CRAIG, CARL & MORITZ VON OSWALD Recomposed By (Universal) 2lp 42.00
Here's yet another record that under different circumstances could have been and yeah probably should have been a Record Of The Week. But for one thing, it's crazy expensive, and for another, it's taken us months to get enough just to list, and highlight, let alone make it ROTW. So that said, be prepared when we sell out to patiently wait while we try to get more. But for now, dig it:
Classical music by Ravel and Mussorgsky, recut, remixed, and recontextualized by techno legends Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald. The result? A gloriously plunderphonic soundscape that slips from shimmery soft focus drift, to a subtly chopped and screwed version of the original piece, to jumbled and blurred Oval-like digital collages, to skittery minimal house music, to dubbed out electronica, to groovy cinematic disco, to spaced out rhythmic ambience, well heck, needless to say, these guys basically pulled off the techno version of a kick ass Tim Hecker / Philip Jeck / Oval record.
The liner notes go into great detail about the process and the idea and the recording, but as with most records, it's the sounds that matter most, and the sounds here are divine. And the whole record somehow works as a single multi movement-ed piece. Each one drifting into the next, the segues seamless, even if the tracks are dramatically different.
The intro is a gorgeous hushed drone, laced with delicate melodies and soft breathless shimmers, almost new agey, a gorgeous ethereal drift that introduces the fanfare that will be the basis for the next few movements. And thus the first movement, a bit of dramatic fanfare, shuffling snares, stuttering horns, the arrangement is subtle, so on the surface it almost feels unaltered, but the notes seem to skitter, and overlap, creating a subtle yet dizzy march, until the second movement introduces the trill of still other horns, locked into a loop over the original, that in turn draped over the deep soft shimmer of the intro, a dense layered landscapes of sampled snares and horns, that grows more hypnotic and mesmerizing, until near the end, the first sign of added rhythms surfaces, a simple high hat pattern draped over that looped horn mesmer, building even more in the beginning of the third movement, before shifting gears completely part way through, the drums taking the lead, the Mussorgsky and the Ravel, relegated mere building blocks, samples transformed into wholly new shapes. The fourth movement follows suit, a gorgeous skittery, late night chunk of minimal Kompakt style techno, with plenty of synth buzz and dubby effects.
There's a brief interlude beginning with some jagged rhythms, and ending with some swoonsome swirling synths, which is simply preparing us for the two loooong closers.
The first, Movement 5, begins with a flurry of deep ominous horns, and dramatic strings, subtly looped into a never ending high end drone, the click in the loop a rhythmic pulse, pounded piano, all very ominous and sinister and epic, before giving way to something much more house-y and clubby, sounding a bit like a house music version of the James Bond theme, complete with those ominous horns, and plenty of sinister strings, which brings us to the final movement, quickly becoming our favorite, a woozy soundscape, all the various strings and horns muted and blurred into a slow shifting backdrop to simple stripped down percussion, distant drones, moaning strings, all hovering beneath the surface, an awesomely hypnotic main loop, and a groovy minimal rhythm, bells chiming in the distance, the backdrop gradually growing ever more ominous and atonal, but fading out completely. Leaving just the rhythm to play itself out.
So so good. Occupies some strange nether region between minimal techno, processed soundscapery, classical, new age, avant dronemusic, plunderphonics, pushes all our buttons, and most likely yours too. Gorgeously packaged like an old Deutsche Grammophon classical record, deluxe booklet with lots of photos and liner notes, and again, these have been tough to get a hold of so please be patient if we run out.
MPEG Stream: "Intro"
MPEG Stream: "Movement 1"
MPEG Stream: "Movement 4"
MPEG Stream: "Movement 5"

CRANDELL, RICHARD Spring Steel (Tzadik) cd 15.98
As much weird, loud, obtuse, and left of the margin music that we love and champion here, we also never shy away from music that we know is undeniably beautiful. Whether it's the majestic West African Kora music of Djibril Diabate and Lanaya or the evocative piano compositions of Lucian Cilio or the sweeping elegance of The Rachels. There is a long list of music that we cherish that manages to be both so beautiful and filled with soul. Richard Crandell deserves a spot right on the top of our all time beautiful music list. Playing the mbira (the thumb piano) to mesmerizing perfection, his last record was one of our favorites of 2004. Three years in the making and Spring Steel is another batch of stellar minimalist compositions that make us melt every time we hear them. There is a tenderness and focus to Crandell's playing that has the ability to make everything else in the world just fade away as you let his soft hypnotic sounds entrance you. Crandell is a rare performer, with such a delicate touch and impeccable taste.
Spring Steel sounds almost like Colleen paying homage to Steve Reich. Methodical and skilled yet so filled with soul and soothing power.
MPEG Stream: "Inner Circle"
MPEG Stream: "Japanese Lullaby"
MPEG Stream: "Spring Steel (A.K.A Ichiro 51)"

CRESHEVSKY, NOAH The Tape Music Of... 1971-1992 (EM Records) cd 23.00
Digging ever deeper into the EM back-catalog (just like this wonderful Japanese label digs ever deeper and deeper into the realm of obscure and out-of-print LPs, looking for weird gems like this to reissue), we are so psyched to finally review this disc, devoted to the music of Noah Creshevsky. Like the recently reviewed EM releases by Barton Smith and David Rosenberg, this Creshevsky guy is another eccentric electronic music pioneer -- just look at him on the cover, with his bald head, mustache, and little sweater vest! But appearances aside, the eight tracks of audio found on this cd definitely live up to the EM standard of wonderful weirdness as well. What you've got to know about Creshevsky is that he was totally into the gospel of ol' JC -- no, not Jesus Christ, we're talking about 20th century avant-garde composer John Cage. Chance and randomness! The thick cd booklet (pretty much all in Japanese, but heavily illustrated with pictures and graphics) includes a color photo of Creshevsky hanging out with his hero in 1986, and there's also a track here, 1976's "In Other Words (Portrait Of John Cage)", that consists of nine minutes of quietly ominous electronic drone backing some words from JC. That's probably the "calmest" cut on this disc, though, as the rest are much more in the mode of tape-spliced mayhem. You get a display of musique concrete as chop socky boom-bap on the cut-up, percussive first track, "Strategic Defense Initiative" (which with a title like that you won't be surprised to learn dates from 1986). Puts us in mind of early Boredoms, almost! The next track, "Highway" from 1979, brings in more snippets of speech, a collage of non-sequiturs sampled from TV and records. But track three, 1971's "Circuit", sources its sounds, layered and looped, from the chiming strings of the harpsichord only. It's a mesmerizing, maddening bit of music that verges on suspense movie spookiness (with sudden jarring jumps in volume). Other cuts here include "Drummer" (1985), a choppy battery of drumming, of course, plus ambient street sounds and screwy tape garble; the amusing "Great Performances" (1978), a cartoonish concert of sampled symphonic sounds and more spoken non-sequiturs; "Sonata" (1980) which continues the classical theme but adds drum machine blasts and a dose of Nyquil to the verbal component. And then things wind up with the last and latest piece found here, 1992's "Cantiga", another jagged "classical" piece that sounds like the work of an ADD-afflicted Carl Stalling, that manages to establish a nicely moody effect in the end. Overall, The Tape Music Of Noah Creshevsky is damaged, deranged, and full of a lot of detail to delve into. Today's breed of digital Plunderphonicans perhaps could claim Creshevsky as an ancestor, and certainly the pop-culture element here posits Noah Creshevsky as a precursor to the (pioneering themselves) Tape Beatles, for instance. Neat.
MPEG Stream: "Strategic Defense Initiative"
MPEG Stream: "Circuit"

CURRAN, ALVIN Canti Illuminati (Fringes Archive) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

CURRAN, ALVIN Theme Park (Tzadik) cd 15.98
Two pieces for solo percussionist--in this case, local madman William Winant.

CUSTER, BETH Vinculum Symphony Live (bc records) cd 13.98
Great San Francisco musician and composer Beth Custer (Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach) assembled these players and instrument builders for the Yerba Buena performance recorded on this disc.

DE LLARIO, DOMENICO Shaker Road (Nonplace Urban Field) cd 16.98

DEMPSTER, STUART On The Boards (Anomalous) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
With a lengthy resume including performances and / or recordings including Terry Riley's "In C" and Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise," not to mention his participation with Pauline Oliveros in The Deep Listening Band, it's a little surprising that Stuart Dempster only has a handful of solo recordings. "On The Boards" was recorded live in Seattle back in 1983 and had almost been lost due to its original cassette only format. Yet, the kind folks at Anomalous have seen fit to reissue this document of extended digeridoo and trombone compositions. For all of you who are cringing at the thought of minimalist compositions for digeridoo, you have our sympathies, as that instrument more so than any other 'ethnic' instrument has become synonymous with the worst atrocities of world music and new age. *However* Dempster may be the only Westerner that I've heard who really has transcended the limitations of the instrument to give its circular patterns a fluid droning quality. Dempster's use of the instrument is analogous to his comrade Pauline Oliveros' minimalist performances on the accordion. Surprisingly nice.
RealAudio clip: "Didjeridervish"
RealAudio clip: "JDBBBDJ"

DHOMONT, FRANCIS Frankenstein Symphony (Asphodel) cd 15.98
Modern classical composer's cut-up collage utilizing his students' pieces.

DICKMAN, STEPHEN Who Says Words (New World Records) cd 15.98
Here's a disc for fans of the cult pulp horror master H. P. Lovecraft. Composer Stephen Dickman's specialty is to "set" texts (poems, prayers, prose) by various authors into musical structures of his own design. In this case, the major work here is a performance of Lovecraft's short story "The Music Of Eric Zann" by baritone Thomas Bruckner (known for his work in Robert Ashley's operas). The avant-classical vocalist reads Lovecraft's tale of cosmic terror (about a musician opening a portal to another dimension) in a semi-sung, semi-spoken sort of hypnotic chant. It, at first, seems more comic than cosmic sounding, but eventually the mesmerizing rhythms of Bruckner's narration begin to have a more disturbing effect. At over twenty minutes, and with no instrumental accompaniment, it really starts to sound like Bruckner is losing his mind--the typical fate of all Lovecraft protagonists! Bizarre and ludicrous, perhaps, but pretty cool. The rest of the disc is great too, with one text-less piano piece of great beauty, as well as more singing by both Bruckner and soprano Elizabeth Farnum, of texts by Rumi, Milarepa, and Rabbi Nathan of Bratslav. These tracks feature either piano or violin accompaniment.

DOCKSTADER, TOD Aerial #2 (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98

DOCKSTADER, TOD Aerial #3 (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98

DOCKSTADER, TOD Eight Electronic Pieces (Locust) cd 14.98
Along with the Rhythmania disc by J.D. Robb we recently reviewed, Locust has reissued on cd another example of early 'electronica', this 1961 Folkways LP by famed tape music pioneer Tod Dockstader, whose experiments in musique concrete and pure electronics are always lively and dramatic. The simply if accurately titled Eight Electronic Pieces is a work of abstract sonic theatre constructed from a large library of tape 'cells' -- 12,000 feet of tape in total -- sourced from recordings made both in the studio and out. All the noise and chaos of the big city (the Big Apple in this case) seems to be swept up in these compositions, with the tape speed manipulations corresponding to the flow of traffic, although little you hear is readily identifiable, even if evocative of the roar of a jet plane overhead, or animals in the wild. Most of the sounds are suggestive only of the pings and pongs and oscillations that they are. Laboratory Music you might call it. Laborious at any rate, when you think of the hours of craft and creativity that Dockstader devoted to works like this, sustained really by his own excitement at the possibilities inherent the genre he was helping to invent, wherein the role of the engineer (composer) utterly supercedes that of the not-now-so-necessary musicians. Listening to sound, and editing sound, replaces writing music (or becomes a way of 'writing' music). In other words, we wouldn't have, say, Matmos today without the likes of Tod Dockstader back when. But not only is his stuff, like Eight Electronic Pieces, worth checking out for historical reasons, it's gonna give your ears something to chew on that's still vital forty years later.
MPEG Stream: "Piece #3"
MPEG Stream: "Piece #6"

DRESSER, MARK Marinade (Tzadik) cd 16.98

DREYBLATT, ARNOLD Live At The Federal Hall (Table Of The Elements) cd 16.98
Arthur Dreyblatt may not be as familiar a name as Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, Terry Riley or Phillip Glass, but lets hope this latest Table of the Elements release changes that. This release marks the 25th anniversary of an historic 1981 live performance at the Federal Hall in New York (where Washington was inaugurated). Dreyblatt accompanied by The Orchestra of Excited Strings put the natural resonances of the architectural dome to good use as his modified instruments such as the pipe organ, hurdy gurdy, just-intoned double bass and piano work through seven pieces of textured rhythmic precision that create gorgeous and dynamic harmonic overtones. Stunning!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2 "

DREYBLATT, ARNOLD Nodal Excitation (Drag City) cd 14.98

DREYBLATT, ARNOLD Point Source / Lapse (Table Of The Elements) 12" 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Two tracks from New York Minimalist composer Arnold Dreyblatt, both sonically owe quite a debt to fellow New Yorkers Rhys Chatham and Glen Branca. The first track, Point Source, features Dreyblatt on "excited bass", Jim O'Rourke on drums (!), David Grubbs and Kevin Drumm on guitars and Maureen Loughnare on violin. A gorgeously hypnotic and metronomic post rock / downtown improv workout. Shades of Faust, Can and even Stereolab. Nice. Recorded live at Chicago's legendary Lounge Ax. The second track, Lapse, is performed by the Berlin version of Dreyblatt's Orchestra Of Excited Strings, performing on custom made instruments in unique tunings. The result is a playful, gypsy-ish romp, atonal and angular, with Eastern sounding melodies and shuffling active percussion. On clear vinyl, with antique cloud/weather charts printed in glow-in-the-dark ink.

DUCHAMP, MARCEL Entire Musical Work Of... (Ampersand) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Predating the inclusion of chance operations into modern composition by almost fifty years, these compositions by Marcel Duchamp (written in 1913) were recorded in 1976 by the S.E.M. Ensemble of New York.
Duchamp was a household word in art circles, and music seemed the least important of his various interests, yet he managed to create a small, but highly innovative body of work. Included here are two interpretations of Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even". One utilizes a chance system in which notes are represented by numbers written on balls which are selected as they pass through a funnel into the open cars of a toy train. The other is based on a a random selection of numbers, transcribed into notes and performed by player piano.
That's all well and good, but what does it sound like? Pretty amazing actually. This disc is worth buying for the first track alone, a gorgeous 25 minute piece, spacious and elegant, a dreamy sleepy swirl of chimes and their shimmering overtones. Absolutely gorgeous.

DUMITRESCU, IANCU / ANA-MARIA AVRAM Musique De Paroles (Edition Modern) cd 14.98

DUMITRESCU, IANCU / ANA-MARIA AVRAM Soleil Explosant (Edition Modern) cd 15.98

EASTMAN, JULIUS Unjust Malaise (New World) 3cd 49.00

EHLERS, EKKEHARD Betrieb (Mille Plateaux) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Using samples from Arnold Schönberg and Charles Ives, among others, Ekkehard Ehler cyclically forms and dissolves structures creating swiveling metallic soundscapes and surging orchestral mayhem. Really beautiful.

EMMANUEL, J.D. Solid Dawn: Electronic Works 1979-1982 (Kvist) cd 14.98
Yes! Finally, J.D. Emmanuel's late seventies, early eighties mind expansion music is more readily accessible. Mostly previously available through rare private pressing lps and vinyl rip blogs, Emmanuel is pretty much one of the main underground touchstones of the present wave of sunny new age meditative minimalist outfits such as The Alps, Emeralds, Ducktails, and White Rainbow. We had that limited reissue of his 1982 Wizards LP which flew out of here in a flash and now we have the less-limited Solid Dawn disc, which is a compilation of works between 1979 and 1982 in which Emmanuel seemed to be superhumanly productive. Taking the minimalist template of Terry Riley, the continuous music of Lubomyr Melnyk, and Brian Eno's discreet music, filtering it through a more soft-focus mystical kosmiche veil of Klaus Schulze, Ariel Kalma and Eberhard Schoener, Emmanuel makes long-form compositions that are vaporous and propulsive like swiftly moving clouds using wind chimes, blurry shifting drones, and arpeggiated synth-scapes. Check out his website for more info about this Texan native, who not only offers spiritual consultation, but offers automotive and business management solutions as well! Outsider New Age doesn't get much better than this!
MPEG Stream: "Sunrise Over Galveston Bay"
MPEG Stream: "Whirlwind"
MPEG Stream: "Changeling"

EMPEROR Scattered Ashes: Decade of Emperial Wrath (Candlelight) book+cd 19.98
Believe it or not, this is a big book of sheet music and guitar tabulature devoted to the songs of Norwegian black metallers Emperor!! Includes lyrics too. Wow. You know you you've made it when someone publishes a fancy 129 page book of your tunes, so that fans can read your music as well as listen, and presumably learn to play it all, though this stuff is waaaaay beyond our resident beginning guitar student (Allan). Maybe years from now if he really really practices.
13 of Emperor's "greatest hits" are detailed here, including such favorites as "Cosmic Keys To My Creations And Times", "I Am The Black Wizards", "Thus Spake The Nightspirit", and "The Loss And Curse Of Reverence".
It's page after page of horizontal lines machine-gun 16th note repetition, more rhythm than melody. It looks like this music was printed out by a runaway computer. We've never seen sheet music that looks this dense and linear. It's just kinda cool to look at!
These songs were transcribed by Emperor guitarist Ihsahn himself, by the way, who also pens a humble introduction to this tome. Includes a cd (disc two of the greatest hits/rarities collection Scattered Ashes: Decade of Emperial Wrath, featuring all of the songs in the book).

FAHRES, MICHAEL The Tubes (Cold Blue) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "The Tubes"
MPEG Stream: "Savan"

FAKESCH, MICHAEL Marion (Musik Aus Strom / Studio K7) cd 16.98
Swathed in stealthy Designer's Republic packaging, Michael Fakesch's "Marion" is the first solo album from half of the German electronica duo, Funkstorung. As with most Funkstorung related projects, Fakesch's sound is superficially identical to that of Autechre. Yet, upon closer investigation, "Marion" veers ever so slightly from the archetypal Autechre sound with a bleaker take on the streaming pulse of melodic "electrons" and a more spastic fracturing of the electro breakbeat.

FASSETT, JIM Symphony Of The Birds (EM Records) cd 25.00
We recently discovered a completely amazing Japanese label called EM Records. Pretty hard to pin down what exactly it is that they specialize in but that's precisely why we're so smitten. From not one, but -several- singing saw records, to acid psych reissues, long lost singer songwriters, early experimental tape music, bizarre robot disco, fifties rock and roll, Australian dub, Isophonic boogie woogie (?) and tons more. We've only begun to dip into the wonderful world of EM, but we're going to start listing them one at a time. This record was initially the release that convinced us to get in touch with EM. Jim Fassett's Symphony Of The Birds is bizarre and beautiful and had AQ written all over it. The liner notes are mostly in Japanese so it's hard to know too many of the details, but Symphony Of The Birds is an amazing example of early tape music, it just so happens that all the tapes used were recordings of songbirds, which Fassett chopped, and cut, spliced and sequenced into a totally unique symphony of bird calls.
The record opens with Fassett's explanatory comments featuring our favorite line: "But keep in mind, as you listen, that nothing has been added. If you think you hear something that sounds like a particular musical instrument, or a human voice, or anything else other than birdcalls, YOU'RE WRONG." The first movement is definitely the best, whistles and chirps, chopped and stretched into dense swirls of psychedelic sound, if you weren't paying close attention, you'd be hard pressed to hear that it was birds making these sounds. Very trippy and spacey and alien sounding, like some crazy analog synthesizer freakout. The second movement involves a lot more itch shifting and changes in tape speed, resulting in sort of clunky purposeful melodies, the same bird call in different pitches to assemble very simple sing songy melodies. The third movement gets back on track, with some of the bird call slowed WAY down so they becomes rumbling drones, while others are sped up and repeated rapidly making impossible trills that almost sound like some blast of Sunroof!-y skree.
The last three tracks feature Fassett narrating an imaginary trip through a meadow, allowing us to study closely the bird song of each different bird isolated from the others, with some deft mixing and stereo panning, and the affect is actually quite stunning, with each bird getting 30 seconds to a minute right up on the mic! Cool!
The whole thing comes packaged in a super tough oversized (to accommodate the massive booklet) jewel case. The booklet contains lots of great photos, liner notes in Japanese, transcriptions of Fassett's spoken word segments on the disc, the album's original liner notes, and strangest of all, a pictorial guide to various and random birdcall records, separated by theme it seems: whistling accompaniment of instruments or big band, field recordings, canary training, instrumental, experimental happening (?) etc. Weird!
MPEG Stream: "Explanatory Comments"
MPEG Stream: "First Movement"
MPEG Stream: "Second Movement"

FELDMAN, MORTON Complete Music For Violin & Piano (Mode) 2cd 30.00

FELDMAN, MORTON Complete Works For Two Pianists (Alice Musik Produktion) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Like the album title states, all of the compositions that Morty scored for two pianists. The pieces were all composed between 1951 and 1963 and include several of Feldman's earliest experiments with using graphical scores. For those overwhelmed by the temporal immensity of Feldman's later works, this release might be the ticket, as all the pieces here are well under the 10 minute mark, though it was irreverently noted that listening to this disc you might be convinced you were listening to one long piece. This because many of the works in this collection instruct the pianists to play at such a glacial pace that a new note is not to be struck until the preceding one has faded completely into silence. Yet not all the tracks here hold this molasses-like tempo. There are a few pieces such as the mantra-like "Work for Two Pianists" and "Ixion - For Two Pianos" which are densely packed with notes -- enough notes to make a dozen Feldman compositions. Includes a nice 39 page essay by pianist Mats Persson on Feldman's career and his close relationship with the visual arts and artists. Comes packaged in a handsome hardcover booklet.
RealAudio clip: "Vertical Thoughts 1 for Two Pianos"
RealAudio clip: "Projection 3 for Two Pianos"

FELDMAN, MORTON Composing By Numbers (Mode) cd 16.98

FELDMAN, MORTON Ensemble Recherche Plays... (WDR) cd 14.98
Collection of recordings of Feldman's music from his "middle period" (what self-respecting composer doesn't have their oevre divided into three periods I ask you) as performed by the Ensemble Recherche. Feldman broke with the absolute serialists of his day -- Stockhausen, Babbitt, Cage & Boulez -- to compose music in an unfashionable, "intuitive" way (there's an anecdote in here of how, when Feldman was in residence at Darmstadt, Stockhausen followed him around demanding "What is your system?") and filled his pieces with slow moving, simple melodies. More importantly, he relenquished much of the authority over note durations up to the performer(s). The results are often bleak, never sterile and always texturally rich. Includes detailed notes in English by acclaimed musicologist Kyle Gann. And if you know German or French, it appears that the liner notes written in those languages are written by two different people and are completely different from one another, not merely translations.

FELDMAN, MORTON For Bunita Marcus (Sub Rosa) cd 15.98

FELDMAN, MORTON For Philip Guston (Dog W/A Bone) 4cd 51.00
One of Feldman's later, and longer, works, "For Philip Guston" clocks in at just under five hours. Performed by Petr Kotik (flute, alto flute, piccolo), Joseph Kubera (piano, celeste), and Chris Nappi (vibraphone, marimbaphone, glockenspiel, chimes) of the S.E.M. Ensemble, Guston is one of the zeniths of Feldman's acheivements. A piece stretched out to such an extreme length is, as Feldman admitted himself, quite a difficult task. The ability to have a piece which retains a natural, organic quality without losing control over it and controlling the development of the piece without being forced into repetitive banality was a compositional conundrum that Feldman struggled with more and more as his pieces grew in length. How Feldman manages to get this piece off the ground, I don't know, but he does and keeps it flying the whole 4-plus hours -- with the help of some excellent musicians. The entire piece (I hope I'm not scaring anyone out there with this) was recorded in a studio, but still has the quality of a hall performance, perhaps touched up with some nice reverb. The studio method of recording the piece has the side effect of causing such everyday performance anomalies such as page turning to become amplified much greater than what one would experience in a hall setting and the flautist Kotik suggests that this be used as a measuring device to set the volume properly at home: if you can hear the page turns clearly, turn down the volume. The booklet included with this issue has a conversation between Petr Kotik and Walter Zimmerman... but maybe "conversation" is the wrong word. I think maybe "argument" might applied here to better describe their dialog, and a hilarious argument it is. A hoot for anyone who gets a kick out of listening to musicologists scrapple.
RealAudio clip: "For Philip Guston"

FELDMAN, MORTON Give My Regards To Eighth Street: Collected Writings Of Morton Feldman (Exact Change) book 15.95

FELDMAN, MORTON Last Pieces (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98

FELDMAN, MORTON Patterns In a Chromatic Field (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Feldman is easily one of our favorite modern composers, attacking space and decay in a similar way as do many of our favorite drone artists and electronic minimalists, focusing not on the attack of a note but the various sonic colorations and permutations the note goes through as it slowly slips away. In the same way, Feldman composes with space as much as he does with sound. Very dark and meditative, dreamy and otherworldy, but somehow also quite personal and romantic. "Patterns..." has many of those obvious Feldman elements but is much more dynamic and jagged than many of his other pieces. The drifting ambient parts definitely harken back to one of our all time favorite Feldman pieces "Rothko Chapel". But unlike the calm and meditative tranquility of "Rothko Chapel", "Patterns" is peppered with jagged atonal piano and squeaking cello. While for some it will obviously detract a bit from the overall mellow moodiness, but as a whole it adds another element of tension and almost aggression, before it slips back into slowly unfolding sweetly intimate quietude.
MPEG Stream: "Patterns In A Chromatic Field"

FELDMAN, MORTON Piano And String Quartet (Hat Hut) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As far as I know this is the only the second time this piece by Feldman has been recorded -- the first by the Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi on Elektra -- but I could be wrong. Composed in 1985, Piano & String Quartet comes late in Feldman's career. Like other pieces of this period, this piece is quite lengthy, clocking in at over 70 minutes (the good people at Hat Hut have even put in arbitrary track numbers throughout the piece, just in case you can't finish it all in one sitting.) For those who found the 4 cd "For Philip Guston" a bit extreme of a commitment, this single disc might be a better introduction to Feldman's large scale works.
RealAudio clip: "Piano & String Quartet"

FELDMAN, MORTON Rothko Chapel Why Patterns? (New Albion) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

FELDMAN, MORTON String Quartet (II) (Hat Hut) 4cd 34.00
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FELDMAN, MORTON String Quartet No. 2 (Mode) dvd 38.00
In 1893 composer/prankster Erik Satie wrote a short piece for piano called "Vexations". Though the score fits easily on one page and is simple enough for even the the most novice of pianists (once they get over the note "spelling" jokes peppered within) to perform, the piece was never played in its entirety -- as the composer indicated -- until 1963. This was due to the performance instructions provided by Satie that the piece be repeated a mere 840 times, a command that would extend the length of the piece to well over an entire day -- give or take a few hours depending on one's tempo. Seventy years later John Cage and several friends, working in shifts, managed to complete it in a brief 17 hours. While Satie's intentions may have been of a humorously philosophical nature, the following century would see a veritable pissing match of composers writing longer and longer symphonies for bigger and bigger orchestras. While Morton Feldman would most certainly never be confused with the likes of grandpa Mahler, he had an ever exceding tendency for maximilizing the minimalism of his later works. We saw not long ago here at Aquarius the release of his 4 hour marathon "For Philip Guston". In a country where, with every passing year, A.D.D. is less a condition than the norm, Feldman's large scale works such as this exist as an anomaly. Webern's brief atonal morsels of the early 20th century seem more fitting to our current temperment. Feldman's later compositions are not only unrealistic for concert performance -- world premiers aside, they won't be entering the short list of the performance canon any time soon. At times the raison d'etre of these pieces seems to be more of an ascetic exercise for aspiring young performers. This performance of String Quartet No. 2, clocking in at a little over 6 hours, is a true test of a musician's endurance. A whole new set of preparations are to be taken into consideration, not the least of which is how to deal with nature's eventual call. And you can bet that prestigious, well paid string quartets like Arditti are not likely to be found cooped up in a studio for something like this. No, this is for young bucks paying their dues. While prestigious in their own rite, having played around the globe at numerous festivals to acclaim, the photo on the inside of this package of the Flux Quartet shows four young -- most certainly recently graduated from fine conservatories -- musicians with smiles on their faces (presumably this was before their non-stop performance of the piece). And while the continuing dedication of performers willing to endure such suffering is certainly a testament to the importance of Morton Feldman as one of the great composers of the late 20th century, it has still taken technology a little more time to catch up. While a single compact disc is good enough to hold the entirety of Beethoven's 9th symphony, it falls way short of handling the behemoths penned by Mr. Feldman. "For Philip Guston" which needs to be chopped up and spread out over 4 CDs would have necessitated 10 LPs back in 1984 and "String Quartet No. 2" exceeds Guston by two hours. Enter the DVD. With its ridiculous storage capacity, a single DVD can retain even the longest of compositions. You can put on "String Quartet No. 2" as you sit down for lunch and be finished as you sit down for dinner. For those of you *still* without a DVD player in this day and age, all is not lost. This edition also comes in the traditional CD form and it takes up a mere 5 discs. Don't worry, Feldman wouldn't begrudge you to listen to this piecemeal. His expectations of the listener are much less than that of the performer (and you can read all you want into his opinions on both) and he would probably encourage you to approach it in much the same way as one would approach a painting in a museum. Or maybe, as Satie might have wished, an elegant piece of furniture.
RealAudio clip: "String Quartet No. 2 [excerpt 1]"
RealAudio clip: "String Quartet No. 2 [excerpt 2]"

FELDMAN, MORTON String Quartet No. 2 (Mode) 5cd 60.00
In 1893 composer/prankster Erik Satie wrote a short piece for piano called "Vexations". Though the score fits easily on one page and is simple enough for even the the most novice of pianists (once they get over the note "spelling" jokes peppered within) to perform, the piece was never played in its entirety -- as the composer indicated -- until 1963. This was due to the performance instructions provided by Satie that the piece be repeated a mere 840 times, a command that would extend the length of the piece to well over an entire day -- give or take a few hours depending on one's tempo. Seventy years later John Cage and several friends, working in shifts, managed to complete it in a brief 17 hours. While Satie's intentions may have been of a humorously philosophical nature, the following century would see a veritable pissing match of composers writing longer and longer symphonies for bigger and bigger orchestras. While Morton Feldman would most certainly never be confused with the likes of grandpa Mahler, he had an ever exceding tendency for maximilizing the minimalism of his later works. We saw not long ago here at Aquarius the release of his 4 hour marathon "For Philip Guston". In a country where, with every passing year, A.D.D. is less a rare condition than the norm, Feldman's large scale works such as this exist as an anomaly. Webern's brief atonal morsels of the early 20th century seem more fitting to our current temperment. Feldman's later compositions are not only unrealistic for concert performance -- world premiers aside, they won't be entering the short list of the performance canon any time soon. At times the raison d'etre of these pieces seems to be more of an ascetic exercise for aspiring young performers. This performance of String Quartet No. 2, clocking in at a little over 6 hours, is a true test of a musician's endurance. A whole new set of preparations are to be taken into consideration, not the least of which is how to deal with nature's eventual call. And you can bet that prestigious, well paid string quartets like Arditti are not likely to be found cooped up in a studio for something like this. No, this is for young bucks paying their dues. While prestigious in their own rite, having played around the globe at numerous festivals to acclaim, the photo on the inside of this package of the Flux Quartet shows four young -- most certainly recently graduated from fine conservatories -- musicians with smiles on their faces (presumably this was before their non-stop performance of the piece). And while the continuing dedication of performers willing to endure such suffering is certainly a testament to the importance of Morton Feldman as one of the great composers of the late 20th century, it has still taken technology a little more time to catch up. While a single compact disc is good enough to hold the entirety of Beethoven's 9th symphony, it falls way short of handling the behemoths penned by Mr. Feldman. "For Philip Guston" which needs to be chopped up and spread out over 4 CDs would have necessitated 10 LPs back in 1984 and "String Quartet No. 2" exceeds Guston by two hours. Enter the DVD. With its ridiculous storage capacity, a single DVD can retain even the longest of compositions. You can put on "String Quartet No. 2" as you sit down for lunch and be finished as you sit down for dinner. For those of you *still* without a DVD player in this day and age, all is not lost. This edition also comes in the traditional CD form and it takes up a mere 5 discs. Don't worry, Feldman wouldn't begrudge you to listen to this piecemeal. His expectations of the listener are much less than that of the performer (and you can read all you want into his opinions on both) and he would probably encourage you to approach it in much the same way as one would approach a painting in a museum. Or maybe, as Satie might have wished, an elegant piece of furniture.
RealAudio clip: "String Quartet No. 2 [excerpt 1]"
RealAudio clip: "String Quartet No. 2 [excerpt 2]"

FELDMAN, MORTON The Viola In My Life (New World) cd 16.98

FELDMAN, MORTON Triadic Memories (Mode) 2cd 27.00

FELDMAN, MORTON Triadic Memories (Mode) dvd 30.00

FELDMAN, MORTON Turfan Fragments / For Samuel Beckett (Dog W/A Bone) cd 19.98
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The iconoclastic 20th Century composer Morton Feldman had been quite vocal in his disdain of traditional opera, making his historic collaborations throughout the '80s with author Samuel Beckett all the more idiosyncratic. Nevertheless, as the two embarked on several projects (such as the libretto "Neither") and began to delve into each other's works, it became apparant to Feldman that they in fact had quite a lot in common, as Feldman explains in the liner notes, his thoughts when composing his tribute to his friend Beckett: "Finally I see that every line is really the same thought said in another way. And yet the continuity acts as if something else is happening. Nothing else is happening. What you're doing, in an almost Proustian way, is getting deeper and deeper saturated into the thought." That is a very apt description of how Feldman's "For Samuel Beckett" sounds (perhaps my - Jim's - favorite composition from Feldman). For nearly an hour, Feldman slowly unfolds a captivating series of chord progressions which continuously reveal profoundly diverse variations in a very reductivist set of muted instruments and flat tones. For as much space that Feldman places between these eerie repititions, it's always surprising how dissonant they are, making what on the surface appears as a meditation on just slightly asymetrical tonal patterns, more of a suspension of the boundary between motion and stasis, tonality and atonality. "For Samuel Beckett" was the final composition that Feldman completed before his death in 1987.
"Turfan Fragments" was a composition dating seven years earlier, relating to a collection of 9th Century Chinese calligraphic fragments housed in Berlin's Preussicher Kulturbesitz. Compared to the lugubrious pace of "For Samuel Beckett," "Turfan Fragments" cycles much faster through the rotations of atonal leitmotifs and gradaually shifted chord progressions, sounding much more nervous than its preceeding composition on this disc. Yet, both pieces (performed here by Petr Kotik and the S.E.M. Emsemble) are exceptional and highly recommended examples of Feldman's third and final chapter of his impressive catalogue.
RealAudio clip: "For Samuel Beckett"
RealAudio clip: "Turfan Fragments"

FERRARI, LUC Cycle Des Souvenirs (1995-2000) (Blue Chopsticks) cd 14.98
A tautology is a statement which is necessarily true because it cannot be used to make a false assertion by virtue of its logical form. Often tautologies involve the needless repetition of a self-evident statement in order to prove that the idea is true; it can also take the form of asserting the truth of a statement by controlling the logic itself. Thus, the authoritarian decree, "because I said so!" defines one of the most common tautological situations. The maverick musique concrete composer Luc Ferrari continues to cite both of these definitions of a tautology when discussing his own work. The liner notes hold much more of the aura of the latter, with his autocratic voice insisting that this is important art and you better believe it! Yet his music which holds elements of the former, is far more seductive with the shifting repetitions of subtle aleatory themes that reflect Ferrari's ideas on memory as always being true to the individual who remembers. It's not clear if Ferrari has picked up these ideas from Proust, but that's another ball of wax.
His work on "Cycle Des Souvenirs" is something of an extension of the psychosexual narrative found within his "Presque Rien." Here field recordings were taken of European streets, the sea, a train station, wind through a valley, etc. with various fragments of speech whispered just beneath the surface of those judiciously edited recordings. The quiet of these passages are disrupted by clipped drum crashes which explode throughout the sonic landscape, further fragmenting the continuous spoken narrative. The end result is quite evocative, recalling Robert Ashley's masterful "Automatic Writing."
RealAudio clip: "1"
RealAudio clip: "4"

FERRARI, LUC Danses Organique (Elica) cd 16.98
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Luc Ferrari left the reptutable INA-GRM outfit in the early 70s to take his expressive electronic & musique concrete experiments to his own studio. 'Danse Organique' is one of the earliest pieces Ferrari made in his own studio. "This could be a 'strange meeting between two girls and a tape recorder' and is one of his most unorthodox, lively, and sensually charged pieces. Ferrari lent his tape recorder to two girls who are supposed to meet and start a relationship and then builds his imaginary folkloric music around their confidential dialogue... The resulting music has a groovy rhythmic quality in its surreal synthetic development and is outstandingly modern with its similarities to some very unacademic electroacoustic music.

FERRARI, LUC Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 (Blue Chopsticks) cd 13.98
The debut release on David "Gastr Del Sol" Grubbs' new Drag City-sponsored label is the cd reissue of this rare LP by French musique concrete artist Ferrari. Apparently such an important work that the label states that "any other record that sounds like this is but a pale imitation."

FERRARI, LUC Presque Rien (INA/GRM) cd 21.00
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Smugly qualified by Ferrari as a "poor man's concrete music," "Presque Rien" is a brilliant piece of musique concrete that reflects the turbulent psychological landscape of Paris in the late '60s and early '70s. While the liner notes make no reference to participation in or sympathy with the Parisian rebellion of May 1968, Ferrari's "Music Promenade" (which opens the "Presque Rien" album) has a rough-hewn, decentralized quality which appears to refer to the incendiary immediacy of those few weeks. Yet as soon as the "Presque Rien" suites begin, the politically charged references of grim military waltzes, impassioned revolutionary speeches, and whirling factory sounds are done away with, in favor of subtle collages of natural sounds. It is as if Ferrari set up an aesthestic antithesis between the tense, urban sounds on "Music Promenade" and the suposedly placid sounds of nature on the rest of the album, all the while maintaining a firm grip on a psychoanalysis upon the landscape. Like Robert Ashley's ultra creepy "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon," Ferrari intertwines fragments of various whispered narratives with the steady buzzings of choral cicadas, as if each narration were that of a voyeur spying upon the intimacy of nature. Upon superficial listens, "Presque Rien" appears somewhat simple; however, do yourself the favor by listening to this attentively (preferrably on headphones) to capture the subtle theatrics of Ferrari's composition.
RealAudio clip: "Music Promenade 1"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien 2 pt. 2"
RealAudio clip: "Presque Rien Avec Filles pt. 1"

FERRARI, LUC Tautologos And Other Early Electronic Works (EMF Media) cd 14.98
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Collection of early recordings from one of the pioneers of Musique Concrete. Includes "Etudes aux Accidents" & "Etudes aux sons Tendus" (from 1958), "Visages V" (1959), "Tete et Queue du Dragon" (1960), "Tautologos 1 & 2" (1961) and "Und so Weiter" (1966).
MPEG Stream: "Etudes Aux Accidents"
MPEG Stream: "Und So Weiter, Part 1"