|
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 12 of 12 items
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 014LP
|
Elettroencefalogramma scans the full breadth of electronic composition by Italian musical mastermind Antonino Riccardo Luciani, who's perhaps best known for his library records, but on the showing here had a strong, prescient line in mind-bending, fathoms-deep experimental and academic work with tape and early, pre-synth devices. Awarded unprecedented access to polymath composer "Tony" Luciani's archive of inter-disciplinary work, Finders Keepers' Andy Votel follows his pressing of Maria Teresa Luciani's Sounds Of The City (FKR 093LP) with a first compilation survey of her sibling's vast catalog, newly issued via the Dead-Cert label he curates alongside Sean Canty and Doug Shipton. The set falls deep within the label's remit of reissued and previously unreleased work by overlooked and undocumented pioneers of 20th century sound, revealing a distinctive mix of material that nods to contemporary, tape music, neo-classical, jazz, electro-acoustic, and counterpoint composition. Drawn from original tapes recorded during the 1970s, Elettroencefalogramma spans the heyday of Luciani's work, before synth music was popularized. In this sense, it's worth noting Luciani's links with Teresa Rampazzi and the pioneering electroacoustic group NPS -- and namely Serenella "Serena" Marega -- with whom he shares a strong affiliation toward embracing the possibilities of new music at the dawn of an unprecedented sonic epoch. There's a sense of being in transition between worlds and eras in the opening blend of melancholy strings and bubbling electronic rhythm "Battery Farm", and likewise the cranky mixture of bestial growls and dissonance in "The Zoo", while the rattle-y rhythm of "Offices" uncannily recalls Trunk's recent issue of Mechanical Keyboard Sounds (JBH 084LP, 2019) from the modern day. But Luciani excels at quieter, introspective styles, as with the flute-led vision of "Desol 2", and most remarkably in the stygian, primitive drum machine pulse and clammy string drones of "Forest Of Chimneys", which is surely crying out for imagery of Satanic mills, while the rupturing tape of "Bombardment" sets him firmly in a lane of advanced Italian noise that connects him to Gruppo's Roland Kayn and Maurizio Bianchi. RIYL: Dapne Oram, Teresa Rampazzi, Daniela Casa, Roland Kayn, Maurizio Bianchi. Edition of 300.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
VCR 013LP
|
Arguably one of the most important experimental records to emerge from 20th century Ireland, Thalia, as featured on the Nurse With Wound list, is coveted for its inventive, unpredictable, near-psychedelic brilliance, yet has remained scarce due to major label politics, meaning listeners had to fork out a ton for a second hand copy. Now readily available on its intended format, the keening, breezy logic and abstract theatric dramaturgy of Roger Doyle's work on Thalia has been reshuffled to highlight its apparent surreality and frolicking apparitions. Combining his studious research and prep work at Utrecht Institute of Sonology (then home to Roland Kayn, Leo Küpper, Jaap Vink) and the studios of Finnish Radio (Yleisradio) Helsinki with a finely honed improvisational intuition at his home studio in Malahide, Dublin, the record yields a poetic diffusion of electro-acoustic phantasms meshed with politicized and unsettling field recordings, alongside a mad, experimental solo piano piece. The three-part title track is the biggest attraction on Thalia. Acting as a sort of shamanic extension of Gaelic bardic traditions, Doyle guides the listener through labyrinthine dimensions, vacillating tape FX with stark synth pulses, fragments of "Danny Boy", and the unsettling sound of a woman wailing or even keening (a lament for the dead) in only the first minutes, the piece spirals over two sides between obtuse electronics and jump-cuts to melancholy strums, airborne melody, and rabid dissonance with the natural quality of Ireland's ever-shifting interplay of sun, rain, and clouds. The relatively brief "Baby Grand" follows as a sort of playful solo piano palate cleanser for the LP's purest electronic piece "Solar Eyes", which surely recalls the iridescent expanses of Roland Kayn or Jaap Vink's cybernetic music as much as Coil's pHILM #1 as ELpH (1994). Mastered and cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 012LP
|
Dead-Cert dip their dusty digits back in Ami Shavit's precious archive for another hemispheric harmonization of biofeedback techniques and hypnotic synth sonics following Finders Keepers ' reissue of 1977's In Alpha Mood back in 2015 (FKR 077LP). With an enviable private collection of synthesizers first started in 1972 during his travels to the US and shipped home to Tel Aviv, as an established kinetic artist, as well as a professor of both philosophy an art, Ami's main focus was art that involved technology; in particular being able to give something mechanical an emotive angle. As such he sought to combine his love of electronic music acts such as Tangerine Dream and Philip Glass and this new synthesizer technology with his interest in the relatively new technique of biofeedback -- a process in which technology is used to relay information about the body's functions enabling a change of physiological activity in order to manipulate them. Combined with his understanding of alpha brainwave, Ami embarked on an experiment with what he called "Alpha Mood" -- a state in which the brain is working in relaxation and in which he used music as a means of helping induce his own meditative state. With practically no formal musical training and working in complete isolation of the Tel Aviv music scene -- with the exception of allowing cult prog nearly men Zingale and a handful of close friends to use his private studio -- over the course of two years he recorded hours of experimental improvised music, or "sounds" as he prefers to call it. The fruit of that experimentation came in the form of a single privately pressed LP aptly titled In Alpha Mood. Part outsider electronic album; part physiological experiment; part work of art, it was limited to only 500 copies and distributed exclusively by a longtime friend, agent, and owner of a small local record shop in Tel Aviv. Five 1/4-inch tapes (including the In Alpha Mood master tape) represent the only remaining artifacts of Ami's experiments -- the rest having been either lost, given to friends, or simply thrown away. Undated and unannotated, these raw studio recordings provide a rare glimpse of Ami at work in his attempts to perfect his technique and reach the plane of "Alpha Mood". RIYL: Tangerine Dream, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Cluster. Artwork by Andy Votel. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering. Edition of 500.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 011LP
|
Impossible-to-find Italian library music oddity from semi-mythical producer and Fabio Frizzi collaborator Giuliano Sorgini, aka Raskovich. Best regarded for his groundbreaking electro-acoustic and concrète sound design input to The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue (1974) and Zoo Folle (1974), Raskovich is also linked to a wealth of impossible-to-find cult LPs with Alessandro Alessandroni's Braen (SME 038LP), Giulia Alessandrini's Kema, and their mysterious supergroup The Pawnshop, all amounting to a catalogue which assures his place in the pantheon of library music greats. Going deep into their under-the-counter channels, Dead-Cert have again outdone themselves with this outing, salvaging Science & Technology from total obscurity to reveal an innovator working at the full extent of his avant imagination in a sort of cybernetic symbiosis with his studio-as-instrument. Keening between sounds as much suited to a blood-lusting horror as a psychedelic, drug-fueled thriller or some esoteric sci-fi, he penetrates and opens up vividly magnetizing realms of abstraction that just beg to be explored by listeners who think they've heard it all before. Erring closer to the kind of minimalist negative space and fractured dynamic favored by Belgium's IPEM, or even pre-echoing the atonality of Maurizio Bianchi, for example, as opposed the fluffier lounge tendencies found on many recent reissues from his field, Science & Technology lives up to its title with impressionistic depictions of industry and plugged-in life evocatively animated under titles such as "Fissione Nucleare" and "Biochemica", or accurately modelling processes in the mutant, polymetric patterning of "Germinazione". An album like this is a reminder of the prescient collective and individual genius of the Italian library music scene, especially at a time when the quality levels, in terms of musical intrigue and uniqueness, not just presentation, is being called into question by a swell of inferior, or just plain unnecessary library music relics. As Dead-Cert co-curator Andy Votel explains: "this release is quite unlike the many projects that have recently flooded the reissue market and stands up as one of the truly unobtainable and wholly original records to come from this important era of European studio music by a composer whose reputation is slowly approaching monarchical status."
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
10"
|
|
VCR 010LP
|
Limited restock. With roots in the early developments of modular synthesis and free jazz and revered amongst the most discerning collectors of international jazz, electronic music, and American avant-garde, the experimental drummer known as Bruce Ditmas occupies a firm branch on contemporary experimental music's family tree. As the one time romantic partner (and artistic collaborator) of sound poet Joan La Barbara (later to be Miss Morton Subotnik) and the stand-out session drummer for both Robert Mason's mutant synth Stardrive project and Gil Evan's legendary Jimi Hendrix tribute band, Ditmas is best savored as the first recorded solo artist to utilize Robert Moog's lesser-known Moog Drum controller -- an instrument which over the course of two 1977 independent LPs (Aeray Dust and Yellow) would become synonymous with his blooming reputation. Raised in Miami, nurtured in New York City, and willingly exploited internationally, Bruce's public life as a child prodigy-cum-world jazz crusader (drawing similarities with the likes of France's Jacques Thollot) has seen him spread his select discography over many imprints, including Joan La Barbara's own Wizard Label, Enja, and ECM -- socializing with sound designers like Suzanne Ciani and collaborating on projects penned by Annette Peacock, Paul Bley, and his long running collaborator Enrico Rava. Spending the last thirty years travelling between America and Italy as a full-time jazz musician whilst working with inter-communal music initiatives, film directors, and theater groups, Bruce has retained the same maverick passion and macabre creative influences channeling brutalism, futurism, science fiction, and psychological horror through his percussive mantra and avant-garde approach to instrument manipulation and recontextualization. The selected titles on Visioni Sconvolgenti are extracted from various recordings made over the last three decades, comprising field recording techniques and percussive manipulation resulting in gritty tonal soundscapes and angular sonic sculptures, while drawing theoretical comparisons with European proto-industrial units like Germany's Faust, Swiss electronic jazz pioneer Bruno Spoerri, Czech sonic illustrator Milan Grygar, and sprawling generation of Parisian musique concrète informed anti-melodic luminaries. Reflecting a lifelong career in active melodic drum exploration and vivid existential sound design, Visioni Sconvolgenti provides an alternative, darker, meditative, glimpse into the work of a proactive composer at his non-conformist best in the uninhibited confides of his own home analog studio. Artwork by Andy Votel. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 009LP
|
Behold, a cultishly coveted slab of freeform new wave dance/tape music from 1984 Madrid, Spain, reissued by Andy Votel, Sean Canty, and Doug Shipton's Dead-Cert label. Notable not only for including Beppe Loda's Typhoon favorite, "La Edad del Bronce" -- which sounds uncannily like a cut from Craig Leon's Nommos (1981) -- this album also features the beguiling concrète funk of "Galilea: Centro de Datos," which, by any measure, bears a striking, prototypical resemblance to Photek's "Ni - Ten - Ichi - Ryu" and has become something of an oft-asked-about staple in Dead-Cert's polysemous, polymetric DJ sets. Founded in 1978, Mecánica Popular was the brainchild of Luis Delgado (also a member of Finis Africae) and Eugenio Muñoz, conceived and nurtured during after-hours sessions in Madrid's Estudios RCA using exclusively tape loops -- no samples involved. They did, however, use an innovative set-up including a Polaroid 600 camera, an Eventide H910 Harmonizer, and an ARP Odyssey, all fed thru a matrix of FX to make a wonky, clanking sound that could be happily compared with the output of Conrad Schnitzler, Chris Carter, Jon Hassell, or Kerry Leimer during that fertile early-'80s era. For the DJs and post-punk fanatics, this one way is just too good to miss out on. Edition of 500. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 008LP
|
Germany-born and Derbyshire-raised musician, painter, and mathematician David Tyack began working under his Luxury Apartments moniker in the summer of 2002, exploring potential film and animation synchronization with nods to his growing penchants for neoclassical, free jazz, and minimal music. He had recently finished a self-penned conceptual LP with original Can vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and been writing and recording for then-yet-to-be-mixed LPs by Jane Weaver's Misty Dixon and his own band D.O.T.; his Luxury Apartments work, a series of experimental recordings made at his compact home studio on Clyde Road in Didsbury, Manchester, counterbalanced his ambitions to record a fully-realized singer-songwriter album. Completed just months before Tyack's untimely accidental death on the island of Corsica, Luxury Apartments reveals him at his uninhibited best, displaying some of his most adventurous, dedicated, and unapologetic solo excursions into sound-design, improvised composition, and electroacoustic territories -- the result is a unique blend of dark ambient, mechanical folk, PINA stylings, and coldwave DIY rhythms. Drawing comparisons to the varied works of Sorgini, Eno, Liska, Stabat Stable, Martin Zero, Luc Mariani, Walter Branchi, and the lost electronic work of Don Cherry, these previously unheard tapes are presented here in unedited form, compiled exactly how Tyack intended the record to be pressed should any independent record label have the foresight to take the plunge into his creative pool. Released with blessing and encouragement from the Tyack family, this is the first unreleased music to come from Tyack's extensive archive, which was shared with close friends and creative collaborators regularly during his creative years in Manchester between 1997 and 2002. Artwork and liner notes by Andy Votel. Limited edition of 500 copies.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 007LP
|
Limted repress arrives soon... Holy Grail territory here from Andy Votel and Demdike Stare's mighty Dead-Cert imprint, who finally bring you this incredible album of previously unreleased industrial-themed recordings made in 1976 by experimental pioneer and Ennio Morricone cohort Alessandro Alessandroni. The concept itself is riveting enough -- the guy who provided that infamous guitar riff for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966) delivering utterly bent and synth-heavy recordings previously unheard by the wider world -- but the material and execution is just nothing short of a revelation, unlocking an uncannily prescient suite of rhythmik pieces that sound completely dissimilar to much library music of the same era. Industrial perfectly encapsulates the heightened state of creativity in the mid '70s surrounding Alessandroni and his close peers Giuliano Sorgini -- together known as Braen Raskovich -- and Morricone, for whom Alessandro also famously whistled the theme to A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Recorded at Piero Umiliani's Sound Workshop in Rome, and made with an arsenal of EMS Synthi VCS3 modular systems, tape loops, and a treated Petrof grand piano, plus a bundle of string instruments, the industrial results (coincidentally issued the same year as Throbbing Gristle's debut release) present a pulsating take on this kind of music, breaching tightly-coiled motorik systems and mood percolators with atonal strings and viral oscillations. Most importantly, the sense of minimalist efficiency and the clarity of the recordings are shocking, pushing the envelope of electro-acoustic music and pre-empting the early notions of an entire genre movement. Artwork by Anthony Shallcross. Liner notes by Shallcross, Jr., aka Andy Votel.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 006LP
|
We've seen a lot of oddities reissued over the last few years, but few come close to capturing the bewildering brilliance of this bizarre instructional Birthing album recorded somewhere in Alaska in 1982 and resurfacing now on a first-ever vinyl pressing, thanks to the supreme Ethno-musicological skills of Andy Votel and his Dead-Cert imprint. Utilizing the ARP 2600, ARP Odyssey, Polymoog, harmonica/synthesizer interface, Eventide Omnipressor, Roland vocoder and genuinely bizarre narration imploring the listener to "push..." over a background of retro-futuristic space-age progressions, these recordings edge the concept of extreme American outsider music to its furthest reaches. Originally broadcast as a one-off transmission for electronic harmonicist Gary Sloan's Import Hour show on Anchorage radio station KGOT FM, it's one of the rarest recordings in the very limited line of Clone breadcrumbs released to date -- the audio discovered by Sloan in his own time capsule of C60 compact cassettes used to document the unlikely synthesized wing of an untraveled North American micro industry. Son of Octabred is unlike any other Kosmische or early synth record you're likely to have heard, arcing from the surreal instructional opening segment to pop-wise synth hooks before eventually building into a monumental layer of synthesized drone you'll have trouble comprehending after the umpteenth listen. As a label set up to give life to recordings that were never really intended for wider public consumption, Dead-Cert has done a commendable job shining a light on lost DIY aesthetics -- this album perhaps making for its most compulsive, odd outing yet.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 005LP
|
Dead Cert collect three unique and chilling electro-acoustic compositions by the pioneering head of Belgium's Institute of Psychoacoustic and Electronic Music, dating between 1958-1971. Born in 1904, in Roeselare, Belgium, Louis De Meester was a self-taught musician who, after travelling widely as a professional player, professed himself an autodidactic composer by 1945 and proceeded to become "Music Modulator" at The BRT (Belgian Radio and TV broadcasting company) and later head producer and artistic director at IPEM in Ghent between 1962-1969. His work, covering chamber music, lieder, cantatas, and concertantes has been subject of renewed focus recently, thanks to reissues such as Metaphon's 50-year anniversary compilation of IPEM recordings, and now thanks to the efforts of Andy Votel and Demdike Stare's Dead-Cert imprint, we're presented with three of his finest pieces plucked from the archive of Alpha Brussels and carefully transferred from tape with little to no further processing by Andy Popplewell. They include "Incantations" (1958) and the string-heavy "Spielerei" (1970), plus a very necessary reissue of the outstanding "Mimodrama" (1971), which was also reissued by Keith Fullerton Whitman's Creel Pone in 2008 and was last available on vinyl in 1974. "Mimodrama" is the record's biggest attraction; a 26-minute composition for magnetophone, patching elements of previous works into a sort of biographical account, travelling from oneiric electronics to more defined concrète shapes and textures to almost arcane Mittel European folk melodies and rhythms. Remastered by Gareth Mallinson and Matt Colton. Limited edition pressing of 500 copies.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 003LP
|
Restocked, last copies. This release will undoubtedly be met by the same deep breaths that have been shared by the small group of collectors who, over the past few years, have held original copies of this rare Folkways release in such high regard. In simple terms this LP is the kind of record you wished existed while nothing really came close to the mark. Respectfully and subtly combining traditional Persian instrumentation, modular synth exercises, field recordings and tape manipulation -- this debut release from 1985 by Dariush Dolat-Shahi bridges multiple cultural and stylistic voids and vindicates the vinyl-buying market's disparate interests in bygone Eastern experimental rock music, radio-phonic experiments, musique-concrete, sound design, neo-tantric meditational records and other early accidental acidic electro murmurs. For those who enjoyed the re-contextualized music of Ilaiyaraaja and Charanjit Singh while holding tight to the legacy of Pierre Schaeffer, Daphne Oram, Ilhan Mimaroglu, and harbor penchants for all things drone, Teutonic, electronic, demonic, and euphoric, this record has just changed all your plans for the weekend. A perfect primer for the aforementioned labels and a proud indication of what to expect from this eternally studious camp in 2013. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
VCR 002LP
|
Restocked; 2012 release. Here is the second release from this new archival series brought to you by the combined inquisitive minds behind Pre-Cert Home Entertainment and Finders Keepers as they continue to share the results of some of their most sub-aqueous vinyl, tape and film excavations yet. Dead-Cert takes the combined obsessions of all its collaborators and applies an intensive research model to the annals of vintage outsider music, sound sculpture, spoken word, ethnological documents, art-trash, early computer music, neotantrik music, tape manipulation, non-pop and vinyl voyeurism. Investigating and re-contextualizing previously un-heard recordings from sources that transcend and eclipse the limitations of the record collecting trend and the commercial music industry. Following on from Dead-Cert's debut release (The liberation of the rare Voice of Packaged Souls by Suzanne Ciani), this official new pressing of an equally obscure sculpture theory souvenir disc treads similar ground in documenting conceptual art and sound collaborations with mechanical music pioneers, in this case Swiss electronic jazz musician, Bruno Spoerri. This previously un-travelled and un-promoted aural thesis documents a one-off 1982 collaboration between the Zurich-born music technologist Spoerri and theoretical material mechanic Miss Betha Sarasin as they collectively embrace computer technology to the advantage of their individual artistic disciplines, resulting in a series of startling melodic and non-melodic pieces using electromagnetically-oscillated stainless steel "instrument sculptures." For Spoerri enthusiasts, this record presents the musician in a new light. AX+BY+CZ+D=0 (aka Kunst Am Computer) both sonically and stylistically revealed a darker side to Spoerri's music, pre-flecting the recent favor for "industrial" and "drone" aesthetics in contemporary experimental recordings and bridging a comparative unison with other unconscious European contemporaries such as Gruppo d'Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Giuliano Sorgini and Egisto Macchi (from Italy) and Igor Wakewich and Richard Pinhas (from France) and the darker Czech soundtrack work of Zdenek Liska. In equal measures, this LP also retains the unmistakable personality of Bruno at his most uninhibited, including the signature sounds buried in his earlier construction site sample experiments and his ongoing relationship with Arp technology and Bill Bernardi's Lyricon 1 wind synth that was simultaneously being utilized and developed in the U.S. for Suzanne Ciani, Roland Kirk, Michał Urbaniak and new-age electronic artist Kat Epple, again, sonically unifying these forward-thinking pioneers. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering. Made in a limited edition of 700 copies.
|
|
|
|