RECITAL - Forced Exposure

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Derek Baron is a composer, musician, and artist. Curtain is a diary. Both in musical and non-musical situations, they attribute a filmic quality to their journal-like aural self-documentation. Dreams turn real then dissolve. Single phrases and events arrive and leave, abruptly. Yet, the overall sense of place that Baron creates is understood. Opening Curtain is the eponymous piece. A 21-minute live chamber work for quintet recorded in 2018. A musical assemblage of glued-together fragments and scraps of sheet music from Baron's past. Compositions wrote in the small margins and folds of paper; illustrated in the art booklet included with the LP. The flute, violin, guitar, keyboard, and bass clarinet phrases saunter at a pre-sleep pace, until a subdued, yet ecstatic Mass theme ushers in periodically. Delivering the warmth of life... it is a slow beauty. It brings me such happiness listening to this piece. Its continuity is cut with scissors and pasted about oddly... all soaked in a certain malaise; a resigned grace. The next piece and other side of the LP, "Chancel," is rather different. An audio journal flipped through, dropped on the ground, picked up and opened to another page. A confusing montage of world-ized musical snatches: car radios, church choirs emanating to the streets, moldy organs, domestic piano recordings. Similarly, machine vibrations, bodega conversations, and other environmental observations segue the harmony and disharmony of this listening experience. Here are some of Derek's notes from the booklet: "Co-opting new achievements / Thank you for this incredible demonstration / This theatre of procedures / This consoling play of recognitions / No theatre but "what's that", / Nowhere for the silver ball to roll to. / How are we so in love." 16-page color pamphlet of artwork & text by Baron; edition of 150.

$16.00 IN STOCK

The second album by the American Gamelan composer and instrument builder, Daniel Schmidt, following In My Arms, Many Flowers (R 017CD), his majestic debut on Recital. Abies Firma lies next chronologically, collecting works from 1976 to 1991, considered the second phase of his compositional form. "We were like children playing with new toys," Daniel recalls of the early days of American Gamelan music. "Though, as we moved into the 1980s, I moved away from Javanese traditional formalism completely, no longer using a constant stream of notes." Daniel became a father twice over in the early '80s, transforming his compositional voice, finding himself open to new affects. Notably, the Sierra fir species, 'abies firma' -- "These trees gave me a sense of rising and rising, all their branches reaching toward sun and sky. Looking at them across open spaces, I felt myself part of their upward striving. The tall mountain trees became rising themes and arpeggios, sometimes even sweeping across the six octaves of the gamelan." This album holds a variety of recordings including an especially immersive tape-delay piece for the rebab, a bowed Javanese instrument. A sort of Eastern Frippertronics weaving the stereo field. Another standout is a semi-improvised flute and gamelan work, ebbing in slowly like a night's wind. "Accumulation" and "Abies Magnifica", the spirited opening pieces, exemplify the precision and dexterity of Daniel's group, The Berkeley Gamelan, who at this time were constantly performing around North America. Two pieces on the album were co-composed by Schmidt and the late Lou Harrison, who helped conceive of the American style of gamelan and enjoyed a similarly long and varied musical career. "Unempins to Sociseknum" is based on arranging Harrison's social security number against Schmidt's unemployment insurance number. A window into the cooperative spirit and experimentation of the late 70s. LP comes with a CD including the additional piece "One White Crow," a three-part tapestry of melodic fragments which epitomizes the second phase of Schmidt's composing; a divergence from both Javanese and European music. Daniel states, "William James once said that one white crow would suffice to overturn science's assertion that all crows are black. I felt myself to be 'one white crow' amidst the prominent, established musical styles." Includes 20-page booklet holding program notes, scores, and a new essay on American Gamelan by Jay Arms. Includes bonus track "Cypress", recorded in 1987.

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Sold out... Recital label head Sean McCann on the record (2020): "A spellbinding tribute from one multi-faceted artist to another. New York-based artist Aki Onda (b. 1967) conjured a transduction to the Korean multi-media pioneer Nam June Paik (1932-2006). Aki himself describes the project: 'Nam June's Spirit Was Speaking To Me occurred purely by chance. In 2010, I was spending four days at Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea for a series of performances and had plenty of free time to wander . . . I have always felt a close kinship with him as an artist, and so it was a great opportunity to immerse myself in his works and ephemera. It was that night I made the first contact, via a hand-held radio in a hotel room in Seoul . . . Scanning through the stations, I stumbled upon what sounded like a submerged voice and I began to record it in fascination. I concluded this was Paik's spirit reaching out to me. The project continued to grow organically as I kept channeling Paik's spirit over long distance and receiving cryptic broadcasts/messages. The series of séances, conducted in different cities across the globe, began in Seoul in 2010, and continued in Köln, Germany in 2012, Wrocław, Poland in 2013, and Lewisburg, USA in 2014. The original recordings were captured by the same radio which has a tape recorder, with almost no editing, save for some minimal slicing and mastering. Paik is known for his association with shamanism, a practice that constantly surfaces in his works all through his career. In an interview, he stated 'In Korea, diverse forms of shamanism are strongly remained. Even though I have created my work unconsciously, the most inspiring thing in my work came from Korean female shaman Mudang.' . . . These recordings also became a way for me to explore the mythic form of radio -- a medium which is full of mysteries. The transmissions captured may be 'secret broadcasts' on anonymous radio stations. There are in fact hundreds of those stations around the world, although the numbers dwindle as clandestine messages can now be sent via encrypted digital channels...' Nam June's Spirit is a beautifully formed homage, I cannot think of any other like it. An intimate, flickering language discovered through the air." Includes 20-page art booklet including rare photographs of Nam June Paik from the set of Michael Snow's film Rameau's Nephew (1974), two essays on radio-wave phenomenon (by Onda and Marcus Gammel), and a remembrance of Paik by Yuji Agematsu. Edition of 250.

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Malcolm Green (b. 1952) is a British artist, dancer, and publisher. His eccentric, liquid ideas seem to come with a smile. Or is it a wry grin? His colorful paintings, usually adorned with phrases, are little riddled plaques. Luckily, Malcolm is of the ilk of visual artists who also records audio works (this multiplicity is always interesting). Green's own label Seedy CDs/Sieh Dies issued a number of CDrs between 2000 and 2005, including many of his own works, along those by friends Jan Voss and a CDr reissue of Dieter Roth's classic Die Radio Sonate (2006). Green is, in fact, a member of the Dieter Roth Academy -- and furthermore gracefully ropes the pillars of Roth into his own artistic process. When Recital head Sean McCann approached Malcolm about republishing an album, Electric Landlady excited both of them immediately. It is the sound of an Epson 90-dot matrix printer running sheets of the score for John Cage's 4'33". It is piercing, though a world of ricocheting meaning can be uncovered in between the lines. Green says, "this particular rendering of Cage's handwritten score is in fact somewhat contrary to Cage's intentions, because every performance on the Epson 90 will be more or less identical. For this reason I have titled it differently: Electric Landlady -- in honor of a felicitous misprint of the famous Hendrix record I once encountered in Italy." The subsequent tracks are beautiful, harmonic re-renderings of the printer's voice, "played live without post-editing, with the (accidental) addition of a booming guitar sound that came with the PC program I was using." Electric Landlady concludes with a jaw dropping DJ-remix of the printer, with airplanes and dogs flying high above a field of beats. Includes four-page pamphlet holding program notes by Green; Edition of 150.

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Sean McCann, Recital label head, on Papers (April 2020): "In addition to the musical objects she creates, Sarah Davachi is also immersed in the theoretical issues that surround her practice. This twin engagement began in her youth in Canada, studying philosophy and music, and working at a specialized musical instrument museum. Her compositional ambitions led to the doorstep of Mills College, fertile with history. Accompanied by a thesis for pipe organ and electronics, she also wrote a tangential document that ties experimentalism and phenomenology and the concept of the 'irreal.' A few years passed as Davachi continued to research and write with an extensive content development project for the museum in Canada. Since 2017, she has been working toward her PhD in musicology at UCLA, with a dissertation on critical organology (the study of musical instruments) and texture in early music, popular music, and experimental music. Papers positions historical and technological conclusions to face their philosophical underpinnings. Illuminating the mysteries of temperament and character in harmony, placing medievalism into the present, giving a narrative of studio recording as world making, and musing on her revered theories about art. Two of the essays dissect sympathetic compositions: Natura Morta by Walter Marchetti and In A Large, Open Space by James Tenney. Fingerprints bordering pathos. The book concludes with six artifact studies: an Italian virginal, a Bösendorfer piano, the Novachord, the Mellotron, the modern harp, and the OSCar synthesizer. Comprehensive details of their development, mechanisms, and cultural significance are laid to bare. I walked downstairs a few weeks ago and Sarah was tuning her harpsichord with a hammer given to us by our friend James Rushford, who had accidentally bought the wrong type a few years back. I sat on the chair beside her; she was setting the instrument to a quarter-comma meantone temperament (from roughly the late 1400s). With only a laymen's understanding of tuning, Sarah demonstrated for me an explanation so simple and beautiful that it made me smile continually. The unique identity of each triad, in this early form, became tangible that afternoon. I could hear how one interval sounded apart from the same in another key. The book elucidates similar experiences. When I read Papers, I admire Sarah's ability to frame the tableau of history with an elegant open end."

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Sean McCann on the release (January 2020): "Ten Impressions dates from the fall of 2010, when I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I was contemplating starting Recital at this time, envisioning the first release to be a double-LP of my ambient, slow works. Amassing violin and piano fragments over the next months, I ended up with over four hours of recorded material. Well, then... I sat and looked at the files on my computer and lost all interest. An odd gapping period overtook me and I stopped working on music. Twiddling my time, my listening interest in classical and art-y avant grade music flourished. A year later, or so, I waded back to the pool of strings and keys and thought, 'oh, well, some of these still feel nice.' So, I opened the chest again. I knew this would be the last 'ambient' record I would make for the foreseeable future (still mostly true). I sculpted them lightly, to a sort of pastoral sadness. Working again on these pieces was familiar and easy. This was just before the obsessive editing microscope was glued above my eye (trying to rip it off, now, though). Ten Impressions is available as a clean CD now. I appreciate the confidence from Root Strata (who originally published this as an LP in 2015). So, thank you Maxwell August Croy and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. This is my most Eno/Budd effort, and I feel the recordings stand well ten years later... Not as an Eno/Budd record, but as a taste of what was before and, if I never got into Fluxus and sound poetry, what could have continued to happen." Four-page pamphlet holding program notes; gatefold wallet; Edition of 200.

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Saturday Night is the debut LP by old friends and collaborators Alex Twomey, Matthew Sullivan, and Sean McCann. Recorded over numerous evenings at the artists' homes, and completed just before the birth of Matthew's daughter, Flora. The album became an excuse to spend time with one another as well as perform. As the trio ordered take-out, drank scotch, smoked on patios, laughing off the weight of reality -- they stumbled into moments of musical focus. This album has a prism of fidelities. High and low resolutions press together as the environment blows through the instruments. The woozy, side-long titular track of hesitant cello and pianos opens the record. Quiet music with blemishes and inebriated pauses, breathing an alleviated air. Phrases with failing propellers, teetering between melodic and apathetic. The true speed of their Saturday nights. Side two opens with "London On My Mind." Reflecting the other pole, manic cassette treatments duel over Twomey's placid keyboard, ultimately breaking into a little joke on the piano. "Collection" features guitar by Sullivan, remembered for his thick fog of work under the alias Earn. With Sullivan's return to the instrument, he is joined by Twomey on upright piano and McCann processing the room in real-time. The brief final work, "Bird," recalls the style of the group's private press cassettes, The Bird and Charlotte's Office: poorly-played pleasant-hearted music. In 2019, two practice sessions were filmed by Sullivan on VHS, the audio has been isolated for this cassette. Includes 20-page color photo of stills documenting the recording process booklet; Edition of 225.

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"Ionisation is the first LP by Italian poet Adriano Spatola. Born in Yugoslavia in 1941, by the age of 23 he became a major force in the Italian avant-garde. 'Towards Total Poetry,' Spatola's critical study on the state of modern poetry, spells out his position: 'to become a total medium, to escape all limitations to include theater, photography, music, painting, typography, cinematographic techniques, and every other aspect of culture, in a utopian ambition to return to origins.' Graphic poetry (cut-up zeroglyphs), volatile and beautiful prose (particularly his books The Porthole and Majakovskiiiiiiij), and of course sound poetry, represented here for the first time. Spatola was the editor of many underground publications: Baobab (a legendary audio-cassette magazine), Tam Tam, and Edition Geiger. Each of his pursuits spread the margins of the format, all done with a relentless, piercing curatorial eye. Spatola has dark, drunken wit in spades. In his sound poems, an even more saturated persona is conjured. A desperate humor sneers through this LP, a humor that has surrendered to the severe joke of life long ago -- lashing out on syllables and ingrown word games. Particularly, his classic 'Aviation/Aviateur' (akin to his 'Seduction/Seducteur', 'Violacion/Violateur' etc.) Read by lesser performers, these pieces would falter and float by in the trough, though Spatola's bull-like confidence tears through. 'Poker Foundation' features the poet hysterically singing 'the play of the words' over a classical radio piece, mocking and squawking against the string swells. Steve Lacy plays scissors, knife, and saxophone on 'Hommage à Eric Satie,' a piece originally recorded for the luxurious Cramps LP boxset Futura. Collaborators Gian Paolo Roffi and Paul Vangelisti are also featured across the collection. The LP concludes with the titular work 'Ionisation,' recorded just days before his premature death in 1988. Feeling his sinking health, his belly in the quicksand, he prefaces the piece, 'a funeral march for my body.' He proceeds to scrape and pound the microphone on his chest, face, and clothing . . . I was born the day after Adriano died, which has some poetic meaning to me, naturally. I am indebted to him, his sickly sweet manner. The opportunity to publish these largely unknown sound works is an honor which brings a warmth to my torso. Much appreciation goes to Giovanni Fontana (poet and dear friend of Adriano), who helped produce this edition with me." --Sean McCann, January 2020 Includes CD and 20-page color booklet with essays by Giovanni Fontana and Adriano Spatola; edition of 250.

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"The Crying Space holds music and sounds to spawn tears. This double-CD is comprised of two sound pieces by the Fluxus artist Eric Andersen (b. Denmark, 1940). The first CD, Le Chemin Des Larmes, is a sound collage made for French radio broadcast in 1990. Fragile narrations in French and English by the artist and other voice actors, played over a streaming assemblage of tragic classical music. The sound crying, that of a professional Karelian mourner, is infused periodically. The texts describe the social and scientific nature of tears, in the context of Andersen's worldwide 'Crying Space' installations, which the artist describes in detail: 'The first Crying Spaces were made in Holland, England and Scandinavia in 1959/60. They were made quite simple by drawing a circle on the ground and to step inside to Cry. Crying is the only means of human communication that cannot be decoded and interpreted with certainty. You can observe a person Crying but can never determine why without additional information. It could be sadness, joy, pain, exhaustion, pleasure, relief or a particle of dust in the eye. However, if you analyze the hormones and crystals in each tear, you can with scientific certainty declare the specific reason for that particular Crying session. After innumerable Crying Spaces all over the world I had an offer to work with the famous marble from the notorious town of Guilietta and Romeo, Verona, Italy. The Verona Rosso. The editor Francesco Conz from Verona offered to publish an edition in Verona Rosso. Here, I found the opportunity to materialize the old Greek saying that the most fragile and ephemeral part of the human body, The Tears, eventually will change and shape the most solid parts of the world. The Crying Stone saw the light of the Day. Unfortunately not in an edition of seven billions (one for each inhabitant of Earth) but in a number of 19. For each stone a most elegant wooden box in mahogany was made. In this way you could travel with your Crying Stone and have it handy for all occasions.' The second CD, The Crying Place, is the soundtrack to installations at Emily Harvey Foundation in 1990 and Galerie J & J Donguy in 1991. Scarce cassette editions were made for these exhibitions. This is a 30-minute complete recording of a professional mourner as they cry and holler in sympathetic pain. The crying becomes songlike, as the weeping modulates and ebbs." --Sean McCann, January 2020 Gatefold packaging with insert of program notes; edition of 200.

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The second album by the American Gamelan composer and instrument builder, Daniel Schmidt, following In My Arms, Many Flowers (R 017CD), his majestic debut on Recital. Abies Firma lies next chronologically, collecting works from 1976 to 1991, considered the second phase of his compositional form. "We were like children playing with new toys," Daniel recalls of the early days of American Gamelan music. "Though, as we moved into the 1980s, I moved away from Javanese traditional formalism completely, no longer using a constant stream of notes." Daniel became a father twice over in the early '80s, transforming his compositional voice, finding himself open to new affects. Notably, the Sierra fir species, 'abies firma' -- "These trees gave me a sense of rising and rising, all their branches reaching toward sun and sky. Looking at them across open spaces, I felt myself part of their upward striving. The tall mountain trees became rising themes and arpeggios, sometimes even sweeping across the six octaves of the gamelan." This album holds a variety of recordings including an especially immersive tape-delay piece for the rebab, a bowed Javanese instrument. A sort of Eastern Frippertronics weaving the stereo field. Another standout is a semi-improvised flute and gamelan work, ebbing in slowly like a night's wind. "Accumulation" and "Abies Magnifica", the spirited opening pieces, exemplify the precision and dexterity of Daniel's group, The Berkeley Gamelan, who at this time were constantly performing around North America. Two pieces on the album were co-composed by Schmidt and the late Lou Harrison, who helped conceive of the American style of gamelan and enjoyed a similarly long and varied musical career. "Unempins to Sociseknum" is based on arranging Harrison's social security number against Schmidt's unemployment insurance number. A window into the cooperative spirit and experimentation of the late 70s. LP comes with a CD including the additional piece "One White Crow," a three-part tapestry of melodic fragments which epitomizes the second phase of Schmidt's composing; a divergence from both Javanese and European music. Daniel states, "William James once said that one white crow would suffice to overturn science's assertion that all crows are black. I felt myself to be 'one white crow' amidst the prominent, established musical styles." Includes 20-page pamphlet holding program notes, scores, and a new essay on American Gamelan by Jay Arms.

$24.00 IN STOCK

Sean McCann on Puck (September 2019): "Puck is here. Music For Public Ensemble (R 022LP), my previous album, was released three years ago. And three years before that was Private Ensemble. Puck is both public and private in nature. A smear of chamber works from Stockholm, Moscow, New York, and Kansas. Three aged personal recordings from 2008, 2009, and 2010 are also poured in the batter: a bedroom violin trio, ambient music, and a sad plucked guitar piece. A marbled blend of new chamber works and older, boisterous recordings from the late-2000s. The first side is subtitled 'Folded Portraits' -- a three-part suite: 'Nightfall', 'Broth', and 'Damals': German for 'back then' (or Remember When: the lowest form of conversation). The spine of it is an informal rehearsal session of Portraits of Friars (2018). Recorded at the fabled Fylkingen in Stockholm, the ten-person text and chamber piece grows and shrinks. False starts and stops and tests are outlined with the black ink of editing. Little moments become big moments. Nailed above that spine is Folded Rose (2018), a piece for piano and humming. A dainty march out of context, immersed in recordings of me gagging and yowling in my car. Sound artist Lia Mazzari shared the titular spoken piece with me. 'Puck,' a duet for dialogue about eggs and jewelry, premiered at Café OTO in 2018. I recorded my text in a dark bathtub in Toronto on my 30th birthday last year. The text is a mold growing on top of a quintet I wrote called Vilon (2017), sweetly performed by the Russian Kymatic Ensemble. Jackson Graham, skilled American percussionist, is a rod bolted through the album. He commissioned a work by me called Violet Fat (2017), which is spliced across both sides, hammered and bent to fit in place. A fusion of jubilation and gut clenching, Puck balances on the rooftop, tipping side to side in the fog." Includes 12-page "Puck" pamphlet and two art cards with program notes and recollections. Edition of 500.

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Recital label head Sean McCann on Towards A Total Poetry: "Culled from live performances in Los Angeles in 1980, Towards A Total Poetry holds radioplays and sound poems by Julien Blaine, Adriano Spatola, F. Tiziano, and Paul Vangelisti. Two concerts were organized by poet and professor Vangelisti and broadcast on his KPFK radio show. A rare gathering of extreme French and Italian sound poets in California, flown out on with an arts funding grant (my, how things have changed!). A jarred specimen on a golden platter of a time passed . . . Sadistically funny, dizzy with confusion: a map lies dissected on the table. Adriano Spatola (1941-1988) is the most beautiful Italian post-war poet, also publisher of Baobab, Tam Tam, Geiger editions. His stage presence is that of a drunken wolverine, thrashing his words and letters, madly chuckling and whispering secrets to himself. Spatola interprets a disfigured rendition of 'Buddenbrooks,' a traumatic and shocking radioplay, held alongside his infamous 'Aviation / Aviateur' and 'Al Capone Poem,' read with explosive tension. His younger brother, F. Tiziano, is a more mysterious figure. His radioplay, 'Los Angeles Bridge,' has four characters: North, South, East, and West. Quibbling through a fever dream over a card game. Professional voice actors were hired for all of the radioplays, translated from Italian by Vangelisti (as with all of Spatola's English publications). French artist and sound poet Julien Blaine (1942) composed the play 'Passe/Futur' -- utilizing his actors as verbal instruments: buzzing and howling as carefully as dots on sheet-music. His sound poems are hilarious, 'Amputation' mimics the sound of four severing surgeries, and 'Mots d'enfants' still confuses me as to what exactly is going on... Paul Vangelisti's works open and close Towards A Total Poetry. The Los Angeles poet and publisher of Red Hill Press organized the affair and was able to hold his own against such powerful artists. Paul's pieces are conceptual, opening with a fitting typewriter hymn, 'Radio,' and concluding with 'Auld Lang Syne,' the Ms of the phone book sung by chorus. These are some of the strangest radioplays in existence. A format I feel is underused. The infusion of drama and comedy and open air to fill... oh, the possibilities. Towards A Total Poetry is of my personal favorites on Recital... exemplifying the core of what I love to publish." Includes 12-page booklet with essays and poems by the artists; Edition of 250.

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Recital label head Sean McCann on Stones : Dreams: "The first audio document ever published by Fluxus artist Geoffrey Hendricks (1931-2018). There is a romanticism found in Geoffrey, that, in my mind, sets his work aside from his Fluxfriends. Known for his timeless sky paintings, applied to canvas, cars, clothes, and so on, the conceptual married the majestic. He was a master painter, whose work could have filled cathedral ceilings. Instead, he chartered his bow alongside George Maciunas, John Cage, Dick Higgins, etc. in the 1950s. Hendricks became a prominent member of Fluxus, shown in exhibitions around the world for over 60 years. In the 1970s, composer Charlie Morrow approached Hendricks about recording an album for the New Wilderness Audiographics cassette series. This became a 40-year dance of orbiting schedules and slipping dates. The sky aligned in 2014, and a recording session at Ear Up Studios in New York manifested. Geoffrey's connection to nature not only focused upwards at the sky, but always downwards to stones. 'Rock Music' consists of a box of rocks being cast across a room. Pounded on wood, soft and hard, the sonar-like snapping echo mapping the dimensions of the room. Small bells hover over the rubbing of stones humming to each other. You can tell that this was a therapeutic ritual he practiced for years, not merely an improvised recording concept. With the LP is a booklet that includes diaries of his stone collecting on Cape Breton island in 1973, beautifully infused with dream recollection. The cassette of 'Music for Sky Slate Wall' was discovered by chance earlier this year in the vast archive Hendricks left behind. It holds Geoff's close friend Philip Corner performing at an Emily Harvey Foundation exhibition in 1999. Corner responds to the Hendricks installation, interpreting the wall adorned with watercolors of day and night skies, grey slate, and a ladder hanging more paintings and golden ornaments. Philip Corner performs with prongs, Korean shaman cymbals, his voice, and a shoe. Their charming friendship can be heard in the interplay. This project was made possible by Geoff's widow, Sur Rodney (Sur), his children, Tyche and Bracken Hendricks, Philip Corner, and Charlie Morrow." Includes 16-page pamphlet with essays by Tyche Hendricks and Charlie Morrow, diaries and artworks by Geoffrey Hendricks. Edition of 220.

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"The Book of Numbers and Spells is multi-hatted composer and inventor Charlie Morrow's first book. Number and letter games bejewel the pages of this anthology (pulling pieces and writings from 1974 to 2019). These works are largely text scores. It wasn't until I saw Charlie perform 'Ten the Long Way' with a room full of participants that the performative power became clear to me. Chanting numbers: the meditative, transparent, and unifying joy that swept across the room was beautiful. Charlie, a born networker of people and ideas, has naturally included two close friends in the book. Jerome Rothenberg provides a poetic essay, 'A Gematria Sampler', along with a compelling article written by composer Tom Johnson. These supplements embolden the scope and richness of Morrow's transparent systems." --Sean McCann, June 2019

"The range of Charlie Morrow's work if laid out end to end would show him clearly -- though never completely -- as a protean and transformational composer and performer. He is, from where I see him, both the leading proponent of an active ethnopoetics in avant-garde musical performance and a master of new technologies as they come into contemporary practice. It's this dynamic of old and new that a gathering like this again makes plain. The effect, all in all, is cumulative, the power in the ensemble, the full range of his explorations: shamanic-inspired dream chants, animal language events, performance pieces based on modern signal codes and ancient numerologies, soundscapes derived from the new wilderness of urban spaces and the old wilderness of arctic tundras, recompositions of familiar repertory works and of long neglected or forgotten chants and hymns, works for multiple massed single instruments (ocarinas, tubas, cellos, harps), international radio events in celebration of winter and summer solstices, and an extraordinary range of massive public spectacles. Now after fifty years of active engagement, the work, as serious and deeply rooted as it gets, is conceived and played out with a boundless energy and good humor -- in a style as distinctive as his familiar and ever present bowler hat." Jerome Rothenberg, 2019

130 pages; 6x9" perfect bound. Limited edition of 100; hand numbered in red ink.

$25.50 IN STOCK

Recital label head Sean McCann on the record (June, 2019): "Father Fugue is Nour Mobarak's first full-length album. The Los Angeles-based artist spent years sculpting this LP, and the result is piercingly emotional. A foray into her being; a sound artist, a songstress, a sculptor. Nour's creativity orbits an ever-moving center. Thus, glimpses, reflections, and splinters of her oeuvre embody Father Fugue. The side-long titular piece on the LP is unlike anything I have ever heard. Nour describes the piece: 'the left channel of 'Father Fugue' is composed of conversations with my father, Jean Mobarak, a polyglot who has a 30-second memory and lives in the mountains of Lebanon. The right channel is composed of improvised song.' Nour and her father speak through four different languages (French, Italian, English, and Arabic), a full transcription and translation is included with the LP in a 24-page booklet. They speak of cars, of soccer, of Italy. They speak in games, in rhymes, and in song. The sonic division of voice and time across the stereo pattern is captivating. The second side of the album is comprised of eleven songs. The word 'song' must be taken widely and liberally in this instance. Elements were recorded in her car, in the shower, in the ruins of Oaxaca, Mexico: a rainbow of personal documentation. The vase holding the bouquet is of jubilation and abstract humor. A chanson written by Nour's great-great-grandmother, at the turn of the 20th century in Constantinople, is sung throughout the LP. The first side concludes with her and her father singing it in duet, as Nour's solo performance begins the second side. Bound by time, Father Fugue reveals Nour Mobarak's expression from and response to her father's place and memory. A flip of the record uncovers her expression and response to her own." 24-page libretto booklet (Arabic/French/Italian/English transcriptions and translations; credits/photo card; Edition of 250.

$22.00 IN STOCK

"The Entertainer is Alex Twomey's first album since 2012. Many have been waiting and finally, here we are! During the silence, Twomey's keyboard work has germinated into a more framed compositional structure, beaming with orchestral strings, woodwinds, and brass; eleven cinematic settings and bouncing refrains mark this LP. Alex describes the album as, 'vignettes alluding to a vague narrative regarding one's idea as an artist.' A somber beauty is penned. Alex previously recorded as Mirror To Mirror, and operated the record label Jugular Forest from 2004-2012. I first met him in 2010 during a large concert in Santa Cruz, CA. Alongside Twomey, myself, Kyle Parker (Infinite Body), Matthew Sullivan (Earn), Pedestrian Deposit, Mike Pollard, and Peter Friel performed that night. Alex's performance was a thick ocean of chords, a penetrating grace that I can still recall. Everyone has since bloomed from the ambient roots of that time in their own way. Alex has held onto utilizing the keyboard, albeit as a tool to build a larger musical world, a legend to the map. On this album the melodies dance as twinkling bulbs along a retired parade float. A dark comedy, a tragic smile, love found in the rough of it all. Twomey is currently studying composition at Occidental College in Los Angeles" --Sean McCann, April 2019. Edition of 250, includes signed postcard.

$15.00 IN STOCK

"Anne Tardos is an American poet, visual and vocal artist; she has developed a unique performance style that allows her to move fluidly within -- and between -- media. This is evident in Gatherings, which was originally published on cassette by New Wilderness Audiographics, and holds recordings from 1974-1981. It stands as one of Tardos's seminal audio documents; two forms of sound are examined here; the first is observational and static recordings of the artist's loft: percussive sounds from heat pipes expanding and contracting and the irregular pulse of her refrigerator defrosting. The reflection of chaos found in nature is encapsulated and tagged here in its simplest form. Tardos rolled those moments of found sounds onto tape, reexamining the meaning (and the ultimate absence) of stillness. The other form of this album is multichannel solo voice works; they are intimate, close-miked, and playful, morphing from harmonic swirls to whisperings. They capture a dynamic exploration of her extended vocal range -- the contrast between pieces is dramatic. The final piece, "Real Sleeper, Real Dreamer," integrates both forms. It is a self-portrait of the artist sleeping, bending inside breath and air, a study of the physical surface above dreams, the durational search within the expanse of the self, and the phenomenal depth of the shallows is splashed in our ears" --Sean McCann, April 2019. Edition of 200, includes eight-page booklet with notes by Tardos and Charlie Morrow.

$24.00 IN STOCK

"The Claviorganum & The Violin is the first published recording of Michel Samson since his unparalleled work with Albert Ayler's quintet in the late 1960s. Samson's violin playing has changed me with his great exuberance and ecstasy, all sliding through an interlocking sadness. Since I first began Recital, I have dreamt of contacting Michel to publish an album that gives reverence to his violin playing; seven years later, it has come to be. The collection on this LP holds numerous 17th century works of the Italian Baroque, performed by Samson and his wife, Rebecca. It showcases some of the earliest music composed for the violin as a featured soloist. Rebecca accompanies on a replica -- believed to be the only extant replica in the United States -- of the claviorganum, a rare and curious instrument that traces back to the 15th century. Comprised of both an organ and a harpsichord integrated into a single case, the claviorganum harkens to a time of experimentation and artistry of design. Michel's violin was made by Francesco Gobetti in 1718; its sound carries beautifully throughout the room. Samson worked as a dealer of rare and antique violins for many years, and has an ear for majestic craftsmanship. The style adopted by Italian composers during the baroque was one of heightened lyricism, emotion, and ornamentation, especially when voiced through the violin; it is no accident that Michel's unique approach to articulation and intonation speaks both to the present and the past. In these recordings one can hear the same joy dripping across the strings, as in his days with Ayler; it shows what beauty can be instilled inside someone. Rebecca's playing is exquisite, too, complementing each movement as they fold on. Please enjoy this special album" --Sean McCann (with contributions by Sarah Davachi), April 2019. Edition of 250, includes eight page insert with program notes and paintings by Michel Samson.

$22.00 IN STOCK

"Matthew Sullivan's Matthew is nailed together with driftwood from around the world. The waters of Italy, the pubs of London, birds of Japan, a phone call in Los Angeles. Sullivan moved from California to London in 2016. Living in London was a pivotal time for Matt, as I see it. This record digests that time. Each sound on Matthew means something specific to the artist. Locales and memories focus to mind as passages rise and sink. Us listeners cannot know what transpires across the speakers, however. Our own narrative is quietly built. I like records that don't concern the audience, ones that make you invest yourself; this is one of those records. Fans of Sullivan's music know that he never gives an inch more or an inch less than he needs to. Bold and looming with few extraneous elements. Ekhein, Matt's former cassette label, and his new label, as of yet without name, also carry this motif. Two side-long pieces, expertly woven, constitute this album. I admire Matt's ability to play with proximity and depth of field: fading sirens, ripping waters, and digitized breath. Like a hallucinating Bill Fontana, the two works are sensory travels folding into themselves. Matt is once again living in Los Angeles, and thus the nostalgic mist that forms within Matthew is all the more meaningful." --Sean McCann, February 2019 Edition of 250, includes signed insert by Sullivan.

$24.00 NOT IN STOCK

"Dreams of India & China is the first retrospective LP of artist and sailor, Rip Hayman. Recorded from 1975-1986, the two side-long works were collaged from a dozen hours of tape recordings (which had lain dormant for over 30 years). It ebbs as the tides; pulsing from one location to the next in a faint stupor, Dreams turns to be an autobiographical sound map. Audio capsules of Hayman's installation performances, private experiments, and every ethnographic voyage in between are charted. Outdoor recordings canopy over indoor recordings, thatching surreality. Tonal quilts lap over "Dreamwaves" on the first side: an all-night sleep concert hosted by Rip as the sandman. Whispers of recounted dreams, birds and trees, organ waves. The second side traverses more saturated memories: bicycle spokes ripping against half-speed piano, bleeding cymbal dances over saxophone gusts, the tumbling of Rip's body affixed with bells and metal. Hayman was a collaborator in New Wilderness Foundation, Ear Magazine, and The Land (a parcel in upstate New York to where John Cage, John Lennon, David Tudor, and more would escape the city in the 1970s). He is the owner of the oldest bar in NYC, The Ear Inn. Focusing on nautical inventions and intentions these days, Rip has veered away from composition; hopefully that will change. For now, let us enjoy the sea-faring sound journeys of his past. Dreams of India & China charters a beautiful confusion -- come aboard and push off into his waters." --Sean McCann, February 2019
"Captain Rip Hayman is a traveller: on the seas, across the lands, and in the realm of music. He has been around the world 51 times to date. Like the proverbial cat, Rip has lived many lives and beaten death more than most. Rip's playlist here is a mix of his compositions and music gathered in his travels. The sounds of the world are all music to the Captain's ears." --Charlie Morrow, December 2018
Edition of 500, includes 12-page color booklet with essays and photographs.

$16.50 IN STOCK

The fourth and final in the "saints series" by Eric Schmid and Sean McCann and friends, following St. Francis, St. Paul, and Joan Of Arc (R 037CD, 2017). Eight artists -- Burns-Coady, Friel, Gean, Grossinger, McCann, Pollard, Schmid, Walton, Weidmann -- responding closely or distantly or lazily to a proposed score by Jonathan Gean. Holds the following writings: Messianism by Eric Schmid, Gospel of Truth by Tim Weidmann, along with photography by Jonathan Gean and Sean McCann. 56-page pamphlet; Edition of 200.

$16.50 LOW STOCK LEVEL

Fourth edition of 200; Glass-mastered CD; Includes a 12-page booklet of program notes and photography. Includes additional track "And the Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn". Recital present the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music -- studying and collaborating with Lou Harrison, Jody Diamond, and Paul Dresher. He currently is a teacher at Mills College, teaching instrument building. The recordings on Flowers date from 1978-1982, selected directly from Schmidt's personal cassette archive. It holds two studio tracks, along with two live performances. The first track, "Dawn" (commissioned by composer John Adams), employs an early digital sampler provided by Pauline Oliveros. It holds the sound of a string quartet. The nature of this piece is breathtaking, an ocean of strings pulsing beneath the gliding bells of the gamelan -- such a lovely interplay. Furthermore, the title track, "Flowers", features the addition of a rebab, a traditional bowed instrument, which reels through the piece, netted and taught. The final two works are strictly gamelan compositions. "Ghosts" is a dynamic piece; rife with dexterous euphoria, it well displays the skillset of the percussionists heard on the LP. The closing work, "Faint Impressions", is a somber elegy. Demonstrating the fragility and grace possible with the gamelan; sounding almost as an evening piano sonata. In My Arms, Many Flowers is a unique document from an under-represented movement of American new music. An account of the curious beauty and woven emotions hidden within resonating pieces of metal.

$27.50 IN STOCK

Recital label head Sean McCann on Tom Phillips's Words And Music (January 2019): "Words And Music is a rare and sought-after album by artist Tom Phillips (b. 1937). Fueled by painting, opera, and concrete poetry, this LP was originally published by the king, Hansjörg Mayer, in 1975 (this LP has never been repressed). Most are familiar with Tom Phillips' 'After Raphael' painting used on the cover of Brian Eno's Another Green World LP (1975), along with the television series he made with director Peter Greenaway, A TV Dante (1990). However, Tom's crowning achievement is his art-book A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel (1970). A reworked version of the obscure book, A Human Document, by W.H. Mallock, each page laboriously painted and collaged over. Spools of text are re-discovered from the original book, stitching together a new story surrounding the protagonist, Toge. Six editions have been published from between 1970 and 2017, each with different texts and paintings imagined. Phillips' work has the air of forlorn fantasy to it -- a designed romance. The first side of Words And Music contains four chamber works grown from impressionistic and graphic scores. A lovely flavor of British experimental composition à la Cornelius Cardew (with whom Phillips collaborated in the Scratch Orchestra). Tom's music incorporates touchstones of visual art: in his Irma opera, a band of voice colors wash over slides of chamber melodies; in 'Ornamentik,' (commissioned by Stuart Dempster) acoustic and electronic instruments are played as extended shapes along a piece of paper. The piano piece 'Lesbia Waltz' augments sheet music, cut-up measure by measure, placed and replaced. The second side of the LP holds readings from his famed book, A Humument. Recited by Tom, whose chestnut voice perfectly carries the stanzas of bizarre, romantic poetry. Dancing between meanings with gentle blood and ink soaking on each word." 7"x9" 12-page color pamphlet with scores and program notes; Includes CD; Edition of 215.

$16.50 IN STOCK

"Reidemeister Move's Arcanum 17 is a sound novella recorded in 2012 in remote Eastern Quebec. Reidemeister Move is Christopher Williams, a composer and contrabass player who worked with Ben Patterson (amongst an army of other mentors) and Robin Hayward, a microtonal tubist and composer who has performed music written for him by Christian Wolff and Alvin Lucier. Arcanum 17, based on the André Breton novel (1945) of the same name, was co-written by Williams and Charlie Morrow (one may recall that Recital published Morrow's fabulous Toot! Too LP last year (R 041LP, 2017)). Charlie introduced me to Williams in late-2016 (introducing is one of Charlie's specialties). Once I discovered Christopher's association with Fluxus composers and Malcolm Goldstein, I figured our conversations would go late into the night. We did not talk, though. And our first meeting consisted of Christopher sitting me down to play a piece of his music. I was initially turned off by the situation: such a bold gesture from a relative stranger (a bottle of wine and banter would normally be on the menu for such an occasion). We turned the lights to a dim glow in my living room and he played the CD for me all the way through: 45 minutes of hyper-silent listening. I sank into the experience with comfort and ease with the first wash of water from the speakers. Arcanum 17 is paced perfectly: field recordings, whispered narration, and cloudy bass and tuba streams fall in and out of frame with cinematic grace. A transportive phenomenon of an album, it sonically echoes Williams' description of the Breton novel: 'A thick, existential little book, a reckoning of and with everything that brings him here: Canadian wildlife, the morning star, the myth of Melusina, feminism, the French education system, the ecstasy of newfound love. His alchemical blurring of prose and poetry, dream and waking states, natural and psychological landscapes, and past, present and future, brings these topics inimitably together. Always on the cusp of development but never quite.' I now am grateful for the serious listening lesson that Christopher sat me down for: both because the sound piece was beautiful, and as a reminder to treat your art with respect and to not slight the weight of your passions."--Sean McCann, October 2018.
Includes 9″ x 6″ 20-page color pamphlet with photos and program notes. Edition of 200.

$22.00 IN STOCK

Recital presents a reissue of François Dufrêne's Cri-Rythmes, originally issued in 1977. A remastered vinyl issue of the impossible-to-find cassette by French sound poet Dufrêne (1930-1982), this LP holds tracks not available since then. Dufrêne swallows the microphone, gargles the capsule, then vomits up the cables. Claustrophobic, verbal seizures, revealing once more that Dufrêne is king and all the pages of poetic history now have his spit on them. Includes memorial/tribute written by Bernard Heidsieck in 1983. Edition of 250.