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 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 475LP
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$16.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 9/24/2021
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 521CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 9/17/2021
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 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 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 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 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 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 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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2LP
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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 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 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 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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SR 502CD
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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. Double-LP version comes on white vinyl.
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 486CD
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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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SR 500CD
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The Acid Lands, created by the Prague-based Opening Performance Orchestra, was first heard in public in 2014 at the Movement-Sound-Space festival in Ostrava, to mark the centenary of William S. Burroughs's birth. The piece was performed live by Opening Performance Orchestra and their guests, the theremin player Martina Potucková, and the poet, musician, and performer Pavel Z as the narrator. The studio version of The Acid Lands was made in late 2019/early 2020 in collaboration with Bill Laswell and Iggy Pop, who undertook the role of the narrator. The piece, which pays tribute to William S. Burroughs, features fragments from the novels The Western Lands (1987) and Junkie (1953). In addition to the title composition, The Acid Lands, the record contains Bill Laswell's instrumental remix, as well as the collective piece "Naming Seven Souls", featuring samples of William S. Burroughs reading his own work.
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LP
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SR 500LP
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LP version. Gatefold sleeve. The Acid Lands, created by the Prague-based Opening Performance Orchestra, was first heard in public in 2014 at the Movement-Sound-Space festival in Ostrava, to mark the centenary of William S. Burroughs's birth. The piece was performed live by Opening Performance Orchestra and their guests, the theremin player Martina Potucková, and the poet, musician, and performer Pavel Z as the narrator. The studio version of The Acid Lands was made in late 2019/early 2020 in collaboration with Bill Laswell and Iggy Pop, who undertook the role of the narrator. The piece, which pays tribute to William S. Burroughs, features fragments from the novels The Western Lands (1987) and Junkie (1953). In addition to the title composition, The Acid Lands, the record contains Bill Laswell's instrumental remix, as well as the collective piece "Naming Seven Souls", featuring samples of William S. Burroughs reading his own work.
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CD
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SR 497CD
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Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences. Its debut eponym album, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repeated musical concepts, textures, and interactive games. Then, during the night, with the machine already well-oiled and the musicians free of all expectations, the ensemble embarked out into the unknown, discovering with wonder unexplored sonic territories, delivering a deep and profound music woven with five strands of yarn. Over the years, BOW has collaborated with artists such as jazz singer Melanie De Biaso, composer Laurent Plumhans, VJ Dirty Monitor, Théâtre de l'Ancre, and most recently with the gypsy guitarist Myrddin De Cauter as well as Aidan Baker. A first EP was released in 2019 on Icarus Records, a live radio session duplicated on limited cassette edition. BOW is an ensemble made up of the musicians Margaret Hermant (Echo Collective) and Benoit Leseure on violin, Jean-François Durdu on viola, Marine Horbaczewski on cello, and Cyrille de Haes (Otto Lindholm) on double bass.
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SR 497LP
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LP version. Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences. Its debut eponym album, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repeated musical concepts, textures, and interactive games. Then, during the night, with the machine already well-oiled and the musicians free of all expectations, the ensemble embarked out into the unknown, discovering with wonder unexplored sonic territories, delivering a deep and profound music woven with five strands of yarn. Over the years, BOW has collaborated with artists such as jazz singer Melanie De Biaso, composer Laurent Plumhans, VJ Dirty Monitor, Théâtre de l'Ancre, and most recently with the gypsy guitarist Myrddin De Cauter as well as Aidan Baker. A first EP was released in 2019 on Icarus Records, a live radio session duplicated on limited cassette edition. BOW is an ensemble made up of the musicians Margaret Hermant (Echo Collective) and Benoit Leseure on violin, Jean-François Durdu on viola, Marine Horbaczewski on cello, and Cyrille de Haes (Otto Lindholm) on double bass.
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2LP
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SR 487LP
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Ars Subtilior (14th Century) and the Noise: the two inspirations of Christophe Guiraud which are like two rivers which are woven in a writing of great power. The young French composer is the link between the most accomplished scholarly music and some radical aspects of noise. Born in Toulouse mid-seventies, he settles in Brussels -- which becomes the crossroads of a continuous creation. He currently works and has been collaborating since several years with numerous European ensembles and musicians such as Ensemble Ictus, Phønix16, Tom Pauwels, Timo Kreuser, Ensemble 21, Sturm und Klang. His most recent pieces intimately mix instrumental timbre and sound hybridization, cultivating a certain secrecy around this alchemy. On Kutra Bégulma * Unfinished Altar more than everywhere else, Christophe Guiraud's compositions create a dialog between the times, from the polyphony of Ars Nova to Spectralism, while integrating his noise heritage. Resolutely an-historical, the last pieces presented here unfold in a trembling stagnation. The ensemble of the pieces creates coherence across a wide range of musicians coming from different places and traditions and from different ensembles -- everything is woven together towards a rather spectacular conclusion: Tarentule Ensemble (Paris), Phønix 16 Ensemble (Berlin), Laps Ensemble (Brussels) with the support of Bernard Sberro (Tel Aviv), Julien Boutonnier (Toulouse) Pauline Claes (Brussels), Jessica Constable (London), and Iris Terdjiman (Napoli). Green vinyl; includes insert.
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CD
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SR 499CD
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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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