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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SR 499LP
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PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/15/2020
LP version. First pressing on color vinyl. From Mille Plateaux to Leaf, Staubgold, and Raster-Noton, ~scape, among others, or on his own label Ripatti, the Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti, aka Vladislav Delay, has been exploring various iterations of the "dub culture vs. electronica", since 1997. His sonic crafts and unique signature sound have been sought after by an eclectic range of bands and artists, ranging from Massive Attack, Hauschka, Black Dice, Autopoieses, Animal Collective, or AGF. Vladislav Delay met Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (the most prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo) thanks to a series of jam sessions. Trumpet player Nils-Petter Molvaer had been asked by the Jamaicans to join them and he invited Delay alongside guitar player Eivind Aarset to tag along, which eventually turned into the Nordub project. The result of these jam sessions turned into an album, mixed and mostly produced by Vladislav Delay, released on the label Okeh. It was also followed by an extensive series of live dates. This one-shot reunion was the beginning of another story: a trio composed by Delay, Dunbar, and Shakespeare. In January 2019, Vladislav Delay went to Kingston and spent some days at The Anchor studios, to record drums and bass with S&R, some voice takes and a series of atmospheric field recordings. Back to Finland, Delay started to experiment with this precious material, mixing, and overdubbing, in the comfort and quiet of his studio, based on the island of Hailuoto, Baltic Sea, Northern Finland, giving another feeling to the Jamaican trip. This became a tribute to the "dub spirit", but in a very personal way, far beyond any influence or "the obvious". 500-Push-Up is two worlds collapsing, merging, also showing some intriguing approach of the Jamaican groove, used as a filigree, like the echo or the ghost of reggae, converging and conversing with a post-industrial and experimental approach. To file beside experiments -- for instance -- such as Lee Perry's Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (1981) or the On U-Sound productions. Somewhere between the old-school electronica culture, the soundscaping, the experimental paths of Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, ghostly clubbing anthems, minimalism, pop, jazz, without being influenced, Vladislav Delay is building a drifting and coherent sound enigma. Personnel: Vladislav Delay - electronics, sampling, percussion; Sly Dunbar - drums; Robbie Shakespeare - bass.
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CD
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SR 499CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 5/15/2020
From Mille Plateaux to Leaf, Staubgold, and Raster-Noton, ~scape, among others, or on his own label Ripatti, the Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti, aka Vladislav Delay, has been exploring various iterations of the "dub culture vs. electronica", since 1997. His sonic crafts and unique signature sound have been sought after by an eclectic range of bands and artists, ranging from Massive Attack, Hauschka, Black Dice, Autopoieses, Animal Collective, or AGF. Vladislav Delay met Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (the most prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo) thanks to a series of jam sessions. Trumpet player Nils-Petter Molvaer had been asked by the Jamaicans to join them and he invited Delay alongside guitar player Eivind Aarset to tag along, which eventually turned into the Nordub project. The result of these jam sessions turned into an album, mixed and mostly produced by Vladislav Delay, released on the label Okeh. It was also followed by an extensive series of live dates. This one-shot reunion was the beginning of another story: a trio composed by Delay, Dunbar, and Shakespeare. In January 2019, Vladislav Delay went to Kingston and spent some days at The Anchor studios, to record drums and bass with S&R, some voice takes and a series of atmospheric field recordings. Back to Finland, Delay started to experiment with this precious material, mixing, and overdubbing, in the comfort and quiet of his studio, based on the island of Hailuoto, Baltic Sea, Northern Finland, giving another feeling to the Jamaican trip. This became a tribute to the "dub spirit", but in a very personal way, far beyond any influence or "the obvious". 500-Push-Up is two worlds collapsing, merging, also showing some intriguing approach of the Jamaican groove, used as a filigree, like the echo or the ghost of reggae, converging and conversing with a post-industrial and experimental approach. To file beside experiments -- for instance -- such as Lee Perry's Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (1981) or the On U-Sound productions. Somewhere between the old-school electronica culture, the soundscaping, the experimental paths of Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, ghostly clubbing anthems, minimalism, pop, jazz, without being influenced, Vladislav Delay is building a drifting and coherent sound enigma. Personnel: Vladislav Delay - electronics, sampling, percussion; Sly Dunbar - drums; Robbie Shakespeare - bass. CD version includes two additional tracks.
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SR 066LP
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/10/2020
For many, the first traces of the Raudive Tapes were in William Burroughs's fictions and articles. The fact is, these mysterious magnetic tapes, which capture the voices of the dead, and were recorded by the Baltic scientist Konstantin Raudive, are not a fiction but a reality (in this case, not judging their scientific objectivity). These tapes, as rare as H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon, are now in Sub Rosa's archives.
What you'll find in this record: 1. Two introductions by Konstantin Raudive and a large session of examples from his archives (July 1965); 2. Nine extracts from the Gerhard Stempnik experiments -- a musician of the Berlin Philharmonic and close friend of Raudive (tapes from 1980); 3. A Raudive celebration including unpublished material by Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky/That Subliminal Kid, David Toop, Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Calla, and Carl Michael von Hausswolff. They have all composed an exclusive piece of music based on the Raudive material. It goes from a close examination of the material itself to a more evocative mood.
Who was Doctor Raudive?: Dr. Konstantin Raudive, a student of Carl Jung, was a Latvian psychologist who taught at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, before devoting the last ten years of his life to electronic voice phenomenon (EVP). He published in his book Breakthrough in 1971. His early collaborator F. Jurgenson, whom he met by the very beginning of 1965, awakened Dr. K. Raudive's interest in EVP research. Raudive spent endless hours for the thorough study of Jurgenson's books (Voices from Space, 1964 and Radio-Link with the Dead, 1967). From an overwhelming database (ranging about 72000 samples!), Raudive's mother seems to be statistically the most frequently reported contact personality. She usually addressed her son in the Latgalian dialect. Includes color insert.
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SR 494CD
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Tlamess (Sortilège) is Oiseaux-Tempête's first original soundtrack composed for the second feature film by critically-acclaimed Tunisian director Ala Eddine Slim (Festival de Cannes' 51st Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, BFI London, ADF Argentina, Geneva GIFF, Rome Medfilm Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival). Combining hypnotic feedbacks and synthesizer orchestral work, drifting ambient with shamanic beats, the Tlamess (Sortilège) original soundtrack was entirely improvised while watching the movie's rushes. On those sessions that took place between Mikrokosm recording studios in Lyon and Magnum Diva home studio in Paris, you find Oiseaux-Tempête's quartet core team: Frédéric D. Oberland, Stéphane Pigneul, Mondkopf, and Jean-Michel Pirès (Bruit Noir). Fully instrumental, including extended versions, and unreleased tracks, this immersive film score is also their most electronic album to date. "S, a young Tunisian soldier, has been told that his mother has died, and is given a week's leave. Instead of returning to his military base, he starts to drift and locking himself away in his parents' house. This passive form of desertion culminates in a manhunt through the outskirts of the city. In the second part of this hypnotic diptych, a young woman, F, is also fleeing an oppressive situation. Married to a rich man and pining away in a luxury solitude she decides to flee the golden cage and disappears into the nearby woods. Eventually the two characters will meet inside the strange forest." In his second feature, director Ala Eddine Slim presents an intriguing juxtaposition of raw realism with a hypnotic allegory of contemporary Tunisia, held together by an intense, powerful, and grating soundtrack. Regularly pairing with cinema and photography since their debut, Oiseaux-Tempête also accompanied the work of video/filmmakers As Human Pattern (KHAMSIN, best documentary at Torino Film Festival), Hinde Boujemaa (Noura's Dream, Golden Tanit & Best Actress prizes at JCC Carthage), Léa Fehner (Les Ogres, best film at Cabourg Film Festival), Stéphane Charpentier (The Divided Line, Athens French Institute), Karel Doing (Palindrome Series, International Film Festival Rotterdam), Clément Cogitore (Braguino exhibition at Le BAL), and the Temps Zero live screenings (in Berlin, Paris, Toulouse with photographers Michael Ackerman, Gaël Bonnefon, Adam Cohen, Damien Daufresne, Alisa Resnik, Gilles Roudière, Yusuf Sevincli...)
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LP version. Orange vinyl; includes poster. Tlamess (Sortilège) is Oiseaux-Tempête's first original soundtrack composed for the second feature film by critically-acclaimed Tunisian director Ala Eddine Slim (Festival de Cannes' 51st Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, BFI London, ADF Argentina, Geneva GIFF, Rome Medfilm Festival, Marrakech International Film Festival). Combining hypnotic feedbacks and synthesizer orchestral work, drifting ambient with shamanic beats, the Tlamess (Sortilège) original soundtrack was entirely improvised while watching the movie's rushes. On those sessions that took place between Mikrokosm recording studios in Lyon and Magnum Diva home studio in Paris, you find Oiseaux-Tempête's quartet core team: Frédéric D. Oberland, Stéphane Pigneul, Mondkopf, and Jean-Michel Pirès (Bruit Noir). Fully instrumental, including extended versions, and unreleased tracks, this immersive film score is also their most electronic album to date. "S, a young Tunisian soldier, has been told that his mother has died, and is given a week's leave. Instead of returning to his military base, he starts to drift and locking himself away in his parents' house. This passive form of desertion culminates in a manhunt through the outskirts of the city. In the second part of this hypnotic diptych, a young woman, F, is also fleeing an oppressive situation. Married to a rich man and pining away in a luxury solitude she decides to flee the golden cage and disappears into the nearby woods. Eventually the two characters will meet inside the strange forest." In his second feature, director Ala Eddine Slim presents an intriguing juxtaposition of raw realism with a hypnotic allegory of contemporary Tunisia, held together by an intense, powerful, and grating soundtrack. Regularly pairing with cinema and photography since their debut, Oiseaux-Tempête also accompanied the work of video/filmmakers As Human Pattern (KHAMSIN, best documentary at Torino Film Festival), Hinde Boujemaa (Noura's Dream, Golden Tanit & Best Actress prizes at JCC Carthage), Léa Fehner (Les Ogres, best film at Cabourg Film Festival), Stéphane Charpentier (The Divided Line, Athens French Institute), Karel Doing (Palindrome Series, International Film Festival Rotterdam), Clément Cogitore (Braguino exhibition at Le BAL), and the Temps Zero live screenings (in Berlin, Paris, Toulouse with photographers Michael Ackerman, Gaël Bonnefon, Adam Cohen, Damien Daufresne, Alisa Resnik, Gilles Roudière, Yusuf Sevincli...)
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3CD
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SR 478CD
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Wall of Sound is a music of sonic sensations. It is a physical and sensual approach to the phenomenon of thick sound worlds. Sound waves become physical objects, four-dimensional sonic sculptures to be experienced, bodily and mentally. Ulrich Krieger's Wall Of Sound is a series of CDs about music that invites the listener to indulge themselves in sound. It doesn't guide an audience through a narrative, like a song, but offers the listener slow changing and developing soundscapes, acoustic sculptures, to immerse themselves in. How listeners move in and through these sounds is up to them: meditative drifting along, focusing on certain small details of sounds, letting themselves be taken away by emerging psycho-acoustic phenomena or going back and forth between listening attitudes. Wall Of Sound features compositions by: James Tenney, John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Phill Niblock, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Lee Ranaldo, Boris Hegenbart, Zbigniew Karkowski, Ulrich Krieger, John Duncan. 3CD set comes in a digipack; includes 16-page booklet.
Ulrich Krieger is well known as a saxophone player in contemporary composed and free improvised music as well as a composer of chamber music and electronic music. His recent focus lies in the experimental fields and fringes of contemporary pop culture: somewhere in the limbo between noise and heavy metal, ambient and silence. He also arranged works by Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle, Deicide, Terry Riley, Henry Cowell, and others for chamber ensemble. He collaborates with: Lou Reed, LaMonte Young, Phill Niblock, Text of Light, Lee Ranaldo, John Duncan, Zbigniew Karkowski, Thomas Köner, DJ Olive, Christian Marclay, Kasper T Toeplitz, Antoine Beuger, Radu Malfatti, Mario Bertoncini, Michiko Hirayama, Miriam Marbe, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Ensemble Modern, Berliner Philharmoniker, Soldier String Quartet, zeitkratzer, just to name a few. Krieger has received prizes, grants and residencies from: Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg, Villa Aurora Los Angeles, Deutsches Studienzentrum Venedig e.V., Akademie der Künste Berlin, "Meet-the-Composer" Forum New York, DAAD, Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, and many others. Since 2007 he lives in Southern California, where he is associate professor for the composition faculty at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.
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SR 495CD
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Oscillatorial Binnage's Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds is an 11-track album of post-digital, post-electronic music. The recordings are deeply acoustic -- no electronic processing features anywhere. The sounds are produced by the experimental manipulation of repurposed recycled objects subjected to electromagnetic force fields. The "infinite world of the real" offers up richly unpredictable effects, with fields of vibration producing psychoacoustic flourishes, along with spontaneous, arbitrarily microtonal and harmonic compositions. Agitations: Post-Electronic Sounds constitutes a series of sonic exercises based around one principal philosophy: that systems of electromagnetically-resonated physical objects can lead to complex electronic-sounding tones that emerge acoustically, progressing themselves in surprising non-linear dynamic states, providing pointers for further actions upon the objects. Techniques usually associated with electronic music, such as modulation, wave-shaping, filtering, etc., are here applied to acoustic physical systems via prods, cranks, levers, gears, and jacks. The bulk of the recordings were made at La Borde Basse/Studio Midi-Pyrénées in 2013, with additional tracks recorded with electromagnetic-force-field resonated oil drums at Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, and upgraded reconstructions of Luigi Russolo's Futurist intonarumori at Mount Pleasant, Clapton. Starting with fallen dry leaves, found pottery, and brass junkets, the experiments progressed to combinations of interconnected objects, including industrial springs, clamps, woks, rods, hand-held brass bells, earthenware, dry leaves, stones, pitchforks, feathers, paper, plastic receptacles, lamp-post doors, wicker baskets, grilles, bottles, barrels, and much more. The album forms an acoustic exploration into the alchemy of found objects, and the origins of inspiration. London-based electroacoustic quartet Oscillatorial Binnage have been giving workshops and performing live experimental improvised music together since 2004. 16-page booklet.
"While music in general drifts every day further from real strings, drums and vinyl, into the virtual world of files, Oscillatorial Binnage reaffirms the origin of sound in physical things that shake, rattle and hum -- the pre-industrial caterwauling of post-electronic music." --Nicolas Collins (author of Handmade Electronic Music)
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SR 094LP
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25 years ago, David Shea released a crafty piece of complex philosophical and narrative audio collage: The Tower of Mirrors. Composed and produced in New York City, during September-October 1995, it includes 24 tracks, and features guests such as David Morley on analog synthesizer programming, Dave Douglas on trumpet, Zeena Parkins on piano and prepared piano, and Jim Pugliese on percussions. This is what David Shea had to say about it in 1995: "In 1994, I wrote a work based on the Hsi-Yu Chi novel for a large ensemble and sampler which used the 100 chapters as a map for creating an independent musical work. The Tower of Mirrors is a work that began as a collection of pieces for sampler solo and for sampler and solo instrumentalist. A series of 'mirrors' for solos and duos based on parts of the novel. Also, a collection of tributes to composers in ambient dance music, exotica, easy listening film music and experimental music formed separate points of entry. In particular, many of the great arrangers and composers of the period from 1955-64 who were the pioneers of stereo recording such as: Esquivel, Marty Gold, The Three Suns, André Popp..." 2019, looking into the (in)side mirror, David Shea says more about this particular experiment: "I'm reflecting today on the period of my life where I was immersed in the Chinese mythological Taoist/Buddhist stories of the Monkey King - Sun Wu Kung - titled, in English, The Journey to the West. I was also lost in sea of Hong Kong films and living in New York working in many of John Zorn's projects (Elegy being one of many high points) . . . Tower of Mirrors became a defining cross into to the last 20 years of my life. I felt thrown into the ethersphere during the years of 94-95 myself and I could not be more grateful to have created during and survived that time. I collaborated with so many during my travels and the credits are full of the people I was so lucky to have crossed paths with. I began a different path soon after this, with my interest in exploring Italian and Irish roots and reflecting on my teenage years of studying Taoism, Chan Buddhism, meditation, and martial arts and what followed was a long period of influence from Giacinto Scelsci and Luc Ferrari to traditional Chinese and Buddhist music..." The Tower of Mirrors was the third album of David Shea released by Sub Rosa.
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SR 483CD
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Available for the first time outside Japan, and on LP and CD, Phosphorescent Dreams is another epic album of symphonic schizophrenic avant-rock from Univers Zero, originally released in 2014 -- only on CD -- on the Japanese label Arcàngelo. Phosphorescent Dreams presents at the same time, in the same track, even on a single moment, the complex musical schemes and ways of Univers Zero, ranging from maximalism to minimalism, classical avant-garde with a 2020 vibe in a constant flux. In a blend of tension constantly emerging from a subtle dialogue between avant-rock and contemporary influences, harmonies and dissonance, Phosphorescent Dreams is a balanced formula of old-school know-how reshaped almost 40 years after the release of the seminal LP Univers Zero, reissued by Sub Rosa (SR 399LP, 2016).
Univers Zero represents one of the longest-living bands in Belgium. It was established in 1974. Drummer Daniel Denis had the brilliant idea to gather together a team of professionals sharing the same taste for music. The band has adopted an instrumental progressive style. Over the last couple of decades, the band has also implemented a series of influences from chamber music -- most commonly, chamber music from the 20th century. Even if the line-up changes a lot over the years, the overall sound of UZ remained fairly consistent.
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SR 485CD
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A collection curated by Alan Dunn in collaboration with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and Sub Rosa. Anthony Burgess's second wife Liana carried a cassette recorder with her at all times to capture her life with the author and their son, Andrew. This extraordinarily intimate audio archive of over 1,000 cassettes now sits with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and artist Alan Dunn has been granted access to select excerpts from it and curate sonic conversations from others. The first disc contains the very first and last known recordings of Burgess's voice alongside domestic incidents, rehearsals, and answering machine messages, while the second disc invites 23 artists and musicians to remix the rare material into a unique Burgess portrait, far beyond A Clockwork Orange (1962). Features The Reverend Max Ripple, Vicky Clarke, Dinah Bird, Alan Dunn & Noisesurfer, Roy Claire Potter and Kieron Piercy, Mark Vernon, David Birchall, Marion Harrison, Jeff Young, Scanner, Ade Blackburn/Clinic & Paul Sullivan/Static, Foreign Investment, Tobias Hazan, Eye Suriyanon, Band Of Holy Joy (James Stephen Finn & Johny Brown), Chris Watson, and Guy-Marc Hinant & Laszlo Umbreit. Double-CD version includes 16-page booklet.
Born in Manchester in 1917, Anthony Burgess was educated at Xaverian College in that city and at Manchester University. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946 and as an education officer in Malaya and Brunei from 1954 to 1959. He published more than 50 books, including A Clockwork Orange and his masterpiece, Earthly Powers (1980), and composed around 250 musical works. He was created a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by President Mitterrand of France and a Commandeur de Mérite Culturel by Prince Rainier of Monaco. He died in London in 1993. His books are still read all over the world.
Alan Dunn is an artist and curator based between Liverpool and Leeds, where he is a reader in Art & Design at Leeds Beckett University. His projects have been presented at Tate Britain, ICA, Liverpool Art Prize, BBC Radio and Bluecoat. The International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester is an independent educational charity which encourages public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.
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SR 485LP
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Double LP version. Includes insert. A collection curated by Alan Dunn in collaboration with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and Sub Rosa. Anthony Burgess's second wife Liana carried a cassette recorder with her at all times to capture her life with the author and their son, Andrew. This extraordinarily intimate audio archive of over 1,000 cassettes now sits with the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and artist Alan Dunn has been granted access to select excerpts from it and curate sonic conversations from others. The first disc contains the very first and last known recordings of Burgess's voice alongside domestic incidents, rehearsals, and answering machine messages, while the second disc invites 23 artists and musicians to remix the rare material into a unique Burgess portrait, far beyond A Clockwork Orange (1962). Features The Reverend Max Ripple, Vicky Clarke, Dinah Bird, Alan Dunn & Noisesurfer, Roy Claire Potter and Kieron Piercy, Mark Vernon, David Birchall, Marion Harrison, Jeff Young, Scanner, Ade Blackburn/Clinic & Paul Sullivan/Static, Foreign Investment, Tobias Hazan, Eye Suriyanon, Band Of Holy Joy (James Stephen Finn & Johny Brown), Chris Watson, and Guy-Marc Hinant & Laszlo Umbreit.
Born in Manchester in 1917, Anthony Burgess was educated at Xaverian College in that city and at Manchester University. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946 and as an education officer in Malaya and Brunei from 1954 to 1959. He published more than 50 books, including A Clockwork Orange and his masterpiece, Earthly Powers (1980), and composed around 250 musical works. He was created a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by President Mitterrand of France and a Commandeur de Mérite Culturel by Prince Rainier of Monaco. He died in London in 1993. His books are still read all over the world.
Alan Dunn is an artist and curator based between Liverpool and Leeds, where he is a reader in Art & Design at Leeds Beckett University. His projects have been presented at Tate Britain, ICA, Liverpool Art Prize, BBC Radio and Bluecoat. The International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester is an independent educational charity which encourages public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.
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SR 483LP
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LP version. Marbled vinyl. Available for the first time outside Japan, and on LP and CD, Phosphorescent Dreams is another epic album of symphonic schizophrenic avant-rock from Univers Zero, originally released in 2014 -- only on CD -- on the Japanese label Arcàngelo. Phosphorescent Dreams presents at the same time, in the same track, even on a single moment, the complex musical schemes and ways of Univers Zero, ranging from maximalism to minimalism, classical avant-garde with a 2020 vibe in a constant flux. In a blend of tension constantly emerging from a subtle dialogue between avant-rock and contemporary influences, harmonies and dissonance, Phosphorescent Dreams is a balanced formula of old-school know-how reshaped almost 40 years after the release of the seminal LP Univers Zero, reissued by Sub Rosa (SR 399LP, 2016).
Univers Zero represents one of the longest-living bands in Belgium. It was established in 1974. Drummer Daniel Denis had the brilliant idea to gather together a team of professionals sharing the same taste for music. The band has adopted an instrumental progressive style. Over the last couple of decades, the band has also implemented a series of influences from chamber music -- most commonly, chamber music from the 20th century. Even if the line-up changes a lot over the years, the overall sound of UZ remained fairly consistent.
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SR 490CD
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Edited and mixed between Montreal and Paris, From Somewhere Invisible summons the fever of experimentation and the powerful sound of the game coming together in the service of a luxuriant and psychedelic drift. Synthetic brass meets hammered rhythms, string electrics with cracked electronics, saxophone cries and laughter at a pulsing and seminal bass. Created in 2012 by multi-instrumentalists Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul, Oiseaux-Tempëte (Storm Petrels) is a constantly evolving collective that, embracing the freedom of improvisation, transcends borders and cultures, straddling the intersection where amplified music (post/kraut/free-rock, jazz-punk, avant-garde, experimental electronics) collides and finds common ground -- a refuge. Sensitive to the beating of hearts, hypnotic beats, and explosions of materials, Oiseaux-Tempête embrace the community of collaboration, regularly inviting to the studio and tour friends, like: the electronic producer Mondkopf, the Dutch performer G.W.Sok (The Ex), drummers Jean-Michel Pirës (Bruit Noir, The Married Monk), Sylvain Joasson (Mendelson), Ben McConnell (Beach House, Marissa Nadler), British bass clarinetist Gareth Davis, contemporary Ondes Martenot player Christine Ott , and musicians Charbel Haber & The Bunny Tylers, Sharif Sehnaoui, Fadi Tabbal, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Youmna Saba, and Two Or The Dragon. At the end of November 2017, Oiseaux-Tempête flew to Canada at the invitation of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart). The program for the quintet (Frédéric, Stéphane, Jean-Michel, Mondkopf, and G.W.Sok): two concerts in Montreal and Toronto in support of the collaborative project Suuns and Jerusalem In My Heart (specially reformed for the occasion), fraternal encounters buried beneath the Canadian snow, and to finish, a mysterious two-day studio session in Montreal's legendary Hotel2Tango. Radwan shifts from the recording controls to the buzuk, the spiraling strings of Jessica Moss (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) a welcome surprise. With usual urgency, Oiseaux-Tempête rushes with joy towards the invisible outcome. The fourth studio album and seventh release on the Belgian avant-garde label Sub Rosa, From Somewhere Invisible embraces the new. Leaving aside for a while the logbooks of long journeys and the field recordings of the previous albums, the music of Oiseaux-Tempête unfolds as a twilight and prophetic orchestra around G.W.Sok's punctuated voice. The poems of Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, and Yu Jian question the modern man and his double, the strange and foreign, the fragmented real, the violence, society and its mirror.
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SR 490LP
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LP version. Includes printed inner sleeve and poster; limited edition marbled vinyl. Edited and mixed between Montreal and Paris, From Somewhere Invisible summons the fever of experimentation and the powerful sound of the game coming together in the service of a luxuriant and psychedelic drift. Synthetic brass meets hammered rhythms, string electrics with cracked electronics, saxophone cries and laughter at a pulsing and seminal bass. Created in 2012 by multi-instrumentalists Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul, Oiseaux-Tempëte (Storm Petrels) is a constantly evolving collective that, embracing the freedom of improvisation, transcends borders and cultures, straddling the intersection where amplified music (post/kraut/free-rock, jazz-punk, avant-garde, experimental electronics) collides and finds common ground -- a refuge. Sensitive to the beating of hearts, hypnotic beats, and explosions of materials, Oiseaux-Tempête embrace the community of collaboration, regularly inviting to the studio and tour friends, like: the electronic producer Mondkopf, the Dutch performer G.W.Sok (The Ex), drummers Jean-Michel Pirës (Bruit Noir, The Married Monk), Sylvain Joasson (Mendelson), Ben McConnell (Beach House, Marissa Nadler), British bass clarinetist Gareth Davis, contemporary Ondes Martenot player Christine Ott , and musicians Charbel Haber & The Bunny Tylers, Sharif Sehnaoui, Fadi Tabbal, Tamer Abu Ghazaleh, Youmna Saba, and Two Or The Dragon. At the end of November 2017, Oiseaux-Tempête flew to Canada at the invitation of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart). The program for the quintet (Frédéric, Stéphane, Jean-Michel, Mondkopf, and G.W.Sok): two concerts in Montreal and Toronto in support of the collaborative project Suuns and Jerusalem In My Heart (specially reformed for the occasion), fraternal encounters buried beneath the Canadian snow, and to finish, a mysterious two-day studio session in Montreal's legendary Hotel2Tango. Radwan shifts from the recording controls to the buzuk, the spiraling strings of Jessica Moss (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) a welcome surprise. With usual urgency, Oiseaux-Tempête rushes with joy towards the invisible outcome. The fourth studio album and seventh release on the Belgian avant-garde label Sub Rosa, From Somewhere Invisible embraces the new. Leaving aside for a while the logbooks of long journeys and the field recordings of the previous albums, the music of Oiseaux-Tempête unfolds as a twilight and prophetic orchestra around G.W.Sok's punctuated voice. The poems of Mahmoud Darwish, Ghayath Almadhoun, and Yu Jian question the modern man and his double, the strange and foreign, the fragmented real, the violence, society and its mirror.
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SR 479LP
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Violin was Milan Knízák's first instrument. He has composed hundreds of works of this ilk. The first one "DHK", was written 45 years ago. Next to his destroyed works, Milan took notations of different composers, cut them and put them together (with his own score) into a collage, expressing his feelings and his apprehension of music. Recorded from February-July 2018 and performed by fama Q: David Danel, Roman Hranicka - violin; Ondrej Martinovsky - viola; Balázs Adorján - violoncello. fama Q is a string quartet founded in 2005 in Prague. Its members, also orchestral musicians with the Prague Philharmonia, were always devoted to chamber and string quartet music.
"I am aware that the majority of my compositions are technically challenging, since I employ uncommon intervals, so as to make the musicians think in a different, novel way and to produce different colors in the 'classical' passages too. If the instruments were arrayed 'beneath one another', simple melodies may come across as boring. In the case of interval skips, whereby I count with a certain fuzziness, even falseness of tones, music is far more colorful. I don't care who would perform my pieces, as long as they are solid musicians. I think I have written them in such a manner that they should not forfeit energy even when someone is not familiar with the modern playing principles, only their effect would somewhat shift. And I really don't mind any shift. One of my friends said that this music of mine is not similar to anything. I would like to add that it is similar to everything. Perhaps both are true." --Milan Knízák, April 2018.
Prof. Milan Knízák, Dr.A. is a multimedia artist working in fine art (actions, paintings, sculptures), music, literature, architecture, fashion, and furniture design. Member of the international art group Fluxus. Featured in major galleries around the world as well as archives, catalogs, encyclopedias and dictionaries. His Broken Music (SR 400LP, 2015) was included among the 1000 most important compositions of the 20th century. A dictionary of designers published by Ambiente lists him as "a central figure in modern Czech design". Milan Knízák has had more than 120 solo exhibitions and hundreds of group exhibitions throughout almost the entire world. He has published approximately 80 books and catalogs and released many music recordings, as well as creating a number of design projects.
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SR 164LP
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Early electronic music from 1959 to 1969 produced by the Institute of Sonology/Instituut voor sonologie, in Utrecht, Holland. Works composed by Dick Raaijmakers, Frits Weiland, Ton Bruynel, Konrad Boehmer, Gottfried Michael Koenig, and Rainer Riehn. Raw material -- a real revolution: music produced by machines designed to construct a new era. Officially founded on September 1, 1960, at the instigation of several people representing cultural institutions, the Institute for Sonology had already taken initiatives in the field of electroacoustic music since 1954. A large complex of studios (initially under the name STEM = STudio voor Electronische Muziek) was set up under the patronage of Utrecht University in an old house on Plompetorengracht in Utrecht. Instruments, machines, and tapes (among them, that of Varèse's "Electronic Poem") coming from Philips laboratories. Double-LP includes insert.
Notes on the five radical composers featured here. Ton Bruyneel: The realization of "Reflexen" took place at the Institute for Sonology and in the composer's private studio. Brunèl has written numerous works for tape and for tape and live instrumentalist. Gottfried Michael Koenig: He studied church music in Braunschweig and composition in Detmold. From 1954 to 1963 he worked at the famous studio for electronic music of the West German Radio (WDR) in Cologne. From 1964-1984, he was the artistic director of the Institute for Sonology. Koenig is one of the pioneering composers of electronic and computer music of the first generation of post-WW2 composers. Dick Raaijmakers: Born in Maastricht, he studied piano at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. From 1957-1960 he joined the Studio for electronic music at Philips in Eindhoven. Rainer Riehn: Born in Danzig, in 1960 he studied composition under Johannes Aschenbrenner and then (until 1963) at the Robert-Schumann Conservatory in Dusseldorf. Until 1966 he studied music in Mainz, Zurich and Berlin. In 1965-66, he participated in courses on electronic music in Utrecht under the direction of G.M. Koenig. Frits Weiland: He enjoyed a technical as well as a musical education. After working for the Dutch Radio and television broadcasting system, he worked from 1961 to 1990 for the Institute for Sonology. Konrad Boehmer (1941-2014): Born in Berlin, from 1959 to 1961 he studied composition under Godfried Michael Koenig. From 1961 to 1963, he worked in the electronic studio of the Cologne Radio (WDR) where one of his creations was "Position" for tape, voice, and orchestra.
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SR 482LP
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Kalmyks (Oirats) are part of the Western Mongolian ethnos, living on the territory of modern Russia. Tatiana Dordzhieva and Maria Beltsykova were deported to Siberia. The two energetic and charismatic grand mammas present here traditional Kalmyks songs (songs about the deportation of Kalmyks in 1943-1944) and Soviet Folklore. This is the first collaboration between Ored Recordings and Sub Rosa.
"In early November 2014 we went to Kalmykia. Our goal was the local 'Dzhangar' epic. The epic genre, as one of the most archaic, can be called a basis for Kalmyk music culture. We met up with Maria Beltsikova and Tatiana Dordzhieva in this village. On the day of our meeting we were able to record more than twenty songs. In the repertoire of Maria and Tatiana there have been religious Buddhist songs, droning laments, ceremonial wedding songs, heroic ballads about Kalmyks in the Patriotic War 1812, and, of course, Soviet folklore. The songs of the 'red' period was presented with a variety of songs: praising the Communist Party and workers of the collective farms and songs about the deportation of Kalmyks in 1943-1944." --Bulat Khalilov (Ored Recordings)
LCDM / ethographic series: Since the beginning of its foundation, Sub Rosa has been interested in ethnographic recordings -- among the milestones: the Inuit anthology, the Bhutan recordings by John Levy . . . more recently, the works of David Toop (Yamomami shamanism) and Ragnar Johnson (Yemen, Ethiopia, recorded in the early 1970s). The time in which the recording is done, it matters a lot because it also captures the air of that Time. On the other hand, the label can only feel it from where they are. It is in this state of mind that they start again a cycle of recordings where the ancient past connects current times.
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SR 468CD
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One opera singer teams with one experimental musician. La Diva Christina Van Peteghem on vocals and Pierre-Jean Vranken everywhere. They are Quasi Una Fantasia. Noise, classical guitars, exquisite melodic songs, minimalism, neoclassical, and avant-garde are the medium and the message. There is no need of more explanation, it's Quasi everything! "It's Cathy Berberian's meeting with Messiaen in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." --Steve Gibbs
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SR 465CD
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Swiss electro-acoustic artist Israel Quellet's fifth opus. A new mysterious work around the church organ this time. Complex and mysterious, secular and modern -- another challenging listen. Israel Quellet was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1972. He worked in the psychiatric field for several years. At 16, he discovers on his own some different soundworlds, such as Miles Davis's electric era, Sun Ra, dub, German cosmic music, Magma, Zappa, and many more. In 1997, he stepped into the action and, following the advice of a sound engineer friend, he bought microphones, a digital mixing board, and studio monitors. Basically, he turned part of his basement into a soundsmith-ing studio. That is when he started to create, out of his immediate surroundings, sound works that have little to do with what is "normally" being done. Appreciated by composer Jorge E. Campos, Quellet is supported by the Centre Pierre Schaeffer in Paris. In 2003, he contacted Sub Rosa; three years later, he releases his first CD. Comes in a digipack.
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SR 461LP
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Sold out, repress possible late 2020... "Have a gramophone in every grave..." --James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)
The anthology Spectra Ex Machina brings together rare documents pertaining to so-called occult phenomena, most of them taken from little-known archives. In the course of three volumes, this series traces an audio history of parapsychology through the exploration of spiritualism and haunted houses (Vol. 1); musician mediums (vol. 2); experiences of extrasensory perceptions (clairvoyance, psychokinesis, etc.) and electronic voice phenomena (vol. 3). The documents gathered here are, by their extravagance and far-fetched aspects, more than the mere objects of belief one would be tempted to reduce them to. They are vestiges of aberrant phenomena, fossils of an unknown civilization buried in the depths of the unconscious that are revived, in a way, when we listen to them. They can be understood as "works", in the full artistic sense of the word, and constitute a kind of "cabinet of sound curiosities" that is worthy of aesthetic interest. Sometimes imbued with a disconcerting dramatic intensity, these documents bear the features of an authentic time machine, placing the listener in the position of a witness of the time immersed in the dim darkness of the experimental hall. And it is at that precise moment that the aesthetic power of these archives takes precedence over their probative value. Their somewhat old-fashioned charm, maintained by the surface noise of magnetic tapes and old wax disks, gets stronger with each listen. Contains a 20-page large booklet, 30x30 cm.
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SR 473CD
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Cloud Atlas is a collection of ten short pieces composed by Toshi Ichiyanagi between 1985 to 1999. Vertical Study gathers rare pieces composed by Claude Ledoux. Both are performed by Japanese pianist Kaoru Tashiro. "Kaoru produces serene, yet rich sound texture; the fluctuation of beat and the perspective of the motif are ingenious. I hope many more people will taste this joy of finding a grain of gold with your own eyes and ears, from her commercialism-unrelated, sincere and an experimental performance." --Miyuki Shiraishi, Asahi Journal Digipack includes 16-page booklet.
Toshi Ichiyanaghi is a legend. Close friend of John Cage and Nam June Paik, he was also the first husband of Yoko Ono -- Fluxus period. His Cloud Atlas is a collection of ten short pieces composed between 1985 to 1999. From exclusives notes from the booklet: "Music has been defined as temporal art, however the temporal elements of music have been gradually decreased and lacking since the late 19th century. I feel that we need to compensate for the lack of those elements and introduce new elements, which can be alternative to them, in my case, it is substantial space, in order to restore the spiritual richness that music provides." Currently, he serves as Artistic Director of TIME; Artistic Director of Ensemble Origin_A Millennium of Resonance; Adviser of the Japan Music Competition; Board Member of Saison Foundation; Councilor of Suntory Foundation for Arts and General Artistic Director of the Kanagawa Arts Foudation.
Claude Ledoux was a pupil of Henri Pousseur. He obtained a Master in Music Sciences from the Liège University. Nowadays, he works as a musical journalist and lecturer as well as a Musical Analysis professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (France). In Spring 2013, he was invited in China for lectures of Master classes at the Shanghai Conservatory. The same year he founded the LAPS Ensemble which mixes laptops and acoustic instruments. The pieces presented here are an example of his interest for both his love for Japan and the cosmos.
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SR 480CD
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These two discs reveal Christian Wolff as a composer fully exploring, in different ways, the continuum between music which is highly fragmented, embracing extended silences (composed or indeterminate), to that which is more progressive and seemingly driven, albeit taking in disarming and unconventional routes. As a body of repertoire, these works are remarkable for their freshness of musical thought and energy (John Cage considered Wolff to be the most "musical" of the experimental composers). Performer Philip Thomas (b.1972, North Devon) specializes in performing experimental notated and improvised music as a soloist and with leading experimental music group Apartment House. He is currently Professor of performance at the University of Huddersfield, co-director of Cerenem, and co-editor of Changing the System: the music of Christian Wolff (2010). Digipack; includes 16-page booklet.
Philip Thomas on the release: "In all my performances of Wolff's music, I aim for interpretations that both interest and surprise me, allowing the notations to lead me to new ways of playing and thinking about music, whilst at the same time trying to lead the notations toward the unexpected."
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SR 114LP
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2020 repress forthcoming, still on "Indian" green vinyl. First time ever on vinyl, re-released in our Sub Rosa Blackcore series. City of Light is the sixth solo album by American composer Bill Laswell, released on July 29, 1997. While it may appear an anachronism in his catalog, fans of Bill Laswell will find City of Light an extension of ideas he has explored throughout his career. His strong interest in Eastern music and religion resulted in this 1997 collaboration with Janet Rienstra. Part sacred, spoken word, part meditative soundscape, City of Light takes as its inspiration the holy region of Banaras, India. Said to belong to Shiva, Banaras also contains the Ganges river: a place sought by Hindus for their cremation. Surrounding the texts is some of the most compelling music this genre has produced, featuring Trilok Gurtu on tablas, Coil (Peter Christopherson and John Balance) on electronics, Tetsu Inoue on sound collages, and Lori Carson on vocals. City of Light was recorded in Banaras, India, and mixed in Greenpoint, New York. It is about Banaras, a city older than history, tradition, and legends. It is Shiva's land, founded at the dawn of creation, and it is India's oldest and most fabled city. The Hindus call it Kashi, the luminous, the City of Light. Features a historical introduction by Hakim Bay.
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SR 481LP
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Yannick Franck (Orphan Swords, RAUM) presents his new project: Mt Gemini. A deconstruction of ska, rocksteady, and skinhead reggae from the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Rather a passionate deconstruction of a genre than compositions or remixes per se, this incantatory tribute favors abstraction using loops, distortion, compression, variations of speed and height, and effects (delay, reverb, chorus). Recorded in different states of altered consciousness, Mt Gemini is built of spontaneous and unexpected combinations. It is an attempt to generate inner spaces where the borders between reverie and reality blur. A hallucinatory shock, a journey made of distant echoes, an atmosphere imbued with joy and nostalgia. Born in 1981 in Belgium, Franck is an electronic musician. During the last ten years, Franck has wallowed freely within diverse musical spheres. Whether cathartic or contemplative, Franck's projects serve an ever more ontological search: the creation of sonic immersions that influence our states of consciousness and contribute to their transformation. In addition to his solo works as Yannick Franck and Mt Gemini, he is the man behind projects RAUM and Outlaw Compound. He is part of the avant-techno duo Orphan Swords with Pierre De Mûelenaere and played in experimental combo Y.E.R.M.O. from 2005 to 2009. Marbled vinyl; Edition of 400.
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LP + BOOK
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SR 476LP
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Talking About The Weather: Teacher and student. Past and present. Two drummers. Two men. Two fathers. Friends. A conversation. A dialogue of the drums. Following up on a drum/percussion duo Eric Thielemans and Billy Hart did in the Summer of 2016 at the Jazz Middelheim festival, these two drummers decided to dedicate time to continue and deepen their versatile dialogues on and around the drums. The meeting and recording of Talking About The Weather took place on January 7-9, 2018 at "Figure 8 Recording"; a beautiful, small recording studio in Brooklyn (NY). In three days' time both drummers circled around the situation of the studio and the conversational aspect of their personal relationship and musicianship. They did this in a way that shows how their musicianship informs and gives structure to a shared experience. As both men after a few sessions acknowledged: "We do talk as we play". Mr. Thielemans and Mr. Hart's story started in the Summer of 1992 when Eric Thielemans joined a masterclass with Billy Hart, organized by the Haleweyn Stiching Summer Jazz Workshop at Dworp in Belgium. This was the start of a deep human connection, friendship and mutual respect for each other's music and musicianship. 25 years in between, a gap, filled with many explorations, life experience and musical endeavors. Time to talk drum shop and drum the talk! Single-LP in 7.5 mm spine sleeve with a 50-page book. 180 gram vinyl. 50-page book, bound with pictures by Monica Jane Frisell and transcriptions of the talks.
Billy Hart: William "Billy" Hart (born November 29, 1940 in Washington, D.C.) is a jazz drummer and educator who has performed with some of the most important jazz musicians in history. Early on Hart performed in Washington, D.C. with soul artists such as Otis Redding and Sam & Dave, and then later with Buck Hill and Shirley Horn. Hart moved to New York in 1968, where he recorded with McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, and Joe Zawinul, and played with Eddie Harris, Pharoah Sanders, and Marian McPartland.
Eric Thielemans: Belgian drummer, Thielemans is one of the most idiosyncratic figures in Belgian music, someone who not only demonstrates that special musicians always seek out (and find) their own place, but above all that they always remain students of the art of questioning and listening.
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