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viewing 1 To 6 of 6 items
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15CD BOX
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FR 025-039CD
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Returning to the unreleased oeuvre of the master of cybernetic sound Roland Kayn, Frozen Reeds hereby unveils a new high watermark for longform electroacoustic composition, unfolding across 15 CDs in a luxurious gold-stamped boxed set. With Jim O'Rourke applying his signature restorative touch to the audio, and Robert Beatty taking his cryptic cybernetics-inspired artwork several steps beyond the label's previous Kayn box, The Ortho-Project (2007) finally sees a fitting release. In 1970, Roland Kayn began a decades-long period of research, development and creation at the Instituut voor Sonologie in Utrecht. In the mid to late '90s, Kayn retired, relocated to the Dutch countryside, and began to realize new electronic works at Reiger Recording Studio -- his modest home facility. "I finally came to the conclusion," he would later point out, "that I no longer needed studios to construct my own electronic music." The working methods Kayn arrived at individually -- without the room-filling synthesizers, mixing desks and signal-processing equipment of Sonology at his disposal -- saw him turning his own career into a cybernetic process. From the hours of recorded sound amassed in prior decades, he began processing and assembling a mountainous quantity of new music. His works of this period are focused on reabsorbing and recontextualizing his life's work to produce yet another series of utterly alien landscapes. From his retirement until his death in 2011, Kayn was wildly prolific, leaving an archive of dozens of finished electronic pieces. Earlier source material is often resculpted using the technology Kayn had available to hand, while other techniques such as sampling radio broadcasts or the plunderphonic quotation of others' works occasionally intercede. No notes accompany any of this music -- no word of explanation or expression of intent. Only the works and their titles remain, the latter often simply deepening the mystery. Their durations range from around 20 minutes to almost 18 hours. The Ortho-Project, presented here in its entirety, is among the longest. At this scale, Kayn's music is perhaps at its most immersive; the listener senses they are being invited to envelope themselves in a rich environment of diverse timbral physicality rather than a programmatic work. This is simply electronic music as you have never experienced it before.
"The mystery, the grace, the boundless invention -- Kayn's machine music is a vast catalogue of very human wonder." --The Guardian
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LP
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FR 024LP
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2024 restock, last copies. Frozen Reeds presents the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures. Derek Bailey and Paul Motian -- two longstanding pioneers of distinct strains of improvised music -- came together for a brief period of collaboration in the early 1990s. Tapes of their two known live performances (one at Groningen's JazzMarathon festival in the Netherlands, the other a year later at New Music Cafe, NYC) were recently unearthed in the Incus archives, and their contents will surprise and delight fans of both supremely idiosyncratic musicians. The Groningen concert (1990) is released on vinyl, while the New York date (1991) is included with the digital download, which is included free of charge for all purchasers. A conversation between Bill Frisell and Henry Kaiser on Bailey, Motian, their intertwined backgrounds, and the significance of these recordings is included as sleeve-note insert. Each player bringing decades of crucial experience to their encounters -- with histories taking in vast swathes of the development of jazz and free improvisation -- these fleeting shared moments provide some of the most riveting playing in the career of either. There is precious little recorded evidence of Motian as a free improviser, but his mastery is beyond any doubt in these recordings. From knife-edge precision to textural haze, Motian's palette is astounding, but perhaps even more impressive is his confidence in the non-idiomatic conversation itself. Pushing far beyond the established vocabulary of free percussion, his playing allows a measured degree of repetition to take form, giving rise to almost song-like structures. In turn, Bailey allows some of his most unashamedly melodic passages to unfold without a mote of his trademark contrariness or antagonism. Patterns that would be acerbically disrupted elsewhere are allowed to settle, with variations of note and timbre introduced more gradually than is typical of his playing. When forceful changes in dynamics or tone do arrive, they do so in such close tandem with Motian's rhythmic and textural transitions as to beggar belief. The guitarist's duos with percussionists (Jamie Muir, Han Bennink, John Stevens) arguably provide some of the highlights of his discography. Duo in Concert represents a strong addition to the list. An elegant sense of construction pervades the sets, as the duo ably fulfil the promise of free improvisation: carving out hugely compelling, expertly balanced, and thrillingly paced music as if from thin air.
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2LP
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FR 006LP
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2023 repress. Double-LP version, black vinyl in gatefold sleeve -- on vinyl for the first time, in a revelatory new remaster by Jim O'Rourke. In 2016, Finnish label frozen reeds published the première release of Julius Eastman's Femenine, for chamber ensemble. Laying unheard for decades prior, the release documented a 1974 performance by the S.E.M. Ensemble with the composer himself on piano. Lauded in Pitchfork (awarded "Best New Music"), The New Yorker, and The New York Times, the first release of Femenine served as the catalyst that propelled Eastman's music into the mainstream. Articles on Eastman's music and its immediate disruptive impact on the classical canon began to appear in every major news organ in the English-speaking world and beyond. His music began to be programmed in major concerts and festivals, several of these entirely themed around his life and work. New recordings sprang up from a fresh generation of musicians engaging with his ideas and interpreting them for a modern audience hungry to hear more. But the raw, emotionally cascading spirit of the original performance continues to inspire listeners. Joyous, insistent, and immersive, Femenine bathes the listener in surges of tonal color from intertwining winds, piano, violin, pitched percussion, synthesizer, and -- uniquely -- the composer's own invention of mechanized sleigh bells, which provide the 72-minute piece with its characteristic pulse. Femenine was recorded live by Steve Cellum -- co-producer of Arthur Russell's World of Echo -- and the new vinyl reissue has been remastered from the original high-definition tape transfer by Jim O'Rourke at his Steamroom studio in the Japanese mountains. Illuminating sleeve notes are provided by composer and author Mary Jane Leach, key figure of the Eastman revival and co-editor of the Gay Guerrilla collection of essays on his life and music. Gatefold. "Eastman's stated aim with Femenine was to please listeners, saying of the piece that 'the end sounds like the angels opening up heaven . . . should we say euphoria?" --Mary Jane Leach
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16CD BOX
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FR 007-022CD
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Sold out, no repress currently planned. Frozen reeds presents the première release of Roland Kayn's 14-hour masterpiece, A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, as a 16-CD boxed set. Roland Kayn's truly epic A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound is both a major late opus and a summation of his vast contribution to the fields of electronic music and composition. Hearing the briefest passage of this piece, assembled in 2009, is enough to date the material of which it is composed back to the era of Kayn's noteworthy LP boxed sets, released on the Colosseum label in the late '70s and early '80s. Kayn's so-called "cybernetic music," to use the term he preferred, resolutely refuses to showcase the methods employed in its creation. The mass of logical interactions and correspondences underpinning the sounds are submerged so deeply below the surface as to defy analysis. One is left only with the results, which grant the listener a profound and unique experience. With A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, Kayn provides both a vast sonic territory and the invitation to explore it. From glacial, drone-like vistas to violent staccato sequences, the piece's 22 movements chart the length and breadth of electronic music in as comprehensive a manner as has ever been attempted. The resurgence of the modular synthesizer as a popular musical tool in recent years belies the possibility that its boldest virtuosi may already lie in the instrument's past. In his work in Europe's electronic music studios alongside colleagues such as Leo Küpper and Jaap Vink, Kayn created sonic textures in such abundant variety as to make genre-categorization redundant. Photographs of the one-off, hand-built systems upon which they were realized have inspired the awe of electronic-music connoisseurs for years, but their output has been all too little heard and appreciated. In 2017, Roland Kayn represents perhaps one of the last titanic figures of 20th-century music to receive their due recognition, and to have their vital music restored to availability. Fresh from its 2016 release of Julius Eastman's Femenine (FR 006CD), which spurred on its composer's wider rediscovery and gave rise to performances, broadcasts, and festivals devoted to his work around the world, frozen reeds is proud to initiate the first stage of a similar process for Roland Kayn, which his incredible music so richly deserves. Edition of 750. Audio restoration by Jim O'Rourke. Artwork by Robert Beatty.
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CD
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FR 006CD
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Limited 2023 restock. This recording is the première release of Julius Eastman's Femenine, for chamber ensemble. It is Femenine's only known recording, documenting a 1974 performance by the S.E.M. Ensemble (with the composer on piano) that has lain unheard for decades. The music of Julius Eastman (1940-1990) is enjoying an ongoing period of rediscovery. Known best in the past for his work with figures like Peter Maxwell Davies, Arthur Russell, and Meredith Monk, today his own formidable compositions continue to draw increasing admiration. Joyous, insistent, and immersive, Femenine bathes the listener in surges of tonal color from intertwining winds, piano, violin, pitched percussion, synthesizer, and -- uniquely -- the composer's own invention of mechanized sleigh bells, which provide the 72-minute piece with its characteristic pulse. Illuminating sleeve notes are provided by composer and author Mary Jane Leach, who is co-editor of Gay Guerrilla, a 2015 collection of essays on Eastman's life and music. Recorded by Steve Cellum -- co-producer of Arthur Russell's World of Echo -- and mastered by Denis Blackham. CD in slim card package with insert. "Eastman's stated aim with Femenine was to please listeners, saying of the piece that 'the end sounds like the angels opening up heaven . . . should we say euphoria?' " --Mary Jane Leach
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2CD
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FR 001-2CD
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Restocked. In 2000, Eberhard Blum (flute, alto flute, bass flute), Nils Vigeland (glockenspiel, vibraphone) and Jan Williams (piano, celesta), American composer Morton Feldman's close friends and collaborators, came together once more as The Feldman Soloists to perform Crippled Symmetry, the trio Feldman composed for them, on the 25th anniversary celebration of June in Buffalo, the festival he founded. The recording of this concert is now finally available on CD, and is destined to become the reference recording of this work. Required listening for all fans of Feldman's rich, hypnotic world of enigmatic harmony and mnemonic echo. Mastered by Denis Blackham, and presented in a card package which unfolds to reveal the musicians' "butterfly-like" arrangement on stage. "This turned out to be one of the best performances that we had ever given together. The rare and indescribable 'magic moment' of occasion and ambience seems to have inspired us. The recording of the concert belongs to my most valued sound documents. When I listened to it for the first time, my immediate reaction was: this performance ought to be available on CD. Now, ten years later, it is." --Eberhard Blum
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