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RDM 104LP
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Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s. There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still around and able to be making music I first dreamt of 50 years ago." These two releases come from Moog Recordings Library second UK lab session and is the first Charlemagne Palestine Moog Sound Lab. All electronic longform drone works from an archive of six recordings.
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RDM 103LP
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Charlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960s. Palestine on the release: "Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960s.There were Moogs around New York but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. So after all this time visiting The Moog Sound Lab is like a dream come true for me... to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad I am still around and able to be making music I first dreamt of 50 years ago." These two releases come from Moog Recordings Library second UK lab session and is the first Charlemagne Palestine Moog Sound Lab. All electronic longform drone works from an archive of six recordings.
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VOCSON 155LP
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In 1974, Ileana Sonnabend commissioned Charlemagne Palestine to create a limited edition, double LP in conjunction with a performance to celebrate the opening of her new Soho gallery at 420 West Broadway. Charlemagne made several recording attempts, first at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where they had a Bösendorfer Imperial Piano in their theater. He recorded "Bösendorfer + Voice", "Voice Piece" as well as some Bösendorfer tests, with Mayo Thompson as producer and Kurt Munkacsi as sound engineer. These ecstatic Swarthmore recordings, recorded late at night in the big empty theater space, represented the original elements on which Charlemagne Palestine later created the piano pieces for Four Manifestations on Six Elements (ALGAMARS 004LP, MAGNE 008LP). For more than 40 years since these recordings were made, Palestine never went back to listen to them, but recently on re-listening to these Swarthmore recordings with Alga Marghen, he found several blissful, arpeggiated piano and falsetto voice studies which he feels now deserve to be heard. Included in the Alga Marghen VocSon series, this LP of two previously unreleased 1974 recordings finally see the light of day. Edition of 405.
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SSH 003LP
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Repressed. The classic minimal music album, available again on vinyl for the first time since the '70s. Primed with a glass of cognac, Charlemagne Palestine sits at the keyboard of a Bösendorfer Imperial grand piano. One foot firmly holds down the sustain pedal while both hands perform an insistent strum-like alternation on the keys. Soon Palestine and his Bösendorfer are enveloped in sound and bathed in a shimmering haze of multi-colored overtones. For 45 minutes, this rich pulsating music swells and intensifies, filling the air. When Strumming Music first appeared on the adventurous French label Shandar during the mid-1970s, it seemed a straightforward matter to place Charlemagne Palestine in the so-called minimalist company of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, whose work also featured in the Shandar catalog. Palestine too used a deliberately restricted range of materials and a repetitive technique, but as he has often pointed out in more recent times, the opulent fullness of his music would more accurately be described as maximalist. Strumming Music, recorded in Palestine's own loft in Manhattan, has no written score. In an age of recorded sound he still feels no need for traditional notation. The surging energy of this particular recording stands comparison with the improvising of jazz visionaries who impressed and inspired him while living in New York as a young man. But, as Palestine himself has made clear, primarily he brings to music-making the sensibility of an artist rather than a musician. Although the technique of the piece has roots in Palestine's daily practice, when a teenager, of playing the carillon at a church, hammering sonorous chimes from a rack of tuned bells, it also draws on his later work as a body artist, staging vigorously muscular, physically demanding and often reckless performances. In addition, Strumming Music can be heard as a sculptural tour de force, while its textures connect with the color moods, plastic rhythms, and tactile space of Mark Rothko's abstract expressionist canvases. Strumming Music remains the essential index of Palestine's singular creative vision. Fundamentally this fascinating piece is a collaboration between an artist and an instrument. Palestine had first encountered the Bösendorfer Imperial back in 1969. "The Bösendorfer at its best is a very noisy, thick molasses piano," he has remarked. Charlemagne Palestine embraced its clinging sonorousness, its clangorous resonance and out of that embrace came the voluptuous sonic fabric of Strumming Music.
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BT 019LP
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Limited repress. "The first vinyl release of Charlemagne Palestine's Godbear, a 1987 solo piano recording originally scheduled to sit alongside Sonic Youth and Swans in the catalogue of Glenn Branca's Neutral Records but eventually released on CD by the Dutch Barooni label in 1998. Although Palestine has worked in an enormous variety of media, his long form performances for solo piano are perhaps his most acclaimed works. Palestine immersed himself in the study of overtones throughout the 1960s, working first with carillons and then with electronic synthesis, searching for the 'golden sound'. Beginning in the early 1970s he continued his exploration of the complexities hidden within seemingly simple tones and intervals on the Bösendorfer Imperial Grand Piano, the 'Rolls Royce' of pianos. With the piano's sustain pedal constantly depressed, Palestine hammers out rapidly repeated notes, allowing a complex cloud of overtones to rise above the percussive texture of the struck keys. Initially working with simple intervals such as octaves and fifths, Palestine gradually expanded the harmonic range of his piano performances over the years, while still retaining their ecstatically single-minded nature. Revisiting his signature piano style in 1987 after several years focusing on visual art, Godbear presents three distinct variations that demonstrate the development of his piano music after the classic recordings of the early 1970s. Occupying the entire first side, 'The Lower Depths' stages a slow descent from the piano's mid-range to the Bösendorfer's cavernous additional low octave, building into a thundering swarm of booming overtones. Breaking entirely with the stereotype of clinical minimalism, Palestine's journey to the depths embraces passages of darkly romantic melody before slowly ascending to its starting point. The version of 'Strumming Music' performed here condenses the developmental arc of the piece into eleven minutes, fanning out from a single octave to a complex harmonic wash that calls to mind Palestine's enthusiasm for Debussy and Ravel. 'Timbral Assault' is like an evil twin of 'Strumming Music,' transforming its insistency and harmonic complexity into aggressive intensity and creeping dissonance, foreshadowing Palestine's later collaborations with Christoph Heemann. A classic release, and one that, because of the variety of approaches surveyed within, serves as an ideal introduction to Palestine's ecstatic and mysterious sound world" --Francis Plagne. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve designed by Stephen O'Malley.
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YMO 001CD
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2007 release. Charlemagne Palestine's The Apocalypse Will Blossom is a stunning piano performance that brings Palestine's recorded work thundering into the 21st century. Working in the lower registers of the piano, as Palestine did in the late '70s, this intensely powerful live performance is unlike anything he's previously released. Recorded in 2000 by Christoph Heemann at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany (on the occasion of the 1000-year celebration of Charlemagne), and subsequently processed by Heemann, The Apocalypse Will Blossom offers the closest experience one can have to hearing Palestine live without witnessing one of his performances. This recording is offered in a CD digipak printed in full color with a collage inspired by Palestine's visual work representing the four horsemen of the apocalypse and an original collage detail of Triomphe de la Morte by the French artist Jacques Brissot. Charlemagne, NOW!
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ALGA 049LP
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Edition of 400 copies. Includes original photos from the recording sessions. High up in a tower, accessible only by a spiral staircase that led to a concrete platform above the whole city, Charlemagne Palestine's "HellsBells" became the sonic mainstay of 53rd Street and 5th Avenue, NYC, from 1963 to 1970. In 1963, while attending The High School of Music & Art in New York, the 15-year-old Palestine was asked if he'd be interested in playing a 26-bell carillon at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church. He decided that he loved the voluptuous Taylor bells, and played them every day from 1963 to 1970, when he left New York to study and teach at CalArts. During his time above 53rd and 5th, Palestine became known as the Quasimodo of midtown NYC, and his dissonant and "klanggdedangggebannggg" style of playing attracted a diverse group of fans, from Moondog to John Cage to Tony Conrad, among others. Palestine was able to continue playing his clanging-bell soap operas for seven years, dinggdonggingggg every late afternoon and Sunday mornings. This LP collects some of the most relevant recordings from those early days. Side A presents the complete reel-tape "Bells Studies," an intense, pulsating work in five movements. It begins with slow, hypnotic, large sonorities and accelerates into more dense and maximal explosions. Side B collects some shorter studies: "Bells," the two parts of "Confiscated Bell Tape," and an excerpt from "Dumb Bell Tape." Each track was recorded by the composer in single takes around 1965 and unheard since, until now.
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NMN 090CD
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Presented in tri-fold digipak sleeve. Alga Marghen presents the "sixSIXsix"th installment of its Golden Research Charlemagne Palestine archive series: CharleBelllzzz at Saint Thomas. These previously unreleased recordings of Palestine's "Bells Studies" are both some of his earliest recordings and some of his darkest and most accomplished works. In 1963, while attending The High School of Music & Art in New York, the 15-year-old Palestine was asked if he'd be interested in playing a 26-bell carillon at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church. He decided that he loved the voluptuous Taylor bells, and played them every day from 1963 to 1970, when he left New York to study and teach at CalArts. During his time high above 53rd Street and 5th Avenue, accessible only by a spiral staircase, Palestine became known as the Quasimodo of midtown NYC, and his dissonant and "klanggdedangggebannggg" style of playing attracted a diverse group of fans, from Moondog to John Cage to Tony Conrad, among others. Palestine was able to continue playing his clanging-bell soap operas for seven years, dinggdonggingggg every late afternoon and Sunday mornings. "Bells Carillon" and "St Thomas Bells," both recorded at unidentified dates between 1966 and 1968, are maximal-bells-pure-resonating frontal attacks, building up in a structure that anticipates the later Strumming campaigns (SR 297CD). Unique and clashing dissonances created like an instinctive, spontaneous outburst. Palestine played the bells right next to his body. The sounds became physical, visceral; each crack of the clapper was like a small earthquake.
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NMN 080CD
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2021 restock; 2015 remastered version of Alga Marghen's 2010 reissue of the Sonnabend Gallery's 1974 limited edition double LP. Presented in digipak sleeve with full-color 12-page booklet including two essays, originals score, and visual materials relating to the composition. Alga Marghen presents the fifth installment of its Golden Research Charlemagne Palestine archive series: Four Manifestations On Six Elements, one of Palestine's most well-known works. In 1973 the Sonnabend Gallery in New York commissioned Palestine to make Four Manifestations On Six Elements. "Two Perfect Fifths, a Major Third Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is an electronic piece that deals with the search for the essence of timbre -- sound color -- through exploration of the inert chemical activity in the overtone series of tone fundamentals. This genre of Palestine's work is akin to a kind of sound alchemy, blending elements over and over again in search of the Golden Sound: the essence of the chord or harmonic structure itself. In "One + Two + Three Perfect Fifths, in the Rhythm 3 Against 2, for Piano" (1973), Palestine uses the resonant Bösendorfer piano to create a more lively and complex variation of tones, intervals, overtones, and rhythms. "One Fifth" evolves by reinforcing the fundamentals of a fifth with their higher octave. Each performance of this work is different, as Palestine reinterprets these simple elements and listens within them for variations of amplitude, mixture, and inertia at the moment of the performance. "One + Two Fifths" deals with the way a rhythmic sonority sounds when the sustain pedal of the piano is not used, thus focusing on its rhythmic aspect. Gradually, by adding the sustain pedal, the external rhythmic pattern begins to internalize, becoming an inert part of the whole timbral fabric -- a piece expressing the struggle for dominance between rhythm and timbre. In "One + Two + Three" a third fifth is added -- variations of melody and sonority reinforcements culminating in a rhythmic deceleration process. "Sliding Fifths for Piano" (1972) is an impressionistic version of the three fifths used in the entire work. The continuous liquid waterfall of pure romantic piano sound and color is an homage to Debussy, Ravel, and Monet. "Three Perfect Fifths, a Major Second Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is the complexification and continuation of track one. A pure and sonorous phenomenon.
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Book w/CD
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ALGA 017BK
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2004 release. Special edition of Sacred Bordello (originally published by Black Dog Publishing) bundled with a limited edition CD released by Alga Marghen. As one of the most influential figures of experimental music and performance, Charlemagne Palestine has remained an enigma. Unlike his illustrious contemporaries Terry Riley, John Cale, Steve Reich, and Phillip Glass, little has been written on Palestine and his continuing influence. In his own right, he was and remains today a pivotal personality whose research in musical composition and performance has been characterized over the years by its incantatory repetitiveness, its flamboyance, and its mysticism, but also by its violence. Born in Brooklyn in 1947, his first musical experiences were as a cantorial singer in the synagogues of New York. Through his contact with Tony Conrad, Palestine was soon introduced to the thriving experimental art scene of the late 1960s. The circles around Andy Warhol and La Monte Young provided a crucial backdrop for Palestine's work, which increasingly extended beyond the scope of music. His groundbreaking appearances, which combined violent piano playing, performance, video, and installation, were considered to be amongst the most radical musical experiences, leaving a lasting impression on followers such as Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and the Sex Pistols, as well as Tintin creator Hergé. Palestine's epic durations, microtonal trembles, and dense overtones are reoccurring features in contemporary industrial and electronic music. Sacred Bordello is a flexi-cover sewn, full color, 192-page, 11" x 9" book that includes essays, scores, and original photos of performances and installations, providing the most complete documentation of Charlemagne Palestine's art. The included CD features an hour-long recording of a lecture that Palestine gave on March 7th, 1975 at the ArtNow Centre in Canada. Following the performance of a strumming music concert, Palestine freely speaks about his music and philosophy, involving the students in some kind of magic ritual. Starting as a question-and-answer conversation, the lecture develops into an intimate speech in which particularly private subjects are discussed. The CD also includes a previously unreleased multi-layer voice study from the early 1960s.
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2LP
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MAGNE 008LP
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One of Charlemagne Palestine's most well-known works, Four Manifestations on Six Elements is presented here as 2LP record edition limited to 120 numbered copies pressed into white vinyl. The gatefold sleeve is silkscreened in one color and presents the original score from 1970. In 1973 Charlemagne Palestine was commissioned to make Four Manifestations on Six Elements by the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. As the gallery was well-known for its presentation of conceptual art, Palestine decided to create a record similar to an exhibition space with four walls to expose on, each wall corresponding to a side on a double LP record. "Two Perfect Fifths, A Major Third Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is an electronic piece that deals with the search for the essence of timbre, sound color, through exploration of the inert chemical activity in the overtone series of tone fundamentals. In this genre of his work Palestine feels akin to a kind of sound alchemy -- blending elements over and over again through the years searching for the Golden Sound - the essence of the chord or harmonic structure itself. In "One + Two + Three Perfect Fifths, In The Rhythm 3 Against 2, for Piano" (1973) the elements introduced are now elaborated upon on the piano. The resonant Bosendorfer allows Palestine to create a more lively and complex variation of tones, intervals, overtones and rhythms. "One Fifth" evolves by reinforcing the fundamentals of a fifth with their higher octave. Each performance of this work is different as Palestine reinterprets these simple elements listening within them for variations of amplitude, mixture and inertia at the moment of the performance. "One + Two Fifths" deals with the way a rhythmic sonority sounds when the sustain pedal of the piano in not used, thus focusing on its rhythmic aspect. Gradually by adding the sustain pedal the external rhythmic pattern begins to internalize becoming an inert part of the whole timbral fabric -- a piece expressing the battle of rhythm versus timbre for dominance. In "One + Two + Three" a third fifth is added -- variations of melody and sonority reinforcements culminating in a rhythmic deceleration process ending the work. "Sliding Fifths for Piano" (1972) is an impressionistic version of the three fifths used in the entire work. The continuous liquid waterfall of pure romantic piano sound and color is an homage to Debussy, Ravel and Monet. "Three Perfect Fifths, A Major Second Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is the continuation of wall one. A pure and sonorous phenomenon.
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NMN 035CD
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Originally released in 2000. The Golden Research is the name chosen for the complete documentation of previously unpublished works by Charlemagne Palestine starting from the early 1960s to the mid-late 1970s. Such a huge project will include seminal collage and electronic music, Bell Studies, New York and California drones, piano drones as well as more specific compositions. All the recordings will be exclusively available through Alga Marghen. Be ready to change your own opinion about minimalism and music in general? Holy1 and Holy2 were both recorded in NYC in 1967. Charlemagne Palestine was listening to a lot of ethnic world music; he was also immersed in the late night New York soundscape, absorbing the spatial sound diversity and beauty that such a big city could only express very late at night. He also worked at night building up a sound, oscillator by oscillator; then adding tiny increments of white noise that would gradually make the sounds thicker and thicker until they were immense sacred machines humming like gargantuan Tibetan bees. The sounds were played very, very loud, making all the objects in the room resonate, while outside all was quiet and sleeping. Holy1 & Holy2 were done this way. Then, in 1969, Tony Conrad asked Charlemagne Palestine to make some carillon music for his film Coming Attractions. They were seeing each other regularly when the Free Music Store of radio station WBAI asked Palestine to create a piece for an event they were preparing to broadcast live on radio. So he asked Tony, his saxophonist Bob Feldman and his then-wife and soprano Deborah Glaser to collaborate on a work that he would organize around an instrument that he invented at that time called an Alumonium. Tony Conrad played an instrument that he invented, the Long String Drone, that was a long string attached to a long wooden structure and amplified. Bob played the chimes and a conch. Deborah sang and played chimes and Charlemagne sang, also played the chimes and some percussion instruments that they found lying around the hall where they played. The piece became Alloy and the sound used as an all-electronic background continuum, played through loudspeakers in the hall, were Holy1+2 from 1968. Digipak CD edition with folded insert and liner notes.
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NMN 047CD
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Originally released in 2003. The first electronically generated sounds that Charlemagne Palestine ever heard came from the machines he encountered in ordinary daily urban life. Machines like the refrigerator electric motor, or electrical generators; but it was especially the sounds of motion (race cars, motorcycles, war planes, rocket ships) that first excited his sonic imagination as a young teenager. Then he heard the electronic music of Tod Dockstader, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer, the famous "Podme Electronique" of Varèse, Xenakis and "Gesang der Junglinge" of Stockhausen. He immediately reacted buying a cheap reel-to-reel tape recorder, cutting and pasting recording tape and making collage sound experiments. Then, one day, Charlemagne Palestine experienced at an electronic music studio what electronically produced sound waves looked and sounded like through an oscilloscope and he began studying Helmholtz's On the Sensation of Tone. He started dreaming of an expressive, continuous, ever-moving, ever-changing sound form; an enormous sonorous, 3-dimensional sculptural canvas in mid-air using electronically produced sounds. The first experiments were done with simple sine tone generators emitting the purest sound waves without any overtones. With access to more complex systems, the sound was constructed using the sine/sawtooth/square wave oscillators in a fluid, ever-changing mix of adding or filtering overtones and white noise to create sonorities, constantly changing timbres, and weight. Five early electronic compositions including "Sine Tone Study" (1967); "Open Closing" (1968), created through speed alterations of "Holy 1+2"; "Seven Organism Study" (1968); "Negative Sound Study" (1969) and "Timbral for Pran Nath" (1970). Late night electronic sonorities created on the Buchlas 100 & 200 systems available at the New York University Intermedia Centre. All compositions previously-unreleased. 3-folded digipak cover with original photos and liner notes written by the composer.
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NMN 068CD
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2008 release. Alga Marghen proudly presents a new chapter in the documentation series of Charlemagne Palestine's historical works. This CD of previously-unavailable recordings not only presents you Charlemagne Palestine activities in 1974, collaborating with some of most important experimental artists and composers from either the New York loft scene and Cal Arts, but also features world premiere recordings of Terry Jennings and The Fundamental D Flat Group. "Short & Sweet" is the title of a breathtaking duo for piano and sax performed on April 24th by Charlemagne Palestine and Terry Jennings. The two composers happened to play together in very private concerts at Cal Arts, but never recorded those sessions, until a special day when Charlemagne happened to have a little tape recorder around. The recording was considered lost for more than 30 years, when finally a copy was found thanks to Tony Conrad. Terry Jennings' soprano sax is very elaborated and decorative. Around 1967, Charlemagne was experimenting mainly with voice and electronics. He also occasionally recorded piano and sax improvisations with his friend Bob Feldman. This CD featured a very special duo by Palestine and Feldman playing electronics and flute. The two artists met in 1961 when Bob Feldman worked in a jazz record shop in the Times Square subway station. Palestine didn't know much about jazz and Feldman guided him through the new progressive jazz styles of the times. Later at the Intermedia Center of NYU where they had a Buchla synthesizer, Charlemagne and Bob Feldman experimented with jazz raga and electronics. Very little was recorded. This is one rare duet that dates probably from around 1967. The last track on this CD is the first 30 minutes of a recording from April 22, 1974 by The Fundamental D Flat Group performing in Db. During one trip back to NYC from Cal Arts, Charlemagne Palestine was invited by Tony Conrad (together with Rhys Chatham) to Albright College in New Jersey for a Sunday afternoon concert. That was the first and last time The Fundamental D Flat Group played in public (Tony Conrad : violin, horn, string drone; Rhys Chatham: flute, organ, string drone; Charlemagne Palestine: voice, pipes, snifter). Although the piece lasted all afternoon, the first 30 minutes were the only portion recorded during the performance. The Fundamental D Flat Group invites you to listen and meditate in the mode of Db. To hear this is to enter the deepest realm of knowledge of the sound current. This CD is housed in a beautiful digipack with a full-color sleeve with photos and liner notes. The edition presents some of the best recordings ever issued by Charlemagne Palestine, a highlight in the Alga Marghen catalog and a unique chance to listen to the core of Charlemagne Palestine.
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2LP
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ALGAMARS 004LP
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One of Charlemagne Palestine's most well-known works, Four Manifestations on Six Elements is presented here as a 2LP record edition limited to 180 numbered copies, the first publication of Algamars, the new sonic art division of Alga Marghen. The gatefold sleeve is silkscreened in one color and presents a signed drawing by Charlemagne Palestine on the front cover. In 1973 Charlemagne Palestine was commissioned to make Four Manifestations on Six Elements by the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. As the gallery was well known for its presentation of conceptual art, Palestine decided to create a record similar to an exhibition space with four walls to expose on, each wall corresponding to a side on a double LP record. "Two Perfect Fifths, a Major Third Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is an electronic piece that deals with the search for the essence of timbre and sound color, through exploration of the inert chemical activity in the overtone series of tone fundamentals. In this genre of his work Palestine feels akin to a kind of sound alchemist -- blending elements over and over again through the years searching for the "Golden Sound" -- the essence of the chord or harmonic structure itself. In "One + Two + Three Perfect Fifths, in the Rhythm 3 Against 2, for Piano" (1973) the elements introduced are now elaborated upon on the piano. The resonant Bösendorfer allows Palestine to create a more lively and complex variation of tones, intervals, overtones and rhythms. "One Fifth" evolves by reinforcing the fundamentals of a fifth with their higher octave. Each performance of this work is different as Palestine reinterprets these simple elements listening within them for variations of amplitude, mixture and inertia at the moment of the performance. "One + Two Fifths" deals with the way a rhythmic sonority sounds when the sustain pedal of the piano in not used, thus focusing on its rhythmic aspect. Gradually by adding the sustain pedal, the external rhythmic pattern begins to internalize, becoming an inert part of the whole timbral fabric -- a piece expressing the battle of rhythm versus timbre for dominance. In "One + Two + Three" a third fifth is added -- variations of melody and sonority reinforcements culminating in a rhythmic deceleration process ending the work. "Sliding Fifths for Piano" (1972) is an impressionistic version of the three fifths used in the entire work. The continuous liquid waterfall of pure romantic piano sound and color is an homage to Debussy, Ravel and Monet. "Three Perfect Fifths, a Major Second Apart, Reinforced Twice" (1973) is the continuation of wall one. A pure and sonorous phenomenon. Edition limited to 180 signed and numbered copies in a silkscreened gatefold sleeve, with an original drawing by Charlemagne Palestine on the front cover.
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ALGA 044CD
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Privately issued by the artist in collaboration with Alga Marghen, Running and Chanting and Falling and Ranting is quite a unique book presenting images from Charlemagne Palestine's complete video productions. "Body Music I" (1973) and "Body Music II" (1974) were Palestine's first incursions into the video medium. They were followed, from 1974 until 1979, by a series of works that together form one of the seminal and most distinctive bodies of conceptual, performance-driven video of that decade. As a composer, performer and visual artist, Palestine has gained international recognition for his influential music, sound compositions and performances across six decades. His psychodramatic video works of the 1970s, which are less well known, transform and extend his sound and performance art into the electronic medium. Throughout these pieces, Palestine activates ritualistic movements and vocal expressions (hypnotic chants, screams, keening wails) as outward articulations of interior states. The very titles of these fervent enactments suggest extreme physical and psychological catharses, release and escape. Palestine's video works of the 1970s are visceral, raw, urgent. While his video works must be seen in dialogue with Palestine's music and performances (his signature objects like stuffed animals, cognac, and scarves appear across media), they also speak to the specific conditions of early video art practices and the wider alternative art scene and countercultural sensibility of the era. Palestine's unruly, unpredictable performance videos emerged in the context of an equally unruly and unpredictable landscape of art-making in the 1970s. As art practices moved away from object-making towards an emphasis on process, the prevailing discourses of conceptual art and post-Minimalism were manifested in the dematerialized gestures of Body Art and performance, and in hybrid forms such as installation, experimental music, expanded cinema, intermedia art, and video. The nascent video art scene was further cross-pollinated with generative ideas and influences that ranged from technology and television to cybernetic theory and political activism. The presiding spirit was one of experimentation, ad hoc and collective processes, and improvisation, a renegade ethos tracked in the decade's underground art from counterculture to punk. The book includes an essay by Lori Zippay titled Body Music: Charlemagne Palestine's Video Rituals, a long interview by Serpentine Gallery director Hans Ulrich Obrist as well as a CD with the full soundtracks of "Body Music I," "Body Music II," "Island Song," "Running Outburst" and "Tying Myself Up." 254 color pages, A4 size. Co-release with Filipson Editions.
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ALGA 038LP
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"Alga Marghen proudly presents two seminal electronic music radical realizations by Charlemagne Palestine. These previously unpublished pieces confirm once more how advanced his Golden Research already was in the 1960s, a very personal approach to sound which would have later become so influential for future generations. 'Continuous Sound,' built by an ever-changing mix of adding and filtering white noise and simple sine tone generators, is the most solid sound construction that Charlemagne created in preparation of his lost electronic masterpiece 'L'Avventura,' inspired by the Michelangelo Antonioni movie with the same title. 'Continuous Sound' pre-dates 'L'Avventura' of just a few months and with its suspended atmospheres and its deep sense of mystery represent one of the most fascinating sonic works by Charlemagne Palestine. 'Crown Chan' is an electronic music piece created for a dance by Gus Solomon in 1970. Conceiving music for dancers gave Charlemagne the possibility to experiment and manipulate the reel tapes of some of his electronic sonorities. In a previous collaboration with Gus Salomon, Charlemagne created a new sound by simply superimposing two already existing and accomplished electronic drones. 'Holy1' and 'Holy2' thus became a completely new sonority titled 'Holy1+2' (these works were included in the CD titled Alloy, also issued by Alga Marghen). In the case of 'Crown Chan' Charlemagne worked in a more structural way, shaping his electronic sound materials into two stereo reel tapes (titled 'Crown Chan' 1&2 and 'Crown Chan 3&4') which also integrated silent parts and were meant to be played back simultaneously, thus providing a powerful live music for the dancers. Edition limited to 380 copies, with an institutional portrait of the composer on front and back sleeve for you consumers to enjoy."
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3CD
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SR 297CD
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2013 repress. Subtitled: For Piano, Harpsichord And Strings Ensemble. 2012 repress. Sub Rosa presents mostly unpublished works by minimalist composer/vocalist/performer Charlemagne Palestine. Charlemagne Palestine wrote intense, ritualistic music in the 1970s, intended by the composer to rub against audiences' expectations of what is beautiful and meaningful in music. A composer-performer, he always performed his own works as soloist. His earliest works were compositions for carillon and electronic drones, and he is best known for his intensely performed piano works. These unpublished pieces from the mid-'70s are works built on the same principles that he developed and established over the years for the piano. This is a unique variation on composition that introduces a perpetual rise inside a continuum of sound. "All of the Strumming Music manifestations seem to have originated from Charlemagne's physical relationship with the colossal carillon bells in the tower of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York. I met Charlemagne Palestine in 1968. The intensity of his listening impressed me as the intensity of his playing would later, when I heard him play on the carillon and the bells to 'his church.' I realized later, when Charlemagne had started to develop his series of piano pieces called Strumming, that he was assaulting that concrete ceiling and literally pushing through its three feet to release the sonic energy in the piano, much as he had with the carillon. Charlemagne's interest and work in electronic music increased in the late '60s, and in 1970, he decamped to southern California where he became a graduate student working with Morton Subotnick. It was during this year at CalArts (1970-71) that Charlemagne developed an approach to the piano that was not only extremely repetitive and physical, but predicated on the theory that, given the right stimulus, the instrument had a voice of its own and could produce a whole array of high overtones that seem to jump out on their own as if by magic. Over the next few years, he developed and polished the music that came to be known simply as 'Strumming.' The rapid alternation between single notes and chords and different registers became a technique that he seemed to own, and it really only worked with this magic piano. 'Strumming' was the physical technique; the melodies and harmonies that resulted made the music breathe and feel alive. After a while, the ear doesn't distinguish between notes that are sounded by hammers and those which are." --extract from the liner notes by Ingram Marshall. Housed in an 8-page digipak including a 16-page book. Please note that disc 1 is the original recording of "Strumming", as originally issued by Shandar on LP (and later, New Tone on CD). Discs 2 and 3 are previously unreleased in any form.
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LP
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ALGA 031LP
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"Relationship Studies LP includes 2 seminal electronic music radical realizations by Charlemagne Palestine, or 'Relationship Study No. 1' (1967) and the generally titled 'Electronic' from the same year. Sounds in motion like race cars, motor cycles, war planes, rocket ships excited Charlemagne sonic imagination when we was still a young teenager. Then came the experience of listening to the electronic music of Tod Dockstader, Alwyn Nikolais, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaffer, Xenakis and Poème Electronique by Edgar Varese. Immediately fascinated, Charlemagne Palestine bought primitive electronic equipment and started to experiment, creating his original electronic-esque language. The two previously unreleased 18 minute masterpieces presented here directly come from this early period of intense experimentations in a fluid, ever-changing mix of adding and filtering white noise and simple sine tone generators. Both pieces are late night compositions created at the electronic music studio of the New York N.Y.U. Intermedia Center using Buchla 100 and Buchla 200 systems. Even if dating back from the mid-1960s, these intense sonorities might very much recall the best early power electronic scene from the late 1970s, in particular to the first brut music works created by Maurizio Bianchi. For sure they represent a very unique and inspiring approach to electronic creation, sounding more and more actual and surprising nowadays. Edition limited to 350 copies."
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2CD
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SR 272CD
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2021 restock. This is the first solo work by Charlemagne Palestine on Sub Rosa -- the first but probably not the last -- the label would also like to re-release a series of his classic works, which have previously been unavailable. From Etudes to Cataclysms is one of Charlemagne's most important works. An impressive composition of more than 140 minutes based on a unique instrument -- a double piano on which one keyboard is played by the feet. "Several years ago, Martin Kaufmann of Kaufmann Pianos in Brussels told me he had seen and heard an amazing and unique instrument in Italy. A piano with two separate bodies! One with a normal grand piano body having 88 notes to be played with the fingers, and below this piano was a second piano also with a grand piano body that could play simultaneously the lower 37 notes of a grand piano with pedals for the feet. Having known my music for years and that I had been a carilloneur where one plays with both fists and feet simultaneously, Martin Kaufmann thought that the Borgato would be perfect for my music. The inventor of this unique instrument was Luigi Borgato from Padua, who developed this instrument with his wife, Paola. I was intrigued, and through an intermediary, the Italian pianist Roberto Posseda visited the Borgatos in Lonigo where they have their workshop and found that their instrument was perfect for my body and my music. We immediately decided to organize recording sessions in a local church for one week and From Etudes to Cataclysms is the result!" --Charlemagne Palestine, October 2007
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2CD
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C@S 2001
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"First time available 2CD set of the Charlemagne Palestine performances at Sonnabend Gallery, New York City, 2001. Privately issued by the composer and exclusively distributed by Alga Marghen. The first contact between Charlemagne Palestine and the Sonnabends took place in Paris with Simone Forti. It was 1972 and collaboration immediately started. Soon after Charlemagne created a sound installation at their gallery on rue Mazarine in Paris and then, when they decided to move to West Broadway Soho and leave Paris, they asked the composer to inaugurate their new Soho address by creating a double disk, '4 manifestations on 6 elements'. The Sonnabends organised several concerts and installations with Charlemagne until the middle seventies. Some time after the composer gave up performances and his sculpture was presented more in Europe than America. At the end of the nineties a new meeting happened and the Sonnabends announced that they had decided to leave Soho for a bigger space in Chelsea and proposed again for Charlemagne Palestine to create a disk. This time it was agreed to record a series of performances done directly in their new space on 22nd street and so Charlemagne at Sonnabend was born. The 2 disks comprise a private performance recorded at their gallery 2 days before the concerts on a Sunday (which is disk one) and the second disk comprises the 2 live performances recorded on the following Tuesday and Wednesday middle of September 2000. All the performances are played on a Bosendorfer Imperial piano."
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CD
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NMN 036CD
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"This CD features two very special moments of the acoustic production of Charlemagne Palestine. A very peculiar strumming for 2 harpsichords and the first piano composition marking the passage from the electronic music period to strumming technique. Elisabeth Freeman and Charlemagne Palestine met in 1971 at Cal Arts near L.A. while she was a student of the international harpsichord virtuoso Fernando Valenti. The sound and clarity of the harpsichord perfectly fitted the sonic approach of Charlemagne who, in 1975, invented a strumming for her. In 1976 she performed the World Premiere of Strumming for Harpsichord at the Purcell Room in London and the next year, 1977, the American Premiere of this work at Carnegie Recital Hall in New York City to critical success. Then in 1978 they visited the harpsichord factory of William Martin in Pennsylvania and decided to experiment with two harpsichords together. The recording featured in this CD, Duo Strumming for 2 Harpsichords (three excerpts), was recorded in that magic moment. You will experience both the harpsichord sound and the strumming approach in a way you never had before. This recording of Piano Drone, from 1972, was recorded at Cal Arts playing the first Bosendorfer Imperial piano that inspired the piano music style to come. At the beginning we hear Terry Jennings 'Getting His Stuff' and then Charlemagne play in the style of that time which was very arpeggiated liquid and dreamy. This Piano Drone on the original Imperial of California beginning with the voice of Terry Jennings is dedicated to him."
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