Chris Cutler is predominantly known for his work with the experimental group Henry Cow, but has worked in an amazing variety of musical contexts over the last 25 years. As a drummer, his anti-virtuosic yet subtle and sophisticated style made him popular with both the progressive rock and new music fans.
Contrary to what most people believe, Chris Cutler is actually an American citizen, being born in Washington D.C. in on January 4th, 1947, but raised in England. He began drumming playing to the music of the Shadows and other early 60's bands. In 1966, he joined a local band, Louise, which mixed songs and "improvised electronic row". The group eventually collapsed three years later after gigging quite a bit on the London psychedelic club circuit. After the break-up of Louise, Cutler looked for another suitable outlet, but couldn't find one and, after meeting Dave Stewart (keyboard player in Egg at the time) eventually formed the Ottawa Music Company, a 26-piece composers' orchestra. "We only did about seven gigs in all. The idea of it was that a pool of musicians existed to play music that was composed ideally for them. There were about five composers I guess, and these were mostly composers who weren't in groups and whose music wasn't being heard at all, and who have subsequently just vanished. It's a great shame".
In the summer of 1971, Cutler joined Henry Cow following an ad he'd put in the Melody Maker. For a while, Henry Cow was absorbed into the Ottawa Music Company. During his 7-year stint with Henry Cow, Cutler toured almost incessantly all over Europe and recorded several studio and live albums, included two in collaboration with Slapp Happy. He also worked intermittently with Gong and both the London Philharmonic and Berlin Radio Orchestras as soloist in David Bedford's Star's End.
It was soon after setting up the Rock In Opposition collective that Henry Cow broke up late in 1978. Chris Cutler kept working with his ex-Henry Cow colleagues, first in the Art Bears (with Fred Frith and Dagmar Krause), then in a variety of spinoff bands including News From Babel (1983-86), the Frith-Cutler improvising duo and various projects by Lindsay Cooper and Peter Blegvad.
Other projects included two other bands he co-founded, Cassiber (1982-now) and The (EC) Nudes (1993-), as well as collaborations with The Residents (1979-80), Aqsak Maboul (1978-80), Duck And Cover (1983-84), Les Quatre Guitaristes De L'Apocalypso Bar (1986-90), David Thomas & The Pedestrians (1983-85), Pere Ubu (1987-90), Hail (1992), The Wooden Birds (1986), Lussier/Derome/Cutler (1988-90), The Kalahari Surfers (1987), Perfect Trouble (1989-90), Between (1992), The Work (1982), Goebbels/Muller (1987), Jon Rose, Biota, La 1919, Telectu, Mieku Shimuzu, etc. Cutler' most recent project is the ensemble 'P53', with Zygmunt Krauze, Marie Goyette, Lutz Glandien and Otomo Yoshihide.
Chris Cutler is known as an improviser (in many contexts), in the experimental rock world, at jazz festivals, and in the world of contemporary music. He is also known as lyricist, both for his own and other projects (When, Jon Rose, Biota, etc.). He founded and runs the independent distribution and record company ReR/Recommended, is editor of the ReR Quarterly, the New Music magazine 'unFILEd' and author of the theoretical book "File Under Popular". With the above projects and many others he has made more than 75 records and CDs and toured through Europe (East and West), the Americas (North and South) and Japan.
Bob Drake/Bob's Drive-In ....CD $16.99
A set of twisty, forty-ideas-a-minute, niftily arranged, irredeemably eccentric, but strangely brilliant songs that skip blithely across genre borders - from Nashville through the Miskatonic by way of the Beach Boys... even the production values range across the history of recording, sometimes switching inside a single song; so - a high-information ride, but still engagingly listenable. Finished with his new CD, Bob sends the raw songs - just chords and melody - to Dave Kerman (ds), David Campbell (bs, vc) and Kavus Torabi (guit, vc) and, a few months later, they assemble at the Crumbling Tomes studio to work up the songs for a performance. Bob is in the band but the band is not being taught his interpretations and arrangements. It finds its own. After a week of rehearsals, there is a show for an invited audience, recorded live. So now we have a second great album - quite different from Bob's own. On the CD, both versions sit side-by-side, each very different, but still intimately linked to one another.
Charles Hayward/One Big Atom ....CD $17.99
Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now, Quiet Sun etc.) continues his unique and extraordinary journey through music with the release of One Big Atom on the artist-led label Continuity. From the 1970s to the present day, Charles has developed and built some of the most radical music of the European underground. Following on with a series of solo projects that have each made bold proposals for possible futures, his new recording One Big Atom is yet another departure for Charles, taking his song writing further into the personal and political, shifting focus towards a "dread bass" sensibility. It was devised, performed and engineered by him in his South London studio, affording an even more integrated and radical approach to his sound. One Big Atom stands outside of genre and any easily identified signifiers, jump-cutting between song, collage, sound field, noise, signal, melody. Made over the space of a year as the world went through a series of far-reaching changes, the music is a sort of tangential response. In order to enable a worthwhile and genuine process, no computers were used until final mastering. 'Certainly, computers are convenient and clean sounding,' says Charles 'but the paths and routes within the creative act are becoming proscribed and increasingly useless as strategies for survival and independence because of the constraints of digital protocol. Just as my work needs to have a sci-fi proposition, so it also needs to commit violence against the representation project, the idolatrous need to push our technologies towards a more and more 'realistic' capability that leaves no room for the audience to fill in the spaces and trace their own connections. Instead, I've tried to look at the plasticity of sound, to mould and shape it as material towards a consciously 'recorded' artefact.'
The Necks/Mindset ....CD $16.99
Now in their 24th year, the Necks release Mindset, their 16th album - and first LP, featuring two starkly contrasting tracks: the pulsating, raw, Rum Jungle and the slower building, rather hypnotic Daylights. Polyrhythms imbue both pieces with powerful forward motion, embroiled with which ethereal piano patterns interweave with bass, drums, electronics, churning Hammonds and noise-guitars. Drummer and percussionist Tony Buck writes: "Mindset shares some elements in common with our previous album Silverwater [2009], mostly in some mixing approaches and rhythmic devices - a reflection of our ongoing fascination with polymetric material and varying simultaneous pulses... but it's a whole other thing again, and the two tracks are very different from one another - Rum Jungle captures the live approach of the piano, bass, and drum trio a lot more, while Daylights features a bed of electronics and little sounds that slowly converge, coalescing into a multi-layered, multi-tempo, swirling soundscape."
Paolo Angeli & Takumi Fukushima/Itsunomanika ....CD $16.99
This is Paulo Angeli's fifth release, this time with ex-After Dinner, ex Volupuk violinist and singer Takumi Fukushima. A high quality, hi-fidelity concert performance in which Paulo and Takumi deliver an impressively well integrated, complex - and largely composed - program of sharply focused pieces, making the most of their not inconsiderable talents and, somehow, managing to sound like a much larger ensemble. In part, this is sheer virtuosity and, in part, it's the exoticism of the instrumentation - in particular, the sonorities of Paulo's extended, customized, prepared Giant Sardinian guitar, which does extraordinary, chameleonic work as bass, chord accompaniment, melody instrument, viola, cello, and sometimes percussion. There are some palpable After Dinner atmospheres here, but mostly the music occupies its own ambiguous, highly convincing, cultural space.
Sun Ra/Wake Up Angels ....double CD $26.99
Recorded live at the Ann Arbor Blues And Jazz Festival 1972-73-74. The classic big band with a full complement of singers, Tracks 1 -10 (1972) feature the great Space is the Place Suite. After the first few minutes the sound is surprisingly good with great drums throughout; crystal clear. Presence and excitement are well captured, along with some blistering Ra electronics and the crowd cheering everyone on. A bass solo even: rare event. Tracks 11 - 18 (1973) roll straight on winding up with the long declamatory, dramaturgical, chant that gives this set its title and, so far as I know, appears here for the first time on any LP or CD.
Steve MacLean Ensemble/GPS ....CD $16.99
Careful compositions converse with focused improvisations under the precise direction of Steve MacLean who, on this CD, after various excursions that took him through experimental works for piano, interactive insect/guitar compositions and pure electronics, returns to a performing band and a journey through complex polyrhythmic compositions imaginatively intercut with careful, atmospheric inventions, for guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion and various objects.
Sun Ra/Space Probe ....CD $16.99
Recorded mostly in the early '60s with Ra, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, James Jacson, Nimrod Hunt and Thea Barbara, Space Probe explores stripped back forms and colour combinations that are far from jazz or that attempt, very successfully, to take jazz into wholly new territories. Especially notable is the extraordinary Conversation Of J.P. for piano and percussion which, along with the opening track - an 18-minute Moog solo, probably recorded in 1970, just after Ra had newly acquired the instrument and was still putting it through its paces - make this an essential release in the Ra canon.
Sun Ra/The Paris Tapes ....double CD $23.99
Previously unreleased live recordings from the legendary 1971 performance at Theatre Du Chatelet, Paris, France. A double CD package, including unpublished pictures from the concert by Jorg Becker and liner notes by Arkestra member Knoel Scott. 6-panel digipack.
Fred Frith/Live In Japan ....CD $16.99
First time on Compact Disc - Fred's classic table-top guitar album. Says Fred: "These concerts were part of a solo tour of Japan organized by the now-defunct magazine Fool's Mate. The music on the CD was first released in 1982 by Recommended Records Japan as a 2 LP box set in a limited edition of 1000. The tapes were returned to Japan after mastering in New York, and at some time during the ensuing 20 years they disappeared. All efforts to unearth them failed. This version was meticulously re-created from 96K vinyl transfers by Tom Dimuzio over a period of several months in 2007, an amazing labour of love.
The Work/See ....CD $17.99
SEE was the final album by The Work to be issued during the band's lifetime. It showcased some of the very best material of their later years, and a penchant to move into a different, more mature setting. The electronic experimentation here perfectly meshes with post-punk appeals and terrorist-like energy, giving the listener plenty of reasons to be drawn-in to their psychotic world of extremes. Each instrument plays perfectly off of the others to send everything, "somewhere else," whilst somehow holding together perfectly amidst some fiendish, "white knuckler" time relations. Though the vocals on this album were more "sung" than "shrieked" (as evidenced on their earliest recordings), the instrumental parts, especially the drumming, keep the group in line with its radically apparent love for showcasing a primal approach. This has been out-of-print for a number of years, so it's great to have it back again.
The Work/The 4th World ....CD $17.99
THE 4th WORLD is the band's long-lost, never before issued, very last album, from 1994. Succeeding "SEE" by some two years, it shares that album's aesthetics and approach - an economy of means, and superior song-writing/playing - even when compared to their earlier albums. One wouldn't guess it was recorded live at a gig in Breisgau, because the sound is, quite honestly, superlative, and is even better than any of their studio albums. The original, mono recordings (by Volkmar Miedtke) were meticulously reprocessed into stereo years later by Udi Koomran, and the sound has really been, "opened up." The playing itself is also powerful and thoughtful. Especially important is the fact that only two of the twenty songs on this disc were released on previous albums, thus making The Work's entire catalog finally complete, and now wholly in print.
The Work/Live In Japan ....CD $16.99
The Work/Rubber Cage ....CD $16.99
The Work/Slow Crimes ....CD $16.99
Paolo Angeli/Tibi ....Hybrid Disc - CD + Video $21.99
This disc will play in stereo on a CD player and with film and 5.1 surround sound (or stereo) on a DVD player or computer. The music, as always, is prodigious, sounding like a small band, but played by one person in real time (as the film attests). In this format, you can also see the instrument close-to - a highly rebuilt and extended giant Sardinian guitar - with many sympathetic and extra strings, motor driven hurdy gurdy wheels, whirling strings, springs and other appendages, played, like a cello, vertically, with bow, fingers, plectra and machines. However Heath Robinson it may appear, however, it is clearly, under Paulo's hands, a highly serious and extraordinarily flexible beast - that requires and has given rise to new playing techniques. The programme of compositions here navigates through highly organized additive rhythms, freer Frith-like pointillism and some seemingly impossible mini-orchestrations. The film, professionally made, follows the performance, occasionally interpolating abstract passages and processed images. A remarkable player with a unique instrument, playing a music entirely his own.
Sun Ra/Beyond The Purple Star Zone + Oblique Parallax ....CD $18.99
Two related classic Saturn LP reissues on a single CD, both recorded at the Detroit Jazz Centre - in 1980 and 1981 respectively. They share an excellent sound quality and great playing - there's a classic version of Rocket No.9 and plenty of otherworldly Moog and electronic keyboards - up there with Ra's best on record. Rocket excepted, all the pieces are original to these LPs and don't appear elsewhere, though the first track of Purple Star Zone is heard again at the end, with another name (exactly as it was on the 2 LPs), so it was clearly much liked by the boss. These were 10 -14 piece bands, featuring the regulars, including June Tyson, and some visiting guests. The first LP features prominent electric guitar (not identified in the personnel list on the CD - but every listing I've seen for these LPs is different; this one should be fairly accurate in general, since the promoter helped to get the CD together). A fine release, touched with greatness. And with a good sound. Comes in the usual elaborate gatefold digipack covers for which the Artyard label is justly praised.
Steve MacLean/Expressions on Piano ....CD $16.99
A remarkable set of pieces for mediated acoustic piano that operates in the shadowy territory between what is playable and what is programmable; between narrative simplicity and performative complexity; between hopeful intentionality and flawless execution. Unusually, Steve has put our ear right inside the piano, sans artificial reverberations and blurring tools and, over the course of the CD, various musical dialects are explored and extended - from the plausible, through the exquisite, to the impossible.
Nikola Kodjabashia/Explosion of a Memory ....CD $16.99
Performed by the Macedonian Symphony Orchestra with Balkan electro legend Kiril Dzajkovski, Chris Cutler (percussion), Nikola Kodjbashia (prepared piano), Patric Driver and Valere Novarina (readers). Text fragments are by Heiner Muller and Valere Novarina. A four-dimensional explosion in which stretches of Baroque, folk themes and Byzantine liturgy exist contemporaneously with modern and post-modern materials - much as strata emerge where tectonic plates fold one time over another - settling eventually into long, beautiful, tonal stretches, lighter than air, that drift and attenuate to reveal, dreamily, the old simplicities. Immersive, timeless and unmistakably new, this music respects but definitively breaks with existing schools to explore instead its own geographically unique influences and contradictions. 'Explosion of a Memory' is a homage to my literary heroes: James Joyce, Heiner Muller, Valere Novarina, William Gibson, Euripides and Colin Teevan; it's also a deeply personal epic about the complex relationship between childhood myths, history and perpetual homecoming'. NK it."
Sun Ra/The Antique Blacks ....CD $17.99
Another much sought after and long unavailable title recorded in 1974 with a smallish ensemble consisting (probably) of stalwarts Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, Danny David, James Jacson, Akh Tal Ebah, Clifford Jarvis, Artakatune, and a new electric guitarist, Sly, and released on Saturn in the same year. This sounds like a studio recording and careful thought out - most of the compositions appear only on this record (apart from versions of Nature's God and Space is the Place), and include a chain of very interesting accompanied /interpolated) spoken texts: There is a Change in the Air, The Antique Blacks, The ridiculous "I" and the Cosmos "Me" as well as a very long and scary coda to Space is the Place. Ra plays Rocksichord and Moog throughout (solo on track 7 and at the end of track 8). Theatrical and political; a fascinating release.
The Necks/Silverwater ....CD $16.99
Their first studio CD for three years - named after an industrial suburb in Sydney - famous mainly for its correctional facility - Silverwater ranges further and wider than the Necks' former releases, exploring a more sectional structure that counterposes extremes and contrasts, and possesses a greater sense of forward motion than we are accustomed to with this most economical of bands - though it still retains the long, hypnotic single-track iterative form for which they have been praised. Layers and skeins of overdubs and shifting textures give way to almost empty stretches as the piece evolves, and there is much play with asynchronous time. Paradoxically, for a band renowned for its slow, cycling, repetitions, the Necks show again that they are a band who try constantly not to repeat themselves.
Pere Ubu/London * Texas ....CD $16.99
A missing piece of the Ubu jigsaw, and a fine memento of a great band, London Texas is a satisfyingly hi-fi live recording of the sadly short-lived line-up that toured briefly between the arrival of Eric Drew Feldman and the departure of Chris Cutler. Certainly it's the best recording of the Scott, Cutler, Maimone rhythm section - though the whole band is on lean-back-intense concert form. Coming back to it, this was the end of a particular era, of a certain kind of band: the songs are economical and tightly arranged but harmonically elaborated - with strongly performative and musical underpinning (there's a new aesthetic in place now); it's an approach that takes no prisoners. Then there's the bonus of that scary live energy. Studio recordings just can't do this. London Texas stings like a bee - in a beret.
Absolute Zero/Crashing Icons ....CD $16.99
"Based in Miami and featuring Pip Pyle (Hatfield & the North, National Health, In Cahoots, etc.), this is a very interesting American band, ploughing its own furrow - whose accent is what they call 'prog' over there, but whose language is more complex by far. Pip Pyle adds a seasoned sophistication - in fact I think this is a great environment for him, he shines - but the whole ensemble is way past the foothills and keeping the oxygen packs handy. An excellent first CD, in a style that, features densely composed, layered, slightly post 5UU-school music - with some sung parts, high level rock/abstract improvisation. virtuoso playing and excellent clean, powerful production. In fact close and intelligent attention to detail - compositional, performative and sonic - is its hallmark. These are long-considered, sustained pieces. A fine debut."-Chris Cutler
Paulo Angeli/Tessuti ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Ahead in the Sand')
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The latest from Paulo on which he plays compositions by Fred Frith and Bjork - solo (though when you hear it, you definitely won't believe it) on his highly customised and extended, electrified, giant Sardinian guitar. A tour de force of technique and a musical pleasure. There is so much subtlety and so much attention to the minutiae of sound, and so much going on at any given time, that it is difficult to relate what you hear to just one person playing. Very concentrated, rewards listening to a few songs at a time. Though strangely, you could probably also dance to it.
Art Bears/The Art Box ....6 CD box set $75.99
The Art Box marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most eclectic, dynamic and productive creative alliances in the history of experimental music. Featuring legendary composer Fred Frith, groundbreaking percussionist Chris Cutler & vocalist Dagmar Krause, this assembly of genius has made what CMJ termed an "incalculable" contribution to the post-context art-rock scene. To mark the 25th Anniversary of the Art Bears we will be releasing a 6 CD box containing: The three original releases, properly re-mastered...Art Bears Revisited -A double CD of re-mixes, re-workings and (mostly) new pieces made from the Art Bears multi-track masters by The Residents, John Oswald, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Jon Rose, Bob Drake (and many others). 6 years in the making, this is an amazing catalogue of imagination and great music. Digi-packed with a cover art by EM Thomas, who did all three original art bears covers and containing Art re-mixes in the booklet as well as comprehensive information. This double also contains Collapse from the Ralph Records single, All Hail from the Recommended Sampler and one previously unreleased and unfinished track completed by Fred Frith and Chris Cutler for this release. A free extra CD only available with the box (there are reasons) containing further re-workings by John Oswald, Bob Drake, Fred Frith, Biota, Yasushi Utsunomiya, as well as live Art Bears tracks and a Duck and Cover cover. A thick book of artwork, articles, notes, interviews and commentary on the material, the work process, the tour and the band in general, with photographs, documents and artwork.
Art Bears/Hopes & Fears ....CD $16.99
Comprised of 1/2 the members of the legendary HENRY COW, during the late 70's this group made 3 of the most powerful statements yet in the world of Art-Rock. Whereas Henry Cow showed an inclination to write long-ish compositions interspersed with improvisational aspects, ART BEARS' approach combined a more lyrical display, with shorter, extended-song forms. Typically, the word-strong poetry of drummer CHRIS CUTLER was the impetus for the group's recordings. Once written, it was set to music by multi-instrumentalist FRED FRITH, (often in a spur-of-the-moment fashion) and was then extrapolated upon and built up by the group during the recording/mixing process in a way that usually validated the lyrical intent. HOPES AND FEARS shows the group at its most formidable stage in terms of composition. The pieces are often highly complex, with ideas that zig-zag through a maze of musical imagery, highlighting the group at their peak of virtuosity. DAGMAR KRAUSE's vocal prowess is stunningly effective as a narrative point to the lyrical subject matter, and the recording itself was edited in a sequence where re-peating themes and studio wizardry present the album as a cycle of related, "songs."
Art Bears/Winter Songs ....CD $16.99
WINTERSONGS: is no less experimental, but offers an even stronger, clearer set of artistic visions. Here the trio of ART BEARS stand alone, and the stripped- down sense of instrumentation, which almost resembles a standard combo (guitar, bass, piano, drums and singing), makes a simpler (though more poignant) musical statement. Often Fred Frith's penchant for angular melodies is forestalled, and re-placed with single note, "non-melodies" in a sort of minimalist, rhythmic accordance to the text's settings. Experimental studio work and effects abound, yet the sound is more economical and hard-hitting than the band's earlier work.
Art Bears/The World as it is Today ....CD $16.99
THE WORLD AS IT IS TODAY : is a scathing, brutal and disturbingly honest venture into the horrors of contemporary inhumanity and political digression. Here ART BEARS forage even more boldly into aspects of using the recording studio as a compositional instrument : A tape of a lawnmower is slowed down several steps to convincingly create the sounds of machine-gun fire and bombs. A Geiger counter is emulated by radically E.Q.ing drum sticks played on a tile flooring in the studio. No punches are pulled, and the band goes all-out on this, their final recording. The playing is aggressive and hefty, and the sound immaculate, intense and, at times, downright scary.
Avi Belleli/Strawberry Cream And Gunpowder ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from '2nd Texture')
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Born in 1963, Avi Belleli is one of the Middle East's most notable and successful composers. He is best known as the leader, songwriter, vocalist and bass player for the Tel Aviv-based rock band, The Tractor's Revenge, who have made seven albums on Israeli labels, most of which have gone Gold. Despite massive success as a commercial personality, Belleli has never turned his back on the more artistic and progressive aspects of his endeavors. "Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder" is, by Israeli standards, a radical recording of music for a dance piece by the same name by the young choreographer, Yasmeen Goder. The performance, (which features Belelli playing live on stage amongst the dancers) has already enjoyed several critically acclaimed runs in Europe, Japan, Israel and New York. The project is influenced by recent events in the Middle East, and with regards to the global terror atmosphere in general, but in more of a psychological than political way: It questions the connections between power and fear, sex and control, gender issues and personal crisis, whilst examining ways by which individuals can learn to cope with sudden, radical (and sometimes horrifying) changes in their lives.
Berliner Ring/Orbital ....CD $16.99
What the London orbital is to the English capital, the Berliner ring is to Berlin: a circular highway that surrounds the city. The first contemporary release from Art Yard amalgamates disparate elements: electro mechanical devices, invented instruments, modified keyboards, delays, customised rhythm and string machines: a half man, half machine driven trip into the Electro-Mechanical sub-underground, built around a combination of moods and themes drawn from the Berlin landscape. Berliner Ring work toward a brew of forms and techniques, creating geographical references and representations, 'tonal landscapes,' an unfolding of ambient instrumental stereologues.
Biota/Half a True Day ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Accidental Photograph')
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Six years in the making, this is the sixth CD released by ReR from the visual/sonic art group Biota. Unique in their history and method, Biota painstakingly construct complex, organic structures that mix extensive studio processing and musique concrete techniques, with a highly eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electronic resources - from kit drums, through mediaeval winds, strings and barrel organs, to early experimental electronic instruments. Their works are always performance driven and interleaved with successive stages of lamination, imbrication of parts, and radical pre- and post-processing. The interaction of staggered, overlapping elements reveals a changeable truth about the whole as the parts variously harmonize or dissent; reinforce or cloak one another in their unfolding. The project is, at heart, about uncertainty. Players encounter the shifting interplay between previously recorded parts juxtaposed with instrumental snippets - out of context - introduced from the group's archives. Electronic processing programs are employed to apply semi-random and semi-intentional alterations to the proceedings.
Blast/Altra Strata ....CD $16.99
Blast are a Netherlands-based avant rock and jazz quartet notable for compositionally complex music. Since forming in 1989, the band has worked to develop a sound both dense and kaleidoscopic, which uses elements of both intense composition and free improvisation. On Altra Strata, they play like a heavy metal band who've discovered new instruments and new music. With the addition of new drummer Fabrizio Spera of the Italian improvising ensemble Ossatura, there's an even greater emphasis on improvisation here than in the past, and this should strongly appeal to the new brigade of appreciators of free-music in this post Sonic Youth world. Altra Strata is a vibrant combination of influences from 20th century classical, the Rock In Opposition bands of the 1970's and a violent approach to free and composed avant music.
Blast/Sift ....CD $16.99
This is the second release, after a long wait, from this unique ensemble. Equally at home with the discipline of composition and the tightrope of improvisation Blast have evolved a fluid, pointillistic, unfathomable but transparent musical language that seamlessly integrates - over very short durations - highly complex writing and very free ranging improvisation, allowing the two languages to merge and combine into a new kind of logical exposition that makes sense but can't be reverse-engineered into its component parts. This is a music that lives through detail and exposition; neither resolving into composition, nor able properly to be understood as improvisation. In this respect Blast have solved a problem that has defeated many in the last 40 years.
Peter Blegvad/Hangman's Hill ....CD $16.99
Musician, songwriter, author and illustrator, Peter Blegvad was born in New York City, but spent most of his life in the UK. Today he finds himself with one foot in the avant-garde music scene (as a collaborator with Faust, Henry Cow, and Slapp Happy) and the other in pop music. He is joined on his new CD, Hangman's Hill, by old bandmates John Greaves on bass and Chris Cutler on drums. This trio recently finished a tour of the states playing much from this CD that got rave reviews from the fans!
The Blitzoids/Stealing From Helpless Children + Look Up ....double CD $24.99
(excerpt from 'No Time')
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Way back in 80's, before the term "Alternative" was hijacked to correspond with Seattle "Grunge," the genre was held in high-esteem for its "D.I.Y./Low-Fi" ethic. The Blitzoids - along with The Residents, R. Stevie Moore and Eugene Chadbourne - epitomized this school of thought in the USA. From the headquarters of their native Chicago, Illinois compound (ie. The De Chiara brothers' record store, which was infamous for its somewhat crude but workable 8 Track recording studio conditions), The Blitzoids created songs that went well beyond normally written forms. Aside from the band's basic "rock" instrumentation, they exploited Musique' Concrete, found sounds and strange instrumentation to define their sonic palette. Different sections of music were seamlessly butted-up against one another to tell musical stories in sharp and clear detail, often giving way to rich, open passages of sound, only to be quickly countered by kitschy, pop-influenced stabs of humor. In the long run, the band's music was at once witty, whacky, artfully strange and wonderfully unique.
Brainville 3/Trial By Headline ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Hour's Gone')
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Daevid Allen, Hugh Hopper and Chris Cutler - three old hands out of Soft Machine, Gong and Henry Cow stretch already elastic musical material into various shapes, tie it in knots and generally have a good time. These high quality recordings combined with seat-of-the-pants playing make for a lot of feature and colour, underpinning a music that is constantly in shape-shifting motion. Compiled from recent concert recordings in Berlin, London and Tel Aviv, this clutch of extended songs should be to the taste of anyone familiar with the protagonists, or who longs to hear a little more straightforward instrumental playing in place of computers, heavy production and highly sanitised post-production. Well seasoned musicality, fast thinking and relaxed conversation at the edge of chaos.
Camberwell Now/All's Well ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Greenfingers')
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This definitive edition collects the entire released output of Camberwell Now (two EPs and an LP), newly re-mastered by the band and repackaged with full notes, lyrics, additional photographs and artwork. Chronologically, Camberwell Now immediately succeeded This Heat, Charles Hayward continuing to work with This Heat's last bassist Trefor Goronwy, and the two of them joining forces with Stephen Rickard who, for the new band, designed his unique 'cassette switchboard', a kind of proto-sampler - though that's not the half of it (Steve's article fully explaining the device is reprinted in the new, expanded booklet that comes with the CD). Musically, Camberwell both followed and departed from the style of This Heat. Formally and gesturally there are common elements, but there is far greater transparency and the sound palette is quite different: the music is more placed than grown, as the slow accumulation and evolution of material in This Heat gives way to a more immediate and orderly development of the material in Camberwell Now. The songs - nostalgic, scary, and quietly desperate - peer into the future to find harbour but confront only fragments of ruin.
Charming Hostess/Punch ....CD $16.99
Charming Hostess hail from Oakland, California and are part of a the region's "weird music scene" which also spawned such bands as Fibulator, Eskimo, Faun Fables, Japonize Elephants and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, three of whom - Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt and Dan Rathbun - are also members of Charming Hostess. Led by hyperactive troublemaker Jewlia Eisenberg (who made a fearsome impression with her Tzadik CD debut), the Hostesses here are an extraordinary 7 piece band: tight, a little rockish, comprising bass, drums, guitar, fiddle, various horns, accordion and other occasional instruments (singing saw, for instance) - but the work is distinguished by the amazing vocal arrangements (everyone sings, and exceptionally). Full of addictive rhythms, stretched harmonies and pinpoint playing, this is evolved material, executed with great skill - and great looseness. Some traditional pieces from Bulgaria, Palestine, Transylvania and Southern America appear in very personalised arrangements alongside original songs that lean on zydeco and traditional American folk music.
Coxhill Hayward Hopper & Robinson/Clear Frame ....CD $16.99
"Featuring the all-star cast of Charles Hayward, Hugh Hopper, Lol Coxhill and Orphy Robinson (vibraphone, steel drums), with guest Robert Wyatt on cornet. Eight strong pieces in a rock-inflected, improvisation-empowered, loose - but not too loose - free-associating open style that has become as rare as hen's teeth today. Clearframe refers back to time when free jazz, rock and all the experimental fringes were converging in search of a polyglot musical language eschewing the exclusions and rules that hedged their different genres about; and all the participants here (except Orphy Robinson - too young) were part of that project and have been shifting genres and evading labels ever since. To my ears, this record returns to unfinished business and does so at the highest level. These chaps know their way around. Clearframe offers a rare opportunity to listen to masters at work in an almost non-existent field. And it's great to hear Lol in full flight."-Chris Cutler, ReR Megacorp
Chris Cutler/Solo ....CD $16.99
Here at last, a solo electronic drum album from Chris Cutler, one of the world's most respected drummers. The first stirrings of Chris' electric kit appeared in later versions of Henry Cow, at that time just a few telephone mouthpieces, a reverb unit and a mixer, with which raw drum sounds could be manipulated. This system was basic, but served Cutler well for his early duo concerts with ex-Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith. Later, when he joined Cassiber, contact microphones, a second small mixer, delays and a pitch shifter were added. Over the last seven years the kit has become fully electrified, with a sixteen-channel mixer, and an array of effects pedals. Drum sounds can be whipped up and down octaves, doused in wildly different reverbs, sent into eternal delays or unexpected reversals, the whole gamut of possible effects can be applied to each individual drum or cymbal. This is the instrument heard on this CD, in recordings made at recent concerts in Europe and the USA. Seeing Cutler in concert one marvels at how one player can make sounds of such variety, subtlety, and at times, power. It's as if a whole electronic orchestra is hidden within a small drum kit. Part of the pleasure lies in seeing how unlikely sounds emerge from a drum being tapped or scraped, sometimes echoing as in a vast cathedral, sometimes transmuted into electronic transmission sounds. Often a drum solo is the least appetizing part of a concert or record: ego massaging for the player, but un-musical, boring and self-indulgent for everyone else. Cutler has changed all that. It will change the way you think about drums forever.
Chris Cutler/There And Back Again ....CD $16.99
Like its companion 'Twice around the Earth,' 'There and Back Again' is derived from a selection of the 365 location recordings made for Cutler's daily Resonance FM radio programme 'Out of the Blue Radio' (2004-2005). It takes extracts from 44 of these environmental recordings to explore - amongst other things - the way memory works, and how the experience of passing time is constructed. That's subtext. More important, it should make enjoyably complex listening: surprising, serendipitous, mundane but alien - the commonplace transfigured. There and Back Again offers an agglomeration of inadvertent sounds, made haphazardly by the world - and some of its inhabitants, that were never meant to survive, and were certainly not meant to be listened to repeatedly. And yet... Since about a quarter of the locations, though not the extracts are the same as those on 'Twice', reading across the two CDs adds another dimension of listening to the memory puzzle that these fleeting but permanent works explore.
Chris Cutler/Twice Around the Earth (an experiment in listening) ....CD $16.99
Compiled from source sounds that have been recorded in 81 different global locations, this remarkable new album collapses the planet into a Sargasso Sea of sound. The material was taken from Cutler's daily half hour radio programme for Resonance FM: Out Of The Blue Radio. "The idea," he explains, "was to open a virtual window on to a different soundscape every day; to put the listener for 30 minutes into someone else's ears, somewhere in the world." 247 contributors sent in 30 minute recordings made in real time at a location of their own choosing, but in the time window of the London broadcast (between 23,30 and midnight GMT). Cutler again: "These were simple blocks of time whose content was uncontrollable. Contributors could choose where to be and what to be doing, but beyond that, whatever happened, happened." TWICE AROUND THE EARTH is a fascinating hour of listening, delivering en route, puzzles, amazing coincidences and, tantalising fragments left unresolved: the earth keeps moving. (Except during the thoughtfully placed central piece in Luxembourg Airport. Time to put our feet up for a while and recover between flights).
Chris Cutler & Thomas Dimuzio/Dust ....CD $16.99
Cutler and Dimuzio have a serious pedigree and reputation: Cutler was the drummer with Henry Cow, Art Bears, The Residents, and Pere Ubu. Thomas Dimuzio is an electronic composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist whose speciality is sampling, live processing and computer editing. The two teamed up in '99 for a series of concerts and an album, Quake, where they laid down the fundamentals of their partnership; subterranean groans, vast drones and tectonic clashes. Dust follows in wake of this seismic activity. Cutler's amalgam of electrified drums and lo fi gadgets produce just about every sound imaginable, while Dimuzio's sampler captures and replays sounds and textures, simultaneously adding its own interjections. Once again its hard to tell who's doing what, as the sound melds into massive interweaving structures. There are just two tracks. The first, Requiem, is an extraordinary intense concert, recorded in New Mexico in 2000. The second, Universal Decoding Machine, was recorded in the studio in France, with sound engineer Maggie Thomas wandering around the house and garden wearing binaural microphones; we hear what she hears, including at one point a horse eating a carrot. It was then mixed and re-processed by Dimuzio in San Francisco, in 2002.
Chris Cutler and Fred Frith/Two Gentlemen In Verona ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler: electrified drums/flotsam, Fred Frith: electric guitar/voice/jetsam, Recorded live April 16th, 1999 at Interzona - Verona, Italy. "There must have been something special going on in Verona last April. By far the most aggressive of their duo albums, it leads us via howling fuzz guitar & machine gun percussion into walls of post-rock improvisation, obsessive industrial rhythms, and levels of excitement rarely generated by two people on a stage." Chris & Fred were members of Henry Cow & the Art Bears, & both have a huge c.v. of releases under their own names.
Bob Drake/The Shunned Country ....CD $16.99
On his fifth full album for ReR, virtuoso bass player, guitarist, producer, studio engineer and composer Bob Drake presents a new collection of 52 very short songs on uncanny themes, illustrated in the exquisite 24pp full-colour booklet with a set of 20 commissioned paintings by Ray O’Bannon. Perhaps the scariest thing is that each of these miniatures is a fully formed, fully orchestrated and complete structure - no lazy snippets here - and Bob plays all the parts with his famously Paganini-esque virtuosity in spooky variable-tempo synchrony - packing more ideas and material into 50 seconds than most could manage on an entire album. There is complexity here, disguised as simplicity; production genius disguised as eccentricity; the pursuit of an aesthetic of exquisite imperfection. These are ears that have heard beyond technical perfection (too easy, once you have the trick) and moved on to something else.
Bob Drake/What Day Is It? ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Rainy')
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What Day Is It? is the re-issue of Bob's very first solo disc (originally self-manufactured in art packaging – here tho, professionally packaged for mass market sales). It already exhibits Bob's characteristic traits: golden fingers, hi-wire vocals, eyebrow-raising country-picking, loose-but-right-in-the-pocket drums, eccentric chord inversions, and a bass-guitar sound to die for. Sitting happily with the fantasy 'Yes' Euro-progressive surface is the rather more substantial depth of a bluegrass and rooted-rock American culture; an almost unique combination and one hard to imitate (or even imagine, until you hear Bob do it). But then, Bob has always marched to the beat of a different drummer, manifestly careless of the fashion or of the easier, more superficial aspects of the music he has absorbed.
Faust/Faust ....CD $16.99
Inventors of Kraut Rock, iconoclasts extraodinaire, Faust are key figures in the history of rock music. In the early 70's, along with Can and Kraftwerk, they reinvented pop as an art-form with a specifically European attitude. They made a stockade of their studio at Wumme, near Hamburg, promising their record company that they would eventually emerge from it as the new Beatles. Instead, they overturned our whole notion of what makes a pop record; improvising with industrial noise, generating bizarre hypnotic grooves, creating shocking studio collages, and dabbling with every conceivable musical genre, sometimes simultaneously. Kurt Graupner, a Deutsche Gramaphon engineer who was seconded to the project, furnished Faust with innovative effects units and built a spontaneous recording environment, which perfectly complemented Faust's conceptual ideas, satirical humour, and insane passions. Being light years ahead of their time, FAUST are arguably the most important figures in the progression of Rock music.
Faust/The Wumme Years - 1970-73 ....CD box set $59.99
Four classic remastered CDs [Faust, So Far, Tapes, ’71 Minutes], a bonus disc of previously unheard material, and a 40 page booklet of interviews and rare photos.
Jane Feder/Speak Puppet ....CD $16.99
No one until now has proposed an amalgamation of the music of Bert Jansch, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix and Karlheinz Stockhausen. By attaching beads, rings and other objects to her acoustic guitar strings, and producing an album of strangely beautiful tunes and ambiences, Denver based guitarist Feder has managed just that. The 'prepared' guitar can send out chiming noises reminiscent of oriental percussion, unexpected out-of-tune twangs, or mimic the distant plunking of an extra-terrestrial harp. Arranged as a suite of gently oscillating tunes, the album also occasionally deploys drum machines and electric bass to summon up the spirit of the Durrutti Column. Central to the project, though, is Feder's playing and composing; whether engrossed in a Jansch-like fingerpicking folk tune, or a more on the edge bottleneck scraping session, Feder produces music, noises and sounds which are never less than captivating and seductive.
Janet Feder & Frith and Fred/Ironic Universe ....DVD + CD $29.99
(excerpt from 'Heart Beat Faster')
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On these disks, Denver-based acoustic guitarist Janet Feder furthers her exploration on the instrument, and teams up with another of the world's most respected guitarists, Mr. Fred Frith. A whole gamut of strange techniques, musical strategies, beautiful tunings and ambiences are employed; The outcome is sure bliss for fans of modern, instrumental music. Part avant-garde, part classical, part folk, in fairly equal proportions, this approach has never before been attempted with such striking success. The DVD portion is separated into 2 segments: Janet's videos were beautifully shot and edited by Hollywood film-maker David Quinn, in a professional studio as she played live. Each track is presented in a different setting to embellish the diverse performances. Fred's video is one, longish improvised session from a recent concert in Boulder, Colorado, also professionally filmed and edited by Quinn. Fred abandoned his electric guitar in lieu of his Taylor acoustic for the event, bringing his playing into a new realm, while still managing to put his many toys (bowls, chains, brushes, dowls etc.) to good use.
Fred Frith/Accidental ....CD $16.99
Any new record from Fred Frith, one of the world's leading avant rock guitarists and composers, is a major event. Accidental was commissioned by a British choreographer who lives in Amsterdam, Paul Selwyn Norton, for a dance piece made with the Batsheva Company in Tel Aviv. For Fred it's a return to basics, a series of deeply contrasting moods achieved with the simplest of means. Throughout the CD, noises of rusty metal, electronic detritus, bits of random radio, improvised cut-up vocals and messed up percussion, suggest an unpredictable and hostile landscape. Fred describes the motivations behind Accidental: "I'm fascinated by accidents. When I do solo improvisations I think of myself as being in continuous dialogue with the unexpected, and its always dynamic. Do I ignore this, do I embrace it, do I integrate it, do I keep my distance? When making this music I was constantly using random elements like radio tuning and trying to frame them in metric or harmonic structures."
Fred Frith/Allies ....CD $16.99
Featuring beautifully understated performances from Joey Baron (drums), the late, great master cellist, Tom Cora, and the inimitable sax talents of George Cartwright, ALLIES is the second in the Music For Dance series, pioneered originally on Fred's TECHNOLOGY OF TEARS. While some compositional similarities are reminiscent of that work, ALLIES employs a more organic approach, weaning mostly acoustic elements into Fred's penchant to explore the musical relationship between the mechanical and the natural elements of sound and modern music. Elegant and meticulously crafted surfaces are constantly under attack from unpredictable elements, creating a particular tension that is haunting and quite unlike any of the composer's other works.
Fred Frith/Cheap at Half the Price ....CD $16.99
Fred's third LP for the US label Ralph Records, back in 1983, was a collection of gloriously direct pop songs, recorded on a four-track home studio system. Fred played almost all of the instruments: guitar, six string bass, Casio 101 keyboard, violin, xylophone, and home mades. There are some great production ideas, with intrusive samples (Ronald Reagan appears in a memorable moment), and guitars snaking, bending and sliding around the mix. It's quite extraordinary, given the sound quality and the vibrancy of the production ideas, that this was recorded on a four-track recorder. There are influences from European cafe music (the inspired electronic doodling of ZNR springs to mind), and Frank Zappa, East European traditional music, Cajun, and....er…Sting and the novelty singles of The Flying Lizards all make themselves felt. Fred is joined for cameos on bass by Bill Laswell and Tina Curren, and Hans Bruinnsson provides some great drum samples. The album caused ripples in the 'progressive music snob' circuit at the time, for its apparent simplicity. With the benefit of hindsight, Fred really captured something with his popularisation of sometimes excessively elitist po-faced avant-garde music.
Fred Frith/Gravity ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith is undoubtedly one of the world's greatest electric guitarists. Starting out with UK avant rock group Henry Cow in the early 70's, he developed a devastating melodic fuzz lead guitar style that took its cue from the 'Canterbury' bands Soft Machine and Hatfield and the North. He's also developed a whole series of Frithisms which do not rely on the fuzz box, gorgeous jazz chords which swell out of thin air, delicate high melodic lines, fantastically complex riffs, and a new language of the solo improvisation which re-connects Derek Bailey with rock n roll. Gravity, originally released on vinyl by Ralph Records in 1980, is one of Fred's most enjoyable and accessible releases. It was born at a time when he wanted to get away from the massive and complex structures of Henry Cow, and he began to think about more direct song and dance forms. During a Greek holiday he scribbled down the melodies of local musicians on napkins, raw material for this album of intriguing electric guitar and violin tunes. There are some impossibly catchy melodies, arranged with the off kilter sense of harmony and instrumentation reminiscent of the first Cow album, but here delivered with in-your-face brutal simplicity. There is mutated mandolin, township jazz piano, Balkan wedding music, and Fred's trademark fuzz guitar. There's even a vicious re-working of Dancing in the Street. Musicians iincluding THE MUFFINS and SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA and Marc Hollander are the support.
Fred Frith/Guitar Solos ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith is a UK born avant rock guitarist, with a world wide reputation and following. He first came to attention as a member of the UK experimental rock band Henry Cow, which he co-founded and played with for 10 years (1968-1978). Originally released on Virgin Records in 1974, while Fred was very actively involved in Henry Cow, this album was hugely influential in its time. This is just Fred alone with electric and acoustic guitars, and the help of multiple pick ups, scrapers, and countless techniques for getting new sounds out of the guitar. At the time it impressed Brian Eno, Bill Laswell and John Zorn so much that Fred eventually got to work with them. It also launched his career as a solo improviser of world stature, which he remains to this day. Rock and roll attacks, post apocalyptic scraping, sound-scapey delays and ambiences, wild fuzz lead; Fred does just about everything you could imagine doing to a guitar. For fans of : Derek Bailey, Steffen Basho-Junghans, John Fahey, Henry Cow, Henry Kaiser, John Zorn.
Fred Frith/The Happy End Problem ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Ukon')
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An instant Fred classic, 'Happy End' presents two, related, small-ensemble works for 6 and 7 musicians respectively - mostly strings of one sort or another, with percussion, flute, clarinet and electronics. Fred, violinist Carla Kilsteht and percussionist Willie Wynant play throughout providing continuity across the pieces, as the music constantly unfolds into new textures and dialects. Melody, harmony and rhythm are omnipresent, though not always obviously colluding, and the music moves with a constant assurance, never hesitating and never marking time. There are some affinities with Nicola Kodjbashia's luminous 'Solitary Walker' here (which it predates), particularly in its use of minimal instrumentation to maximum effect, popular materials, exquisite articulation and a kind of modest transcendence. The necessity and simplicity of these pieces conceals a catalogue of experimental techniques and novel ideas - there are those who'd have squeezed a score of albums from this material.
Fred Frith/Impur ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Impur')
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In 1996, at the end of a two year residency, Fred organised an event at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne in France involving as many of the students as possible, grouped according to their departments - early music, rock, African drumming, classical etc. Each group was set up in a different room in the school building and during the concert the public was encouraged to wander around creating their own mix, or to sit in the courtyard and listen to the sound drifting out through the open windows. For their part, each group of musicians had to play musical material Fred had prepared for them - occasionally they could improvise. In order to co-ordinate all the groups, who naturally couldn't hear each other, everyone followed a precise time-score prepared by Fred (55 minutes regulated by synchronized stopwatches). The entire event was recorded on 4 A-DAT machines, to be mixed down later, and this CD is the result: a lurching, complex and capricious beast with many heads: an orchestra tuning up; a salute to Sonny Blount; a roiling chaotic mass of sound splitting into layers, colliding back together, pullulating, ululating, roaring and sometimes mewing like a kitten.
Fred Frith/Impur II ....CD $16.99
Impur II is totally different from Impur I - which was a deconstructed, spatialised simultaneity of musical events that could only be heard through open windows or by wandering through rooms - Impur 2 took the form of an unannounced performance across which audience members had to stumble by chance (and then collect their friends - or not). Both events formed part of a commission by L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villurbanne in May 1996.This recording, painstakingly edited and re-mastered by Fred, appears as a full-on concert by a large 19 strong ensemble with Fred conducting as well as playing. It's built on rhythm, harmony, rock noise, exotic instrumentation, power, complexity and melodic writing - with intermittent stretches of chaos, eccentricity and theatre, and fits comfortably into the aesthetic of his earlier performing ensemble projects, like Gravity, Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog.
Fred Frith/Middle of the Moment ....CD $16.99
Field recordings of traditional singing and drumming, the jaunty accordion and violin music of a travelling circus troupe, the sounds of trucks, trains, wells, winds, flies, fire, thunder, camels, goats and a jackal are woven into a multi- layered, subtly shifting cinematic aural journey. This is Fred's poetic soundtrack CD accompanying the Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel documentary film of the same name. Middle of the Moment is a poetic evocation of nomadism; The filmmakers travelled with the Tuereg people in the Sahara desert, and also experienced the exotic wanderings of Cirque 0, an avant garde circus troupe. Fred says: "I 'travelled' through this material, formed my impressions, and created a 'sound -movie' from them, using a process analogous to that of editing a film. I've never been interested in making a typical film soundtrack record … My idea is more to create a parallel narrative, free to draw on music that wasn't in the film but was part of the process of making it."
Fred Frith/Nowhere Sideshow Thin Air ....CD $16.99
This is Fred's sixth CD of music for dance, featuring three commissions by three different choreographers each sharing, as Fred says 'a certain obsession with melodic deconstruction.' Two of them feature - and were especially written for - the remarkable violinist Carla Kihlstedt. Fred and Carla perform one of them (Fred playing a huge array of instruments here as on all pieces), are joined by Fred Guiliano (samples) and Gail Brand (trombone) on another, while the third features Fred, Hande Erdem (violin) and Threresa Wong (cello). These are complex studio compositions characterized by a deceptive simplicity, layers and plateaux, rhythm and colour.
Fred Frith/The Previous Evening ....CD $16.99
For his latest recorded adventure, former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music, John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. The Previous Evening was originally commissioned by Amanda Miller, a work that was partly premiered by the London Contemporary Dance Theatre at London's Sadler's Wells in December 1993, and by the Pretty Ugly Dance Company in 1996, at the Tiroler Landestheater, Innsbruck and the Hebbel Theater, Berlin respectively. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. as he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage; "Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at randome from John Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the events, and dynamic markings in this section were also determined using chance methods." Elsewhere an Australian dawn chorus illustrates a section of "Part 3 (Homage to Earle Brown)", while other sound sources include works by Cage, Schumann, Mozart and "some bits and pieces of my own earlier work." The result is a record which shines new light on the work of Cage, Feldman and Brown, as well as illuminating another side of Fred Frith's constantly evolving career as a musician and composer.
Fred Frith/Prints ....CD $16.99
It's a real pleasure to hear a new album of Fred's songs. This is Fred in pop mode, a fascinating and almost commercial album. There's a cheeky use of samples, with fragments of Burt Bacharach, Serge Gainsbourg, Bill Clinton, and Helmut Kohl all providing useful grist to Frith's mill. Fred's singing is effective and distinctive; a cross between Robert Wyatt and Christoph Anders, or an English David Byrne. Funky, rocky, noisemongery, but full of offbeat humour and quirky arrangements. The most accessible commercial release by Frith in years, perhaps ever and is also Fred's first album of songs for years.
Fred Frith/Speechless ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith is a UK born avant rock guitarist, with a world wide reputation and following. He first came to attention as a member of the UK rock band Henry Cow, which he co-founded and played with for 10 years (1968-1978). Frith made this album in 1980 not long after Henry Cow had broken up and he had moved to New York City. The musicians Fred chose to use on Speechless bridge Fred's European roots and his joining in the then emerging New York City 'downtown' scene. Frith made this record with the participation of two bands: Etron Fou Leloublan (from France) and Massacre (from New York, which included Bill Laswell within the ranks! Speechless was originally released in 1981 on Ralph Records, and was a huge critical and sales success.
Fred Frith/Step Across The Border ....CD $16.99
This is Fred's soundtrack to the independent movie of the same name, by Nicolas Humbert and Werner Penzel, which followed Fred touring & playing in the late 80's, when he was actively on the road all the time.. The album does not sound like a conventional sound track album it's one of Fred's most vibrant releases, as the music rushes between styles as far apart as East European folk, Japanese Pop, African drumming and just about everything you can improvise in between. This functions as a sort of a 'best of' sampler, featuring many aspects of Frith's work, some of which can be found on other albums, but most of which is only available here. Performers on this album include: Iva Bittova, Joey Baron, Ciro Batista, Tom Cora, Haco, Bob Ostertag, Zeena Parkins and John Zorn.
Fred Frith/Technology Of Tears ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Sadness, Its Bones Bleached Behind Us')
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Stunning performances from John Zorn, Tenko, and turntable revolutionary Christian Marclay, with idiosyncratic use of the latest (1986) digital technology made this one of Fred's most successful releases. Painstakingly re-mastered from the original tapes.
Fred Frith & John Zorn/The Art Of Memory 2 ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'The Painter')
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Recordings from the relatively early days of what has become an enduring and exhilarating musical partnership. On the borderline between music and chaos, these live performances from one of the most vital periods of New York's illustrious musical history.
Fred Frith's Keep the Dog/That House We Lived In ....double CD $24.99
This is the first time any recordings of Keep The Dog, Fred Frith's touring band from the early 1990's, have been released! Features JEAN DEROME (saxes, flute, voice), FRED FRITH (guitar, bass, violin, voice), CHARLES HAYWARD (drums, voice), RENE LUSSIER (guitar, bass), BOB OSTERTAG (sampler), ZEENA PARKINS (accordion, electric harp, keyboards, voice). "Every Keep The Dog concert was different. For these CDs I've tried to re-create the feeling of a typical two-set concert. More than anything, this music demonstrates the importance of the collective process...the musicians always had the freedom to twist and turn the music to fit any and every occasion." - Fred Frith
Bill Gilonis & Chantale Laplante/Zurich - Bamberg ....CD $16.99
Bill Gilonis and Chantale Laplante worked on Zurich-Bamberg intermittently for three years. The CD comprises a series of pieces that fall loosely into a category that could be called "electro-acoustic Horspiel." However, with Bill in Zurich and Chantale based firstly in Bamberg, Germany and later in Montreal, Canada, it was difficult to find a way of collaborating by conventional means. But, by ping-ponging audio file CDs between these cities they managed to develop a practical, and in some ways advantageous, composition and recording strategy. For this project conventional instrumentation has been virtually abandoned. What we hear on these recordings - collaged and sometimes manipulated via processing technology - is street noise, household clatter, fragments of radio, close-miked objects, etc. By and large the pieces are constructed from precisely the sounds that our ears are constantly and automatically filtering out; but by orchestrating these sounds into pieces to be listened to - as opposed to heard - listeners are introduced to a radically personal world.
Heiner Goebbels/Italian Concerto ....CD $16.99
With Chris Cutler, The Icarus Ensemble, Sira and Boubacar Djebate, Johannes Bauer, Tiziano Popoli, Jocelyn B. Smith and the Orchestra of the Teatro Popoli, Bologna, conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama, this is a rare release from one of the pioneers of contemporary cross-platform composition. Working with montage, superposition and elements of different musical languages, Heiner sidesteps genre to concentrate on the material. This CD comprises four high quality (world premiere) recordings that feature a disparate set of compositions performed at a three-city festival organised by Angelica in 2007. The Italian concerto/Tutti Writing marks a now vanishingly rare live appearance from Heiner in an extended duet with Chris Cutler, concluding with TuttiWriting, in which they are joined by the Icarus Ensemble. This is followed by Ou bien Sunyatta for Kora, Voice and Orchestra, Die Faust im Wappen, derived from a story by Franz Kafka, for trombone (Johannes Bauer) and orchestra and So that the blood dropped to the earth, for orchestra and voice adapted from Surrogate Cities. These are remarkable and substantial pieces.
Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth/Homage-Fier Fauste fur Hanns Eisler + Von Spregen des Gartens ....double CD $24.99
This long and extraordinarily fruitful partnership started here - continuing though the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester - where they picked up Christoph Anders with whom they went on to co-found Cassiber with Chris Cutler. These are jazz inflected, punk inflected but mainly spirited and imaginative renderings of Eisler material, with more pieces by the duo who, between them, cover a lot of instruments and combinations of instruments and - ah youth - are never less than hurling themselves into the performances. Both LPs have been re-mastered by Bob Drake for this release.
Haco + Hiromichi Sakamoto/Ash in the Rainbow ....CD $16.99
"ASH IN THE RAINBOW" is Haco's most crafted album yet. Her voice is interwoven with the cellos of co-star Hiromichi Sakamoto, starting with a massive bout of what sounds like classical strings and soprano voice forged into ambient before transforming into skewed but delicate Japanese pop, with equal parts of kitsch and experimentalism. The exquisite arrangements feature bowed saw, plunked pizzicato, and complex and seductive noise-scapes. With the help of lo-tech gadgets, songs like 'Channelling' posit a post-human persona, which the likes of Laurie Anderson can only dream of. The whole album is imbued with a magical, Zen sense of wonder, and a terrific economy of means.
Hail/Hello Debris ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'I Don't Know')
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Hail are Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake, probably best known for their work with the Colorado based band, Thinking Plague. On this, their third ReR release, the duo explores more of the heavy, grunging, artrock side of things, aided and abetted at times by synthesizers and keyboards. Susanne's clear compositions and heavy handed, clever wit are augmented by Bob's inimitable production crafting, giving Hello Debris a raw and passionate feel. Perfect frequencies, excellent vocal delivery, great guitar/bass/drum work, and some of the more radical recording/mixing aesthetics to date are all presented with a sense of immediacy and urgency.
The Hat Shoes/Differently Desperate ....CD $16.99
Ad Hoc Records' new, four-panel digipack reissue of The Hat Shoes' debut album will be especially welcomed by lovers of intelligent and thoughtful Progressive music, with a hint of Romanticism. Originally released in 1991, "Differently Desparate" is a studio offering of diverse avant-pop songs by a "Super-group," comprised of members Bill Gilonis (The Work), Catherine Jauniaux (Fluvial), Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now) and Tom Cora (Skeleton Crew, Curlew). There's also a slew of well-known guest performers: David Thomas, Amos, Chris Cochrane, Tim Hodgkinson, Hahn Rowne and Rick Brown, among others.
Henry Cow/Concerts (remastered) ....double CD $23.99
(excerpt from 'Ruins')
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Originally released in 1976, this collection offers a snapshot of Henry Cow as audiences would have heard it in the year before. In the chronology Concerts came between In Praise of Learning and Western Culture - that is, after Virgin had lost interest in releasing any more Henry Cow studio records and before the band quit to make one of its own. It was also the year of the 'merger' with Robert Wyatt for a series of concerts in which compositions were shared - the last show, in Rome, was also Robert's last public performance. From its earlier records, the band was known for its rather complex compositional work. This double LP for the first time gave serious space to the improvisations that accounted for maybe a third of any of its lengthy stage performances. When the double LP was reissued as a CD, the Henry Cow side of the long deleted 'Greasy Truckers' album was added - five surpisingly accessible but abstract studio pieces recorded in an afternoon in 1973 - recovering yet another side of the group's rapidly evolving vocabulary. This new edition repackaged and carefully re-mastered by Bob Drake, completes the definitive edition of the group's officially released recordings.
Henry Cow/Stockholm & Goteborg ....CD $16.99
This is the first new release in 30 years from this legendary audience-splitting British group, and the first featuring Georgina Born, the group's bassist from 1976-78. Remixed and re-mastered from the original Swedish radio tapes. Henry Cow were never going to fit in. Their compositions were way too composed and their improvising was way too improvised - a tendency that only got more extreme as time went on, as these recordings from 1976 and 1977 demonstrate. Stockholm and Goteborg fills in some of the missing history between In Praise of Learning (1975) and Western Culture (1978) and offers music that has not been heard on record until now. First is Tim Hodgkinson's late and fiendishly complicated epic composition 'Erk Gah' (a working title), that took many months of sweat to learn and resolutely eschews any hint of riff, solo or modular assembly. At the other extreme are the two wide-ranging improvisations built around heady extended instrumental techniques, aleatorics, quotations, more-or-less randomly inserted prepared materials and a blithe disregard for genre rules. Between, constantly shifting ground, are a straight-ahead version of Phil Ochs' No More Songs (one of only two covers ever performed by the band), an unreleased composition by Fred Frith, and a version of the Ottawa Song: a typical live set from that period. Finally, Stockholm is a snapshot of a band of exceptional talents having fun. And it reflects what the studio albums could not - that Henry Cow's natural habitat was the stage - and the real-time pressure of public performance - because it was there that the music could live and breathe. And evolve.
| Henry Cow/In Praise of Learning ....CD $16.99 | Henry Cow/Leg End (Original Mix) ....CD $16.99 | Henry Cow/Unrest (Remastered) ....CD $16.99 | Henry Cow/Western Culture ....CD $16.99 |
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If one were to list a whole slew of gushing, over-the-top compliments about this band,
it would hardly reach hyperbole. Simply stated, they were arguably the most important rock
band of the 70's, and reached the pinnacle of excellence set by their predecessors of
styling: the early Mothers of Invention, Soft Machine etc. Their 4 albums for Virgin
Records, their lone, dbl live set and self-produced record, all offer some of the most
complex modern music to date, coupled with an extreme penchant to experiment within and
without the artform, making each one a classic, indispensible masterwork in its own right.
"LegEnd" and "Unrest" are mostly
instrumental records, the latter being what many consider the apex of the band's output
with regards to studio and compositional experimentation. The song, "Deluge,"
stands as one of rock's most successful tape experiments, and shows the group
"cutting their teeth" in the recording studio as producers (an endeavor that
they would individually and collectively master in later years.) Most of guitarist
Fred Frith's compositions for the group stemmed from this early era and were so far ahead
of their time that few, if any, have managed to surpass them in terms of excellence.
"In Praise of Learning" which, besides boasting Henry Cow's
most auspicious studio-elaborated improv ("Beginning: The Long March) also offers Tim
Hodkinson's breathtaking "Living in the Heart of the Beast," and the first,
officially released Cutler/Frith collaboration, "Beautiful as the Moon, Terrible as
an Army With Banners."
After Dagmar's departure, the group toured Europe at breakneck pace as an instrumental
band once again. Their studio album from this period, the self-produced "Western
Culture," was penned equally by Hodgkinson and bassoonist, Lindsay Cooper.
It offers Henry Cow's most complex compositions ever, mixed with an arrangement prowess
that sonically enhances the group's sound. The studio work here embellishes the music,
causing it to go far beyond just 'notes' and 'playing.'
Henry Cow/40th Anniversary Full Box Set ....CD box set + DVD $179.99
(Boxes 1 & 2, 9 CD's, 1 DVD, 2 Boxes, 2 60 Pg Books) The 5 full-length discs in Box 1 cover Henry Cow's career from the pre-Virgin Records days up to roughly 1975. These are all previously unreleased recordings, some live, some demo, some studio, all sonically enhanced by Bob Drake's painstaking re-mastering. We are treated to everything from early BBC sessions to somewhat later live improvisations, alternate recordings with Robert Wyatt, to the full 18 minute version of "With the Yellow Moon And Half Star" (The Bacchae). There are many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases; The disks also document a number of one-off projects and events and - where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion - live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. The hefty, 60-page booklet is chock-full of historic information and exclusive photos.
The 4 full-length CD's + 1 DVD in Box 2 cover the Cow's career from roughly 1976 to the band's demise, with an emphasis on the later era. Nobody knew that this 75-minute concert broadcast of the band existed, so the DVD is a real boon, and has spectacular versions of "Beautiful As The Moon", "Living In The Heart Of The Beast", "March", "Erk Gah", "No More Songs" and a great, improvisational piece. The music discs are also excellent, and include as highlights the original version of "Joan," as well as a 12 minute, hitherto unreleased piece by Lindsay Cooper, and great versions of "Erk Gah" and "Viva Pa Ubu." There's also some immaculate improvising, including a 17 minute foray from the original RIO Festival, and Fred's "Awake Against Sleep" from the Western Culture sessions - and all that's just the tip of the iceberg. The hefty, 60-page booklet is chock-full of historic information and exclusive photos. And everything has been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering.
Het/Let's Het ....CD $16.99
This compact disk is the first CD issue of the long-out-of-print and highly coveted, "Let's Het." The band were co-led by Dominique Weeks and Cass Davies, two of the prime movers in London's underground music scene during the 80's, here joined by Catherine Jauniaux and Tim Hodgkinson . Though many fans have likened them to a melding of Harry Partch with The Residents, Het performed music which defies categorizing, other than to say that it was a unique and intense product of its time and place: Complex, highly percussive, primal, densely orchestrated, angst-ridden, artful, meticulously constructed and intense. This classic project is a monumental achievement of sound production, and was expertly recorded and mixed by Tim Hodgkinson (who is responsible for this digital reissue) at the legendary, "Cold Storage Studio."
Tristan Honsinger & Massimo Simonini/Call Me Us ....CD $16.99
Cellist Honsinger and pre-existing media manipulist Simonini with a piece that falls between radio art, music theatre and... and what? A highly unusual performance in 10 parts that deploys its materials sparingly and intelligently and, through a combination of skill, spontaneity and ambiguity, arrives at something seemingly too controlled and precise to be improvised, but too complex and willful to have been composed. In a world of its own; this is confident, eccentric, and highly musical. Simonini's choice, use and development of both plundered sources and real time manipulation is masterful. A one-off.
IZ/EM ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Pinball Brain Node')
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"EM" is the 3rd CD from IZ, and is a densely layered and skillfully presented instrumental CD on the heavy side of rock, with elements of experimental music. Generally the songs writing is in a minimalist and sparse style that is in contrast to the thick tambor, meter changes and harmonic complexities. This approach makes every note/chord an essential statement and creates a unique sonic quality rarely heard in groups with rock instrumentation. Michael Lance Serviolo does the majority of the composing and plays guitar, Tom Sublet plays bass & synthesizer, David Kerman plays drums. This line-up offers diversity and musical quality to "EM." Michael has played with such groups as The Perry Weissman 3, Jux County and Elan. David is known for his work with Thinking Plague, The 5UU's, U-Totem and Present. Tom has worked with Uversa, Sandscrit and The Good Vibes Quartet. The blending of rhythmic precision, interesting compositions and tonal coloring make this a great recording.
K-Space/Going Up ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Kuzungu')
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Gendos Chamzyryn – Tim Hodgkinson – Ken Hyder. For "Going Up" these musicians have superimposed performances from different occasions and places, some dating back to Hyder and Hodgkinson's initial trip to Siberia in 1990, but also concerts staged in Western Europe. These recordings, with their disparate acoustic properties, are overlaid and overlapped to form dense sonic thickets alive with action and event, palpably embedded in the multi-dimensional flux of the world and lived social structures. Human voices conversing, footfalls on frozen ground, a blackbird singing, the sound of the wind or water, the crackling of wood in a fire, audience applause - sounds from specific sites with their own peculiar resonance and significance leak through the K-Space mesh into the listening present. "The crucial thing is to hear and feel it. It's made for those of us who want listening to remain a real adventure and an ongoing process of discovery."-Julian Cowley-WIRE MAGAZINE
K-Space/Infinity ....Computer Disc $16.99
COMPUTER ONLY DISC (PC or MAC) that re-composes all musical parameters when loaded + 4 Quicktime movies + full-color photo album. A new, revolutionary album which is different every time you play it has been created by Tim Hodgkinson, Ken Hyder and Gendos Chamzyryn. At a time when the music industry is making a dramatic shift from CDs to downloads, K-Space's Infinity presents a different option. First of all, this disk plays on a computer, not a CD player. And this is a whole piece of work - you can't download tracks from it. In fact the disk contains software that performs the 'pieces' on the album differently every time you play them. These performances are in no way random and this has nothing to do with shuffle-culture. The software is specially programmed to make choices from the available material. Furthermore you can't pause or fast-forward this album: the music is indivisible, and you can only turn it on or turn it off. In fact everything that happens is there to create a special listening experience... The sensation for the listener is of being in one space which encompasses different locations and different moments in time. And each space is different each time the piece is played. On the same disc, there's also 4 videos of the band, and a full-color photo album. Faust's Jean-Hervé Peron says: "Great great piece of work on the musical/spiritual level as well as this very ingenuous technological twist: you buy one cd and you get x-times the length of always good music! A genius strike! And magic...... it is always new.. I was UP UP AND AWAY !!"
Nikola Kodjabashia/The Most Of Now ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'No Idea 2')
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A lapidary and subtle new composition by award-winning Macedonian concert, film and theatre composer Nikola Kodjbashaia exquisitely realised by a broad and mixed ensemble of exemplary - and mostly Macedonian - instrumentalists. A suite of highly imaginative variations on a theme that meanders with purpose through a unique musical landscape, in which reflections of everything from lounge music, Macedonian folk instrumentals, Byzantine church liturgy, contemporary orchestra composition and exotica, rub shoulders without parody or embarrassment. Constantly mutating, constantly fascinating, this follows the path opened up in Kodjbashia's first CD into a completely personal but accessible musical language. Subtle, complex, profane music, but at the same time easy - even a joy - to listen to. This is his second CD for ReR: the first, Reveries of the Solitary Walker was described as 'probably the best record of the year' by JW in the BBB.
Massacre/Killing Time ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Carrying')
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Fred Frith met Bill Laswell and Fred Maher (along with Michael Beinhorn) then known as the Zu Band, on the first day he arrived in New York in 1978. They were rehearsing his song Moeris Dancing in the basement of Giorgio Gomelsky's Zu Space. There was an instant rapport. Some time later, when Peter Blegvad was looking for an opening band for his Valentine's day concert at Soundscape, Frith invited Bill and Fred to join him in a power trio. The band was an instant success, and soon they were performing all over the city, in the Mudd Club, Danceteria, the Peppermint Lounge, Inroads, CBGB, Hurrah, and many others. Massacre's territory was perhaps most closely aligned with punk, and indeed the critics coined the term punk jazz to describe them. Their pieces were often very short, always very loud, and involved intricate heads that opened into high-energy explorations of rhythm and timbre. When they performed at progressive rock venues in France in early 1981 it was like a blast of fresh air whose impact was deeply felt and long-lasting. "Killing Time" is a record that for many changed everything, and which represents a true milestone in the history of experimental rock.
Steve MacLean/Bridges ....double CD $19.99
(excerpt from 'In and Around Susan')
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Steve MacLean began playing drums and guitar at the age of seven and composing at twelve. Completing high school early, he met Roswell Rudd and began playing concerts with him in New York. He moved to the city and took a job in a busy recording studio, working with cutting edge artists of every genre and spending his free time moving around the NYC 'downtown' free improvisation scene. He soon joined Nick Didkovsky's Dr. Nerve and made a slew of records. By 1980 he was scoring for dance, performing his own compositions on PBS television's New Music Directions series, and setting up his own studio, which over the next two decades produced award winning scores and sound design for hundreds of TV and radio commercials, films and disparate multi-media projects. Between times he co-founded the Portland Experimental Music Collective, established his own permanent ensemble and had compositions performed at numerous festivals. He moved to Boston in 2000 to take up a professorship in the Synthesis and Ensemble Departments at Berklee College of Music. He continues regularly to perform composed and improvised music - alone, with a student ensemble and in numerous projects with Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Nick Didkovsky, Ken Field, Chris Cutler, Jonathan LaMaster, Eric Rosenthal, and others.
Steve MacLean/Frog Bug Guitar Computer ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Bug Time')
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Frog Bug Guitar Computer represents a completely new musical format: a collaboration between acoustic guitar and ensembles of frogs and insects in which the guitar has to adapt to natural forms, while the bugs and frogs adjust to the times and frequencies of the human domain of 'music.' This is where the computer, with its massive power to analyze, process and recombine materials enters the equation, enabling the insect and batrachian collaborators to be time and pitch shifted in order, under rules compatible with human musical discourses, to converse with the guitar.
Michael Maksymenko/Businesscide ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Fran Hogre Ort')
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Maksymenko, founder and brain behind the extraordinary Swedish post-Beefheartian group Kraljursastalten - and world-class ice-hockey player - here collects his extraordinary songbook including much of the two celebrated '70s releases by Kraljursastalten (the Reptile Institution: Michael plus the telepathic twins Stefan and Thomas Agaton), with later recordings from his solo record plus released and unreleased pieces with Henry Kaiser, John 'Drumbo' French, Sten Standell, Andy West and others. Wild lurching swing complexity, ridiculous tempi, great rhythms, sudden mood changes, fine compositions and music that is always to the point. No fat, just coffee and cigarettes.
The Miners Of Banal/The Miners Of Banal ....CD $16.99
"Some years back Bill Gilonis (The Work, The Lowest Notes, Hail etc.) teamed up with B.O.A. administrator, Trixa Arnold, to write and record songs which would mostly praise the lords of Aqua-Vita (alcohol). Filling out their band of Smirnoff-swilling miscreants was Ilya Komarov (bassist for the Estonian band, Ne Zhedali) and none other than armchair anarchist, crown prince of avant-garde Pop, Rob Murphy, AKA "Bing Selfish". Whilst the group hoped that their songs would become instant "hits" with those who quaff down lots of booze (ie: the whole of Rock music's target market, ages 17 thru 35), they hadn't accounted for a change in public attitude towards basic health and hygene issues, which caused record company executive, Chris Cutler, some alarm. Always monitoring the merits of demographics and pie-chart predictions, Cutler feared the album would not meet sales requirements. Straightening his tie as he exited his Rolls, and in-between puffs on a 13-inch Romeo and Juliet, the legendary money-maker made the band aware, in no uncertain terms, that their music was "as unkempt and as messy as yourselves." But, although he feared the master tapes of Miners Of Banal were lacking in two areas (form and content), he nonetheless agreed to issue the disk on a limited basis to "test the murky waters." Hence the disk's original issue fell off of the map rather quickly. As it's nowadays hip and cool again to play messy, unkempt music in the avant-rock vein of L. Voag, The Work, Unrest Work & Play and Orchestra Murphy, we've decided that the world is probably now finally dirty enough for The Miners of Banal, and we're happy to re-distribute this (almost) legendary album."-Recommended Records
R. Stevie Moore/Phonography ....CD $16.99
"Phonography was Stevie's first LP release and an out-of-the-blue masterpiece: terminally idiosyncratic but with all the compositional qualities of great pop. A gifted songwriter, R Stevie (son of Bob Moore, Elvis' bassist) grew up and was steeped in Nashville's countrypolitanism; but, as a recidivist rebel, he inevitably slipped into strange byways, following his own, unique path into celebrated obscurity - as this strange and compelling record attests. Hans Arp said, 'My paintings are like fingernails: they keep growing and I keep cutting them off'. R Stevie's songs seem to follow the same rule. They create worlds, tell stories, trifle wantonly with form, harmony, structure and execution, and throw off passages of casual brilliance on the way. Lo-fi is integral to its purpose. You can't pay to get a sound like that. So, when nobody seemed to want to keep Phonography in print, ReR Megacorp were happy to oblige - it's history. We took the opportunity to re-master and restore it to its original form."
N.I.M.B.Y./Songs For Adults ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Empty Words')
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James Grigsby – Bob Drake – Jerry Wheeler – Dave Kerman "Not In My Backyard" (NIMBY) is James Grigsby (of the legendary Motor Totemist Guild) and left-field luminaries from Thinking Plague, Hail, The 5UUs and Giant Ant Farm. The official story is that an electrical storm temporarily deranged their faculties while leaving their musical abilities unaffected, leading to this unaccountable recording, made more or less live in a barn in Southern France, with only a handful of overdubs (mostly vocals & some soloing) added by engineer and bassist Bob Drake at the mixing and mastering stage. Instead of making the cutting edge contemporary post rock record they planned, they wound up musically reverting to their youth while mentally indulging in the whiny frustrations of middle age. Could it be worse? Yes. This is not just an album of songs, it's a concept album and it documents what happens when a bunch of spoiled baby-boomers - mostly from Southern California - get old & grumpy.
The Necks/Aether ....CD $16.99
Word of mouth is rapidly transforming The Necks into one of key forces in contemporary music. With successful tours of the UK and Europe underway, the quietly revolutionary post-jazz-post-everything trio are releasing a new CD, Aether. It's a follow up to last January's Hanging Gardens, which won critical acclaim both in the UK and internationally. The Necks are an improvising post-jazz trio from Australia, whose music is about as far from New Orleans as you could imagine. It's jazz that has been stripped of all its excess, and been re-forged out of the belly of minimal trance club culture. Hanging Gardens used a single rhythm held for an hour, with sumptuous chords occasionally rising and falling at huge intervals. For the first 30 minutes of Aether they've gone even further; they've dropped the rhythm altogether, and what remains is just a single chord which emerges and then fades into nothing, again and again. There are just small variations on electric piano, bowed double bass and electronics. At the 35-minute point a high-pitched keyboard pattern gradually emerges, and imperceptibly the group swing in to a Steve Reich inspired interlocking pattern, which builds to a climax. It finally subsides into a series of hypnotic cymbal washes.
The Necks/The Boys ....CD $16.99
The latest release by the extraordinary Australian improvising ambient/jazz trio, The Necks, is drawn from a soundtrack the group composed for the prize-winning Australian movie, The Boys. For the Necks this is a revolutionary move; gone are the hour-long shifting luminous improvisations which they have made their own special territory. Here you will find seven short- ish instrumentals, each developing a different sound and mood. The usual Neck’s components (floating acoustic piano, anchoring double bass, and skimming drums) are all present, but are set to very different tasks. There's a darkness absent from their other releases, and the CD ends with full-bliown Joy Divisionish rock, with fuzzed up bass and heavy tribal drums. Along the way, The Necks expand on Erik Satie-like vignettes, tempered with electronic sounds and ambiences, insistent rhythms reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, and music and sounds that are subtly sensuous and extremely addictive. No fan of The Necks, and no one looking for new adventurous new directions in music, can fail to be impressed.
The Necks/Chemist ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Fatal')
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This is the 13th release from Australian maverick trio The Necks, now approaching their 20th Anniversary, and still occupying a genre-group of one. Their slow, gripping development of a single idea over the length of a whole CD, while somehow obvious, has proved un-copyable, mostly because it so much depends on the unique musical personalities and extreme virtuosity of these three profoundly different musicians. Having established their theme, The Necks, with Chemist, break the habit of a lifetime and juxtapose three 20 minute tracks. Bassist Lloyd Swanton, pre-empting his critics, wrote: "We just wanted to see what we could do by contrasting different aesthetics on a single CD. These pieces are calculatedly different, and the contrast is important." Perhaps they were hoping with this minor scandal to draw attention away from the guitar, played by drummer Tony Buck, which features on all three tracks.
The Necks/Drive By ....CD $16.99
From a single, informal musical theme, The Necks weave a nebulous tapestry of sounds, styles and textures that is at once escapist, organic and bold. Accomplishing an astonishingly ambient sound for a trio, drummer Tony Buck, double bassist Lloyd Swanton, and pianist Chris Abrahams, forge spontaneous compositions...by (these) great rhythm minimalists. Somewhere between Hanging Gardens and Aether, this is a steady moderate tempo piece with some beautiful floating chords and inspired drum passages. The usual masterful playing and restraint; forward movement and stasis. A classic band.
The Necks/Mosquito; See Through ....double CD $21.99
This new double CD re-writes the rules yet again. Mosquito begins with the scrunching sound of a hand drum with hanging rattles being draped over percussion, while a fragmentary high piano melody tinkles in the distance. These two elements persist for the entire hour of the CD, providing a supporting texture for the most gorgeous piano chord sequence you've ever heard, gently coaxed by a ride cymbal. There's a hint of Massive Attack's 'Protection' about these chords, which just repeat in an endless melancholy ecstasy. For Lloyd Swanton Mosquito is "quite austere, but in a rewarding, refreshing way. I think it's one of the most rigorously minimalist pieces we've ever done." Austere and rigorous it may be, in terms of its beautifully organised structure and economy of means; but don't be fooled. This record is seriously haunting and sensuous. See Through is another beast entirely. Taking its cue from the ultra minimalist Aether, it counter poses ripe piano chords and splashing cymbals (reminiscent of Alice Coltrane) against long passages of silence. Like Aether the music comes in waves, which suggest a vast scale and an open organic structure. But here the silences demand their own space, and the music operates as part of an environment, into which it constantly retreats and from which it endlessly re-appears.
The Necks/Townsville ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Townsville')
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For over two decades the Necks have been stepping onto stages with absolutely nothing in mind, waiting for the first sound to happen and then following it through - with glacial inevitability, and never any sudden shift of gear - or introduction of new material for an hour or so. Never mechanical minimalism - since each moment is invested with an intense presence this is more a dense liquefaction of time; a form unique to the Necks; no-one else has even tried to do it. It s a musical form the band evolved over more than 20 years of performing, and no two concerts ever the same. Though many of their pieces open with - or eventually arrive at - some discernable groove, Townsville just floats in a state of suspension from beginning to end. It s like watching the ocean as wave follows wave: each the same; each different - assymetric. Bassist Lloyd Swanton who, on this occasion, provided the motif that set Townsville in motion had no idea where it would lead: 'One of the deep joys for me he said, 'after twenty years of making music with this group, is that we re still completely unable to predict where our pieces will go. It's a paradox that makes the band addictive and keeps its music fresh: while there s an apparent inevitability that should shut the music down, somehow it seems always to remain open; it s never clear exactly how it s going to unfold.
Picchio dal Pozzo/Abbiamo Tutti i suoi Problemi ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Mettiamo il Coso Che')
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Amongst the cognoscenti, Piccio dal Pozzo is regarded as one of the most original, impressive and highly respected of all the experimental groups to have come out of Italy in the 1970s. 'Abbioamo...' was originally released by l'Orchestra Cooperativa in 1980, after which the group officially wound up. This release has been newly remastered by Bob Drake.
Puppetina/Piewacket! ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'M-Bira Song')
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Here's a brand new disc by Anna, the "Goddess of Improv", and her pals. It looks (and at times actually sounds) terminally cute, but be warned of the subversive nature that hides underneath. Named after Kim Novak's cat in the film "Bell, Book and Candle," PIEWACKET" is played on both conventional and unconventional instruments (including kitchen timers, plastic tape, and walkie-talkie static) fused with keyboards, accordions, ethereal voices and lyrics to create a delightfully strange auditory feast. Anna is an internationally acclaimed performance artist/singer who expresses herself in newly invented languages that approach authentic folk traditions. Her musical intentions are never malevolent, never bash the listener over the head with ego-driven enthusiasm, or point a knowing finger with malice. Instead, she treats us, the listeners, with respect and reverence. She has played her craft everywhere, from the stages of the world's most prestigious New-Music festivals, to high atop the men's shower stalls at a health club. Her music is always "honest", and this disc is no exception. "That one can't pinpoint or categorize this cliche free music only adds to it's aura of quirk, strangeness and charm." - LA Weekly
Nadia Ratsimandresy & Matteo Ramon Arevalos/Messiaen et autor de Messiaen ....CD $16.99
A signature collection of exquisite works for onde Martinot and piano by Olivier Messiaen, N'Guyen Thien Dao, Jacques Charpentier and Tristan Murail, exploring the many voices of this extraordinary instrument. The onde (or ondes musicales or le Martenot) was first demonstrated at the Paris Conservatoire in 1928 and immediately attracted the attention of Varese, Milhaud, Koechlin, Jolivet, Honegger and Messiaen, who all wrote for it - cumulatively ensuring its survival. Although only a year younger than the theremin, the onde is a far more sophisticated, complex and versatile instrument, not least because of the combination it offers of pitched and glissando tones, and the wide range of filters and different resonating media through which it can sound: loudspeakers, gongs, sympathetic resonating strings and reverberant enclosures. The compositions here exploit every unearthly aspect of the instrument and are beautifully performed: a remarkable and exquisite collection.
The Red Masque/Fossil Eyes ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'The Spider Is the Web')
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Unfortunately: it's all too seldom that an American rock band will come on to the scene, seemingly out of nowhere, to shake things up on some sort of musical level. Fortunately: we DO have The Red Masque, who have a penchant to do exactly that. Singer Lynnette Shelley's vocal prowess is so extremely formidable, that it stands unrivaled in today's world of advancement-based music (what some folks still stubbornly refer to as "Progressive Rock"). Her vocal delivery, both strong and passionate, is insistently astounding, and whilst never overbearing to the intent of her lyrical matter, often lends a helping hand of credence to it. This is a sign of musical maturity, and far too few are willing to examine this presentation, or to strip away their own influences in the hope of creating something new; Thankfully, Ms. Shelley helps her style of music to break its own mold. The band alongside her is comprised of top-notch musicians [Brandon Ross, Vonorn and Andrew Kowal], who compose and play a fresh new slant in a school of music whose major proponents lost their sense of immediacy long ago. They work long and hard together on the compositions, and it shows. Within the framework of "normal" instrumentation (meaning guitars, keys, bass and drums), and a few not-so-ordinary (like the erhu), The Red Masque exceed the parameters of PROG which time and again have reproduced formulaic results, and therefore go well beyond the norm of their contemporaries.
Skeleton Crew/Learn To Talk and Country of Blinds ....double CD $24.99
(excerpt from 'The Border')
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Fred Frith/Tom Cora/Zeena Parkins - A timely reissue of two timeless classics. On the first CD it's just Fred Frith and and Tom Cora, the legendary two man crew who somehow – in real time, not with endless overdubs - managed to play all their own instruments (cello, bass, electric guitar, violin, casio) and sing - as well as, between them, constructing the drum parts – dislocated into elements with each of them having bits of the kit. This made for some fantastic - and normally unplayable parts - most drummers having only one brain. No one sounded like Skeleton Crew, ever. Devious, complicated, brutally simple, always unexpected, turning on a dime, this was not just a pop band but a tocsin, a call to arms - and in a short recorded life it produced a catalogue of invention that is still breathtaking today. On the second album, the inspired addition of Zeena Parkins (keyboards, accordion, more drums, more vocals) led to some of the best music of the decade. The recording was rawer, more urgent, the songs standing out in sharp relief; every part essential. And yet - it's a puzzle almost impossible to unravel: how on earth did they ever evolve those dislocated parts and still make them fit so perfectly together? Did I mention the texts? So much to the point, so good. And where are the Skeleton Crews today when we really need them? Both CDs are here, in full, re-mastered by Fred and with 10 extra tracks – each as good as anything on the official albums.
Slapp Happy/Acnalbasac Noom ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Casablanca Moon')
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SLAPP HAPPY met in Germany in the early seventies, where they recorded their first album 'Sort Of' for Polydor. ACNALBASAC NOOM was their second LP, recorded in 1973, and engineered by Kurt Grauner, in Faust's legendary Wumme Studio. Like the first it was produced by Faust's svengali Uwe Nettelbeck, using Faust as the Slapp Happy house band. Unaccountably it was rejected by Virgin Records, who made the group re-record all the material with different musicians and another producer in their own studio. That version is still available through Virgin as 'Casablanca Moon' - they straightened up the name too. As time has told, it is now universally accepted that ACNALBASAC is the definitive version of this material.
Slapp Happy & Henry Cow/Desperate Straights ....CD $16.99
This was remastered by Bob Drake. "It's from the original 1/4" mix tapes. As in all my mastering jobs every step of the process was done with only the most transparent and high-resolution gear with my fastidious attention to details. The old CD release was very low resolution and suffered from the harsh unpleasant sound of early A/D converters. The vinyl, as always, has less detail than the master tapes. So listening to the new CD is the closest thing you'll get to listening to the master tapes, except I made some things even better of course, in my extremely subtle ways."
Sun Ra/Disco 3000 ....CD $17.99
In the winter months of 1977-1978, philosopher, pianist and bandleader Sun Ra was in Italy. The Italian tour resulted in releases on Sun Ra's own Saturn label, all of which have long been out of print and all but impossible to find. With the re-release of DISCO 3000 one of the most celebrated of these elusive Saturn gems is once more available. This release, and it's companion MEDIA DREAMS, capture a side of Sun Ra's work - small ensemble, close form, original composition, rather minimal - that is otherwise under-represented. Depending heavily on Ra's electric and electronic keyboards (including the mysterious Crumar Mainman - of which even the company has no record) and, more unusually, on his intelligent use of sequencers and rhythm machines, this is an important window on the evolution of Ra's musical thinking, rendered even more transparent by the economy of its means; a quartet comprising only saxophonist John Gilmore, trumpeter Michael Ray and drummer Luqman Ali.
Sun Ra/Media Dreams ....double CD $27.99
(excerpt from 'Constellation')
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Companion to Disco 3000, made on the same classic Italian quartet tour with John Gilmore, Michael Ray (trumpet) and the minimal but perfect Luqman Ali (drums). Ra himself plays piano and electronic keyboards, including the mysterious Crumar Mainman, which Ra describes as 'like a piano, organ, clavichord, cello, violin and brass instruments' and which also, importantly, has a facility for pre-programmed bass-lines and electronic percussion - which Ra uses constantly and to great effect in this small ensemble setting - and seldom, if ever, elsewhere. The best of this collection (most of CD1) is luminous: very electronic, often rhythmical and melodic, always economical and making every sound count. These tracks are like no other jazz ensemble and, although recognisable as Ra - who else could think of, and then get away with, this - unlike any other Ra ensemble either. Ra makes the machines do amazing, visionary, things while the band exercises restraint, remaining always in focus. Between, there are piano, saxophone, trumpet and drum vignettes, fresh and perfectly judged; this really was a fine band. This places the original vinyl release (and related releases: Sound Mirror and Disco 3000) back into the context of the concerts from which they were drawn. An important addition to the Sun Ra canon since it is a rare document of an unusual Ra project that produced three classic late '70s LPs. Beautifully packaged and well annotated.
Sun Ra/Nidhamu + Dark Myth Equation Visitation ....CD $18.99
Nidhamu & Dark Myth Visitation Equation complete the Egypt trilogy. Most remarkable is 'Nidhamu' (the second release of the series, half recorded at the Balloon Theatre, the other half at Hartmut Geerken's house in Heliopolis) - a remarkable document: austere and very out there. Electric keyboards and an eerie 'Discipline No.11' set the scene, and after some solo Moog there's a spooky miniature 'Discipline No.15' introducing another long Moog and keyboards solo: 35 pretty abstract minutes that just slip by. 'Dark Myth Visitation Equation' follows (this was the first LP release, and has also been known as Sun Ra in Egypt Vol 1 and Nature's God). The first tracks are from the Cairo TV broadcast and the whole collection features more familiar groove-based pieces characteristic of the period, interspersed with Moog and electric keyboard solos. June Tyson reappears for 'To Nature's God' and the highly eccentric 'Why go to the Moon?'
Sun Ra/On Jupiter ....CD $16.99
"Righteous Ra from the end of the 70s -- one of the most soulful albums ever by the Sun Ra Arkestra, and a lost treasure that's got some nice funky moments! The vibe here is very much in the Lanquidity/Disco 3000 mode -- an extrapolation of styles best known from the Space Is The Place era, tightened up into more of a groove at some points, but also relaxed and more reflective at others. Our favorite track on the set is "UFO," a snapping bit of funk that comes as a real surprise from Sun Ra -- and a tune that's got some nicely noisy guitar jamming alongside straighter electric rhythms -- all topped off by vocals from the group and some really strong horn work! The tune's a great party funk number that shows the Arkestra at its most joyous -- and other tracks include "On Jupiter", which has a great blend of light vocals, spacey moog, and snakey sax -- plus the side-long "Seductive Fantasy," a laidback number that unfolds with a really gentle grace." - Dusty Groove
Sun Ra/Sleeping Beauty ....CD $16.99
One of the most soulful Sun Ra albums ever -- very much on the Lanquidity tip, and done with a great mix of electric and acoustic instrumentation! The vibe here is really mellow, spiritual, and warm -- and the album actually feels a lot more like a session recorded for the Strata East label than it does for Saturn! Keyboards pervade the session -- electric piano and organ drifting around in moody, laidback lines -- augmented by occasional vibes, bits of guitar, and some wonderfully well-blown sax solo work by Marshall Allen and John Gilmore! The title track "Sleeping Beauty" runs for all of side two of the album -- and it's an amazing little number that mixes instrumental passages with some great mellow Roy Ayers-styled vocals. "Door Of The Cosmos" is a bit of a groover, and even gets a bit funky at times -- and the album also features the laidback spacey number "Springtime". - Dusty Groove
Sun Ra And His Solar Arkestra/Horizon ....CD $16.99
Horizon (also known as Starwatchers and Sun Ra in Egypt Vol.2) contains a big chunk of the now legendary Balloon Theatre concert. The Balloon extract is an uncut block (tracks 1- 4 on the CD) and features a lot of Sun Ra's all-hell-let-loose Moog soloing, as well as a great version of Discipline 2. The rest of Horizon is from the Heliopolis concert, kicking off with an instrumental version of Enlightment and Love in Outer Space segueing slowly into Space is the Place - followed by drum orchestra, more Ra soloing on Moog, Tiger Organ and detuned piano (bloops, hoovering, whistles, concords taking off) leading to a first lurching, then wild, Discipline 8. Two bonus tracks, for the first time restored from the original concert, follow: We'll Wait for You (with June Tyson) and The Satellites are Spinning - which ends in full-on percussion.
This Heat/This Heat (The Blue And Yellow) ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Twilight Furniture')
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Charles Bullen / Charles Hayward / Gareth Williams This Heat, the record, was a landmark release. It tore up the book and laid new rules for band composition and performance. The music was without precedent; the musicians uncompromising; the recordings hammeringly intense and the sound deep, radical, and rich. This was music stripped back to the bone but never simplified. And over time it has also proved itself prescient; there are musical innovations here that anticipate genres that would take another 15 years to reappear.
Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer/Cold Peace Counterpoints ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Our Fashion Is Our Brain')
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A suite of fiendishly complex compositions for mixed real and virtual resources. The real are Bob Drake, Djorge Delibasic, Pegja Milosavljevic and Chris Cutler who, between them, cover electric guitar, bass, drums and virtuoso violin, but it's mainly Stevan here, who plays all kinds of keyboards, strings, double bass and zither, on top of samples and software. In this collection of highly concentrated compositions we are presented with three thoroughly through-composed and finely articulated pieces: "Concerto Grosso (for keyboards, string instruments and CPU)", "The Cold Peace Counterpoints", and "Five Bagatelles for a Polyhistor". Those familiar with Tickmayer's earlier recordings, or with the Science Group, will have some idea of what to expect - a rare commingling of high European art music (Tickmayer studied with both Gyorgy Kurtag and Louis Andriessen), various East European folk musics, experimental rock, post rock and computer assisted electronic composition. These are intense, emotionally and philosophically driven pieces that demand attention - and reward it when given.
Various Artists/The Recommended Records Double Sampler (1983) ....double CD $27.99
Faust, Art Bears, ZNR, Robert Wyatt, The Residents, Henry Cow, This Heat, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Stormy Six, Aqsak Maboul, Picchio Dal Pozzo, Decibel, Goebbels and Harth, The Homosexuals, The Work, Amos and Sarah, The Black Sheep, Feliu Gasul, The Muffins, R.Stevie Moore, Robel Vogel, Ron Pate/Raudelunas, Conventum, Joseph Racaille and Patrick Portella. Originally released in 1982, this is a collection of specially commissioned and (at the time) newly recorded pieces by the most interesting groups and individuals then in the Recommended catalogue. Never reissued, it has slowly become a prized collectors' item - and remains an indispensable snapshot of the range and musical brilliance of this critical moment in the history of a small community of left-field groups struggling towards new musical languages. The breadth of imagination displayed is exemplary and it is amazing how fresh and original this music still sounds, and how much things have changed in only 25 years.
Jack Vees/The Restaurant Behind the Pier ....CD $16.99
Many musicians use the phrase "extended techniques" as a catch all phrase for playing in an experimental or outside context, but Jack Vees, bassist for Forever Einstein, truly embodies it; and it perfectly describes his playing on this album. The term applies to situations wherein an accomplished musician begins with conventional playing methods and uses them as a foundation upon which to build. Vees extends standard bass technques in order to create new sounds and expand both the sonic range of his instrument and his own musical vocabulary, as well as the musical function of the bass. While not ignoring the customary method of playing the electric bass, Vees frees himself (and his instrument) from the usual constraints and limitations by using ashtrays, rubber mallets and bows to cajole a variety of sounds from the strings. The entire CD, "The Restaurant Behind the Pier", is solo bass guitar. There are some cuts which are overdubbed, but nothing more than what can be done live with a looper (JamMan or Digital Echoplex). While the majority of this album is original compositions, Vees also works his magic on three rock tunes, John Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", "Manic Depression" by Jimi Hendrix, and "As You Said," a tune by legendary bassist , Jack Bruce.
Venus Handcuffs/Venus Handcuffs ....CD $16.99
Referred to as "a cross between Throbbing Gristle and Nick Cave" during the band's lifetime, VENUS HANDCUFFS (Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake) got their start in the ranks of Colorado's most far-reaching band, Thinking Plague, and went on to infamy after changing their band's name to HAIL. This disk is their debut duo recording, and well-encompasses an experimental direction which, while somewhat natural for the time in America, has since been sadly overlooked by those who have followed in their wake. This is the first time this classic, experimental-rock recording has been issued on CD; the former vinyl version has been long out-of-print and hungrily sought out by collectors for years. Painstakingly re-mastered by Bob Drake for optimum sound quality.
VRIL/The Fatal Duckpond ....CD $16.99
After a break of six years, Chris Cutler, Bob Drake and Lukas Simonis, now with added ingredient Pierre Omer, present the second volume of recordings by the elusive VRIL - a band who revive and update both the great institution of the guitar instrumental and the now sadly neglected practice of collective arrangement, intense rehearsal and live studio performance. Appropriate to the half century that has passed since the birth of the form, these hits dodge about, get bored easily and blend both concentration and complexity with the still indispensable traditional qualities that made the genre great: hummability, crafted sounds, nifty arrangements, ridiculous gimmicks and ensemble playing. 'Neither tribute nor parody, these enigmatic pieces are never more nor less than exactly what they are'.... wrote Lothar Preen in his Melbourne concert review....'but perfectly realised.' With film stills, misleading sleeve-notes and storyboard by the Diogenesian recluse Frank Key.
Gareth Williams/Flaming Tunes ....CD $16.99
When Gareth Williams died on Christmas Eve 2001 at the age of 48, the world lost a huge personality and a unique creative talent, yet little is known of his work outside of the legendary group This Heat. With this first official release on Compact Disc of Williams's solo and collaborative works from 1985, Life and Living Records take the first steps to correcting this imbalance. "Flaming Tunes" was recorded by Gareth Williams and Mary Currie with input from a variety of contributors including fellow This Heat member Charles Bullen, long term collaborators Martin Harrison and Rick Wilson, Mick Hobbs and others.
Woof Records/Woof 7 Inches ....CD $16.99
This CD comprises all four 7" releases by the British underground label, WOOF RECORDS, plus extra tracks by THE WORK and THE LOWEST NOTE. All tracks were originally released on vinyl between 1980 and 1985, but most have never before been issued on CD. This disk features a who's who of the London art-rock scene from those years (Bill Gilonis, Mick Hobbs, Tim Hodgkinson, Rick Wilson, Andy Bole, Trefor Goronwy, to name a few), plus the Belgian expressionist-singer, Catherine Jauniaux.
The Work/Live In Japan ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Like This')
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Bill Gilonis / Tim Hodgkinson / Amos / Chris Cutler By 1982 drummer Rick Wilson had left The Work to study Katakali in India, and bassist Mick Hobbs followed shortly afterwards over disagreements about what the group should be playing. The remainder of the band then asked Amos (bass) and Chris Cutler (drums) to join them for a tour of Japan that had already been scheduled before the breakup. Together with sound engineer Chris Gray, the group flew there in June to play three concerts in Tokyo and one in Osaka. The recording that became "Live in Japan" was taken at the Osaka concert, the only one on the tour that was recorded. A Japan-only release followed (on Recommended Records Japan), which has been out of print for over 20 years and is virtually impossible to find anywhere. This disc re-issues the concert for the first time, adding the extremely rare, red flexi-disc, live version of the classic, "I Hate America", as a bonus track.
The Work/Rubber Cage ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Commerce and Despair')
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These are powerful recordings of the band's most densely composed material., musically akin to another of their classics, "Slow Crimes," but honed into even more mature fashion. (The band had broken up after a tour of Japan in 1982, and reformed for this record 7 years later. In the interim, each of the musicians' talents and compositional abilities had grown by leaps and bounds). This album was a new beginning for The Work, and set them off in a slightly different direction than they had previously employed: Much of the energy of this music came from the sheer "tenseness" of the compositions; they didn't need to bludgeon the ears to get the point across. Besides collecting what could arguably be their most finely crafted songs, this disk best displays the group's unusual sense of individual soloing: The singularly-plucked cello during "Dangerfish", and the free-form piano of "Jay," both seem to be the intrinsic opposite of the musical settings they embellish. Capturing such disparate approaches sets up a dichotomy of styling throughout this exceedingly intense album, offering startling (and usually brutal) results.
The Work/Slow Crimes ....CD $16.99
(excerpt from 'Knives')
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Originally issued on vinyl in 1982, this music, along with that of compatriots This Heat and Unrest Work & Play, set the stage for a unique type of new British Invasion; one that seemed to absorb the complexity and slickness of Progressive Rock, whilst throwing its aesthetics to the dogs, in lieu of the energy and power of early Punk. THE WORK were amongst the first few to purposefully break their own mold in an attempt to break new ground, concomitantly creating music that seems more comfortable resting on a bed of nails than precious laurels. The drums are primal, and hold the entire band together in a polyrhythmic way that was, at the time, unheard-of in Punk music. The vocals are offered unapologetically, sometimes in semi-screams of anguish and insolence. The guitars & bass chug along, daring the listener to tap their foot in time to regain one's bearings. Over it all is the collective penchant to add experimental noise, to further a state of shock. The group worked tirelessly within these guidelines on the road for 2 years before disbanding, only to reform some seven years later, releasing two additional and equally excellent albums.
ZNR/Barricades 3 ....CD $16.99
This album has stood up to the test of time better than almost anything else. Compared to their almost-as-equally-excellent 2nd album, the listening experience is less "Classical" and more bizarre. It remains as startling and mystifying as the day it was first released on vinyl in 1977, covered in glue and pasted into its own album jacket by accident as an oversight at the pressing plant. ReR re-issued it on vinyl to improve conditions, and now on compact disk for optimum listening clarity. And it IS crystal clear, both sonically and in terms of musical intent. This disk features Hector Zazou, arguably the most bizzare of French contempory musicians, playing predominently electric piano and chromelodion (the tube-version precurser to the modern synthesizer), and partner Joseph Racaille on acoustic piano. Both share songwriting duties and vocals, the latter of which at times are so overdriven and messed-up that they create an ironic disparity to the seemingly Satie-like atmosphere. While the overall feel is delicate, it is nonetheless difficult to characterize this music as "chamber rock" of any sort because the tension and energy are more immediate and overwhelming, spawned by an almost naive sense of quiet destruction of forms. We're talkin' highly idiosyncratic, immaculately realised and performed, and an absolute landmark in terms of stylistic thought. Highest recommendation possible.
5uu's/Hunger's Teeth ....CD $16.99
Absolute Zero/Crashing Icons ....CD $16.99
Alquimia & Jose Luis Fernandez Ledesma/Dead Tongues ....CD $16.99
AMM/AMMusic 1966 ....CD $16.99
Paolo Angeli/Bucato ....CD $16.99 Cover
Paolo Angeli/Nita (l'angelo sul trapezio) ....CD $16.99 Cover
Paulo Angeli/Tessuti ....CD $16.99
Paolo Angeli/Tibi ....Hybrid Disc - CD + Video $21.99
Paolo Angeli & Takumi Fukushima/Itsunomanika ....CD $16.99
Arcane Device & David Lee Myers/Engines Of Myth ....CD $16.99
Art Bears/The Art Box ....6 CD box set $75.99
Art Bears/Hopes & Fears ....CD $16.99
Art Bears/Winter Songs ....CD $16.99
Art Bears/The World as it is Today ....CD $16.99
Avi Belleli/Strawberry Cream And Gunpowder ....CD $16.99
Berliner Ring/Orbital ....CD $16.99
Biota/Almost Never ....CD $16.99
Biota/Half a True Day ....CD $16.99
Biota/Invisible Map ....CD $16.99 Cover
Biota/Object Holder ....CD $16.99
Biota/Tinct; Bellowing Room ....CD $16.99
Biota/Tumble ....CD $16.99
Biota & Mnemonists/Musique Actuelle 1990 ....CD $16.99 Cover
Blast/Altra Strata ....CD $16.99
Blast/Sift ....CD $16.99
Peter Blegvad/Hangman's Hill ....CD $16.99
The Blitzoids/Stealing From Helpless Children + Look Up ....double CD $24.99
Andy Bole/Ramshackle Pier ....CD $16.99 Cover
Brainville 3/Trial By Headline ....CD $16.99
Camberwell Now/All's Well ....CD $16.99
Cassiber/Beauty And The Beast ....CD $16.99
Cassiber/A Face We All Know ....CD $16.99 Cover
Cassiber/Live in Tokyo ....double CD $24.99 Cover
Charming Hostess/Punch ....CD $16.99
Lindsay Cooper/Rags; The Golddiggers ....CD $16.99 Cover
Coxhill Hayward Hopper & Robinson/Clear Frame ....CD $16.99
Alvin Curran/TotoAngelica ....CD $16.99 Cover
Peter Cusack/Baikal Ice ....CD $16.99 Cover
Peter Cusak/Where Is The Green Parrot ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler/Solo ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler/There And Back Again ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler/Twice Around the Earth (an experiment in listening) ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Thomas Dimuzio/Dust ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Thomas Dimuzio/Quake ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Fred Frith/Live In Moscow Prague and Washington, D.C. ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Fred Frith/Live Vol. 2 ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler and Fred Frith/Two Gentlemen In Verona ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Lutz Glandien/Domestic Stories ....CD $16.99
Chris Cutler & Zeena Parkins/Shark ....CD $16.99
Thomas Dimuzio/Headlock ....CD $16.99 Cover
Thomas Dimuzio/Slew ....CD $16.99 Cover
Tod Dockstader & David Lee Myers/Bijou ....CD $16.99 Cover
Tod Dockstader & David Lee Myers/Pond ....CD $16.99 Cover
Tod Dockstader and James Reichert/Omniphony 1 ....CD $16.99 Cover
Bob Drake/13 Songs and a Thing ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/Bob's Drive-In ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/Little Black Train ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/Medallion Animal Carpet ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/The Shunned Country ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/The Skull Mailbox ....CD $16.99
Bob Drake/What Day Is It? ....CD $16.99
Dumetrescu; Avram; Cutler; Hodgkinson/Musique Action '98 ....CD $16.99
The (EC) Nudes/Vanishing Point ....CD $16.99
Fat/Automat Hi - Life ....CD $16.99
Faust/71' Of Faust ....CD $16.99
Faust/BBC Sessions + ....CD $16.99
Faust/Faust ....CD $16.99
Faust/So Far ....CD $16.99
Faust/Tapes ....CD $16.99
Faust/The Wumme Years - 1970-73 ....CD box set $65.99
Faust/You Know Faust ....CD $16.99
Jane Feder/Speak Puppet ....CD $16.99
Janet Feder & Frith and Fred/Ironic Universe ....DVD + CD $29.99
Four Guitarists of the Apocalypse/World Tour 1998 ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Accidental ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Allies ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Cheap at Half the Price ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Gravity ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Guitar Solos ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/The Happy End Problem ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Impur ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Impur II ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Live In Japan ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Middle of the Moment ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Nowhere Sideshow Thin Air ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/The Previous Evening ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Prints ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Speechless ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Step Across The Border ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith/Technology Of Tears ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith & John Zorn/The Art Of Memory 2 ....CD $16.99
Fred Frith's Keep the Dog/That House We Lived In ....double CD $24.99
Bill Gilonis & Chantale Laplante/Zurich - Bamberg ....CD $16.99
Lutz Glandien/The 5th Elephant ....CD $16.99
Lutz Glandien/Lost In Rooms ....CD $16.99
Lutz Glandien/Scenes From No Marriage ....CD $16.99
Heiner Goebbels/Italian Concerto ....CD $16.99
Heiner Goebbels & Alfred Harth/Homage-Fier Fauste fur Hanns Eisler + Von Spregen des
Gartens ....double CD $24.99
Ground Zero/Consume Red ....CD $16.99
Ground Zero/Plays Standards ....CD $16.99
Ground Zero/Revolutionary Pekinese Opera Ver. 1.28 ....CD $16.99
Haco/Haco ....CD $16.99
Haco + Hiromichi Sakamoto/Ash in the Rainbow ....CD $16.99
Hail/Hello Debris ....CD $16.99
Hail/Kirk ....CD $16.99
Hail/Turn Of The Screw ....CD $16.99
The Hat Shoes/Differently Desperate ....CD $16.99
Charles Hayward/One Big Atom ....CD $17.99
Henry Cow/40th Anniversary Full Box Set ....CD box set + DVD $179.99
Henry Cow/Concerts (remastered) ....double CD $23.99
Henry Cow/In Praise of Learning ....CD $16.99
Henry Cow/Leg End (Original Mix) ....CD $16.99
Henry Cow/Stockholm & Goteborg ....CD $16.99
Henry Cow/Unrest (Remastered) ....CD $16.99
Henry Cow/Western Culture ....CD $16.99
Het/Let's Het ....CD $16.99
Tim Hodgkinson/Pragma ....CD $16.99 Cover
Tim Hodgkinson/Sang ....CD $16.99 Cover
Tristan Honsinger & Massimo Simonini/Call Me Us ....CD $16.99
Ilaiyaraaja/Ilaiyaraaja's Music Journey ....CD $16.99 Cover
Ilaiyaraaja/Wings ....CD $16.99 Cover
Robert Iolini/Electroacoustic Soundscapes and Works For Radio ....CD $16.99
Robert Iolini/Songs from Hurt ....CD $16.99 Cover
IZ/EM ....CD $16.99
Catherine Jauniaux and Tim Hodgkinson/Fluvial ....CD $16.99 Cover
K-Space/Going Up ....CD $16.99
K-Space/Infinity ....Computer Disc $16.99
Kalahari Surfers/Volume 1 : The Eighties ....CD $16.99
Kampec Dolores/Rapid ....CD $16.99
Kampec Dolores/Sitting On The Buffalo ....CD $16.99 Cover
Kampec Dolores + Istvan Grencso/Koncert! ....CD $16.99
Ernö Kiraly/Phoenix ....CD $16.99
Nikola Kodjabashia/Explosion of a Memory ....CD $16.99
Nikola Kodjabashia/The Most Of Now ....CD $16.99
Nikola Kodjabashia/Reveries of the Solitary Walker ....CD $16.99 Cover
Boris Kovacs/Ritual Nova I & II ....CD $16.99
Lagos; Venosta; Mariani/Electronic Adventures In Flamenco ....CD $16.99
Lussier, Derome, Cutler/Three Piece Suite ....CD $16.99
Steve MacLean/Bridges ....double CD $19.99
Steve MacLean/Expressions on Piano ....CD $16.99
Steve MacLean/Frog Bug Guitar Computer ....CD $16.99
Steve MacLean Ensemble/GPS ....CD $16.99
Steve MacLean Ensemble/The Opposite Of War ....CD $16.99 Cover
Michael Maksymenko/Businesscide ....CD $16.99
Christian Marclay/More Encores ....CD $16.99
Istvan Martha/The Wind Rises ....CD $16.99 Cover
Elio Martusciello/Unoccupied Areas ....CD $16.99 Cover
Massacre/Killing Time ....CD $16.99
MCCB/Things From The Past ....CD $16.99 Cover
Miners Of Banal/The Miners Of Banal ....CD $16.99
Phil Minton/Past ....CD $16.99 Cover
Mnemonists/Gyromancy ....CD $16.99 Cover
Mnemonists/Horde ....CD $16.99 Cover
R. Stevie Moore/Phonography ....CD $16.99
R. Musci; C. Cutler; J. Rose; C Gabbiano/Steel Water Light ....CD $16.99
Roberto Musci, Giovanni Venosta/Messages and Portraits ....CD $16.99
Roberto Musci, Giovanni Venosta/A Noise, A Sound ....CD $16.99
N.I.M.B.Y./Songs For Adults ....CD $16.99
N.O.R.M.A. + Chris Cutler/L'Arpa E L'Asino [The Harp & The Donkey] ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Aether ....CD $16.99
The Necks/The Boys ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Chemist ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Drive By ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Hanging Gardens ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Mindset ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Mosquito; See Through ....double CD $21.99
The Necks/Silverwater ....CD $16.99
The Necks/Townsville ....CD $16.99
Ossatura/Verso ....CD $16.99 Cover
Ossatura with Tim Hodgkinson/Dentro ....CD $16.99 Cover
Aki Peltonen/Radio Banana ....CD $16.99 Cover
Pere Ubu/London * Texas ....CD $16.99
Louis Pernot/Livre De Luth De Perrine (Lute Book Circa 1680) ....CD $16.99
Cover
Picchio dal Pozzo/Abbiamo Tutti i suoi Problemi ....CD $16.99
Puppetina/Piewacket! ....CD $16.99
Nadia Ratsimandresy & Matteo Ramon Arevalos/Messiaen et autor de Messiaen ....CD
$16.99
The Red Masque/Fossil Eyes ....CD $16.99
Remian; Dalaba; Dempster/Lung Tree ....CD $16.99 Cover
Jocelyn Robert/Folie-Culture ....CD $16.99
Jon Rose/Brain Weather ....CD $16.99
Jon Rose/The Fence ....CD $16.99 Cover
Jon Rose/The Hyperstring Project ....CD $16.99 Cover
Jon Rose/The People's Music ....CD $16.99
Jon Rose/://shoppinglive@victo. ....CD $16.99
The Science Group/A Mere Coincidence ....CD $16.99
The Science Group/Spoors ....CD $16.99 Cover
Skeleton Crew/Learn To Talk and Country of Blinds ....double CD $24.99
Slapp Happy/Acnalbasac Noom ....CD $16.99
Slapp Happy & Henry Cow/Desperate Straights ....CD $16.99
Sun Ra/The Antique Blacks ....CD $17.99
Sun Ra/Beyond The Purple Star Zone + Oblique Parallax ....CD $18.99
Sun Ra/Disco 3000 ....CD $17.99
Sun Ra/Media Dreams ....double CD $27.99
Sun Ra/Nidhamu + Dark Myth Equation Visitation ....CD $18.99
Sun Ra/On Jupiter ....CD $16.99
Sun Ra/The Paris Tapes ....double CD $23.99
Sun Ra/Sleeping Beauty ....CD $16.99
Sun Ra/Space Probe ....CD $16.99
Sun Ra/Wake Up Angels ....double CD $26.99
Sun Ra and his Arkestra/Cosmo Sun Connection ....CD $16.99 Cover
Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra/Horizon ....CD $16.99
This Heat/This Heat (The Blue And Yellow) ....CD $16.99
Formatio Tickmayer/Wilhelm Dances ....CD $16.99
Stevan Tickmayer/Repetitive Selective Removal of One Protecting Group ....CD $16.99
Cover
Stevan Kovacs Tickmayer/Cold Peace Counterpoints ....CD $16.99
Various Artists/CMCD: Six Classic Concrete; Electroacoustic and Electronic Works ....CD
$16.99 Cover
Various Artists/Contemporary Music ....CD $16.99
Various Artists/The Recommended Records Double Sampler (1983) ....double CD $27.99
Various Artists/ReR Quarterly Selections Vol. 2 ....CD $16.99
Various Artists/ReR Qtrly Vol. 4, Number 1 ....CD $16.99
Various Artists/ReR Qtrly Vol. 4, Number 2 ....CD $16.99
Jack Vees/The Restaurant Behind the Pier ....CD $16.99
Venus Handcuffs/Venus Handcuffs ....CD $16.99
Michael Vogt/Argonautika ....CD $16.99 Cover
VRIL/Effigies In Cork ....CD $16.99 Cover
VRIL/The Fatal Duckpond ....CD $16.99
Lauren Weinger/Silo ....CD $16.99
When/Black White and Grey ....CD $16.99
Gareth Williams/Flaming Tunes ....CD $16.99
Brian Woodbury/Variety Orchestra ....CD $16.99 Cover
Woof Records/Woof 7 Inches ....CD $16.99
The Work/The 4th World ....CD $17.99
The Work/Live In Japan ....CD $16.99
The Work/Rubber Cage ....CD $16.99
The Work/See ....CD $17.99
The Work/Slow Crimes ....CD $16.99
ZGA/Sub Luna Morrior ....CD $16.99
ZGA/Zgamoniums ....CD $16.99
ZNR/Barricades 3 ....CD $16.99
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