Sir BN's Best Of / Notable Albums Of The Year 2016 list . . .

Brighternow

Same procedure as last year.

Posted with the caution (or reservation) that It's very likely that there's albums forgotten about and albums I haven't had the capacity to check out.
- And that the order could have been different at another time / day

So for what it's worth, here's the first five:

#1

.

Steven van Gils (tenor)
Tiemo Wang (baritone)
Maciej Straburzynski (bass-baritone)
Pepe Garcia Rodriguez (percussion)
Enric Monfort (percussion)
Frank Wienk (percussion/laptop)
Yannis Kyriakides (composition/text)
Fedor Teunisse (musical direction)
Romain Bischoff (vocal direction)

- "Lunch Music by composer Yannis Kyriakides is a set of pieces for voices, percussion and live electronics, inspired by the 1959 book Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. On this recording the virtuosity of percussionists Slagwerk Den Haag (recently heard on the recording of Michael Gordon’s Timber) and contemporary vocal specialists of Silbersee are embedded in a rich sonic environment of electronics, modulated voices, grinding pulses and hallucinatory noises.

The concept of the music revolves around the idea of the polyphony of voices found in Naked Lunch. The effect of one voice speaking through another, of mediumship and possession, is a central musical concept in the piece, and it is manifested in the way the live electronics, controlled by the percussionists modu- lates the voices of the singers and the various fragments of samples heard: from the voice of Burroughs to snippets of 50’s pop songs.

The piece, originally commissioned by Slagwerk Den Haag, was composed for the dance/music theatre piece of the same name, produced by Club Guy and Roni, Slagwerk Den Haag and Silbersee, that toured The Netherlands in the season 2013/2014 and is touring again in Spring 2016."

Slagwerk Den Haag

- "performs and develops contemporary percussion music in its most diverse forms: from existing repertoire, via a large number of new commissions and collaborations with composers, to researching the furthest limits of organized sound. The artists are highly versatile creators and performers that aim to amaze time after time, in every setting imaginable, exploring the traditional instruments as well as all forms of experimental ones; porcelain, equine jaws, glass or 3D-printed instruments.

The New York Times described Slagwerk Den Haag as ‘…dazzling percussion group, similarly combined virtuosity and theatricality…’."

- Unsounds - Emusic  - Soundcloud

Yannis Kyriakides

- "was born in Limassol, Cyprus in 1969 , emigrated to Britain 1975 and has been living in the Netherlands since 1992. He studied musicology at York University, and later composition with Louis Andriessen and Dick Raaijmakers. He currently lives is Amsterdam with his wife and two sons.

As a composer and sound artist he looks for ways of creating new forms and hybrids of media that problematize the act of listening. The question as to what music is actually communicating is a recurring theme in his work and he is often drawn to the relation between perception, emotion and language and how that defines our experience of sound. In the last years his work has been exploring different relations between words & music, both in concert compositions and installations through the use of systems of encoding information into sound, synthesizing voices and projecting text to music. The latter work has led to about 20 music text films that play on the idea of imagined or inner voice. . . . ."

#2

Holographic is the new album and series of performances from Paris-born composer Daniel Wohl. The album, released on January 29, 2016, was co-produced with Paul Corley (Oneohtrix Point Never, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost) and features contributions from Lucky Dragons, Olga Bell, Caroline Shaw (Roomful of Teeth), Bang on Can All-Stars, Mantra Percussion, Mivos Quartet and Iktus Percussion. In a groundbreaking new model, Holographic was commissioned by pioneering organizations Liquid Music (of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra), MASS MoCA, Baryshnikov Arts Center and Indianapolis Museum of Art.

- "Paris born composer DANIEL WOHL draws on his background in electronic music to create works that intimately merge electronic and acoustic elements. His distinctive hybrid format has earned him praise as one of his generation’s “imaginative and skillful creators” (New York Times) “shaping our contemporary music scene” (NPR) . His music has been commissioned and/or performed by cutting-edge ensembles and performers such as Eighth Blackbird, So Percussion, Present Music, Bang on a Can All-Stars Lisa Moore, Ashley Bathgate and Vicky Chow, Talujon, Da Capo, California E.A.R Unit, Dither, Mantra Percussion, Iktus percussion and Calder Quartet, as well as the more classically-oriented American Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Ossia Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, New York Youth Symphony, and St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. His work has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Webster Hall, the MATA Festival, the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Ecstatic Music Festival, NordKlang (Switzerland), Mass MoCA, Dia Beacon, River to River, Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), and over media outlets such as NPR, PBS, WQXR, CANAL +, TFI and FRANCE 2. . . . ."

New Amsterdam Records  - http://danielwohl.bandcamp.com/

More Daniel Wohl at Emusers.

#3

Ben Frost - The Wasp Factory

- "In advance of new music from Ben Frost in 2017, Bedroom Community is excited to present the definitive recorded version of his 2013 opera and directorial stage debut, The Wasp Factory, based on the novel by the late Iain Banks.

- "Setting his unwitting characters against the backdrop of vast, implacable forces of nature—storm, sea, fire, and even their own madness— Frost reaches deep into his formidable arsenal to reveal an unexpected warmth, from the composer of electronic experiments like AURORA and Theory of Machines. The focus here is on the live sound of the Reykjavík Sinfonia, recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio II and, for the first time, the human voice. He sets David Pountney's Libretto to tuneful, even soulful vocal lines; an extraordinarily unreliable narrator describing scenes of extreme violence and horror in music of incongruous loveliness.

Rather than attempt to represent his protagonist onstage with a singing, acting boy, Frost infamously cast an ensemble of 3 women to give voice to his dissociated internal monologues: Lieselot De Wilde, Jördis Richter and Wildbirds & Peacedrums' own Mariam Wallentin. And just as he did with the highly detailed instrumental writing on his albums like AURORA or Sólaris (composed with Daníel Bjarnason), here Frost creates a seamless collaboration of performer and interpreter, each singer and each player fully and sensitively inhabiting their respective nuanced parts. And the recorded result defiantly stands apart from the realm of traditionally “classical recordings”, framing in the highest definition every moment of this studio performance - the confrontationally close breath of strings and vocalist alike push and pull against a range of digital shapes and textures.

The Wasp Factory is not too far from those albums in terms of continuity with Frost's thematic obsessions. Like Sólaris, which was inspired by another so-called "sci-fi" novelist's literary masterpiece, The Wasp Factory asks what it means to be a human being, and what happens when that human being gets lost in the labyrinth of his own psyche. And like AURORA, and By the Throat, it asks where—and whether—the boundary can be drawn separating the human animal from the terrible, destructive brutality of nature."

- Also on Emusic.

Ben Frost on directing and composing The Wasp Factory  (The Royal Opera)

#4

 An operatic oratorio for four singers, piano trio, percussion and chorus by composer Andrew Staniland and poet Jill Battson

Wayne Strongman, Conductor 
Neema Bickersteth, soprano; Krisztina Szabó, mezzo soprano; Peter McGillivray, baritone; Marcus Nance, bass-baritone 
The Elmer Iseler Singers
The Gryphon Trio
Annalee Patipatanakoon, violin; Roman Borys, cello; Jamie Parker, piano
Ryan Scott and Mark Duggan, percussion

Dark Star Requiem is at once intended to be challenging and joyous, complex and beautiful. A sequence of 19 poems charting a short history of HIV AIDS unfolds over the course of 14 musical movements. The poems vary stylistically from linked haikus, to ghazals, to praise poems and back to free verse. The musical movements are unified through a haunting melody and driving rhythm derived from the numbers attributed to HIV-1 and HIV-2 by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses: 00.061.1.06.009. and 00.061.1.06.010. In musical terms these numbers are interpreted in both melody and rhythm.

- Canadian Music Centre (Centrediscs)

Composer Andrew Staniland has firmly established himself as one of Canada’s most important and innovative musical voices. Described by Alex Ross in the New Yorker magazine as “alternately beautiful and terrifying”, his music is regularly heard on CBC Radio 2 and has been performed and broadcast internationally in over 35 countries. Andrew is the recipient of the 2009 National Grand Prize in EVOLUTION, presented by CBC Radio 2/Espace Musique and The Banff Centre, top prizes in the SOCAN young composers competition, and the 2004 Karen Keiser Prize in Canadian Music. As a leading composer of his generation, he has been recognized by election to the Inaugural Cohort of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists Royal Society of Canada in 2014.

Andrew has been Affiliate Composer to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (2006-09) and the National Arts Centre Orchestra (2002–04), and has also been in residence at the Centre du Creation Musicale Iannis Xenakis (Paris, 2005). Recent commissioners include the Gryphon Trio, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the Toronto Symphony, cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and American Opera Projects. Andrew is the lead composer/educator with the Gryphon Trio’s Listen Up! education initiative, created and produced in collaboration with the Gryphon Trio and music educator Rob Kapilow. Andrew also performs himself, both as a guitarist and working with new media (computers and electronics). Andrew is currently on faculty at Memorial University in St John’s Newfoundland.

#5:

Brian Eno • ‘The Ship’

- "Humankind seems to teeter between hubris and paranoia:the hubris of our ever-growing power contrasts with the paranoia that we're permanently and increasingly under threat.
At the zenith we realise we have to come down again...
we know that we have more than we deserve or can defend, so we become nervous.
Somebody, something is going to take it all from us:
that is the dread of the wealthy.
Paranoia leads to defensiveness, and we all end up in the trenches facing each other across the mud.

On a musical level,
I wanted to make a record of songs that didn't rely on the normal underpinnings of rhythmic structure and chord progressions
but which allowed voices to exist in their own space and time, like events in a landscape.
I wanted to place sonic events in a free, open space.

One of the starting points was my fascination with the First World War,
that extraordinary trans-cultural madness that arose out of a clash of hubris between empires.
It followed immediately after the sinking of the Titanic, which to me is its analogue.
The Titanic was the Unsinkable Ship, the apex of human technical power,
set to be Man's greatest triumph over nature.
The First World War was the war of materiel, 'over by Christmas', set to be the triumph of Will and Steel over humanity.
The catastrophic failure of each set the stage for a century of dramatic experiments with the relationships between humans
and the worlds they make for themselves.

I was thinking of those vast dun Belgian fields where the First World War was agonisingly ground out;
and the vast deep ocean where the Titanic sank; and how little difference all that human hope and disappointment made to it.
They persist and we pass in a cloud of chatter.

Written in the late sixties, Lou Reed's song 'I'm Set Free' seems even more relevant now than it did then.
Perhaps anybody who's read Yuval Noah Harari's 'Sapiens' will recognise the quiet irony of "I'm set free to find a new illusion"...
and its implication that when we step out of our story we don't step into 'the truth' - whatever that might be - but into another story.

This album is a succession of interleaved stories.
Some of them I know, some of them I'm discovering now in the making of them.

Wave. After. Wave. After. Wave."

http://www.brian-eno.net/

About the title track:

“The piece started as an Ambient work intended for a multi channel sound installation in Stockholm, but during the making of it I discovered that I could now sing a low C - which happens to be the root note of the piece. Getting older does have a few fringe benefits after all. From that point the work turned into an unusual kind of song...a type I've never made before where the vocal floats free, untethered to a rhythmic grid of any kind.”

- Brian Eno.

Brighternow

Continuing

#6

by Soundwalk Collective with Jesse Paris Smith feat. Patti Smith

A shimmering ambient tone, an electronic underlay to the lulling chatter of crickets, makes way for the unmistakable voice of Patti Smith, quietly intoning, ominously, “The killer road is waiting for you / like a finger, pointing in the night.”

Behind the music and concept of Killer Road is international trio Soundwalk Collective – Stephan Crasneanscki, Simone Merli, and Kamran Sadeghi (aka. Son of Rose)–  who, alongside Patti Smith's daughter, Jesse Paris, conceived an immersive exploration of the tragic death of Christa Päffgen. Better known as Nico, the Velvet Underground chanteuse and solo pioneer, Päffgen died while riding her bike on the island of Ibiza in the summer of 1988. Killer Road is an ambient soundscape and spoken word tribute to Nico – eight interpretations of her lyrics, predominantly taken from classic albums such as Desertshore and Drama of Exile, arranged by fellow poet and kindred spirit Patti Smith. Originally executed as a live performance piece with Jesse Paris Smith and Soundwalk Collective, Killer Road sees the light of day in album format for the first time.

- Sacred Bones

https://soundcloud.com/soundwalk-collective

#7

- "Recital is proud to publish the first album of American Gamelan composer Daniel Schmidt (b. 1942). Schmidt, who emerged in the Bay Area music scene in the 1970s, wove the threads of traditional Eastern Gamelan music together with American Minimalism (repetitive music). Schmidt was (and is still) a prime figure in the development of American Gamelan music –  studying and collaborating with Lou Harrison, Jody Diamond, and Paul Dresher. He currently is a teacher at Mills College, teaching instrument building.

The recordings on Flowers date from 1978 – 1982, selected directly from Schmidt’s personal cassette archive. It holds two studio tracks, along with two live performances.   The first track, Dawn (commissioned by composer John Adams), employs an early digital sampler provided by Pauline Oliveros. It holds the sound of a string quartet. The nature of this piece is breathtaking, an ocean of strings pulsing beneath the gliding bells of the gamelan – such a lovely interplay.   Furthermore, the title track, Flowers, features the addition of a rebab, a traditional bowed instrument, which reels through the piece, netted and taught.

The final two works are strictly gamelan compositions. Ghosts is a a dynamic piece; rife with dexterous euphoria- it well displays the skillset of the percussionists heard on the LP. The closing work, Faint Impressions, is a somber elegy. Demonstrating the fragility and grace possible with the gamelan; sounding almost as an evening piano sonata.

This is album is unique document from an under-represented movement of American New Music. An account of the curious beauty and woven emotions hidden within resonating pieces of metal."

- Recital Program

http://centerfornewmusic.com/gallery/american-gamelan-by-daniel-schmidt/
Norman Records review


- With thanks to @rostasi ; . . .

#8

"Give me new noise, give me new affection

Strange new toys from another world

I need to see more than just three dimensions

Stranger than fiction

Faster than light."

In 1980, Tuxedomoon created a sensation with their masterpiece debut album Half-Mute, which immediately established them as one of the leading avant-garde pop bands.

36 years later, in the spring of 2016, Tuxedomoon’s original members, Steven Brown, Peter Principle and Blaine Reininger, joined by Luc van Lieshout, will get together to revisit Half-Mute and perform it live on a series of exclusive shows around Europe.

On this occasion, Half-Mute will be reissued, along with GIVE ME NEW NOISE, a tribute album for which 13 artists have specially created covers of all songs from Half-Mute and from the album’s associated singles.

The contributors include Foetus/JG Thirlwell, Aksak Maboul, Simon Fisher Turner, DopplAr (feat. 2 members from Amatorski), Cult With No Name and others, with special appearances by the three makers of Half-Mute, Steven Brown, Peter Principle and Blaine Reininger.

GIVE ME NEW NOISE was conceived and curated by Philippe Perreaudin, a founding member of French band Palo Alto.

Philippe Perreaudin has loved the music of Tuxedomoon ever since Patrick Roques beautiful artwork drove him to listen to Half-Mute, sometime in the mid-80s. In 2006, he put together Next To Nothing, a tribute album to the band. In 2015, he came up with the idea to assemble a tribute to Half-Mute, to celebrate the album’s 35th anniversary, without knowing at the time that Tuxedomoon would decide to revisit the album in concert.

Philippe’s idea was to create a mirror image of the album by asking ten artists to each cover one of the songs from Half-Mute. In order to stay close to the Tuxedomoon atmosphere, he first turned to some of the band’s friends and collaborators, as well as to some artists associated with Palo Alto.

He also asked the three creators of Half-Mute (Steven Brown, Blaine L. Reininger and Peter Principle) to take part in the project, they kindly accepted.

To complete the track list, he then commissioned cover versions of two songs which came out on singles around the release of Half-Mute in 1980, Crash and Dark Companion.

Finally, excited by the resurrection of Aksak Maboul, he asked Marc Hollander to cover a song of his choice, Marc opted for Tritone (Musica Diablo).

Give Me New Noise : Half-Mute Reflected comes out in three formats: as a stand-alone vinyl LP (with covers of the original 10 songs, plus two bonuses contained on a 7“ vinyl inserted in the LP), as a digital album (with three bonus tracks), and as part of the new CD edition of Half-Mute, along with the remastered original album. The CD edition also contains the three bonuses. Some of the tracks come in different versions according to the format.

- Crammed Discs

#9

- "Frank LAMBERT, also known as Falter BRAMNK, likes to performs a brand of Progressive rock music Chris CUTLER would have been proud of. His art can easily be put in the style of Rock In Opposition, such as defined by HENRY COW and ENSEMBLE NIMBUS, for instance. Falter BRAMNK plays MAISIE: its title says "Music Is A Fish Defrosted With A Hair Dryer" and the action is in full accordance with the usual hallucinated pop vein that shines and glitters in MAISIE's brooding improvisation, at the same time being a feedback signal wrapped in a game of high-resolution acoustic, electric or electronic movements among arrangements which seem to flow along the stereo channels like a dynamic stroke coming back to MAISIE without ever frustrating her capricious hastiness. Published in the year 2015 on the Gazul label, "Vagal" has been entirely produced and performed by Falter BRAMNK. The artist plays piano, organ, synthesizers, sampler, guitars, strings, percussions, electronics, soundscapes... Nothing less ! Not even mentioning his voice, of course. He is helped by guests on snare drum and saxophone, for the tracks "Time Factor" and "Abschaum". To be discovered !"

- Gazul/Musearecords

     French composer, improvisor and sound designer, F. B. lives and works in Lille (France). Musical education: studied piano and singing. Activities: starts with music for theater, video art, then contemporary dance and at present mainly short (fiction and animated) films.

Plays and composes with live bands (currently the band Grand Orchestre de Muzzix), also live music with silent films and involved in multi-instruments solo projects and sound art (sound-portraits and phonographies).
Co-founder of MUZZIX
DJ on the radio show "Opposition de phase" on RCV.99.FM since 1998.

#10

- to be continued . . .

Brighternow

 5 more . . .

#11

- "No one inhabits a Steinway quite like Australian pianist Lisa Moore, which is probably why so many modern composers have invited her to interpret their music. Known for her “beautiful and impassioned” approach, as the New York Times described one of her performances, Moore brings a fully charged sense of rhythm, mysticism and adventure to The Stone People, her first full-length recording for Cantaloupe Music. It follows in the footsteps of Moore’s three-part series of acclaimed EPs for the label — Seven (2009), Lightning Slingers and Dead Ringers (2011) and Stainless Staining (2012).
As Pulitzer-winning composer and Bang on a Can co-founder David Lang reveals in the album’s liner notes, the project takes its name from the opening piece by another Pultizer winner, John Luther Adams. “John’s music is ruggedly elemental,” Lang writes, “using very restrained materials as a way of probing some of our most fundamental human truths. Who we are. Where we are. How we relate to each other. How we relate to the natural world. His pieces are stark explorations of humankind in its most elemental state, and this CD brings together, for the first time, his complete acoustic music for solo piano.”
Among other firsts, the disc includes two works for piano by Julia Wolfe (2015’s Pulitzer winner!), as well as newly recorded pieces by Martin Bresnick, Missy Mazzoli and Kate Moore. By turns meditative, mysterious, tumultuous and tender, The Stone People presents Lisa Moore at the height of her transformative powers."

The New York Times writes, “Lisa Moore, an Australian pianist long based in and around New York, has always been a natural, compelling storyteller.” TimeOut New York describes her as “the wonderfully lyrical pianist.” Moore has nine solo discs (Cantaloupe, Orange Mountain Music, Tall Poppies) ranging from Leoš Janáçek to Philip Glass. She has made more than 30 collaborative recordings for a wide range of labels, including Sony, Nonesuch, DG, BMG, New World, ABC Classics, Albany, New Albion, Starkland and Harmonia Mundi. Music for Eighteen Musicians (Harmonia Mundi), with Ensemble Signal, made the New York Times’ 2015 “Best Classical Music Recordings” list.
Moore collaborates with a large and diverse range of musicians, ensembles and artists—groups such as the London Sinfonietta, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich Ensemble, New York City Ballet, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and the American Composers Orchestra. She is a member of Grand Band, Ensemble Signal, TwoSense and the Paul Dresher Double Duo.
Festival guest appearances include Lincoln Center, BAM Next Wave, Crash Dublin, Graz, Rome, Turin, Aspen, Tanglewood, Huddersfield, Paris d'Automne, Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, BBC Proms, Southbank, Uzbekistan, Leningrad, Moscow, Lithuania, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Israel and Warsaw.
Crowned by the New Yorker as “New York's queen of avant-garde piano,” Moore was the founding pianist for the Bang On A Can All-Stars (1992-2008) and winner of Musical America's 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award. She has worked with composers ranging from Iannis Xenakis, Elliot Carter, Philip Glass and Frederic Rzewski to Ornette Coleman, David Lang, Meredith Monk, Thurston Moore, Hannah Lash and Martin Bresnick.
Lisa Moore is a Steinway artist. She has performed in some of the world’s greatest concert halls—La Scala, the Musikverein, the Sydney Opera House, Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall. As a concerto soloist, Moore has performed with the London Sinfonietta, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Wesleyan Orchestra and Sumarsam Gamelan, Albany, Sydney, Tasmania, Thai and Canberra Symphony Orchestras, Philharmonia Virtuosi and the Queensland Philharmonic, under the batons of Bradley Lubman, Richard Mills, Reinbert de Leeuw, Pierre Boulez, Jorge Mester, Angel Gil-Ordonez and Edo de Waart. As an artistic curator, Moore produced Australia's Canberra International Music Festival 2008 Sounds Alive series, importing artists from around the world for ten days of events at the Street Theatre.
Lisa Moore grew up in Australia and London. She studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium, the University of Illinois, Eastman School of Music, SUNY Stonybrook and in Paris with Yvonne Loriod. Moore won the silver medal in the 1981 Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition, and moved to New York City in 1985. She teaches at Wesleyan University and at Yale’s summer Norfolk Festival New Music Workshop, and is a regular guest at the Australian National Academy of Music in Melbourne.

- Cantaloupe Music - Emusic

#12

 

 

- "The country has fallen into chaos as an undefined war rages on U.S. soil. Roads are closed except for military use. There is no work. Progressively, the schools close. Food runs out. The power gets shut off. Neighbors mysteriously vanish. Those without homes beg for food at the porches of those who do, but no one has anything to give.

A family of five — two parents, two sons, and a young daughter, Lisa — do what they can to survive. They eat wild grass from the yard. The father goes hunting every day, but all the animals have fled. “They know something we don’t,” he says. One day, Prince arrives.

Prince, a man in a dog suit, befriends Lisa and provides her with an escape from the isolated boredom of her life. Lisa’s mother supports this friendship. Prince is her pet, though Lisa’s father, Howard, opposes it. Howard confronts Prince. “Stand up,” he says. “You’re a human being, for God’s sake. Stand up like a man. . . I’ll give you my own clothes if you’ll . . . stand up like a man and talk to me. I know you can talk.”Prince barks; Howard chases him away. Conditions continue to worsen. It’s winter now. Dark early, and cold. The family hasn’t eaten in weeks, maybe months. “I wish I had a steak,” says one brother. The other brother adds “I heard in China people eat dogs.” There is silence in the room."

- David T. Little

- Vision Into Art

More David T. Little at Emusers here and here.

#13:

Raymond Murray Schafer

Commissioned by the French Television Network of CBC at Montreal for the programme "l'Heure du Concert", during the 1965-66 season.
Text in English by the composer (French translation by Gabriel Charpentier).
Opera for T.V.
For soprano, 3 mezzo-sopranos, 3 spoken roles, 2 violins, viola, cello, contrabass, harp, piano(harpsichord, celesta), guitar (Spanish, electric, banjo), mandolin, 6 percussion, electronic and pre-recorded sounds on tape.

- "Centrediscs is pleased to announce the reissue of R. Murray Schafer’s Loving (Toi). This iconic recording was originally released on the Melbourne label as a double LP in 1979. Centrediscs is delighted to partner with New Music Concerts to make this historic performance available to new generations on compact disc.

Loving (Toi) was commissioned by Radio Canada and performed first (in part) as Toi on the TV series L'Heure du concert in February 1966, produced by Pierre Mercure with music direction by Serge Garant. It was rebroadcast on the CBC English network as Loving later the same year 1966. Loving received semi-staged performances of the complete score in 1978 in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Halifax by a cast that included Mary Lou Fallis, Jean McPhail, Susan Gudgeon and Kathy Terrell and a chamber orchestra (New Music Concerts Ensemble) conducted by Robert Aitken. It was recorded that year by the same performers and released by Melbourne Records. In Schafer's words Loving is a “synaesthetic work” in which “several arts are employed in extremely close, frequently interpenetrating relationships.” There is no plot in the sense of unfolding action; rather there is a series of comments on and suggestions about love between man and woman. The female psyche is portrayed by the four singers - Modesty (soprano), Ishtar, Vanity, and Eros (all mezzos) - and by an actress, Elle (Trulie MacLeod). The male psyche is represented by an actor, Lui (Gilles Savard), and a voice on tape, Le Poète (also Savard).

R. Murray Schafer
(born Sarnia, Ontario, 1933) - has won national and international acclaim not only for his achievement as a composer, but also as an educator, environmentalist, literary scholar, journalist, visual artist, and provocateur. He has written more than 100 compositions, ranging from orchestral and vocal pieces to musical theatre and multimedia rituals. In his music and in his writings he repeatedly challenges and transcends orthodox approaches to the relationships among music, performer, audience and setting. He has expanded the potential and appreciation of music and its place in the arts and culture of our time. Among his myriad honours are two prizes from the Fromm Foundation, the Canadian Music Council Medal, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Harold Moon Award, Composer of the Year Award from the Canadian Music Council, the Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music, the Prix Honegger, the first Glenn Gould Prize for Music and Its Communication, the Molson Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Louis Applebaum Composer's Award, the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement and the title of Companion of the Order of Canada."

- Centrediscs

#14

- "Georg Katzer produced his first computer composition that consisted entirely of synthetic sounds in Stockholm in 1984. In those days, programming was still truly laborious and waiting for the resulting sounds rather wearing. In the years afterwards, he built on the experience he gathered there to develop his own computer program for a self-organising composition process generating controlled aleatoric musical sequences.
The present CD covers the period from 1976 to 2010, a period which includes Georg Katzer's composition 'Bevor Ariadne kommt' of his first electro-acoustic works up to his compositions generated by the computer program developed by him.
The continuous examination of computer-assisted composition techniques becomes apparent in his works like a documentary report. Analogous and digital (instrumental) sounds are often mixed with noises and signals until the work of the composer in 'Steinelied 2' eventually consisted in choosing from the recorded sounds and com-posing them.
Memories and the assimilation of historical events as well as reactions to political events often serve Katzer as basic themes for his compositions. 'Mein 1989' is about the political changes in East Germany whereas 'Bevor Ariadne kommt' focusses on the events surrounding the Prague Spring of 1968. Katzer also takes a very prominent look at the technological progress of his 'composition instrument': '"Preußisch Blau" recalls the technology of a time long past with equipment filling a room, space-consuming loops of tape and the eternal battle with background noise.'"

Wergo

- "The German composer Georg Katzer was born on 10 January 1935 in Habelschwerdt, Silesia, and studied with Rudolf Wagner-Regeny and Rutz Zechlin in East Berlin as well as at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague with Karel Janáček and at the Academy of the Arts of the former German Democratic Republic as a postgraduate student of Hanns Eisler. In 1978 Katzer was elected to membership in the Academy of the Arts in East Berlin, whose artistic director he remained until 2005. In 1987 he was appointed Professor and subsequently taught a masterclass in composition at the Academy of the Arts. From 1988 to 1991 he was President of the German Section of the C.I.M.E. (International Council for Electroacoustical Music) and from 1990 to 2001 was a presiding member of the Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council). In the early 1980s, he founded the Studio for Electroacoustic Music at the Akademie der Künste der DDR."

#15

Morton Subotnick is a living legend in the development of electronic music. A leading innovator in works involving instruments and other media, he used many of the important technological breakthroughs of his time in his work as a composer. Many of his compositions contain electronic or computer-generated parts. The works compiled on this CD form part of the larger work "Music for The Double Life of Amphibians", conceived as a symphonic poem, the title of which can be understood as a metaphor: "The metaphor suggests that the ‘doubleness’ of the amphibians, needing its past-present environment (the water) while reaching for a new present-future world (the air), is our ‘doubleness’ – the past-present and present-future – that beast-spirit and angel-spirit in us all." (Subotnick)

"Axolotl" is a Mexican salamander with two filigree wing-like appendages, extending from either side of the body. These are its lungs for the future transition from water onto land, but the axolotl never goes through the final stage of its potential development – it never reaches air – it remains forever in water.

"Ascent Into Air" starts with section 1 as a dark and intense musical environment without articulation of rhythmic or melodic material. This is followed by more dance-like materials in section 2. The third section is a playful interaction between the pianos, percussion and computer sounds which flows into the fourth section which is more emotional and forceful – even violent. The last section transforms into an ethereal, flowing chorale-like material.

"The Last Dream of the Beast" is a theatrical work, an electronic media drama in which both music and images will be emotional, clearly articulated, forceful and at times violent. "The Beast" means a creature caught between man and beast.

"A Fluttering of Wings" is in four parts played without pause. The opening is fast music of continuous semiquavers. The dance is also quick and continuous. In the third section, the music pauses for the first time. Here individual plucked notes and chords are altered by frequency changes produced by the electronics which help to create a halo-like sound. The final song hovers quietly while the landscape gradually evolves into its ultimate ecstatic form.

- Wergo.

- To be continued . . .

Brighternow

Another five:

#16

- "A moody, detailed and wide-ranging work, in which atmosphere and dramaturgy lead the ear into a suspended world, like being entrapped within an Arctic ice shelf... "

- Glacial Movements  - Emusic

"I love to play live and onstage I play an Electric Psalterion + "Triple Caterpillar" Drum Guitar + turntables + an amplified wood-tablet, a washboard-like kitchen tool, various glass/knives/inflatable balloons... I also love to process textures w/ my laptop (prepaired strings, various clicks & electro-acoustic or field recordings forming a tapestry of sound) to create a deep sound assemblage. 
Topping it all I play my prepaired vinyls. 
Assaulting turntables to take advantage of the vinyl material to fondle released sounds, raking the needle across the record's grooves, rubbing their stylus on paper, cardboard, metal to process unusual noises and textures… Headbutting... Dancing... Enjoying to perform and entertain my audience."

- Philippe Petit.

'You Only Live Ice' by self proclaimed 'musical travel agent' Philippe Petit is an atmospheric journey into a brooding, dream like soundscape, frozen in time and ice-cold space. The compositions are like the soundtrack to an invisible movie composed by a transcendental dreamer and it's easy to see the influence of the artists' peers and often times collaborators such as Lydia Lunch, Murcof, The European Contemporary Orchestra (E.C.O.), Mark Cunningham (MARS), Cindytalk, Orkest De Ereprijs and Audrey Chen to name but a few.

- Norman Records

 #17 

http://www.lakeshorerecords.com/

- "We're pleased to announce Invada will be releasing a Ltd edition vinyl pressing of the Kreng score to action-thriller Camino. Some of you may know Kreng from his incredible score to Cooties, released last year by our friends Death Waltz Recording Company and Milan Records.

US Online Horror Site Bloody-Disgusting announced this story earlier, Jonathan Barkin (editor) says of the score:

"The music of Camino calls to mind the works of Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and even elements of Aphex Twin and Mogwai. Mixing digital elements with analog warmth, there is a beauty to this music that is absolutely captivating."

Directed by Josh Waller, who also produced Cooties, Camino follows, “…a photojournalist who gets more than she bargained for when she snaps a photo of a shadowy religious figure in the jungles of Colombia, triggering a flight-and fight-for her life…”

Related: [Interview] An Uncensored Zoë Bell on ‘Camino’ and Transitioning Into Acting!

Kreng explains, “We really wanted the first 20 minutes of the film to feel like a well-made documentary about Avery Taggart and her life as a photographer. And then: BOOM, this awful scene comes along and the movie just turns itself inside out. What I tried to convey in that key scene was a choking sense of claustrophobia. From that point on there is no way back for Avery, she is trapped in the jungle and there is no way out.”

Invada Records Label Manager Redg Weeks shares his excitement for the record, telling us:

Kreng’s score to last years ‘Cooties’ movie was a firm office favourite for us at Invada HQ; So when the opportunity arose for us to release Kreng’s latest offering we jumped at the chance.

There are currently a handful of modern film scores that are breaking the mould from the traditional and often over-predictable generic format that seem to be churned out on demand. Kreng pays homage to past film score masters whilst keeping his ideas dynamic & interesting. The music on this LP could appeal way beyond soundtrack collectors and strike a chord with fans of experimental electronica & industrial fans.

- Invada

#18

 

Autechre ‎– elseq 1–5

#19

  

- "Possibly the thing in the world that you never expected to happen, but luckily you were wrong: Klanggalerie are proud to present you the brand new album by Renaldo & The Loaf. 30 years after "The Elbow is Taboo", Renaldo & Ted The Loaf have created another fabulous record. 13 songs in classic RATL style with an incredible cover by the wonderful Poxodd. All the RATL trademark sounds are there, but of course technology has not passed unnoticed, so there is a 2016 approach to the music, too. This is what the band say: "Olleh! Hard to believe almost 30 years have passed since Elbow Is Taboo but finally we have decided it’s about time for a brand new album. So... (surprise!).... Gurdy Hurding is soon to be released by Klanggalerie . With a wonderful cover design and artwork by Poxodd, the collection of 13 tracks is scheduled to be released on October 25th. Renaldo & Ted". British avantgarde at its purest by who was often called The English Residents."

- Klanggallerie

- "The style of Renaldo and the Loaf is immediately recognizable, with goofy voices and exaggerated accents, bizarre lyrics involving topics like garden gnome bedmates or a hatred of soap, non-obvious chords and melodies, acoustic instruments played abnormally and extreme sound manipulation to make everything sound unnatural. On Gurdy Hurding, the duo’s original bizarre vigor is still strong, although there are some technological enhancements. (...) Gurdy Hurding is a true statement of the duo’s fun yet uneasy spirit with an emphasis on creating interesting sounds and a relentless devotion to manipulate each one until it’s sufficiently peculiar."

(The Pulse, November 2016)

#20

 - "Finders Keepers invite you to witness the incredible first ever Buchla synthesiser concerts/demonstrations providing a distinctive feminine alternative to The Silver Apples Of The Moon if they had ever been presented in phonographic form. This is history in the remaking.

This spring Finders Keepers Records are proud to release an archival project that not only redefines musical history but boasts genuine claim to the overused buzzwords such as pioneering, maverick, experimental, groundbreaking and esoteric, while questioning social politics and the evolution of music technology as we’ve come to understand it. To describe this records as a game-changer is an understatement. This record represents a musical revolution, a scientific benchmark and a trophy in the cabinet of counter culture creativity. This record is a triumphant yardstick in the synthesiser space race and the untold story of the first woman on the proverbial moon. While pondering the early accolades of this record it’s daunting to learn that this record was in fact not a record at all… It was a manifesto and a gateway to a new world, that somehow never quite opened. If the unfamiliar, modernistic, melodic, pulses, tones and harmonics found on this 1975 live presentation/grant application/educational demonstration had been placed in a phonographic context alongside the promoted work of Morton Subotnick, Walter Carlos or Tomita then the name Suzanne Ciani and her influence would have already radically changed the shape, sound and gender of our record collections. Hopefully there is still chance.

In short, Suzanne was a self-imposed twenty-year-old employee of the Buchla modular synthesiser company, San Francisco’s neck and neck contender to New York’s Moog. Buchla was run by a community of festival freaks and academic acid eaters whose roots in new age lifestyles and the reinvention of art and music replaced the business acumen enjoyed by its likeminded East Coasters. In the eyes of the consumer the creative refusal to adopt rudimentary facets like a piano keyboard controller rendered the Buchla synthesiser the more obscure stubborn sister of the synth marathon, steering these incredible units away from the mainstream into the homes and studios of free music aficionados, art house composers and die-hard revolutionaries. Championed and semi-showcased by composer Morton Subotnick on his albums The Bull and Silver Apples Of The Moon, Buchla’s versatility began to open the minds of a new generation, but the high-end design features and no-compromise modus operandi was often confused with incompatibility and, in the pulsating shadow of Moog’s marketing, the revolution would not be televised nor patronised. Suzanne Ciani, as one of the very few female composers on the frontline (and also providing the back line) did not lose faith.

These “concerts” are the epitome of rare music technology historic documents, performed by a real musician whose skills and academic education in classical composition already outweighed her male synthesiser contemporaries of twice her age. At the very start of her fragile career these recordings are nothing short of sacrificial ode to her mentor and machine, sonic pickets of the revolution and love letters to an absolutely genuine vision of and ‘alternative’ musical future. In denouncing her own precocious polymathmatic past in a bid to persuade the world to sing from a new hymn sheet, Suzanne Ciani created a bi-product of never before heard music that would render the pigeon holes “ambient” and “futuristic” utterly inadequate. Providing nothing short of an entirely different feminine take on the experimental “records” of Morton Subotnick and proving to a small, judgmental audience and jury the true versatility of one of the most radical and idiosyncratic musical instruments of the 20th century. These recordings have not been heard since then.

The importance of these genuinely lost pieces of electronic musics puzzle almost eclipses the glaring detail of Suzanne’s gender as a distinct minority in an almost exclusively male dominated, faceless, coldly scientific landscape. Those familiar with Suzanne’s work, a vast vault of previously unpublished “non-records”, will already know how the creative politics in her art of “being” simultaneously reshaped the worlds of synth design, advertising and film composition before anyone had even dropped a stylus in her groove. Needless to say this record, finally commanding the archival format of choice, courtesy of the Ciani and Finders Keepers longstanding unison, was not the last “first” with which this hugely important composer would gift society, and the future of a wide range of exciting evolving creative disciplines.

You have found a holy grail of electronic music and a female musical pioneer who was too proactive to take the trophies. With the light of Buchla and Ciani’s initial flame Finders Keepers continues to take a torch through the vaults of this lesser-celebrated music legacy shining a beam on these “non-records” that evaded the limelight for almost half a century. You can’t write history when you are too busy making it. With fresh ink in the bottomless well, let’s start at the beginning. Again. You, are invited! "

- Finders Keepers Records

- "Suzanne Ciani is a composer, recording artist, and pioneer in the field of electronic music and sound design. She is best loved for her fifteen albums of original music which feature her performances in a broad array of expressions: pure electronic, solo piano, piano with orchestra, and piano with jazz ensemble. Her music, renowned for its romantic, healing, and aesthetic qualities, has found a rapidly growing international audience, and her performances include numerous benefits for humanitarian causes.

Currently Ciani resides in Northern California where, in 1995, she established her own record label, Seventh Wave. Ciani felt the need to own and control her own creative work. "In many ways, this label represents the culmination of the long journey of my evolution as a recording artist," says Ciani.

In the eighties and early nineties, in order to finance her recording projects, Ciani brought her expertise to Madison Avenue. Her New York-based commercial production company, Ciani-Musica, Inc., was the leader in the field of sound design and TV spot scoring, creating award-winning music for a host of high profile Fortune 500 clients, including Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, A T & T and General Electric. Additionally, Ciani has scored the Lily Tomlin feature 'The Incredible Shrinking Woman,' and 'Mother Teresa', as well as scoring for the TV daytime serial 'One Life to Live'.

n the early nineties Ciani re-located to northern California to concentrate on her artistic career from her sea-side studio. She has toured throughout the United States, Italy, Spain, and Asia.

Her many recognitions include five Grammy nominations for Best New Age Album, an INDIE award for Best New Age Album, numerous Clios, a Golden Globe, and Keyboard Magazine's "New Age Keyboardist of the Year."

Ciani is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a Masters in Music Composition from the University of California at Berkeley."

So, This was 20.
 It is really unfair to all the other brilliant 2016 albums to stop here.
- So maybe I will continue, maybe not . . .

There will be some honourable mentions coming soon.

Brighternow

 Allright then, 5 more:

#21

LEWIS PESACOV -  THE EDGE OF FOREVER

Music by Lewis Pesacov
Libretto by Elizabeth Cline
wild Up ensemble, Christopher Rountree conducting.

- "The Edge of Forever is a chamber opera in five scenes inspired by the ending of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. It is a time-responsive opera, written for one moment in time and performed once on December 21, 2012, the final day of the Mayan Calendar.

The Edge of Forever explores the nature of consciousness and its relationship to time through a prophecy of divine love. It is the story of an ancient astronomer and a distant beloved, a cosmic union that will begin a new, undocumented era of time. Pesacov's score manifests his journey from dark emotional states of yearning to the warm glow of infinite love. The sound world balances imaginary ancient and future musics, from conch shell to electronic oscillations: Deep earth sounds ripple, murmur and surge into shimmering ritualistic music.

To remain true to the concept and experience of the work, this recording is the only documentation of the production. It is comprised of both live and post-performance studio recordings, produced by the composer with the utmost sensitivity to creating the best possible representation of the live experience.

The Edge of Forever was site specific to the historic Philosophical Research Society, a Mayan Revival architecture style building in Los Angeles. The audience entered the opera in Act III, at that present moment in time on December 21, 2012 at 8pm—an event that has been recorded in stone since the 9th century by the Mayans as the end of their calendar. The opera was staged as an immersive experience that begins with a procession of chorus members leading the audience into the theater with their voices. Once inside, the audience was immediately transported to the cenote where the action is already taking place."

- "Lewis Pesacov is a musician, producer and composer based in Los Angeles, California. LA Weekly writes "Lewis Pesacov is living the dream. Not only has he learned to make a career out of being a musician, but he's learned to separate his personal projects from his work, and therefore never lose his passion."

As co-founder of Afro-pop group, Fool’s Gold, Pesacov has co-written, performed and produced the group's three studio albums. Fool's Gold has toured extensively throughout the US, UK and Europe in a wide range of settings, including appearances at the Austin City Limits, Glastonbury, Reading, and Leeds Festivals; at the historic Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles with legendary desert rockers Tinariwen. In 2012, Fool's Gold supported the Red Hot Chili Peppers in arenas across the UK, as well as in Tel Aviv at one of the largest concerts in Israel's history.

An accomplished songwriter and guitar player, Pesacov has been featured in American Songwriter, Guitar Player, LA Times Magazine, The Village Voice and LA Weekly. As a guitar player, he has immersed himself in diverse guitar styles ranging from Mande and Tuareg desert blues of Mali to the Soukous fingerstyle from the Congo. Currently Pesacov is studying North Indian Hindustani classical music and the Hansa Veena Indian slide guitar.

As a producer, Pesacov has made numerous albums, including Best Coast’s 2010 Billboard-charting debut Crazy for You, as well as a variety singles/EPs for influential independent artists including FIDLAR, Oberhofer, Superhumanoids, and Guards to name but a few. He was co-founder of the influential Echo Park-based indie label, White Iris Records, which released over thirty 7" singles, EPs and full-length albums over the course of it's four years.

As a composer, Pesacov is inspired by the transcendent potential in sounds, heard. His works have been featured in festivals, museums and galleries including The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the 2013 Biennial of the Americas (Denver) performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and at Machine Project (Los Angeles) performed by the Calder Quartet. His work has also been performed internationally at the Darmstadt Ferienkursen and the Conservatory of Music Trossingen (Germany), the Dissonanz Festival (Switzerland) and by the Orchestre de Sceince-Poiltiques Paris (France). In 2013, Pesacov's chamber opera The Edge of Forever, inspired by the ending of the Mayan long count calendar, was performed by LA-based chamber music ensemble wild Up, conducted by Christopher Rountree, at The Philosophical Research Society (Los Angeles)."

#22

”Let me tell you how it was.” A mysterious, ululating soprano line opens Hans Abrahamsen’s song cycle – a setting of Paul Griffiths’s novella that uses only words spoken by Shakespeare’s Ophelia, and one of the most spellbindingly beautiful vocal-orchestral works of recent years. It was created for soprano Barbara Hannigan and is a stunning vehicle for her, with its floating, effortless-sounding high notes and pure, expressive tone. Her Ophelia is intense and fragile, sensuous and febrile; her phrasing is elastic and tasteful.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– The Guardian, 14 January 2016
http://www.barbarahannigan.com/

#23

ANNE-JAMES CHATON voice, guitar, electronics

THURSTON MOORE voice, guitar

ANDY MOOR guitar, electronics, voice

‘Heretics’ is a series of portraits of radical heretical figures found throughout the history of schismatic thinking.
Heretics like Caravaggio, William Burroughs, Jose Mujica, Marquis de Sade and Johnny Rotten, fascinated the artists. These influential figures are presented here in the form of poetic texts and catchy melodies combined with experimental noise.

With the addition of ex-Sonic Youth guitarist, singer and songwriter Thurston Moore – Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor’s more than a decade long collaboration becomes an exciting trio. They researched and created the material for Heretics during a residency in the French port of St Nazaire, in July 2014. They used voice, guitars and electronics in solo, duo or trio, to collaboratively explore their ideas and co-write texts and music.

Moore and Moor both emerged from the punk/post-punk scene – albeit on different continents. This familiarity with each other’s background and music meant they were able to work at an intuitive fast pace during the making of these pieces, and subsequent recordings. Chaton’s powerful delivery and hypnotic style holds it’s own amidst the two guitarists building a rich wall of sound, melody and noise around him. Chaton and Moore’s contrasting voices and choice of words ring out in the tradition of non-conformist poetry. Shaped by jagged distorted guitars and penetrating chords, the trio’s combination of guitar and poetry evokes a new genre.

Anne-James Chaton

Anne-James Chaton has published several books published by Al Dante and joined the German label Raster-Noton in 2011 with  Evénements 09 and Décade published in 2012. He has given many performances in France and abroad. He has worked with the group of Dutch post-rock band The Ex and released an album, Le journaliste (2008), with the English guitarist Andy Moor, with whom he develops since 2011 Tansfer series of four 7” project whose album was released in 2013 on the Dutch label Unsounds. He worked on the albums Unitxt (2008) and Univrs (2011) by German artist Carsten Nicolai aka Alva Noto. In January 2009, he created the trio Décade, with Andy Moor and Alva Noto. He also created Napoli, Napoli with Benoît Bradel, Black Monodie with Philippe Menard for the 64th edition of the Festival d'Avignon, and Le cas Gage, ou les aventures de Phineas en Amérique with choreographer Sylvain Prunenec, part that will be created during the edition 2013 Dance festival Uzes in Uzes.
In 2013 he began a collaboration with singer and composer Nosfell around project Icons. The same year he formed the trio HERETICS with Andy Moor and Thurston Moore, guitarist and singer of American band Sonic Youth.

#24

Geoff Leigh (flute, voice, electronics)

Yumi Hara (keys, voice)

Chris Cutler (drums)

John Greaves (bass, voice)

The band was convened after a chance encounter in 2010, at Jean-Herve Peron’s Avant Garde Festival in Hamburg (3 days of Utopia™) and has popped up here and there ever since. This is their first official release, recorded over 2 days at the University of East London, then edited and tweaked into shape over the next half year. Hard to pin down – some of it is obviously written, some obviously improvised – and then there are a lot of grey areas; it’s a law unto itself really.

- "The Artaud Beats (Geoff Leigh: sax, fl, vo, electronics, Yumi Hara: p, vo, Chris Cutler: dr, John Greaves: b, vo) came together in a chance encounter at Jean-Hervé Péron's Avantgarde Festival in Schiphorst, 2009. Geoff Leigh and Yumi Hara were there as a duo, Chris Cutler and John Greaves with Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause. It was Geoff who proposed the quartet and Jean-Hervé enthusiastically supported the idea - since Geoff, Chris, and John had all been in Henry Cow together when they toured with Faust; and Yumi seemed the perfect companion. The concert was fine, the public happy and a Norwegian promoter from Bodo, who happened to be in the audience, immediately invited us to his next festival. So our casual meeting metamorphosed into a band. We gave ourselves a name: The Artaud Beats, and made ourselves available. Two tours of Japan and a box-set later, we're back - still with no programme and no songs, and still engaged in the hazardous but honourable art of conjuring music out of empty air."

- Yumi Hara.

#25

- And then some honourable mentions soon and that will be it.

Brighternow

A good handful of Honourable mentions, mostly new releases of old material.

 
https://daily.bandcamp.com/2016/10/13/carl-stone-interview/

 - "In 1963, Dutch abstract-expressionist painter Karel Appel (1921-2006), one of the founders of the avant-garde movement Cobra in 1948, logged time in the Instituut Voor Sonologie to compose music for a documentary being made on himself by cinematographer Jan Vrijman. Musique Barbare was born, released by Philips, this masterpiece of Musique Concrete is a real jewel for any record collectors. Made in collaboration with the Insituut's member Frits Weiland, the result is a fantastic mix of electric organ fumblings to full-on riots of distorted kettle drum and assorted percussion-room filigree, assembled into an extremely edit-heavy suite - much use of tape-speed manipulation"

Karel Appel was a forceful and fascinating personality, and his Musique Barbare does not less bear the stamp of it than do any of his other artistic creations. A more remarkable gramophone record has not been produced in many a year.

- Sub Rosa


Released by Caroline in 1973 and rereleased on Superior Viaduct April 8th, 2016

- "Violinist, composer and filmmaker Tony Conrad started his career in New York in the early 1960s. As a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music (a.k.a. the Dream Syndicate) alongside John Cale, La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Angus MacLise, he participated in now-legendary and often legendarily loud drone performances with many pieces having no beginning and no end. During a fateful trip to Germany in 1972, Conrad met with avant-rock visionaries Faust and made the very first record to bear his name.

Outside The Dream Syndicate, originally released in Europe only in 1973, is a stunning debut. Two side-long tracks – "The Side Of Man And Womankind" and "The Side Of The Machine" – show just how far Conrad had moved beyond his minimalist peers. Werner Diermaier's repetitive drum beat and Jean-Hervé Peron's stripped-down bassline conjure a tense, ascetic groove, while Conrad's seamless violin, initially so controlled, reveals a surprising adaptability. The music shifts almost on a subliminal level, pushing and pulling to the drone's internal pulse.

It is hard to imagine Conrad's trajectory from downtown Manhattan to a farmhouse in the German countryside that ultimately resulted in Outside The Dream Syndicate, yet no other record captures – so completely and instantly – the intersection of avant-garde and rock forms. Outside The Dream Syndicate remains ahead of and bracingly outside of its time.

This first-time vinyl reissue has been carefully mastered from the original master tapes and includes liner notes by musician Jim O'Rourke and author Branden W. Joseph." 

- Released by BBC Records in 1979 and rereleased by Silva Screen Records in april:
 

 

- "In 1958 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop opened with the aim to enhance in the main, drama output on the Third Programme (now Radio 3) following the development of new electronic music techniques emanating from Europe. Their work expanded across the BBC to take in TV drama (especially sci-fi), schools programmes and themes. The latter being their most celebrated and well known work, Delia Derbyshire's treatment of Ron Grainer's theme for Doctor Who. This collection, originally released by BBC Records in 1979 to celebrate 21 years of the workshop appears for the first time in its full original form on CD. From The Goons (Bloodnocks Stomach) to the Interval Signal to Doctor Who and Great Zoos Of The World this is a fascinating chronicle of some of the most innovative music ever made. These ground-breaking compositions providing a major influence on music from The Beatles and Pink Floyd and onwards into the contemporary world of Aphex Twin, Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. "The Radiophonic Workshop, I loved all that, it fascinated me, and still does”.

- Paul McCartney.

First reissue of the 1981 classic masterpiece album by the legendary Hastings of Malawi featuring a founder member of Nurse with Wound and Pat Simmons:

Dave Hodes, Heman Pathak, John Grieve

- "They recorded the album in one night in 1981 with no plan and no idea of what they were doing.

They played drums, clarinet, synthesiser and piano but also made use of things that they found lying around the
studio - old records, cookery books, telephone directories and a telephone.

The recordings were played down the phone to randomly dialled numbers and the reactions added to the recording.

All three had been involved in the recording of the first Nurse with Wound album Chance Meeting On A Dissecting Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella and had contributed metal scrapings, piano, effects, clarinet and guitar during the session.

The album was released in 1981 as Vibrant Stapler Obscures Characteristic Growth by Hastings of Malawi on the Papal Products label."

The star of the record is Pat Simmons who was the voice of the UK speaking clock between 1963 and 1984.

In his book Lipstick Traces writer Greil Marcus seeks to draw a line from Dada through the Situationist International to punk rock. If this line exists then this record sits on the end of it.

The only review that the album received was from Steve Stapelton who suggested that "nobody should miss this
vinyl disaster."

Good or bad are not concepts that can be applied to this recording.

The record stands firmly in opposition to the now all pervading concepts of commercialisation, celebrity culture and the commodification of creative activity.

- Sub Rosa


This one was previously released by INA_GRM in 1988.
- Released in 2016 in the Sub Rosa Early Electronic Series:

In 1987, Michel Redolfi hit the California Desert road during the Fall, to catch those hypothetical poly-sensorial desert tones. He visited the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, Palm Canyon and came back with an extraordinary album of early electronic music, sparse and bright to express the crude light and the divine silences.

During the '80s and '90s he composed collaborative works with Luc Ferrari, Bernard Parmegiani, Pierre Henry and Jean-Claude Risset.

As a resident of the United States from 1973 to 1984, he carried out his research with several new music centers, including the CME at the University of California in San Diego and the California Institute of the Arts. Also during this period he developed several collaborations with American composers.

The natural elements highlighted by technology are a constant in Redolfi's catalog: many of his electroacoustic pieces stylize and orchestrate sound matter, and are recorded in remote locations as on Pacific Tubular Waves, originally released with Immersion in 1980 (REGRM 014LP, 2015) and Jungles (1997). He currently heads a major studio in sound design, Audionaute, based in Nice, France.

He currently heads a major studio in sound design, Audionaute, based in Nice, France.

In 1954, Henri Pousseur was twenty-five when he composed his first piece of electronic music in the studios of the Cologne radio, where Stockhausen (with whom he had a close relationship) had created most of his famous pieces.

This seventh and penultimate installment in the series Henri Pousseur had programmed around his experimental and electronic music features his earliest works -his first steps.
Henri Pousseur studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 to 1953. He was closely associated with Pierre Froidebise and André Souris. He encountered Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio and thereafter devoted himself to avant-garde research. Henri Pousseur has taught in Cologne, Basel, and in the United States at SUNY Buffalo, as well as in his native Belgium. From 1970 until his retirement in 1988 he taught at the University and Conservatory of Liège where he also founded the Centre de recherches et de formation musicales de Wallonie.

- Sub Rosa

<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.henripousseur.net/index.php">http://www.henripousseur.net/index.php</a><br>

Henri Pousseur, granddaddy of the Belgian electro-acoustic scene, was possessed by an incredibly complex yet undogmatically inspired creative imagination. He was lesser known within French and Anglo-Saxon experimental electronic music circles, but featured as somewhat of a leading figure in the scenes of his native country, as well as in those of the Netherlands and Germany. As a matter of fact, it was in the legendary Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne -- where Stockhausen, with whom Pousseur had a close relationship, famously created his first revolutionary electronic experiments -- that the merely 25-year-old Pousseur recorded the earliest piece collected here. 1954's revolutionary composition "Séismogrammes I" radiates and bleeps elegantly, and sounds like a lost gem of early electronic music. At a time when many other composers from the international avant-garde were still devoted to the cult of serialism, Pousseur was busy constructing an "open form" of composition, opening up his compositional method towards audience participation. Simultaneously, however, his musical vernacular was deeply informed by the tropes of medieval and renaissance music, and it is ultimately this sense of tradition that anchors the musical structures explored here. Henri Pousseur's work carefully reimagines existing musical motifs, while continually expanding forward-reaching otherworldly atmospheres and ancient dimensions.

- Review by Niels Van Tomme @ Other Music

Unless something essential pops up this will be it.