LYE, LEN Composing Motion (Atoll) cd 17.98
Len Lye was a staple of the 50's and 60's art scene in Greenwich Village and a leading figure in the burgeoning field of kinetic art. He designed and built a series of large scale metal sculptures that not only moved, but also created sound. Just to look at, the sculptures are breathtaking, very sleek and modern, simple and stunning, large sheets of steel, strange little metallic antennae, long twisted metal strips, all hanging or spinning or vibrating. Like some alien machines, whose function can not be discerned. So mysterious and lovely. This disc is the first time the sounds of Lye's sculptures have been recorded and released commercially. And they are just as haunting and beautiful as the strange pieces of metal that produced them. The sounds are quite varied, depending on the piece, from reverberating pulses, like a struck spring, whirring metallic drones, the overtones shifting in pitch as the metal bends and twists, warm subterranean whirs, musicbox like melodies, simple subtle chimes, clattery clang and crash, subtle almost industrial rhythms, like a sprinkler or the blades on a helicopter, scraping metallic soundscapes, like a million little metal bugs rustling alongside one another, and then there's some full on spaced out swirl and hiss and shimmer like wires whipping in the wind, which sounds like Merzbow or Total, way too dense and weird to be the work of nothing but a big piece of metal, but it is. Magical, mysterious and pretty darn amazing. 
Comes with a big book of linernotes, text about the performances / recordings as well as lovely photos of each of Lye's sculptures.
MPEG Stream: "Blade"
MPEG Stream: "Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Roundhead"

MACE Circulations (Sub Rosa) cd 14.98
Circulations is an instrumental album in four sections, for four instruments: drums, guitar, harp and clarinet. And tape. Which we'll explain in a second. First though, let's just say: this is so GREAT. But it's been tough to review. 'Cause there's a lot of explaining to do. And it's the sort of thing where, yup, the construction of the music IS interesting, but reading about it sorta might make it sound like an academic exercise. Which it may be, in part. But our point is, that even if you don't know how it came about, academics aside it's a really really great listen! Like a crazy soundtrack, sort of (a lot of this would be perfect for some freaky '70s Italian horror/sci-fi/suspense flick). Sometimes bewilderingly dense, at others beautifully melodic and simple. There's a chaotic tangle of sounds but it's carefully crafted, moving through (and returning to) many moods.
You'll encounter moments of heavy distorto-percussion frenzy that sound not unlike Village of Savoonga, This Heat or Dead C. Passages of pretty melody carried by the harp or the clarinet. Intense, echoing drumscapes. Shimmering textures, loud stabs of skronk guitar, placid strings, stirring arpeggios, glitchy stutter. It's very dynamic indeed. Sometime simple and serene, sometimes seriously scrambled and spliced. A complex assemblage of sounds constantly morphing and mutating...
But let's give the background on this, 'cause we're sure that some of you will be intrigued. Basically, the deal here is that young French composer Pierre-Yves Mace (who has one other album out, on Tzadik), wrote out four solos for the four instruments (drums, guitar, harp, clarinet). The musicians in question recorded these solos. Then Mace took those recordings and created four processed tape-collage backing tracks to accompany each of the original individual solos, which were then slightly revised and performed again over the tapes that Mace created. Thus four movements, created in four stages, for Percussion/Tape, Guitar/Tape, Harp/Tape, and Clarinet/Tape. (It says "tape" here, so we will too, though we suspect a computer was involved at some point, not just old-fashioned cut and splice procedures.) The 'solo' instrument is the focus of each track, but you'll hear from all of 'em throughout the disc. Fortunately, Mace's talents extend beyond this disc's conceptual framework, however interesting. While it's fun to listen and try to pick out the sounds from each solo that have been processed and transposed and otherwise recontextualized in the taped accompaniment (you'll be cross referencing from one movement to another, looking for traces of a guitar lick or clarinet motif heard elsewhere), the end-result music is just as interesting and enjoyable without even thinking about how it was created.
It stands on its own as a highly-charged, detailed and often gorgeous instrumental piece of music, which could be a brilliant electro-acoustic improv session, kinda like Ground Zero or Supersilent or those Spring Heel Jack improv projects, that blend live instruments with live electronics and sampling (self-sampling in this case). But with a 20th (21st?) century classical feel. And it's definitely composed and purposeful. Very impressive. There's certainly been a few great releases lately from the Belgian label Sub Rosa (Tibetan Buddhist Rites, Mitchell Akiyama's Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep) and now this. Recommended!
MPEG Stream: "1st Movement For Percussion / Tape"
MPEG Stream: "4th Movement For Clarinet / Tape"

MACE, PIERRE-YVES Faux-Jumeaux (Tzadik) cd 15.98

MACEDA, JOSE Gongs and Bamboos (Tzadik) cd 16.98
When Tzadik says something like "one of the most original and underappreciated composers in contemporary music" it should be taken with more than one grain of salt, yet the presentation of Philipino composer Jose Maceda certainly holds up to such critical praise. Well versed in both the temple musics of Southeast Asia and the conceptually minded compositions of Varese and Xenakis, Maceda explores an interesting form of minimalism using very large ensembles performing upon Southeast Asian instruments. "Pagsamba," for example, is a massive composition for 100 bamboo flutes, 100 bamboo, 100 bamboo clappers, 100 wooden bars and beaters, 100 bamboo scrapes for 100 instrumentalists, 8 gongs with stopped sounds, 8 gongs with free sounds, 5 male vocal quintets, and 100 mixed vocals. Whew! In a score that seems rather open-ended and no apparent lyrics to the free-floating vocals, "Pagsamba" has more than a few similarities to "The Great Learning" by Cornelius Cardew. "Suling-Suling" is another piece of extended minimalism for a 30 member ensemble for flutes, bamboo buzzers, and flat gongs with a composition that again is somewhat open-ended. As the performance of "Suling-Suling" was done by the Mills Contemporary Ensemble, it has much more of that "stumbling down the stairs" feel. The final piece "Colors Without Rhythms" (as perfomed by the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra) is a piece for intertwining percussion, vibraphone, harp, strings, woodwinds, etc... recalling Terry Riley's painterly "In C."

MARCHETTI, WALTER De Musicorum Infelicitate (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
Eccentric Italian composer Walter Marchetti (whose albums "Nei Mari Del Sud" and "Antibarbarus" are two excellent and highly evocative pieces of electro-acoustic composition) here accompanies his "De Musicorum Infelicitate" with a fragmented manifesto that pines for "a magniloquent destructio musicae, the destruction of an administrated practice, or a tautological exercise devoid of inner necessity." The 10 six-minute pieces of incredibly dense piano solos found within this composition are meant to be so impenetrable as to merely reflect back upon themselves, thus revealing that music merely speaks of itself. Purposefully frustrating and complex.

MARCHETTI, WALTER Nei Mari Del Sud. Musica In Secca (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
Beautiful calligraphic tones -- the result of a piano triggering six magnetic tapes, whose signals are displaced out-of-phase, reverberating quietly and slowly over empty space in this stunning piece by Marchetti -- dark and ominous. Along with some excessive liner notes (if you thought we could be long winded), there's an awsome photo of Walt on the back cover enjoying a martini at some dark hotel bar.

MARCHETTI, WALTER Per La Sete Dell'Orecchio (Cramps) cd 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This disc features three distinct pieces from the sonically adventurous composer Walter Marchetti. The first "Per La Sete Dell'Orecchio" is a beautiful action piece in which a burly Latvian man methodically hurls boulders into a deep cavernous pool (although when I listen to it, I like to pretend it's my coworker Byram tossing rocks into a swimming pool)... and the 'score' might not have specified Latvian brawn, but nonetheless the carefully recorded resonations and the natural echoes from objects dropped into deep waters were intentionally composed for this meditative piece. "Da Nulla E Verso Nulla" appears to be an homage to Harry Partch with playful wooden percussion over oscillating electronics. And Marchetti's "Song For John Cage" is a tranquil collage sewn from multitracked chirps of grasshoppers.

MAXFIELD, RICHARD / HAROLD BUDD The Oak Of The Golden Dreams (New World Records) cd 15.98
A split release between Richard Maxfield and Harold Budd (known for his collaborations with Eno) showcasing their 1960's experiments in electronics and free jazz. Maxfield's work ranges from synthetic 60s concrete / electronic pieces to narrated poetry over uptempo Ornette Coleman style free jazz. Budd's "The Oak of the Golden Dreams" is the highlight - a gritty piece of Steve Reich / Angus MacLise inspired minimalism of persistantly droning chords and loopy flanging notes making the whole piece sound like an electronic bagpipe.

MCLEAN, BARTON AND PRISCILLA Electronic Landscapes (EM Records) cd 23.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More pioneering electronic music unearthed by Japan's EM Records (previous releases include discs by Barton Smith, David Rosenboom, and Noah Creshevsky). This time, it's Barton and Priscilla McLean. A husband and wife team, but no Sonny and Cher here!! This duo performed live as the "McLean Mix", and were responsible for a bunch of sought-after Folkways LPs in their time, including 1979's "Electro-Symphonic Landscapes" (all the tracks from which are found here). The cover of this cd is an adaptation of the cover of that LP, the artwork actually being the graphical score for Barton's "Song Of The Nahuatl" (it's interesting to note that while the McLeans worked together, they didn't collaborate compositionally it seems -- half the tracks here are by the Mr. and half by the Mrs.). The McLeans got their start together in electronic composition in academia, at the University of Indiana, South Bend, 'round about 1973, when the Music Department there brought in a huge EMS Synthi-100 synthesizer and Synthi-256 sequencer. Hours of tape-splicing creativity would ensue! That mega-synthesizer was later repossessed (!) so the McLeans turned to musique concrete techniques (bouncing steak knives on violin strings, metal bars on piano strings, that sort of thing) to source their sounds, combined with the output of what electronic equipment they were able to access. Much of this disc, tracks dating back to 1975, feature this sort of laborious processing of sound. And the results are fantastic! Reminds us a bit of the classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack by Louis and Bebe Barron, another husband and wife team who preceded the McLeans in the annals of electronic music... In addition to the vintage '70s stuff here, there's a couple tracks of some newer material from the digital age... which holds up quite well, actually! Keening drones, mysterious pulses, psychedelic bleepage -- yep, way better than Sonny n' Cher!
EM has graciously provided both English and Japanese liner notes, so the 22 page cd booklet makes good reading for anyone curious about the McLeans' musical methodology, as well as providing cool graphics and intriguing photos to ponder.
MPEG Stream: PRISCILLA MCLEAN "Voices Of The Invisible"
MPEG Stream: BARTON MCLEAN "Song Of The Nahuatl"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR KMH (Unseen Worlds) cd 13.98
Ever since we heard Wave-Lox, possibly the most famous piece by composer/pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, we were totally smitten. The sound an impossible mashup of Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine. A modern reimagining of the minimalist tradition, with his Continuous Music system developed over years and years, finding inspiration in harmony and expressing it through fluidity and virtuosity, dense flurries of notes. Later, the playing would become faster, even setting a world record, but always at the core of Melnyk's sound, was harmony and melody and simple beauty. 
It's appropriate that KMH is the first actual Melnyk cd ever released (all the rest have been cd-r's) as this was his first actual recording. After years of perfecting this new technique, KMH was finally released in 1978, and while reminiscent of Reich's Music For 18 Musicians, it was something entirely new. Sound based on the movement of dancers, the music of moving and standing still all at once. 
For those of you familiar with other Melnyk discs we reviewed, the sound here, while notably different, will at once be quite familiar, the main difference being that the sound is not so dense, there are not so many notes, the playing is not quite as fast, instead, it's deeper, and slower and almost dreamier, still warm and magical, but like a slowed down, relaxed version of Wave-Lox. Almost more traditionally twentieth century sounding, but at the same time, still wonderfully unique, and much more emotionally resonant than much modern minimalism. 
For those who have yet to experience the amazing sounds of Lubomyr Melnyk, this is the perfect introduction, the first recorded instance of his Continuous Music, a technique involving continuos melodies, constant playing up and down the keyboard, with the pedals constantly depressed, allowing the notes to ring out and drift into one another, the various notes and overtones blending and beating, creating strange and mysterious harmonies. 
Little fluttering clouds of notes drift in weightless swirls, like dust motes in beams of sunlight. It's like the musical equivalent of a snowglobe, notes drifting and floating everywhere, forming shapes, and then just as quickly turning back into separate notes again, the sound both wintry and warm, dreamily dizzying and serenely soothing. So totally captivating. A glorious glimpse into the formative stages of one of our favorite modern composers. 
Packaged with all new artwork, new liner notes, photos, and the original liner notes from the original release.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Legend and Song of Galadriel (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site for more about Melnyk and Continuous Music, because while The Song Of Galadriel employs similar technique, the results are a bit different.
It's hard to know what to say about this piece. On first listen it is much more traditionally classical sounding than Melnyk's other works, but according to the liner notes it is "one of the composer's most deeply personal and melodic works so far", and one can almost hear that in the music. Much darker, with much more attention paid to the lower registers, giving the piece a dark and ominous feel. The low end rumbles and sustains creating a warm dark drone above which little squalls of tinkling melodies swirl and soar. The main melody is quite subtle, being that it is created by hundreds of notes together, a lot like looking at a picture too close, so all you see are dots and lines, but as you step back, a picture begins to take shape. This is indeed lovely, and mournful and rich with emotion, while Melnyk's other pieces are more abstract and serve more as abstract and meditative, Galadriel definitely seems to have a narrative, and listening from start to finish, one definitely feels like a story was told, life and love and loss and hope and death and forgiveness all somehow represented in tiny little piano pixels. So totally fantastic.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "Song Of Galadriel"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Remnants Of A Man / The Fountain (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
This is the fourth record we've reviewed from Lubomyr Melnyk, pianist and inventor of the Continuous Music technique. A customer suggest we check him out describing him as sounding like three Terry Riley records being played at once. And it does. And it's amazing. Anyone who owns any of the other three will most likely want this one too. It's definitely similar as are all the pieces utilizing Melnyk's technique, but it has its own unique sound and arrangement that makes it just as special as any of the other recordings we've had. And as with many things we just can't get enough.
For those of you who missed the titles we already listed or are new to the AQ list, here's a little info about Melnyk and his amazing technique:
In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. At once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away.
Just re-reading that gets us excited all over again. This music is indeed amazing and incredibly unique. A dizzying swirl of solo piano. So dense and deep it doesn't sound like it could possibly be coming from just two pianos. It's almost like someone took a million pianos, removed every note from each piano, placed them in some sort of giant container, shook it up, and then dumped all the notes over our heads. But somehow, the notes fall in perfectly predetermined patterns creating impossibly complex melodies and totally breathtakingly lovely textures and arrangements.
"Remnants Of A Man" was recorded in Stockholm in 1985 and is probably the least abstract and most directly dramatic piece we've heard. Beneath the flurries of high notes are huge resounding minor key chords. So dark and ominous. Within the piece is included a direct melodic reference to Beethoven, a short bit from his 9th symphony, Melnyk's tribute to Beethoven and his unhappy life. In fact the piece is themed around the futility of love, and you can totally hear it in the notes. Sad and sorrowful, intense and so emotional.
"The Fountain" is more of what we might consider traditional Melnyk, the cascade of notes composed to sound like the water of a fountain. And unlike most of his pieces, the first half of "The Fountain" is performed without the sustain pedal depressed, which means the notes are dry and there are no drawn out overtones, it's remarkable to hear the complexity of performance and composition. Almost like looking up into a sky full or raindrops or snowflakes.
The final track "Niche" is an excerpt from a longer piece and is an example of solo piano in the Continuous Mode, a glistening, sparkling, shimmering world of lighter than air melodies, gentle drifts of notes, cobwebby tangles of delicate melody, completely effervescent and dreamlike. Awesome.
Lots of super technical liner notes as always, with a brief history of Melnyk and the Continuous Music technique. Be sure to check out Wave-Lox, The Voice Of Trees and the Legend And Song Of Galadriel too!
MPEG Stream: "Remnants Of A Man"
MPEG Stream: "The Fountain"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR The Lund-St. Petri Symphony (Bandura) 2cd-r 32.00
It's been a while since we've heard from pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, master and creator of the Continuous Music technique, a playing style that involves incredible dexterity, the player creating swirling flurries of notes, in fact, Melnyk holds the record for most notes played per second! But as we've mentioned in past reviews, Continuous Music is no mere gimmick, Melnyk uses his technique to create dense shifting soundscapes, almost like a 20th Century Classical Oval, notes and melodies constantly in flux, dizzying and dreamy, a massive shape shifting organic whole, that seems to constantly change shape and tone and timbre. But the music of Melnyk is not difficult listening, just the opposite. His music is serene and hypnotic, mesmerizing and gorgeous. You can read way more about Melnyk and his technique in some of the other reviews, but needless to say, every new release is a thrill. And yes, it's another cd-r, but according to Melnyk and the label, there are so many pieces, that they'd rather make them all accessible, instead of making 1000 copies of just one. Who are we to argue? Besides, there's the fact that aQuarius is one of the only places in the world you can get Melnyk records.
Anyway, The Lund-St. Petri Symphony is another example of Melnyk's incredible skill and his deft arranging. This piece, originally composed and performed on organ, is recorded here on solo and double piano and is another shimmery expanse of Continuous music, with Melnyk sustaining a speed of 11-14 notes in each hand for the entire duration of the piece! What's even crazier, is it was meant to be played on THREE pianos (or organs), but was never recorded due to the fact that according to Melnyk, that much sound would not translate to modern recording techniques. There were plans to record the third part and release it as a separate lp so folks with two turntables could experience it in all its 3 piano glory, but it hardly matters, even on one piano, the sound is stirring. Minor key and melancholy, the notes glisten and glimmer, the melodies dense and ever shifting, the whole thing so completely entrancing. If you can imagine Pop Ambient music being created with just pianos, it would probably sound something like this.
As always, WAY recommended, this one only available at AQ as far as we know, and limited (maybe only 50 copies?). You like Oval, Eno, new age, Pop Ambient, or just wondered what it would sound like to hear 10 or 12 'normal' piano players all playing the same piece simultaneously, well, a little like this. Divine!
MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 1"
MPEG Stream: "NKR 22 Pt. 2"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR The Voice Of Trees (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
The name Lubomyr Melnyk is most likely not familiar to you. It definitely wasn't to us. Until a customer suggested we check out this unique piano player. He told us he thought it sounded like playing three Terry Riley records at the same time, which sounded pretty darn good. And we were not disappointed. It was everything we hoped it would be and more. We got a disc called Wave-Lox in, and we have been unable to keep it in stock, a swirling flurry of impossibly fast notes, a billowy cloud of piano ambience. How about a quick recap on the illustrious Mr. Melnyk:
In the early 70's Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes.
That's right. World's fastest pianist. But Melnyk uses his powers for good. This is not wanky showboating, or Yngwie style pointless shredding, no this speed is necessary to realize his music, dense swirls of hundreds and hundreds of notes, whirling and swirling, overtones shifting and tonal color slowly changing. It's like looking at a pointilist painting close up, or sitting two inches from the television, colored dots, streaks of light, weaving in and around and all about each other, creating almost dronelike ambience, that seems almost static from a distance, but up close, it's made up of millions of tiny flitting parts and pieces. See the review for Wave-Lox elsewhere on the site, because while The Voice Of Trees employs similar technique, the results are quite different.
The Voice Of Trees is a piece for 3 tubas and 2 pianos, composed and performed to accompany a dance performance by the Kilina Cremona Dance Company. In the liner notes it states that since NO other piano player has the skill to play Melnyk's compositions, he had to pretape on of the piano parts and play the other live. And this is a live recording, so if you listen very closely you can sometimes hear the feet of the dancers. This piece also holds the distinction of being composed partially in "Geometric Form" a type of musical composition invented by Melnyk (after the works of Russian philosopher Ouspensky) where musical events are dictated by mathematics, geometry and the Fourth Dimension (!?). Woah! But fear not, you don't need a physics degree to sit back, close your eyes and let this loveliness carry you right off.
The focus is still Melnyk's Continuous Music, a flurry of notes like leaves carried on the wind, but it's the tuba that adds an unlikely slant to the proceedings. By themselves, the two pianos are a hypnotic drone, dense and slowly moving and constantly shifting, totally lovely. But the tuba adds structure, and its low mournful melodies add a certain morose quality to the piece, and make it sound classical and more like some abstract epic post-rock, played on piano and tuba. Sound weird, and it is, but it's also so gorgeous, and so intense. The piano is dizzying, the listener sort of drifts back and forth from letting the notes blend together into a swoonsome whole, and seeing every note, trying to make sense of the thousands of notes, trying to understand the patterns and the composition. And that's where the tubas come in, allowing the pianos to act as a lush backdrop, while the tubas moan and croon their lonesome melodies. Amazing.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing.
MPEG Stream: "One"
MPEG Stream: "Two"

MELNYK, LUBOMYR Wave-Lox (Bandura) cd-r 16.98
This AQ fave finally back in stock!
We had never heard of Lubomyr Melnyk, nor his 'Continuous Music method' before. But the more we learn the more we fall in love with this iconoclastic modern innovator. In the early '70s Melnyk developed a unique approach to the piano called Continuous Music, a physical and mental technique that allowed Melnyk to play an incredible amount of notes at an incredible speed. In fact he holds two world records, one as the fastest pianist in the world, sustaining speeds of over 19.5 notes per second in each hand, simultaneously! And two, for the most number of notes played in one hour! In 60 minutes, Melnyk sustained an average speed of over 13 notes per second in each hand, yielding a total of 93,650 INDIVIDUAL notes. Holy shit!! But don't be mislead, this is not some Yngwie bullshit, where songs and composition are sacrificed for mere shredding. No, there is a method to Melnyk's madness, and the result says all that needs to be said. Continuous Music as you might have surmised, involves generating an extremely rapid flow of notes, with the pedal sustained non stop, patterns, broken chords, the sound is dense and dizzying, like glimpsing the inner workings of some tiny lifeform and watching atoms and molecules spin and swirl. The result of so many notes, played so quickly and so close together, with the overtones drifting and bleeding into each other, is some of the most breathtaking music we've ever heard. It's almost like a waterfall of piano notes, a frothy cascade of tinkling sparkling melody, or a laying beneath a perfectly black night sky, watching a million fireflies dance and flit, a sky full of tiny little streaks of light. Someone described Wave-Lox as three Terry Riley playing at once, which is not that far off the mark. Or imagine a thousand George Winstons spinning weightless in space, notes everywhere careening wildly, but with some strangely indescribable pattern. The sound of Wave-Lox is at once chaotic and soothing, confusional yet serene. Close listening yields so much detail, like looking at a piano concerto through a microscope, not so close listening offers the listener a glorious abstract soundscape on which to drift away. Wave-Lox is actually a piece for 2 pianos (giving you an idea of the density and number of notes we're talking about here) and 3 contra-bass, which offer the same sonic complexities as the piano, making a rich sonic stew even more deliriously dense.
It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing. And for those of you who are especially moved by this music, you can write to Melnyk and purchase a course that will train you to be able to play Continuous Music. But be warned, Continuous Music requires serious discipline, in fact Melnyk, when he first started out, was unable to perform the pieces he composed, and only after years of strict discipline, including extra training, both physical and mental, in the form of martial techniques like Tai Chi, was he finally able to play the music the way he intended it to be played. SO AWESOME!!
These are professionally printed cd-r's with full color covers and extensive liner notes, they are bit more expensive than most cd-r's we carry because instead of mass producing one or two titles, Melnyk wanted to make available all of the pieces he has been working on for the last 20 years. Thus each disc is pressed in a super limited run, but what that also means is that there are 50 or more different pieces to choose from, all of them utterly amazing. We currently have about 10 different titles in stock, and while Wave-Lox is our favorite so far, one of the others features Melnyk on piano accompanied by multiple tubas! So drop us an email if you're interested in any of the other titles, but for now revel in the beautiful beautiful music of Wave-Lox!
MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 1"
MPEG Stream: "Wave-Lox 2"

MESSIAEN, OLIVIER Oeuvres Pour Piano Et Orchestre (Koch) cd 15.98

MIMAROGLU, ILHAN Agitation (Locust) cd 14.98

MOE, OLE-HENRIK Ciaccona / 3 Persephone Perceptions (Rune Grammofon) 2cd 22.00
Not for the faint of heart. But pretty bad ass. If you can say that about an academic, avant-garde, micro-detailed, solo VIOLIN recording. Two discs worth to boot! Norwegian composer Ole-Henrik Moe (henceforth known as OHM as per the liner notes), who studied with extreme 20th c. classical dude Iannis Xenakis, offers up 43+40 minutes of stark, scary musick, all brilliantly performed by his wife, violinist Kari Ronnekleiv. Disc one, "Ciaccona", is a tour-de-force of scratching and sawing and scraping, tortured strings sculpting some kind of strange and terrible beauty out of the vast (yet intimate) soundspace that the resonant silences present here delineate. In fact, these recordings took place an a (presumably empty) church, that Ronnekleiv alone fills with menacing drones. It's pretty frickin' amazing that this is all played straight through by one person. She's got incredible stamina and such subtle, awesome control, her fingers commanding overtones, with no overdubs.
More high end shriek and suspenseful shimmer is to be heard on disc two, "3 Persephone Perceptions". On both discs, at times it's like you're hearing the violin analog to a free jazz saxphonist's circular breathing freakout, or for that matter a demented little kid's frantic balloon-rubbing. But plenty of it is quiet and atmospheric as well, full of droning delicate waver, suggesting the weeping of a frightened child. Sudden bursts of sound are the whip hand coming down.
With all these dynamics of hush and hysterics, this is a palate cleanser that puts other stuff in perspective... put on some, say, Wolf Eyes or Yellow Swans on after this and they'll sound like campfire singalongs. Heck try this back to back with some black metal, we swear the corpsepainted ones will seem just a little less intense than they previously did. Hmm...Orthrelm/Octis might be a match for it though. Maybe it's the association we make between stabbing violins and stabbing knives due to Bernard Herrmann's infamous score to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, but this is definitely "shower scene" music at times. And the whole thing could easily be running through the head of any self-respecting resident of your local Asylum for the Criminally Insane. Play it LOUD. And tremble.
Perhaps how we're describing this isn't what OHM intended... but c'mon it's what any normal person's gonna hear. And also what any abnormal person (i.e. typical AQ customer) who digs the weirder, out-there edges of "20th Century Classical" (a la Xenakis), is gonna like.
Comes in the usual nice Rune Grammofon packaging with a suitably evocative Kim Hiorthoy designed digipack sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 14"
MPEG Stream: "3 Persephone Perceptions track 3"
MPEG Stream: "Ciaccona track 2"

MOONDOG And His Friends (Honest Jon's) 10" 13.98
This vinyl-only reissue from the eccentric Mr. Moondog gets a guest review here from our pal Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records:
Originally released on Epic in 1953, this long-playing EP is one of the greatest artifacts of the blind New York percussionist available. On par with the excellent Prestige years, with a similar vibe. However, there is something darker here, with an almost acid edge...and the sounds come ripping off the well-mastered vinyl ever so thickly. This classically packaged ten inch boasts an instrumental round that is the precursor to the great All Is Loneliness To Me, "Rim Shot" which is reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ruminy Soup", and two suites that brilliantly use lush strings behind the signature Moondog hypnotizing percussion. "Be a hobo and go with me," Moondog sings...and why not join him?

MOONDOG And His Friends 2006 (Moondog's Corner) cd 19.98
Finally on cd, this is an AQ favorite from one of our most beloved musicians of the last half century. This new edition includes 3 bonus tracks of some current day folks like Stefan Lakatos adding their own flavor to preexisting Moondog tracks. But of course the real gold here is the original record which is Moondog in his full glory! We only wish this reissue had a little bit more in the way of elaborate packaging as this just comes in a cardboard sleeve. Here is what our pal Dave Katznelson of Birdman Records said about this record when he reviewed it for us back when we had the 10" version in stock:
Originally released on Epic in 1953, this long-playing EP is one of the greatest artifacts of the blind New York percussionist available. On par with the excellent Prestige years, with a similar vibe. However, there is something darker here, with an almost acid edge...and the sounds come ripping off the well-mastered vinyl ever so thickly. This classically packaged ten inch boasts an instrumental round that is the precursor to the great All Is Loneliness To Me, "Rim Shot" which is reminiscent of Tyrannosaurus Rex's "Ruminy Soup", and two suites that brilliantly use lush strings behind the signature Moondog hypnotizing percussion. "Be a hobo and go with me," Moondog sings...and why not join him?
MPEG Stream: "Theme And Variation - Rim Shots"
MPEG Stream: "Tree Frog - Be A Hobo"
MPEG Stream: "Suite No. One Third Movement"

MOONDOG The Viking of Sixth Avenue (Honest Jon's) cd 16.98
In our minds, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century was a man with a long white beard and a Viking helmet on his head -- Louis Hardin (aka Moondog). Whether it was how he incorporated field recordings into his compositions, unleashed riveting vocal cannons or created confusional worlds of percussion that were light-years ahead of their time, he had such a singular touch and far reaching vision, it's no surprise he's an all time AQ favorite!
While we love so many avant composers of the 20th century, there tends to be an undeniable academic angle to their work which sometimes leaves us a bit cold. Moondog on the other hand employed such a playful approach to his work. Whether he was building his own instruments, creating new scales, experimenting with field recordings, inserting fun wordplay into otherwise austere pieces, you get this amazing sense of playfulness, childlike wonder and a totally unique strangely sophisticated kind of joy. The outsider that he was, Moondog answered to no one. No movement, no school, no tradition. He took his love, appreciation and deep-seated knowledge of classical music, his poetic mind, and his free spirit and created sounds that were like nothing of its time. Losing his eyesight at an early age he began writing scores in Braille. Like most truly special artists, he spent much of his life in relative obscurity, he spent much of the 50's and 60's on New York street corners where he would sell his poems, record the sounds of daily life, and soak in all aspects of his atmosphere. Most New Yorkers just thought they were walking by some crazy homeless guy in a Viking costume, they had no idea they were passing one of the most brilliant musical minds of the last century. Thanks to the help of some of his big fans like Janis Joplin, who covered "All Is Loneliness" on her first outing with Big Brother Holding Company, he got a record deal with Columbia and eventually recorded with the London Symphony, and then spent the last 20+ years of his life in Germany where a rich family supported him while he continued to make music, up until the time of his death. His influence runs so deep and continues to spread among the musical underground, but also slowly but surely permeates into mainstream music. There is talks of a tribute album coming soon, in the '90s many hip-hop and electronic producers sampled his works and many avant electronic folks were definitely influenced by his strange musicks, including Mr. Scruf, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. Antony and The Johnsons have been doing an amazing version of "All Is Loneliness" in their live show, and you can hear echoes of Moondog's sounds in everyone from Rhys Chatham, to Jon Brion, to Steve Reich, to Philip Glass and even The Residents. The cost on this collection finally dropped down from a prohibitively steep import price so now we finally can list this and urge you to let these 36 songs introduce you to what will no doubt be a life long love affair with one of our favorite musical minds of all time!
MPEG Stream: "All Is Loneliness"
MPEG Stream: "Oo Debut"
MPEG Stream: "Oasis"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

MOONDOG The Viking of Sixth Avenue (Honest Jon's) 2lp 27.00
In our minds, one of the greatest composers of the 20th century was a man with a long white beard and a viking helmet on his head -- Louis Hardin (aka Moondog). Whether it was how he incorporated field recordings into his compositions, unleashed riveting vocal cannons or created confusional worlds of percussion that were light-years ahead of their time, he had such a singular touch and far reaching vision, it's no surprise he's an all time AQ favorite!
While we love so many avant composers of the 20th century, there tends to be an undeniable academic angle to their work which sometimes leaves us a bit cold. Moondog on the other hand employed such a playful approcach to his work. Whether he was building his own instruments, creating new scales, experimenting with field recordings, inserting fun wordplay into otherwise austere pieces, you get this amazing sense of playfulness, childlike wonder and a totally unique strangely sophisticated kind of joy. The outsider that he was, Moondog answered to no one. No movement, no school, no tradition. He took his love, appreciation and deep running knowledge of classical music, his poetic mind, and his free spirit and created sounds that were like nothing of its time. Losing his eyesight at an early age he began writing scores in Braille. Like most truly special artists, he spent much of his life in relative obscurity, he spent much of the 50's and 60's on New York street corners where he would sell his poems, record the sounds of daily life, and soak in all aspects of his atmosphere. Most New Yorkers just thought they were walking by some crazy homeless guy in a viking costume, they had no idea they were passing one of the most brilliant musical minds of the last century. Thanks to the help of some of his big fans like Janis Joplin, who covered All Is Loneliness on her first outing with Big Brother Holding Company, he got a record deal with Columbia and eventually recorded with the London Symphony, and then spent the last 20+ years of his life in Germany where a rich family supported him while he continued to make music, up until the time of his death. His influence runs so deep and continues to spread among the musical undeground, but also slowly but surely permeates into mainstream music. There is talks of a tribute album coming soon, in the 90's many hip-hop and electronic producers sampled his works and many avant electronic folks were definitely influenced by his strange musicks, including Mr. Scruf, DJ Shadow and Aphex Twin. Antony and The Johnsons have been doing an amazing version of All is Loneliness in their live show, and you can hear echoes of Moondog's sounds in everyone from Rhys Chatham, to Jon Brion, to Steve Reich, to Philip Glass and even The Residents. The cost on this collection finally dropped down from a prohibitively steep import price so now we finally can list this and urge you to let these 36 songs introduce you to what will no doubt be a life long love affair with one of our favorite musical minds of all time!
MPEG Stream: "All Is Loneliness"
MPEG Stream: "Oo Debut"
MPEG Stream: "Oasis"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation"

MORRICONE, ENNIO Psycho Morricone (GDM) cd 16.98
Ah, Morricone compilations. So many to choose from, so little time (and money). Being an avowed Morricone fan-atic, I (Windy) have had to be very very picky with all these records suddenly appearing out of the woodwork. I mean, we want quality, right. Some bang for our buck. It's quite nice that Dagored has taken to releasing worthy, whole soundtracks to single films that Morricone scored (altho please put out Come Maddalena!), and yes, it's also nice when a variety of labels collect the best tracks for those of you who only want one or two Morricone cds. But the *point* of the collections is to represent his best work, and to dispense with the filler tracks, or the ones that just obviously don't work when there's no images to accompany them. Unfortunately it would appear that Psycho Morricone, which claims to feature tracks from twelve Morricone-scored films such as Copkiller, Il Serpente, L'Attentato, Revolver, etc, is comprised of just that: filler! It's decent music of course, but Morricone fans will not find any unearthed gems, or even any memorable melodies or effects. It's basically lot of scary high-pitched violins, and some rackety percussion, and it's only slightly scary or 'psycho'. I'm looking forward to hearing the other attempts by GDM to collect Morricone stuff, namely the Bizarre Morricone and the Chase Morricone titles, but this one is, sadly, a disappointment.
RealAudio clip: "Rapimento"
RealAudio clip: "Paura e aggressione"

MORTON, JOHN Outlier: Music for Music Boxes (Innova) cd 14.98
New York pianist / composer / instrument builder John Morton has composed 5 pieces based around electronic and physical augmentation of traditional music boxes. Thus, the whirring plinks and tiny melodies of his arsenal of music boxes are central to Morton's work, but have occasionally been modulated by computer synthesis into odd timbres or altered like a prepared piano with tiny pieces of metal shifting the tones into clumsy thuds. While his multiple music boxes have an interesting rhythmic and harmonic complexity, his additional instrumentaions for clarinet (which are particularly dorky), piano, guitar, and vibraphone are not as sonorously complementary as Morton would like them to be.

MOTHER MALLARD'S PORTABLE MASTERPIECE CO. Music By David Borden (World Arbiter) cd 16.98
First time release of these 1976-77 recordings by Moog minimalism pioneer Dave Borden and his Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpice Company, oddly enough released on the World Arbiter label, from whence we got the great "Lost Sounds of the Tao" and "Roots of Gamelan" cds we've recently praised. I guess their notion of world music can encompass white Americans with synths as well!
Composer Borden's all-Moog ensemble drew upon his experiences as Bob Moog's "test pilot" in the late '60s, and acknowledged inspirations Philip Glass and Terry Riley. As demonstrated here, Mother Mallard was all about looooong tracks of repetitive, bubbling synths, pleasantly trancey and mesmerizing, with complex interlocking cyclic rhythmic layers like a futuristic (circa the '70s) take on Medieval cantos. The cover photo shows a whole choir onstage behind the long-haired Moog-operators, and indeed after many minutes of build-up, human voices join the electronics. Famed avant-garde singer Joan LaBarbra solos, backed by the Thomas Sokol Chorale. It sounds a bit Magma-like, actually, certainly religious -- the text comes from the Revelation of St. John the Divine. If you liked the Cuneiform reissue of this band's "Like A Duck To Water" or dig on the idea of Moogs n' minimalism, check this out.
MPEG Stream: "The Continuing Story of Counterpoint Part 3"

MUHLY, NICO Speaks Volumes (Bedroom Community) cd 15.98
Although young enough to be their son, Nico Muhly seems to have a great grasp of the kind of elegance in chamber music that folks like Steve Reich and Philip Glass have developed over the last several decades. The first release on a new label from Iceland, Muhly's name is no upstart in Icelandic music circles as he helped Bjork on Medulla as well as for her score to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 9. The company Muhly keeps gives pretty good insight into the majestic and moving music that he creates. As well as Bjork, Muhly has also collaborated with Philip Glass on lots of stage and film works, and Antony of Antony & The Johnsons, who appears on the last track here. Muhly has a sensitive songwriting hand which keeps the songs on Speaks Volumes subtle enough to remain riveting but with enough emotional weight to keep us coming back for more. So very nice!
MPEG Stream: "Clear Music"
MPEG Stream: "Pillaging Music"

MUMMA, GORDON Electronic Music of Theatre and Public Activity (New World Records) cd 16.98

MUMMA, GORDON Live-Electronic Music (Tzadik) cd 16.98
Collection of pioneering electronic composed between 1963 and 1985. Having collaborated extensively throughout the 60's with contemporaries Robert Ashley, David Tudor, Pauline Oliveros, Alvin Lucier and David Behrman often helping them with the construction of their own electronics. Mumma's distinction lies in the construction of his own analog gear which he then uses to process, in real time, the sounds produced during a live performance, either solo or with another musician and for each piece Mumma has fashioned a unique device for its execution. The 5 compositions on this disc feature collaborations with William Winant (percussion), David Tudor (bandoneon), Robert Ashley (voice and piano) and George Cacioppo (voice) with one solo performance by Mumma on waldhorn, valve horn and cybersonics.
RealAudio clip: "Hornpipe"
RealAudio clip: "Medium Size Monograph 1963"

MUMMA, GORDON Studio Retrospective (Lovely Music) cd 14.98
"Studio Retrospective" is a collection of six of Mumma's electronic compositions dating from 1959 to 1984. Four of the pieces were originally composed for the quadraphonic theater systems, and have been digitally remastered in stereo for this collection. Mumma's work is full of grinding metallic drones, (think Stockhausen, Nordheim, Ussachevsky) electronic pings & clicks, and buzzing FM synthesis. Evocative (and not too stodgy) academic work.

NANCARROW, CONLON Lost Works, Last Works (Other Minds) cd 14.98
Like the title says, this cd collects not only some of the late works of avant garde 20th century composer Conlon Nancarrow circa 1990-3 but also a variety of previously unpublished pieces from the '30s and '40s. There's music written for piano, tape, prepared player piano, string quartet, and more. Plus, there's a rare half hour interview with the man himself concluding the disc.

NANCARROW, CONLON Studies for Player Piano Vol. 1-5 (Wergo) 5cd 56.00
"This set brings together all five volumes of Nancarrow's prize-winning player piano recordings in one deluxe, slipcase package. With their dazzling acrobatic complexities, well beyond the technique of any human, Nancarrow's works are both amazingly beautiful and strangely unsettling. Wergo's recordings were made in 1988 at Conlon Nancarrow's Mexico City studio, using the composer's own custom-altered Ampico reproducing piano. The 140-page booklet includes numerous unpublished photographs, an essay by producer Charles Amirkhanian and a probing musical analysis by James Tenney." - Wergo liner notes. Originally this collection was issued in separate editions with Vol. 1 + 2 together, Vol. 3 + 4 togather, and Vol. 5 separate, but all sets have subsequently been deleted by Wergo. This set with the book is the only way now to get these awesome mind numbing recordings.

NATH, PANDIT PRAN Midnight / Raga Malk (Just Dreams) 2cd 41.00
This recording, the musical life of Pandit Pran Nath, his influence on Western minimalism, his importance to music, both modern and traditional, is steeped in history, but just as important, if not harder to describe, is the sound. A warm drifting dreamscape, layers of buzz and hum and drone, Nath's perfectly intonated vocals, hovering weightless above a thick swirl of Sitar string buzz and slowly shifting drones. This is true drone music. Warm and rich, thick and effervescent. Densely layered but light and airy. Truly difficult to describe, but a record that has immmediately become one of the most played / listened to records around these parts. Nath spent most of his life studying and performing in India, and became well known for his strict adherence to the authentic rendering of traditional ragas and an unwillingness to change his style or sound to be more 'modern'. His focus on the slower 'alap' sections of ragas was an obvious influence on seventies minimalists like La Monte Young and Terry Riley (both students of his), and other students / followers included Don Cherry, Rhys Chatham, Henry Flynt and many others. He eventually became a US citizen and continued performing, composing and teaching right up until his death. There is a definite dearth of recordings, considering how long Nath had been performing, this 2 disc set was originally released in 2002, and has luckily been reissued. The price tag is steep, but once these sounds hit your ears, any thoughts of price or money as well as all of your other earthly worries will just drift away. Both of these performances, one from 1971 recorded in San Francisco, the other in NYC in 1976, feautre Nath accompanied by Western musicians, Terry Riley, Ann Riley, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, who seem perfectly in tune with Nath's sound and vision. Anyone who loves the music of Chalk, Coleclough, Mirror, Ora, Organum, any of that minimal drone music, would do well to dig deep and discover the roots of that music. This is most definitely some of the most beautiful, transcendental drone music we have ever heard.
MPEG Stream: "Midnight (4 VIII 71 SF)"

NEUHAUS, MAX Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By (Sony Japan) cd 29.00

NEUHAUS, MAX Fontana Mix-Feed 1965/1968 (Alga Marghen) cd 16.98
This is one of three separate shards of electronic music history (Ashley, Neuhaus, and Palestine) recently unearthed by Italian audio archaeologists Alga Marghen.
Max Neuhaus' "Fontana Mix-Feed" features six "realizations" of an indeterminate John Cage score, in Neuhaus' hands an electro-acoustic feedback concerto created with timpani, contact microphones, amplifiers, and a mixer. Shrill, high-end death drone, different at each performance. This is common stuff nowadays, but back in 1965 before such genres as "power violence" and "no-input mixing board" music, it must have fascinated and/or severely disturbed the listeners (generally in some posh academic setting -- the booklet is full of great photos and flyers for Neuhaus' performances). Like the Ashley's "Wolfman", this Neuhaus disc is cool when you consider that context: as depicted on the cover, a nerdish young Neuhaus in suit and tie, on stage at Carnegie Hall causing audience discomfort and pain with his knob twisting! Definitely of historic import, at the very least.
MPEG Stream: "Chicago, April 1965"

NEUHAUS, MAX Four Realizations Of Stockhausen's Zyklus (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98

NEUHAUS, MAX The New York School. Nine Realizations Of Cage, Feldman, Brown (Alga Marghen) cd 17.98

NEW BAND Playing On The Original Harry Partch Instruments (Innova) cd 14.98
New Band is a group spearheaded by Dean Drummond, custodian of Harry Partch's collection of unique micro-tonal instruments. The group's mission includes both performing the works of Harry Partch (which can only be played on Partch's own instruments for the most part) and premiering new works composed for the instruments, primarily Drummond's own. This disc has two compositions by Harry Partch -- "Eleven Intrusions" and "Dark Brother" -- and two by Dean Drummond -- "Before the Last Laugh" and "Congressional Record". "Eleven Intrusions" (1950) is a suite of nine texts set to music by Partch and two instrumentals, while "Dark Brother" (1943) is a 10 minute piece based on the final paragraphs of Thomas Wolfe's "God's Lonely Man." Drummond's "Before the Last Laugh" is a reworking of a larger work that Drummond had composed for the 1925 silent film "The Last Laugh". "Congressional Record" is a satirical piece which utilizing the United States' Congressional Record as a source for its libretto, including: Jesse Helms' arguments for the abolishment of the N.E.A., Kenneth Starr's Independant Counsel Report on hanky panky in the White House and something from The Plumbing Standards Improvement Act of 1999. Drummond's pieces both feature new instruments built by Drummond in the spirit of Partch.
RealAudio clip: PARTCH, HARRY "The Rose"
RealAudio clip: DRUMMOND, DEAN "Congressional Record"

NIBLOCK, PHILL Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice (Touch) cd 16.98
Phill Niblock is a minimalist contemporary of LaMonte Young, Charlemagne Palestine, and Tony Conrad, yet has been seemingly overlooked, minus a few avant rock footnotes from the likes of Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Band of Susans. In the liner notes, essayist Kyle Gann offers an unconvincing argument as to the reason for his relative obscurity, claiming that Niblock's work is too challenging, compared to his minimalist brothers... Well, Niblock's approach is certainly more complex than Young's static explorations of fundamental pitches or Conrad's scraping antagonism toward traditional intonation, but more challenging? I think "more interesting" is a better read of Gann's thesis. While them's fightin' words in the quick-to-slander political world of NYC '60s minimalism, Niblock's "Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy and Voice" is certainly a formidable album that stands firmly on its own merits, without Aquarius adding any fuel to the fire.
The first piece "Hurdy Hurry" is an extended drone, based on samples of Jim O'Rourke and his hurdy gurdy. Niblock begins the piece simply enough with a single sustained whir of the wooden machine, but thickens the mix with multi-tracked layers of more hurdy gurdy drones tuned to specific pitches. The result is a glistening audio kaleidoscope of rich ambers, oranges, and blood reds.
The two versions of "A Y U (aka As Yet Untitled)" are based upon a similar multi-tracked technique as before, but based upon recordings of baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner. These two tracks have a nasally warble to them, sounding similar to the circular breathing of Tuvan throat singers. While sonically similar, the first version is open and diffuse, and the second is lumbering and forceful.
As with all Touch releases, Jon Wozencroft offers his usual amazing design sensibility to an amazing piece of minimalist composition.
RealAudio clip: "A Y U (part one)"
RealAudio clip: "Hurdy Hurry"

NITSCH, HERMANN 7. Sinfonie 2cd 32.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
In the ongoing uncovering of recordings from Hermann Nitsch's actionist orchestrations, the Huntertmark Gallery in Cologne, Germany has released 7.Sinfonie from the massive Nitsch archives. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no information to be found as to the nature of this piece. Was it the score to one of his blood ritual performances? Was it a formal event with only an orchestra in mind? Maybe these questions are not that important, but since we've presented what information we could about previous Nitsch pieces, we're just trying to be consistent. ANYWAY! 7.Sinfonie follows the basic formula that Nitsch employed with his massive orchestrations for Island and Musik Der 66.Aktion, with discordant swells of horns and organs playing a singular note, increasing the volume to the trumpet's equivalent of 11. Drums and cymbals crash arrythmically in the huge walls of sound, punctuating the movement from the drone supreme into atonal stupor. Pretty fucking amazing.
RealAudio clip: "excerpt"

NITSCH, HERMANN Das 6-Tage-Speil (Day 3 "Day of Dionysus") pt.1 (Cortical Foundation) 3cd 43.00
Packaged in a deluxe gatefold LP sleeve with a handful of gory-but-beautiful, blood-drenched photographs overprinted with shimmering transparent lettering, this triple cd is a partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day performance. Already, the highly dedicated and apparently well-funded Cortical Foundation has presented a huge amount of material from Day Five (a picture disc and an 8cd box set) and some material from Day Six.
Unlike previous releases of Nitsch's musical works where visual evidence of his "actions" (for which his music provides the soundtrack) appear only as album cover art, this time we get a CD-Rom with video of portions of Day 3's activities (the usual Nitsch spectacle of people stomping tomatoes, disembowling butchered pigs, crucifying naked participants, and pouring lots and lots of blood over everything). But regardless of whether that sort of thing interests you, the two audio cds in the set provide what we have come to expect from Hermann Nitsch's orchestrations: tense, swelling masses of atonal strings, the performers told to play loud, and then to play even louder. The major difference in these scores is in how Nitsch arranges the breakdowns of these swells. On one of the discs, Nitsch inserts some festive Polka tunes between his signature walls of sound; on the other, Nitsch required a drummer to back up the drones with stumbling, haphazard beats. His truncated fills and erratic rhythms making it into something almost "free jazz", if anything this dark and droney could be so described. You get the impression that this drummer is slipping and sliding off his drum stool because of all of the blood, and randomly striking his drums on the way down. In conjunction with the ominous, building strings and horns this creates a sound not at all unlike recent AQ fave Crystal Fist. As with almost everything we've heard from Nitsch, droning and mesmerising and magnificent.
RealAudio clip: "Day Of Dionysius 3pm"
RealAudio clip: "Day Of Dionysius 10am"

NITSCH, HERMANN Das 6-Tage-Speil (Day 3 "Day of Dionysus") pt.2 (Cortical Foundation) lp + cd 43.00
Packaged exactly the same as the triple cd (in the same deluxe gatefold LP sleeve adorned with blood drenched photographs), this vinyl album is the second partial documentation of the third day of Hermann Nitsch's epic six day performance, and features different music than the 3cd offering of Day Three. However, the CD-Rom that comes in both packages is the same, so if you're a Nitsch completist (like some of us) you'll get both pt. 1 and pt. 2 and then have an extra CD-Rom to give to a friend. What a nice thing to do. The music on the vinyl version is of course akin to that of part 1 -- indeed, Nitsch employs both the Polka interludes and the clunky "free jazz" drummer (but to a lesser degree). And like part 1, it's utterly magnificent.

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 1, 2, 3, 4 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
The Hermann Nitsch "Harmoniumwerk" certainly rivals (and often surpasses) the magnificient tonal quality of such '60s drone suprematists as Charlemagne Palestine and LaMonte Young.
RealAudio clip: "Harmoniumwerk 1"

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 5, 6, 7, 8 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
This is the second double cd in the 40 volume series of Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk."

NITSCH, HERMANN Harmoniumwerk Vol 9, 10, 11, 12 (Cortical Foundation) 2cd 35.00
Oh shit. It appears that the Cortical Foundation will be reissuing the complete Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk," which totals 40 volumes. Released four volumes at a time, this looks like it may end up being 10 double cds! While Hermann Nitsch is known mostly as the Vienna Aktionist who specialized in perfomances of ritualized bloodletting, his musical accompaniments to his performances have often revealed an incredibly developed aesthetic of dynamic dissonance balanced against subtle droning passages. The "Harmoniumwerk" series stands out from all of the Nitsch recordings, as not being made in conjunction with his performative productions. Nitsch describes this work, "In 1968, I got a harmonium as a wedding present from my wife. From then on, I sat at the harmonium and played almost exclusively long notes that never wanted to end. I tried to listen into the infinite structure of the stars, into the unimaginable spaces searching for sound. The joy of beautiful colors, of (almost intoxicating) combinations of sound was most important but at the same time it was carried by the almost presumptuous task to conjure, to sing of, and measure the extent of cosmic space. The course of the stars were to be put to sound."
This is the third double cd in the 40 volume series of Hermann Nitsch's "Harmoniumwerk."

NITSCH, HERMANN Musik Der 66. Aktion, 21st May 1980 (Alga Marghen) 2cd 25.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NITSCH, HERMANN Sinfonia Punta Campanella in 4 movimenti (Fondazione Morra) cd 38.00

NONO, LUIGI La Lontananza Nostalgica Utopica Futura (Montaigne) 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 the title nostalgically referencing the landscapes of a utopian future, there is an element of despair within Luigi Nono's composition, as the eccentric experimental composer prefers to look at the future through the "classical" lens of Jules Verne or even Terry Gilliam. Technology is a system of magnetic gears and whirring electrical devices which affect the environment around them to actualize the dreams of the alchemists searching not only for the catalyst which turns lead into gold but also the rifts leading toward instantaneous time / space travel. Composed in 1988 when information and cyberspace were becoming the technological tools of the neo-alchemist, Nono saw his vision collapsing and composed this piece as a document to a "future nostalgic landscape."
After many hours of recording violinist Gidon Kremer, Nono composed an 8 channel backing tape in which original violin tones were filtered and treated to create an arsenal of frequency shifted, dense harmonics. The piece had been composed as an interaction between a solo violin and the pre-recorded backing tape -- to the point where both the violinist and the backing tape can control each section of the work. For this recording, Irvine Arditti and Andre Richard leave plenty of room between all of the tones to exist as rich singularities much like Morton Feldman's application of tonal color.

NONO, LUIGI Variazioni Canoniche (Montaigne) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NORDHEIM, ARNE Dodeka (Rune Grammofon) cd 16.98

OLIVEROS, PAULINE Alien Bog/Beautiful Soop (Pogus) cd 13.98
Two beautiful and intense minimal electronic compostions from 1967 and 1966 respectively.