NEW! ESKELIN 6TET! SIGMATROPIC! TOM WAITS! ERIK M! GUNTER MULLER! SIR RICHARD BISHOP! YOKO MIURA & MATT WILSON! LISBON IMPROV PLAYERS! KLARESQUE ENSEMBLE! KAZUO IMAI & SHUICHI CHINO! BRIAN ENO'S AMBIENT SERIES REMASTERED [FINALLY]! CLASSIC JAZZ IMPORT RARITIES!
AND, THE FULL 'LOVELY MUSIC' CATALOG!!!



ELLERY ESKELIN - Ten (Hatology 611) Featuring Ellery Eskelin on tenor sax, Andrea Parkins on piano, accordion and sampler, Jim Black on drums, Marc Ribot on electric guitar, Melvin Gibbs on bass and Jessica Constable on voice. Ellery's extraordinary trio (with Andrea & Jim) celebrates their tenth anniversary this year a new release which looks toward the future by adding three great guest musicians, downtown legends, Marc Ribot and Melvin Gibbs, plus the wonderful vocalist Jessica Constable who one played at our old store in an inspired trio with Andrea Parkins and Okkyung Lee.
CD for $17

ERIK M & FENNESZ - Complementary Contrasts / Donaueschingen 2003 (Hatology 618) Two different temperaments, the same background - this observation was the basis of the idea of inviting Erik M and Fennesz to form a duo for the first time. A few days before the duo premiered at the Donaueschingen Musiktage 2003 the musicians met in the SWR studio to try out strategies for playing together. This CD captures the two best takes from these studio sessions along with the recording of the festival concert, which lasted about forty minutes. Although they are much more abstract than the rock-like Donaueschingen concert, the studio takes reveal most strikingly that the new duo is united in inner harmony. - Reinhard Kager (translated by Friederike Kulcsar)
CD for $17

ERIK M /GUNTER MULLER / TOSHIMARU NAKAMURA - Why Not Bechamel (For 4 Ears 1553) Featuring Erik M: 3-k.pad.system; Gunter Muller: I-pod, selected percussion & electronics; Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board. Erik M and GØnter MØller, both ex Poire_z, meet Toshimaru Nakamura for the recordings of 'Why Not BØchamel'. Three titles, two of them mixed by Erik M, one by Muller, display rich soundscapes between silence and intensity, and may give new ideas in electronic improvisations.
CD for $15

JASON KAHN / GUENTER MULLER - Blinks (For 4 Ears 1552) Featuring Jason Kahn: laptop; GØnter MØller: I-pod, selective percussion & electronics. On 'Blinks', Jason Kahn and GØnter MØller -- both originally drummers -- meet not for a classic drum battle but for nine improvisations taking percussion beyond its original source acoustics. Created with laptop, ipod, selected percussion and electronics, 'Blinks' is an audio document of rich sonority which will reward the attentive listener with new insights into Kahn and MØller's approach to percussion and improvisation.
CD for $15

TOM WAITS - Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph 86678) On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound -- keyboards -- he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural blues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on turntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's turntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics. It's a throwaway, and the album would have been better had it been left off entirely. But it's also a canard, a sleight-of-hand strategy he's employed before. The jewels shine from the mud immediately after. The mutated swamp tango of "Hoist That Rag" has stuttered clangs and quakes for drums, decorated by distorted Latin power chords and riffs from Ribot, along with thundering deep bass from Claypool. On the ten-plus minute "Sins of My Father," Cody's spooky banjo walks with Taylor's low-strung bass and Waits' shimmering reverbed guitar as he ominously croons, revealing a rigged game of "star-spangled glitter" where "justice wears suspenders and a powdered wig." It's part revelation, part East of Eden, and part backroom political culture framed by the eve of the apocalypse. It's hunted, hypnotic, and spooky. In stripping away convention, Waits occasionally lets his songs go to extremes with absurd simplicity, such as on "Don't Go into That Barn," a musical cousin to his spoken "What's He Building?" from Mule Variations. But there's also the downright riotous squall of "Shake It," which sounds like an insane carny barker jamming with R.L. Burnside, or the riotous raging blues of "Baby Gonna Leave Me." There are "straight" narratives such as "How's It Gonna End," with its slow and brooding beat storyline, and the moving murder ballad "Dead and Lovely," with its drooping, shambolic elegance. There's the spoken word "Circus," with its wispy spindly frame that features Waits on chamberlain. And "Metropolitan Glide" feels like a hell-bent duet between James Brown and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, followed by the fractured, busted-love, ranting-at-God pain that rips through "Make It Rain." The tender "Green Grass" is among Waits' finest broken love songs; it's movingly rendered by a character who could have resided in one of William Kennedy's novels. The set closes with "Day After Tomorrow," featured on MoveOn.org's Future Soundtrack for America. It is one of the most insightful and understated antiwar songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation. Real Gone is another provocative moment for Waits, one that has problems, but then, all his records do. His excesses, however, do nothing to cloud the stellar achievements of his risk-taking vision and often brilliant execution. - Thom Jurek, AMG
CD for $16
Above item also available on LP for $15

SIGMATROPIC [With Guest Vocalists ROBERT WYATT/HOWIE GELB/LEE RANALDO...] - Sixteen Haiku & Other Stories: Songs Based On The Poetry Of George Seferis (Thirsty Ear 57142) On Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories, a slate of international guests help Akis Boyatzis and Sigmatropic recast their original, Greek-language interpretations of George Seferis' poetry into English, in the process bringing the Nobel laureate's evocative work to their own varied audiences. The recording's guest list is rather impressive, from an indie standpoint at least. Shoving off with no less an eccentric talent than the inimitable Robert Wyatt, Sixteen Haiku drifts soundtrack-like through 22 unnamed pieces ("Haiku Five," "Haiku Six," etc.) According to Boyatzis' liner notes, the guests involved recorded their respective vocal interpretations over Sigmatropic's existing tracks; the resulting musical threads tie together what might otherwise be a mess of tangled voices. The album percolates with electronic programming, and the grooves of what might be labeled indie electronica. Processed bits of guitar build subtle melodies over thick bass, wildly varied drum loops, faraway snatches, traditional instrumentation, and assorted blips of human laughter and muttering. Ultimately, however, Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories is about words and voices. Wyatt, Laetitia Sadier, Alejandro Escovedo, and Edith Frost dress their performances in personal nuance, but never outpace the poetry itself. (The artfully simplistic couplets are included in the accompanying booklet, along with a brief Seferis bio.) "I am raising now/A dead butterfly/With no make-up," Cat Power sings in "Haiku 10." It's brief at just over a minute. But the track's atmospheric buzz is sold by Chan Marshall's particular phrasing. This holds true throughout the album. Despite all the distinct personalities and their clever interpretations, no one piece ever really stands out. Instead, they each pour a spoonful of sparkling crystals into Sixteen Haiku and Other Stories' rejuvenating mineral spring. - Johnny Loftus, AMG
CD for $15

THINKING PLAGUE - ...Upon Both Your Houses (Nearfest 004; USA) Recorded live at NEARfest 2000, 'Upon Both Your Houses' is a stunning document of Rock-In-Opposition at its finest. Thinking Plague delivers a commanding set of highly technical and challenging, yet melodic compositions in a manner that must be heard to believe. The masterful musicianship displayed by this sextet is exquisite. They draw from obvious progressive rock sources, but refuse to merely relive the 70's as they push their unique brand of music forward. This energetic, jaw-dropping live performance is a must for your prog rock collection!
CD for $15

SIR RICHARD BISHOP - Improvika (Locust 61) By trade Sir Richard Bishop is a dealer of rare occult books and fine paper ephemera. For many in the musical cosmos, he has occasion to travel the smoke filled carnie circuit as 1/3 of the Sun City Girls medicine show. But in the twilight hours of a shadow world sensed only by few, Bishop is a dazzling unaccompanied guitarist. On Improvika, Bishop rides a very tall horse through a surrealist's cowboy set that's 1 part bruit Peckinpah muscularity & 2 parts illuminated Jodorowskian symbolism. A very strange place, indeed. Armed only with a single steel string wooden guitar, bare-knuckled Bishop fends off the horrors & dangers of the night with ease as he spits out glorious white robed arabesques, django inspired gypsy arcs and Latin terracotta flourishes like so many spinning tumbleweeds in a one horse town that is his alone. 'Improvika' is Sir Richard's follow up to his part on Locust's celebrated Wooden Guitar collection and second full length release after his debut on John Fahey's Revenant label.
CD for $14

DJ OLIVE - Buoy (Room 40 #4/Australia) The first of Room 40's summer ambient series is DJ Olive's Buoy. Buoy is a beautifully warm and encompassing record that reflects DJ Olive's long association with the New York ambient scene, sleep parties and chill out DJ sets. One of the first DJs in New York to host ambient events in Brooklyn and Manhattan, this disc is a recollection of sounds and textures he experienced on his global tour last September through November. The record is an engaging listen, a perfect soundtrack for that hot northern summer -- a chill out session that heralds the return of DJ Olive to rich textures, humming sub-harmonics, echoed field recordings and ambient moods.
CD for $15

KATO HIDEKI / JAMES FEI - Sieves (Improvised Music from Japan 522) Featuring Kato Hideki: electric bass and bass synthesizer and James Fei: oscillators, filters, spring reverb, contact mike, and miscellaneous electronics. Based in New York City since 1992, Kato Hideki -- a former member of Otomo Yoshihide's group Ground-Zero and Tony Buck's band Peril -- has been involved in myriad projects in America and Europe, including Fred Frith and Ikue Mori's Death Ambient, and a multimedia collaboration with Nicholas Collins. Taiwan-born James Fei studied with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton following his move to the U.S. (also in '92). Now living in New York, he's active as a composer and improviser, and as an instructor at Columbia University's Computer Music Center. Fei is also a sax player, although he doesn't use the instrument on this album. In recent years, Kato and Fei have been performing as a duo at live music venues and galleries in New York. 'Sieves' was made through a process of excerpting, editing, mixing, and mastering electronic performance and recording using feedback; live-performance-like analog mixes; and performance-recording of acoustic reverberation. Not limited to mere documentation and editing, the recording process was treated as a form of improvisation and composition.
Japanese CD for $18

YOKO MIURA & MATT WILSON - Dialogue (YokoPia Music 1001/Japan) Ms. Miura is a charming woman and fine pianist, who paid us a visit this week and left us with a few copies of her self-produced CD. She is a friend of Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura and it was Satoko that sent her here to DMG. Matt Wilson is a most inventive and diverse local jazz drummer, composer and band-leader. He seems to play with just about everybody, from Dewey Redman to Mario Pavone to Charlie Haden's LMO to Lee Konitz and loads more. 'Dialogue' is a most appropriate title since this duo sound as if they are talking to another and us at the same time. The opening piece, "Improvisation" is nearly 32 minutes and begins very quietly, delicately and mysteriously. Superbly recorded, the duo slowly build, blend and weave their notes gracefully and spaciously. What's wonderful is the way they are able to split up their playing so that Yoko's right hand can play one segment while Matt shadows her on the cymbals or tom toms, while Yoko creates some soft turbulence at the low end of the piano, while Matt also reacts to the lower depths with some other cymbals or lower pitched rums. All of this done at a very slow pace, as the duo takes their time pick up the pace and evolve. About half way through the dialogue becomes more dense and dark, yet finally winds down into freer terrain afterwards, most cautious and filled with space and suspense. The other three pieces are shorter and more composed. "(Anxiety)" is a suspense-filled piece for a minimum of notes and much space, eerie cymbals and cautious notes on the piano carefully selected. "Manickptra Market" has an odd, child-like melody, coy and a bit goofy, building to a slightly bent conclusion and winding back down. "Itotsumugi" has an intriguing two handed theme when it begins and shows some strong dialogue between Yoko and Matt, playing tightly together in sections, with short solo episodes then more tight interplay. Matt seems like the ideal partner here as he plays very melodically throughout, there is a perfect balance the tow players. The magic or glue that holds this encounter together is that it never get too dense or too out. Yoko left us with just three copies of this gem, we hope to get more in the near future.
Japanese CD for $17

KAZUO IMAI - Far and Wee (PSF 155/Japan) Kazuo Imai: Acoustic guitar, chair. "Kazuo Imai has developed into one of the most strikingly individual and immediately identifiable guitar improvisers in Japan, equally adept on electric or acoustic, and even on viola de gamba and unusual ethnic instruments. These two releases on PSF seem destined to finally cement Imai's reputation as an improviser of international stature. Imai's training as an improviser and guitarist saw him studying with both Masayuki Takayanagi (famously, Imai was the one and only student to ever graduate under Takayanagi's tutelage), and Takehisa Kosugi. As a performer he's played with Takayanagi's New Direction, Taj Mahal Travellers, East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort, as well as with European and US luminaries such as Arthur Doyle, Lee Konitz, Barre Phillips and Han Bennink. Far and Wee, only Imai's second solo release (following -How Will We Change?' PSF-70), sees him setting aside the electric strurm und drang in favour of the limitations of a nylon-strung acoustic guitar. In Imai's hands though, the instrument is opened up in an utterly thrilling fashion, as he agilely traverses clumped string thickets, high tension slide motion and yawning acoustic caverns with a jaw-dropping array of extended techniques. There's a density of conception and creativity on display here that is simply jaw-dropping." -- Alan Cummings.
Japanese CD for $20

SHUICHI CHINO / KAZUO IMAI - 001111 (PSF 156/Japan) Shuichi Chino: piano; Kazuo Imai: guitar. "Pianist Shuichi Chino's lengthy career is more convoluted, with early stints in groups like Wha-ha-ha and the Downtown Boogie Woogie Band, followed by theatre and soundtrack work, and a towering heap of sessions with improvisers like Butch Morris, and Kazuhisa Uchihashi. '001111' is a reissue of a minimally distributed private CD-R, documenting Chino and Imai's acoustic duo meeting at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts, on 11 November 2001. Together they explore the subtleties of group-mind free shiver, pluck and rustle, hitting a foggy zone where Django nods out with John Tilbury." -- Alan Cummings.
Japanese CD for $20

BOREDOMS - Seadrum/House of Sun (Warner Bros. 10119/Japan) Absolutely brilliant and completely over the top! The Boredoms have re-invented themselves once again! Commencing with just a bit of Yoshimi's charming vocals, soon those drums and space percussion come a pounding. Ritualistic, trance-inducing, tribal, fabulous layers of percussion, wonderful harp-like waves of piano, angelic voices floating on the top, transcendent, dream sequence, hyper-pace intensity, African percussion segment, acid-like meditation/medication/exhilaration. Just two long tracks found here: "Seadrum", a 23-minute epic of breathtaking cosmic bliss that takes us up to the heavens and "House of Sun", which helps us glide back down to Mother Earth. "House of Sun" features dreamy layers of sitar, tambura, guitar(s), exquisite drones and other mesmerizing eastern samples or instruments. Helping to pacify the pain of modern life with subtle, yet mind-blowing shimmering spirits. Considering how f**king expensive this precious gem is, it still feels like a delectable portal into other worlds.
Japanese CD for $34

BILL FRISELL - Unspeakable (Nonesuch 79828) Produced by Hal Willner and featuring Frisell on guitars, Steve Bernstein on trumpet, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, Briggan Krause on bari sax, the 858 Strings with Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola & Hank Roberts on cello, Willner on turntables & samples, Adam Dorn on synth, Tony Scherr on bass & guitar, Don Alias on percussion and Kenny Wollesen on drums. This is the first Frisell release not produced by Lee Townsend in about a decade, so expectations do run a bit higher than usual. Townsend has a way of smoothing out the rough edges and sense of adventure that Bill's old pal and bandmate, John Zorn (in Naked City), used to inspire and even demand. Master of the tribute concept (on records & in concert), Hal Willner, also does a great job of producing by seeing the big picture and selecting the right musicians, like characters in a play and taking some inspired chances. Hal also has also written or co-written most of the pieces here. On a few of these tunes, Hal and Bill have come up with some rather funky, bluesy grooves, complete with some sly horns and great gritty guitar. Even on the laid back "Sundust", Hal weaves some spooky samples into the suspenseful atmosphere. Frisell has written the string arrangements on a few of these tunes, often using them just for colors and textures, often recalling those slithery strings from them old Isaac Hayes records. Bill made a wonderful solo guitars CD called 'Ghost Town' a few years back, one of his more consistent recent offerings. On "Gregory C." (for Corso?), his mysterious, spacious electric guitar sounds float hypnotically with a bit of cello and samples, quite breathtaking. I just wish he would do more of this. The full band turns them funky beats inside-out on a few of these pieces, with Bill also dropping some unexpected and rather twisted notes in strange places. On a couple of these pieces the strings and horns do sound a bit cheesy, perhaps they should've saved it for an appropriate film, "Who Was That Girl" is a perfect title for silly teen flick. One minor complaint is that at nearly 70 minutes, this endeavor is a bit too long, perhaps dropping a couple of lesser interesting tunes would make it better. Certainly not amazing, but a step in the right direction.
CD for $17

KLARESQUE ENSEMBLE - approachable perspectives/the music of Ernesto Klar (Fresh Sound World Jazz 026) My sales rep for the massive Fresh Sound label, Milan, left us with some 30+ promo CDs a couple of months back and I worked hard on listening to every one, which was no easy task. I did get a bit tired listening to a dozen discs that Chris Cheek appeared on, but my reward was finding three fine CDs from Fresh Sound's World Jazz series. I can't say that I am familiar with Boston-based composer and conductor Ernesto Klar, but I do know a few of the 15 players on this disc - Jim Hobbs (Fully Celebrated Orchestra) on alto sax, Taylor Ho Bynum (Braxton duo disc & current downtown hero) on trumpet & flugel, Jonathan LaMaster (Saturnalia Strings & Kowald collaborator) and Vic Rawlings (BSC) on prepared cello. The instrumentation includes three reed players, trumpet, two trombones, double bass and rum kit, two guest string players and a recitation on one track. The music a well crafted blend of modern classical and modern jazz. Layers of muted horns, echoed flutes over a tight, staccato rhythm team, actually reminding me of British jazz composers Neil Ardley and Graham Collier. The lengthy three-part work, "Zarathustra Suite" includes rich and elegant harmonies and is laid back and lush. Jason Hunter plays some lovely, warm and buttery tenor sax, which recalls Dexter Gordon or someone even older than that, backed superbly by the great acoustic bass of Massimo Biolcati and precious drums of Eric Thompson. Ernesto has a gift for placing the sublime flute of Hiro Honshuku within the graceful harmonies of the three brass players. Even Jim Hobbs, who have scream and honk with the best of the free-jazzers, plays with just the right amount of beauty and restraint due to the lyrical, yet adventurous charts that Ernesto has provided. On "Il Segno" (part 3), Jason Humter again plays an amazing, but further out tenor solo, back by some sprawling and truly inspired bass and drums. "enTroPia-per Morton Feldman" is a work which blends modern classical cautiousness with free-sounding terrain, yet also feels very focused, as if it a well conducted improvisation. It evolves through a few tight curves and remains fascinating throughout. "(Between Light and Darkness)" begins quietly with the wonderful (Robert Wyatt-like) mallet-work of Eric Thompson, eerie bowed bass and mysterious muted horns. A haunting recitation by Ms. Chiara Civello floats in and Taylor Ho Bynum takes of those great fractured Herb Robertson-like solos. A most challenging and completely engaging work from one of Boston's best little-known ensembles, well worth seeking out.
CD for $14

LISBON IMPROVISATION PLAYERS - live_Ixmeskla (Clean Feed 007) Featuring Rodrigo Amado on alto & bari saxes, Marco Franco on soprano sax, Paulo Curando on alto & soprano saxes. Pedrp Goncalves on double bass and Acacio Salero on drums. Baritone saxist Rodrigo leads this fine improv-only triple sax quintet and also has a fine improv trio CD on Clean Feed with Carlos Zingaro and Ken Filiano, reviewed here a couple of weeks ago. Although they begin with some open-ended free improv from all three saxes, soon the rhythm team erupts and begins burning. Ridrigo plays good deal of those percussive and bent sounds that Evan Parker is known for, only Rodrigo does on his bari sax. The rhythm team is equally inventive, pushing things into a variety of groove and free terrain as well. This often doesn't sound completely improvised as they tight moments when it all comes together and they stop on a dime. On "song for bluiett", (for Hamiet, I guess), it is a fine, laid back ballad at first, then picking up speed as it goes with strong baritone work from Rodrigo. The rhythm team really stands out on "memory of a free festival" and spin quickly and intensely, pushing all three saxes to swirl around one another in joyous communion, even launching into some great avant-funk at one point. I dig the way just the saxes talk to each other on "conversation piece", sopranos and altos weaving together so well integrated, even better when they start freaking out. They brings things to a close on "this is our music", which is the title of an early Ornette album, the skeletal rhythm section, cautiously sets the pace as the saxes quietly sail around one another, building in tempo and density as it ascends. The sopranos and bari sax sound perfect together, as they create gnarly harmonies. This piece sounds like Euro-free improv at its best, free yet completely connected and organically evolving. Another gem from those fine folks at Clean Feed.
CD for $16

FREDRIK NORDSTROM QUINTET - Moment (Moserobie 018) Featuring Fredrik on tenor sax, Magnus Broo on trumpet, Mattias Stahl on vibes, Flip Auguston on bass and Fredrik Rundqvist on drums plus special guest Alberto Pinton on contrabass clarinet & bari sax. Mr. Nordstrom recently paid us a visit and was surprised that I had heard of him. Thanks to some of my more adventurous customers, I often hear about new players from the folks in our vast audience. I am a bit familiar with Magnus Broo through his work with Mats Gustafsson in School Days. Nordstrom's writing is strong with intricate parts for the vibes/bass/drums rhythm team and inspired soloing from Nordstrom's tenor and Magnus' trumpet. Alberto Pinton's mysterious contrabass clarinet opens "There's Something Strange on the Carpet", which is a feature for Magnus' muted trumpet, the groove they get into recalls one of those memorable finger-snapping Mingus lines that will have you humming along. Nordstrom takes an inspired Booker Ervin like tenor solo. These cats play with a great deal of restraint on the haunting "The Modern Things", which builds wonderfully as it starts to swing hard with that elastic pulse, Vibist Mattias Stahl does a great job of consistently supporting the horns and providing a chordal cushion. He knows how to let those vibes ring, resonate and hang just right in the air. "Russian T" is a duet for vibes and tenor, and it is lush and laid back and lovely. Although Nordstrom is a young man, his warm, expressive tone is well weathered and sounds like he has been around for quite a while. He seems to favor the more laid back sounds of an older jazz style much of the time. He and Mattias on vibes work especially well together throughout. One of the most American sounding European (jazz) releases I've heard in a while and I don't think that is a bad thing.
CD for $15





HISTORIC RECORDINGS, REISSUES of NOTE, and RESTOCKS for 10/8/04:

STEVE LEHMAN QUINTET - ArtificialLight (Fresh Sound NT 186; USA) Featuring: Steve Lehman (as), Mark Shim (ts), Chris Dingman (vb), Drew Gress (b), Eric McPherson (d) The quintet on "Artificial Light" began performing together in August of 2002. Each member of the group has developed a truly innovative approach to his instrument, while maintaining the ability to navigate and transform complex compositional structures. Mark Shim (Elvin Jones), Drew Gress (Fred Hersch) and Eric McPherson (Jackie McLean - Greg Osby) are among the busiest performers in New York at the moment, in large part due to their ability to combine technical virtuosity with abstract thinking. The vibraphonist, Chris Dingman, is a former student of Steve Lehman's and one of the few musicians in New York capable of handling the demands made upon the chordal instrument by the music on "Artificial Light". Each composition on this CD is intended to create a fresh and original framework for small group interaction. In some cases, this goal is achieved through the use of meter that is constantly shifting with each measure. In other cases, it achieved through the rethinking of traditional instrumental roles.
CD for $14

SONNY ROLLINS With DON CHERRY/HENRY GRIMES/BILLY HIGGINS/BOB CRANSHAW - Our Man In Jazz...Plus! [aka On The Outside] (RCA Victor 85160; EEC) This expanded CD version contains all 6 RCA tracks Rollins recorded with Don Cherry [essentially the exact contents as an earlier CD entitled 'On The Outside']: the entire 'Our Man In Jazz' album [3 tracks recorded live in 1962 at the Village Gate with Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins], and the 3 cuts from the '63 sessions that showed up on the '3 In Jazz' album with the '63 touring lineup of Cherry, Higgins, and Henry Grimes!
CD for $17

RICHARD THOMPSON - Henry the Human Fly (Fledgling 3045/UK) Richard Thompson's first solo album after leaving Fairport Convention is a stunning tour de force -- an absolute classic of English music. Recently voted by MOJO magazine as one of the top guitar albums of all time, 'Henry the Human Fly' has been out of print for several years. For this sensitively re-mastered, slipcased edition Fledg'ling have restored all the elements of the original artwork, included song lyrics and added several previously unpublished photographs.
CD for $16

FOTHERINGAY - self/titled (Fledgling 3044/UK) Fotheringay's beautiful debut album was recorded in 1970 and has long been regarded as one of the greatest achievements of British folk-rock. Sandy Denny, Trevor Lucas, Jerry Donahue, Pat Donaldson and Gerry Conway created a magical ensemble sound and one of the finest albums of Sandy's career. It has been out of print for sometime. For this carefully re-mastered edition Fledg'ling have restored all of the original artwork and added four bonus tracks - performances recorded at the 1970 Rotterdam Festival. Remastering approved by original producer Joe Boyd. Amongst my favorite British folk-rock classics of all time. - BLG
CD for $16

SHIRLEY COLLINS - Within Sound (4 CD Box-set) (Fledgling 5001) A most comprehensive overview of Shirley Collins' remarkable recording career from the earliest, 1955, recordings through to a song recorded earlier this year. 4 CD set in a long form box. 84 tracks -- including 21 previously unreleased and 16 very rare recordings. 56 page full color booklet, with a biographical essay, full track details and detailed song notes. Short contributions from Bob Copper, Billy Bragg, Alan Lomax, John Kirkpatrick and John Hasted. Plenty of rare photographs and memorabilia. A Pete Frame family tree and complete discography.
4 CD set for $60

EGG - The Civil Surface (Virgin/Charisma 68688/Japan) Japanese-only reissue of the 3rd & final Egg album, originally released on the Caroline label in 1974 (domestic CD on Blue Plate is long deleted). Packaged in a mini-LP jacket. Egg were: Dave Stewart (organ, piano; bass), Mont Campbell (bass, voice, French Horn, piano), Clive Brooks (drums), with guests: Steve Hillage, Lindsay Cooper, Tim Hodgkinson, Amanda Parsons, Barbara Gaskin, etc. "A reunion album of sorts that includes a roster of Canterbury all-stars. Stewart, by now a well established keyboard player with supergroup Hatfield and the North, and Mont Campbell, now in possession of a music composition degree, had finely honed their chops in the previous couple of years. All these things make for a much fuller sounding album. The complex counterpoint and tart harmonies on 'The Civil Surface' set the stage for the sound that would later be National Health's trademark.
Japanese CD for $30

JANNICK TOP - Soleil D'Ork (Utopic; France) An AMAZING archival release, released by Jannick's (Magma bass god supreme) new label, all in much better sound than you would expect given the rarity & 70's recording dates. A collection of recordings written and recorded by Top between 1974-76. It includes his hyper rare single & unreleased tracks, included a demo of De Futura that features Richard Pinhas on guitar! There is also appearances on a 10' track by Christian Vander, Klaus Blasquiz, Patrick Gauthier & Claude Olmos. A Magma must-have! - Steve Feigenbaum, Cuneiform
CD for $12

JANNICK TOP/UTOPIC ORCHESTRA - Nancy (Utopic; France) An amazing archival release, released by Jannick (Magma bass god supreme) on his own label, all in much better sound than you would expect given the rarity & 70's recording dates. This is the first legit release of a legendary recording which was the very 1st recording of De Futura, live 10/16/75 by a big band version of Magma! This is a famed & mythic recording, & is rounded out by the rehearsal for the show and more rare Jannick materials, including 3 amazing live Magma pieces that feature Jannick at his most over-the-top best (including two versions of the piece featured on Inedits, but in MUCH better sound quality!) A Magma must-own!! - Steve Feigenbaum, Cuneiform
CD for $12

YOCHK'O SEFFER BIG BAND - Yog 3 (Musea 3037; France) Yochk'o first came to attention as a member of Magma, and then as a founding member of Zao. After leaving Zao, he made a number of notable solo albums in the 70's and early 80's. While he isn't as active these days as he once was, he's still a fine player and composer. This 1999 release spotlights his great tunes (many of which, of course, bear resemblance to his work on his solo albums or his tunes written for Zao) and sax work. The band includes 5 tubas, 4 saxes, electric and acoustic piano, bass (by Dominique Bertram, who played in Neffesh Music) and drums (by Jean-My Truong, who played in Zao)! - Steve Feigenbaum
CD for $12

ARTI + MESTIERI - Tilt: Immagini Per Un Orecchio (Cramps/Akarma; Italy) Arti + Mestieri were one of THE great Italian bands of the early 70's. This is their *classic* 1st, which features a quite fantastic predominantly instrumental fusion-based progressive music based around sax, violin, keyboards, guitar, bass & drums. While there are not a lot of vocals, what there are are excellent. - Steve Feigenbaum
CD for $12

KENSO - In The West (Musea; France) Kenso are the best known Japanese progressive/fusion band, a band that has built their reputation their gifts of melody and their musicianship. This is a 1997 live recording - with Yoshihisa Shimizu, Kenichi Ogushi, Kenich Mitsuda, Shunji Saegusa, Masayuki Muraishi - which includes many of their best compositions performed with energy and fire and captured in excellent sound. A great place to start with them.
CD for $12

APHRODITE'S CHILD - End of the World (World Psychedelia 8475) Well done bootleg reissue of their first album, from 1968. Originally issued by Mercury in Europe only. "Surprise hit album that resulted when the hyper-talented Vangelis Papathanassiou, Demis Roussos and Lucas Sideras fled from the Greek military junta to the relative safety of Paris and the 1968 student uprisings; the single 'Rain and Tears', based on Pachelbel's famous 'Canon' became the song of the year... and careers outside of Greece became real for two of the three Aphrodite's members; beautiful and strange album -- dream-like, baroque, carefully crafted pop/psych; very much in the style of English bands of the era, but with that little twist that makes it all even more special; six bonus tracks compiling rare non-LP singles tracks round out this fine reissue; lyrics and photos too in 12-page booklet.
CD for $16

ERKIN KORAY - 2 (World Psychedelia 8477) Bootleg reissue, with five bonus tracks. "First time on CD for this more advanced fusion of eastern and ethnic music from Turkish psychedelic master Koray; this is actually his third album (second for the Dogan label), and is the 1976 follow-up to the immensely excellent Elektronik Turkuler; the album tracks themselves were recorded between 1972-1976, and were first issued as singles; five bonus tracks are great! and come from 1967, 1968, and 1971... as well as an undocumented acoustic version of 'Yalnizar Rihtimi' from Turkuler; lyrics and photos in 8-page booklet.
CD for $16

ENNIO MORRICONE - Once Upon A Time [2 CD set] (Silva America 1165; US) Subtitled: The Essential Film Music Collection. "Morricone's music stood out on those early Western movies as something quite new and original. With its unusual instruments and sound combinations it seems to fill in for the action when the characters are in close-up, eyeing each other and waiting for the first move. Then it punctuates the scene like a punch-line when the action is all over in a flash." 2 CD set covering the best of his 500 film scores. Recorded and mastered in HCCD and Dolby surround sound.
Consider This: John Zorn felt this work so important that he made his debut major label recording, "The Big Gundown", an album of Morricone covers!!!
2 CD Set for $22

THE SLITS - Return Of The Giant Slits (Sony 208/Japan) Japanese-only reissue of the 2nd Slits album, originally issued by CBS in 1981. Produced by The Slits, in conjunction with Dick O'dell (Y Records) and Dennis Bovell. Lineup on this album was: Ari Up (vocals), Viv Albertine (guitar), Tessa Pollitt (bass), Bruce Smith (drums), Steve Beresford (keyboards). This was the final Slits recording, never previously reissued (nor ever issued at all in the US). "What the Slits came up with on Return of the Giant Slits is nothing short of breath taking. The songs might not have the punch of their early punk sides or the catchiness of the current pop trends circa 1981, but what they do have is a cutting edge sound and production. The songs have a meandering feel to them, but they remain centered by the incredible vocalizing of the Ari Up and her fellow Slits, the varied rhythms, and offbeat instrumentation." -- Gullbuy.
Japanese CD for $24




FINALLY REMASTERED!!! A SECOND SET OF FOUR GROUNDBREAKING BRIAN ENO RECORDINGS - THESE THE PRECURSORS TO THE AMBIENT/NEW AGE EXPLOSION - FROM MORE THAN TWO DECADES AGO...

BRIAN ENO - Discreet Music (Astralwerks 66493) Eno's first instrumental album [not counting the two Fripp & Eno releases] from 1975. The Pachelbel piece [2nd half of the album] features the Cockpit Ensemble conducted by Gavin Bryars. Taking a cue from Satie's idea of "musique d'ameublement" (furniture music), music that just exists like furnishings in an apartment, played so as not to draw attention to itself (not really Muzak, a company which seeks to produce a more intentional work-product effect), Eno created several albums of what he termed "ambient music" which combined a softer style of pattern music (influenced by Bryars, Nyman, Harold Budd) with environmental noises. Discreet Music is probably the best of these, using an Oliveros-style tape delay arrangement to slowly change patterns of repeating sounds. -- "Blue" Gene Tyranny, AMG
CD for $15

BRIAN ENO - Music For Airports: Ambient 1 (Astralwerks 66495) (With Robert Wyatt on piano, and the voices of Christa Fast, Christine Gomez, and Inga Zeininger). Four subtle, slowly evolving pieces grace Eno's first conscious effort at creating ambient music. The composer was in part striving to create music that approximated the effect of visual art. Like a fine painting, these evolving soundscapes don't require constant involvement on the part of the listener. They can hang in the background and add to the atmosphere of the room, yet the music also rewards close attention with a sonic richness absent in standard types of background or easy-listening music. - Linda Kohanov, AMG
CD for $15

HAROLD BUDD/BRIAN ENO - The Plateaux Of Mirror: Ambient 2 (Astralwerks 66497) The second in Brian Eno's ambient series, The Plateaux of Mirrors fuses the fragile piano melodies of Harold Budd and the atmospheric electronics of Eno to create a lovely, evocative work. In sharp contrast to the exaggerated pieces found on his debut, The Pavilion of Dreams , this record finds Budd delivering sharp shards of piano notes pregnant with meaning and minimal in the best sense of the word. Eno 's unobtrusive electronics add a resonance and atmosphere that draw from the ambient textures found on Discreet Music, Music for Films , and Evening Star . The album's best moments evoke their subject matter efficaciously and effortlessly; "First Light" creates an audible early morning chill, "An Arc of Doves" employs flights of Frippertronics, "Not Yet Remembered" seesaws between sleep and consciousness, and so on. Although neither artist is a musician in the usual sense of the word -- Budd's piano playing is still somewhat limited here -- they excel as musical painters. The wisps of synthesizer that snake through the rattling percussion of "Wind in Lonely Fences," the wistful melody held at a remote distance in "Among Fields of Crystal," the unbounded edges of the piano notes on "Above Chiangmai" -- these wash over the listener in a suffusion of sound. 'The Plateaux of Mirrors' remains a fascinating hybrid (as are many of Eno 's collaborations), reflecting the uniqueness of both composers in a most flattering light. - David Connolly, AMG
CD for $15

BRIAN ENO - On Land: Ambient 4 (Astralwerks 66499) (With Bill Laswell, Jon Hassell, Michael Brook, Alex Gross, and Dan Lanois). On Land represented a significant move away from the strategies Brian Eno had employed in earlier ambient releases such as Discreet Music and Music for Airports . Instead of using a specific process to generate music with minimal interference from the composer, he here opts for a more gestural and intuitive approach, creating dreamy pictures of some specific geographical points or evocative memories of them. It's quite easy to imagine these works as soundtracks to mysterious footage of imprecisely glimpsed landscapes. On Land is an album that would become highly influential with the rising tide of new age composers, though few if any would capture the chilly beauty or latent romanticism that is part and parcel of Eno. The first piece, "Lizard Point," includes an early recorded performance of Bill Laswell on bass, and one imagines that his association with Eno was a crucial factor in the ambient directions his later work would sometimes take. On Land remains a landmark event in the genre, as well as one of its high-water marks, and sounds entirely up to date 20 years after its initial release. A superb effort. - Brian Olewnick, AMG
CD for $15

[For those wondering about Ambient 3, it was not an Eno record - it was auto-harpist Larraji's 'Day Of Radiance', only produced by Eno]

ALSO AVAILABLE ARE ENO'S 2004 REMASTERS OF...

BRIAN ENO - Another Green World (Astralwerks 77291) From 1976. (With Robert Fripp, John Cale, Phil Collins, Percy Jones, Ian McDonald, Phil Manzanera, Brian Turrington, Paul Rudolph, and Rod Melvin). A universally acknowledged masterpiece, Another Green World represents a departure from song structure - even though recognized as one of Eno's song albums - toward a more ethereal, minimalistic approach to sound. Despite the stripped-down arrangements, the album's sumptuous tone quality reflects Eno's growing virtuosity at handling the recording studio as an instrument in itself (a la Brian Wilson).
CD for $15

BRIAN ENO - Before And After Science (Astralwerks 77292) 1977 (With Robert Fripp, Fred Frith, Phil Manzanera, Phil Collins, Percy Jones, Dave Mattacks, Paul Rudolph, Bill MacCormick, Jaki Liebezeit, Brian Turrington, Achim Roedelius, Mobi Moebius, Andy Fraser). Before and After Science is really a study of "studio composition" whereby recordings are created by deconstruction and elimination: tracks are recorded and assembled in layers, then selectively subtracted one after another, resulting in a composition and sound quite unlike that at the beginning of the process. Despite the album's pop format, the sound is unique and strays far from the mainstream.
CD for $15

BRIAN ENO - Here Come The Warm Jets (Astralwerks 77293) 1973. Eno's solo debut from 1973, Here Come the Warm Jets , is a spirited, experimental collection of unabashed pop songs on which Eno mostly reprises his Roxy Music role as "sound manipulator," taking the lead vocals but leaving much of the instrumental work to various studio cohorts (including ex- Roxy mates Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackay, and Paul Thompson, as well as Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Chris Spedding, Busta Cherry Jones, Bill MacCormick, Paul Rudolph, Nick Judd, Lloyd Watson, Nick Cool).
CD for $15

BRIAN ENO - Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy (Astralwerks 77288) 1974. Continuing the twisted pop explorations of Here Come the Warm Jets , Eno's sophomore album (with backing from an all-star lineup including Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt, Andy Mackay, Phil Collins, Brian Turrington et al), Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) , is more subdued and cerebral, and a bit darker when he does cut loose, but it's no less thrilling once the music reveals itself.
CD for $15




TWO OF OUR FAVORITE DVDs ARE BACK IN STOCK...NOW AT A LOWER PRICE!

ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO - In Concert: Live From The Jazz Showcase [DVD] (Rhapsody 2869005; EEC) [complete program on each side of the disc: one side NTSC all region, other side PAL all region!] This outstanding DVD includes a memorable live performance - in color - at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, November 1st, 1981, by the most influential avant-garde jazz band of the 70s and 80s. The primary innovators in the fusion of traditional African and African- American music with European performance art, performed by the classic quintet of Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors, Famadou Don Moye, Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell! 60 minutes
DVD for $25

MILES DAVIS//CHARLIE PARKER//LESTER YOUNG//DIZZ GILLESPIE//HARRY EDISON - Great Performances: Four Jazz Movie Masterworks [DVD] (Idem 1057; EEC) [complete program on each side of the disc: one side NTSC all region, other side PAL all region!] This DVD includes the only two surviving films of Charlie Parker, one featuring his acceptance of the Down Beat Award [1952] playing "Hot House" with a 5tet incl. Dizzy Gillespie, Dick Hyman; and the other a two reel movie with the JATP troupe: five tunes [1950] with a band incl Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Hank Jones, Buddy Rich, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Brown, Flip Phillips, Harry Edison and Bill Harris!!! This also has the exemplary half hour [ 4 tunes] CBS television program featuring the classic late '50 Miles Davis Quintet [John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb] and the Gil Evans Orchestra - an absolute historic masterpiece in perfect sight & sound [rely on poor quality bootlegs no longer!] ...as well as the complete material from the "Jammin' The Blues" filmed sessions of August-September 1944 with Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Harry Edison, Barney Kessel, Red Callender [or John Simmons], Jo Jones [or Sid Catlett], Marlowe Thomas [7 tunes including 4 - with Dicky Wells and Garland Finney added - not originally in the released short feature!]
DVD for $25



NEW IMPORTED CLASSIC JAZZ REISSUES...

CLIFFORD BROWN & MAX ROACH QUINTET With SONNY ROLLINS - Complete Live At The Bee Hive 1955 [2 CD set] (Lone Hill Jazz 10128; EEC) Originally a double LP on Columbia, this is Brown´s first ever recording with Sonny Rollins and Max Roach recorded live at Chicago´s Bee Hive on November 7th, 1955. The playing is actually somewhat historic, a jam session featuring the ill-fated Clifford Brown, tenorman Sonny Rollins (who was playing with Brownie for the first time), drummer Max Roach and a few other musicians (Nicky Hill on tenor, pianist Billy Wallace [or Chris Anderson], guitarist Leo Blevins and bassist George Morrow), but earlier editions of this [on LP] betrayed not-very-good recordings. They have been cleaned up here as best as possible.
2 CD set for $25

PAUL CHAMBERS/TOMMY FLANAGAN - Motor City Scene: Complete recordings (Lone Hill Jazz 10134; EEC) Recorded in New York, 1959-60. This sensational release features Paul Chambers and Tommy Flanagan with two all-star Detroit formations including such outstanding musicians as Thad and Elvin Jones, Donald Byrd, Pepper Adams, Billy Mitchell, Kenny Burrell and Louis Hayes.
CD for $16

ERIC DOLPHY - Hot Cool & Latin (Blue Moon 3057; EEC) Tracks 1-8: Eric Dolphy, alto sax, flute and bass clarinet; Dennis Budimir, guitar; Nathan Gershman, cello; Ralph Pena or Wyatt Ruther, bass; Chico Hamilton, drums. Recorded in Hollywood, 1959. Tracks 9-15: Eric Dolphy, alto sax, flute and bass clarinet; Felipe Diaz, vibes; Arthur Jenkins, piano; Bobby Rodriguez, bass; Lou Ramirez, timbales; Tommy Lopez, tumbadora. Recorded in New York City, 1960
CD for $14

CHICO HAMILTON QUINTET With ERIC DOLPHY - Truth (Fresh Sound 362; EEC) The material selected for these sides is a strong representation of that premise, since it is graded from Chico's jet propelled "Opening", to the moody harmonics of "Lady E". As the artistic history of jazz is written, and its components placed in perspective, the distinctive Chico Hamilton quintet will one day mark a turning point in ensemble creativity.
CD for $14

TUBBY HAYES/RONNIE SCOTT - The Couriers of Jazz (Fresh Sound 1620; EEC) Featuring Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott on tenor saxes, Terry Shannon on piano, Jef Clyne on bass and Bill Eyden on drums. Two of England's finest tenor sax titans join forces for a wonderful straight ahead jazz date from the November of 1958. Five originals plus "My Funny Valentine", Moses Allison's "In Salah", "Star Eyes" and "Day In, Day Out". Both saxists have superb, warm tones and this is great as any U.S. jazz from that period.
CD for $14

AND SOME OTHER IMPORT JAZZ TITLES ARE BACK IN STOCK...

MANNY ALBAM/JAZZ GREATS OF OUR TIME - Complete Recordings: The Coral Sessions [2 CD set] (Lone Hill Jazz 10118; EEC) This 2 CD set contains the complete recordings made both in studio and live by the 'Jazz Greats Of Our Time' for the first time on CD! CD 1: offers the two volumes recorded in 1957 under the generic title of "Jazz Greats Of Our Time" on Coral. See what Ken Dryden at AMG has to say about these volumes: "Albam leads a truly all-star tentet with Gerry Mulligan, Phil Woods, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Bob Brookmeyer, Nick Travis, and Art Farmer, along with a rhythm section consisting of Hank Jones, Milt Hinton, and Osie Johnson. Most of these 1957 sessions are devoted to Albam's cool but swinging original works, each of which features great solos and superb interplay among the musicians. One oddity is the inclusion of the 1920s-era "My Sweetie Went Away," which somewhat resembles Mulligan's composition "Jeru," though the playing is first-rate. Cohn trades his usual tenor sax for baritone to join Mulligan in Albam's humorous "Poor Dr. Millmous" (whose title was inspired by a James Thurber cartoon). Consider yourself fortunate if you locate a copy of this rare album. CD 2: Manny Albam put out a steady stream of compelling progressive big-band LPs in the 1950s and 1960s, though few of them have been reissued on CD. These 1957 sessions feature numerous so-called West Coast jazz players on the date (Shelly Manne, Richie Kamuca, Conte Candoli, and Bill Holman, among others), though "Trumpeter X," actually Harry "Sweets" Edison, is a notable exception. Albam's charts are consistently challenging to the musicians and there are plenty of great solos, far too many to list individually. If Edison's identity isn't apparent from the liner notes and the song title "Sweet's-Bread," his two-chorus muted solo on that swinging track and the single chorus in his own "Jive at Five" will clear up any doubt. This long unavailable Coral LP will be extremely difficult to acquire..........and CD 2 features super-rare live recordings of the Jazz Heritage/Jazz Greats Of Our Time groups!
2 CD set for $25

JOHN COLTRANE/WILBUR HARDEN - Complete Mainstream Sessions (aka Savoy Sessions) 2 CD set][ (Lone Hill Jazz 10116; EEC) In the late 50s, 'Trane recorded some fantastic sides with trumpeter Wilbur Harden for Savoy Records, and the material is unlike anything he ever did elsewhere. (Why is this called the "Mainstream Sessions.?!?!?) This is the complete collection of recordings made with Harden, a mysterious figure in jazz history, who was forced to retire at the age of 35 due to ill health. The band includes Tommy Flanagan, Curtis Fuller, Louis Hayes and Art Taylor!
The tracks are long and modal, a perfect platform for Coltrane's new ideas of soloing that were beginning to take shape at the time. Harden's had a fiercer approach to rhythm than Miles - which drives Coltrane along in a more souful groove than ever before. The 2CD set features 19 tracks from the Savoy Sessions. Titles include "Gold Coast", "Dial Africa", "BJ", "Once In A While", "Tanganyika Strut", "West 42nd Street", and "Rhodamagnetics" -- and the CD includes 6 alternate versions as well!
2 CD set for $25

ERIC DOLPHY QUINTET Featuring HERBIE HANCOCK - Gaslight Inn, October 7th 1962 (Lone Hill Jazz 10124; EEC) 1962 broadcast originating from the Gaslight Inn in New York Ciry is the source for this live Italian bootleg. Eric Dolphy leads a pickup group with Herbie Hancock and Richard Davis, along with drummer Edgar Bateman and trumpeter and flugelhornist Ed Armour. Dolphy is heard almost exclusively on alto sax, though he does get in a few typically adventurous solos. The leader's memorable flute makes the nearly twelve and a half minute "Left Alone" the most valuable track. There are also performances of his originals "Miss Ann" and "G.W." Singer Joe Carroll dominates a rather forgettable bluesy treatment "Oh, Lady be Good!" in which Dolphy is only featured briefly on bass clarinet. The broadcast is faded with DJ Alan Grant's voice-over on top of an incomplete rendition of Dolphy's "245." This long unavailable LP, later reissued on CD by the now defunct Stash as Live in New York, has had its recording quality improved to be the best possible here.
CD for $16

ERIC DOLPHY QUINTET Featuring LALO SCHIFRIN - Philadelphia '61 (Lone Hill Jazz 10121; EEC) [Purportedly] a radio broadcast form Philadelphia in 1961, this set matches the remarkable multi-instrumentalist with pianist Lalo Schifrin, bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Mel Lewis, performing long versions of "On Green Dolphin Street" (over 23 minutes), "Softly As in a Morning Sunrise" and "The Way You Look Tonight." Although the rhythm section is conventional, Dolphy really tears into these standards, making this imported CD worth searching for. -- Scott Yanow, AMG
CD for $16

STEVE LACY - Early Years 1954-1956: The Legendary Pioneer Of Modern Soprano Sax [2 CD set] (Fresh Sound 364; EEC) This 2 CD set charts the exciting early years of Steve Lacy, playing progressive Dixieland and swinging mainstream jazz on a soprano saxophone with extraordinary freshness, vigor and personal style, when he exploded onto the mid-50's jazz scene. To hear Steve play the multi-toned modern figures and extended line on an instrument usually associated with Sydney Bechet is always a stimulating experience. Of his extraordinary approach to the instrument, Lacy said: "As Charlie Parker increased the technical and expressive possibilities of the alto, Milt Jackson, the vibraphone, Kenny Clarke, the drums and Jimmy Blanton, the bass, one of my personal aims is to do the same for the soprano." On hearing these sessions, we think you'll agree that he managed to do just that. "During the preparation of this production [originally slated as a release on the Lone Hill label as "Steve Lacy: The Complete Whitey Mitchell Recordings] Steve Lacy sadly passed away in Boston on Friday, June 4, 2004. He maintained a vigorous teaching and performing schedule right up until his last month. He continued to produce works of startling originality, and was considered one of jazz's most prolific recording artists. Fifty years after he made his first recordings, it is obvious now that Steve Lacy took that challenging instrument and made it his own. He'll be missed."
2 CD set for $22

JOHN LEWIS / ORCHESTRA U.S.A. - The Debut Recording (Lone Hill Jazz 10117; EEC) Never Previously released on CD! With Eric Dolphy, Phil Woods, Richard Davis, Connie Kay, and Jim Hall. Recorded in NY in a studio on January 12th and february 4 & 27th, 1963. Includes both mono and stereo versions. His debut concert was celebrated at the Philarmonic Hall in NY's Lincoln center of the Performing Arts
CD for $16

WES MONTGOMERY ALL STARS Featuring CANNONBALL ADDERLEY/JON HENDRICKS/PONY POINDEXTER - A Good Git-Together/Kismet (Lone Hill Jazz 10133; EEC) Never Previously Released on CD! This set offers two long lost treasures - with the focal point being Wes Montgomery - on 1 CD: Jon Hendricks' first album as a leader, 'A Good Git-Together has not been reissued since its 1959 release, but it is a real gem. This rarity features such major sidemen on various tracks as altoist Pony Ponidexter, guitarist Wes Montgomery and both Nat and Cannonball Adderley. Hendricks -- who, at the time, was riding high in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross -- is in superb form on such numbers as "Everything Started In the House of the Lord," a couple of songs that Hendricks had written for Louis Jordan, Randy Weston's "Pretty Strange," "Social Call" and the jubilant "A Good Git-Together." A near-classic LP long overdue to be reissued on CD. -- Scott Yanow, AMG
A second album released under the group name Mastersounds performing their version of the Broadway revue Kismet: "Recorded in the late '50s and released in 1966 when the name Wes Montgomery became well known, this reading of Borodin's evergreen classic "Kismet" is a wondrous platter. The Mastersounds were the Montgomery brothers' group before Wes stepped out on his own. Monk and Buddy Montgomery were excellent musicians in their own right. Buddy's vibe work on this record clearly shows that he was leading the group through their paces, and his performance is excellent. Top marks also for piano player Richard Crabtree, whose vamp on "Baubles, Bangles & Beads" is positively funky, and drummer Benny Barth. Wes was indeed coming into his own here, and for just that reason alone this is an important record. Although merely an accompanist, he gets to stretch out on the extended "Not Since Nineveh" and the snaky, Eastern-tinged "Fate." Overall, an excellent jazz reading of one of the most beloved musicals ever and also an important historical record for Wes Montgomery fans"- Matthew Greenwald, AMG
2 CD set for $25

LEE MORGAN With DIZZY GILLESPIE ORCHESTRA Featuring WYNTON KELLY & BENNY GOLSON - Those Dizzy Days (Lone Hill Jazz 10107; EEC) It was not until Lee Morgan came into the band in Gordon´s place that Dizzy had a trumpeter of comparable individuality to his own. The line of trumpets includes Talib Ahmad Dawud, Carl Warwick and others behind Lee & Diz, Ray Connors, Al Grey and others on trombone, Pee Wee Moore on baritone, Wynton Kelley on piano, and a stunning showing by Charlie Persip on drums! Originally recorded in Hester, Pennsylvania, June 14th (# 1-11), LA, March 23rd (#12-13), NY, April 8th (14-15) and Newport Jazz Festival, July 6th, 1957. 78 minutes!
CD for $16



TWO ITEMS WE RARELY GET WHEN WE ORDER THEM ARE HERE NOW [BRIEFLY, SO DON'T WAIT IF...!]

JULIE TIPPETTS [nee DRISCOLL] - Sunset Glow (Disconforme 1967; Spain) 24 bit digital re-master. "After leaving Brian Auger's band and becoming the musical and life partner of pianist/composer Keith Tippett, Julie Tippetts issued Sunset Glow, her second solo recording [the first was under the name Julie Driscoll], in 1974 on the Utopia label. After her soul, pop, and R&B beginnings, Tippetts redeveloped her voice, taking it and her music in a different direction. She began to extend its reach in improvisation, breath control, and uncommon phrasing. She is one of the most compelling and original singers in recorded music's history. Sunset Glow is a curious recording, one that walks the razor's edge of composition and improvisation. Fans of Robert Wyatt's earlier solo records, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard and Rock Bottom, will appreciate its strange song structures, varying dynamics, and knockout lineup: Tippetts sings, plays piano, acoustic guitar, and percussion, and she is backed by a host of luminaries from the Canterbury Scene: Brian Godding, guitars; Keith Tippett, piano, harmonium; Mark Charig, cornet, tenor horn; Elton Dean, alto saxophone; Nick Evans, trombone; Brian Belshaw, bass; Harry Miller, bass; as well as African drum master Louis Moholo. The set begins innocently enough with "Mind of a Child," a fairly straight-ahead Baroque pop song with a lilting piano line accompanying Tippetts' plaintive singing. But even here, with the channel-shifting production and suspended chords, Keith Tippett's harmonium providing a baseboard for everything, and the slightly off-kilter horns winding in and out of the backdrop, this is anything but a pop song. From here on it's almost anything goes, as "Oceans and Sky" brings jazz, free improv, prog rock, and blues to bear in a dynamite soaring wail of a tune that was virtually unlike anything else at the time. She pierces the sky with her improvising, opening her voice up with the heaviness and swallowing it whole. Many have criticized the simple lyric lines Tippetts wrote for these songs, but this is philistinism; her lyrics fit these melodies better than anything else could. They adorn simply, speak plainly, and offer the heart of the matter in each case. In that sense, they are truly poetic. If the production styles sound rooted in the '70s, it's all for the better. It's hard to imagine anyone making a record like this today - because this is a singular achievement in any era. The set ends with "Behind the Eyes (For a Friend, R)," which listeners can safely assume is about Robert Wyatt, whose accident took place a bit before the album was recorded. Its stark, simple, shimmering glissando piano walks a simple line under the moaning, imploring, almost chant-like voice of Tippetts. It's a moving track that closes as fine an album as one is likely to hear." - Thom Jurek, AMG
CD $15.00 7 for 6 SALE.

EMBRYO - We Keep On (Disconforme 1936; Spain) 24 bit digital re-master. 'We Keep On' is the German art/jazz rock band Embryo's most successful recording. It's also one of their best. In late 1972, saxophonist Charlie Mariano joined Embryo along with guitarist Roman Bunka. Mariano's already encyclopedic knowledge of world music forms was a welcome addition to the band; they sought to fuse jazz and space rock -- a la their countrymen Can -- with the various rhythms and harmonic sensibilities of folk musics across the globe. Bunka also played the Turkish saz and was a great, if unconventional, vocalist. Embryo's leader, Christian Burchard, took up everything from drums to marimba to Mellotron on this set to complement pianist Dieter Miekautsch's Rhodes and clavinet work. And Mariano played not only sax and flute but nagasuram and bamboo flutes as well. Here, on "Ehna, Ehna, Abu Lele," West African rhythms danced with jazz rock and wove something entirely new from the roots of both. On "Hackbrett-Dance," saz, marimba, and percussion became something out of time and space that might have come from any North African nation, but found a place in the tripped-out world of psychedelic space music as well -- check the recordings of Angus MacLise for a frame of reference here. But it is on the Miles-influenced jazz-funk of "No Place to Go," which used the Jack Johnson groove to achieve new rock ecstasies, that the album really comes into view for its revolutionary contribution to the language of assimilation. The CD version also contains two welcome bonus tracks from the session, a nearly 16-minute "Ticket to India" and an eight-and-a-half-minute extended improv called "Flute, Saz and Marimba" that could have come from one of Don Cherry's early-'70s recordings. Highly recommended. - Thom Jurek, AMG
CD $15.00 7 for 6 SALE.



LAST COPIES OF THIS TWO OUT-OF-PRINT RARITES...

WADADA LEO SMITH And N'DA CULTURE With THOMAS MAPFUMO And THE BLACKS UNLIMITED & HENRY KAISER - Dreams And Secrets (Anonym 101; EEC) Avant-garde trumpet and flugelhorn player Wadada Leo Smith and chimurenga vocalist Thomas Mapfumo may seem like an odd pairing. Indeed, the differences between their respective styles are apparent on this album; Mapfumo and his band, Blacks Unlimited, sound relaxed and upbeat -- they even approach middle-of-the-road pop on "Big in America" -- while Smith and his band, N'Da Kulture, sound more venturesome and abrasive, particularly during some of Smith's trumpet solos and the dissonant guitar workouts by Henry Kaiser and Woody Lee Aplanalp. Smith and guitarist Henry Kaiser collaborated before on Yo, Miles!, which paid homage to the '70s fusion work of Miles Davis, and they continue in a similar musical vein on Dreams & Secrets; this time, however, they perform Smith's original compositions instead of Davis covers, work with a different set of musicians, and don't stretch their ideas out as thinly. They do seem to dominate the proceedings since Thomas Mapfumo wrote only four of the album's 12 tracks (and three of the four were co-written with Smith); nonetheless, Blacks Unlimited help give this album a lighter, richer, and more textured sound, and the musicians more than hold their own. For example, Zivani Wilberforce Masanga's mastery of the trumpet is particularly evident on "Big in America." When the two groups of musicians come together and both seem to be contributing, the results are magical, such as when Smith soars through Black Unlimited's precisely arranged horn lines near the end of "Regai Tione/Jealousy." - Todd Kristel, AMG

CD For $16


DAVID TUDOR/COMPOSERS INSIDE ELECTRONICS - Rainforest IV (Gramavision/Editions Block 01; EEC) Rainforest IV (1973) is an electro-acoustic environment conceived by David Tudor and realized by the group Composers Inside Electronics. These recordings are excerpts from a two-week installation of the acoustic environment Rainforest IV, 1980 in the Akademie der Kunste in West Berlin, as part of the exhibition, "For Eyes and Ears -- From the Mechanical Clock to the Acoustic Environment" (organized by the Berlin Festival Society, the Akademie der Kunste and the Berlin Artists Program of the DAAD.)
CD for $16



THE LOVELY MUSIC CATALOG

CONSIDERING THAT THE 'SOUNDS LIKE NOW FESTIVAL' WHICH BEGINS NEXT THURSDAY IS PRESENTING MANY OF THE '70s NEW MUSIC ARTISTS/COMPOSERS, WE THOUGHT WE'D BRING YOU A LISTNG OF THAT LONGTIME INDEPENDENT LABEL WHICH ORIGINALLY PRESENTED MANY OF THEM TO THE PUBLIC...

LOVELY MUSIC, THE CONTEMPORARY CLASSICAL LABEL THAT BROUGHT OUT EARLY/VITAL RELEASES FROM JON HASSELL, MEREDITH MONK, LEROY JENKINS, ROSCOE MITCHELL. ALVIN LUCIER, JOAN LA BARBARA, WILLIAM DUCKWORTH, DAVID TUDOR, ROBERT ASHLEY, ET AL, RELEASES A NEW TITLE AFTER A LONG WHILE...

SO WE'RE OFFERING MANY OF THEIR BACK-CATALOG CDs [Single CD items only] AT $1 OFF!!!!

THE NEW ONE IS...

JACQUELINE HUMBERT - Chanteuse: Songs Of A Different Sort (Lovely Music 4001) "Chanteuse is a collection of new or previously unreleased songs, many of which were written for me by a broad range of contemporary American composers [including James Tenney, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Robert Ashley, Larry Polansky and others]. My performance style resides somewhere between musical speech and melodic interpretation in a lyrical, poetic approach to the articulation of words, capitalizing on their inherent sound shapes, vernacular and colloquial origins, and intricate vocal rhythms. (Really!) I am fortunate to have such a wonderful variety of works to present in this collection, all of which extend, reinterpret, and re-conceive what we think of as belonging to the musical genre, song." (JH) Since the early 1970s, Humbert has collaborated as performer, visual artist, and designer with leading innovative artists, filmmakers, choreographers and composers worldwide. Her approach to vocal performance has influenced many composers, and the works in "Chanteuse" represent a new and exciting extension and reinterpretation of the "song" genre.
CD for $13

AND THEIR CLASSIC CATALOG IS...

ROBERT ASHLEY - Atalanta (Acts Of God) [2 CD set] (Lovely Music 3301) Robert Ashley, solo voice; with Thomas Buckner, Carla Tato, Jacqueline Humbert, voices; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, keyboards; Paul Shorr, mixing and electronics. Recorded live at the Teatro Olimpico in Rome. Sung in English and Italian. Ashley makes use of the story of "Atalanta"--a royal princess, discarded by her family, who was raised by the animals to become the fastest-running human, and who was later reclaimed by her father to marry her off for dynastic purposes--to present the character aspects of the "successful suitor." These three aspects of character are presented in the opera as anecdotes about three extraordinary men of our times: Max Ernst (surrealist painter), Willard Reynolds (shaman storyteller) and Bud Powell (composer pianist). The genius of these three men can be taken to represent three aspects of the opera itself: image, narrative and music. In the imaginary setting of Atalanta (Acts of God), one companion (singer) reminds her of her excellence (the "Odalisque" arias); another recommends to her the characteristics of excellence in men (the "Character Reference" arias); and a third amuses her with anecdotes, as if told to her by each of the three men (the "Anecdotes"). "Atalanta is part avant-garde, part Fellini soundtrack, a cultural car crash between old world decadence and new world laconicism." Peter Watrous, Musician Magazine
2 CD set for $25

ROBERT ASHLEY - Automatic Writing (Lovely Music 1002) "A 1996 CD compiling three early Ashley works from the years 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental and out-there works. A classic electronic music collection and an ideal intro into the somewhat foreboding oeuvre of Robert Ashley's recorded works. The title piece is a 46-minute classic from 1979, which rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense. Steven Stapleton's commentary upon this summarizes the intense vibe of this recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambience and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. A fascinating and mysterious work focused on "involuntary speech". The second piece on this CD is "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" from 1968. It features the voice of Cynthia Liddell, backed by singers, bells and crackle. Originally issued on the Mainstream label, as an excerpt for a theatre work for amplified voices and tape. The final piece, "She Was a Visitor" is from 1967, originally issued on the infamous electronic compilation Extended Voices (CBS Odyssey), featuring experimental vocals works. Performed by the The Brandeis University Chamber Chorus, directed by Alvin Lucier." - FE
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ROBERT ASHLEY - Dust [2 CD set & book] (Lovely Music 1006) DUST, an opera by Robert Ashley and Yukihiro Yoshihara (video direction) whose imaginary setting is a street corner anywhere in the world, where those who live on the fringes of society gather to talk, to each other and to themselves, about life-changing Spotlight , missed opportunities, memory, loss and regret. Five "street people" recount the memories and experiences of one of their group, a man who has lost his legs in some unnamed war. As part of the experience of losing his legs, he began a conversation with God, under the influence of the morphine he was given to ease his pain. Now he wishes that the conversation, which was interrupted when the morphine wore off, could be continued so that he could get the "secret word" that would stop all wars and suffering. (90 minutes) Includes a 2-CD jewel box and 160 page libretto in slipcase. Voices: Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara; Musicians: "Blue" Gene Tyranny, synthesizer, Tom Hamilton, live mixing and sound processing; electronic orchestration by Robert Ashley, Tom Hamilton and "Blue" Gene Tyranny; sound effects for "Friends" composed by Tom Hamilton.
2 CD set & Book $35

ROBERT ASHLEY - el/Aficionado (Lovely Music 1004) Featuring Thomas Buckner as The Agent and Jacqueline Humbert, Sam Ashley and Robert Ashley as his interrogators. Orchestration by Robert Ashley. Engineering and mixing by Tom Hamilton. 1 CD. Booklet includes full libretto. This is the fourth opera in Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea tetralogy: Junior, Jr.'s story. A group of scenes from the life of an Agent. The scenes are a kind of debriefing to a jury of Interrogators, in which the Interrogators challenge the Agent in various forms of musical dialogue. The mood of the opera owes much to our fascination with espionage and with the character of those people who lead double lives.
CD for $13

ROBERT ASHLEY - Perfect Lives: An Opera For Television [3 CD set] (Lovely Music 4917) Robert Ashley, solo voice; Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem, chorus; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, keyboards; David Van Tieghem, non-keyboard percussion; Peter Gordon, music producer; Paul Shorr, soundtrack producer. 3 CDs. Perfect Lives has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s." At its center is the hypnotic voice of Robert Ashley. His continuous song narrates the events of the story and describes a 1980's update of the mythology of small town America. Perfect Lives is populated with myriad characters revolving around two musicians --"R", the singer of myth and legend, and his friend, Buddy, "The World's Greatest Piano Player". They have come to a small town in the Midwest to entertain at the Perfect Lives Lounge. As Robert Ashley describes in the opera synopsis, "they fall in with two locals to commit the perfect crime, a metaphor for something philosophical: in this case, to remove a sizable about of money from The Bank for one day (and one day only) and let the whole world know that it was missing." The eloping couple, Ed and Gwyn, the old people at the home, the sheriff and his wife (Will and Ida) who finally unravel the mystery, and Isolde who watches the celebration of the changing of the light at sundown from the doorway of her mother's house are some of the characters who journey through the seven episodes of the opera. Derived from a colloquial idiom, Perfect Lives transforms familiar material into an elaborate metaphor for the rebirth of the human soul. It has been called a comic opera about reincarnation.
3 CD set for $35

ROBERT ASHLEY - Private Parts (The Record) (Lovely Music 1001) "1990 CD issue of a 1977 recording, which was the first Lovely Music release. A softly pedaling mood enhancer of exotically weird proportions, this suffers quite a bit from mis-appreciation in today's harsh reality scenario. Ashley's words hover just above your lips like a glowing lung, and it's easy to understand why all of Kyle Gann's friends in the 70s were going around reciting phrases memorized from this album, as they emanate connectively to some false dream society like little else in the world of 70s contemporary art. Not for everyone, I suppose, but the properly channeled will melt right into the couch. "Eventually he recognizes what he's created as the first and last episodes of his opera for television, Perfect Lives, the middle opera of a monumental trilogy tracing the history of the movement of consciousness across America (east to west). This original recording with Ashley's voice, accompanied by 'Blue' Gene Tyranny on keyboards, and 'Kris' on tablas, remains a classic. It is a masterpiece in its simplicity of form and in the purity and intensity of its effect on the listener...Everything in Ashley's creation makes metabolic connections; there's a transpersonal, time-exempt freedom in it; "the feeling of the idea of silk scarves in the air." In other words, the effect of his engaging, lyrical expression is that the mind opens. Only a masterpiece does that." Melody Sumner, FE
CD for $13

ROBERT ASHLEY - Yellow Man With Heart With Wings (Lovely Music 1003) Robert Ashley, English voice and all instruments; except "Blue" Gene Tyranny, clavinet; Spanish voice, Guillermo Grenier A two-part composition with narration (part one in Spanish and part two in heavily altered English) commissioned by public radio station KUNM in Albuquerque, this music has a plain, serene beauty. Part one is a narration by Guillermo Grenier in dreamy, flatly inflected Spanish, backed by a four-note synthesizer track, and punctuated by mysterious, heavily processed vocalizations. Ashley throws in extensive sound washes and other electronic figures which flutter in and out of the mix. The text, "Ideas from The Church," will later show up in the 1994 opera, Foreign Experiences. It is included in the liner notes. In part two, the four-note synthesizer line returns, this time backing an ethereal, sustained chord, and the vocals sound "like a distant rendering of the earth's electromagnetic halo." "1990 CD issue of this 1978 piece for voice and electronics. The electronics (with additional Clavinet by "Blue" Gene Tyranny) start out shimmering and subtle, slowing building up in strange, menacing fashion. The first part is in Spanish (with Guillermo Grenier providing the voice); the second part is "in English" (heavily processed vocals by Ashley) and quite radical -- easy to imagine this one sitting very high in a United Dairies-like universe." - FE
CD for $13

ROBERT ASHLEY - Your Money My Life (Lovely Music 1005) An opera commissioned by Bayerisher Rundfunk Munich's Horspiel und Medienkunst department about an internationally renowned swindler, who almost took down the European and American banking system. Featuring the voices of Robert Ashley, Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jackie Humbert, and Joan La Barbara. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. Your Money My Life Goodbye is one of forty-nine vocal-ensemble pieces of various lengths (from 10 minutes to 90 minutes or more) that can be used in many kinds of combinations to make an opera for stage, for radio or for television. Any of the combinations go under the title of the "opera," The Immortality Songs. When any of the pieces are performed separately, as in Your Money My Life Goodbye for Bayerischer Rundfunk, they take their individual titles. I have finished seven of the compositions. It looks like a lifetime of work. Hence, the title. In all of the forty-nine compositions some aspect of the musical structure (or many aspects of the musical structure) derive directly from the English language of the libretto. This process of derivation can be secretive and arcane (the music based, for instance, on grammatical structures or on the probability of the recurrence of certain syllables) or, as in Your Money My Life Goodbye, open and obvious. I think that the open and obvious approach - in this case, matching the syllables of the English (and the German) to the rhythm of the title-line, and matching the voice choices to the occurrence of the "characters" in the text - is a good solution to the "light-hearted" nature of the text. The story is simple. A woman responds to an invitation to attend a high-school reunion by sending her son, because she is incapacitated for some unknown reason. In describing her son, we get the idea that he is a high-level "intelligence agent" (a spy). A sort of James Bond character. The woman writes that her son's wife will not attend the reunion, because she is recently dead, either from suicide or murder. The son's wife is described in great detail from various newspaper articles. She was an internationally renowned swindler, who almost took down the European and American banking system. She was a successful entrepreneur. Your Money My Life Goodbye doesn't take this seriously at all. Everybody is crazy. -- Robert Ashley, 1998
CD for $13

ROBERT ASHLEY & PAUL DE MARINIS - In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men And Women [CD and Book] (Lovely Music 4921) New definitive cd reissue of this original Cramps label album from 1974, an early classic from Robert Ashley (previous cd version on Cramps is now deleted). This deluxe slipcase version features an 110 page book, reproducing the original Wolgamot text along with fascinating liner notes explaining the whole project from Keith Waldrop and Robert Ashley. The cd features one long composition with Ashley reading a text by poet John Barton Wolgamot. The poem has128 stanzas; each stanza is made up of the same phrase, into which are introduced four variables, three are names or groups of names or constructions of names, and the fourth variable is formed by the adverb of the active verb. The result is considered "one of the most unusual and difficult linguistic textures in the English language". The underlying music is supplied by Paul DeMarinas on Moog synthesizer. Here's Ashley on De Marinas: "{Paul} has elaborated seven different modular combinations, each of which can be controlled by programmed impulses. These derive from the sound of the reading of the poem passed through the regeneration high frequency filter and successively translated into a series of command impulses."
CD & Book for $25

DAVID BEHRMAN - Leapday Night (Lovely Music 1042) David Behrman, electronics; Takehisa Kosugi, violin; Ben Neill and Rhys Chatham, trumpets. A series of three pieces/suites; 'Leapday Night', 'A Traveler's Dream Journal', and 'Interspecies Smalltalk' involving Rhys Chatham/Ben Neill (on trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takeisha Kosugi (violin), and Behrman himself on electronics. Behrman creates thickly layered liquid sounds utilizing this complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, then plays off their improvisations with its own synthesized reactions. The system consists of pitch sensors ("ears" with which it listens to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a computer graphics color video display and a personal computer. "Heavy period-synth float with bare accompaniment, thankfully just-pre DX-7."
CD for $13

DAVID BEHRMAN - On the Other Ocean (Lovely Music 1041) David Behrman, electronics, Kim-1 microcomputer; Maggi Payne, flute; Arthur Stidfole, bassoon; David Gibson, cello. Recording engineers: "Blue" Gene Tyranny and Richard Lainhart. Originally released by Lovely Music on LP in 1978; reissued on CD in 1996. On the Other Ocean is an improvisation by Maggi Payne and Arthur Stidfole centered around six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits connected to the "interrupt" line and input ports of a microcomputer, Kim-1. The microcomputer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer is an interactive one, with the computer changing the electronically-produced harmonies in response to what the musicians play, and the musicians influenced in their improvising by what the computer does. Figure in a Clearing, made a few months before On the Other Ocean, was the first piece of Behrman's to use a computer for music. For Figure, the Kim-1 ran a program which varied the time intervals between chord changes. The time intervals were modelled on the motion of a satellite in falling elliptical orbit about a planet. David Gibson's only "score" was a list of 6 pitches to be used in performance, and a request that he not speed up when the computer-controlled rhythm did. The timbral richness and concentrated eloquence of his playing sprang from his own sources.
CD for $13

THOMAS BUCKNER - His Tone Of Voice (Lovely Music 3024) Works by "Blue" Gene Tyranny, His Tone of Voice at 37; Mel Graves, Meditations on Truth; and Jacques Bekaert, Orfeo Thomas Buckner, baritone. With Jeffrey Berman, vibraphone; Josef Bergstaller, trumpet; Jay Elfeinbein, contrabass; Ethel (Todd Reynolds and Mary Rowell, violins, Ralph Farris, viola, Dorothy Lawson, cello); Mel Graves, contrabass; Benjamin Herrington, trombone; Leroy Jenkins, solo violin; Joseph Kubera, harpsichord; Jacqueline LeClair, oboe; Ted Mook, cello; Bill Ruyle, bowed marimba; Stefani Starin, flute; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, piano; and Christopher Berg, conductor for His Tone of Voice at 37. On this collection, Thomas Buckner brings us three works about man's spiritual quest for truth and goodness. The central character in "Blue" Gene Tyranny's collection of songs, His Tone of Voice at 37, realizes something that he had always known, but forgot that he knew - a secret that frees him to search for a place where there are no more wars or suffering. Mel Graves draws his inspiration for Mediations on Truth from the poems of the 15th-Century Sufi poet, Kabir, whose style was at once, irreverant yet intensely spiritual. Jacques Bekaert brings us the story of the gentle Orfeo, who has become a symbol of marital fidelity, non-violence, and of the artist whose greatest ambition is to make the world a better place.
CD for $13

THOMAS BUCKNER With J D PARRAN/JON GIBSON et al - Full Spectrum Voice (Lovely Music 3021) Thomas Buckner, vocals; Tony Barrero, trumpet; Jon Gibson, clarinet/flute; J.D. Parran, bass clarinet and baritone saxophone; "Blue" Gene Tyranny, synthesizer; Joseph Kubera, piano; Tom Hamilton, synthesizer; Michael Pugliese, timpani and percussion From new music's acclaimed baritone, called "the voice of the new", works by six composers: Roscoe Mitchell, Jon Gibson, Robert Ashley, Annea Lockwood, Peter Gena, Nils Vigeland.
CD for $13

THOMAS BUCKNER With LEROY JENKINS/J D PARRAN et al - Inner Journey (Lovely Music 3023) Thomas Buckner, baritone, with Leroy Jenkins, viola; Joseph Kubera, piano; J.D. Parran, bass clarinet; Stefani Starin, flute; David Wessel, synthesizer; Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, Petr Kotik, conductor. Recorded and mixed by Tom Hamilton. This CD contains works by William Duckworth, Thomas Buckner, Jacques Bekaert, David Wessel and Somei Satoh -- united by their themes of the quest for self knowledge. Composed of fragments from the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller and Gertrude Stein, and Thomas McGrath, William Duckworth's text reveals the multiple perspectives of an unknown couple whose post-modern love story emerges. Thomas Buckner's improvisation, Inner Journey, is dedicated to the spirit and musical techniques of a beloved friend. Jacques Bekaert takes musical material from a popular Cambodian song to reflect some of the emotions, hopes and pains anyone approaching that tragic land must feel and evoke an inner landscape. In the David Wessel's piece, Buckner's musical discourse is with the computer. Finally, Somei Satoh compares his work for voice and orchestra to his own meditation, "serene on the surface, yet burning vehemently like a flame."
CD for $13

THOMAS BUCKNER With LEROY JENKINS/JON GIBSON et al - Sign Of The Times (Lovely Music 3022) Thomas Buckner, baritone; Stefani Starin, flute, alto flute and khaen; Jon Gibson, soprano saxophone; Leroy Jenkins, viola; Joseph Kubera, piano; Bill Ruyle, percussion Commissioned works dealing with contemporary social and spiritual concerns.
CD for $13

JOHN CAGE/JOSEPH KUBERA - Music of Changes (Lovely Music 2053) "Like the Pierre Boulez Sonata, Music of Changes is a manifesto. It marks Cage's first comprehensive "exploration of non-intention" through the systematic use of chance operations to create a complete, major work. Begun in May 1951 and completed on 13 December of that year, Music of Changes was named in honor of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, the ancient Chinese book of oracles that had become Cage's means of synthesizing chance with rigorous discipline. Cage's notation heralded a new concept of musical time, placing the performer in a new relation to the score, one in which orientation is to the occurrence of events rather than to the relations between them, which is to say to action rather than to memory. Performances of Music of Changes have been rare since David Tudor ceased playing the work in the late 1950s; Herbert Henck and, more recently, Joseph Kubera are among the few pianists to have assayed the obstacles posed by its innovations. For all its prominence in the history of postwar music, Music of Changes has remained more discussed than heard, more treatise than artwork." -- John Holzaepfel CD booklet includes John Holzaepfel's complete notes, as well as a memoir by Don Gillespie.
CD for $13

PAUL DeMARINIS - Music As A Second Language (Lovely Music 3011) Speech melodies extracted from sources as various as language instruction recordings, hypnotists and televangelists are resynthesized and applied to digital musical instruments, becoming eerily beautiful, "the singing of voices more ancient than language."
CD for $13

DOWNTOWN ENSEMBLE - Downtown Only (Lovely Music 3081) The DownTown Ensemble was formed in 1983 by co-directors Daniel Goode and William Hellermann. The Ensemble has several points of focus: music for open (unspecified) instrumentation, emerging composers, commissions, graphic scores, ritual/intermedia music, and large ensemble works. While the Ensemble has a consistent core of players, performances always involve a variety of other artists. There have been over fifty such collaborations since the group's inception. This Lovely Music CD presents four of them. Features works by Daniel Goode, William Hellerman, Mary Jane Leach and Peter Zummo.
CD for $13

PAUL DRESHER - This Same Temple (Lovely Music 2011) Paul Dresher, Fender stratocaster guitar; Dresher and Paul Tydelski, tape processing system; Double Edge (Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles, piano duo); Gene Reffkin, drums. The works on this CD are all from what Dresher considers to be his first phase of composition in his own musical voice, ranging from 1976 through 1985. They focus entirely on the three instruments he knew best and has worked with since childhood: the guitar, the piano and the tape recorder. Liquid and Stellar Music began as an idea for a sonic world while working with Terry Riley at Mills College and was working exclusively with the electric guitar. Through the use of a four-channel tape machine with three playback heads located at various points in the path of a closed loop of variable speed, system, it is possible for the performer to build up complex textural, harmonic or rhythmic structures through what is essentially a process of live multi-track recording (and playback, erasing and mixing). Destiny draws its surface unabashedly from the idiom of rock and roll yet it is contrapuntally and polyrhythmically organized via processes normally associated with other domains. At this time, Dresher was "grappling with the diverse and contrary influences of both rock & roll, world music and contemporary 'art' music. This work was a direct attempt to reconcile these differences and incorporate the qualities of each which I find inspirational." In Water Dreams the sounds of water in many contexts (rain, ocean waves, lakes, rivers, streams and drips) form the basic sonic palette. The composition is a hybrid of these acoustic sounds (manipulated only with equalization and tape speed alterations), synthesized sounds (Yamaha DX-7) and sampled acoustic sounds. This Same Temple was premiered by the East Bay New Music Ensemble in the Fall of 1976 with Rae Imamura and Phil Aaberg at the pianos. Dresher says, "The work clearly owes a debt to Steve Reich, with whose ensemble I played briefly in the summer of 1974. It was through Steve that I met Nurit Tilles to whom I turned when I wanted to record the work."
CD for $13

WILLIAM DUCKWORTH - Southern Harmony (Lovely Music 2033) The Gregg Smith Singers, chorus; assisted by The Rooke Chapel Choir of Bucknell University. A post-minimalist reworking of hymns from the famous 1854 edition of the eponymous hymn collection, one of the staple sources for shaped-note singing. It's a translation from a naive (if complex) church tradition into a form and texture conscious concert medium, an exploration of processes inherent in the original hymn but not developed there.
CD for $13

WILLIAM DUCKWORTH - The Time Curve Preludes (Lovely Music 2031) Neely Bruce, piano William Duckworth's Well-Tempered Clavier of minimalism. Elegant studies in proportion and sonority, beautifully played by pianist Neely Bruce. Each prelude grows from a single rhythmic figure, uses modal harmonies, raga-style drones, and Medieval melodic outlines, and captures a particular but relatively brief mood, whether meditative, dance-like, or song-like. Duckworth's shifting, modal patterns unfold in a specially reverberant universe created by sustaining (with weights) certain of the keyboard's lowest notes. With pace and duration perfectly controlled, the preludes progress from sweetness to pungency with an elegiac inevitability.
CD for $13

WILLIAM DUCKWORTH - Thirty-One Days (Lovely Music 2032) Michael Swartz, alto saxophone Whereas all of his previous compositions were fully notated, William Duckworth wanted to take advantage of alto saxophonist Michael Swartz's improvisational skills. Basic units of material, melodies both traditionally and graphically notated, are to be repeated according to a 31-part Fibonacci-based structure. To preserve spontaneity of performance within a work that requires extensive rehearsal, the performer is strictly limited to one daily reading of the score over a 30-day period. Swartz gives a very colorful and thoughtful reading in a solo version (recorded on the 31st day.) An "ensemble version" created by over-dubbing seven readings of the score makes perfectly clear both the formal structure and the freedom which manage to co-exist in this work which is ultimately a collaboration of equal partners.
CD for $13

FAST FORWARD - Panhandling (Lovely Music 2091) Fast Forward's primary instrument on this CD is the steel drum or pan, but he may use any percussion instrument: a coil of flat metal, a bathtub, temple bells. He rolls a ball around the concave surface of the pan, once after filling it with water. With relatively simple means, chosen by a playful and imaginative mind, Forward creates a sound that is rich and surprisingly delicate, unfolding engaging melodies that leave an acoustic afterglow -- like a shimmering veil, suggesting the mesmerizing appearance of the northern lights.
CD for $13

JON HASSELL - Vernal Equinox (Lovely Music 1021) Jon Hassell, trumpet, synthesizer, drones; Nana Vasconcelos, Miguel Frasconi, Nicolas Kilbourn, David Rosenboom and William Winant, percussion Released in 1977, this recording would go on to influence Brian Eno, whose subsequent association with Hassell formed a collaboration with Possible Musics. Within these sparse but exotic textures, you can hear the vocal source of Hassell's unusual trumpet sound as he bends notes into breath-like murmurs. On the raga-like title track, Hassell weaves a long, sinewy trail across the slow percussion of David Rosenboom and Nana Vasconcelos, with a slowly-shifting synthesizer background acting like a "minimalist" take on a tamboura drone. "Early experiments (76-77) in fourth-world algorithms from this oft-overlooked composer. Features the dynamic/tasteful instrumental stylings of Nana Vasconcelos, David Rosenboom (recent Braxton collaborator), William Winant, Nicholas Kilbourn, and someone/thing monikered to the known universe as 'Drone'. Mostly light island rhythms augmented by Hassel's alien effector-trumpet. Recalls the peaceful slumber of Miles's In a Silent Way in spots. Don't forget the most important credit; "256hz pitch standard: Motorola Scalatron" (Wouldn't want to run into THAT in a dark alley...)." --Hrvatski.
CD for $13

BARBARA HELD - Upper Air Observation (Lovely Music 3031) Flutist Held presents works by Alvin Lucier, Nils Vigeland, and Yasunao Tone and a composition of her own. Known for her collaborations with composers, Held has beautifully chosen and performed this wide-ranging sampling of contemporary musical styles.
CD for $13

LEROY JENKINS - Solo (Lovely Music 3061) Leroy Jenkins plays violin and viola in a concert recorded live at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe "Among improvising violinists, Leroy Jenkins is preeminent where innovation, imagination and individualism are considered. Not only has he expanded the improvising violinist's palette via extended technique, but his sound and approach are unique. This solo concert recording can be seen as a follow-up to the much-admired 1977 India Navigation (IN 1028) LP, "Solo Concert." Leroy Jenkins is an artist to be treasured. He makes music of great depth, passion and intellectual substance. The Santa Fe audience experienced the special magic of a Leroy Jenkins solo concert on October 24, 1992. Now, with this compact disc, you can too." -- Carl Baugher
CD for $13

TOM JOHNSON/FREDERIC RZEWSKI - An Hour for Piano (Lovely Music 1081) Frederic Rzewski, piano A trance music piece made up of repeating 4/4 cells in which an absolutely steady eighth-note motion predominates. Often several cells are going on simultaneously, and one cell frequently mutates into another through the addition or subtraction of a note or two. One has to step back far enough to get a perspective on the large-scale shifts in density and tonality before the impact of An Hour For Piano can be felt. Frederic Rzewski plays very percussively throughout, giving the piece an intense forward motion. CD booklet includes Tom Johnson's, "Program Notes to be read while hearing An Hour for Piano," and an essay by Kenneth Goldsmith, "An Hour of Tom Johnson."
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TAKEHISA KOSUGI - Violin Improvisations (Lovely Music 2071) Takehisa Kosugi, electric violin "1990 CD release of solo violin & electronics recorded in NYC in September of 1989. Kosugi is of course the main "Taj Mahal Traveler" and a key player in Fluxus-related activities during the sixties. This is some of the most beautiful mathematical-relationship inspired solo performance grate/scrape out there, it's really hard to believe that all present glossed-out cavern/tank sonics are derived from a single violin & a digital delay unit. Just enough trace of certain 'Eastern' micro-tonalitites & alien gesture to keep your ears dancing on end. Sublime." -- Hrvatski, Forced Exposure Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assemble sounds into music. When listeners connect with his sounds, a direct identification of experience occurs between audience and performer.
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JOAN LA BARBARA - 73 Poems (Lovely Music 3002; USA) Joan La Barbara, voice; Joan La Barbara, Michael Hoenig and Bradford Ellis, sound design Joan La Barbara's composition, 73 Poems, was commissioned, produced and recorded by Permanent Press (Brooklyn, NY) to accompany the publication of Kenneth Goldsmith's 73 Poems as a book and as a suite of lithographs. La Barbara's works often involve multiple layers of her own voice, creating a kind of sonic canvas on which she throws splashes of vocal colors. On this CD, her potent combination of vocal and studio expertise makes it possible for her to represent in music some of the most distinctive features of Goldsmith's visual texts.
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JOAN LA BARBARA - Sound Paintings (Lovely Music 3001) Joan La Barbara, voice Joan La Barbara begins Sound Paintings with a scream that pushes you into an unusual world of vocal sound. Her virtuoso singing style, developed over a 20-year period, can be heard on this disc, which combines some of her earlier works with more recent compositions. She takes her extended techniques, which include multiphonics, overtone singing, and glottal clicks, and orchestrates them in layered soundscape compositions using from 8 to 16 tracks of material.
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JOAN LA BARBARA - Voice Is The Original Instrument: Early Works [2CD] (Lovely Music 3003) Collection of early works and her first vocal compositions, originally released on LPs in the 1970s and early 1980s on her own Wizard Records. "One of my earliest pieces, "Hear What I Feel", was a self-exploratory, sensory-deprivation experimental work, designed to help me discover new sounds, delve into psychological aspects, as well as communicate with the audience on a pre-verbal level of awareness. After spending an hour in isolation with my eyes taped shut and not touching anything with my hands, I was led our into the performance space where my assistant had placed a variety of substances in six small glass dishes. As I touched the material, I tried to give an immediate vocal response to what I felt both emotionally and physically, without the benefit of visual information. I expected the shock of bringing a solitary state of mind into the heightened awareness of a performance situation to intensify my experience, and the poignancy of my "prepared"; state to affect the audience. The sounds are presented here in their raw state; it is truly an experimental work with no intentional musical implications or designs. "Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation" explores the color spectrum of a single pitch. Circular Song was inspired by the circular breathing technique of horn players. "Des Accords pour Teeny", an exploration of multi-phonic technique or choral singing, was dedicated to Teeny Duchamp. In much of my early work I dealt with sound as a physical presence, sculpting it, building up layers in complex constructions, letting the flow of thought and the visualization of sonic gestures direct my studio art. Voice Is the Original Instrument was both a statement of purpose and a manifesto as, through various experiments and explorations, I tried to rediscover the basic function of the voice as the first means of expression as well as to release untapped sonic material. As I gave my classically trained voice its freedom, letting it direct me toward new places and ideas, I developed what was a unique vocabulary and used those sounds to score an orchestra of layered voices."
2 CD set for $25

ANNEA LOCKWOOD - A Sound Map Of The Hudson River (Lovely Music 2081) Annea Lockwood, recording, mixing; the Hudson River An aural journey from the source of the river, in the high peak area of the Adirondacks, downstream to the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean; Lockwood traces the course of the Hudson through on-site recordings of its flow at 15 separate locations. Annea Lockwood has recorded rivers in many countries to explore the special state of mind and body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches. The listener will find that each stretch of the Hudson has its own sonic texture, formed by the terrain, varying according to the weather, the season and downstream, the human environment whose sounds are intimately woven into the river's sounds. 71 minutes 33 seconds.
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ANNEA LOCKWOOD - Breaking The Surface (Lovely Music 2082) Duende (1997) (24:57), about shamanic transformation, is written with and performed by Thomas Buckner. Lockwood selected sounds which reminded her of certain vocal transformations heard in recordings of shamanic ceremonies. In such singing, changes in the voice mirror and also help to bring about changes in the singer's mind and awareness. Within an improvisational framework, Buckner explores the possibility of change of state through such transformations, moving through three stages: preparation, a first flight, and a final flight in which he moves beyond the self he knows. Thus Duende is a not a prepared, performed work, but a vehicle for experience. Buckner is partnered by a tape drawn from the sounds of the cuica (an African and South American instrument), a large glass gong and other glass sounds, wind, a Cameroonian rattle, a kea (New Zealand mountain parrot), and a bullroarer. Delta Run (1982) (25:38) is an expression of the thoughts and experiences of a sculptor who talked with Lockwood just over a day before he died in 1979, aged thirty. He knew that he was dying and wanted to communicate his perceptions of death as something "only natural, you know - now is my time", seeing this piece as a form of continuing creativity now that sculpture was out of reach. Interwoven with his voice are wind, water, ambient sounds from the hospice where they talked, and some of the ordinary sounds of daily living, embodying the sense that dying is a part of living, not separate from it, and that in dying we are incorporated back into the elements from which we emanate.
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ALVIN LUCIER - Clocker (Lovely Music 1019; USA) For amplified clock, performer with galvanic skin response sensor, and digital delay system; Alvin Lucier, performer; recorded by Nicolas Collins Through the means of a galvanic skin response sensor driving a digital delay on a miked clock, Lucier creates the illusions of time expanding and contracting, and of a room that is changing in size. Another classic Lucier catalog item, a 45-minute recording made in 1991 of this piece that he first conceived in 1978. The piece is for: amplified clock, performer with galvanic skin response sensor and digital delay system. The sounds that emanate are beautifully shifting patterns of tock-collage that reveal dramatic sonic detailings. "I wanted to make a work in which a performer could speed up and slow down time, stopping it, if possible, simply by thinking. I bought a Westclox Silver Bell Monogram in a local store and ordered a galvanic skin response sensor through the Edmund Scientific Catalogue. A GSR is designed to measure differences in skin resistance caused by changes in emotional state. A small current is sent through the body, the response to which is amplified, producing an output voltage which can be used to control various devices...later I added a bank of fixed delays which, as they splay out from the voltage controlled delay, create multiple reflections that almost convince the listener that the room is changing size. — from Forced Exposure
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ALVIN LUCIER - Crossings (Lovely Music 1018) Alvin Lucier, electronics; Thomas Ridenour, clarinet; The New World Consort of Wesleyan University, Three works for classical instruments and oscillators (1982-85). Lucier explains the process: "The three works on this compact disk explore interference phenomena between sound waves. When two or more closely tuned tones are sounded, their oscillations periodically coincide to produce audible beats of sound. The speed of the beating depends upon the distances between the pitches of the sounds. The further apart, the faster the beating; at unison, no beating occurs. Furthermore, under certain conditions, the beats may be heard to spin around the room....."
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ALVIN LUCIER - I am sitting in a room (Lovely Music 1013) Alvin Lucier, recorded voice. In this fascinating exploration of acoustical phenomena, Alvin Lucier slips from the domain of language to that of music in the course of 40 minutes and 32 repetitions of a simple paragraph of text. In I am sitting in a room, several sentences of recorded speech are simultaneously played back into a room and re-recorded there many times. As the repetitive process continues, those sounds common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated. The space acts as a filter; the speech is transformed into pure sound. All the recorded segments are spliced together in the order in which they were made and constitute the work. I am sitting in a room was composed in 1970 and was first performed at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City that same year. A second version was made in 1972 to accompany the dance, Dune, performed by the Viola Farber Dance Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Since that time, numerous versions of this composition have been realized in various ways by other musicians, including a Swedish radio broadcast version. This recording was made by Alvin Lucier on October 29th and 31st, 1980, in the living room of his home in Middletown, CT. The material was recorded on a Nagra tape recorder with an Electro-Voice 635 dynamic microphone and played back on one channel of a Revox A77 tape recorder, Dynaco amplifier and a KLH Model Six loudspeaker. It consists of thirty-two generations of Alvin Lucier's speech and was made expressly for Lovely Music, Ltd.
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ALVIN LUCIER - Music on a Long Thin Wire (Lovely Music 1011) Alvin Lucier, concept & design; the Wire A 50-foot length of taut wire passes through the poles of a large magnet and is driven by an oscillator; the vibrations of the wire are miked at either end, amplified and broadcast in stereo. The thin wire is set vibrating four times at four different frequencies; what results is not the low drone one might expect from a long, vibrating wire, but a complexity of evocative, ethereal chords. First released on Lovely Music in 1980, Music on a Long Thin Wire is a classic example of Alvin Lucier's investigations into the physics of sound and the sonic properties of natural processes.
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ALVIN LUCIER - Panorama (Lovely Music 1012) A gorgeous recording of works for trombone and piano, transformed by Lucier's electronics and oscillators. Wind Shadows (1994), Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums (1990), and Panorama (1993)--were written for the Swiss musicians Roland Dahinden and Hildegard Kleeb, who play them on this CD. Also included: Music for Piano with Amplified Sonorous Vessels (1990), which was originally written for Margaret Leng Tan.
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ALVIN LUCIER - Still and Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas [2 CD set] (Lovely Music 1015) Double CD release of of a four-part work, initiated in 1972 and recorded as presented here in 1983-4 and 2001. This reissues two long-out-of-print LPs on Lovely, with four added parts (the strings) released for the first time. A series of mostly solo instrument works for the likes of: clarinet, marimba, viola, voice, xylophone, violin, flute, glockenspiel, cello, horn, vibraphone. Performed by: Thomas Ridenour, William Winant, Dan Panner, Rebecca Armstrong, Conrad Harris, Susan Palma, Gregory Hesslink, James de Corsey. An absolute masterpiece of "interference sound."
2 CD set for $25

ALVIN LUCIER - Still Lives (Lovely Music 5012) Three new works for pure waves and instruments. Lucier has pioneered in many areas of music composition and performance, including the notation of performers' physical gestures, the use of brain waves in live performance, the generation of visual imagery by sound in vibrating media, and the evocation of room acoustics for musical purposes. His recent works include a series of sound installations and works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra in which, by means of close tunings with pure tones, sound waves are caused to spin through space. "I count Alvin Lucier's Still Lives among the most beautiful recordings I've ever heard. Like Janacek, Lucier's art stands alone despite the air of detached cool it shares with Lovely Music's catalog. (Few labels hew to an aesthetic line so tenaciously as Lovely. Mimi Johnson, the woman in charge, is married to Robert Ashley, whose operas set the tone for a significant aspect of "downtown" style.) Lucier's deceptively simple aesthetic is in fact delightfully complex in the manner in which it reveals horizons. In this release, the composer has purely acoustic sounds (single piano tones, less often chords, and briefly, koto) interacting with electronically created, similarly uncomplicated sounds. The magic - and I choose that word carefully - occurs in the mingling. Lucier takes his time, and so should the listener. I can think of little music better suited to the recording medium. The disc's eponym, in eight parts, serves as a showpiece for the varieties of soul-touching experience Lucier's seemingly perfunctory systems permit. The composer's good notes tell the story. Particular congratulations to Tom Hamilton (a fine composer in his own right) for a wonderfully intimate sound." - Mike Silverton, "Golden Ear Awards 2002", The Absolute Sound
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ALVIN LUCIER - Theme (Lovely Music 5011) 1: Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings A work in which the strings of a piano sound by themselves. Several E-Bows (small electromagnets used primarily with electric guitars) which would cause the piano strings to vibrate and sound are placed on the strings of the piano. The pianist works from a prose score which describes the process and suggests she freely position and reposition five E-Bows on the piano strings, creating strands of sounds of varying density and texture. Much of her time is spent listening for harmonics, audible beating, occasional rhythms produced as one or more magnets vibrates against adjacent strings, and other acoustic phenomena. 2: Theme Setting a poem of John Ashbery's to music, Lucier didn't want to violate the flow of the words of the poem by fragmentation or any other cut-up method. The stanzas seemed musical enough just as they were and he wanted the audience to hear the poem more or less in its pristine state, so, working intuitively and by ear, he wrote out the poem for four readers in the order it was written, repeating words and phrases, overlapping and superimposing them in various ways. To "set" the poem, he inserted microphones into the mouths of various vessels, including a small milk bottle, a sea shell, a vase and an empty ostrich egg, to pick up the words as they were sounding inside the vessels. The readers speak normally, allowing the pitches of their voices which match those resonances of the vessels to create musical sounds. Occasionally, however, a reader will tend to emphasize certain pitches more than others, reading in an almost chant-like way, to sound the resonances of the vessels more clearly. Theme is performed on this CD by Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Jacqueline Humbert and Joan La Barbara. 3: Music for Gamelan Instruments, Microphones, Amplifiers and Loudspeakers Wanting to make a work for Javanese gamelan, but wary of using someone else's music in his own work, it wasn't until he started imagining the bowl-shaped bonangs of the gamelan orchestra more as resonant chambers to be sounded than objects to be struck, that Lucier felt he could make a work for gamelan that he could call his own. During the performance four players place bonangs of various sizes over microphones, creating feedback, the pitch of which is determined by the shape and size of the bowl and the resonant characteristics of the room. Three gender players strike the bars on their metallaphones, searching for the pitches of the feedback strands. Since it is virtually impossible that a strand of feedback will match exactly a pitch on any fixed-pitch instruments, audible beats--bumps of sound which occur as sound waves coincide--occur. The closer the tuning, the slower the beating. When the players reach near-unison with a feedback strand they slow down or speed up their playing, creating beating patterns between the pitches of their instruments and those of the feedback.
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CHRIS MANN With CHRISTIAN MARCLAY/ANTHONY COLEMAN et al - The Use (Lovely Music 3091) Chris Mann, an Australian poet, writer, performer and composer relocated to New York City, brings a recording of his signature works to Lovely Music. With the participation of Christine Bard, Anthony Coleman, Christian Marclay, Jim Pugliese, Mark Stewart and David Watson. "Language is the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do. (Where "I" is defined by those changes for which I is required)." -Chris Mann Chris Mann's works for voice are based on complex texts, freely composed to allow a play of wit and humor. He explores the textures and gestures of Australian speech, with its rhythms and qualities of color, pitch, intonation and emphasis. He has collaborated widely with composers, film-makers, and electronic music composers. He has received commissions from Radio France, Paris Autumn, National Public Radio, Composers Forum, Australian Biennale, Ars Electronica, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC. He has held residencies at the Shire of Healesville in Victoria, ABC Staff Union, Harvestworks, RPI's iEar Studios. He performs extensively worldwide with Machine for Making Sense, Chris Mann and the Impediments, and solo.
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ROSCOE MITCHELL - Four Compositions (Lovely Music 2021) Robert Cole, flute; Richard Lottridge, bassoon; Joan Wildman, piano; Vartan Manoogian, violin; Roscoe Mitchell, alto saxophone; Wingra Woodwind Quintet; Tom Buckner, voice; Roscoe Mitchell, bass saxophone; Gerald Oshita, contrabass sarrusophone; Brian Smith, triple contrabass viol Pointillistic chamber compositions: NONAAH, Duet for Wind and String, Cutouts, and Prelude. Delicate as to texture, dispassionate as to mood, these mostly notated woodwind, string, and piano chamber works are atonal, but collapse into tonal cadences. "Mitchell's atonal explorations here seem somehow earthier and more alive than most contemporary chamber music, perhaps a reflection of his cutting-edge jazz background."--Hayes, Capital Times, June 1992
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ROSCOE MITCHELL - Pilgrimage (Lovely Music 2022) The Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble: Mitchell: saxophones, winds and percussion; Thomas Buckner, voice; Joseph Kubera, piano; Vartan Manoogian, violin His reassertion of the composer into what has traditionally been an improvisational form have placed Roscoe Mitchell at the forefront of contemporary music for over twenty-five years. This recording features eight new works (including one by Henry Threadgill) performed by the Roscoe Mitchell New Chamber Ensemble. Texts by Thulani Davis, Lord Byron, e. e. cummings, and Joseph Jarman.
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MEREDITH MONK - Key (Lovely Music 1051) Meredith Monk, voice, organ, jews harp; Daniel Ira Sverdlik, Dick Higgins, Collin Walcott, Lanny Harrison, Mark Monstermaker, voices This recording contains Meredith Monk's earliest compositions for voice. The songs that make up Key were composed and performed in a 3-year period between 1967 and 1970, when Monk collected them into this 45-minute "invisible theater" experience. "In 'Key" I wanted to create a constantly shifting ambience. Each song dealt with a different vocal character, landscape, technical concern or emotional quality. I was trying for a visceral, kinetic song form that had the abstract qualities of a painting or a dance. I knew that I didn't want to set music to a text; for me, the voice itself was a language which seemed to speak more eloquently than words. I chose certain phonemes for their particular sound qualities. In a sense, each song became a world in itself with its own timbre, texture and impulse." -- Meredith Monk
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GORDON MUMMA - Studio Retrospect: Stereo And Binaural Electroacoustic Music (Lovely Music 1093) STUDIO RETROSPECT is a collection of six compositions made in electronic music studios from 1959 to 1984. All were composed for concert hall or theater performance with choreography, as well as for distribution on recordings. Music from the Venezia Space Theatre, The Dresden Interleaf, and Echo-D were composed for quadraphonic theater systems, and were later spatially remodeled for release on stereophonic recordings. A collection of six compositions made in electronic music studios from 1959 to 1984. All were composed for concert hall or theater performance with choreography, as well as for distribution on recordings. "Long-awaited CD collection of early electronic works from this Sonic Arts Union member (along with Alvin Lucier, Robert Ashley, and David Behrman) and co-founder (with Ashley) of the Cooperative Studio for Electronic Music in Ann Arbor, MI (rumoured the first EMS in the US) as well as the ONCE festival(s, 66-74), not to mention his involvement with John Cage and David Tudor as one of the principal composers for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Oh yeah, and Mumma 'was among the first composers to employ circuitry of his own design in compositions and performance.' Features the pieces 'Retrospect' (1959, whose 'Densities' interlude beat B.Gunter et.al to the punch [line] by about 30 years), 'Music from the Venezia Space Theatre' (1964, as brilliant a headfuck as implied), 'The Dresden Interleaf 13 February 1945' (1965, after six minutes of near-silent ghost echoes, one thousand bees invade for exactly 25 seconds, then...), 'Echo-D' (1978, harpsichord and Buchla box sources are given 15 minutes in which to roam freely), 'Pontpoint' (1966-80), and 'Epifont' (1984). Mumma's been one of the more obscured blokes in possession of a misfiring neuro-transmitter set (his 'portable recording apparatus' and related getup puts the MD sham-antics of the Lucky Kitchen set to shame) and what with the 'electron-archaica' movement being graced with it's own Ellipsis Arts boxset (like they were all fucking Babenzele Pygmies) you'll surely find a local pen-pal with which to co-tirade on themes of his inherent era genius and contemporary shadow-likeness (as far as output is concerned, although 1987's video-performance of his 1974 piece 'Some voltage drop' wherein 'various parts of musical piece are played on musical saw in an empty amusement park; other part is electronic squeals emitted from accelerometers' would make Gord seem at bat w/old demons) over firelight and fine tawny port. Music, alive, perhaps crawling towards the sun." -- Hrvatski.
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PAULINE OLIVEROS - Crone Music (Lovely Music 1903) Pauline Oliveros, solo accordion; Panaiotis, processing and mixing Commissioned by Mabou Mines, the experimental theater group from New York, for their interpretation of "King Lear," Oliveros' Crone Music is a subtle and haunting electronic music endeavor. Interfacing an abundance of digital delay processors, reverb effects and foot pedals to bend pitches from piercing to twisted, sonorous tones, with her one-of-a-kind expanded accordion, Oliveros produces rich, eerie textures. "Studio recordings from 1989-90, 'commissioned by Mamou Mines, the New York based experimental theater collective, for their production of Lear by William Shakespeare.' In use herein is a fairly complex series of pitch-modulated foot-controlled digital delay units which render Oliveros' solo accordion playing into a full accordion ensemble. This all results in SERIOUSLY dense overtone/ghost chord action, complete with microtones and countermelodies emulating something like a grand-pipe-organ jam session. Heavy. By far the most ear-triggering of all Oliveros's explorations with said instrument." -- Hrvatski.
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MAGGIE PAYNE - Crystal (Lovely Music 2061) Maggi Payne, flute, synthesizers and electronics Payne's musical imagination is vivid: she is interested in the surreal, the inward, the micro, and the accumulation of physical and psychological tension. Periods of silence gently evolve into flowing drones of complex resonances. Oozing drones evolve into dense and powerful peaks of short duration. On one cut, multi-tracked voices shift in and out of phase, creating alternately shimmering and percussive patterns; on another, digital delay and 32 separate flute tracks create a rain forest where instruments call to each other like chrome birds. The compositions and sounds on this CD have incredible depth, a profound logic and, though not "pretty," an irresistible beauty.
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ELIANE RADIGUE - Mila's Journey Inspired By A Dream (Lovely Music 2002) Performed (Arp synthesizer) and recorded by Eliane Radigue; Robert Ashley, English voice; Lama Kunga Rinpoche, Tibetan voice. Milarepa is a great saint and poet of Tibet who lived in the 11th Century. His autobiography, the Mila Kabum or Namthar, as told to his closest disciple, Rechungpa, has been translated into several Western languages. In this story of Milarepa's life, we can see how, through years dedicated to meditation and related practices in the solitude of the mountains, Milarepa achieved the highest attainable illumination and the mental power that enabled him to guide innumerable disciples. His ability to present complex teachings in a simple, lucid style is astonishing. He had a fine voice and loved to sing. When his patrons and disciples made a request or asked him a question, he answered in spontaneously composed free-flowing poems or lyric songs. It is said that he composed 100,000 songs to communicate his ideas in his teachings and conversations. Drinking the Mountain Stream (Lotsawa Publications), from which the song on this CD was taken, is the first English translation of these texts, by Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Brian Cutillo.
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ELIANE RADIGUE - Songs Of Milarepa [2 CD set] (Lovely Music 2001) Performed (Arp synthesizer) and recorded by Eliane Radigue; Robert Ashley, English voice; Lama Kunga Rinpoche, Tibetan voice Double CD of all 5 of Radigue's songs in tribute to the Tibetan saint and poet from the eleventh century. Two of the tracks date from an 1983 LP (Radigue's first release), two are previously unreleased and the final 62-minute track was previously issued as a single CD in 1987. The material is performed by Radigue (synthesizer and recording), Robert Ashley (English