Sub Rosa is a Belgium-based label exploring a wide range of sounds and musical journeys. The name derives from the Latin phrase sub rosa, literally translating as "under the rose", and figuratively meaning something secret or undercover. The label was founded in the mid-80s and expanded its catalog in the mid-90s with the release of electronic music. The catalog ranges from archives and voices (William Burroughs, Belgian Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp) to proto-electronic forms (Angus MacLise, Luc Ferrari, Henri Pousseur, Léo Kupper), contemporary (Christian, Wolff, Julius Eastmann, John Cage Morton Feldman, Nam June Paik) and traditional music (Inuit, Yanomami shamanist ceremonies, Tibetan rituals, Gongs from Southeast Asia), "In the Margins" forms of expression (Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel, Adolf Wölfli), as well as echoes of the Belgian underground scene (Pseudocode, Etat Brut, Kosmose, Punk in Brussels) and the Framework Series, devoted to the many shapes of electronic music. To which should be added regular collaborations (long-term or recent ones) with artists such as David Shea, Bill Laswell, Ulrich Krieger, David Toop, Scanner, C.M. Von Hausswolf, Opening Performance Orchestra, Oiseaux Tempête, Charlemagne Palestine, Hastings of Malawi, Palo Alto, Michel Redolfi. But this just the tip of the iceberg, for Sub Rosa has been a home, since the '90s, for out-of-range music, which lead to various "non-compilation" conceptual projects: Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Volumes 1 to 7, Persian electro, Chinese, Turkish, Greek experimental and electronic music, Folds and Rhizomes for Gilles Deleuze...
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SR 552LP
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Musik für animierte Tonspurfilm, the twelfth album by Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (or DAAU, as they are commonly known), is the soundtrack to a series of short, abstract animation films by Rudy Trouvé, who also acted as a creative director during the recording process. The music originates from acoustic improvisation sessions by accordionist Roel Van Camp, clarinetist Han Stubbe, double bass player Hannes D'Hoine and percussionist Jeroen Stevens. These took place according to conceptual guidelines set by Trouvé. Sometimes the starting point was a play on words or a random chord sequence, sometimes a specific atmosphere, but the playing field was always kept deliberately limited. Hence, the musicians were forced to build a musical structure with minimal means. The result was cut on cassette, after which the Antwerp enfant terrible Rudy Trouvé, known from his work with dEUS, Kiss My Jazz, Gore Slut, and I H8 Camera among others, happily hit the tracks with a virtual sledge hammer. DAAU's pieces were cut up, sampled, drastically restructured and pasted together again, a method that had been applies earlier on the retrospective album Hineininterpretierung (2017). On top of that audio collage, the musicians added new electronic layers, using a digital accordion, synths, digital bass and marimba.
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SR 555CD
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Univers Zero's new album follows the lineage of Phosphorescent Dreams, originally released only on CD in Japan in 2014, and reissued as an LP on the Sub Rosa label in 2019. Lueur is the fruit of two years' work and reflection, the foundations of which were laid by Daniel Denis (keyboards, drums, percussion), then enriched by the contributions of Nicolas Dechêne (guitars), Kurt Budé (clarinet / bass clarinet) and Nicolas Denis (bass, percussion, vocals), all three present on Phosphorescent Dreams. With this reduced line-up, Lueur offers a dense journey, rooted in the balance between power and calm, raging and serene sound. A balance, too, between complex arrangements and more contemplative moments. While this album continues the avant-rock tradition of Univers Zero, it also features some very short pieces, more electronic, tribal and haunting sounds, and voice work that is new to the U.Z. universe. Between tradition and subtle evolution, Lueur is a major new contribution to the discography of this band, which will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2024. 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 462LP
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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 link between music, sound and the paranormal is manifested in many different ways. Gerard van der Leeuw, the Dutch historian and philosopher, wrote "Music represents the great struggle of reaching the wholly other, which it can never express." Furthermore, "The effect of music on the emotions is so mysterious as to seem magical. There is no logical explanation why a particular combination of musical notes, whether in the form of a tune or of a simple chord, can affect the heart. Nothing in nature has perhaps so persistently resisted explanation," as said Derek Parker, the British journalist. Since music is arguably the most intangible of the arts and since the paranormal, in all its manifestations, continues to intrigue people, the placing of these two subjects together seems obvious. This second volume of musical and audio anomalies continues and expands upon the works initially reproduced in the latter. Rosemary Brown makes a welcome re-appearance, especially with a performance of Grübelei via Liszt, as well as the Caruso-inspired tenor Leo May making a repeat performance. Few people realize that both Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley were quite fine musicians and Alex Sanders was also interested in music. The background music of Wagner's Tannhäuser used by the latter combines both pagan and Christian elements. So close your eyes and let the magic of sound take over! Also featuring David Behr, Jack Webber, Robert, Rita Goold, Leslie Flint, Leo, Carmen Rogers, Uri Geller, Jean-Louis Victor, Joe Meek, Howard Menger, Barbara The Gray Witch, and Rev. Patrick J. Berkery, Ph. D.
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SR 555LP
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LP version. Univers Zero's new album follows the lineage of Phosphorescent Dreams, originally released only on CD in Japan in 2014, and reissued as an LP on the Sub Rosa label in 2019. Lueur is the fruit of two years' work and reflection, the foundations of which were laid by Daniel Denis (keyboards, drums, percussion), then enriched by the contributions of Nicolas Dechêne (guitars), Kurt Budé (clarinet / bass clarinet) and Nicolas Denis (bass, percussion, vocals), all three present on Phosphorescent Dreams. With this reduced line-up, Lueur offers a dense journey, rooted in the balance between power and calm, raging and serene sound. A balance, too, between complex arrangements and more contemplative moments. While this album continues the avant-rock tradition of Univers Zero, it also features some very short pieces, more electronic, tribal and haunting sounds, and voice work that is new to the U.Z. universe. Between tradition and subtle evolution, Lueur is a major new contribution to the discography of this band, which will be celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2024. 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 543CD
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This second project released on Sub Rosa by the Japanese artist Kaoru Tashiro, manages to create a subtle dialogue between four composers, and four musical pieces, mixing a delicate blend of Japanese and European sensibilities. Those different approaches convergence thanks to the highly recognizable sensibility of Kaoru Tashiro's way to play. After "drifting" through unpublished pieces from Toshi Ichiyanagi (Fluxus) and Claude Ledoux on the album Cloud Atlas, Kaoru Tashiro is now highlighting the works of: Kenji Sakai, Claude Ledoux, Jean-Pierre Deleuze, and Julia Purgina. Sakai dilates space through a virtuoso piece, "Reflecting Space I - Bell, Cloud and Disincarnations," based on the idea of the metamorphosis of classical repertoires. Claude Ledoux, already present on the first disc, is wandering through mysterious, disquieting landscapes, that gives pride of place to the hushed sounds coming from the piano strings, hammered and muffled by the imprint of the pianist's fingers. Jean-Pierre Deleuze whom creates through this piano composition a dreamlike space that unfolds. Julia Purgina, a young Austrian composer, whose piece that was composed in full confinement, turned out to be "dark," as she attempted to create an atmosphere of an almost surreal expressivity between exaltation and pessimism. This work has been premiered in Vienna in 2021 and this is a first recording.
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SR 544CD
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At the border of genres, Ogives is an ambitious musical project, initiated and led by composer and musician Pavel Tchikov. This large ensemble leads us onto a path to a sacred universe, to a cathedral of sounds, whose foundations are rock and classical music. Born in Liège (Belgium), Ogives offers a resolutely intense personal and poetic work, dominated by layers of melodious, polyphonic, shouted or lyrical voices. This first album from Ogives, La Mémoire Des Orages ("The Memory of Storms"), is build and orchestrated around poems written by two members of the group. These texts revolve around the themes of the perception of time and the perspective of death. We find here all the group's influences, ranging from post-rock, prog, to contemporary music, baroque and medieval music, through electronic music and noise, all exploited to forge a homogeneous and singular material. From the first choral notes to the last sharp riff, it is a dense and melancholic epic, carried by inhabited and versatile musicians. The album was mixed by Steve Albini.
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SR 550LP
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LP version. Marbled vinyl. In 1995 the self-titled full-length debut of Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU) was released. The band consisted of four young, "classically derailed" musicians who played their own compositions exclusively with their with acoustic instruments such as violin, cello, clarinet and accordion. Their work contained influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz, and was performed with energy and true punk spirit. DAAU was part of the fertile Antwerp scene, which also produced dEUS, Zita Swoon, and Kiss My Jazz, and soon signed an international record deal with Sony Classical. The group's influential first record, which has been out of print for a while, is now finally being released again and is available on vinyl for the very first time.
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SR 544LP
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Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve. At the border of genres, Ogives is an ambitious musical project, initiated and led by composer and musician Pavel Tchikov. This large ensemble leads us onto a path to a sacred universe, to a cathedral of sounds, whose foundations are rock and classical music. Born in Liège (Belgium), Ogives offers a resolutely intense personal and poetic work, dominated by layers of melodious, polyphonic, shouted or lyrical voices. This first album from Ogives, La Mémoire Des Orages ("The Memory of Storms"), is build and orchestrated around poems written by two members of the group. These texts revolve around the themes of the perception of time and the perspective of death. We find here all the group's influences, ranging from post-rock, prog, to contemporary music, baroque and medieval music, through electronic music and noise, all exploited to forge a homogeneous and singular material. From the first choral notes to the last sharp riff, it is a dense and melancholic epic, carried by inhabited and versatile musicians. The album was mixed by Steve Albini.
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SR 551X-LP
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Maurice Louca and his band Elephantine announce Moonshine, shining brightly with a live, raw, collective sound. One of the most gifted, prolific and adventurous figures on Egypt's thriving experimental arts scene, Louca has in recent years garnered a global reputation through three previous solo albums and an expanding, evolving lineup of genre-defying collaborations. The Wire called his 2014 sophomore solo effort, Salute the Parrot, "remarkable music-dense, driven and splashed with colour." For Louca, Elephantine serves as both the pinnacle of his wide-ranging experience and a bold next step in his development as a composer, arranger and bandleader, from cosmic jazz, African and world music, to transcendental modal traditions. The music-from its pensive lulls through its stretches of hard-grooving hypnosis and moments of avant-jazz. All copies on red/black vinyl mix.
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SR 550CD
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In 1995 the self-titled full-length debut of Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung (DAAU) was released. The band consisted of four young, "classically derailed" musicians who played their own compositions exclusively with their with acoustic instruments such as violin, cello, clarinet and accordion. Their work contained influences from Roma music, Eastern European folk, klezmer and jazz, and was performed with energy and true punk spirit. DAAU was part of the fertile Antwerp scene, which also produced dEUS, Zita Swoon, and Kiss My Jazz, and soon signed an international record deal with Sony Classical. The group's influential first record, which has been out of print for a while, is now finally being released again and is available on vinyl for the very first time.
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SR 553CD
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"All my music is night music," says the composer Petr Bakla. Three pieces featured on the new album Late Night Show span almost a decade and provide varied examples of his style, "so specific and personal, so allergic to fashion or aesthetic trend," as Eric Wubbels puts it in the insightful liner note. The central instrument is the piano, operated by Bakla's longtime collaborator Miroslav Beinhauer, accompanied by the musicians of Brno Contemporary Orchestra. Digipack and booklet.
Petr Bakla (born 1980) composes orchestral, chamber, and solo pieces. In his compositions, he often employs basic material, typically chromatic and whole-tone scales. He is interested in constructing situations and structural contexts in which these frugal musical elements can acquire a unique expressiveness and energy. A frequent feature of Bakla's work is a simultaneous course of two musical/sound layers which, although usually markedly differing in dynamics to allow for a sense of "figure and background", are not mutually subordinating -- they are of equal importance, their "friction" creating specific tension and ambiguity. Petr Bakla's music has been played in Europe and the USA, in many cases commissioned and/or performed by distinguished ensembles, soloists and conductors. Of particular importance for him has been his collaboration with the Ostrava Days festival, which has made possible the performance of numerous works of his for large ensemble or symphony orchestra.
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SR 536LP
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LP version. From his early days with Henry Cow, Fred Frith was seen as a brilliant instrumentalist and improviser, but what has been overlooked is what a first-rate composer he is. This recording offers both aspects. His most complex orchestral composition and two selected improvisations with the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. Fred Frith, as an infusion of energy and inspiration.
"Something about this Landscape was commissioned by Ars Musica in 2018. I composed the piece during a residency at Lou Harrison's straw-bale house in the desert at Joshua Tree, California. It's an inspiring place for a number of reasons -- the silence, the light, the life, the history. The extraordinary diversity of birds during the migration season. Both other pieces are improvisations. The first one is the one we did during the concert (in public), the other one, very different, is the one we did during the dress rehearsal (on the day of the concert)." --Fred Frith
Musiques Nouvelles is one of the two most successful and diversified contemporary music ensemble in this country with Ictus. With, under the influence of Jean-Paul Dessy, a deeply spiritual and mutual listening aspect. This meeting with the legendary Fred Frith will remain as an important step.
Personnel: Fred Frith - guitar, composition + Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles: Berten D'Hollander - flute; Charles Michiels - clarinet; Adrien Lambinet - trombone; Hughes Kolp - guitar; Pierre Quiriny - percussion; Claire Bourdet et Laurent Houque - violins; Karel Coninx - viola; Jean-Paul Zanutel - cello; Jean-Paul Dessy - conductor.
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SR 539LP
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Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve; includes 24-page large booklet. All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments. This Fluxus edition features (in alphabetical order): Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, John Cage, Giancarlo Cardini, Giuseppe Chiari, Henning Christiansen, Philip Corner, Öyvind Fahlström, Ken Friedman, Sten Hanson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, George Maciunas, Sara Miyamoto, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Opening Performance Orchestra, Benjamin Patterson, Josef Anton Riedl, Terry Riley, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Dieter Schnebel, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, and La Monte Young. The musicians and performers Anna Clementi, Agnese Toniutti, Deborah Walker, Werner Durand, Luciano Chessa, Miroslav Beinhauer, Petr Bakla, Nicolas Horvath, Petr Ferenc, and Premysl Ondra have played, performed and declaimed the Fluxus pieces, Arditti Quartet and S.E.M. Ensemble provided one piece from their archives. Milan Knízák, Petr Rezek, Petr Kotík, Olaf Hanel, Eric Andersen, Per Brunskog, Peter van der Meijden, Pavlína Morganová, Natasha Lushetich, Joseph Nechvatal, Natilee Harren, Martin Patrick, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christopher M. Reeves, and Hubertus von Amelunxen have written Fluxus-themed texts. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive Fluxus archives and Edizioni Conz provided coproduction. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Rozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. The cover themes are paintings by Milan Knízák, while the graphic design is the work of Jaroslav Buzek.
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SR 536CD
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From his early days with Henry Cow, Fred Frith was seen as a brilliant instrumentalist and improviser, but what has been overlooked is what a first-rate composer he is. This recording offers both aspects. His most complex orchestral composition and two selected improvisations with the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. Fred Frith, as an infusion of energy and inspiration.
"Something about this Landscape was commissioned by Ars Musica in 2018. I composed the piece during a residency at Lou Harrison's straw-bale house in the desert at Joshua Tree, California. It's an inspiring place for a number of reasons -- the silence, the light, the life, the history. The extraordinary diversity of birds during the migration season. Both other pieces are improvisations. The first one is the one we did during the concert (in public), the other one, very different, is the one we did during the dress rehearsal (on the day of the concert)." --Fred Frith
Musiques Nouvelles is one of the two most successful and diversified contemporary music ensemble in this country with Ictus. With, under the influence of Jean-Paul Dessy, a deeply spiritual and mutual listening aspect. This meeting with the legendary Fred Frith will remain as an important step.
Personnel: Fred Frith - guitar, composition + Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles: Berten D'Hollander - flute; Charles Michiels - clarinet; Adrien Lambinet - trombone; Hughes Kolp - guitar; Pierre Quiriny - percussion; Claire Bourdet et Laurent Houque - violins; Karel Coninx - viola; Jean-Paul Zanutel - cello; Jean-Paul Dessy - conductor.
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SR 533LP
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Hailing from the Agouza district of Cairo, Egypt, this brilliant trio consists of Alan Bishop (acoustic bass, vocals, alto sax), Maurice Louca (keyboards, drum machine), and Sam Shalabi (electric guitar). Born in 2012 when the three were living in the same apartment building in Cairo's Agouza district, the trio's instrumental improvisation-based explorations are propelled by Louca's North African percussion loops and shimmering keys, Shalabi's West African tinged free jazz guitar and grounded by Bishop's driving Krautrock-style acoustic bass. High Tide in the Lowlands was recorded in Brussels at Les Ateliers Claus on September 5, 2017 and is quite an intense experience. Most performances and recording sessions are improvised and this set is no different and even though the group opened the show with "Baka of the Future" from their first album Bes, it is almost unrecognizable and everything the trio plays is continually morphing into the next unknown idea. As the sound, energy, and instantaneous composition flows, the trance is growing and growing, ranging from raw shapeshifting "no (un)wave", free jazz, traditional Arabic, and modern experimental explorations to a concrete mystic trip from a universe expanding and contracting constantly. This is earth interrogating the sky, the sky rejoining the earth, an unknown and unwritten cosmogony.
Maurice Louca is an Egyptian musician and composer born in Cairo where he lives and works. As well as being the co-founder of the bands Bikya, Alif, and Lekhfa, Louca lends his sound to numerous other projects, composing for theatre, film, dance and contemporary art. Previous releases on Sub Rosa: Elephantine (SR 474LP), Saet El-Hazz (SR 519LP). Alan Bishop is a founding member of Phoenix/Seattle avant-garde trio Sun City Girls, who, for 27 years, explored the outer reaches of improvisation and composition (from free jazz/post rock psychedelic, and sound collage to outernational Arabic and Asian inspired folk music). As founder of the Sublime Frequencies record label, Bishop has released over 100 records, introducing previously ignored musical genres from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sam Shalabi is a prolific Egyptian-Canadian composer and improviser living between Montreal, Quebec and Cairo, Egypt. As the founder of Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, and many other projects, he began with punk rock in the late '70s and his work has evolved into a fusion of experimental music that incorporates modern/traditional Arabic, shaabi, noise, and classical music with spoken word, free improvisation and jazz.
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SR 539CD
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All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments. This Fluxus edition features (in alphabetical order): Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, John Cage, Giancarlo Cardini, Giuseppe Chiari, Henning Christiansen, Philip Corner, Öyvind Fahlström, Ken Friedman, Sten Hanson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, George Maciunas, Sara Miyamoto, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Opening Performance Orchestra, Benjamin Patterson, Josef Anton Riedl, Terry Riley, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Dieter Schnebel, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, and La Monte Young. The musicians and performers Anna Clementi, Agnese Toniutti, Deborah Walker, Werner Durand, Luciano Chessa, Miroslav Beinhauer, Petr Bakla, Nicolas Horvath, Petr Ferenc, and Premysl Ondra have played, performed and declaimed the Fluxus pieces, Arditti Quartet and S.E.M. Ensemble provided one piece from their archives. Milan Knízák, Petr Rezek, Petr Kotík, Olaf Hanel, Eric Andersen, Per Brunskog, Peter van der Meijden, Pavlína Morganová, Natasha Lushetich, Joseph Nechvatal, Natilee Harren, Martin Patrick, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christopher M. Reeves, and Hubertus von Amelunxen have written Fluxus-themed texts. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive Fluxus archives and Edizioni Conz provided coproduction. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Rozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. The cover themes are paintings by Milan Knízák, while the graphic design is the work of Jaroslav Buzek. Double-CD version comes in digipack; includes 72- page booklet; edition of 500.
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SR 534LP
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Puce Moment is part of the French contemporary music scene. Their music is climatic, often inhabited by a strong emotional power. A procession of harmonic structures organized in a ritual way, sometimes close to trance. It can be written or improvised, vocal or instrumental. The electronic and electroacoustic arrangements summon new spaces and abstract landscapes, which can go from the purest sound to the rawest distortions. Vast, slower, deeper -- distant echoes of half-faded things -- and when you are lost, voices appear. Voices whose only reference would be the timeless SeeFeel. Nicolas Devos and Pénélope Michel are visual and sound artists, one trained at the Beaux-Arts and the Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains and the other a classically trained cellist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. They created Puce Moment, envisaged as a sound research laboratory open to experimentation, to multi-disciplinary encounters and to decompartmentalization. Their work is akin to a fictional ethnology expressed through protean projects and mutant visual, sound and musical creations. Epic Ellipses is their fourth album. They have composed the original soundtracks of more than a dozen dance performance, fiction or documentary films, virtual reality in variable formats (Christian Rizzo, Mylène Benoit, Vania Vaneau, Benjamin Nuel, Laurent Pernot, Carolina Gonçalves). Or in the form of film-concerts including David Lynch's cult film Eraserhead with which they have toured intensively since 2012 in France and Europe, and since 2019 Koyaanisqatsi, the cult experimental documentary by Godfrey Reggio.
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SR 527LP
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Laszlo Umbreit's album Pas de Regrets combines electronic sounds with recorded memories and various materials to create a unique listening experience. The album features complex soundscapes and techniques of layering and editing, drawing on Umbreit's experience as a sound designer for films. Pas de Regrets is an immersive and rich listening experience, with a narrative quality that places it between prospective electronics and experimental radio. Field recordings made in Belgium, around Sevry and Charleroi, during summer 2013 and 2017.
Laszlo Umbreit is a Belgian sound designer and musician based in Brussels. Laszlo's work is anchored in sound research yet usually dialogues with the moving image, whether as present or absent. His musical practice mixes improvisation on electronic instruments, field recordings and a long meticulous editing and mixing process of sonic materials.
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SR 540LP
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Double LP version. With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible.
Dedalus Ensemble: Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism: Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Moondog, or Philip Glass. Personnel: Didier Aschour - guitar, arrangements and artistic direction; Denis Chouillet - piano; Amélie Berson - flute; Fabrice Villard - clarinet; Pierre-Stéphane Meugé - saxophone; Christian Pruvost - trumpet; Thierry Madiot - trombone; Silvia Tarozzi - violin; Cyprien Busolini - viola; Deborah Walker - cello; Eric Chalan - double bass, vibraphone.
Inspired by Erik Satie's furniture music, Cage's indeterminacy and La Monte Young's drones, Eno's series of compositions were based on strict formal protocols bringing the listener into an enthralling world of sounds. Brian Eno was widely seen as a pioneering and influential figure of popular music and worked with icons of pop culture such as David Bowie, U2, etc.
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SR 540CD
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With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible. Double-CD version includes eight-page booklet.
Dedalus Ensemble: Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism: Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Moondog, or Philip Glass. Personnel: Didier Aschour - guitar, arrangements and artistic direction; Denis Chouillet - piano; Amélie Berson - flute; Fabrice Villard - clarinet; Pierre-Stéphane Meugé - saxophone; Christian Pruvost - trumpet; Thierry Madiot - trombone; Silvia Tarozzi - violin; Cyprien Busolini - viola; Deborah Walker - cello; Eric Chalan - double bass, vibraphone.
Inspired by Erik Satie's furniture music, Cage's indeterminacy and La Monte Young's drones, Eno's series of compositions were based on strict formal protocols bringing the listener into an enthralling world of sounds. Brian Eno was widely seen as a pioneering and influential figure of popular music and worked with icons of pop culture such as David Bowie, U2, etc.
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SR 529LP
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Recorded at the height of the global pandemic, and at a time when remote communication was becoming increasingly prevalent, Choreological Exchanges is part of Hastings Of Malawi's continuing investigations into the medium of communication itself. Prior to telephony becoming digital, all phone calls were routed through mechanical telephone exchanges, and the majority of the sounds on side one are the sounds of these exchanges and some of the voices of the engineers who worked with them. Hastings Of Malawi make strange records and this one is no exception although it has a more linear narrative structure in opposition to what critics have described as their Dadaist approach. Their records certainly resist genre classification and do not really fall into the category of music. Hastings Of Malawi have themselves described previous records as films without light, radio plays and as poems. This one is a dance -- a dance that takes place within the chain, or pipe, that is brain -- mouth -- telephone -- telephone exchange -- telephone -- ear -- brain.
"It is a dance record but not in the way that these are usually understood. An invitation to dance appears twelve minutes in on the first side. It is a dance within the wires, movement around noise used as a sculptural material rather than unwanted signals and a joyful exploration of sonic materiality. The second side begins with the voice of a telephone engineer, who states that in the top floor switch room of the exchange is the only vestige of human control. Is this top floor switch room the human brain? The sounds on this side, float between the mechanical telephone exchange and the body where the messages are created and interpreted -- it is an exploration of the relationship between thought and the material devices in which telephone sound is propagated and transformed. Side two ends with a long list of randomly generated words created by digital voice synthesis." --Hastings of Malawi
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SR 537CD
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Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin have been making music together since over 20 years. But it's a vast and fascinating list of unrelated events that brought them to make this recording, featuring the music of 12th century sage and mystic Hildegard von Bingen in a setup of voice with electronics accompanied by pipe organ. Yet it feels like an unexpected and vibrant evidence -- coming home somewhere else. The music of Hildegard von Bingen is essentially monodic, made to be performed by a voice and maybe one fixed pedal note played by an instrument. A big part of the work has been to find the right approach and tone for this setup. To see how these melodies resonate today and what they call for, inventing spaces where they can unfold simply. Improvisation played a key role in this process; listening, feeling, dreaming. A tune of Robert Schumann and Tom Jobim have been added to enhance and stabilize the colors that presented themselves. The result -- Sibyl Of The Rhine -- is an object of a mesmerizing beauty, made to be heard over and over. But it's also a clear blueprint and a powerful source for further live reenactments. Lynn Cassiers and Jozef Dumoulin both established themselves in the realm of contemporary jazz and improvised music. Besides other collaborations they play as a duo called Lilly Joel, mixing free improvisation with electronics. Lilly Joel Plays The Organ is a special edition of the duo with Jozef Dumoulin replacing his usual electronic setup by the ancient pipe organ, an instrument he played extensively as a teenager. Personnel: Lynn Cassiers - voice and electronics; Jozef Dumoulin - pipe organ.
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SR 535LP
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Green vinyl. It's an all-electronic affair, harmonically maximalist, predominantly symphonic-synthetic, requiring active listening. Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present a problem-solution scenario, collectively via a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving. Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works full of sound, euphonic, and vivid in nature. The making of this album was intentionally a very personal process, going into self-therapy territory at times interpreting the composer's contemplating mind dealing with tolerance, destruction, compassion, misery, grace and tyranny in an auditory manner. Some pieces function as challengers of musical structural habits, provoking the short attention span culture, others present a problem-solution scenario, collectively via a neoteric noise aesthetic and detailed melodic weaving. Ultimately, the objective was to engineer an assortment of works, awash with euphonic sound vivid in its essence, with a deep focus on various synthesis techniques within a compositional framework. Dedicated to Peter Rehberg aka Pita.
Ata "Sote" Ebtekar composes music with a deeply-held conviction that rules and formulas should be deconstructed and rethought. He alters musical modal codes from their original tonality and rhythmic tradition to achieve vivid, synthetic soundscapes. Over the last three decades, his work has been published by labels such as Warp, Sub Rosa, Opal Tapes, Diagonal, Mute, and Morphine, among others. In 2018, he founded a new label called "Zabte Sote", which focuses on releases by Iranian experimental electronic composers from around the globe. Known for creating compositions that range from the delicate to the abrasive, using sounds both of acoustical and electronic origins, Ebtekar sees music as the expression of cultural habits in sound and anti-sound (silence). Seeking to expand such traditions he creates music that, while rooted in many cultures at once, belongs to none in particular. Sote's work deals with various blueprints, in particular his solo all synthetic music, his electroacoustic audio/visual group project, and his multi-channel sound installations. Sote is on the jury panel of The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, and has created commissioned work for and performed at a.o. Berghain and CTM Festival (Berlin), Unsound Festival (Krakow), Cafe Oto (London), Jazzhouse (Copenhagen), TodaysArt Festival (The Hague), Bozar (Brussels), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Donaufestival (Krems), Donaueschinger Musiktage, Mira (Barcelona), Terraforma (Milan), and many more.
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SR 531CD
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With their sixth studio album, Oiseaux-Tempête unveils a new facet of its mythology through a dense work that carries darkness towards the light of day, that rumbles, calms down and warms up again. Like the silhouette of a lighthouse that reveals itself as its torch rises and shines, the powerful beauty of What On Earth (Que Diable) radiates into an expanding musical cosmos. From the mammoth riffs of "Partout Le Feu", progressively thickened by explosive sound textures and sirens ringing the alarm, you levitate on "Terminal Velocity", a minimalist interlude with a crepuscular feel that is jostled by the hypnotic pulsations of "Voodoo Spinning" and then the call of the dungeon "The Crying Eye - I Forget", an electro mystical trance that deploys its philters in a troubled moat haunted by the psalmodies of Radwan Ghazi Moumneh. The tempo speeds up in "A Man Alone in a One Man Poem", a meeting of body and mind, of mechanical energy and burning breath where the spoken word of G.W.Sok sneaks in, before the pastoral crossing of "Waldgänger" and its forest of electronic chimeras.
"... At the center of this project, which blurs lines and genres, the duo turned trio of multi-instrumentalists Frédéric D. Oberland, Stéphane Pigneul, and Mondkopf have been building dialogues between their own reality, their vocabulary, and those of fellow travelers met all around the surface of the world. From their Mediterranean trilogy to their foray into Canada with the explosive From Somewhere Invisible, deeply instinctive albums shrouded in mystery take shape, in parallel with feverish and incendiary live performances, punk in their urgency to tell the world by blasting the boundaries of space and time. After having signed the soundtrack of the bewitching Tunisian film Tlamess (Sortilège) by Ala Eddine Slim in 2020, Oiseaux-Tempête immerses us with What On Earth (Que Diable) in a collapsed future. A psychedelic/psychological roadmap, the album gathers around Frédéric D. Oberland, Stéphane Pigneul, Mondkopf and Jean-Michel Pirès (Bruit Noir), the voices of Ben Shemie (SUUNS), G.W.Sok, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Jerusalem In My Heart) or the electric strings of Jessica Moss (Thee Silver Mt. Zion). If the planetary reality of 2022 looks like a bad spin-off of a pre/post-apocalyptic series, this new record invites us to another kind of anticipative present where the only weapons are poems chanted against the wind. Ben Shemie opens the projection on 'Black Elephant' and sets the tone for this magnetic dance . . . Drum machines, analog synths, percussions, guitars, mellotron, flute, saxophone, vocals, rhodes, piano, violin and electric buzuk come to life in a sort of disaster aesthetic, pushing back the walls of the decor, against the current of any calibrated music." --Alice Butterlin
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SR 488CD
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L'effet Rebond is not one album but two. Two parallel albums sharing the same title. One by Pierre-Yves Macé, the other by Sylvain Chauveau -- two friends and regular collaborators for nearly twenty years. Both works come from the same original material: a few tracks of guitar, piano, harmonium, and vocals, initially recorded by Chauveau. The lyrics (in French, English, Japanese) are very short poems by or quotations from e.e. cummings, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, Basho, cult tennis player John McEnroe, Carla Demierre, Aram Saroyan, Joseph Guglielmi, and painter Philip Guston. From this common material, each of the two composers has built his own edifice, choosing the elements he keeps, the ones he abandons, adding little by little his own instruments, structures and ideas. In the end, two distinct and autonomous opuses are born. Double-CD; digipack inside a slipcase.
"Version Iridium": Pierre-Yves Macé has allowed himself to be guided by his long-standing obsessions: hybridization of genres and formats, balance between lyricism and formalism, intersection of chamber instrumental writing and chiseled electronics. But this time he pushes his penchant for sobriety further than ever. Whether it is a song-haiku, a miniature for piano or a long repetitive and rhythmic piece, the simplicity is at the service of the clarity of the ideas and the beauty of the timbres -- Maitane Sebastiàn's cello or Cédric Jullion's bass flute in mind.
"Version Silicium": Sylvain Chauveau has surrounded himself with his friends Peter Broderick (backing vocals), Machinefabriek (electronic processing), Lucille Calmel (field recordings), Romke Kleefstra (electric guitar), and Rainier Lericolais (electronic sounds) in order to develop more than ever his love of repetition and the ultra-short format. Here, the pieces often last only the time of a breath, of a few heartbeats. A musical form rarely explored in any musical genre, but one that Chauveau has been fond of since his early days and whose quintessence he seeks here.
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