***6xCD SET WITH BONUS DVD AND BOOK!!! Long overdue retrospective and entirely appropriate veneration of “the abstract, surrealist, and occasionally terrifying organism” that is RALF WEHOWSKY and company. Collected here are Kühe In 1/2 Trauer (Selektion 1984); tracks from Masse Mensch compilation (Selektion 1982); Distruct (Selektion 1984) plus bonus tracks “Schmutz-fugen,” and “Black, Black, Always Black”; Nichts Niemand Nirgends Nie (Selektion 1986) plus bonus track “Ephemeral March Of The Dead Monks”; Tionchor (Selektion 1987) plus bonus track “L’effiface et l’effet,” “Dorothy Malone with Glasses,” “Easter Anywhere,” and “Essenz”; Acrid Acme (Selektion 1989); Three Projects (RRRecords 1993) plus bonus Merzbow collaboration track “V4”; and, on the DVD, nine Captured Music films (studio footage and visual collages) plus “Luxus & Mehrwert,” “Improvisation Jan. 87,” “Les Honteuses Alles,” “Kühe in 1/2 Trauer,” created by Markus Caspers for an unrealized, posthumous video project. In other words: pulsing synths; crashing percussion; horror film piano passages; tense, uncomfortable moods; scattershot tape collages; mangled and mixed raw materials from Nurse With Wound, The Haters, Merzbow, Asmus Tietchens, The Halfer Trio, and Psychic TV, among many others; junk percussion fused with the sound of guitars being slowly pulled out of tune; horns and indiscernible reed instruments rising up amid the chaos; electronics, tape cut-ups, jackhammer edits and weird synthetic outbursts in collaboration with Achim Wollscheid’s Swimming Behavior Of The Human Infant; ghostly, raw walls of noise that ooze menace; overdriven rhythmic throb obscured by noise; cheap drum machine loops and erratic electronic outbursts; dredged and repurposed recordings from...
6XCD $68.50
06/11/2013
***A Renaissance man, a rebel among rebels. What began with a boyhood dream and a Herman's Hermits record is now EUGENE CHADBOURNE’s musical odyssey that connects the dots between the Appalachians and the edges of the known musical universe.
LP $18.60
02/28/2012
***Self-described by the improvisers as “the wild horseman of sound,” Razine slides, breaks rhythmical lines, transforms textures suddenly, and suggests the ring of the “Trumpet of the Martians,” caught through utopian poetry by visionary and transreason linguist Velimir Khlebnikov, inspirer of futurians, serialism, surrealism and lettrism.
CD $15.00
02/28/2012
***DAN WARBURTON time-stretched about one-hundred IF, BWANA recordings and multitracked them into a single forty-five minute sludge cocktail, before decanting and editing them into a single span of music. AL MARGOLIS then added the ambient sounds of the food-preparation parlor of the titular multimedia minimalist. The two subsequently performed live in Belgium in 2008, mixing the recording with live electronics, clarinet, violin, and a time-stretched and pitch-shifted piano piece of Warburton’s, Speed Study I.
CD $15.00
02/28/2012
***Driven to amalgamate mechanically and electronically generated sounds, CARL LUDWIG HUBSCH (tuba), THOMAS LEHN (synth), PHILIP ZOUBEK (piano), and FRANZ HAUTZINGER (trumpet) create vividly structured architecture. Multilayers, soundscapes, and chamber compositions created in the peak of the moment.
CD $15.00
02/28/2012
***The unique musical language of this Austrian pioneer of electro-acoustic performance and composition is based on the de- and reconstruction of the sonic possibilities of the violin, expanding the instrument with live electronic effects and innovative performance techniques. Primal and organic, screaming, lyrical, explosive and composed, her "automatic playing" is a continuous exploration of sound and music as physical phenomena, constantly pushing back the boundaries in radical and provocative performances and compositions.
CD $15.00
02/28/2012
***Field recordings from around the world, surreal collage techniques and synthetic sounds derived from digital audio tools. With contributions by C. SPENCER YEH (BURNING STAR CORE), Lithuanian sound artist DARIUS CIUTA and Berlin-based circuit bender GUIDO HENNEBOHL, among others.
CD $14.50
10/18/2011
***The works of the London-based conceptual artist, writer, plasticien sonore and composer Robin Rimbaud traverse experimental terrain between sound, space, image and form. Philosopher, musician, and author DAVID ROTHERNBERG takes his inspiration from the melodies and beats of birds, insects, whales, water, and wind.
CD $14.50
10/18/2011
***Making music based upon two simple principles (it is derived from speech; it repeats incessantly), the main project of ALESSANDRO BOSETTI, fretless guitarist KENTA NAGAI, and drummer TONY BUCK is entirely dedicated to Bosetti's loop compositions. Melodies are crafted out of speech profiles of recordings of Bosetti's emotional, often surreal or non-sequitur lyrics. Words cast into everyday speech are subsequently transcribed and played as endless loops. Speech becomes song and the non-metric, irregular rhythms that it creates turn into powerful grooves and precise pulsations never lining up with any regular beat. The band's performance is a meditative exercise in precision and intensity. Musical action begins in little shifts of intonation and inflections, anticipation and delay, played out by voice, fretless guitar, drums and electronics. Music warms up to a calm incandescence. Development is patient and inexorable. It never misses to reach a further level and it never loses its bizarre sameness. The controlled but restless energy mutates and transforms this trio into a devastating stage monster during live performances. The insistently repeated speech fragments at the center of the music end up disappearing from perception while leaving a cloud of vaporized meaning behind.
CD $14.50
10/18/2011
***Three new pieces somewhere between composition, song, literary essay, poem and unreligious mantra, without embracing any genre in particular. ALESSANDRO BOSETTI translates intonations of speech into complex and seemingly orchestral scores where meaning, tone and noise melt together. Inspired by Arcimboldo's 16th Century paintings, which he calls "examples of hand made convolution and shadowing," he pours words into notes, notes into noise, and noise into meaning. Repetition, meditation, hallucination. Harpsichord, piano, guitar, soprano saxophone, field recordings. The core of the sinuous "Gloriously Repeating" is generated from a short fragment from the W.G. Sebald poem "After Nature." "Life Expectations" is constructed around the intricate emotional, rhythmic and melodic counterpoints of a casual conversation, where the sensitive interaction between voices becomes the matter. The text of the surreal and short “Dead Man” implies a ready-made pseudo-zen philosophy of resurrection derived from quotes of Iron Maiden lyrics.
CD $20.15
05/17/2011
***Duo performances by two outbound percussionists (with JASON KAHN on synthesizer also) from Switzerland 2009 recorded by Kahn, composited into their final versions here by Z’EV. Not surprisingly, the heavy processing transcends the inherent rhythmic quality of percussion and settles instead on their complex sonic qualities. “Lausanne” layers metallic noises with delicate grains running through a hollow wooden body; dark clouds gather, undefined sounds appear, a soft metallic hum becomes for a moment the sole audible component, underlying drum tremors rise to the surface. “Zürich” goes through light and dark phases, and rather bare moments where only drone-like electronics and processed drum noises create an impenetrable vacuum.
CD $14.50
05/17/2011
***MARK WASTELL’s misfortune-prone project started with a gigantic tam tam, recorded in 2004 by GRAHAM HALLIWELL; LASSE MARHAUG applied his electronics, computer, and compositional structure to the recording in 2005. A mere five years later, here is the forty-minute result—dark, haunting atmospheric. Cardboard gatefold jacket with twelve-page book.
CD $14.50
05/17/2011