Sub Rosa is a Belgium-based label exploring a wide range of sounds and musical journeys. The name derives from the Latin phrase sub rosa, literally translating as "under the rose", and figuratively meaning something secret or undercover. The label was founded in the mid-80s and expanded its catalog in the mid-90s with the release of electronic music. The catalog ranges from archives and voices (William Burroughs, Belgian Surrealism, Marcel Duchamp) to proto-electronic forms (Angus MacLise, Luc Ferrari, Henri Pousseur, Léo Kupper), contemporary (Christian, Wolff, Julius Eastmann, John Cage Morton Feldman, Nam June Paik) and traditional music (Inuit, Yanomami shamanist ceremonies, Tibetan rituals, Gongs from Southeast Asia), "In the Margins" forms of expression (Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel, Adolf Wölfli), as well as echoes of the Belgian underground scene (Pseudocode, Etat Brut, Kosmose, Punk in Brussels) and the Framework Series, devoted to the many shapes of electronic music. To which should be added regular collaborations (long-term or recent ones) with artists such as David Shea, Bill Laswell, Ulrich Krieger, David Toop, Scanner, C.M. Von Hausswolf, Opening Performance Orchestra, Oiseaux Tempête, Charlemagne Palestine, Hastings of Malawi, Palo Alto, Michel Redolfi. But this just the tip of the iceberg, for Sub Rosa has been a home, since the '90s, for out-of-range music, which lead to various "non-compilation" conceptual projects: Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Volumes 1 to 7, Persian electro, Chinese, Turkish, Greek experimental and electronic music, Folds and Rhizomes for Gilles Deleuze...
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PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
Composer Ahmed Essyad was born in Salé, Morocco, in 1938. After studying music at the Rabat Conservatoire (Morocco) he moved to Paris in 1962, where he became a student of Max Deutsch and, later, his assistant. Trained in the avant-garde practices of Western musical composition, he also claimed the Amazigh folk music of Morocco as a fundamental source of inspiration for his work. In 1965, he was already incorporating elements of oral tradition in his work so as to question the language of his time, and therefore had to cope with the limits of musical notation and communication with musicians who did not share his cultural references. It was difficult to agree on what was implicit, "behind the notes," especially regarding the management of musical time and micro-intervals. In search of new compositional tools, he turned to electro-acoustic music. Working in a studio made it possible for him to be the interpreter of his own work, which ensured a certain continuity with music of oral tradition. The pieces presented here were produced between 1972 and 1974 in a studio dedicated to electro-acoustic music, the S.M.E.C.A, which was part of the Music Workshop founded by Jorge Arriagada in Paris. The studio was equipped with EMS and Minimoog synthesizers, a piano, a marimba, a xylophone, as well as various percussion instruments and a tape delay system. The practice of electro-acoustics may have been a mere parenthesis in Ahmed Essyad's long and prolific career as a composer of contemporary music, but the works presented here are nonetheless important. They show how strongly he both supported North African popular forms of expression and opposed its folklorizing through simplistic and "exotic" representations. It's not about fusing together East and West -- impossible, he says: "the real point is to open up an imaginary space where another modernity can exist outside the largely Eurocentric framework of avant-garde music. Synthesis means anticipation, knowledge. As for me, I'm increasingly ignorant. I write to discover what I don't know. Music feeds me, it pollinates me. It's my daily wine."
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SR 572LP
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$24.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/31/2025
LP version. Composer Ahmed Essyad was born in Salé, Morocco, in 1938. After studying music at the Rabat Conservatoire (Morocco) he moved to Paris in 1962, where he became a student of Max Deutsch and, later, his assistant. Trained in the avant-garde practices of Western musical composition, he also claimed the Amazigh folk music of Morocco as a fundamental source of inspiration for his work. In 1965, he was already incorporating elements of oral tradition in his work so as to question the language of his time, and therefore had to cope with the limits of musical notation and communication with musicians who did not share his cultural references. It was difficult to agree on what was implicit, "behind the notes," especially regarding the management of musical time and micro-intervals. In search of new compositional tools, he turned to electro-acoustic music. Working in a studio made it possible for him to be the interpreter of his own work, which ensured a certain continuity with music of oral tradition. The pieces presented here were produced between 1972 and 1974 in a studio dedicated to electro-acoustic music, the S.M.E.C.A, which was part of the Music Workshop founded by Jorge Arriagada in Paris. The studio was equipped with EMS and Minimoog synthesizers, a piano, a marimba, a xylophone, as well as various percussion instruments and a tape delay system. The practice of electro-acoustics may have been a mere parenthesis in Ahmed Essyad's long and prolific career as a composer of contemporary music, but the works presented here are nonetheless important. They show how strongly he both supported North African popular forms of expression and opposed its folklorizing through simplistic and "exotic" representations. It's not about fusing together East and West -- impossible, he says: "the real point is to open up an imaginary space where another modernity can exist outside the largely Eurocentric framework of avant-garde music. Synthesis means anticipation, knowledge. As for me, I'm increasingly ignorant. I write to discover what I don't know. Music feeds me, it pollinates me. It's my daily wine."
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SR 570CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 12/13/2024
Outre-nuit as Outre-noir by Pierre Soulages displays the greatest nuances on subtle variations. Between Clara Levy's two original compositions is Giacinto Scelsi's "Xnoybis" (1964), a piece that makes you feel like you're listening for the first time. It is a journey amongst the reliefs contained within one single pitch. Written in three parts, the piece is an instinctive approach to the sound spectrum (the term "spectral music" was coined a decade later). Next comes a nocturne by Kaija Saariaho, which focuses on the sound material metamorphosis. Erika Vega and Eva Maria Houben, two young female composers, close the program with their own pieces. All pieces performed by Clara Levy. Levy (1991) is a French violinist and improviser living in Brussels whose career is mainly focused on new music performance. She has been developing solo project addressing different topics at the core of contemporary music practice: the blurred lines between interpretation and composition (13 Visions) or the listening experience and dramaturgy of the concert (Outre-Nuit).
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SR 564CD
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inhabit, the second release by Stefan Prins on Sub Rosa, brings together four recent, large-scale compositions in which traditional instruments-from bass woodwind trio to electric guitar and symphonic orchestra-merge seamlessly with electronics, feedback, and field recordings. inhabit once again serves as a testament to how Prins, whose work is performed worldwide by some of the most celebrated musicians, ensembles, and orchestras, continues to stay attuned to the pulse of contemporary music. His compositions offer a refreshing, gripping, and consistently surprising exploration of the increasingly porous boundaries between the acoustic and electronic realms. The first disc of this double album, co-produced by Deutschlandfunk Kultur, opens with "Inhibition Space #1," a piece for amplified bass woodwind trio and feedback, delivered in a masterful performance by the Berlin-based Ensemble Mosaik. This exploration of instrumentally controlled feedback is juxtaposed with an acoustic chamber orchestra in the multidimensional "inhabit_inhibit," captured during a gripping live performance by Ensemble Kollektiv Berlin, conducted by Max Murray at Ultraschall Berlin in 2023. The second disc features Prins' provocative electric guitar concerto, "under_current," performed by the formidable Yaron Deutsch on electric guitar and the dream-team of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under the baton of conductor Ilan Volkov. In this expansive sonic landscape, ranging from delicate flageolet whispers to ear-splitting outbursts-the orchestra functions as an acoustic meta-amplifier for the electric guitar, enhanced by a range of effect pedals. The album concludes with "Mesh" for five instruments, feedback, electronics, and field recordings, in which the traditional boundaries between human, technology, and nature are completely deconstructed. In their place, Prins creates a world where unexpected sonic connections emerge and dissolve, like acoustic mirages. The Belgian Nadar Ensemble, which Prins co-directs, once again demonstrates why it is such a sought-after ensemble on the international concert stage, and one of Prins' principal musical ambassadors. Additionally, this release includes an exclusive, insightful 12-page booklet on these compositions by music journalist, researcher, and novelist Joep Christenhusz. This release is a co-production with Deutschlandfunk Kultur and BBC Radio 3 and was made possible by the generous support of the Flemish Community (Flanders State of the Art), the Nadar Ensemble, Ensemble Mosaik, and Ensemble Kollektiv Berlin, along with all the musicians involved.
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LP version. On Beautiful Days is Winter Family's fourth album. It tells a lot of stories; that of the musicians themselves and their loved ones, those of their territories, of their life in Jerusalem, Paris, or Lorraine; that of women, "witches," conspiracy myths; that of capitalist and colonialist Europe; that of the blindness and violence of Israeli society and the indoctrination of its population; that of the occupation of Palestine; that of eternal lockdown and a laboratory rat; and maybe yours, too. The duo from Jerusalem and Lotharingia formed by Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine has been developing for around fifteen years a unique universe, to say the least, alternating synthetic punk sounds and dronic prayers of a society on the edge of the precipice. Nourished by metal and baroque music, multidisciplinary theater and African-American culture, they continue to trace a unique path by defending a radical discourse that is aware of its contradictions. They play across the world in clubs, galleries and churches, music that is minimal, dark, political and abrasive, between magic, chaos and melancholy. Winter Family also create documentary theatre performances produced by major European theaters. Sometimes their daughter Saralei plays with them. Listeners hear layers of pump organs and harmoniums, an old piano, distortions and celestial white noise, sirens -- the sound of marching boots -- breathing during sleep -- stun grenades at checkpoint 56 in Hebron recorded by Xavier, the flows of Saralei's flutes, beats played on an iPhone and Ruth's voice. Listeners dive into all these contemporary stories haunted by history, feeling of a leap into the void, a state of dissociation or a feeling of liberation.
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SR 562LP
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The first ever publication of the original soundtrack composed by Alain Pierre for the Belgian cult film Vase de noces, directed by Thierry Zeno in 1974. Limited edition of 400 copies with screen-printed sleeve. Vase de Noces wasn't released in Belgium. The only distribution Thierry's films might have accessed here was the "Swedish distribution," a code for distribution around adult movie theaters. Films by major directors such as Bergman or Polanski were released this way. In memory of Alain Pierre (1948-2024).
"Vase de noces was made with very little money. Thierry used 16mm reversal film, utilizing the ends of reels he obtained from friends who worked as TV cameramen. Similarly, I salvaged magnetic tape from my workplace, the Équipe sound studio. Film professionals looked down on him because he filmed everything on his own, without relying on technicians. The remarks became even more disparaging when they saw the quality of the result. Thierry shot this film gradually, just getting by, progressing intermittently, but he had a precise idea and memory of the framing and sequences. He really did a great job, as if he had the entire edit in mind from the start. The first shot had to be the right one. He showed me the film sequence by sequence when the editing was over. This was how he worked, and that's why it took him so long getting the right splices, the right light, etc. Thierry handled the framing and the lighting himself. His black-and-white work is unique; he operated within constraints, which is how creativity often flourishes. Thierry had a story in mind, and in the end, he achieved exactly what he wanted. The performance of actor Dominique Garny, for instance, and his aptitude -- it helped a lot. They spent hours together in the cold, in the mud. As the shooting progressed, I suggested samples of sounds obtained from my machine. This was what he wanted: bottle sounds. There isn't a single direct sound in the film -- it's all dubbed. I never distinguished music from the rest of the soundtrack. The idea of a 'sound object' never left me, and I've always kept that direction in mind when composing. One day, Thierry stopped by while I was working on a documentary about Saint Augustine, for which I was using a tune by Monteverdi. He told me about a certain sequence from his film, and I had the feeling that this music would work wonderfully with that sequence if I slowed it down to the extreme, to the point that it would be unrecognizable. Very rudimentary special effects. I had manipulated music sung by castrati this way for O Sidarta (FKR 107LP), and he liked it. My suggestion was accepted." -- Alain Pierre
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SR 549CD
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In April 2023, the first part of the Fluxus edition called Stolen Symphony was released. Now, in 2024, there is the second part, called Keep Together. At the center of this edition was a broken piano, acquired by the Opening Performance Orchestra for the purpose of making live and studio recordings. During this time other new works for this broken piano were written by diverse Fluxus and non-Fluxus composers. In the spring of 2022, the Opening Performance Orchestra and the broken piano participated in an event hosted by Mieko Shiomi. This was a new version of her early work Spatial Poem, documentation of which was presented at the 2022 Aichi Triennale in Tokyo. At present, the broken piano lies in the open air in Prague and is subject to gradual decay. This edition contains new and old pieces, live and studio recordings, finished pieces and scores to be performed, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments from 33 Fluxus artists, which have been played by ten soloists and four ensembles. There are new essays and articles from 15 writers on the theme Fluxus, as well as original photos and other documentation in the booklets. The Belgian label Sub Rosa provided technical support and a good place for the grand-scale release. The audio restauration and mastering were done by Gabriel Séverin at Laboratoire central, Brussels, and Kakaxa, 3bees, Prague. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive archives and Edizioni Conz provided co-production. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Mozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive, the private archives from diverse Fluxus artists and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. Milan Knízák, Henning Christiansen, La Monte Young, Philip Corner, Bengt af Klintberg, George Maciunas, Takako Saito, Toshi Ichiyanagi, John Cage, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nam June Paik, Sara Miyamoto, Ken Friedman, Yoko Ono, Josef Anton Riedl, Giancarlo Cardini, Ay-O, and George Brecht.
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SR 573CD
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Mazza Vision's Ohm Spectrum represents the first album of this new project created by two founding members of Tone Rec and Dat Politics, joined by occasional collaborators. Recorded during the bizarre pandemic summer of 2020, the six slow-burning tracks take drone-rock-noise as rhythm to new hazy territories by stripping down the essence of acoustic/electronic sound into dry husks and organizing them into strangely harmonic and hypnotic structures. A radical collision of instrument manipulations, heady electronics, field recordings, and heartfelt ambient soundscapes forms part of a puzzling, lo-fi dissonant movement that seems to seep out of the concrete walls. All music composed and mixed by Mazza Vision (Pailliot, Collet): electronics, drums, synthesizer, sampler, organ, bass, accordion, guitar, field recordings, contact mic, minidisk. RIYL: Tone Rec, Seefeel, Tomaga, Fuck Buttons.
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SR 549LP
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Double LP version. In April 2023, the first part of the Fluxus edition called Stolen Symphony was released. Now, in 2024, there is the second part, called Keep Together. At the center of this edition was a broken piano, acquired by the Opening Performance Orchestra for the purpose of making live and studio recordings. During this time other new works for this broken piano were written by diverse Fluxus and non-Fluxus composers. In the spring of 2022, the Opening Performance Orchestra and the broken piano participated in an event hosted by Mieko Shiomi. This was a new version of her early work Spatial Poem, documentation of which was presented at the 2022 Aichi Triennale in Tokyo. At present, the broken piano lies in the open air in Prague and is subject to gradual decay. This edition contains new and old pieces, live and studio recordings, finished pieces and scores to be performed, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments from 33 Fluxus artists, which have been played by ten soloists and four ensembles. There are new essays and articles from 15 writers on the theme Fluxus, as well as original photos and other documentation in the booklets. The Belgian label Sub Rosa provided technical support and a good place for the grand-scale release. The audio restauration and mastering were done by Gabriel Séverin at Laboratoire central, Brussels, and Kakaxa, 3bees, Prague. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive archives and Edizioni Conz provided co-production. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Mozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive, the private archives from diverse Fluxus artists and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. Milan Knízák, Henning Christiansen, La Monte Young, Philip Corner, Bengt af Klintberg, George Maciunas, Takako Saito, Toshi Ichiyanagi, John Cage, Geoffrey Hendricks, Nam June Paik, Sara Miyamoto, Ken Friedman, Yoko Ono, Josef Anton Riedl, Giancarlo Cardini, Ay-O, and George Brecht.
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SR 571CD
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On Beautiful Days is Winter Family's fourth album. It tells a lot of stories; that of the musicians themselves and their loved ones, those of their territories, of their life in Jerusalem, Paris, or Lorraine; that of women, "witches," conspiracy myths; that of capitalist and colonialist Europe; that of the blindness and violence of Israeli society and the indoctrination of its population; that of the occupation of Palestine; that of eternal lockdown and a laboratory rat; and maybe yours, too. The duo from Jerusalem and Lotharingia formed by Ruth Rosenthal and Xavier Klaine has been developing for around fifteen years a unique universe, to say the least, alternating synthetic punk sounds and dronic prayers of a society on the edge of the precipice. Nourished by metal and baroque music, multidisciplinary theater and African-American culture, they continue to trace a unique path by defending a radical discourse that is aware of its contradictions. They play across the world in clubs, galleries and churches, music that is minimal, dark, political and abrasive, between magic, chaos and melancholy. Winter Family also create documentary theatre performances produced by major European theaters. Sometimes their daughter Saralei plays with them. Listeners hear layers of pump organs and harmoniums, an old piano, distortions and celestial white noise, sirens -- the sound of marching boots -- breathing during sleep -- stun grenades at checkpoint 56 in Hebron recorded by Xavier, the flows of Saralei's flutes, beats played on an iPhone and Ruth's voice. Listeners dive into all these contemporary stories haunted by history, feeling of a leap into the void, a state of dissociation or a feeling of liberation.
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SR 405LP
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Crawling Wind was released in 1981 on the Japanese Chaos International Series label and features the tracks "Toujours Plus à l'Est," "Before The Heat," and "Central Belgium In The Dark." This is the first vinyl reissue of this legendary EP. "Toujours Plus à l'Est," as the title suggests, is heavily influenced by the traditional music of Eastern Europe, particularly Bulgaria. It also pays tribute to the iconic catchphrase of Professor Calculus (Tournesol), the character from the Belgian comic series Tintin. "Before The Heat," played live a few times, is an ambient composition by Andy Kirk, who is part of the EP's lineup alongside Daniel Denis, Guy Segers, Alan Ward, and Dirk Descheemaeker. "Central Belgium in the Dark" is a live improvisation from a period when Univers Zéro dedicated part of their concerts to complete improvisation. What makes this recording unique is that one of Andy Kirk's effects pedals picked up and emitted the sound of a mysterious radio signal, seemingly coming from "nowhere," especially noticeable at the end of the piece. The title of this improv is a nod to contemporary composer Charles Ives' work "Central Park in the Dark." "Central Belgium" refers to the concert venue where the piece was recorded (Haine-St-Pierre). This EP was named one of the greatest Belgian albums of all time by MOFO magazine in February 2000, a rock magazine from the '80s. The original cover artwork has been beautifully redesigned by Thierry Moreau. Univers Zero represents one of the longest-living bands in Belgium. It was established in 1974. Drummer Daniel Denis had the brilliant idea to gather together a team of professionals sharing the same taste for music. The band has adopted an instrumental progressive style. Over the last couple of decades, the band has also implemented a series of influences from chamber music -- most commonly, chamber music from the 20th century. Even if the line-up changes a lot over the years, the overall sound of UZ remained fairly consistent.
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SR 547CD
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Seen from the outside, Ensemble(s) is in a sense a kind of compilation of unreleased or rare pieces covering nearly three decades. Five essential pieces that count in the evolution of the Jean-Luc Fafchamps' writing. Post-spectral works that definitively position Fafchamps as one of the important European composers. It also weaves subtle links between him and Jean-Paul Dessy and Musiques Nouvelles, once created by Henri Pousseur. This disc is undoubtedly the best introduction to his work. Performed by Musiques Nouvelles. Conducted by Jean-Paul Dessy.
"At the instigation of Jean-Paul Dessy, the Musiques Nouvelles ensemble initiated all sorts of configurations to which I was often associated, and glad to be. This album is the journal of these criss-crossing collaborations: sometimes as part of the ECO (European Contemporary Orchestra) project, through which Musiques Nouvelles met the Ensemble Télémaque (from France) and Orkest de ereprijs (from the Netherlands) in a large orchestral formation; sometimes for a project produced with Art Zoyd (France); sometimes as a string ensemble or with Claire Bourdet as a soloist. I am glad to present, united in one album, such different periods, contrasting collaborations and multiple encounters not merely due to coincidence but also to affinities. May my style, and the story of my questionings, give a certain consistency to this ensemble of beautiful collaborations." --Jean-Luc Fachamps
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SR 558LP
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Octet supergroup lead by Eric Quach aka Thisquietarmy. Including three drummers, guitar, synth and brass players (who also play in bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Exhaust, Hanged Up, Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche, and more); Pangea De Futura brings together the merged and emerging territories of Montreal's exploratory music scene. War Milk is the debut studio album from the supergroup, an octet that has been exploring since 2019, the many ways of -- slowly -- constructing massive textural musical shapes and droning tribal post-rock ambiances. Each track simultaneously encapsulates its structure emerging from and within a flux, alongside its impending entropy, creating a suspended moment. This intense experience is crafted through the combined rhythmic contributions of Aidan Girt, Eric Craven, Samuel Bobony, the merging brass arrangements of Véronique Janosy, Reüel Ordoñez, Neboysha Rakic, the electronic textures provided by Charles Bussières, and the intense drones/soundscapes created by Eric Quach's guitar playing. Eight musicians, involved -- in total -- in some fifty projects from the Montreal scene.
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SR 568LP
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LP version. After a few concerts/screenings improvised as a duo in Cairo and Beirut, as well as for the Rencontres d'Arles, the Lille photography center and the Belgian magazine Halogénure, Dargent and Oberland have teamed up with mavericks Elieh and Halal for a puzzling cross-border manifesto. The first sonic moves of this eclectic quartet, made in a bunker studio somewhere between Paris and Berlin, urgently took the form of a quest, that of a neo-folklore for troubled times, a music seeping with many kinds of atavism and experimenting in all directions. A fertile no-man's-land where trance and contemplation, jazz and electronica, acoustics and electricity would merge in a stimulating mystical magma. From the possible emergence of a Babelian language to the shared desire to rediscover music as a ceremonial act, this encounter took place over three days of improvised sound bacchanalia, the phases of which were all recorded by Benoit Bel (Zombie Zombie, Thurston Moore Group, Oiseaux-Tempête). A hallucinated and generous testimony, SIHR is a synergy of many different worlds and many different possibilities, the sonic vision of a present conjugated in a hybrid tense and exalted by too many tangos danced. Multi-instrumentalist and photographer, Frédéric D. Oberland has been leading the Oiseaux-Tempête collective for over ten years, lying somewhere between avant-rock and free jazz, repetitive music and electronics. Founding member of the bands FOUDRE! and Le Réveil des Tropiques, he's also performing solo and composing soundtracks for cinema and installation art. Electric guitarist, oud player, composer and photographer, Grégory Dargent cultivates his musical schizophrenia and identity through improvised music, trance music, jazz, hijacked maqam, repetitive music, pop, electro-acoustic installations and French chanson. Tony Elieh is one of the pioneers of experimental music in Lebanon. A founding member of the first post-rock group of post-war Lebanon, The Scrambled Eggs, he has since developed his unique electric bass skills in various groups and styles of music including collaborating with in groups such as Karkhana, Calamita, and Wormholes Electric. Darbuka player Wassim Halal can be found with Polyphème playing and co-composing popular-contemporary music with Gamelan Puspawarna, or next to the French bagpiper Erwan Keravec, with performers and drawers Benjamin Efrati and Diego Verastegui, with Gregory Dargent and Anil Eraslan in H, or composing pieces for ensembles.
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SR 530CD
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Even the most experienced ear will not come out of Pia-Noise unscathed. Consecrating the meeting of two consummate artists, this release confronts their universe like a massive head-on shock in the eye of a sound storm. Masami Akita (Merzbow) has been surveying the territories of noise music for more than forty years, directing all sorts of instrumentaria, analogical or digital, instrument or software-based. For this record he relied on his favorite combination, a mix of various effects pedals and noise generators. Nicolas Horvath is a pianist of exceptional sensibility. More than well-versed in the classical repertoire, he also is fundamentally curious and multifaceted, as evidenced by his rescuing works and composers from oblivion, championing them on stage and patiently, carefully recording them. Nicolas Horvath also improvises and composes electronic music. Since the early 2000s, he has been active in the experimental and underground scene under many different names, especially Dapnom. A collaboration with Merzbow had already been considered some fifteen years ago. In the midst of forced isolation, it was all the more tempting to meet symbolically, following the ways of the World Wide Web. Pia-Noise is actually a project born from the health crisis and lockdowns, carried out from different homes in days of anguish and uncertainty. Both artists thus projected their worries about the ongoing crisis and today's ecological disaster. The music produced took on the shape of a constant struggle between, on the one hand, Merzbow's continuous release of energy, saturated sounds, masses, stridencies, powerful granulations, surrounding textures, chaotic rhythms and organized chaos, and on the other, Nicolas Horvath's improvisations, sometimes lyrical, sometimes harmonic, always deeply rooted in his classical culture and personal pantheon, like a memory of a golden age forever lost. No listener will escape it as they lend a careful and sometimes all but desperate ear to the raging soundwaves. The two continuous musical lines often collide and even seem to ignore each other every so often, but they also meet and complete each other, helping the compositions breath. This confrontation generates a great opulence of sound calling for an extremely active form of listening. In the midst of a global wreck and a period of upheaval, two artists still manage to communicate from one digital raft to another, and render the poetry of a moment. Comes in four-panel digipack with eight-page booklet.
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SR 565CD
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After the release of the Anthology of Turkish Experimental Music 1961-2014 (SR 390CD, 2016), this new series of recordings unveils the diverse creativity of young Turkish female artists. The majority of these compositions were crafted between 2021 and 2024. The anthology presents works from 15 Turkish female artists, each contributing to the album's beauty through their multifaceted creations. It encompasses various styles, ranging from purely formal music to innovative electronica, incorporating remnants of Turkish harmonies, as well as pieces with conceptual or political undertones, varying in intensity from subtle to overt. Featuring Aslz Kobaner, Eda Er, Elif Yalvaç, Eylül Deniz, Fulya Uçanok, Gökçe Uygun, Gülce Özen Gürkan, Güls¸ah Erol, KAOSMOS, MelteM Ural, Mine Pakel, Pervin Güzeldere, Senem Pirler, Seinemis, and Zeynep SarÏkartal.
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SR 568CD
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After a few concerts/screenings improvised as a duo in Cairo and Beirut, as well as for the Rencontres d'Arles, the Lille photography center and the Belgian magazine Halogénure, Dargent and Oberland have teamed up with mavericks Elieh and Halal for a puzzling cross-border manifesto. The first sonic moves of this eclectic quartet, made in a bunker studio somewhere between Paris and Berlin, urgently took the form of a quest, that of a neo-folklore for troubled times, a music seeping with many kinds of atavism and experimenting in all directions. A fertile no-man's-land where trance and contemplation, jazz and electronica, acoustics and electricity would merge in a stimulating mystical magma. From the possible emergence of a Babelian language to the shared desire to rediscover music as a ceremonial act, this encounter took place over three days of improvised sound bacchanalia, the phases of which were all recorded by Benoit Bel (Zombie Zombie, Thurston Moore Group, Oiseaux-Tempête). A hallucinated and generous testimony, SIHR is a synergy of many different worlds and many different possibilities, the sonic vision of a present conjugated in a hybrid tense and exalted by too many tangos danced. Multi-instrumentalist and photographer, Frédéric D. Oberland has been leading the Oiseaux-Tempête collective for over ten years, lying somewhere between avant-rock and free jazz, repetitive music and electronics. Founding member of the bands FOUDRE! and Le Réveil des Tropiques, he's also performing solo and composing soundtracks for cinema and installation art. Electric guitarist, oud player, composer and photographer, Grégory Dargent cultivates his musical schizophrenia and identity through improvised music, trance music, jazz, hijacked maqam, repetitive music, pop, electro-acoustic installations and French chanson. Tony Elieh is one of the pioneers of experimental music in Lebanon. A founding member of the first post-rock group of post-war Lebanon, The Scrambled Eggs, he has since developed his unique electric bass skills in various groups and styles of music including collaborating with in groups such as Karkhana, Calamita, and Wormholes Electric. Darbuka player Wassim Halal can be found with Polyphème playing and co-composing popular-contemporary music with Gamelan Puspawarna, or next to the French bagpiper Erwan Keravec, with performers and drawers Benjamin Efrati and Diego Verastegui, with Gregory Dargent and Anil Eraslan in H, or composing pieces for ensembles.
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SR 567CD
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The only example of a working sixth-tone harmonium in the world belongs to the collections of the National Museum and is permanently exhibited in the Czech Museum of Music in Prague. Sub Rosa presents these new compositions that were written by Phill Niblock, Klaus Lang, Bernhard Lang, Milan Gustar, Judith Berkson, Idin Samimi Mofakham, and Ian Mikyska. The premiere of these compositions took place in August 2023 as part of the Ostrava Days contemporary music festival. Performed by pianist Miroslav Beinhauer, who is currently the only musician in the world to be able to play this unique instrument. The first model of the sixth-tone harmonium was created in the 1920s on the basis of a commission from the pioneer of microtonal music, Alois Hába, whose visions for its construction convinced the company August Förster. The improved model of the harmonium dates from 1936 by the same company. The first Czechoslovak president Masaryk supported the purchase of the new instrument by contributing ten thousand crowns, and the same amount was added by the Ministry of Education and National Enlightenment at the time. In 2018, Miroslav Beinhauer participated in the premiere of Hába's sixth-tone opera Come Thy Kingdom, followed by the staging and recording of Alois Hába's opus Six Compositions For Sixth-Tone Harmonium, op. 37, which was the only solo composition for this instrument for more than ninety years. In the last three years, new repertoire for sixth-tone harmonium has been written by renowned Czech and foreign composers.
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2CD
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SR 560CD
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Five Traces is a wordless opera in three acts. Its sound includes words and images. The notes must speak: "This wordless opera is certainly my most daring experiment with text in sound. Over the ten years I spent discovering the majestic Geomungo, the six-string Korean bass zither played with a suldae plectrum, working on Héros de la pensée gave soft, poetic, melodious and appeasing sounds. Some of my studies continued the reduction process I had started for the piano and the violin (and then for the Gayageum), in the compositions I wrote between 1986 and 2023, attempts at extreme reducing and simplifying down to lines, music stated on one and single note (with exceptions). Lines allows the interpreter to express themselves within the scope of rhythm, nuance, vibratos, stresses and attacks, and to show the many unheard orchestral possibilities at the root of this unique instrument. In stark contrast, Chanson Cubique (Vol II) or Trace III include moments with an excessive variety of notes driving the instrument into a corner. With the warm timbres of the recordings featuring on the first two CD volumes, the listener is an accomplice to the interpreter, standing in the wings while they rub strings on fret, prepare their fingers and release the strings, tune the instrument while playing, etc. On the other hand, 'Traces' (once every five of them have been listened to) offers a more panoramic view, a look at the geometric structures of the compositions. Vol I was my doorway to the geomungo, while the compositions gathered in Vol II were explorations (experiments, studies) with a more technical aspect, in preparation for the writing of Five Traces." --Baudouin De Jaer
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SR 548LP
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This LP reveals the extraordinary diversity of research -- almost all hidden -- by Spanish musicians in the '50s and '60s. Those pieces were composed while the country was under the tyranny of Francisco Franco. It is truly the ultimate grail, developed by musicologist Miguel Álvarez-Fernández: he is its curator, editor and commentator. This undoubtedly marks a major step in the approach and understanding of this music which had to fight to exist before the death of Franco in 1975. Miguel Álvarez-Fernández (Madrid, 1979) is a writer. He hosts the weekly radio broadcast Ars Sonora -- dedicated to sound art and experimental music, and offering hundreds of freely available podcasts on Radio Clásica (Spanish National Radio). Five Spanish Pionniers of Eletronic and Experimental Music aims to present five composers who most often work outside the rules and without the possibility of help from their own country. Jose Val del Omar (1904-1982) is essentially a creator, a filmmaker developing a dreamlike art -- not without links with Federico Garcia Lorca or Luis Buñuel. Eduardo Polonio (b. 1941) has published, in forty years, more than a hundred works. Josep Maria Mestres Quadreny (1929-2011) joined the Manuel de Falla Circle in 1952 and in 1974 he founded the Laboratori de Música Electroacústica Phonos. During his life he collaborated with Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies. Juan Hidalgo (1927-2018) participated in the music festival XII Internationale Ferienkurse Fur Neue Musik in Darmstadt in 1957. The following year he met the American composers John Cage and David Tudor. A member of Fluxus, in 1966 he participated with Gustav Metzger, Otto Muehl, Wolf Vostell, and Hermann Nitsch in the Destruction in Art Symposium in London. Cristóbal Halffter (1930-2021) was soon considered one of the most important composers of his generation. As a lecturer at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, he worked with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio.
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2CD
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SR 554CD
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The album, featuring Milan Knizak, Petr Ferenc (aka Phaerentz) and Opening Performance Orchestra, includes Knizak's 1973 private recording Broken Music, released as a multiple of forty copies by Armin Hundertmark in 1983 on Edition Hundertmark, and a live version of Broken Rebroken, performed in January 2020 at the Museum of Czech Music in Prague. The album comes with a comprehensive 24-page booklet that includes an interview with Milan Knizak on the topic of Broken Music, an extended essay by Petr Ferenc that originally appeared in Czech Music Quarterly, visual documentation from the archives of Maria Knizakova and Opening Performance Orchestra, as well as Anna Bastyrova photographic documentation from the 2020 performance of Broken Rebroken. The cover of the album consists of photographs of Milan Knizak's now-defunct 1963 assemblage. Mastering was done by Stephan Mathieu and Gabriel Séverin, who also made the audio restoration of the archival recording Broken Music.
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SR 462CD
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The anthology Spectra Ex Machina brings together rare documents pertaining to so-called occult phenomena, most of them taken from little-known archives. In the course of three volumes, this series traces an audio history of parapsychology through the exploration of spiritualism and haunted houses (Vol. 1); musician mediums (Vol. 2); experiences of extrasensory perceptions (clairvoyance, psychokinesis, etc.) and electronic voice phenomena (Vol. 3). The link between music, sound and the paranormal is manifested in many different ways. Gerard van der Leeuw, the Dutch historian and philosopher, wrote "Music represents the great struggle of reaching the wholly other, which it can never express." Furthermore, "The effect of music on the emotions is so mysterious as to seem magical. There is no logical explanation why a particular combination of musical notes, whether in the form of a tune or of a simple chord, can affect the heart. Nothing in nature has perhaps so persistently resisted explanation," as said Derek Parker, the British journalist. Since music is arguably the most intangible of the arts and since the paranormal, in all its manifestations, continues to intrigue people, the placing of these two subjects together seems obvious. This second volume of musical and audio anomalies continues and expands upon the works initially reproduced in the latter. Rosemary Brown makes a welcome re-appearance, especially with a performance of Grübelei via Liszt, as well as the Caruso-inspired tenor Leo May making a repeat performance. Few people realize that both Anton LaVey and Aleister Crowley were quite fine musicians and Alex Sanders was also interested in music. The background music of Wagner's Tannhäuser used by the latter combines both pagan and Christian elements. So close your eyes and let the magic of sound take over! Also featuring David Behr, Jack Webber, Robert, Rita Goold, Leslie Flint, Leo, Carmen Rogers, Uri Geller, Jean-Louis Victor, Joe Meek, Howard Menger, Barbara The Gray Witch, and Rev. Patrick J. Berkery, Ph. D.
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SR 545LP
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Those recordings of gongs orchestras were produced in 2003 and 2004 during funeral ceremonies in two Kung villages and one Jaraï village in Ratanakiri province, Cambodia by Laurent Jeanneau (Kink Gong), during a time when the jungle had not been replaced by rubber plantations. Focusing on funeral ceremonies, these hypnotics pieces are intense and haunting sonic experiments.
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SR 461CD
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The anthology Spectra Ex Machina brings together rare documents pertaining to so-called occult phenomena, most of them taken from little-known archives. In the course of three volumes, this series traces an audio history of parapsychology through the exploration of spiritualism and haunted houses (Vol. 1); musician mediums (Vol. 2); experiences of extrasensory perceptions (clairvoyance, psychokinesis, etc.) and electronic voice phenomena (Vol. 3). The documents gathered here are, by their extravagance and far-fetched aspects, more than the mere objects of belief one would be tempted to reduce them to. They are vestiges of aberrant phenomena, fossils of an unknown civilization buried in the depths of the unconscious that are revived, in a way, when audiences listen to them. They can be understood as "works," in the full artistic sense of the word, and constitute a kind of "cabinet of sound curiosities" that is worthy of aesthetic interest. Sometimes imbued with a disconcerting dramatic intensity, these documents bear the features of an authentic time machine, placing the listener in the position of a witness of the time immersed in the dim darkness of the experimental hall. And it is at that precise moment that the aesthetic power of these archives takes precedence over their probative value. Their somewhat old-fashioned charm, maintained by the surface noise of magnetic tapes and old wax disks, gets stronger with each listen. Comes with 32-page booklet.
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SR 538CD
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With "Folksong Distortions," Tom Pauwels and Liesa Van der Aa create a journey of lament through the soul of times gone by. Their radical renditions of works by Larry Polansky and Christopher Trapanido do not distort the more upbeat rhythm and tradition of folk songs, but rather reveal and highlight the essence of hard lives, imposed choices -- choices that were illusions in the first place -- and the difficult times and conditions they have always depicted. Christopher Trapani arranged two classics from the U.S. South, reimagining folk songs with microtones, improvisation, and electronic effects. The work, developed in collaboration with Tom Pauwels and Liesa Van der Aa, was originally made and featured on ICTUS' American Lament program. The duo was given considerable room for improvisation and interpretation in the process. The first song, "Wayfaring Stranger," is a well-known folk/gospel melody in A minor. The lyrics contrast an aimless journey through a harsh, hostile world, with the Christian promise of heaven as a "home" and reunion with lost loved ones. The second song, "Freight Train," was written by Elizabeth Cotten, a left-handed guitarist who held her guitar upside down, resulting in a very recognizable strumming style. "Sweet Betsy from Pike" and "Eskimo Lullaby" are taken from Larry Polansky's 2005 Songs and Toads, a five-section piece that consists of three settings of American folk songs and two computer-composed pieces. The work was originally written for guitar, more specifically for the national steel guitar, refretted in a specific intonation designed by Lou Harrison. Each piece explores a different guitar tuning. A significant intervention to the original work is made to accommodate Liesa Van der Aa's violin with effect pedals, opening to an epic re-reading of the work as conceived by the American composer Larry Polansky. What this set-up enables is a melancholy, slow-paced approach that quite radically opposes the more upbeat and joyful nature of the folk songs.
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