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viewing 1 To 21 of 21 items
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ADHOC 022CD
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"Any album by The Work is difficult to categorize, or to pigeon-hole. The band's output has been labelled everything from 'post-punk' to 'acid jazz', and yet any sort of classification just doesn't seem to do the music justice. The approach seems to exhibit the complexity of progressive rock, whilst throwing that aesthetic to the dogs, in lieu of assimilating the energy and power of early punk. The Work were among the first few post-Henry Cow bands to purposefully break their own mould in an attempt to conquer new ground, thus creating music that seems more comfortable resting on a bed of nails than precious laurels. See was the final The Work album to be issued during the band's lifetime. It showcased some of the very best material of their later years, and a penchant to move into a different, more mature setting. The electronic experimentation here perfectly meshes with post-punk appeals and terrorist-like energy, giving the listener plenty of reasons to be drawn-in to their psychotic world of extremes. Each instrument plays perfectly off of the others to send everything, 'somewhere else', whilst somehow holding together perfectly amidst some fiendish, 'white knuckler' time relations. Though the vocals on this album were more 'sung' than 'shrieked' (as evidenced on their earliest recordings), the instrumental parts, especially the drumming, keep the group in line with its radically apparent love for showcasing a primal approach. This has been out-of-print for a number of years, so it's great to have it back again."
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ADHOC 036CD
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"The 4th World is the band's long-lost, never before issued, very last album, from 1994. Succeeding See by some two years, it shares that album's aesthetics and approach -- an economy of means, and superior song-writing/playing -- even when compared to their earlier albums. One wouldn't guess it was recorded live at a gig in Breisgau, because the sound is, quite honestly, superlative, and is even better than any of their studio albums. The original, mono recordings (by Volkmar Miedtke) were meticulously reprocessed into stereo years later by Udi Koomran, and the sound has really been, 'opened up'. The playing itself is also powerful and thoughtful. Especially important is the fact that only two of the twenty songs on this disc were released on previous albums, thus making The Work's entire catalog finally complete, and now wholly in print."
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ADHOC 030/31CD
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"Roger Trigaux's post-Univers Zero band, Present, returns with a vengeance on this release: a new studio album CD, plus a three-hour DVD. These are compositions that spread out and expand upon the style of the band's latest works, Number 6 and High Infidelity, and include the Trigaux duo's latest epic, 'Vertges,' as well as Present's slick version of 'Jack The Ripper,' and Pierre Chevalier's fiery, 'A Last Drop.' The DVD is comprised of live footage from the band's two RIO France performances in 2007, and roughly half of the Gouveia Art Rock Festival performance from 2005. As an added bonus, there is archival footage, some of which dates back to the early days of the band, featuring Daniel Denis and Christian Genet. All of this has been exquisitely recorded and mixed by Udi Koomran, with post-video work by Asaf Carmeli, both of whom were out to re-define the parameters of modern-day Rock In Opposition products. The disks come in a spiffy, 8-panel digipack." CD plus 3-hour DVD (NTSC Region Zero -- will play worldwide).
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ADHOC 024CD
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"Bill Gilonis and Chantale Laplante worked on Zürich-Bamberg intermittently for three years. The CD comprises a series of pieces that fall loosely into a category that could be called 'electro-acoustic Hörspiel.' However, with Bill in Zürich and Chantale based firstly in Bamberg, Germany and later in Montreal, Canada, it was difficult to find a way of collaborating by conventional means. But, by ping-ponging audio file CDs between these cities, they managed to develop a practical, and in some ways advantageous, composition and recording strategy. For this project, conventional instrumentation has been virtually abandoned. What we hear on these recordings -- collaged and sometimes manipulated via processing technology -- is street noise, household clatter, fragments of radio, close-miked objects, etc. By and large, the pieces are constructed from precisely the sounds that our ears are constantly and automatically filtering out; but by orchestrating these sounds into pieces to be listened to -- as opposed to heard -- listeners are introduced to a radically personal world."
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ADHOC 023CD
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"Ad Hoc Records' new, four-panel digipack reissue of The Hat Shoes debut album will be especially welcomed by lovers of intelligent and thoughtful progressive music, with a hint of Romanticism. Originally released in 1991, Differently Desperate is a studio offering of diverse avant-pop songs by a 'super-group' comprised of members Bill Gilonis (The Work), Catherine Jauniaux (Fluvial), Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now) and Tom Cora (Skeleton Crew, Curlew). There's also a slew of well-known guest performers: David Thomas, Amos, Chris Cochrane, Tim Hodgkinson, Hahn Rowne and Rick Brown, among others. At a time when most 'Rock In Opposition'-type bands were well-known for their serious musical endeavors, some branched out to offer a lighter, more whimsical side of the genre, often exploiting 'pop' idioms and structures. This disc is one of the finest examples of that school of thought, and along with the related groups Officer and The Lowest Notes, goes far to dispel the myth that Rio is only for those whose tastes are mostly academic in nature. There's even a cover of The Archies' 'Sugar Sugar."
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ADHOC 018CD
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"Born in 1963, Avi Belleli is one of the Middle East's most notable and successful composers. Strawberry Cream and Gunpowder is, by Israeli standards, a radical recording of music for a dance piece by the same name by the young choreographer, Yasmeen Goder. The performance, (which features Belelli playing live on stage amongst the dancers) has already enjoyed several critically acclaimed runs in Europe, Japan, Israel and New York. The project is influenced by recent events in the Middle East, and with regards to the global terror atmosphere in general, but in more of a psychological than political way: It questions the connections between power and fear, sex and control, gender issues and personal crisis, whilst examining ways by which individuals can learn to cope with sudden, radical (and sometimes horrifying) changes in their lives."
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CD/DVD
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ADHOC 019/20CD
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"On these disks, Denver-based acoustic guitarist Janet Feder furthers her exploration on the instrument, and teams up with another of the world's most respected guitarists, Mr. Fred Frith. A whole gamut of strange techniques, musical strategies, beautiful tunings and ambiences are employed; the outcome is sure bliss for fans of modern, instrumental music. Part avant-garde, part classical, part folk, in fairly equal proportions, this approach has never before been attempted with such striking success. The DVD portion is separated into 2 segments: Janet's videos were beautifully shot and edited by Hollywood film-maker David Quinn, in a professional studio as she played live. Each track is presented in a different setting to embellish the diverse performances. Fred's video is one, longish improvised session from a recent concert in Boulder, Colorado, also professionally filmed and edited by Quinn. Fred abandoned his electric guitar in lieu of his Taylor acoustic for the event, bringing his playing into a new realm, while still managing to put his many toys (bowls, chains, brushes, dowls etc.) to good use. The music disk is Janet's third CD proper, following on the heels of ReR Megacorp's release of Speak Puppet, and her first, self-issued disk, Iciyimi. The addition of Fred's mostly electric guitar work adds new scope and depth to her compositions, which are exceedingly rife with extended techniques, appurtenances attached to the strings, and virtuosic finger picking." DVD is NTSC format, region free, for North America.
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2CD
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ADHOC 016/17CD
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"Way back in the '80s, before the term 'alternative' was hijacked to correspond with Seattle 'grunge,' the genre was held in high-esteem for its 'D.I.Y. / low-fi' ethic. The Blitzoids -- along with The Residents, R. Stevie Moore and Eugene Chadbourne -- epitomized this school of thought in the USA. From the headquarters of their native Chicago, Illinois compound (i.e. The De Chiara brothers' record store, which was infamous for its somewhat crude but workable 8-track recording studio conditions), The Blitzoids created songs that went well beyond normally written forms. Aside from the band's basic 'rock' instrumentation, they exploited musique concrete, found sounds and strange instrumentation to define their sonic palette. Different sections of music were seamlessly butted-up against one another to tell musical stories in sharp and clear detail, often giving way to rich, open passages of sound, only to be quickly countered by kitschy, pop-influenced stabs of humor. In the long run, the band's music was at once witty, wacky, artfully strange and wonderfully unique. Drawing on influences like Martin Denny, Rock In Opposition, Captain Beefheart and above all, The Residents, their music was more often left than center, causing the group to appear only sporadically in public. This double disk set compiles the band's entire recorded output (two self-produced LPs plus eight bonus tracks) for the first time digitally, allowing us a crucial re-assessment of an almost criminally overlooked American phenomenon."
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ADHOC 014CD
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"This new edition of Rubber Cage is Ad Hoc Records' definitive digital reissue of The Work's third full-length release. These are powerful recordings of the band's most densely composed material, musically akin to another of their classics, Slow Crimes, but honed into even more mature fashion. (The band had broken up after a tour of Japan in 1982, and reformed for this record 7 years later. In the interim, each of the musicians' talents and compositional abilities had grown by leaps and bounds). This album was a new beginning for The Work, and set them off in a slightly different direction than they had previously employed: much of the energy of this music came from the sheer 'tenseness' of the compositions; they didn't need to bludgeon the ears to get the point across. Besides collecting what could arguably be their most finely crafted songs, this disk best displays the group's unusual sense of individual soloing: the singularly-plucked cello during 'Dangerfish,' and the free-form piano of 'Jay,' both seem to be the intrinsic opposite of the musical settings they embellish. Capturing such disparate approaches sets up a dichotomy of styling throughout this exceedingly intense album, offering startling (and usually brutal) results."
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ADHOC 015CD
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"This disc is Ad Hoc Records' definitive digital release of the first album by the English underground band, The Work. Originally issued on vinyl in 1982, this music, along with that of compatriots This Heat and Unrest Work & Play, set the stage for a unique type of new British Invasion; one that seemed to absorb the complexity and slickness of progressive rock, whilst throwing its aesthetics to the dogs, in lieu of the energy and power of early punk. The Work were amongst the first few to purposefully break their own mold in an attempt to break new ground, concomitantly creating music that seems more comfortable resting on a bed of nails than precious laurels. The brutal tone and sonic approach of that first recording held over into the Slow Crimes sessions, recorded the next year. The drums are primal, and hold the entire band together in a polyrhythmic way that was, at the time, unheard-of in punk music. The vocals are offered unapologetically, sometimes in semi-screams of anguish and insolence. The guitars & bass chug along, daring the listener to tap their foot in time to regain one's bearings. Over it all is the collective penchant to add experimental noise, to further a state of shock. The group worked tirelessly within these guidelines on the road for 2 years before disbanding, only to reform some seven years later, releasing two additional and equally excellent albums."
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ADHOC 012CD
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"These recordings, with their disparate acoustic properties, are overlaid and overlapped to form dense sonic thickets alive with action and event, palpably embedded in the multi-dimensional flux of the world and lived social structures. Human voices conversing, footfalls on frozen ground, a blackbird singing, the sound of the wind or water, the crackling of wood in a fire, audience applause -- sounds from specific sites with their own peculiar resonance and significance leak through the K-Space mesh into the listening present. This layering and the filtering through of discrete geographic and temporal occasions compounds that superimposition already at work in the trio, the piling up and overlap of intense personal experience. Chamzyryn, a bona fide shaman and folk artist; Hodgkinson, academically trained in social anthropology, an exploratory rock musician, composer and radical improviser; Hyder, jazz drummer, free player, inveterate field worker in remote musical worlds." Performed By: Gendos Chamzyryn (Tuva), Tim Hodgkinson (England), Ken Hyder (Scotland).
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ADHOC 009CD
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"Nimby is James Grigsby (of the legendary Motor Totemist Guild) and left-field luminaries from Thinking Plague, Hail, The 5UUs and Giant Ant Farm. The official story is that an electrical storm temporarily deranged their faculties while leaving their musical abilities unaffected, leading to this unaccountable recording, made more or less live in a barn in Southern France, with only a handful of overdubs (mostly vocals & some soloing) added by engineer and bassist Bob Drake at the mixing and mastering stage. Instead of making the cutting edge contemporary post rock record they planned, they wound up musically reverting to their youth while mentally indulging in the whiny frustrations of middle age. Could it be worse? Yes. This is not just an album of songs, it's a concept album and it documents what happens when a bunch of spoiled baby-boomers -- mostly from Southern California -- get old & grumpy."
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ADHOC 010CD
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"Bob is already celebrated for his five ReR solo CDs, as well as for his long and illustrious career as a member of Thinking Plague, Hail, 5uu's, Vril, The Science Group, AA Kismet, ...the list goes on. What Day Is It? already exhibits Bob's characteristic traits: golden fingers, hi-wire vocals, eyebrow-raising country-picking, loose-but-right-in-the-pocket drums, eccentric chord inversions, and a bass-guitar sound to make you want to work like crazy or quit. Sitting happily with the fantasy 'Yes' Euro-progressive surface is the rather more substantial depth of a bluegrass and rooted-rock American culture; an almost unique combination and one hard to imitate (or even imagine, until you hear Bob do it). But then, Bob has always marched to the beat of a different drummer, manifestly careless of the fashion or of the easier, more superficial aspects of the music he has absorbed."
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ADHOC 011CD
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"This is the first recording of the seventeenth-century masterpiece, The Book of Perrine. It comprises some of the most beautiful pieces exclusively written for baroque lute by Ennemond Gaultier, professor to the Queen of France, and his equally notable cousin, Denis. Much of the score was lost until quite recently, and the French, master lutenist, Louis Pernot has worked tirelessly for the past decade to perfect its performance. The historical importance of this disc to the world of classical music cannot be overstated. Unlike most other lute pieces, this one was transcribed by Perrine, a contemporary of the authors, from tablature to a more precise, modern technique. This has made The Book a fabulous, interpretive tool for other pieces; a sort of Rosetta Stone for the lute world, as the score gives indications about left and right hand positions, ornamentation, arpegements and articulation. The harmonies are unique, surprising, and at times downright bizarre -- qualities that hint at the book's overall genius; This recording allows us to hear for the first time, as closely as possible, the original interpretation of those ideas."
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ADHOC 013CD
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"By 1982 drummer Rick Wilson had left The Work to study Katakali in India, and bassist Mick Hobbs followed shortly afterwards over disagreements about what the group should be playing. The remainder of the band then asked Amos (bass) and Chris Cutler (drums) to join them for a tour of Japan that had already been scheduled before the breakup. Together with sound engineer Chris Gray, the group flew there in June to play three concerts in Tokyo and one in Osaka. The recording that became Live in Japan was taken at the Osaka concert, the only one on the tour that was recorded. A Japan-only release followed (on Recommended Records Japan), which has been out of print for over 20 years and is virtually impossible to find anywhere. This disc re-issues the concert for the first time, adding the extremely rare, red flexi-disc, live version of the classic, 'I Hate America,' as a bonus track. This is a different and extremely in-your-face version of The Work, made more so by the original processing of the (cassette) recording, which brought everything to the front of the mix, accentuating every hit and roar." Performers: Tim Hodgkinson, Amos, Bill Gilonis, Chris Cutler.
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ADHOC 005CD
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"Re-issue of 1984 album. Herein Andy Bole performs some stunning acoustic guitar work, adding some electric passages here and there (for good measure and variety), which make the arrangements both richly engaging and hauntingly beautiful. Bole is a master of guitar techniques from the world over, and many are handsomely displayed here (including an innovative plectrum style, belaying his love for the bouzouki and Greek Rembetika music). He's performed in Europe and N. America alongside members of both ELO and Fairport Convention, as well as Progressive Rock mainstays, Mike Oldfield and Dave Stewart. It is seldom that a musician following in the wake of such luminaries as Bert Jansch and John Renbourn will steer away from those influences enough to truly become a unique sort of 'Troubadour' in his/her own right; But by means of a combined foray into the worlds of virtuosity and eclecticism, and by creating music so skillfully inventive in this sort of 'candid' setting, Andy Bole has done exactly that."
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ADHOC 003CD
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"This compact disk is the first CD issue of the long-out-of-print and highly coveted, Let's Het. The band were co-led by Dominique Weeks and Cass Davies, ex members of Furious Pig, and two of the prime movers in London's underground music scene during the 80's, here joined by Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow, The Work, God, K-Space,etc.) and the Belgian expressionist singer/performance artist, Catherine Jauniaux. Though many fans have likened them to a melding of Harry Partch with The Residents, Het performed music which defies categorizing, other than to say that it was a unique and intense product of its time and place: Complex, primal, densely orchestrated, highly percussive, angst-ridden, meticulously constructed and intense."
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ADHOC 001CD
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"This disk compiles the entire back catalog and previously unreleased recordings of the combined Dutch/English underground label, MCCB (1978-82), and marks the first time any of these works have been issued on compact disk. Great efforts were made to locate, restore & re-master the original tapes, and the entire process was personally overseen by MCCB's chief, the legendary musician/singer Geoff Leigh. Under the auspices of The Black Sheep, Kontakt Mikrophoon Orchestra and Red Balune, Geoff is joined by long-time affiliates Loek VanSaus, Collin McLure and Kathy Williams. This is 'pop' music gone terribly right for a change, where imagery supersedes fashion, and sound knows no rules. Features cameo appearances by members of Henry Cow: Fred Frith, Tim Hodgkinson and Chris Cutler."
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ADHOC 006CD
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"Referred to as 'a cross between Throbbing Gristle and Nick Cave' during the band's lifetime, Venus Handcuffs (Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake) got their start in the ranks of Colorado's most far-reaching band, Thinking Plague, and went on to infamy after changing their band's name to Hail. This disk is their debut duo recording, and well-encompasses an experimental direction which, while somewhat natural for the time in America, has since been sadly overlooked by those who have followed in their wake. Most of this disk was recorded in the empty (meaning abandoned) Mile High Yogurt factory building in a forgotten and decrepit section of upper downtown Denver, utilizing the large, empty industrial spaces as sonic effects (reverb, ambience, echo etc.). Most of the instruments and equipment employed were rather 'low-tech' and as run-down as the space itself, adding a unique charm and intimacy to the sound: This is art for the ears, and hearkens back memories of The Factory and the New York art rock scene in general, but brings a uniquely 'post-punk' fortitude to the forefront of its style."
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ADHOC 004CD
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Compilation of material that originally released by the UK Woof label, in the early 80s. Deluxe foldout digipak. "This CD comprises all four 7" releases by the British underground label, Woof Records, plus extra tracks by The Work and The Lowest Notes. All tracks were originally released on vinyl between 1980 and 1985, but most have never before been issued on CD. This disk features a who's-who of the London art-rock scene from those years (Bill Gilonis, Mick Hobbs, Tim Hodgkinson, Rick Wilson, Andy Bole, Trefor Goronwy, to name a few), plus the Belgian expressionist-singer, Catherine Jauniaux."
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ADHOC 002CD
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"This is the first digital issue of Belgian songsmith Catherine Jauniax's classic and long out of print recording from 1983. Her main co-conspirator here is Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow, The Work, God, K-Space), who is himself a mainstay in the world of modern experimental music. Together they perform a work that defies both categorization and genre labeling, offering up almost as many different styles of music as the collection of instruments that played them. Besides capturing what could arguably be Catherine's most unique and auspicious vocal work, this disk also displays an amazing amount of baffling, scored percussion by Tim H., and some timeless and beautifully articulated performances by the late, great master cellist, Tom Cora. Other guests include Georgie Born (Henry Cow, Alan Holdsworth) Charles Bullen (This Heat), Lindsay Cooper (News From Babel, Oh Moscow, Henry Cow, Comus), Bill Gilonis (The Work, The Lowest Notes) and Dominic Weeks (Het)."
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