Browse by Artist: SHARP, ELLIOTT

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Arc 2: The Seventies
Label:	ATAVISTIC
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	ALP 092CD

"The 2nd release in E. Sharp's series of archival digs -- a collection of live & studio recordings dating back to 1972, simultaneously demonstrating the depth, breadth and futuristic scope of his unique musical vision. The textures on Arc 2 range from fuzzed-out hyperguitar choirs, machine rhythms & free improvisation, to microtonal elegies and proto-ambient soundscapes. Elliott's intensely percussive techniques are deployed on all types of implements including tenor saxophones, acoustic guitars, and his fascinating home-brewed string instruments."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Tectonics Errata Vol. 1
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40702CD

First in a series of archival recordings from the Elliott Sharp vaults. Performed and composed by Elliott Sharp. Recorded at Studio zOaR New York, 1998. "The roots of my Tectonics project may be found in my early fascination with all things futuristic and electronic. I read science-fiction from my youngest days and planned to become a scientist... At Bard College and in graduate studies at the University of Buffalo, I worked with EML and Moog synthesizers and the Music IV programming language and began developing projects that would incorporate analog sequencers and synthesized percussion mixed with improvised guitars and reeds using extended techniques and processed with modulators, filters, and tape delay. This approach extended into instrument building and design including the slabs, pantars, violinoids, as well as fretless guitars plus doubleneck and 8-string guitarbasses with extended range. Conceptually, the music drew upon chaos theory and fractal geometry, algorithmic approaches, and acoustic phenomena... The third Tectonics CD, Errata (first released by the Knitting Factory in 1998) delved deeply into chaos and glitches, saturated timbres and hyper-pixillated rhythms."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	SyndaKit Vol. 2
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40703CD

Performed by: Orchestra Carbon: Judith Insell (viola); Rea Mochiach (percussion); Zeena Parkins (electric harp); Jim Pugliese (percussion); Ted Reichman (accordion); Marc Sloan (electric bass); Tim Smith (bass clarinet); David Soldier (violin); Evan Spritzer (bass clarinet); Joseph Trump (drums & percussion); David Weinstein (synthesizer and sampler); Elliott Sharp (electroacoustic guitar). Recorded December 1998. "Composed in 1998 for my ensemble Orchestra Carbon, SyndaKit utilizes a collection of biological metaphors to create an ever-shifting rhythmic and timbral matrix. Improvisatory and algorithmic but not improvisation, SyndaKit's essence is a transformative organism consisting of 144 composed cores on 12 sheets divided among the 12 players with a set of simple rules for their use through processes of imitation, addition, recombination, transposition, and mutation. These actions are based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Larynx Vol. 3
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40704CD

"Larynx is an analogy; the orchestra as a throat. It follows as corollary to the throat as orchestra: throat singing as practiced by the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic and the hoomii singing of Mongolia, as well as by related jawharp techniques found throughout the world. The natural overtone series is the melodic core of much of these musics and of much of Larynx. Ratios derived from the Fibonacci Series are used to generate tunings and melodic/harmonic material for the strings, brass, slabs, pantars and doubleneck guitarbass, as well as rhythmic material for the ensemble." Performers: Samm Bennett (drums & percussion); Lesli Dalaba (trumpet & slab); David Fulton (trombone, slab, pantar); Ken Heer (trombone, slab, pantar); David Linton (drums); Charles K. Noyes (drums); Bobby Previte (drums); Jim Staley (trombone); Soldier String Quartet: Saura Seaton (violin), David Soldier (violin), Ron Lawrence (viola), Mary Wooten (cello); Elliott Sharp (doubleneck guitarbass, soprano sax, tenor sax, bass clarinet and sampler). Recorded and mixed at BC Studio, Brooklyn, New York, June-October 1987.

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Rheo~Umbra
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40706CD

"'Flow of shadows' is how I would translate the composite neolog title of this 1997 work for Orchestra Carbon and how I might describe the musical gestures therein. In seven sections, 'Rheo~Umbra' layers through composed materials, algorithmic strategies for the ensemble, and improvisations by various soloists. The algorithmic approaches include the 'transient additive pulse' where a percussive hit and its reverberations morph into a pulsing groove. There are also hockets and phased looping/transformation of the composed material designed to gradually translate the horizontal -- notes and lines -- into vertical simultaneities. The overall sound design of the composition is an important structural element with the two keyboardists playing samples constructed by me and derived from my own extended techniques on soprano saxophone and bass clarinet as well as an array of sounds produced on the slabs, sounds then layered with their 'live' manifestations." --Elliott Sharp

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Spring & Neap
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40708CD

"'Spring & Neap' -- a central event during Carbon's 1996 Japanese tour was the Music Merge Festival taking place over 3 days at Tokyo's Shinjuku Pit Inn and bringing together a diverse and international collection of wonderful musicians including Michiyo Yagi, Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Jim O'Rourke, Yumiko Tanaka, David Grubbs and more. In addition to sets from Carbon and my solo Tectonics project, I was asked to create an algorithmic structure that I would conduct, composed for a small orchestra made up of players from the festival. Re:Iterations -- it was a happy coincidence that Paul Dunkel (Associate Conductor of the American Composers Orchestra) contacted me in January 1986 about a commissioned piece for the orchestra at the same time that I had been thinking about applying my Fibonacci-series work to an ensemble of strings, essentially re-orchestrating ideas evolved on the guitar. As I was completing Re:Iterations, another useful coincidence: David Soldier had formed the Soldier String Quartet and asked me for a composition for their debut concert at the Miller Theater in NYC. I decided to re-orchestrate Re:Iterations for quartet -- 'Tessalation Row' was the result. Both pieces use the Fibonacci series to generate tunings, rhythms, and forms. All pitches are played on open strings (tuned to 1/1, 3/2, 5/3, 8/5) or overtones of those open strings. The score uses graphic modules which contain information on the various operations to be performed and give exact rhythmic, timing and pitch information. There are times when the players can vary the overtone melodies and timbres in a section but strictly within the parameters indicated in the score, not improvising. I was very concerned with identity -- the ability of sonic flux and internal detail to vary greatly in each performance without destroying the essence and exact proportions of the piece."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Spectropia Suite
Label:	NEOS (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$21.00
Catalog #:	NEOS 40905CD

Original soundtrack to the film Spectropia, performed by Elliott Sharp with The '31 Band; Sirius Sting Quartet & Debbie Harry (Blondie). "Spectropia is both a full-length feature film and an interactive media event set in a possible England in 2099, and in New York City in 1931 after the stock market crash. Directed by Toni Dove, it tells a story of time travel and supernatural possession to explore the disorders brought on by consumer culture. For the score, I endeavored to create two different noir soundworlds: for the future, one of distressed computers and tortured guitars -- for New York 1931, one based on an imagined meeting of the musics of Duke Ellington and Edgar Var�se. The song 'This Time That Place' appears in various versions heard throughout the film: as a tango, as a feedbacked guitar solo, as a swing tune, a classical piano etude, and as a rock ballad sung by the great Debbie Harry of Blondie. To perform Spectropia Suite, I assembled an ensemble of musicians, The '31 Band, all of whom have extensive experience in many realms of music. All have worked with me on many projects, from the various Western traditions of jazz and classical music to the farthest reaches of contemporary music, free jazz, and improvisation. We recorded the music in the traditional manner of a film orchestra, cue by cue (though not working to picture as most of the timings were not that precise.) Overdubbing, editing, and processing all took place at my Studio zOaR including the tender yet sardonic vocals of Ms. Harry. This music has evolved from a set of cues into a suite for performance with The '31 Band expanding on the written material with solos and other interpretive actions by the players." -- Eliot Sharp, 2009

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Xenocodex
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7016

"The Soldier String Quartet performs two extended compositions from the master of fractals: the psychedelic transformations of 'Xtopia' and the dark, jagged snapshots of 'Intifada.'" Sharp plays Buchla Thunder, fretless guitar, clarinet in addition. "Xtopia" is a lovely real-time approach to Elliott's re-assemblage techniques (prev. documented by "Crytid Fragments," where string materials were radically sculptured through time-expansion/compression, pitch-shifting, filtering, editing, etc.).

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	String Quartets 1986-1996
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7084

"Elliott Sharp is one of the downtown's most consistently original composers and a wildly versatile string player, whether it be on bass, electric guitar, or one of his whacky homemade hybrids. His music is rhythmic and intense, often drawing upon mathematical models such as the Fibonacci series, fractals or chaos theory for inspiration. With the release of String Quartets 1986-1996 all of Sharp's work for this classic format is now available exclusively on Tzadik. Performed by his longtime associates The Soldier String Quartet and the virtuosic Meridian Quartet many consider this to be his best and most challenging music to date."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Figure Ground
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7505

"Sharp's most eclectic album to date. Using guitars, saxophones, computers, analog synthesizers and kitchen sink, Sharp performs powerful scores for four films including Daddy & the Muscle Academy (a documentary on the life of pioneering gay fetish cartoonist Tom Of Finland) and The Salt Mines (a documentary about transvestite prostitutes living in salt warehouses in NYC). Sharp's music is as varied and eccentric as the films he writes for." Some really great loopy characteristics, processed patterns for guitar, and rhythmically inventive -- totally worth the time to listen.

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	Suspension Of Disbelief
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 7512

"Elliott Sharp is one of the most versatile composer/performers on the downtown scene -- a musician who has embraced free jazz, funk, blues, contemporary classical, rock, world music and distilled them all into his own unique amalgam. Suspension of Disbelief is his most varied album to date and is one of the few CDs that showcase the full range of his talents as a composer/multi-instrumentalist performer and recording engineer/producer. A fascinating compilation of sweeping electronics, jungle/jazz/psychedelia, fragmented sonics and distorted club sounds from one of the masters of downtown border crossing."

Artist:	SHARP, ELLIOTT
Title:	String Quartets: 2002-2007
Label:	TZADIK
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	TZ 8052

"This is the second CD in a series presenting the complete string quartets of composer/performer/producer/instrument builder Elliott Sharp, one of the busiest and most consistently inventive figures in the downtown scene. Elliott has forged a unique language blending computer science, fractals, improvisation and mathematics, and his dynamic compositions for string quartets are some of the best work in his catalog. Brilliantly performed by the dynamic Sirius Quartet, who has a history with Sharp's music that goes back decades, this is intense and imaginative new music from one of the most unique compositional voices working today."

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