Sub Rosa

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." 

2 rare historical recordings (1983 and 1986) originally released as single sides and gathered here for the first time. "Conductor might be my favourite composition and Life & Death Of Pboc might be my most sincere. Conductor was my first composed piece with no obvious reference points ... Life & Death Of Pboc was the second. these two compositions gave me the title Godfather of Dark Ambient."

55 Historical Recordings Of Traditional Music From Greenland 1905-1987 features historical recordings of traditional Greenlandic music recorded between 1905 (by the British ethnologist William Thalbitzer) to 1987 and collected by the Danish ethnomusicologist Michael Hauser. It was published in Greenland by Ulo. Sub Rosa took the decision to enlarge the distribution of this tribute to traditions and roots of the Inuit culture. This is more than an hour of ultra-rare documents, the testimony of a century of Inuit recordings. As a guide through this abundant material, included is a 24-page booklet with notes, comments and photos. Voices recorded in Greenland almost hundred years ago on wax glader cylinders, a lost shamanic story, a duel-song, a mournful melody and a unique collection of drum dance and songs. Hope, happiness and mournings - all of humanity is right here.

Four Pianos (1979-80): It is recognized today that these tutelary pieces for four pianos are among the most powerful in contemporary music, their impact is almost unparalleled. After the historical version recorded forty years ago, this one, featuring four of the greatest European performers, is now regaining its full power. High level recordings too. Includes 12-page booklet.

Julius Eastman: There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic -- undoubtedly also one of the most powerful, and it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During Winter of 1981-82, he got deported from his apartment by the police, who destroyed most of what he owned - including scores and recordings. He was found dead in 1990, on the streets of Buffalo, after years of vagrancy.

The Performers: Nicolas Horvath, pianist and electroacoustic composer; Melaine Dalibert, a French composer and pianist; Stephane Ginsburgh, a tireless surveyor of the repertoire but also explorer of new music; Wilhem Latchoumia, embraces both new music and the classical repertoire with success and charisma.

Milan Knízak canonical text Aktual University, dating from 1967, contains ten short lectures outlining the university's character -- On Conflict, On Dreams, On Revolutions, On Love, On Belief, On Art, etc. These lectures were to serve as inspirational schemes for lectures, seminars and discussions held at an ideal university. In the first piece, Aktual University, Milan Knízak reads his own text, with Opening Performance Orchestra providing the musical accompaniment. It was performed live in October 2019 at the Movement-Sound-Space festival in Opava, where this recording was made. The second track, titled "Broken Suite", is a studio remix, in which Opening Performance Orchestra used fragments and quotations from Milan Knizák's compositions, conceived over the past fifty years, applying the "broken" method. The majority of them are made public for the very first time in the newly created "Broken Suite". The booklet features English translations of ten Aktual University lectures, as well as Milan Knizak's contemporary initiation text. Includes 12-page booklet.

Tetsuo Furudate has been working on projects including electronic music, films, videos creating time passages between old and new pieces, re-reading the past through re-appropriations. All his recent pieces can be watched or just listened to. it is also a cultural mix embracing all eastern and western cultures (from JS Bach to Merzbow). Here he recreates a borderless and timeless universe, where voices and pianos reach emotional moments of great depth. The whole is driven by Tetsuo who, by a continuous mixing, conceives these different pieces as an editor would a film made of borrowings images, archives material and unpublished fragments. The Nocturne, The Nightmare and a Fruit features Keiko Higuchi and Olga Magieres. Tetsuo Furudate was first the collaborator and friend of Zbigniew Karkowski in Japan, together they created some of the most radical but complex pieces under the name of World as Will (after Arthur Schopenhauer's book), some of which were rewritten for the Viennese Zeitkratzer Ensemble. Keiko Higuchi is above all a pianist and performer, linked to jazz and improvisation. She was revealed by Love Hotel (2008), her concerts are like real performances, she is considered as one of the most singular and impressive performing artists of her generation. Olga Magieres, Russian pianist living in Denmark, specializes in improvised music and the syntactic relationship of languages. She has already collaborated with Tetsuo in 2010 with Introduction Of Blue Of Noon, her first opus Piano and Poetry had been praised.

Includes color insert. Sub Rosa present a reissue of volume one (Mindanoo Mistiru) and two (Gold From Wax) of Ethiopian Urban And Tribal Music, both originally released as two distinct LPs on Lyrichord in 1972. Mindanoo Mistiru and Gold From Wax were recorded by Ragnar Johnson. Ethiopia contains many diverse peoples and many styles of music. It was still an empire in July and August of 1971 when these recordings were made. Over 70 languages and 200 dialects are spoken in Ethiopia. In much of the music, lyrics are more important than instrumentation, and the transmission is oral. The urban musicians, the bagana, and Mary Armeede, were recorded in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian urban musicians come from many parts of the country and are familiar with, and adapt to, styles of regions other than their own. The Afar divination chants and flutes were recorded in the Danakil desert. The Anuak toum and Nuer harp, lament and dance were recorded near the Sudan border. The Konso dance and the Gidole Fila flute dance were recorded near the Kenya border. Mindanoo Mistiru means "What is the Unknown?". Gold From Wax refers to the two layers of meaning in Amharic poetry. File under: Le Coeur du Monde.

John Levy, a London ethnomusicologist and devotee of Tibetan Buddhism who recorded both sacred and secular music on Nagra stereo, left this masterpiece in the mid-1970s for Lyrichord, a prestigious American label with a catalog of recordings of traditional music from around the world. This work is the second part of Levy's entire project to capture not only the sacred music of the Tibetan rituals in the small South Asian country of Bhutan, but also all indigenous folk music. This fully remastered traditional folk/instrumental album features Tibetan and Bhutanese lute and fiddle playing, beautiful folk songs, and some of the yaks and Tibetan-originated dramas of Eastern Bhutan. This is truly a selection of 20 authentic blues songs from the top of the world.

From Mille Plateaux to Leaf, Staubgold, and Raster-Noton, ~scape, among others, or on his own label Ripatti, the Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti, aka Vladislav Delay, has been exploring various iterations of the "dub culture vs. electronica", since 1997. His sonic crafts and unique signature sound have been sought after by an eclectic range of bands and artists, ranging from Massive Attack, Hauschka, Black Dice, Autopoieses, Animal Collective, or AGF. Vladislav Delay met Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare (the most prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production duo) thanks to a series of jam sessions. Trumpet player Nils-Petter Molvaer had been asked by the Jamaicans to join them and he invited Delay alongside guitar player Eivind Aarset to tag along, which eventually turned into the Nordub project. The result of these jam sessions turned into an album, mixed and mostly produced by Vladislav Delay, released on the label Okeh. It was also followed by an extensive series of live dates. This one-shot reunion was the beginning of another story: a trio composed by Delay, Dunbar, and Shakespeare. In January 2019, Vladislav Delay went to Kingston and spent some days at The Anchor studios, to record drums and bass with S&R, some voice takes and a series of atmospheric field recordings. Back to Finland, Delay started to experiment with this precious material, mixing, and overdubbing, in the comfort and quiet of his studio, based on the island of Hailuoto, Baltic Sea, Northern Finland, giving another feeling to the Jamaican trip. This became a tribute to the "dub spirit", but in a very personal way, far beyond any influence or "the obvious". 500-Push-Up is two worlds collapsing, merging, also showing some intriguing approach of the Jamaican groove, used as a filigree, like the echo or the ghost of reggae, converging and conversing with a post-industrial and experimental approach. To file beside experiments -- for instance -- such as Lee Perry's Scientist Rids The World Of The Evil Curse Of The Vampires (1981) or the On U-Sound productions. Somewhere between the old-school electronica culture, the soundscaping, the experimental paths of Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, ghostly clubbing anthems, minimalism, pop, jazz, without being influenced, Vladislav Delay is building a drifting and coherent sound enigma. Personnel: Vladislav Delay - electronics, sampling, percussion; Sly Dunbar - drums; Robbie Shakespeare - bass.

This project, Massif and Archipelago, is a field recording project initiated by Japanese sound artist Yasuhiro Morinaga, documenting traditional gong music by different Southeast Asian ethnic groups. The project aimed to examine the impact of the natural and social environment on the gong music culture of Southeast Asia. During the project, he visited over 50 different ethnic groups and made hundreds of recordings. This album presents a selection of the unique gong music from different ethnic minorities. The selected music has been divided into two broad sections: one focussing on the music from the Massif, i.e. mainland Southeast Asia (Central Highland of Vietnam and Northeast Cambodia), the other on music from the Archipelago, maritime Southeast Asia (the Luzon Islands of the Philippines, Borneo, Sulawesi, and the Flores Islands of Indonesia).