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Browse by Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)


Artist: KUBISCH, CHRISTINA
Title: On Air
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 003CD
"A spectacular all-transparent Audio/multimedia CD (a reprint of the 1984 cassette-only private release). A final and comprehensive document on the series of installations named 'On Air' or 'Magnetic Air' which C. Kubisch exhibited in Italy and Europe from 1982 to 1986. The relationship between specific locations and electronic music was explored through the use of magnetic induction cables and special earphones. Twenty years later, On Air has remained a fascinating listening experience, and represents a unique illustration of the artistic integration of sound and vision. The interactive section provides a virtual journey through the spectacular 1984 installation created for the medieval town of Gargonza in Tuscany, complete with 1 hour of music and a 15-minute video plus photos, a Bio, info and scores." Enhanced CD; Audio and Interactive tracks. + 15 .MPG Video for PC/MAC.


Artist: RAMPAZZI, TERESA
Title: Musica Endoscopica
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 009CD
2008 deluxe CD box edition of Teresa Rampazzi's incredible early electronic music. Teresa Rampazzi, a seminal yet very little-known female Italian composer/musician, founded the NPS - Nuove Proposte Sonore -- an experimental music collective formed in the late-'60s. She was also one of the founders and main figures of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, a computer music research center active from the early-'70s at the University of Padua. It would be easy to see electronic composer Rampazzi as Italy's equivalent of Daphne Oram or Delia Derbyshire, those long-neglected pioneers behind the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. But zoomed in closer, though, a more intriguing picture begins to emerge: Musica Endoscopica is in fact an immersive journey into a futurist-ic/early digital electronic music with dense, long drone pieces made of complex textures that explore the computer's capacity to produce endless variations of source material, at times anticipating some of the electro-feel to emerge in the years to follow. Includes a 40-page booklet with extensive notes in English and Italian.


Artist: RAMPAZZI, TERESA
Title: Musica Endoscopica
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: LP
Price: $29.00
Catalog #: DS 009LP
Following the acclaimed CD edition released by Die Schachtel in 2008, here's the long-awaited limited "silver" LP edition of Teresa Rampazzi's incredible early electronic music. It differs from the CD edition with the inclusion of "Metamorfosi," a previously-unreleased and magnificent drone piece. Teresa Rampazzi, a seminal yet very little-known female Italian composer/musician, founded the NPS - Nuove Proposte Sonore -- an experimental music collective formed in the late-'60s. She was also one of the founders and main figures of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, a computer music research center active from the early-'70s at the University of Padua. It would be easy to see electronic composer Rampazzi as Italy's equivalent of Daphne Oram or Delia Derbyshire, those long-neglected pioneers behind the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. But zoomed in closer, though, a more intriguing picture begins to emerge: Musica Endoscopica is in fact an immersive journey into a futurist-ic/early digital electronic music with dense, long drone pieces made of complex textures that explore the computer's capacity to produce endless variations of source material, at times anticipating some of the electro-feel to emerge in the years to follow. A welcome return of Die Schachtel's celebrated "metallic" series vinyl LP editions, dedicated to early electronic Italian composers. Housed in a deluxe silver cover with silver foil design with a custom inner sleeve and a 4-page booklet in English and Italian.


Artist: GRUPPO DI IMPROVVISAZIONE NUOVA CONSONANZA
Title: Azioni
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 2CD/DVD
Price: $47.50
Catalog #: DS 013CD
"This deluxe boxed edition presents some of the most compelling improvisations of this extraordinary improv group active in the '60s and featuring such names as Ennio Morricone, Ivan Vandor, Roland Kayn, Franco Evangelisti, Walter Branchi, Mario Bertoncini and John Heineman. Spanning from free-jazz to total abstract noise and wild electronic sounds, these pieces were recorded between 1967 and 1969 and are released here for the first time. The enclosed video DVD, shot in a stunning black and white, is a unique document that captures the rehearsal of the thrilling concert that the group gave in Rome in 1967. It features both English and Italian subtitles. The cloth-covered box contains three individual digipak, a 72-pages Italian-English booklet and a poster. "Il Gruppo was a brilliant and prolific composer's collective exploring extended techniques and new sound sources through the medium of improvisation. Although very much a product of its time, their music remains timeless. They were instrumental in founding a radical tradition of western musical improvisation that owed little or nothing to anybody and created some of the strangest music ever made. They were utterly unique." --John Zorn, NYC 2006. DVD is PAL format for Europe, region 0.


Artist: ART FLEURY
Title: I Luoghi Del Potere
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 014CD
"Art Fleury was born in Brescia, Northern Italy, in the mid-'70s. They were still in their teens when they had the opportunity to open for the group Area at the famous Parco Lambro Festival in Milan (1976), in front of fifty thousand people. In the following years they extensively toured and played with Henry Cow, and in 1980 they were finally able to produce and release their first record, I Luoghi del Potere ('The places of power'), which they started recording in 1977. Superficially (or intentionally) included in the 'prog' genre, I Luoghi del Potere (originally conceived as the soundtrack of an imaginary movie), is a very personal and radical experience, at times recalling Faust's free-form Kraut riffing, or the industrial sound collages of Nurse With Wound. The music is articulated through an outstanding dynamic juxtaposition of instrumental parts, with frequent structural and harmonic fragmentations, and a diverse array of unusual sound elements: from a sort of brass-band progression to radio frequencies, from cacophonic intermezzos to expressionist tape-collage techniques. Through this free flow of sounds, only apparently casual, the group wanted to expose the alienation, the folly, the hopes and fears of their times, through a creative act that pushed to the limits their expressive means." Housed in a deluxe box edition with a poster and 16-page booklet with notes in English and Italian.


Artist: BERTONCINI, MARIO
Title: Arpe Eolie
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 015CD
Deluxe silver CD box edition, silver-foil design, complete with a 64-page booklet in Italian and English. One of the most adventurous composers and performers of the Italian avant garde scene, member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, great performer of the music of John Cage, Mario Bertoncini started in the early '70s to design and build incredibly complex and visually fascinating "sound sculptures" based on the Aeolian sound principle. Amongst his more spectacular installations there were Vele, a massive Aeolian harp (more than 7 meters high); Venti (winds), for 20 Aeolian sound generators and 40 performers; and Chanson pour Instruments à Vent, an assemblage for Aeolian harps, Aeolian gongs, and one performer. His self-built harps and gongs are excited by blows of compressed air, or by the composer's own breath, and the resulting sound is amplified through contact microphones. If at superficial levels they may sound like electronic music (long drones and swooshes of otherwordly sounds), at a close listening they reveal the intensity of a pure and analogic sound of air, far removed from both any artificial or measurable principle as well as from any casual or chance method of composition. In fact, all the pieces are carefully composed and even notated. The CD presents the complete series of his works for Aeolian harps, from 1973 to more recent days.


Artist: GROSSI, PIETRO
Title: Musicautomatica
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 016CD
2008 deluxe CD box edition of Die Schachtel's first vinyl release ever (2003), finally giving a wider audience the opportunity to listen to some of the most intense compositions from this visionary and uncompromising composer. Includes a 24-page booklet with notes in English and Italian, plus historic photos. Minimalist before the Minimalists, pioneer of Computer Music, founder of the Studio of Phonology of Florence, visual artist and hacker ahead of his time. This was Pietro Grossi, a larger-than-life Italian composer who questioned the concept of musical authorship and the idea of personal artistic expression: "A piece is not only a work (of art), but also one of the many 'works' one can freely transform: everything is temporary, everything can change at any time."
"Ideas are not personal anymore, they are open to every solution, everybody could use them."


Artist: ROCCHI, CLAUDIO
Title: Suoni Di Frontiera
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DS 018CD
2009 reissue of this Italian psychoacoustic obscurity, originally released in 1975 on Ariston. Slick tri-fold digipak release with 12-page booklet and gloss varnish cover. "Back in 1975 when Suoni Di Frontiera (Borderline Sounds) was released, Claudio Rocchi was already a well known figure in the Italian pop scene. In the late '60s Rocchi had burst onto the scene as a member of Milanese psych-prog legends Stormy Six. He performed on their Le Idee Di Oggi Per La Musica Di Domani LP in 1969 and soon after, the acid folk of Viaggio, Rocchi's solo debut, was released in 1970. That same year Rocchi hosted an influential radio show on the Italian national broadcasting station, RAI. 1971 brought the simply awesome Volo Magico No.1.
An acknowledged classic, it emerged as not dissimilar to Roy Harper's landmark song cycle of progressive/psych folk, Stormcock. The album -- especially the epic 18 minute title track -- established Rocchi as the Italian psych-folk minstrel par excellence. Then, after traveling to India, improvisation and Eastern philosophies began to shape his next few albums, Essenza from 1973 being a high point. 1974's Il Miele Dei Pianeti Le Isole Le Api (The Honey Of The Planets The Islands The Bees) featured guitars, tabla, strings and percussion but the following album from 1975, Rocchi was, according to the man himself, 'a real U turn.' It featured a handful of songs, though Rocchi baffled his hardcore following by introducing cut-ups, environmental sounds and analogue synthesizers recorded at his home studio using a Revox A70.
This brings us to the experimental electronics of his next album Suoni Di Frontiera. Consisting of 16 'sketches' made at home, this recording went much further out than Rocchi. Described by so-called authorities to be naïve and unsophisticated, to these ears Suoni is a highly personal and extremely charming collection of psychedelically damaged constructs. All of Rocchi's celebrated and highly-recognized vocals were now processed and modulated -- if they were heard at all. They sat alongside his spacey and dislocated homespun synth stylings that sound simultaneously retro and futuristic. What more can one ask for?
Rocchi described the release as "diving deeper into psychoacoustics, a practical theory on healing music, mind resonances, inner flows." Yep. And thanks to the good folk at Die Schachtel, another crucial piece of the '70s Italian puzzle has been unearthed for our pleasure. Dig in." --Oren Ambarchi


Artist: GROSSI, PIETRO
Title: Combinatoria
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 2CD BOX
Price: $23.50
Catalog #: DS 020CD
A comprehensive guide to the core recordings of one of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians from Italy, this 2CD box deluxe edition captures Pietro Grossi's original vision, presenting a wide selection of his studio early recordings, beautifully remastered to preserve the enduring quality. Pietro Grossi used to playfully define himself as pigro (trans. "lazy"), but he wasn't lazy at all! Few musicians have been working everyday at such a cracking pace, creating, teaching and writing -- and when we listen to his music, we should bear in mind how this complex figure of musician, cellist and composer, and also visual artist, has developed creative thinking in a path where a blend of very different aspects organically cohabited. Since the late '50s, Grossi was convinced of the potential of the "new sound" and was totally obsessed with pioneering it, to the point where he would found the S 2F M (Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 -- which made its headquarters in Florence at the Conservatorio, and then in his apartment -- spending days and nights on end splicing tapes and working with various modified machines to create his abstract soundscapes. The two CDs feature his first analogical electronic music, as well as some S 2F M studio works by colleagues such as Vittorio Gelmetti, Gruppo NPS (with Teresa Rampazzi) and Albert Mayr, while the second disc is focused on the prototype computer-generated sound synthesis.


Artist: VA
Title: Prix Italia
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 6CD BOX/BOOK
Price: $100.00
Catalog #: DS 022CD
Subtitled: The Prix Italia And The Radiophonic Experimentation. Deluxe boxed edition -- 6CD + 400-page book in Italian and English. Edited by Angela Ida De Benedictis and Maddalena Novati. After five years of intense, passionate and sometimes painful work, Die Schachtel (in collaboration with RAI) is proud to announce the release of the long-awaited massive book + 6CD boxed edition dedicated to some of the most compelling Italian radio works which took part in the prestigious Prix Italia, a world-famous contest established by the RAI (the National Italian broadcasting company) in the '50s and still alive today, aimed to award the best and most uncompromising audio-visual works produced throughout the world. The Prix Italia and Radiophonic Experimentation presents seven original radio plays -- some of them previously-unreleased -- which entered the competition from 1961 to 1981, complete with two audio interviews of some of the participants. The works have been taken from the original RAI tapes, carefully restored and impeccably re-mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, making them a splendid listening experience. The accompanying 400-page book (in Italian and English) features seven essays written by some of the most prominent experts in this field, plus a long interview with Mr. Sermonti and the complete transcriptions (again both in Italian and English) of all the featured works. Curated with painstaking attention to detail by Angela Ida De Benedictis and Maddalena Novati (authors of the celebrated New Music At The Radio and Nine Oscillators books, both devoted to the RAI Studio di Fonologia), the enclosed book takes advantage of the impeccable English translation by Mr. Mark Weir and the classic design by Dinamomilano, making it an essential reading in understanding in-depth the musical and semiological aspects of these outstanding works, composed and realized by some of the greatest geniuses of modern Italian music. The selection includes works from artists such as Nino Rota, Bruno Maderna, Niccolò Castiglioni, Luciano Berio and Salvatore Sciarrino.


Artist: GRUPPO NPS
Title: Nuove Proposte Sonore 1965-1972
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD BOX
Price: $20.00
Catalog #: DS 023CD
The NPS -- Nuove Proposte Sonore (trans. "New Sound Proposals") group was founded in Padua (Italy) in 1964 by the composer Teresa Rampazzi, together with the visual artist Ennio Chiggio. Working with analogical devices, they produced some of the most compelling electronic music of the period, and they soon became one of the most reputed electronic music centers in Italy, together with the S 2 FM by Pietro Grossi in Florence and the SMET by Enore Zaffiri in Turin. With the departure of Chiggio, the years 1969-1970 transformed it into a female-only collective (Teresa Rampazzi, Serenella Marega and Patrizia Gracis). The two periods were characterized by different instrumentation, and it is surprising how they were able to achieve great results with some simple means -- at least in the beginning. In the first period, they used a couple of two-track tape recorders (Sony 777 and Sony 521), an EICO low-frequency generator, a radio station to produce long wavelength frequencies, a mixer, an oscillator, a Revox, and a self-built loudspeaker. They had to use the stairwell as an echo chamber. In the second one, when the studio was more established, they had six manually-controlled oscillators as well as six modulated ones, a white noise generator, an octave-band filter and a variable one, an amplitude modulator, a noteswitch, a reverb, a 10-channel mixer, a unit for audio signal routing, four tape recorders, a stereo sound system and a frequency meter (during the last years they also bought a 2500 ARP synthesizer). This deluxe edition presents the group's compositions for the first time ever. The CD box comes in a silver-foil design, complete with a 36-page booklet in Italian and English.


Artist: GRUPPO NPS
Title: Nuove Proposte Sonore 1965-1972
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: LP
Price: $29.00
Catalog #: DS 023LP
LP version. The NPS -- Nuove Proposte Sonore (trans. "New Sound Proposals") group was founded in Padua (Italy) in 1964 by the composer Teresa Rampazzi, together with the visual artist Ennio Chiggio. Working with analogical devices, they produced some of the most compelling electronic music of the period, and they soon became one of the most reputed electronic music centers in Italy, together with the S 2 FM by Pietro Grossi in Florence and the SMET by Enore Zaffiri in Turin. With the departure of Chiggio, the years 1969-1970 transformed it into a female-only collective (Teresa Rampazzi, Serenella Marega and Patrizia Gracis). The two periods were characterized by different instrumentation, and it is surprising how they were able to achieve great results with some simple means -- at least in the beginning. In the first period, they used a couple of two-track tape recorders (Sony 777 and Sony 521), an EICO low-frequency generator, a radio station to produce long wavelength frequencies, a mixer, an oscillator, a Revox, and a self-built loudspeaker. They had to use the stairwell as an echo chamber. In the second one, when the studio was more established, they had six manually-controlled oscillators as well as six modulated ones, a white noise generator, an octave-band filter and a variable one, an amplitude modulator, a noteswitch, a reverb, a 10-channel mixer, a unit for audio signal routing, four tape recorders, a stereo sound system and a frequency meter (during the last years they also bought a 2500 ARP synthesizer). This deluxe edition presents the group's compositions for the first time ever. The LP comes in a silver-foil design, including a booklet in Italian and English in an edition of 300 copies.


Artist: SACCHI, FRANCA
Title: En
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD BOX
Price: $20.00
Catalog #: DS 024CD
One of the very few female composers of early electronic music, Franca Sacchi studied at the well-known RAI Studio of Fonologia in Milan in the '60s. She developed the "En-static" principle, which included improvisation, electronic music, ritual, performance, teaching and meditation. Her music focuses mainly on sound, which is treated as raw material and endlessly explored. Sacchi's free concept of duration and deep emotional feeling brings her closer to Eliane Radigue and La Monte Young, especially for the long and sustained tones which are suddenly turned into pulsations and gritty sound textures. Her work was also included in the seminal Broken Music exhibition in Berlin. Originally published by Die Schachtel as a limited edition LP, this lavish, golden CD box + booklet presents her best works in the field of electronic and concrete music from the late '60s to 1972, in a fully remastered edition. CD box (digipack deluxe) in a gold-foil design, complete with a 12-page booklet in Italian and English. Limited edition of 500 copies.


Artist: CURRAN, ALVIN
Title: Live In Roma
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: Book
Price: $29.00
Catalog #: DS 904873
Although Alvin Curran is almost universally recognized as one of the leading figures of the late 20th century musical avant-garde, he has never received the recognition he deserves in the form of a proper publication. This is, in fact, the first book ever to present a complete and coherent picture of this gigantic figure of experimental music. A radical experimentalism and a kind of innate volatility have, in fact, long kept the person and the work of Alvin Curran, one of the historic founders of the group Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV), at the margins of contemporary musical historiography. His vast and all-inclusive experience refuses to fit into the common schemas and cubbyholes, excluding him from the conceptual straitjackets of current Western musicology. Lavishly produced and conceived, this book is centered around extensive descriptions of the most important works and compositional techniques, providing a historical account of Curran's musical concerns and changing style: in permanent flux between two distinct cultural geographies (Italy and USA), sensitive to an infinity of pressures, encounters, transformations, and provocations, Curran's artistic voyage is presented here through a comprehensive historical and critical study that avoids buzz-word definitions and gives great respect to his otherness -- an otherness clearly and happily a part of the variegated musical universe of our time. Gathered for the first time in a single monograph, the contributions of several of the foremost Italian and international scholars -- enriched by an astounding "travel log" by Alvin Curran himself and by unpublished images from his private archive -- confirm the role of this composer-performer-teacher-writer as a major contributor to the evolution of artistic languages in the late 20th century and beyond. Edited by Daniela Margoni Tortora. 300 pages, softcover, in Italian and English.


Artist: MATHIEU, STEPHAN
Title: Radioland
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: DSART 006CD
2009 digipack release. Radioland is Stephan Mathieu's 5th full length studio work, following his acclaimed The Sad Mac CD from 2004. Exclusively based on real-time processed shortwave radio signals, Radioland takes the listener on a carpet ride across endless, majestic shimmering landscapes. Radioland is a mesmerizing reflection on the bubble of information that's all around us, all the time, by one of the truly unique minds in today's abstract digitalia. "...this was the most complete and fully-realized Mathieu recording to date, one that took his familiar methods of signal processing and applied them to a set of radio transitions for one of the most haunting pieces of grainy ambient music to emerge this year. " -- Dusted


Artist: CHIARI/DANIELE LOMBARDI, GIUSEPPE
Title: +/-
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: LP+CD
Price: $57.00
Catalog #: DSART 007/9LP
Restock of this 2010 release, last copies... LP+CD special limited edition release by Fluxus composer Giuseppe Chiari and Futurist pianist Daniele Lombardi. Each LP is hand-numbered, and contains two art prints by Giuseppe Chiari, housed in a very original fold-out cover. The CD is hand-numbered and signed by Daniele Lombardi. The total selling copies of the bundle edition are limited to 130. Giuseppe Chiari was one of the leading names associated first with Fluxus (being the only Italian member of the interdisciplinary art group since 1962) and later with conceptual and performance art as well as sound art. Coming from a background of different disciplines, he established new theoretical and practical standpoints in relation to music and art: his approach was always irreverent, walking the tightrope between to do or not to do, to say or not to say, while continually challenging the limits of language.
       The Die Schachtel vinyl LP (titled +/-) features some of his previously-unreleased and most intense pieces for piano, the musical instrument par excellence and emblem of conformist sound with which Giuseppe Chiari has a love-hate relationship, bestowing on it equal measures of ridicule and praise. It is also an amazing document of his last concert, with Frederic Rzewski (playing the 1964 groundbreaking piece "La Strada"), Giancarlo Cardini, Daniele Lombardi and Giuseppe Chiari himself. The limited CD edition by Daniele Lombardi, published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at MUDIma Foundation in Milan (2008), is the reissue of a 1978 piano sound exploration entitled Costellazione, based upon a map of sky constellations, planned as the first step in a large work focused on the exposition and "performance" of constellations maps, planetaria and maps of the heavens. It is a perfect counterpoint to the Chiari Edition, and it is housed in a custom-made, silk-screened natural cardboard case, inserted in the fold-out cover together with the LP.


Artist: HENNIX, CATHERINE CHRISTER
Title: The Electric Harpsichord
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD/BOOK
Price: $20.00
Catalog #: DSART 010CD
Restocked; 2nd pressing with lower pricing. After the limited art edition quickly sold out, The Electric Harpsichord is now reprinted -- in its complete form -- in a new elegant white boxed edition. Known to the very few, The Electric Harpsichord is possibly THE obscure masterpiece of early American minimalism. Recorded live in 1976 after many years of study under the guidance of Pandit Pran Nath and La Monte Young, it has finally found the perfect home in the Die Schachtel catalog, now in an elegant white boxed 56-page book+CD edition, that gives the work the space and merit it deserves as a unique work of art, complete with two poems by La Monte Young especially written for this edition, and an extensive essay by Henry Flynt. An improvisation performed on just intonation-tuned keyboards put through time-lag accumulators similar to those used by Terry Riley, Hennix has produced one of the most remarkable pieces of music to emerge from the La Monte Young school of minimalism. A Sweden-born composer, who studied in the tradition of Xenakis and Stockhausen in the 1960s, Hennix met La Monte Young and Hindustani raga master Pandit Pran Nath at the Nuits du Fondation Maeght festival in 1970, and pursued studies with both men during the 1970s. While the use of the time-lag in Riley's works such as "A Rainbow In Curved Air" results in an experience of blissful, focused, samadhi-like calm, Hennix's drone work has more in common with the chaotic fluxes of psychedelic experience or the mandalas of Tibetan Buddhism. This is a moving eternity, a pulsating, shifting-something like a raga perhaps, insofar as a raga is a specific deity invoked into sound, fluttering inside the matrix of the drone. Catherine Christer Hennix: keyboard and custom sine wave generators. Recorded live at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.


Artist: NIBLOCK, PHILL
Title: Six Films (1966-1969)
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: DVD
Price: $25.50
Catalog #: DSV 001DVD
Die Schachtel in collaboration with O' artspace proudly presents a deluxe DVD featuring six experimental films by New York-based composer, photographer and filmmaker Phill Niblock from the late-1960s. Anybody familiar with Niblock would probably characterize his work by the sound of his long, sonorous drones, producing rich overtones usually combined with a visual element -- since before moving into composition, Niblock was an active photographer and filmmaker. While he usually is known for his films from the Movement Of People Working series alongside performances of his music, Niblock's early works stand apart as unique objects. The integrity and consistency of his style is fully on display in these seldomly-seen or screened 16mm sound films wonders that include: Morning (1966-1969) from an idea by Phill Niblock and Jean Claude Van Itallie, filmed by PN, text by Lee Worley and Michael Corner, with members of the Open Theater group. Starring Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Cynthis Harris, Sharon Gans, Joseph Chaikin; text read by Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Barbara Porte, Dorothy Lyman, Michael Corner. Black & white 16mm film. The Magic Sun (1966-1968) with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, music by Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Filmed on high-contrast black & white 16mm film. Dog Track (1969) -- a film by Phill Niblock, with a found text read by Barbara Porte. Color 16mm film. Annie (1968) -- a portrait of the dancer Ann Danoff, with a sound collage soundtrack. Color 16mm film. Max (1966-19) -- an image collage film/portrait of percussionist/sound-artist Max Neuhaus, with a collage soundtrack by Max Neuhaus. Black & white 16mm film. Raoul (1968-1969) -- a portrait of the painter Raoul Middleman, with extensive use of time-lapse film technique. The soundtrack is improvised by Raoul Middleman and Phill Niblock. Color 16mm film. Limited edition of 500 copies. NTSC, all-region DVD, stereo, 4:3 format. Run-time: 65 minutes.


Artist: Å
Title: Å
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 001CD
"Å is a young Italian trio on violin, exotic percussions, Theremin, synth and piano, who created a remarkably original world of sound. Although one can hear occasional influences from kraut rock style and the early minimalism, this music is unique in its sense of sound, space and time. An imaginative, nostalgic, meditative, bizarre and courageous music. This is the first title in a new Die Schachtel series (ZEIT) dedicated to the most innovative and intelligent music coming out of Italy."


Artist: PETRONELLA, ANGELO
Title: Sintesi Da Un Diario
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 002CD
"Angelo Petronella has been working as a composer and sound artist for many years, and has developed a very personal vision on the narrative qualities of acousmatics, which he pursues with millimetric precision and obsessive passion. In Sintesi da un Diario (Abstract from a Diary), he has created a rich and complex soundscape made of distant and future memories, imaginary places and countless possible stories."


Artist: CHRISTA PFANGEN
Title: Watch Me Getting Back The End
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 003CD
"Christa Pfangen are Andrea Belfi and Mattia Coletti. The name is an homage to Nico, although the music has obviously no relation with the icon of the New York avant garde scene. They belong to the new electroacoustic/improv/avant-rock scene which is taking shape in Italy and includes such names as 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, Valerio Tricoli, Å, Stefano Pilia and others. Working with percussion, treated guitar and an array of different objects and noises, they have given birth to a dynamic work of great beauty and reverberating rhythms, oscillating between avant-folk and electroacoustic music."


Artist: BACHI DA PIETRA
Title: Non Io
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 004CD
"Bachi da Pietra ('The stone worms') is a two-men band whose dark and resonating music wraps around tunes of desolate candor and lyrics (in Italian) as dark and imaginative as broken love can be. A relentless drumming hovers over a huge wash of ride cymbal and a deep, plaintive voice, which is able to capture sadness, anger and yearning. The entire album is a visceral emotional journey: the dissonant blues-based songs develop around the steady drone of the singer's voice, a trance-inducing vocal presence singing of grim meditations on life that are crafted and performed with disarming sincerity. Just like the mysterious and enigmatic characters that orbited their doom-laden, disturbing world, Bachi da Pietra is an unpredictable band that leaves the listeners feeling vulnerable, moved, and sometimes totally spaced-out."


Artist: BOSETTI, ALESSANDRO
Title: Exposé
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 005CD
"Based on a series of 33 musical ideas written, printed, framed and 'exposed' in a recent installation in Milan, Exposé is the first of a new cycle of works as well as the result of Alessandro Bosetti's fascination with speech loops. The mesmerizing voice of Audrey Chen, endlessly repeating the same sentence over the entire duration of each piece, is full of musical nuances, and it rewards close attention. The result is a weird and fascinating experience, that takes the listener through a surreal sonic space. The misty, microtonal electronics and instrumental layers are arranged and recorded in an extremely precise fashion. The slowly shifting speech-derived rhythmical patterns provide a subtle, low-key backdrop to the vocal parts, perhaps suggesting the option of adopting an ambient-like listening strategy, while at the same time the use of headphones will enhance the work's strangely compelling blend of the surreal and hypnotic."


Artist: 7K OAKS
Title: 7000 Oaks
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 008CD
2008 release. A fierce and hypnotic music that wildly combines free jazz with elements of contemporary music, electroacoustic and microtonal interplays. 7k OAKS -- Massimo Pupillo (Zu, Original Silence) Luca Venitucci (Zeitkratzer, Ossatura) Alfred 23 Hart (Cassiber, Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet) Fabrizio Spera (Ossatura, Blast) -- manage to build up and maintain a feverish tension of uncompromising intensity.


Artist: FARAVELLI, ATTILA
Title: Underneath The Surface
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 010CD
2009 release. Since the very first notes, this music appears to be about memory, decay and subversion. It is a deep investigation on the ability of sounds to freely attract or reject each other, in accordance with their own nature and disposition, and still maintain their meaning. Combining dense, multilayered sheets of synthetic sounds, treated bass, electronic percussion, the six tracks reveal their non-architectural principle as the music develops through warm textural details, reverberations, underlying melodies, like microscopic events happening in a dim light underneath the surface. Italian experimentalist Attila Faravelli also appears in the project Tumble on the Musica Improvvisa (ZEITIMP 001/010) box set. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Housed in a tri-fold digipak.


Artist: 3/4HADBEENELIMINATED
Title: Oblivion
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 011CD
This is the fourth album and long-awaited return of Italian quartet 3/4HadBeenEliminated. The group (guitarist/double bassist Stefano Pilia, turntablist/sound assembler Claudio Rocchetti, tape manipulator/vocalist/guitarist Valerio Tricoli and percussionist Toni Arrabito) has created a work which is at the same time new and refreshing and yet completely consistent with their vision: a deep interaction between human, environment, traditional instruments and live electronics that creates a floating atmosphere filled with a natural energetic flow, which borders on the psychedelic. Thanks to the versatile use of the voice, capable of experimenting with new solutions and suggestive ways of emission, and to the instrumental and electronic atmosphere, they are able to create a three-dimensional space that switches between a concrete, rough world and a dream-like one. Oblivion is a further confirmation of the outstanding talent of these Italian musicians.


Artist: RATTI, NICOLA
Title: 220 Tones
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 012CD
The Die Schachtel label presents a work that points out a crucial turning point in the artistic life of the well-known Italian guitarist and composer Nicola Ratti. In 220 Tones, Nicola Ratti chooses to play instruments that cannot live without electric tension, such as the synthesizer, Farfisa organ, record player, electric guitar, reel-to-reel recorder and CRT television. The relationship between the material instruments and the non-material electrical flow brightens the instruments themselves and creates a deep energy as well as an intense atmosphere that streams through the whole piece. The perfect balance between all these features is proficiently combined with the mastery of the musician as well as the imagination of the composer, making the listener feel the charm and seduction of live performance much more than the usual recording dimension.


Artist: 7K OAKS
Title: Entelechy
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEIT 013CD
This is the second full-length album by the experimental/free-jazz quartet 7k Oaks, live-recorded in concert at the InterAct Festival in Hasselt. This new release is at the same time a confirmation of their musical background as well as an exploration of new territories: about an hour of full-blast energy, with a variety of directions ranging from walls of electro-acoustic noise to free-jazz bursts, hypnotic rhythmic patterns and lyrical melodic themes. It is the entelechy of an acorn to be an oak tree: the music flows naturally through the tracks of the disc, thanks to the mastery of these outstanding performers, able to drive the listener amongst the unexpected twists of their music in order to appreciate every pleat of their timbre. In short, Entelechy has it all: Alfred 23 Harth's (Cassiber, Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Quintet) blistering tenor squall, Fabrizio Spera's (Ossatura, Blast) limitless percussion, Luca Venitucci's (Zeitkratzer, Ossatura) ceaselessly inventive keys and Massimo Pupillo's (Zu, Original Silence) masterful bass creates, unquestionably, a masterpiece.


Artist: ZURRIA, MANUEL
Title: Repeat!
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 3CD
Price: $31.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 001CD
2008 release. The restless experimentation and creativity of Manuel Zurria (of Alter Ego fame) has resulted in a brilliant series of collaborative works with legendary composers such as Luc Ferrari, Alvin Lucier, Arvo Part, John Cage, Morton Feldman, László Sáry, Louis Andriessen, Aldo Clementi, Zoltan Jeney, Stefano Scodanibbio, Salvatore Sciarrino, Jonathan Harvey and Kevin Volans. A truly stunning mixture of electronic and longform electro-acoustic pieces, repetitive ethnic rhythms, drones and delay, field recordings, flute and the human voice.


Artist: DE SIMONE, GIROLAMO
Title: Shama
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 002CD
2008 release. Composer and performer Girolamo De Simone emerged from the "new avant-garde" scene which arose in Naples in the late '70s around his "maestro" Luciano Cilio. De Simone in fact played several parts on Cilio's highly-acclaimed 2004 release Dell'Universo Assente. The compositions featured here are like intimate and introspective miniatures, full of melancholy and a sense of sweet decay. Blending acoustic and electronic particles, De Simone creates a fascinating osmotic process of great beauty and delicacy.


Artist: ARCHETTI, LUIGI
Title: Null
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 003CD
Die Schachtel presents an album by Switzerland-based composer, experimenter, guitarist and visual artist Luigi Archetti. Null is a monolithic, sinister and doomy drone masterpiece. Oscillating in filigree nuances, the modulation of a drone that seems to last an eternity alone indicates that the sense of real time has been canceled, while, at the same time, another acoustic track surfaces like a distant memory, only to disappear again. A universe of sound particles spreads out, in which the sounds provide no references to a possible location. What the ear might consider to be the crunching sound of snow crusts, the deep droning of ice breaking, the scraping of migrating glaciers is often merely an acoustic hallucination, while actually the sounds have been composed using the finest of sound particles, which Archetti's ear has taken from completely different sources, such as the hum of generators, or the white noise of a blank video tape being played, or drone sounds created with the E-bow, which he extracts from his electric guitar (often with scordatura tuning). An intermediate realm is created in which acoustic sedimentations are layered into a sound tapestry so dense, that it feels like there is almost no air left to breathe or to hear with anymore. But it also draws one in like an invitation to journey further into unexplored regions, a journey through timeless and spare acoustic events with a rivetingly hypnotic effect. Housed in a deluxe tri-fold digipack edition.


Artist: COLUCCINO, OSVALDO
Title: Neuma Q
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 004CD
The new addition to the Die Schachtel Composers series, Osvaldo Coluccino's Neuma Q is an utter immersion into the purest electronic sound, exploring a broad spectrum of electroacoustic phenomena, low-end drone, magically-constructed and sequenced in a way that preserves its intimate feel. The composer serves as a seismograph of both the inner and the outer world and the composition as a record of a momentary musical horizon that combines four pieces that defy any standard modern music evaluation criteria and explore new spaces of sound. Osvaldo Coluccino (1963), is a composer and poet. His compositions have been commissioned by Biennale Musica (Biennale of Venice), Milano Musica (Teatro alla Scala), Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI (RAI Nuova Musica), and Compagnia per la Musica in Rome, and have also been performed at several international festivals.


Artist: PETRONELLA, ANGELO
Title: Rimandi E Scoperte
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 005CD
Long-awaited new album by the enigmatic Italian composer and sound artist Angelo Petronella, in a superb piece of electroacoustic microsound, intertwining scrupulous minimalism, environmental recordings, and an intense glacial drone nebula. Angelo Petronella is a missing link, a unique artist drifting to and fro between classic instrumentations and electronics. He was raised on the drums, the initiator of the legendary InsiemeMusicaDiversa collective ensemble in the mid-'70s, then fell in love with the early synthesizer and computer. He turned his attention to sound installation and field recordings, and the range of sound worlds he has traveled so far, with brilliant but little known results, encompasses classical instrumentations, tape manipulation and state-of-the-art computers.


Artist: MCDONAS & STEFANO SCODANIBBIO, THOLLEM
Title: On Debussy's Piano And...
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 006CD
Die Schachtel is proud to present a recording that embodies the virtuosity of piano soloist/composer Thollem McDonas and contrabass soloist/composer Stefano Scodanibbio, in the spirit of Claude Debussy's rebellious creativity. As Terry Riley wrote: "Anyone who has heard Thollem or Scodanibbio as a soloist might well imagine what a combination of their unique genius could produce. Awesome, well-matched virtuosos in an ocean of sound." During the listening of this CD, you will witness the renowned talent of Scodanibbio, a 21st century Paganini, whose innovations on the contrabass inspired some of the most important composers of the 20th century, such as Cage, Berio, Scelsi and Stockhausen. Thollem devised the improvisational scheme specifically for this occasion, demonstrating once again his distinctive sound and his unique approach to music. This album was recorded on the only piano Claude Debussy owned the last 14 years of his life, kindly loaned by the City of Brive-La-Gaillard and Musée Labenche of Art and History. Thollem and Scodanibbio's improvisational style creates a sonic flow, resulting in a unique combination of historical and contemporary musical genius. In his liner notes for this album Terry Riley continues, "an imaginative idea, wonderfully realized with virtuosity, improvisational mastery and intuitive communication of deep sensibility all residing here in the magical marriage of their artistry."


Artist: SELVAFIORITA & VALERIO TRICOLI, FABIO
Title: Death By Water
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 007CD
This is a four-handed musique concrète composition by electroacoustic Italian composers Fabio Selvafiorita and Valerio Tricoli. This single-track piece was conceived and realized between Milan and the Giudecca Island, in Venice, which is the location of the field recordings and reel-to-reel tape treatments. The work stresses and questions the dramatic and alchemical potential of a musical landscape marked by water: visceral and metaphysical at the same time, full of narrative suggestions. Death By Water is intended as a comment on the fourth movement of T. S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land," with its theme of renewal and regeneration.


Artist: CORNER & MANUEL ZURRIA, PHILIP
Title: Joy Flashings
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 008CD
A joyful product of mutual understanding between these two outstanding composers, described by Manuel Zurria in the booklet with the following words: "Philip gave me the key to enter a secret and wonderful room, full of fabulous things and made me discover a part of me I did not know." Much more than a journey through sound, this work is a reflection on our modern world and the role played by music and soundscapes. It's a journey through traditional instruments and modern techniques of sound production, from the usual electronic ones to the ultimate icon of contemporary society: the iPhone. Here, music has been reduced to a mere suggestion, a medium used in order to discover the potential of the player, plucking at his heartstrings. The wide range of sounds shares a common feature of the composers' will: to experience music as a whole, without limits and boundaries related to the specific instrumental destination. Two worlds melt here and the result of this blessed encounter is well expressed by the title.


Artist: ARCHETTI, LUIGI
Title: Null II/Null III
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 2CD
Price: $20.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 009CD
Null II and Null III are the second and third part of Italian/Swiss composer Luigi Archetti's massive electronic work on the theme of "nothing" ("Null"), whose first part saw the light with the 2010 Die Schachtel "Null" edition in the ZeitComposers series (ZEITC 003CD). Within these pieces, Archetti's thick sound-drones border on the edge of tonality as their many layers develop with a sort of "geological" pace. The work is in fact intended as musical research on the "interior" of sound, obtained by large masses of sound punctuated by seemingly minimalistic details. The mastery of Luigi Archetti conducts the listener deeply inside the musical event, while at the same time introducing a model, just like the traces of a gold seam in rocks, which the listener can follow and frequently re-encounter over the 140 minutes in which the music unfolds. The result is a trance-inducing sense of slow-motion and even stillness, alternating with subtle changes often obtained only by tiny, almost "invisible" variables. Null is a vast and profound place where perception is confronted with a stream of slow-developing, sometime "still" sound. Null II and Null III will certainly appeal to fans of Eliane Radigue, Thomas Köner and long and sustained drone electronic music in general.


Artist: TRAVERSA, MARTINO
Title: Critical_Path
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: CD
Price: $17.00
Catalog #: ZEITC 010CD
Martino Traversa is a very well-known Italian composer who studied at Salzburg's Mozarteum, at the CCRMA at Stanford University and with Luigi Nono from 1987 to 1989. Critical_Path presents for the first time ever a selection of his electronic music works, composed between 2000 and 2008. Besides being a prolific composer, Martino is a very active cultural promoter: he founded the Ensemble Edgard Varèse in 1990, with Luigi Nono's support; in 1991 he launched "Traiettorie," a highly-reputed international festival of modern and contemporary music in Parma, where he is also Professor of Music at the University. He recently established the Casa del Suono in Parma, a place entirely devoted to new music events. The most important piece on this CD is undoubtedly "Variations Upon A Labyrinth" (2000), prompted by two of the most significant personalities of Italian avant-garde, the poet Edoardo Sanguineti and the composer Luciano Berio. The piece is in fact based on the "Laborintus" text by Edoardo Sanguineti, read by the poet himself, whose voice is electronically treated by the composer, becoming a sort of maze of sound and meaning. "NGC 253" (2007) is a sort of virtual sound sculpture realized for the outstanding "Sonic Chandelier" installed in the Casa del Suono. The Chandelier consists of 228 speakers precisely distributing sounds in the area below the installation, giving the listeners the feeling that the sound is coming from invisible sources moving just above and around their heads. This site-specific work's main constituent is anything else but 253 milliseconds of noise, taken from an old vinyl recording that undergoes a subtle transformation, evolving and wandering in different time and spatial dimensions, but always following a spiral pattern, falling from the top to the bottom of the acoustic space as a sort of "quantistic rain of sounds." This is not the only composition inspired by a specific site: "Coming To The Temple Of Asclepion" was composed after a visit to the ancient temple situated on top of one of the hills of the Greek island of Kos, where the surrounding sounds are greatly evocative: waves breaking on the rocks and the shrill of cicadas in a landscape made mainly of blue sky. Taking inspiration from these sounds (and far from any New-Ageish reference), the composition is a sort of programmed crescendo that builds up to a drama: a high level of noise is followed by a sudden, immense silence. What remains is the image of the "écume des mer" that climbs up the hill, bringing with it the voices of the thousands of men and women that lived there, just to make us remember once again the fragility of the human existence. Last but not least, "Critical_Path" is a composition that once again starts from natural sounds, like wind and water, and the sound of traditional instruments like the piano, and aims to explore the intrinsic properties of the nature of each sound, in order to define a specific abstract reference model. It is realized through a sound-generation engine based on a new type of synthesis and sound models. The new sounds are multiform, almost protean, as different structures and reference models coming from different sounds co-exist within them. A great "electronic" premiere for a composer definitely worth exploring.


Artist: VA
Title: Musica Improvvisa
Label: DIE SCHACHTEL (ITALY)
Format: 10CD BOX+DVD
Price: $75.00
Catalog #: ZEITIMP 001/010
Musica Improvvisa is a cutting-edge project of multi-sensorial improvisation, an open dialogue among different musical experiences, narratives and aesthetics that charters the unexplored soundscape of the telluric territory of the new improvised music from Italy. Ten groups that span from the South to the North of Italy, from the well-known to the totally obscure, whose music goes from a harsh assault to the ear to a visionary post-electronic/post-everything free-form structure. The brilliant outcome has been lovingly packaged by Die Schachtel in a deluxe box featuring 10 full-length CD albums in a series of painstakingly-designed individual CD/LP sleeves, plus an additional DVD of visual scores to accompany CD4 PLUS a 24-page booklet AND a poster. DVD format: 16:9, PAL, region free, Stereo 2.0, Surround 5.1, total time: 45 minutes. Artists include: A Spirale, Amp 2, Amuleto, An Experiment In Navigation, Ligatura, Ossatura, Thau, Tumble, Wintermute, Xubuxue (CD+DVD).

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