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OME 1030LP
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Sold out, no repress. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Clara Rockmore's Theremin, originally released in 1977. Lithuanian-born violin prodigy Clara Rockmore became the best-known master of the electronic theremin after emigrating to the USA, her uncommon approach enabling its integration in the classical milieu even as she refined its construction. This landmark debut surfaced in 1977, when she was already 66; produced by synthesizer pioneer Bob Moog and featuring her sister Nadia on accompanying piano, Theremin (aka The Art Of The Theremin) showed all the majesty and grace of Rockmore's approach to the theremin, her classical grounding and virtuosity enabling an emotive response from the instrument, with uncommon nuances of pitch, tone, and cadence. This one-off masterpiece is a musical gem ripe for rediscovery, a must for all fans of the theremin and anyone interested in the nexus of the classical and electronic forms. Edition of 500; hand-numbered.
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OME 1029LP
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Reduced price, last copies. One of the most prolific composers of contemporary music in The Netherlands, Henk Badings was born in Indonesia in 1907, the son of an East Indies Company army officer, and orphaned at an early age. Back in Holland, Badings worked as a mining engineer and paleontologist, but abandoned this career to devote his life to music, making an impact in 1930 with the performance of his first cello concerto. The composer of various symphonies that made use of unusual music scales and uncommon harmonic structures, Badings began experimenting with electronic music in the 1950s, composing the first side of the Electronic Music LP in 1952 for a performance at the Gravesano Music Festival, using 12 oscillators and a violin, the second side in 1958 for a ballet performed by the Hannover Opera Ballet; recorded at Philips's studio in Eindhoven, it utilizes various sound generators, the final track featuring Dick Raaijmakers, a composer and electronic music specialist then employed by Philips in the field of electro-acoustics.
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OME 1026LP
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Roza Eskenazi was a giant of rembetika, the urban Greek music of Ottoman origin associated with the poor underclass. Eskenazi's life was extraordinary: born Sarah Spinazi to a poor Sephardic Jewish family in Constantinople, probably in the mid-1890s, after an itinerant childhood, she began dancing at the Grand Hotel Theatre in Thessaloniki. She eloped with the wealthy Yiannis Zardinidis around 1913, with whom she bore a son, but after his untimely death in 1917, she placed the son in the care of an orphanage and moved to Athens, where she danced with Armenian cabaret artists. Eventually, the composer Panagiotis Toundas discovered her singing and arranged her first recordings for Columbia Records in 1929, which catapulted her to fame. Cutting over 500 songs in the 1930s, she became the leading exponent of the Smyrna school of rembetika. Running a nightclub in Athens during the German occupation of World War II, she hid resistance fighters and British spies and helped many Jewish families flee the country. She finally toured the USA in the 1950s, and though her career subsequently waned, a 1970s revival led to further work. The longevity of her output is such that her song "Misirlu" was included on the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction; the 21 gems collected here were recorded between 1931 and 1947.
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OME 1028LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Om Kalsoum's La Ya Habiby, originally released in 1963. A titan of middle eastern music, the contralto singer Om Kalsoum (or, Umm Kulthum) was hailed as "The Voice of Egypt" or "Egypt's Fourth Pyramid," and as she reportedly sold over 80 million records worldwide during her lifetime, she is one of the most popular singers of all time. Born in a small village in the Nile Delta, either in the late 1890s or the early 1900s, she joined her father's family group at an early age and as a teenager, was taught classical Arab music by singer Mohamed Abo Al-Ela. The composer Zakariyya Ahmad convinced her to move to Cairo in the early 1920s, where the composer and oud player Mohamed El Qasabgi introduced her to the Arabic Theatre Palace, where she enjoyed her first taste of success, leading to her breakthrough in the early 1930s and subsequent tours of the middle east; appearances in local films and the regular broadcasts of her live concerts allowed her to surpass her rivals. At home, her peak period is seen as the 1940s and '50s, yet she continued to record enthralling work in the '60s and '70s, including "La Ya Habiby," an epic song of heartache, composed by Riad El Sombati, with lyrics by Abdelfatah Moustapha, first recorded in 1963. Kalsoum has since been cited as an influence by Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Bono, and Jah Wobble, among many others.
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OME 1024LP
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Reduced price, last copies. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Serenata I/Sonatine/Canteyodjaya/Zeitmasze, originally released in 1958. The avant-garde composer and conductor Pierre Boulez was a titan of post-war experimental classical music. Born in the small cheesemaking town of Montrbrison in central France in 1925, Boulez studied at the Paris Conservatoire with the composer and organist Charles Messiaen and received private tuition from pianist Andrée Vaurabourg; after moving to the Marais district in 1945, he briefly studied with Schoenberg disciple, René Leibowitz, and further influence came from immersion in Balinese gamelan, Japanese classical music, and African drumming, among other sources. Earning money by playing an early electronic keyboard called the Ondes Martenot on theater productions, Boulez soon became music director of the Renaud-Barrault Theatre Company, leading to tours of Belgium, Switzerland, Britain, and both North and South America. American composer John Cage became an ally, though they subsequently clashed over Cage's commitment to the role of chance in his compositions, paving the way for an intense and lasting friendship with the German composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, who arrived in Paris in 1952 to study with Olivier Messiaen. In July of that year, the pair attended the International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, leading to contact with Italian composer Luciano Berio and other noteworthy figures. Then, in 1954, with backing from Barrault and Renaud, Boulez began staging a series of concerts of experimental music at the Petit Marigny Theatre, titled Le Domaine musical. The pieces collected on this album are all taken from performances staged for the 1957 Domaine musical season, beginning with Berio's "Serenata I", conducted by Boulez, which debuted in Paris in March of that year; arranged for flute and fourteen instruments, Berio said that the idea behind the piece was for the solo flute to be confronted by continuously interchanging elements, rather than mere accompaniments or oppositions. Boulez's own "Sonatine", composed in 1946 for flute and piano, is a 12-tone piece that evidences Messiaen's influence, with shades of Asian classical music in places; then, Stockhausen's monumental "Zeitmasze" (or "Time Measures") a serial composition for five woodwinds, played in different combinations of tempos and speed, was partly inspired by Webern's principles of homogenous and harmonic textures. Finally, Messiaen's 1949 work "Cantéyodjayâ", delivered by pianist Yvonne Loriod, takes it shape from the classical Hindu rhythms of ancient India, as with much of the composer's oeuvre. 180 gram vinyl.
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OME 1021LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Umm Kulthum's (Oum Kalthoum) The Twinkling Star, originally released in 1961. Kalthoum is a legendary Egyptian vocalist and one of the biggest celebrities of the 20th century Arab world. She was dubbed "the voice of Egypt" and "Egypt's fourth pyramid", and is considered a national treasure. This 1961 album originally released on Parlophone is one of the finest examples of her vocal ability and a beautiful example of mid-20th century Egyptian popular music. Kalthoum counts among her legion of fans none other than Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Bono, and Youssou N'Dour, along with most of the Arab speaking world, and this LP is one of the finest of her career. An absolute legend!
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OME 1018LP
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Reduced price, last copies. Alessandro Moreschi (1858-1922) was the last known castrato, and the only one to have ever made recordings. He was born into a Catholic family in one of the so-called Roman castles, where he was castrated either for health reasons, or because of his singing talents, the history is unclear. But either way he was discovered soon after for his talents and by a very young age was known as "l'Angelo Di Roma" and quickly became the first soprano of the Sistine Chapel choir, a position he held for more than 30 years. In Roma at the time members of the Sistine Chapel choir, and castrati in particular, held much esteem, bordering on celebrity, and Moreschi was probably the most famous of them all. His recordings were made in 1902 and 1904 at the Vatican. Most of them are extremely rare and are collected here for the first time. This historic re-issue includes all twelve records which Professor Moreschi is known to have made, as well as five choral records on which his voice is clearly discernable. 425 gram sleeve; hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1014LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Deben Bhattacharya's Music On The Desert Road, originally released in 1957. The late Deben Bhattacharya was a noted Bengali record producer, ethnomusicologist, poet, documentarian, radio producer, and all-around renaissance man. Having moved from Northern India to London as a young man, Bhattacharya began working for the BBC as a radio producer. In 1955, having worked all possible angles to securing funding Bhattacharya traveled to India to record musicians. The success of this trip allowed him to travel again soon after to the countries of the Middle East. With recordings from Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, as well as India and Pakistan, this LP is one of the best and earliest documents of the diverse and rich musical traditions of the Middle East. Subtitled "A Sound Travelogue by Deben Bhattacharya", Music On The Desert Road is exactly that, a beautiful and flowing document of the region's sound. 425 gram sleeve; hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1019LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Jean Ritchie Singing The Traditional Songs Of Her Kentucky Mountain Family, originally released as a 10" in 1952. In the world of American folk music, Jean Ritchie was a truly unique presence. Most of the younger artists of the folk revival of the '50s and '60s were middle class urbanites and liberal arts college students who helped "rediscover" the older traditional artists of the South. Though these two groups intermingled at concerts and the younger artists idolized the "true" folk artists, Jean Ritchie was an anomaly in that she fit equally in each crowd. Born in Viper, Kentucky in 1922, Jean was born into The Ritchies of Perry County, who were considered one of the two great ballad-singing families of Kentucky celebrated among folk song scholars. The youngest of 14 children, Jean had Appalachian folk music in her blood, learning dozens of songs at a very early age from her parents and siblings. By college she was a master of traditional song and it was there that she met Alan Lomax who brought her to New York where she quickly began performing and mingling with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the like. Though she would appear on Library of Congress compilations and various other Lomax related recordings, this 1952 release is her first proper album and you will not find a more beautiful example of traditional Appalachian dulcimer and folk singing than Jean Ritchie Singing The Traditional Songs Of Her Kentucky Mountain Family. Another essential piece of obscure Americana to have new life breathed into it by Fantôme Phonographique. 425 gram sleeve; hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1011LP
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Reduced price, last copies. The Greek avant-garde composer Anestis Logothetis was noted for his pioneering tape techniques as well as developing his own notation system for composition that incorporated visual symbols meant to be interpreted by the performers. "Hör!-spiel" / Nekrologlog 1961 / Fantasmata 1960 collects three of his most famous works, realized in Vienna where he spent much of the 1940s-1960s. After completing studies at the music academy there, in the 1950s Logothetis became enamored of 20th century composers like John Cage and Earle Brown, and moved away from traditional composition for orchestras and performers in favor of fully electronic composition in the late '50s. A groundbreaking composer and electronic musician, Logothetis has long been underappreciated by the world of avant-garde and electronic musicians but Fantôme Phonographique seeks to rectify that issue with this brilliant release.
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OME 1017LP
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Fantome Phonôgraphique presents a reissue of eden ahbez's Eden's Island: The Music Of An Enchanted Isle, originally issued in 1960. Though he was originally from Brooklyn and raised by adoptive parents in rural Kansas, George Alexander Aberle, aka eden ahbez, is about as California as they come. He was discovered in the 1940s while working in one of Los Angeles' earliest raw vegetarian restaurants and was known throughout the '50s and '60s for being spotted on the streets of L.A. in full white robe, sandals, and beard, and legendarily camping underneath the first L in the Hollywood sign. After writing numerous hits for jazz and pop singers, including the iconic "Nature Boy" made famous by Nat King Cole in 1948, ahbez (who spelled his name with lower case lettering because he deemed only God and Infinity worthy of capitalization) recorded his only long playing record, Eden's Island: The Music Of An Enchanted Isle in 1960. A combination of exotica arrangements and beat era poetry, the album sold poorly at the time but has since become regarded as an exotica classic that transcends the trappings of the genre. Absolutely essential L.A. weirdness from one of the original L.A. weirdos.
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OME 1012LP
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Reduced price, last copies. Henri Pousseur was a Belgian composer, teacher, and music theorist active from the 1950s on, influenced by Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio. Pousseur may be lesser known than those contemporaries but his composition and technique is regarded by many as equaling, if not surpassing much of the work of those more famous names. Realized in the same Cologne radio studio as much of Stockhausen's most famous work, this collection brings together some of Pousseur's greatest work, early tape and electronic masterpieces that deserve the recognition afforded many of his more famous contemporaries.
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OME 1016LP
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Reduced price, last copies. Rune Lindblad was born in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1923 and began composing music in 1953. This was a time when composers in Germany and France were feuding over the merits of electronic music made by pure wave oscillators versus Musique concrète, which used the tape recorder as its main instrument. Lindblad, however did not see these genres as mutually exclusive. In fact, Lindblad extended his work to incorporate other mediums along with his approach to music. Deeply involved with woodcuts and painting, Lindblad was already experimenting with using damaged 16mm film in his Optica 1 as early as 1959. Not surprisingly, since Lindblad represented no institutionalized school of thought, his experiments went unnoticed for many years with the exception of his demonstration of Musique concrète in a concert at Folkets Hus in 1957 where the audience demanded their money back and the critics called his concert "pure torture". Until a retrospective published by Radium in 1989 there were only two recordings of Rune Lindblad's compositions; one was the single side of a 7" record released in 1957, the other a full length album published in 1975. Both of these recordings were poorly distributed and remain fairly unknown. Lindblad taught at Gothenburg University; among his students were Rolf Enstrom, Ake Parmerud, and Ulf Billing. The music on Death Of The Moon & Other Early Works has lain dormant for almost 35 years. It was recorded at a time when Lindblad was forced to borrow equipment from the University in Gothenburg in the evening and have it returned by sunrise the next morning. These compositions are essentially tape music, where individual performances are fed back and forth between tape recorders in a style represented by the technical limitations during this time period.
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OME 1009LP
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2021 restock. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of G.I. Gurdjieff's Improvisations. G.I. Gurdjieff was an Armenian and Greek philosopher, spiritual teacher, and musician, whose teachings of The Fourth Way influenced thousands worldwide and created communities that still exist to this day. His goal was to teach humans to reach a higher consciousness out of the "waking sleep" he considered most to be living in. Music was an important part of his teachings and these brilliant harmonium improvisations were recorded in 1949 in Paris, just a short time before his death. Droning and ethereal, these beautiful pieces mark a pinnacle in the work of a legend of human spirituality. Comes in a heavy sleeve with a hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1010LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Herbert Eimert's Epitaph Für Aikichi Kuboyama / Sechs Studien, originally released in 1966. Herbert Eimert was a German music renaissance man, with his expertise ranging from theory, to composition, editing, radio production, and criticism. He wrote numerous books on music theory, worked for years at the British occupational forces run Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk. It was there in 1951 that he established a studio for electronic music that he ran until 1961, which hosted recordings from Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Cardew, among others. This brilliant work begins on Side A with "Epitaph Für Aikichi Kuboyama", a brilliant piece of voice and electronics dedicated to a Japanese fishing boat radioman, who lost his life from complications related to radiation poisoning in 1954, after the ship he worked on was contaminated from fallout after the USA's nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll. In addition to being a brilliant piece of electronic musique concrete, it is a damning indictment of nuclear warfare, as prescient now as it was during The Cold War. Side B is made up of six studies in electronic music, showcasing Eimert's talents which are as impressive as his more famous contemporaries. Essential early electronic music. Comes in a heavy sleeve with a hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1008LP
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2020 restock. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Pierre Henry's Orphée Ballet, originally released in 1964. Scored for Maurice Béjart's choreography to the Orphée Ballet, based on the Greek god, Orpheus, this is one of Pierre Henry's finest works of musique concrète, the genre in which Henry was an early innovator and to which he devoted his career. After years working for the French national radio (RTF) and honing his studio chops on radio spots and editing/composition, Henry formed his own studio in 1958 and began working on modern dance and ballet and soundtrack work. Incorporating percussion, industrial soundscapes, nature sounds, spoken French narrative, and synthesized tones, Orphée Ballet is a beautiful piece that while less known than what is perhaps his most famous work, also for Béjart's ballet production, 1967's Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent Et Musiques Concrètes Pour Maurice Béjart, is equally compelling and groundbreaking. Following his passing in 2017 at age 89, Henry's work has found renewed interest, and this is a welcome reissue of one of his rarest and finest works. Truly brilliant. Comes in a heavy sleeve with a hand-numbered sticker.
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OME 1007LP
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Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of the only known recordings from the infamous occultist, mystic, magician, poet, novelist, sexual deviant, and all-around misfit, Aleister Crowley. Recorded onto wax cylinder in the early 1910s, and later transferred to 78 RPM discs. The tracks include Crowley's recitation of the first two Enochian Keys, original poetry, incantations, and songs. An absolutely essential piece of occult history. This collection was originally compiled and released on LP in 1986.
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OME 1006LP
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Limited 2020 restock. Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of Pur En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu by Antonin Artaud. Antonin Artaud was a French poet, dramatist, and director and one of the most important figures in 20th century European theater, and especially the avant-garde. His piece "Pour En Finir Avec Le Jugement De Dieu" was recorded in 1947 to be aired on French radio. But the project was shelved not only for its scatological, anti-American, anti-religious content, but also for its avant-garde sound, with screams, cries, grunts, glossolalia, and general cacophony, all of which the radio thought would be too shocking for the listeners of post-WWII France. Now regarded as one of his most brilliant works, the piece is finally available again on vinyl courtesy of Fantôme Phonographique. Features the voice actors Maria Casarès, Roger Blin, and Paule Thévenin. Edition of 500 (hand-numbered).
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OME 1004LP
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Limited restock, last copies... Fantôme Phonographique present a reissue of The Electrosoniks's Electronic Music, an LP by Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaymakers's (aka Kid Baltan) originally released in 1962. Tom Dissevelt and Dick Raaymakers were both Dutch composers and electronic music pioneers. Both musicians began their studies at Royal Conservatory of The Hague on trombone and piano respectively, and later discovered the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Anton Webern. In the mid-50s Raaymakers began working at the Philips NatLab (the Dutch research division of the Philips company). Dissevelt was recruited by the NatLab soon after, and this is where they met, working on Philips stereo equipment and electronics, and eventually composing electronic music and musique concrète pieces together. Their first recordings in 1959 together, The Fascinating World Of Electronic Music, set the tone of experimental synthesizer space odysseys that would be perfected with their 1962 LP, Electronic Music, released as The Electrosoniks. Cited by David Bowie as one of his favorite albums of all-time, Electronic Music is a forward-thinking collection of bubbling synths and space-age atmospherics that is well ahead of its time. Since Dissevelt and Kid Baltan were employed by a research lab to compose and record electronic music, one might assume that the music would be soulless and restrained, but the reality is quite the opposite this is joyous and haunting and soulful music created by two undercelebrated Dutch pioneers who are finally getting the credit they deserve. Essential pioneering electronic music brought back to life by Fantôme Phonographique. Edition of 500 (hand-numbered).
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OME 1001LP
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2020 repress. Fantome Phonographique present a reissue of Maya Deren's Voices Of Haiti, originally released as a 10" record in 1954. Maya Deren (1917-1961) was a Russian-American filmmaker and one of the most important voices in avant-garde cinema of the mid-20th century. She was a muse and inspiration to such up-and-coming avant-garde filmmakers as Curtis Harrington, Stan Brakhage, and Kenneth Anger, who emulated her independent, entrepreneurial spirit. Throughout the 1940s and '50s, Deren attacked Hollywood for its artistic, political and economic monopoly over American cinema. She stated, "I make my pictures for what Hollywood spends on lipstick." When Maya Deren decided, between the end of the '40s and the beginning of the '50s, to make an ethnographic film in Haiti, she was criticized for abandoning the avant-garde film world where she had made her place, but she was ready to expand to a new level as an artist. Deren not only filmed, recorded, and photographed many hours of voodoo ritual, but also participated in the ceremonies. It was in working on this film that Deren recorded the Haitian musicians found on these sides originally released in the very early days of Elektra records. Voices Of Haiti, a beautiful artifact of percussion and chant heavy ritual music, is one of the earliest and best Western ethnographic documents of voodoo culture in Haiti. It is unmissable both for its historical value and for the beauty and spiritual power of the music it contains. Original cover art for the album was created by the Japanese composer and performer Teiji Ito, husband of Maya Deren. Remastered; repressed here as a 12".
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