Avant-Garde / Contemporary
704 products
From Scratch is a development of a performance group organized by Phil Dudson, who learned from the far-left musician Cornelius Cardew, as the New Zealand branch of the Scratch Orchestra in the 1970s. They are known around the world for their combative custom instruments, and Ryuichi Sakamoto became a percussion instrument unit at a glance, and he visited Japan twice.
The work that can be said to be their true value is this difficult song "Gung Ho 1,2,3D", which features hocking in which the performers beat different beats individually, and the ultimate polyrhythm with accurate repetitive rhythm is a masterpiece. The sound is mechanical and inorganic in terms of characters, but the overtone-covered mundane sounds generated from the vinyl chloride tube and the slight error caused by human performance become organic components and create a mysterious ecstasy.
In this work, the original recording of 1981, which was performed in the most complicated 8,9,10 and 9,10,11 time signatures of "Gung Ho 1,2,3D", is the first, and the current three artists in Japan and abroad: Goat (M2) led by YPY Koshiro Hino / Don't DJ (M3), a German genius / Utena Kobayashi (M4), who is currently active in DAN, Tokumaru Shugo, etc. Contains a total of 4 works. All the performances are based on the score, but the interpretations of the four are completely different, and despite the fairly advanced performance, it has a pop appearance due to the repetitive rhythm.
+ CD version: Japanese / English commentary / normal jewel case / booklet included
From Scratch is a development of a performance group organized by Phil Dudson, who learned from the far-left musician Cornelius Cardew, as the New Zealand branch of the Scratch Orchestra in the 1970s. They are known around the world for their combative custom instruments, and Ryuichi Sakamoto became a percussion instrument unit at a glance, and he visited Japan twice.
The work that can be said to be their true value is this difficult song "Gung Ho 1,2,3D", which features hocking in which the performers beat different beats individually, and the ultimate polyrhythm with accurate repetitive rhythm is a masterpiece. The sound is mechanical and inorganic in terms of characters, but the overtone-covered mundane sounds generated from the vinyl chloride tube and the slight error caused by human performance become organic components and create a mysterious ecstasy.
In this work, the original recording of 1981, which was performed in the most complicated 8,9,10 and 9,10,11 time signatures of "Gung Ho 1,2,3D", is the first, and the current three artists in Japan and abroad: Goat (M2) led by YPY Koshiro Hino / Don't DJ (M3), a German genius / Utena Kobayashi (M4), who is currently active in DAN, Tokumaru Shugo, etc. Contains a total of 4 works. All the performances are based on the score, but the interpretations of the four are completely different, and despite the fairly advanced performance, it has a pop appearance due to the repetitive rhythm.
+ CD version: Japanese / English commentary / normal jewel case / booklet included
The title nods to a 16th-century study of magnetism, and it is magnetism that is at the heart of this release, with Takuji Naka's cassette decks and Tim Olive's magnetic pickups, across five untitled tracks, initiating a dream-logic-imbued semi-narrative flow, in which "out of date" low-tech sound sources are at the service of an ears-forward compositional sensibility.
The use of pliable metals, analog electronics and a battered spring reverb unit, along with the inherent instability of cassettes, results in an atmosphere of subdued unease, over-the-horizon mystery and a burnished, melancholy beauty. Perhaps it is a bit of a stretch to link Naka's career as a temple gardener in Kyoto and Olive's relatively recent involvement in film with the music's austerely organic and eerily cinematic aspects, but there you have it. Recorded in the mountains in the north of Kyoto in 2013, the CD has a strong sense of place, but as befitting magnetism's play of opposites, that sense of place shifts and flickers; time ebbs and returns; the light grows dim.
CD digipak release, with liner notes in Japanese and English by musicologist/writer/composer Wakao Yu.
In October 1962 John Cage and his great interpreter/co-visionary David Tudor visited Japan, performing seven concerts and exposing listeners to new musical worlds. This legendary "John Cage Shock", as it was dubbed by the critic Hidekazu Yoshida, is the source of this series of releases, three CDs and a "best hits" double LP compilation. Recorded primarily at the Sogetsu Art Center in Tokyo on October 24, 1962 (with two performances from October 17 at Mido-Kaikan in Osaka), all recordings in this series are previously unreleased. A major historical trove, unearthed. The performances on this tour featured Cage and Tudor with some noteworthy Japanese musicians playing pieces by Cage and a number of other composers. Volume 1 begins with Toru Takemitsu's Corona for Pianists (1962), played by Tudor and Yuji Takahashi, an indeterminate piece scored using transparencies, a sign of Cage's influence on younger Japanese composers of the era. Following this is Duo for Violinist and Pianist (1961) by Christian Wolff, written specifically for David Tudor and violinist Kenji Kobayashi. The final piece, a near-twenty-minute realization of Variations II (1961), is a rare example of the rougher side of Cage, work that presaged much of the live electronic music and noise of the following decades, an aspect of his oeuvre which is woefully under-represented on CD. Cage and Tudor, using well-amplified contact microphones on a piano, deliver an electrifying performance, alternating distorted stretches of harsh 60s reality with bountiful silences. Volume 2 lifts off with a fiery example of Tudor's piano virtuosity, his mastery of dynamics well evident in a performance of Klavierstück X (1961) by Karlheinz Stockhausen. The titular shock of this series is delivered even more forcefully with the next piece, Cage's 26'55.988" for 2 Pianists and a String Player (1961), which was first performed the year before in Darmstadt by Tudor and Kobayashi, a combination of two of Cage's solo pieces. The performance here, from Osaka, has a slightly altered title and the composition becomes a seismic quartet with the addition of Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono, with the four performers providing acutely-angled blasts of sound. The final CD of the series features Cage's 0'00" (1962), also referred to as 4'33" No.2, performed by the composer, with daily activities such as writing and drinking coffee amplified by contact microphones into sonic abstraction, following the score's directions: "with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action". Next is Composition II for 2 Pianos (1960/61) by Michael von Biel, lovely and sparse, performed by Tudor and Ichiyanagi. The disc closes with Ichiyanagi's Piano Music #7 (1961), performed also by Tudor and Ichiyanagi, beds of silence disrupted by pianistic stabs, music box madness, traffic recordings, percussive thumps, tape manipulations and more. The "John Cage Shock" series features truly historical recordings, all previously unreleased, of compositions by an amazing roster of international composers. The intensity of these performances by Cage, Tudor, Ichiyanagi, Kobayashi, Ono and Takahashi has remained hidden and unheard for half a century, but remains undiminished. These three CDs, as well as the special double LP (including a vinyl only bonus track), feature rare photos plus Japanese and English liner notes.