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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2CD
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SR 581CD
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$20.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/20/2026
This musical journey pays tribute to René Daumal and his enchanting world of mysteries and magic. The album shares its title with Daumal's novel, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, published posthumously in 1952, eight years after the author's untimely death. Mount Analogue is a classic allegorical adventure novel. The novel describes an expedition undertaken by a group of mountaineers to travel to and climb the titular Mount Analogue an enormous mountain on a surreal continent, that is invisible and inaccessible to the outside world and can be perceived only by the application of obscure knowledge. The central theme of mountaineering is extensively explored through literary and philosophical lenses. Daumal died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the story, which ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence. The first disc features a fifty-minute composition divided into six chapters: "Introduction," "Meeting," "Supposition," "Crossing," "Arrival," and "Conclusion." This album weaves together a rich tapestry of diverse instruments, sounds, and voices that collectively tell the story of this conceptual work, loaded with a synesthetic multitude of colors, aromas, meanings, textures, and moods. The second disc presents five improvisations for solo electric guitar by Henry Kaiser. The first solo, Jodorowsky's "Peradam," draws its inspiration from Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film The Holy Mountain, which was inspired by the Daumal novel. Kaiser's initial forty-eight-minute guitar solo serves as a foundational guide for his four subsequent, Rashomon-esque, solo musical interpretations of Mount Analogue, as seen through the psychedelic labyrinth of Jorodrowsky's cinematic masterpiece. Contributors to this musical poem include Bill Laswell (bass), Henry Kaiser (guitar), Anna Clementi (vocals), Percy Howard (voice), Hideo Yamaki (percussion), Graham Haynes (cornet), Dorian Cheah (violin), Nils Petter Molvaer (trumpet), Peter Apfelbaum (keyboard), and P.ST (concept, electronics), who all lend their talents to a series of excerpts from Daumal's text.
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2LP
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SR 581LP
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$31.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/20/2026
Double LP version. This musical journey pays tribute to René Daumal and his enchanting world of mysteries and magic. The album shares its title with Daumal's novel, Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing, published posthumously in 1952, eight years after the author's untimely death. Mount Analogue is a classic allegorical adventure novel. The novel describes an expedition undertaken by a group of mountaineers to travel to and climb the titular Mount Analogue an enormous mountain on a surreal continent, that is invisible and inaccessible to the outside world and can be perceived only by the application of obscure knowledge. The central theme of mountaineering is extensively explored through literary and philosophical lenses. Daumal died before the novel was completed, providing an uncanny one-way quality to the story, which ends abruptly in the middle of a sentence. The first disc features a fifty-minute composition divided into six chapters: "Introduction," "Meeting," "Supposition," "Crossing," "Arrival," and "Conclusion." This album weaves together a rich tapestry of diverse instruments, sounds, and voices that collectively tell the story of this conceptual work, loaded with a synesthetic multitude of colors, aromas, meanings, textures, and moods. The second disc presents five improvisations for solo electric guitar by Henry Kaiser. The first solo, Jodorowsky's "Peradam," draws its inspiration from Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film The Holy Mountain, which was inspired by the Daumal novel. Kaiser's initial forty-eight-minute guitar solo serves as a foundational guide for his four subsequent, Rashomon-esque, solo musical interpretations of Mount Analogue, as seen through the psychedelic labyrinth of Jorodrowsky's cinematic masterpiece. Contributors to this musical poem include Bill Laswell (bass), Henry Kaiser (guitar), Anna Clementi (vocals), Percy Howard (voice), Hideo Yamaki (percussion), Graham Haynes (cornet), Dorian Cheah (violin), Nils Petter Molvaer (trumpet), Peter Apfelbaum (keyboard), and P.ST (concept, electronics), who all lend their talents to a series of excerpts from Daumal's text.
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CD
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SR 577CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/20/2026
Grand Piano Gebrüder Stingl from 1916. The year is 2021. The piano is in the garden; the sun shines on it and rain falls on it. The piano cannot be tuned. Some keys work only partially, some not at all. It is Broken Piano. The first pieces for Broken Piano were recorded on this piano in 2021 and became part of the Fluxus editions Stolen Symphony (2023) and Keep Together (2024). The pieces for this edition were written and provided by Terry Riley and Milan Knízák. "Broken Piano," which was acquired by the Opening Performance Orchestra to make live and studio recordings, was the focus of both volumes of this edition between 2021 and 2023. Compositions for Broken Piano intended for Fluxus editions were recorded by Czech pianist Miroslav Beinhauer. During this time, other new works for Broken Piano were written by a variety of Fluxus and non-Fluxus composers. In the spring of 2022, the Opening Performance Orchestra and Broken Piano participated in an event hosted by Mieko Shiomi. This was a new version of her early work "Spatial Poem": it was a moving event, documentation of which was presented at the Aichi Triennale 2022 in Tokyo. During this performative event, consisting of moving any object, Broken Piano was moved from the village Vyzlovka to Unhost, where the SONO music studio is located. It is in the SONO studio that the new compositions for Broken Piano were recorded, written by Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Milan Knízák, Gordon Monahan, Elliot Sharp, Milan Gustar, and Yoon-Ji Lee, which form the content of this album. All the new compositions were recorded by pianist Miroslav Beinhauer.
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CD
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SR 546CD
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$15.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/27/2026
"I have been fascinated by the sound and potential of gongs since I first heard Stockhausen's 'Mikrophonie '1' in the late 1960s. When I moved to Oakland in 1999 I discovered the work of Karen Stackpole, one of the few percussionists in the world specializing entirely in gongs, and attended several of her performances. I always tried to imagine how I could combine my own sonic vocabulary with her incredibly rich array, and we enthusiastically agreed to a musical meeting which somehow kept being postponed, year after year. These recordings are among his most precious ones. Finally, as my teaching career at Mills College was winding down, we succeeded in making an appointment to record together at Karen's home studio in the Californian hills. As a seasoned professional recording engineer, she had her vast and beautiful collection of gongs meticulously placed and amplified. It was a joy! Guitar as gong, gong as harmony and everything in between, an interweaving that left me breathless." --Fred Firth
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SR 574CD
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DVD is NTSC format, region-free. Never released before. In 2009, the Triton venue (near Paris, France) was sold out to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Univers Zéro, an iconic band of the Rock In Opposition movement. These two exceptional concerts highlighted a radical and unique style of music, at the crossroads of new music and chamber rock, skillfully blending acoustic and electric instruments, as heard on the cult album Ceux du Dehors. Around Daniel Denis (drums, composition), Michel Berckmans (oboe, bassoon), and Andy Kirk (keyboards and guitar), three historical figures of the group, complemented by four other talented musicians, offered an intense multimedia show, intertwining a condensed version of key pieces from the repertoire with more recent compositions. These concerts were part of a key phase in which the band offered one of its most-accomplished line-ups, taking the opportunity to establish its sound and image. The line-up had undergone a few changes since its reformation in 2004, with Pierre Chevalier (from the band Présent) and a new bassist joining the ensemble. This highlight has now resulted in the release of a live CD/DVD, a precious testimony to the band's artistic resurgence and stage energy.
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SR 559CD
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Uzed is the fourth album by Belgian band Univers Zero. It was released three years after Ceux du Dehors, due to a change in line-up and a new repertoire, although the EP Crawling Wind had been released in the meantime. The album marked a turning point for the band. Univers Zero explored new electric colors, giving it a more rock feel with the addition of new musicians such as Jean-Luc Plouvier, who introduced the synthesizer, guitarist Michel Delory, who played a memorable solo in "Célesta (For Chantal)," and André Mergen on electric cello and alto saxophone, who enriched the orchestral texture. With Dirk Descheemaeker on clarinet and soprano saxophone and the return of Christian Genet on bass, this evolution can also be explained by the arrival of new musicians. Uzed is entirely composed and arranged by Daniel Denis. The recording and mixing were done at Daylight Studio in Brussels in 1984, but to bring out Uzed, the sound had to be improved by giving it more dynamic range, which was done at ICP Studios in 2024. 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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LP
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SR 559LP
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LP version. Uzed is the fourth album by Belgian band Univers Zero. It was released three years after Ceux du Dehors, due to a change in line-up and a new repertoire, although the EP Crawling Wind had been released in the meantime. The album marked a turning point for the band. Univers Zero explored new electric colors, giving it a more rock feel with the addition of new musicians such as Jean-Luc Plouvier, who introduced the synthesizer, guitarist Michel Delory, who played a memorable solo in "Célesta (For Chantal)," and André Mergen on electric cello and alto saxophone, who enriched the orchestral texture. With Dirk Descheemaeker on clarinet and soprano saxophone and the return of Christian Genet on bass, this evolution can also be explained by the arrival of new musicians. Uzed is entirely composed and arranged by Daniel Denis. The recording and mixing were done at Daylight Studio in Brussels in 1984, but to bring out Uzed, the sound had to be improved by giving it more dynamic range, which was done at ICP Studios in 2024. 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 569LP
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This album is not just an homage -- it's a gentle act of remembrance. A way of tuning in to what Alvin Lucier showed the world: that listening is an art in itself. A meditation on resonance, memory, and the quiet power of pure sound. The influence of Alvin Lucier's work on acoustic phenomena and the interplay between sound and space is difficult to overstate. His legacy continues to echo through the work of countless composers and sound artists today. Lucier's music is marked by a sense of childlike wonder and sonic simplicity -- shifting perception from what people hear to how they listen. At the heart of his compositions lies the sine wave: the purest, most elemental form of sound. Clarinetist Dries Tack pays tribute to this master of minimalism with an album centered around two works Lucier composed as intimate "In Memoriams" for friends. Both pieces explore a single, elegant idea: the interaction between an instrumental tone and a sine wave. Out of that interaction, "beatings" emerge -- a pulsating rhythm that accelerates or decelerates as the waves draw nearer or drift apart. Though built on the same concept, the two works are like mirrored reflections of one another: "In Memoriam Jon Higgins," the sine wave glides in a slow glissando while the clarinet holds steady tones. "In Memoriam Stuart Marshall," it's the clarinet that dances around a fixed sine wave. Dries Tack is a clarinetist specializing in contemporary performance practices. He performs with ensembles such as Nadar Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players, and Ensemble Fractales. As co-artistic director of the GLoW Collective, he explores collaborative practices across artistic disciplines in the broadest sense. In addition to his ensemble work, Dries curates solo projects that offer fresh perspectives on existing repertoire or give rise to entirely new works at the intersection of composition and improvisation.
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SR 585LP
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"Narthex" means "railed-off western portico" or "ante-nave" in early Christian churches for women, penitents, and catechumens. Narthex is also a trio featuring (at the beginning) Daniel Denis (Univers Zero, Art Zoyd), Alain Neffe (Pseudo Code, Human Flesh, Bene Gesserit) and Nicolas de Villemarqué (Nuwage Music). They had a very different musical background (mostly electric/electronic rock) and decided to work in the field of a totally acoustic music recorded live (two microphones + portable DA T) in churches of their area. After several recording sessions, Nicolas de Villemarqué decided to leave the group. ln order to complete the trio, Daniel Denis and Alain Neffe ask the participation of some of their friends. Anna Homler (The Sugar Connection, Cro-Magnon), Michel Berckmans (Univers Zero, Julverne, Aksak Maboul, Von Zamla) and Daniel Malempré (M.A.L., Human Flesh) accepted the challenge and succeed to fit into their musical universe. Never released before and recorded from 1994 to 1999, Superstitions features rhythmic, exotic, deep, and primitive sounds for postmodern ears.
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2LP
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SR 583LP
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The long-awaited interpretation of Le Lay de l'Ymage -- never recorded before! -- is the most beautiful song of the 14th century you will hear this year. To approach the music and poetry of Guillaume de Machault, at the heart of the 14th century, one must always take a step back and look again, to see what a poetic and musical tradition of old might contain, with fresh eyes and ears -- as each generation must - to immerse oneself in it with care. Thus was born the great desire for the boxed set of L'Ymage, the new double album by Michaël le Grébil Liberg -- a co-production between Sub Rosa and Thödol Records. At the heart of the box is an exclusive and complete interpretation of the Lay de l'Ymage. The repertoire of Machault's lais is very rarely performed, and this album offers a rare opportunity to hear this unique and particular form, one that unfolds across an extended period of time; an experience of duration, at a time when brutality and acceleration are shrinking the sense of time. On the fringes of the Lay de l'Ymage, are two other pieces. One opens the album, a piece where l'envers vaut l'endroit (Backward's worth forwards) -- as the filmmaker Jean Epstein once said -- the polyphonic rondeau Ma Fin est mon Commencement instrumentally reimagined in collaboration with Clara Levy and Stéphane Clor. At the other end, there is a Hörbild, a book of sound images in the orthogonal lineage of German hörspiels, aural cinema and radio poems -- an intertwined form where music, distant voices, and field recordings allow listeners to hear some Oyseaulx d'Avryl. What's in the box? Medieval Ars nova meets dark folk, aural cinema, contemporary music, drone and much more. An astonishing album gathering three extended pieces that unfold the works of polyphonic music genius Guillaume de Machaut, the greatest and last of the troubadours. Lovingly recorded by sound master Frederic Alstadt, featuring Clara Levy, Stéphane Clor and Eugénie De Mey, this album captures all the poignancy and poetry of this timeless music. Comes in a limited handmade box set of 300 numbered copies including double LP and 72-page booklet.
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2CD
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SR 575CD
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That Wolf At The Door is a collaborative 2CD between Henry Kaiser (Califonia, USA; guitar) and P.ST (Prague, Czechia; electronics). The first CD That Wolf At The Door is a solo baritone guitar disc that pays a heartfelt tribute to the late science fiction author Gene Wolfe (May 7, 1931 -- April 14, 2019). The album is a testament to the decades-long friendship and mutual appreciation between Wolfe and Kaiser, two creative minds who shared a passion for pushing the boundaries of their respective art forms. With novels often as complex and extraordinary as Cecil Taylor's best piano playing, Wolfe is one of Kaiser's favorite writers of all time. On this disc, Kaiser's guitar storytelling and narratives were consciously and intentionally influenced by Wolfe's writing. The baritone guitar, with its longer scale length, typically larger body, and lower tuning than a regular guitar, is an intriguing instrument. It is often pitched halfway between the lowest note of a bass of a regular guitar, adding a unique depth and resonance to the sound. Henry Kaiser has been playing baritone guitars for over 30 years, and this is his second CD, after 2024's The Lost Chord, which is all baritone. The solos here are free-improvised, live, in real time, with no overdubbing. Various extended techniques, both manual and electronic, were employed to create polyphonic and orchestral textures. Many of Kaiser's musical heroes -- Terry Riley, Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Iannis Xenakis, Rockette Morton, Conlon Nancarrow, Barry Guy, Rakotozafy, D'Gary, Evan Parker, and György Ligeti -- inspired the solos on this disc. The second CD Sea Of Memories is a solo electronic disc by P.ST, created exclusively from Henry Kaiser's guitar playing. P.ST is a performer/composer based in Prague. The first fifty minutes of Sea Of Memories are sourced from Henry Kaiser's solo guitar playing, which P.ST digitally decomposed and deconstructed. The second piece, "Pattern Of Joy," is an eight-minute guitar improvisation from Henry Kaiser processed by P.ST through thirty-two periodically delayed overlays that grew the piece into twenty-two minutes duration.
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SR 464LP
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LP version. Unreleased material composed by Bernard Parmegiani in 1992. Lac Noir - La Serpente is part of Emmanuel Raquin-Lorenzi's Lac Noir, a composite work inspired by a serpentine female creature or "snake-woman" that he saw in Transylvania in 1976, with a total of 33 pieces using various media, 24 by himself and 9 by other artists. All the materials used in Lac Noir were gathered on the land of the snake-woman between 1990 and 1992. The first coordinated broadcast ran from June to October 2019, like a theatrical display of media.
"At the end of May 1992, in Provence, in his Summer studio not far from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Bernard Parmegiani played the first musical moments he had worked on from the sounds he and Christian Zanési had collected in Negreni in October 1990. A few days after this listening session, on 4th June, I wrote him a letter. I didn't mean to take control of what was to become the ninth movement of his composition, but to share with him some of the resonances I had heard in what he had composed, which mingled with my dreams and memories of the Transylvanian snake-woman, and outlined possible concordances with the other pieces underway for Lac Noir. In the midst of the garish chaos of the fair and its spectacular stunts, there could spread out -- still, silent eye of the cyclone -- the long waters of a lake. Calm waters. Patches cool but sensitive as skin. Between the waters there flows and ripples, there shows up and dives again a snake-woman born of the still waters. A sweet, good serpent whose song -- strange and melodious, sensual, yet already tinged, as if bitten by the black depths, with bitterness; that of prescience, shading it with melancholy -- is her very undulation, the rings of which appear, together or in turn, the way translucent veins overlap, slither over one another in a moving braid of metamorphoses." (Extracts from notes by E. Raquin-Lorenzi)
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2CD
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SR 563CD
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A unique artistic partnership. This project represents a distinct and carefully considered artistic endeavor. Developed by Mark Springer (Rip, Rig and Panic) and Neil Tennant (The Pet Shop Boys), it combines a suite for piano, quartet, and quintet with vocals, accompanied by lyrics offering thoughtful introspection. The collaboration explores the intersection of divergent creative approaches-one characterized by radical expression, the other by meticulous craftsmanship. The result is a work that invites reflection and demonstrates the potential of disciplined artistic dialogue. Neil Tennant: "I bought a book of Goya's print series Los Caprichos which had inspired Mark's music and saw that the artworks were a satirical, cruel, nightmarish portrayal of the politics, corruption and culture of his era, exploring his dreams -- or nightmares -- while exposing the double standards of the ruling establishment. The lyrics I wrote for Sleep of Reason, in response to Los Caprichos, are intended to be sardonic and dreamlike, looking back to Goya's nightmares but then reflecting on my experiences in 21st Century popular culture and media in which I have located the 'monsters' Goya saw in his dreams. It often feels like we're living in an era dominated by monsters with their grotesque egos hollering through social media, unfiltered and untruthful, leaving a trail of wreckage behind them. Maybe it's always felt like that."
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2LP
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SR 563LP
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Double LP version. A unique artistic partnership. This project represents a distinct and carefully considered artistic endeavor. Developed by Mark Springer (Rip, Rig and Panic) and Neil Tennant (The Pet Shop Boys), it combines a suite for piano, quartet, and quintet with vocals, accompanied by lyrics offering thoughtful introspection. The collaboration explores the intersection of divergent creative approaches-one characterized by radical expression, the other by meticulous craftsmanship. The result is a work that invites reflection and demonstrates the potential of disciplined artistic dialogue. Neil Tennant: "I bought a book of Goya's print series Los Caprichos which had inspired Mark's music and saw that the artworks were a satirical, cruel, nightmarish portrayal of the politics, corruption and culture of his era, exploring his dreams -- or nightmares -- while exposing the double standards of the ruling establishment. The lyrics I wrote for Sleep of Reason, in response to Los Caprichos, are intended to be sardonic and dreamlike, looking back to Goya's nightmares but then reflecting on my experiences in 21st Century popular culture and media in which I have located the 'monsters' Goya saw in his dreams. It often feels like we're living in an era dominated by monsters with their grotesque egos hollering through social media, unfiltered and untruthful, leaving a trail of wreckage behind them. Maybe it's always felt like that."
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SR 561LP
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Double LP version. Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the eight staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect. "For this recording, we chose to record first the eighth notes, then the long notes in re-recording. This utopian version, with each musician playing short and long notes at the same time (!), illustrates the minimalist aesthetic that plays with our perception and allows us to reconcile opposites and cultivate the apparent paradox of a music that moves forward without Moving and changes constantly while remaining the same." --Dedalus Ensemble
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SR 561CD
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Founding work of minimalism, Music with Changing Parts is a piece with free instrumentation. The musicians choose which part to play among the eight staves of the score. At each indicated cue, the musicians can change part, which produces an abrupt change of instrumentation. While the music is based on a melodic material limited to a few notes that are repeated in patterns that expand or contract, the changes in orchestration refresh the listening experience by producing sonic contrasts. These techniques at work in Music with Changing Parts, written in 1970, will lead Philip Glass to renew his language and move from the monochromatic works that precede it to more dramatic works such as music in 12 parts and especially the opera Einstein on the Beach. When Philip Glass began rehearsing the piece, he was surprised to hear long notes when everything was written in eighth notes. After making sure that none of the musicians were playing held notes, he realized that the fact that the same notes were played by all the instruments in the ensemble produced, through a psycho-acoustic effect, a harmonic substrate of resonant frequencies. He then decided to add to the score the possibility of playing long notes to reinforce this effect. "For this recording, we chose to record first the eighth notes, then the long notes in re-recording. This utopian version, with each musician playing short and long notes at the same time (!), illustrates the minimalist aesthetic that plays with our perception and allows us to reconcile opposites and cultivate the apparent paradox of a music that moves forward without Moving and changes constantly while remaining the same." --Dedalus Ensemble
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SR 557LP
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"The term 'Miao' is a very ancient Chinese misleading pseudo-ethnic categorization, the Hmong in western languages, a term recognized by colonial French Indochina. Miao became a generic term which does not reveal the diversity of 38 subgroups or 9 million people, mostly in Southern China Guizhou Province. China, since having moved towards the market economy, now includes a large number of minority regions that are marketed a commodity available only to them: their ethnicity itself. Ethnic tourism has developed in a big way in China since the 1990s, for both Chinese and foreign tourists, and it is often promoted as the way to generate income in those areas for development. I usually stay away from Ethnotouristic shows and try to get music that is not a commodity! I was based in Dali, Yunnan, China between 2006 and 2013." --Laurent Jeanneau
Recorded by Laurent Jeanneau and Shi Tanding. Notes By Laurent Jeanneau. "Miao Three Mouthorgans In Guizhou China" features three men each using a different size lushen or gué and four women each blowing in a different mantong. Recorded in Paisha village. "Hua Miao Wedding Dance In Sichuan China" features an instrument called the lushen, the predominant kind of mouth organ being used for entertainment. "Hmoob Dongliang In Guizhou China" was recorded in Biasha village, composed of two reeds instruments and male and female singers, intended as love songs. "Hua Miao Hulushen In Sichuan China" was performed by one man. The main music instrument is the small mouth organ, hulushen, the predominant mouth organ used for entertainment, where the long tubes lushen is mounted on a wooden resonance box. "Hmoob Mouthorgans In Guizhou China" was recorded in Biasha village, and features a Miao (they call themselves Hmoob). This is part of musical demonstration for tourists. Armed with heavy cameras, six men using six lushen of various sizes. "Gelao Gupiaoqin In Guizhou China" was recorded in Songlong village, where people identify themselves not as Miao but as Gelao, using a very rare string instrument called the Gupiaoqin. "Gelao Canon Singing In Guizhou China" features two old ladies performing canon singing in Songlong village. "Shui Miao Travelling Song Guizhou China" features the Shui Miao (water Miao), a sub group of the Miaos of Guizhou, based in the Shidong area outside of Kali in Guizhou.
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SR 464CD
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Unreleased material composed by Bernard Parmegiani in 1992. Lac Noir - La Serpente is part of Emmanuel Raquin-Lorenzi's Lac Noir, a composite work inspired by a serpentine female creature or "snake-woman" that he saw in Transylvania in 1976, with a total of 33 pieces using various media, 24 by himself and 9 by other artists. All the materials used in Lac Noir were gathered on the land of the snake-woman between 1990 and 1992. The first coordinated broadcast ran from June to October 2019, like a theatrical display of media.
"At the end of May 1992, in Provence, in his Summer studio not far from the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, Bernard Parmegiani played the first musical moments he had worked on from the sounds he and Christian Zanési had collected in Negreni in October 1990. A few days after this listening session, on 4th June, I wrote him a letter. I didn't mean to take control of what was to become the ninth movement of his composition, but to share with him some of the resonances I had heard in what he had composed, which mingled with my dreams and memories of the Transylvanian snake-woman, and outlined possible concordances with the other pieces underway for Lac Noir. In the midst of the garish chaos of the fair and its spectacular stunts, there could spread out -- still, silent eye of the cyclone -- the long waters of a lake. Calm waters. Patches cool but sensitive as skin. Between the waters there flows and ripples, there shows up and dives again a snake-woman born of the still waters. A sweet, good serpent whose song -- strange and melodious, sensual, yet already tinged, as if bitten by the black depths, with bitterness; that of prescience, shading it with melancholy -- is her very undulation, the rings of which appear, together or in turn, the way translucent veins overlap, slither over one another in a moving braid of metamorphoses." (Extracts from notes by E. Raquin-Lorenzi)
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SR 579CD
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Sopa Boba is a Belgian/Dutch, electronic, modern classical project. The idea behind the form is a so-called Oratorio from the present age which unfolds a dramatic tale within a sociopolitical framework. The compositions incorporate a neo-classical style string quartet, harsh modular synths, and spoken word vocals. It features Pavel Tchikov (Ogives) and G.W. Sok (The Ex, Oiseaux-Tempête). That Moment is an adaptation of the eponymous text by Moldavian writer Nicola Esinencu. The starting point of That Moment takes place in a real fact, which happened in present-time Moldavia, where a father cut his son's finger with an axe, as a punishment for stealing a bit of money from the father's wallet. From there the author combines the tale and its reality with a caustic irony, interrogating an unbridled capitalist society, where everything and everyone is for sale. The total playing-time is 55 minutes, somewhere in between a hybrid electronic-modern classical oratorio and a concept album, with seven tracks that serve as seven chapters of an ironic and satiric story about the downward spiral of the capitalist society.
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SR 579LP
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Double LP version. Sopa Boba is a Belgian/Dutch, electronic, modern classical project. The idea behind the form is a so-called Oratorio from the present age which unfolds a dramatic tale within a sociopolitical framework. The compositions incorporate a neo-classical style string quartet, harsh modular synths, and spoken word vocals. It features Pavel Tchikov (Ogives) and G.W. Sok (The Ex, Oiseaux-Tempête). That Moment is an adaptation of the eponymous text by Moldavian writer Nicola Esinencu. The starting point of That Moment takes place in a real fact, which happened in present-time Moldavia, where a father cut his son's finger with an axe, as a punishment for stealing a bit of money from the father's wallet. From there the author combines the tale and its reality with a caustic irony, interrogating an unbridled capitalist society, where everything and everyone is for sale. The total playing-time is 55 minutes, somewhere in between a hybrid electronic-modern classical oratorio and a concept album, with seven tracks that serve as seven chapters of an ironic and satiric story about the downward spiral of the capitalist society.
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SR 566CD
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The recordings on A Modern View on Early Music show a bold mix: breathtaking a cappella interpretations of the Octonaires de la Vanité du Monde by Paschal de L'Estocart (1582) and pieces from the Geneva Psalter (1562) meet the reworkings of Sylvain Chauveau. The voices of chant 1450, trained in early music, sing these pieces with lyrics about transience full of emotion and elegance. Sylvain Chauveau processed individual pieces electronically, whereby transience remains sonically present in his always surprising versions. The reworkings do not take early music as a fixed, quasi-museum repertoire, but as a starting point for something new -- everything is in flux, is reinterpreted, changes. A wonderful stream of fantastic music emerges, with ancient and contemporary music coming closer together than one might initially expect. Le Beau du monde -- A Modern View on Early Music, is the second collaboration by chant 1450 and Sylvain Chauveau after Echoes of Harmony - Early Music Reworked (SR 447CD, 2017), both released by Sub Rosa.
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SR 572CD
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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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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 572LP
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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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2CD
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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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