Sub Rosa is the home of "out-of-range" artists that share a passion for music, in every form possible. They may hail from Japan, UK, USA, Germany, from all over the world, but they all share a common taste for experimentation -- not necessarily in a radical way, but often closer to some level of "abstract" forms of expression. The proof that besides the commercial circuit and the deep underground movements... there is life! The label creates connections between past, present and future. The perfect example would be the Noise Anthology series, which reaches back into the past and unlocks the vaults that offer a selection of rare and unreleased "early-electronicians," as well as presenting contemporary artists who are well ahead of their time but who are thinking in the same ways as their elders did, trying to push forward both art and music. Other releases from Luc Ferrari, Martyn Bates, Eyeless In Gaza, Stephen Vitiello, Brion Gysin, Winter Family and a fantastic release of Persian electronic music.
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3CD
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SR 491CD
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$20.00
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RELEASE DATE: 3/11/2022
The complete works of one of the pioneers of Belgian early electronics. This three-CD set highlights Leo Kupper's earliest unique compositions produced during the '60s to '90s when he was ardently seeking out structures distinctly applicable to purely electronic sounds. His GAME machine -- Générateur Automatique de Musique Electronique (Automatic Generator of Electronic Music) was constructed during such period and spirit of renewal and technical explorations. Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series. Includes 20-page booklet.
Leo Kupper was born in Nidrum, Hautes Fagnes (Eastern Belgium) on April 16th, 1935. He studied musicology at the Liège Conservatory, then became the assistant of Henri Pousseur who, in 1958, had just founded the Apelac Studio in Brussels. Kupper started to work on his first pieces there, but he would finalize them only upon putting together his own studio in 1967: the Studio de Recherches et de Structurations Electroniques Auditives (Studio Of Audio Electronic Research And Structuring). That is where he would compose, to this day, over forty works, most of them on instruments of his own design. In the '70s and '80s, he built a series of Sound Domes (briefly established in Rome, Linz, Venice, and Avignon), places where every sound, every phoneme uttered by the listening audience was transformed by hundreds of loudspeakers of various sizes organized in a dome shape. This device transformed sounds through space and time: something said could be morphed into another sound hours, days, perhaps years later. Leo had envisioned that a device like his, a place for contemplation, would be much-needed in cities where nature had been evacuated. In the late '70s, after discovering Iranian music master Hussein Malek, Kupper became one of the very few Western virtuosos of the santur. His first pieces were released by Deutsche Grammophon and, later, Igloo. His latest works have been released by the New York-based label Pogus.
The GAME machine: In 1961, having terminated his musicology studies, Leo Kupper left Liège for Brussels. By that time, centers for music research such as those in Cologne, Paris, and Milan had already produced works of experimental music, where pioneers were forging new and diverse routes in electronic music, "musique concrete", and electro-vocal music. The GAME machine was constructed during such period and spirit of renewal and technical exploration. The GAME consisted of a collection of variable "sonic cells" sensitive to modulations of positive and negative voltages and programmable manually through the aid of color-coded cables. Complex electronic loops and sound from loudspeakers and from microphone pick-ups were then either recorded by tape-machines or performed and interpreted by musicians who opened automatic channels, thus triggering automatic sound to exit the speakers.
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SR 523CD
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$15.50
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RELEASE DATE: 2/18/2022
Released in Sub Rosa's Unclassical series. "This album is the result of years of work and friendship with the composer. It started with 'De Profundis', a piece which has had a deep impact on me as a musician and a person, and ended with it. Frederic attended many of my performances of the piece, the last one during our last public concert together in early 2020 in Brussels. In the meantime, he wrote 'Dear Diary' (2014) and 'America: A Poem' (2020) for me which were both premiered at Ars Musica festival. I am very happy to present these pieces to you on this new and special album coming out on Sub Rosa." --Stephane Ginsburgh
Frederic Rzewski (1938-2021): Frederic Rzewski was born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1938. He initially studied piano with Charles Mackey in Springfield and went on to study composition with Walter Piston (orchestration) and Randall Thompson at Harvard University and with Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt at Princeton University, where he also took courses in philosophy and Greek. A Fulbright-Scholarship enabled him to study with Luigi Dallapiccola in Florence in 1960-61. His musical collaboration with Dallapiccola marked the beginning of his career as a pianist for contemporary piano music. His friendship with Christian Wolff and David Behrman and his acquaintance with John Cage and David Tudor influenced his development, both as a composer and as a pianist. During the 1960s, Rzewski taught and took part in the first performances of Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Klavierstück X" (1962) and "Plus Minus" (1964). From 1977 to 2003, he was a professor for composition at the Conservatoire Royal in Liège, Belgium. He also taught at various other universities, among them Yale University, the California Institute of the Arts and the Berlin University of the Arts. Rzewski founded the live electronics ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva with Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum in Rome in 1966. After his return to New York in the early 1970s, his politically outspoken compositions probably made it difficult for him to obtain a long-term teaching position in the US. Frederic Rzewski lived and worked in Brussels. He left us on June 24, 2021 in his Italian home in Montiano.
Stephane Ginsburgh (1969): A tireless surveyor of the repertoire but also explorer of new combinations including voice, percussion, performance or electronics, Stephane Ginsburgh performs as a soloist in many international festivals such as Ars Musica (Brussels), Quincena Musical (San Sebastian), ZKM Imatronic (Karksruhe), Agora (Paris), Bach Academie Brugge, Ultima Oslo, Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse, Gaida (Vilnius), Warsaw Autumn, Klara Festival (Brussels), Festival Forum (Moscow), and Musica Strasbourg. He has collaborated with many contemporary composers such as Frederic Rzewski, James Tenney, Philippe Boesmans, Jean-Luc Fafchamps, Stefan Prins or Matthew Shlomowitz as well as with choreographers such as Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (Rosas) and visual artists such as Peter Downsbrough and Kurt Ralske.
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SR 522EP
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$11.00
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RELEASE DATE: 2/11/2022
7" limited clear vinyl. Following their recent Difference and Repetition: A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze (SR 484CD/LP, 2021). Features "The Tears of Nietszche" on side A with Richard Pinhas as guest musician and "Vecteur d'abolition" on side B with the voice of Gilles Deleuze. Palo Alto: Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with ten albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox) and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy Fox...) Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. Their new album is no exception to this rule...
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SR 518CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/14/2022
Milan Knízak canonical text Aktual University, dating from 1967, contains ten short lectures outlining the university's character -- On Conflict, On Dreams, On Revolutions, On Love, On Belief, On Art, etc. These lectures were to serve as inspirational schemes for lectures, seminars and discussions held at an ideal university. In the first piece, Aktual University, Milan Knízak reads his own text, with Opening Performance Orchestra providing the musical accompaniment. It was performed live in October 2019 at the Movement-Sound-Space festival in Opava, where this recording was made. The second track, titled "Broken Suite", is a studio remix, in which Opening Performance Orchestra used fragments and quotations from Milan Knizák's compositions, conceived over the past fifty years, applying the "broken" method. The majority of them are made public for the very first time in the newly created "Broken Suite". The booklet features English translations of ten Aktual University lectures, as well as Milan Knizak's contemporary initiation text. Includes 12-page booklet.
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SR 475LP
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Historic Belgian prog-fusion outfit of the early 1970s. Arkham played eclectic jazz and rock mixtures in the "Canterbury" vein, inspired by Soft Machine and Egg. Never released before on vinyl, the recordings reproduced on this album come from magnetic tapes of some of Arkham's concerts and rehearsals, recorded at various times. Arkham are an early '70s prog band that featured keyboard player Jean-Luc Manderlier who would later join Magma, drummer Daniel Denis who would also move on to Magma as well as Univers Zero, and drummer Patrick Cogneaux. Arkham aren't nearly as dark as Magma or Univers Zero, their jazzy overtones placing them a little closer to Soft Machine. The three musicians, who show some maturity, are obviously pouring their hearts out throughout the album, which exudes an intensity that can't be ignored.
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SR 519LP
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$16.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/10/2021
Maurice Louca is one of the most gifted musicians and composers on Egypt's thriving underground music scene. This forthcoming full-length album draws voraciously on Arabic music, psychedelic folk. The title Saet El-Hazz is a coded saying in Egypt to refer to a good time and usually implies a great deal of debauchery. "When you mention to someone that you've had a saet hazz, there are no questions asked. It is what it is." The initial spark for Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) was Louca's desire to collaborate with "A" Trio, the Lebanese improvisational group featuring Mazen Kerbaj on prepared trumpet, Sharif Sehnaoui on prepared guitar, and Raed Yassin on prepared double bass. "When the three of them come together they create a sonic cosmos entirely their own. I started by composing music that I wanted to have exist within this sonic world- at times in harmony, or clashing with it, and all the emotional ranges in between." Just as "A" Trio served as the spark, a commission from Mophradat, an arts organization based out of Brussels, was the tinder. The commission was for a new composition to be performed using instruments that Louca would modify to play microtonally. This led him to Turkey and Indonesia. In Istanbul, he worked with a luthier to custom-make a guitar. In Surakarta, he ended up with an instrument maker tuning a Serang-referred to as the Indonesian xylophone, part of the family of Gamelan tuned percussion instruments. These new modified instruments opened up the composition to new tonal possibilities which drove Louca to expand his line up to include Khaled Yassine, a longtime collaborator and versatile percussionist and drummer, Christine Kazaryan, a dynamic harpist whom he met via Praed Orchestra, and Anthea Caddy, a cellist who came highly recommended from the Berlin free improv scene. Saet El-Hazz (The Luck Hour) is a long form composition of six movements, recorded over the course of a week in August 2019 at A/B studios in Brussels. RIYL: Sun City Girls, Tortoise, Nadah El Shazly, Amirtha Kidambi, Don Cherry, Jaubi, Pharoah Sanders, Sunil Ganguly. Marbled vinyl with insert.
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SR 525CD
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Sarah Defrise dedicates her first new music album to the American mezzo-soprano Cathy Berberian. The disc features exclusively a capella pieces which were written for Cathy by some of the most prominent composers of her time. Berio's Sequenza III, Cage's Aria and Cathy's own Stripsody have become new music "hits", but For Cathy also presents lesser-known repertoire such as Henri Pousseur's Phonème pour Cathy, Bussoti's fragment from Passion selon Sade and Entretien, a piece for electronic tape composed by Sarah Defrise as a tribute to Berberian. Sarah took an active part in the editing process of the disk in order to create a coherent sound object, displaying the endless possibilities of the human voice. Includes 24-page booklet.
Cathy Berberian (July 4, 1925 - March 6, 1983): American mezzo-soprano and composer based in Italy. She worked closely with many contemporary avant-garde music composers, including Luciano Berio, Bruno Maderna, John Cage, Henri Pousseur, Sylvano Bussotti, Darius Milhaud, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, and Igor Stravinsky. As a recital curator, she presented several vocal genres in a classical context, including arrangements of songs by The Beatles as well as folk songs from several countries and cultures. As a composer, she wrote Stripsody (1966), in which she exploits her vocal technique using comic book sounds (onomatopoeia), and Morsicat(h)y (1969), a composition for the keyboard (with the right hand only) based on Morse Code.
Sarah Defrise: Belgian soprano Sarah Defrise has quickly established herself as one of the most fascinating young vocal artists enjoying close working relationships with a wide range of contemporary composers. A polymorphic artist, she is at ease in Lied, opera as well as contemporary performances including solo stand-up shows. She featured as a soloist on stages such as the Berlin Staatsoper, the Grand Théâtre de Genève, MÜPA in Budapest, NOF in Fribourg, the Opéra royal de Wallonie in Liège and la Monnaie / De Munt in Brussels. Composers Peter Eötvös and Jean-Luc Fafchamps have conceived roles specifically for her.
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SR 521CD
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Tetsuo Furudate has been working on projects including electronic music, films, videos creating time passages between old and new pieces, re-reading the past through re-appropriations. All his recent pieces can be watched or just listened to. it is also a cultural mix embracing all eastern and western cultures (from JS Bach to Merzbow). Here he recreates a borderless and timeless universe, where voices and pianos reach emotional moments of great depth. The whole is driven by Tetsuo who, by a continuous mixing, conceives these different pieces as an editor would a film made of borrowings images, archives material and unpublished fragments. The Nocturne, The Nightmare and a Fruit features Keiko Higuchi and Olga Magieres.
Tetsuo Furudate was first the collaborator and friend of Zbigniew Karkowski in Japan, together they created some of the most radical but complex pieces under the name of World as Will (after Arthur Schopenhauer's book), some of which were rewritten for the Viennese Zeitkratzer Ensemble.
Keiko Higuchi is above all a pianist and performer, linked to jazz and improvisation. She was revealed by Love Hotel (2008), her concerts are like real performances, she is considered as one of the most singular and impressive performing artists of her generation.
Olga Magieres, Russian pianist living in Denmark, specializes in improvised music and the syntactic relationship of languages. She has already collaborated with Tetsuo in 2010 with Introduction Of Blue Of Noon, her first opus Piano and Poetry had been praised.
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SR 520LP
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"The beauty of all this, as well as its sorrowful brutality, is even more powerful and stupefying since Ghédalia's sudden departure. Because retrospectively, not only is this recording the trace of a rare moment in a Parisian garden, it also summons a ghost, that of a loved one that is gone, and of his voice, which is fully alive here."
Tazartes and Chatham had met once in 1977 at CBGB's and had not seen each other since then when they were asked by their mutual agent to play a private show in Paris. This happened in September 2018 in a house with a garden where sax player Steve Lacy had lived back in the 1990s. This album presents the recording of this show plus another show at La semaine du bizarre festival in Montreuil, France a year later, mixed with a couple of studio sessions. This was probably the last music Tazartès, who died in February 2021, recorded. His unique singing blends perfectly with Chatham's loops on electric guitar, trumpet and flute. Clear vinyl.
Rhys Chatham is a composer, guitarist, trumpet player and flutist from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who altered the DNA of rock and created a new type of urban music by fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of the early 60s with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones -- the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock. -Chatham's trumpet work deploys extended playing techniques inherited from the glory days of the early New York minimalist and '70s loft jazz period.
Ghédalia Tazartes: French cult artist with an uncompromising character who defied categorization. He recorded alone more than 20 albums, calling his Art "Impromuz" for lack of a better term. Before the years 2000s, his public appearances remained exceptional events. Ghédalia Tazartès' music has always been a mystery. It switches from musique concrète to -- existing or invented -- ethnic music, from poetry to noise, or from loops and collages to sad and extremely beautiful tunes in a second, but it constantly is in flux and coherent. In 2004, Ghedalia finally decided to do live performances again. He first worked with other musicians (Les Reines d'Angleterre, David Fenech & Jac Berrocal, Norscq & Black Sifichi, Nicolas Lelièvre) then went solo for ten years. Since then, Tazartes has played many shows across Europe. Ghedalia died at his home in Paris on 9th February 2021.
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SR 493CD
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A work that literally immerses the listener into an acoustic substance. The sound becomes almost like matter, like jelly. Soon, you're swimming in sound, getting lost inside it. Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series.
Michel Redolfi on Sonic Waters: "With the Sonic Waters project initiated in 1978, my aim was to situate field of electronic music within a liberating and futuristic experience, outside the concert halls and in sync with the development of new instruments -- in particular the Synclavier digital synthesizer, the first model of which I acquired in 1977. As concert space, the Pacific Ocean seemed to me to be the ideal experimental medium for both acoustic and cultural reasons. I then developed the aesthetic and technical elements that would contribute to the conception of 'Underwater Music'. Numerous performances would follow spanning four decades, in natural sites or in large public pools such as those of Sydney, Paris or Venice during the 2006 Biennale. I've divided this album into two fields: 'Sonic Waters: Music for Fresh Water' (1981) 'Sonic Waters: Music for Salt Water' (1979-1987)"
Michel Redolfi (1951), French composer and sound artist, is the founder of "Underwater Music". The natural elements captured and highlighted by experimental technology are a constant in Redolfi's catalog: many compositions explore the earth environments such as in Pacific Tubular Waves, Jungles, Desert Tracks (SR 418CD/LP) and especially with Sonic Waters, a work that literally immerses the listener into an acoustic substance. During the mid-70s, Redolfi carried out his electro-acoustic research in the United States, with major electronic music centers including the California Institute of the Arts and chiefly the University of California in San Diego. As invited resident of their studios, Michel Redolfi launched the underwater music concerts, with the series Sonic Waters performed in the Pacific Ocean. Michel Redolfi's underwater creations have since been regularly programmed by major international festivals, with multi-media installations held in ecological marine reserves or in historical city pools. Among them, the Sydney Festival, Paris "Nuit Blanche", Ars Electronica in Linz, the 2006 Venice Biennale (nominated Golden Lion) and lately the 2018 Ars Musica festival in Brussels. This record presents different variations of Sonic Waters from 1980 to 1987, alternating studio mixes with their re-recordings in the depths of the Pacific.
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SR 493LP
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Sold out, no repress as of now... LP version. A work that literally immerses the listener into an acoustic substance. The sound becomes almost like matter, like jelly. Soon, you're swimming in sound, getting lost inside it. Released in Sub Rosa's Early Electronic series.
Michel Redolfi on Sonic Waters: "With the Sonic Waters project initiated in 1978, my aim was to situate field of electronic music within a liberating and futuristic experience, outside the concert halls and in sync with the development of new instruments -- in particular the Synclavier digital synthesizer, the first model of which I acquired in 1977. As concert space, the Pacific Ocean seemed to me to be the ideal experimental medium for both acoustic and cultural reasons. I then developed the aesthetic and technical elements that would contribute to the conception of 'Underwater Music'. Numerous performances would follow spanning four decades, in natural sites or in large public pools such as those of Sydney, Paris or Venice during the 2006 Biennale. I've divided this album into two fields: 'Sonic Waters: Music for Fresh Water' (1981) 'Sonic Waters: Music for Salt Water' (1979-1987)"
Michel Redolfi (1951), French composer and sound artist, is the founder of "Underwater Music". The natural elements captured and highlighted by experimental technology are a constant in Redolfi's catalog: many compositions explore the earth environments such as in Pacific Tubular Waves, Jungles, Desert Tracks (SR 418CD/LP) and especially with Sonic Waters, a work that literally immerses the listener into an acoustic substance. During the mid-70s, Redolfi carried out his electro-acoustic research in the United States, with major electronic music centers including the California Institute of the Arts and chiefly the University of California in San Diego. As invited resident of their studios, Michel Redolfi launched the underwater music concerts, with the series Sonic Waters performed in the Pacific Ocean. Michel Redolfi's underwater creations have since been regularly programmed by major international festivals, with multi-media installations held in ecological marine reserves or in historical city pools. Among them, the Sydney Festival, Paris "Nuit Blanche", Ars Electronica in Linz, the 2006 Venice Biennale (nominated Golden Lion) and lately the 2018 Ars Musica festival in Brussels. This record presents different variations of Sonic Waters from 1980 to 1987, alternating studio mixes with their re-recordings in the depths of the Pacific.
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SR 515CD
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"You should play the music very loud. If the neighbors don't complain, it's probably not loud enough." --Phill Niblock Four Walls Full of Sound is an electronic interpretation of the works of Phill Niblock by the Prague-based group Opening Performance Orchestra. This studio version, recorded at the re-set studio, was preceded by a live performance at the 2017 Ostrava Days Festival of New and Experimental Music. The cover was designed by Jaroslav Buzek and the booklet includes essays by Kurt Gottschalk and Petr Ferenc. Sound designer Stephan Mathieu took part in shaping the resultant sound of the recording. Includes eight-page booklet.
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SR 503CD
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Four Pianos (1979-80): It is recognized today that these tutelary pieces for four pianos are among the most powerful in contemporary music, their impact is almost unparalleled. After the historical version recorded forty years ago, this one, featuring four of the greatest European performers, is now regaining its full power. High level recordings too. Includes 12-page booklet.
Julius Eastman: There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic -- undoubtedly also one of the most powerful, and it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy.
The Performers: Nicolas Horvath, pianist and electroacoustic composer; Melaine Dalibert, a French composer and pianist; Stephane Ginsburgh, a tireless surveyor of the repertoire but also explorer of new music; Wilhem Latchoumia, embraces both new music and the classical repertoire with success and charisma.
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SR 506LP
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Restocked. For the first time on vinyl, the post-isolationist, deep ambiance and folksong classic Murder Ballads [Drift] by Mick Harris/Martyn Bates , originally released in 1994. Rarely do two types of music meet on a level where they threaten to cancel each other out -- let alone create something even more meaningful in their mutual vanishing. But the music created within the seminal Murder Ballads [Drift] by Martyn Bates (Eyeless in Gaza) and Mick Harris (Napalm Death, Lull, Painkiller, Scorn) creates just such a world. Murder Ballads [Drift] evolves Martyn Bates vocalizations/storytelling song-voices, by turns expressed as labyrinthine layers, calls and responses, muted and distant echoes, sung whispers and counter-melodies, ultimately resulting in a mesmeric conversation of musical inferences and correspondences. Murder Ballads [Drift] created the post-isolationist frame of reference, innovating and extemporizing into a truly original dazzlingly unique form. Mick Harris traffics in the isolationist ambience of Lull, while Martyn Bates is the emotive voice of literate cult-pop duo Eyeless in Gaza. The unlikely pair -- one given to terminally frigid drone, the other to impassioned, bittersweet voicings -- finds common ground in folk music's most macabre tradition, the murder ballad. These ghoulish parables are awash in blood and tears, the strands of love, hate, birth, death, sin, and salvation entwined within like the roots of an ancient tree. Mothers callously kill their children; suitors slay their maidens without remorse; and fate exacts its cruel price from all. The archaic murder ballads that leak from Bates' vocal cords are intensely sad and carnal. They tend to leap off cliffs of hollow effects or drone darkly, offering neither a robust delivery nor an element of irony to take the edge off. The archetypal characters that live and die in them give life's full tragedy back to Harris' electronically numbed "post-isolationist" dreaming. Drift plays out an unbreakable and timeless cycle of bloody folklore (people) and hypnotic soundscapes (the god who watches). Textured sleeve; Marbled vinyl.
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SR 516LP
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Unreleased track "Oberheim SEM 8 Voice" (1979-80) with selected works circa 2000 by a key composer of Belgian electronic music, André Stordeur. Released in Sub Rosa'a Early Electronic series.
André Stordeur (March 01, 1941 - April 07, 2020): Belgian electronic music composer. His musical career started in 1973 with a tape composition for the soundtrack to a film on Gordon Matta-Clark titled Office Baroque. Later in the 1970s, he participated to avant-garde music ensemble Studio voor Experimentele Muziek, founded in Antwerp, Flanders, by Joris De Laet. Since 1980, Stordeur composes exclusively on Serge synthesizer, either a Serge series 79 and a Serge prototype 1980, which was especially built for him by Serge Tcherepnin himself. In 1981, Stordeur composed the music of Belgian film director Christian Mesnil's documentary Du Zaïre au Congo. He studied at IRCAM in 1981 with David Wessel and then flew to the US to study with Morton Subotnick. Stordeur became an influential sound synthesis teacher and, in 1997, completed his Art of Analog Modular Synthesis by Voltage Control, a guide to everything modular.
Oberheim: While "Oberheim" is the centerpiece of this LP, Sub Rosa pressed for the first time on vinyl three pieces from the session André called Synthesis Studies, previously featuring on Complete Analog and Digital Electronic Music, 1978-2000. "I was helped in my studies by a must-have book: The Techniques of Electronic Music, by Thomas Wells and Eric Vogel (University Stores, 1974). That book aside, I learned synthesis on my own. After a trip to India in 1968, I discovered Indian music and took tabla and sitar classes in New Delhi; my teachers were students of Chatur Lal and Ravi Shankar. Later, in the 2000s, while living in the US, I tried to recreate through synthesis all the Indian musical instruments I loved so much.' 'Drone' is one of his most spectacular works."
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SR 504LP
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Rawfrücht's classic 1996 album, available for the first time on vinyl. Recorded in late 1996 and released in early 1997, this first album from the power trio Rawfrücht (two guitars plus percussions), defies and questions the definition of genres, eras and musical movements. Ranging from minimal meditative dronish soundscapes, perfect for introspective journeys, to more "groovy" moments, from noise rock to free rock-but-not-post rock unstable patterns -- sometimes even within a single track -- this album is a ride on undefined roads, no maps allowed, just instinct and the energy to always go further and deeper into charting new sonic territories. After the release of this first untitled album, names like those of Marc Ribot, Sonic Youth, or King Crimson were frequently associated to it. But this doesn't really define what this album, released for the first time on LP, really is about. Two guitars and drums. Swell Maps meet Parliament, shades of Hendrix. Can-erisms catching up with the ramblings of Gastr Del Sol. Secret and reserved side in the best tradition of the Chicago School: Tortoise, Rome, etc. Rawfrücht was a powerful trio from Brussels, based on two guitars: Hugues Warin and Teuk Henri (Sharko, Juniper Boots), and a drum: Thomas Van Cottom (Cabane, Venus).
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SR 508LP
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British artist Robin Rimbaud (Scanner) traverses the experimental terrain between sound and space connecting a bewilderingly diverse array of genres. Since 1991 he has been intensely active in sonic art, producing concerts, installations and recordings, the albums Mass Observation (EDRM 427CD, 1994), Delivery (1997), and The Garden is Full of Metal (1998) hailed by critics as innovative and inspirational works of contemporary electronic music. Committed to working with cutting edge practitioners he has collaborated with Bryan Ferry, Wayne McGregor, Mike Kelley, Carsten Nicolai, Michael Nyman, Steve McQueen, Laurie Anderson, and Hussein Chalayan, amongst many others. Rimbaud first met Belgian artist Hans Op de Beeck at Le Fresnoy Studio national des Arts Contemporains when they were both Visiting Professors in 2012. Op de Beeck lives and works in Brussels, Belgium and creates sculpture, installations, video, photography, animated films, drawing, painting, and writing. His various works show the viewer non-existent, but identifiable places, moments and characters that appear to have been taken from everyday life. The artists found an immediate creative connection, and a year after meeting Staging Silence (2) was completed. In 2019, they returned to the theme and created Staging Silence (3). Each of the films is realized through the same principles, as two pairs of anonymous hands construct and deconstruct fictional interiors and landscapes on a mini film set of just three-square meters in size. The films take the viewer on a visual journey through depopulated, enigmatic and often melancholic, but nonetheless playful, small-scaled places, which are built up and taken down before the eye of the camera. Ranging from hyper-realistic fictional land and cityscapes to absurd, almost surreal, dreamscapes, the various locations are connected by the sense of mystery and melancholy that pervades them. And at every moment Rimbaud's score is amplifying and illustrating these moments, from tragedy to nostalgia, witty to optimistic. Introspective and lyrical, Staging Silence offers listeners a world of mystery and intrigue, held together by nature and time. This is a very humane works experienced at a time when many feel disconnected from the surrounding world. The peculiar silence that permeates this hauntingly beautiful work is very much an illustration of our times, anticipating a future in the past. Staging Silence is an exquisite study in dreamlike abstract ambience, a kaleidoscope of sounds and tones that engage the head and the heart.
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SR 505LP
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Winter Family is a duo made up of Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine. They met in Jaffa in 2004. Their dark, saturated and dense music is described as "death swing", "weird wave", or "funeral pop". They recorded new parts of this new album in St Martin church of Maxéville, France. Includes insert.
Xavier: "I recorded the pipe organ there, inspired by the Alsatian philanthropist organist Albert Schweitzer whose slow, bombastic performances, limited by faulty technique have always touched me deeply. In 2006, my aunt Loulou agrees to lend me the keys to the church. Ten years later, Loulou passes away, I play on this same pipe organ during her funeral. During the fall of 2018, in her room with old floral wallpapers, so cold, that I empty, surrounded by her missals and huge crucifixes I remix this pipe organs and the voice of Ruth. Through this late remixing, we wanted to deliver this woman from her agony, her eyes turned to the milkish Lotharingia sky and beyond, trying to illustrate this Catholic France of yesterday, as vain and terrifying as a month of November in this cold and humid garden, within reach of the incessant song of the A31 highway."
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SR 512LP
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This journey, this slowly drifting sonic meditation, is an "inner soundscape", a dialogue between the senses, the conscience and the world, inside / outside, interconnected. Like waking up from a long dream, and being stuck into its echo. The April Sessions immerges the listener into a drone-ish universe, full of random acousmatic events, inner monologues and a vast and unwritten subjective map to be drawn.
"The April Sessions has been living in a seedy hotel in Brussels for a few months. She listens to the sparse traffic outside her window, locked in and locked down. "Everything is constructed", she says to herself, "even the sound of a solitary aircraft at 25,000 feet traverses the sky no further out than the inside of my skull". Other weird sonic phenomena criss-cross the inner cosmos of her brain and streak across her private sky like comets. And then there is the unshakeable presence of that inner monologue, known to her variously as the Tacit Dictator, the Subvocaliser and, nightmarishly enough, the voice of the Merlucid Hake." --Anthony Moore, St Leonards, 10th of March 2021
Anthony Moore, Dirk Specht and Tobias Grewenig have known each other and worked together since the early 2000s. They have collectively participated in a number of projects including live performances and recordings. In 2016, as part of The Missing Present Band, they released the live LP The Present Is Missing on A-Musik. The following year they released Ore Talks, a double LP, realized in collaboration with Therapeutische Hörgruppe Köln.
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SR 513LP
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Hastings of Malawi release their third LP. In this bleak vinyl mid-winter, the sleigh bells have been replaced with twelve handsaws, two motors and a dustbin, a duet between a walrus and an autistic child on an airplane, a chorus of pigs and Tasmanian devils, sounds from Japan, China, Africa, Italy, India, and Hawaii, digital voice synthesis, sound sculptures, randomly generated music, Geiger counters, free improvisation, and a rocket engine. As with their first two albums this record continues to explore themes of communication and communication breakdown. Is communication possible? What is the message? What is sound? What is on the surface of a record? What is beneath the surface of a record? Hastings of Malawi provide the answer to these questions in the form of a 38-minute poem called Axial Incidents. Marbled purple vinyl.
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SR 501CD
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"The end sounds like the angels opening up heaven... Should we say euphoria?" This is Julius Eastman himself, speaking about Femenine, a piece that remains as a big and slow breathing, with something informal driving the listener to a near-hypnosis state. J.E. (1940-1990): There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic -- undoubtedly also one of the most powerful. And it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy. Performed by ensemble 0: Variable geometry group created in 2004. It interprets the compositions of its members and pieces by other composers. The group works with many regular and invited collaborators, being able to change, increase or reduce its lineup at will according to each project. Ensemble 0 has now become one of the most significant ensembles of a new sound vision. For this piece, ensemble 0, including this time Melaine Dalibert (piano), Sophie Bernado (bassoon), Cyprien Busolini (viola), Jozef Dumoulin (Fender Rhodes, synthesizer), Céline Flamen (cello) Stéphane Garin (percussion, artistic co-direction), Ellen Giacone (voice), Jean-Brice Godet (bass clarinet), Amélie Grould (vibraphone), Alexandre Herer (electronics), Tomoko Katsura (violin), Julien Pontvianne (saxophones, orchestration, artistic co-direction), and Christian Pruvost (trumpet).
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SR 484LP
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Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve. Palo Alto's tenth album was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third (1970) on form (four sides/four titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. The four long pieces of this double concept album were developed over two years and each has a different style and climate. Bold and kaleidoscopic, Difference and Repetition perfectly synthesizes the musical and literary obsessions of Palo Alto. Difference and Repetition features Richard Pinhas, Thierry Zaboitzeff (Art Zoyd), Alain Damasio, and Rhys Chatham.
Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with ten albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox), and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy Fox...) Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll, or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. Their new album is no exception to this rule...
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SR 484CD
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Palo Alto's tenth album was born from two ambitions: to pay tribute to Soft Machine's Third (1970) on form (four sides/four titles) and to philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition is the title of his thesis) on the contents. The four long pieces of this double concept album were developed over two years and each has a different style and climate. Bold and kaleidoscopic, Difference and Repetition perfectly synthesizes the musical and literary obsessions of Palo Alto. Difference and Repetition features Richard Pinhas, Thierry Zaboitzeff (Art Zoyd), Alain Damasio, and Rhys Chatham.
Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of a discography rich with ten albums. The band is now composed of Jacques Barbéri (also a science fiction author), Laurent Pernice (ex-member of the French industrial band Nox), and Philippe Perreaudin (also coordinator of several compilations and reissues: Legendary Pink Dots, Un Département, Nino Ferrer Revisited, Ptôse, Hardy Fox...) Literature, and particularly science fiction, is a leitmotiv in the band's work. Antoine Volodine, Thomas Pynchon, Philip K. Dick, Lewis Carroll, or J. G. Ballard have been invoked many times. In recent years, Palo Alto has multiplied musical collaborations with, among others, The Residents, Ptôse, Klimperei, Tuxedomoon... From industrial music to inextricable electronic ramifications, by making a detour through improvisation, the musical universe of Palo Alto is multifaceted. Their new album is no exception to this rule...
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SR 502LP
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Double LP version. White vinyl. The Fall is a deconstruction of November by Dennis Johnson. Written for solo piano in 1959, November is the first example of minimalist music composition and was the inspiration for La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano (1964). The 66-minute piece is a collaboration between legendary artist Lustmord and renowned classical pianist Nicolas Horvath, in which they reduce Johnson's original November to its core element and place it in a landscape of complimentary sound. The Fall echoes November, but with further resonance. Recorded in May-June 2019 in Los Angeles, and Misy-sur-Yonne, France.
Lustmord, active since 1980, was born of the original "industrial" scene of the period. With its own distinctive approach, blurring the line between music and sound design Lustmord's work has featured in 45 motion pictures including The Crow and Underworld and also in video games, television, and commercials. Recently, Lustmord scored the music for Paul Schrader's movie First Reformed (VAULTWORK 331CD/LP, 2019). While Lustmord is often credited for creating the "dark ambient" genre there is much more nuance to its work than what that label implies. Notable collaborations amongst many include Tool, Melvins, Jarboe, John Balance of Coil, Clock DVA, Chris & Cosey, Paul Haslinger, Karin Park, and Robert Rich.
Nicolas Horvath, an unusual artist with an unconventional résumé, pianist, and electroacoustic composer is known for his boundary-less musical explorations. Horvath is both an enthusiastic promoter of contemporary music -- he has commissioned numerous works (including no fewer than 120 as part of his Homages to Philip Glass project in 2014) and collaborated with leading contemporary composers from around the world, including Alvin Lucier, Mamoru Fujieda, Jaan Rääts, Alvin Curran, and Valentyn Silvestrov -- and a rediscoverer of forgotten or neglected composers such as Moondog, Nobuo Uematsu, Germaine Tailleferre, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Hélène de Montgeroult, Jean Catoire, Karl August Hermann.
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SR 486LP
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Since the early '90s, the Belgian duo Silk Saw has pioneered nearly unclassifiable electronic music at the forefront of experimental and avant-garde. Their 12th album is a contiguous expansion of the universe created in Imaginary Landscapes, the previous album published on Kotä in 2015, blending sweet and bitter in languorous and enigmatic melodies that float on intriguing pounding polyrhythms. With the release of Nothing Is Finished / Everything Starts on Sub Rosa, Marc Medea and Gabriel Séverin are back home, since their very first trial, Musique du garrot et de la feraille -- under their strange "modern dada" alias, Jardin d'Usure -- was released in 1994 (followed by the first two Silk Saw albums from 1996 and 1997). Now more than ever, without compromise, the duo makes full use of complex tools like frequency modulation, granular and morphing synthesis. In an array of delightful to jarring surprises, a sinuous ballad will be troubled with remote blasts, or abruptly interrupted by a collapse of the base. While the tracks resonate fundamentally with a feeling of falling, failing, decay, the sleeve picture conveys that destruction is in fact where everything starts. Broken rhythmics, deliquescent soundscapes infiltrated in fragmented rooms and corridors... When the roughness of some deflagrations meets the accuracy of textures. Russell Haswell meets Autechre.
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