Electronic / Experimental
1518 products

"I don't hold onto terms like music and sculpture anymore. Those old distinctions have lost all their meaning." ~ Harry Bertoia, 1976
Harry Bertoia's Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 of Bertoia's original records newly restored from their master tapes and housed in replica jackets. A heavy duty box, printed with metallic inks, holds the 11 discs as well as a 100 page book containing a lengthy historic essay, Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive, modern and archival photos of the Bertoia barn as well as reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia's children. The Complete Sonambient Collection celebrates 100 years of Harry Bertoia in 2015, the centennial of his birth.
In the late 1950s Harry Bertoia (1915-1978), already a renowned American sculptor, began creating long-form, improvised pieces of music utilizing pure acoustic tones evoked from his sound sculptures. Around this time Bertoia came up with the term "Sonambient" to describe the music and environment created by his tonal sculptures and their lush harmonic overtones. In a renovated barn on his property deep in the Pennsylvania woods Harry curated a harmonious selection of his sculptures and gongs, often recording his frequent, intuitive sound experiments using fout overhead microphones and a 1/4" tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced ten more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see or hear these records himself. Bertoia died in 1978, at age 63, and was buried beneath a giant gong behind his Sonabmient barn.
Bertoia's recordings are as much a celebration of sustained tones, slow decay, healing vibrations and shimmering harmonics as Indian Classical music, singing bowls, The Well Tuned Piano or Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica. Through these rich harmonics, pulsing tones and pure gongs Bertoia was able to more clearly articulate his inner spirit than he could with sculpture alone – a point he made himself many times in interview. Harry's single greatest piece of art is the totality of his life which is nearly impossible to measure but easy to feel. It's our hope that somehow this box set evokes some of the same sacred, personal feeling that one has in Bertoia's barn.
Your purchase directly supports the preservation of Harry Bertoia's Sonambient archive.


Eliane Radigue's complete Opus 17 (1970), her finest and final work created using feedback, is contained on this double CD. With Opus 17 Radigue perfected her slow mixing technique with sublime results. Imperceptible transformations envelop the attentive listener who is confronted with an immensely physical experience. Time is suspended in powerfully poetic and artful ways as Radigue masterfully sculpts the physical matter of sound using feedback for the last time.
Opus 17 is an absolutely essential masterpiece in the realm of early electro-acoustic/drone/minimalist composition.
Metallic silver ink printed on high gloss paper.











For over half a century, Takehisa Kosugi was one of the most unique and enduring figures in the Japanese underground. As an art student in Tokyo in the early 1960s, he joined the Fluxus-styled performance unit Hi Re Centre and founded the improvisational ensemble Group Ongaku, but his most legendary project was The Taj-Mahal Travelers – a multicellular organism that included Kosugi, Ryo Koike, Yukio Tsuchiya, Seiji Nagai, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and sound engineer Kinji Hayashi. With a penchant for long psychedelic jams (some lasting 12 hours or more) The Taj-Mahal Travelers lived up to their name. Touring in a Volkswagen van across Europe and Asia in the early '70s, they eventually reached the actual Taj Mahal in India. Upon their return to Japan, they held a concert to raise more touring funds and released their very first recordings. Their debut album, July 15, 1972, would extend the band's matter-of-fact titling: all the tracks were named precisely for the times they began and ended. With a grab bag of instrumentation (electric violin, double bass, santoor, vibraphone, harmonica, radio oscillators, sheet iron, etc.), The Taj-Mahal Travelers weave together mesmerizing waves of sonic texture. Featuring longtone concepts that Kosugi discovered while working with sound generators in New York in the mid-'60s, July 15, 1972 remains just as much a collective tone poem as psych workout. These leader-less sounds coalesce into a unified whole that feels both subconscious and sublime, as if the waveforms bypass the listener's ears and land directly inside one's synapses. This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster.










この人の作品の新たな入門盤といっても過言ではないでしょう。今年度最高クラスの一枚!国産ミニマル/アンビエント金字塔的傑作『鏡の向こう側』でもお馴染み、もはや説明不要、初期の久石譲プロデュース仕事でも知られるMkwaju Ensembleにも参加、近年のニューエイジ・リバイバルを通じて吉村弘や芦川聡らと並ぶ不動の人気を獲得した作曲家、打楽器奏者である高田みどり(1951-)。自身の『鏡の向こう側』を掘り起こし、世界的人気作品へと押し上げた縁深いレーベルである〈WRWTFWW Records〉より、実に23年ぶりとなる最新ソロ・アルバムをリリース。
ベルリン・ラジオ・シンフォニーのソリストとしてデビュー後、1980年代に入りアフリカやアジア各国を巡り伝統音楽の探求を開始。ガーナ、ブルキナファソ、セネガル、韓国、等の音楽家とセッションを重ね(日本では佐藤允彦や演出家である鈴木忠志とも)、音と人体との一貫性というインデグラルなコンセプトを基に、アフリカの動的な音楽性とアジアの静的なスピリットを統合し、精神性を伴った独自の音楽性を確立。
本作は、スイスの〈ジュネーブ民族学博物館〉に所蔵されている楽器を使用し、ジンバブエのショナ族の伝統的なムビラ音楽を代表する伝統的な作品である「Nhemamusasa」を演奏したライブ録音のアルバム。高田氏の作品は、『百億年の交響詩』や『Tree Of Life』といった比較的アヴァンギャルドな色彩の強い作品が目立ちますが、本作は、『鏡の向こう側』の2020年代ヴァージョンといった風情のコンテンポラリー/ミニマルの凄まじい傑作!自身のアフリカ音楽とミニマリズムへの探究心と多文化的ヴィジョンの集大成ともいうべきマスターピースに仕上がっています。こりゃ絶対持っとけ!


この人の作品の新たな入門盤といっても過言ではないでしょう。今年度最高クラスの一枚!国産ミニマル/アンビエント金字塔的傑作『鏡の向こう側』でもお馴染み、もはや説明不要、初期の久石譲プロデュース仕事でも知られるMkwaju Ensembleにも参加、近年のニューエイジ・リバイバルを通じて吉村弘や芦川聡らと並ぶ不動の人気を獲得した作曲家、打楽器奏者である高田みどり(1951-)。自身の『鏡の向こう側』を掘り起こし、世界的人気作品へと押し上げた縁深いレーベルである〈WRWTFWW Records〉より、実に23年ぶりとなる最新ソロ・アルバムをリリース。
ベルリン・ラジオ・シンフォニーのソリストとしてデビュー後、1980年代に入りアフリカやアジア各国を巡り伝統音楽の探求を開始。ガーナ、ブルキナファソ、セネガル、韓国、等の音楽家とセッションを重ね(日本では佐藤允彦や演出家である鈴木忠志とも)、音と人体との一貫性というインデグラルなコンセプトを基に、アフリカの動的な音楽性とアジアの静的なスピリットを統合し、精神性を伴った独自の音楽性を確立。
本作は、スイスの〈ジュネーブ民族学博物館〉に所蔵されている楽器を使用し、ジンバブエのショナ族の伝統的なムビラ音楽を代表する伝統的な作品である「Nhemamusasa」を演奏したライブ録音のアルバム。高田氏の作品は、『百億年の交響詩』や『Tree Of Life』といった比較的アヴァンギャルドな色彩の強い作品が目立ちますが、本作は、『鏡の向こう側』の2020年代ヴァージョンといった風情のコンテンポラリー/ミニマルの凄まじい傑作!自身のアフリカ音楽とミニマリズムへの探究心と多文化的ヴィジョンの集大成ともいうべきマスターピースに仕上がっています。こりゃ絶対持っとけ!


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