Browse by Label: RECOMMENDED (UK)

Artist:	BIOTA
Title:	Object Holder BOX VERSION
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD BOX
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	RER BCD4BOX

A limited edition box set version of the 4th Biota CD (the regular version is now deleted), produced by the band in limited quantities back in 1995. A simple card box with rubberstamped cover encloses the CD (same as the regular edition), and attached to the bottom inside of the box is a small original painting by various Biota members -- in the same style as the fantastic art that has graced their releases since day one. If you've never gotten this album, your opportunity to get a one-off deluxe version has never been greater. Limited stock.

Artist:	CAMBERWELL NOW
Title:	All's Well
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	DUP 022CD

The complete works of this post-This Heat band featuring Charles Hayward, recorded 1982-1986. Featuring these original releases: Meridian, The Ghost Trade & Greenfingers LP/EPs. "This definitive edition collects the entire released output of Camberwell Now (two EPs and an LP), newly re-mastered by the band and repackaged with full notes, lyrics, additional photographs and artwork. Chronologically, Camberwell Now immediately succeeded This Heat, Charles Hayward continuing to work with This Heat's last bassist Trefor Goronwy, and the two of them joining forces with Stephen Rickard who, for the new band, designed his unique 'cassette switchboard,' a kind of proto-sampler -- though that's not the half of it (Steve's article fully explaining the device is reprinted in the new, expanded booklet that comes with the CD). Musically, Camberwell both followed and departed from the style of This Heat. Formally and gesturally there are common elements, but there is far greater transparency and the sound palette is quite different: the music is more placed than grown, as the slow accumulation and evolution of material in This Heat gives way to a more immediate and orderly development of the material in Camberwell Now. The songs -- nostalgic, scary, and quietly desperate -- peer into the future to find harbour but confront only fragments of ruin. Debris and disturbance eat away at the root and corrode each shiny surface (mostly the musical work of the cassette switchboard). The juxtaposition of powerful, virtuosic playing and the eerie, often unidentifiable keenings, chords and constant motion of the cassettes is one of the things that make Camberwell Now so expressive of its time -- when the whole social and political fabric of a no-longer-great Britain was unravelling. Camberwell Now worked and recorded in Cold Storage, and toured intermittently through Europe between 1983 and 1986, when they disbanded."

Artist:	OSSATURA/TIM HODGKINSON
Title:	Dentro
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER 01

"Improvisation represents the backbone of the music played by Italian group Ossatura. Their music is marked by a sequence of sound blocks and diversified interlocking timbres and shapes, where detailed textural work alternates with rhythmic accelerations and highly dense sound events. For Dentro they are joined by former Henry Cow-man Tim Hodgkinson to produce an electro-acoustic collaboration that Chris Cutler described as being: 'somewhere between musique-concrete and a kind of abstract improvisational work, using extended techniques and electrification that disconnects sound from any recognizable source."

Artist:	OSSATURA
Title:	Verso
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER 02

"Improvisation is the main raison d'être for this Italian trio, who met in the mid 90's, and are now one of the leading groups on the international improvising circuit. ReR released their first CD Dentro -- a collaboration with ex Henry Cow man Tim Hodgkinson -- in 1998. It was an extremely dense concoction, where blocks of sound were manoeuvred about like large objects on a building site. For their new album Ossatura have mostly abandoned the acoustic instruments which featured heavily on Dentro. Verso focuses on the electronic noise making gadgets they have built or acquired over the years. Without the ameliorating affect of 'real' instruments the sound is more stark, more elemental, and the textures are more open. It's a series of almost violent electronic interventions, in their words 'highly dense sound events'. At times it's like being trapped inside the entrails of a sci fi computer game, as one is bombarded by sonic debris. At others the music settles into hypnotic repeating gestures. Its great to hear electronic music produced by real players, in real time -- a million miles from the pre-programmed lap top fare which has recently threatened to dominate the scene."

Artist:	ART BEARS
Title:	Hopes & Fears
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER AB1

New digipak reissue of the first Art Bears album, originally issued by Recommended in 1978. Fred Frith : guitars, keyboards, bass, violin; Dagmar Krause: voice; Chris Cutler: percussion. With: Tim Hodgkinson: keyboards, woodwinds; Georgie Born: Bass, cello;

       Lindsay Cooper: bassoon, oboe, soprano sax, recorders. "Originally recorded as a Henry Cow album (but eventually assigned to the trio of Art Bears), during the late 70's this grouping made one of the most powerful statements yet in the world of Art-Rock. Whereas Henry Cow showed an inclination to write long-ish compositions interspersed with improvisational aspects, Art Bears' approach combined a more lyrical display, with shorter, extended-song forms. Typically, the word-strong poetry of drummer Chris Cutler was the impetus for the group's recordings. Once written, it was set to music by multi-instrumentalist Fred Frith, (often in a spur-of-the-moment fashion) and was then extrapolated upon and built up by the group during the recording/mixing process in a way that usually validated the lyrical intent.

       Hopes And Fears shows the group at its most formidable stage in terms of composition. The pieces are often highly complex, with ideas that zig-zag through a maze of musical imagery, highlighting the group at their peak of virtuosity. Dagmar Krause's vocal prowess is stunningly effective, and the recording itself was edited in a sequence where repeating themes and studio wizardry present the album as a cycle of related, 'songs'. Of the best and most bizarre of the old school of Art-Rock."

Artist:	ART BEARS
Title:	Winter Songs
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER AB2

New digipak version; originally released 1978. "The Art Bears' second album consists of twelve songs of various tensions: rest vs. speed, improv vs. pulse, space vs. density, Dagmar Kraus' vocals vs. everyone else. As usual, Chris Cutler's lyrics tell political allegories through medieval-tinged stories: slaves, castles, and wheels of fortune (and industry) dominate. Fred Frith explores discordance through his guitar, and European folk figures through his always enjoyable violin. Though not as confrontational as their other work, the centerpiece has to be the frantic 'Rats and Monkeys' with three minutes of teeth-gritting, out-of-control insanity as all three players are plugged into a wall outlet and let rip."

Artist:	ART BEARS
Title:	The World as it is Today
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER AB3

New digipak version, of the third Art Bears album, originally released 1980. "If you thought Henry Cow was a pretty political band to start with, you may be even more taken aback by the Art Bears, which was put together following Henry Cow's demise by former Cows Chris Cutler (percussion), Fred Frith (guitar, violin), and Dagmar Krause (voice). On The World as it is Today and its predecessor, Winter Songs, the Art Bears move away from the long-form art rock of Henry Cow and get much, much more politically explicit: song titles like 'The Song of the Dignity of Labour Under Capital' and 'The Song of Investment Capital Overseas' almost sound like Monty Python gags today, but if any humor was intended it was clearly meant to be mordant. Frankly, the lyrics are so overwrought and portentous that it's hard to take them seriously. But the music is something else again. Cutler and Frith are natural collaborators; Cutler's drumming always rides a very fine line between the scattershot and the funky, while Frith bounces his horror-show guitar noise and carnival piano off of Cutler's grooves with manic abandon and fearsome inventiveness. And Krause's singing is just as inventive; she whoops, croons and screams her way through the density of Cutler's lyrics without a hesitation or misstep. Easy listening it isn't, but it's sure worth hearing. Frith fans, in particular, should consider this album a must-own."

Artist:	ART BEARS
Title:	Revisited
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$24.00
Catalog #:	RER AB4/5

2003 release; separate version of 2 of the bonus discs from the 6CD The Art Box. "As the years passed and technology marched on, the band decided to let some other artists (all of whom are well-known for their advanced focus on music thru innovation) to remix the three original albums. On Revisited, we are treated to how others perceive the importance of the Art Bears' back catalog by their own standards in the current studio world, using the resurrected master tapes as a starting point. In all cases the work is as radical today as it was when the band first offered it up a quarter of a century ago. Features remixes and reworksings by Bob Drake, Stevan Tickmeyer, Jon Rose, Christian Marclay, Thomas Dimuzio, Musci/Venosta/Mariani, Lars Pedersen (When), Warrick Swinney/Kalahari Surfers, Biota, The Residents, Otomo Yoshida/Ground Zero, and, well...too many more to mention here. You get the idea. It harkens the Art Bears' trilogy into a new era of technology, aesthetic and sound, all of which had yet to be introduced back when the albums were made. Also on these disks are previously unreleased concert recordings, a reissue of the 'Collapse' 45 rpm (from Ralph Records), a newly completed piece by the band aptly called, 'Rebirth' (which was hitherto a poem in the coveted 'Wintersongs' book), 'All Hail' from the Recommended Sampler."

Artist:	ART BEARS
Title:	The Art Box
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	6CD BOX
Price:	$90.00
Catalog #:	RER ABOX

"Art Bears -- The Art Box marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most eclectic, dynamic and productive creative alliances in the history of experimental music. Featuring legendary composer Fred Frith, groundbreaking percussionist Chris Cutler & vocalist Dagmar Krouse, this assembly of genius has made an 'incalculable' contribution to the post-context art-rock scene. A 6-CD set, the collection features the first 3 albums (Hopes & Fears, Winter Songs, The World As It Is Today) remastered and in their entirety, a 2-CD set of remixes & re-workings with contributions from Christian Marclay, The Residents, Ground Zero, Biota, & more, plus a bonus CD of previously unreleased material not available elsewhere."

Artist:	AFTER DINNER
Title:	Editions
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER ADCD

Repressed and available again for the first time in years. After Dinner was the Japanese group from the late 80s, let by vocalist Haco. This reissues their original ReR studio album from 1984, plus tracks from the live cassette release that followed, etc.. "...bizarre experimental 3D surround-sound, backwards/sped up/slowed down tape technique (before the days of sampling), complex but charming arrangements featuring a huge cast of Japanese instrumentalists. The influences are many: John Cage, nursery rhymes, cabaret, free-jazz, traditional folk music..."

Artist:	AMM
Title:	AMMusic 1966
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER AMMCD

Repressed, originally reissued in 1989. Monumental debut recording (originally issued by the Elektra recording company in far different times). "The classic first recording from 1966, with Cornelius Cardew, Eddie Prevost, Lou Gare, Keith Rowe and Lawrence Sheaf. One of the first attempts to bring Noise improvisation (radios, scraped guitars, prepared pianos) into popular culture. Essential and historic." See the Matchless label for the rest of AMM's discography.

Artist:	PELTONEN, AKI
Title:	Radio Banana
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER AP1

"Just when you think it's all over, along comes something completely unpredictable -- in this case, a modest but uncompromisingly original confection that mixes Latin brass arrangements (sort of), with great drumming, medium- wave radio and the many characters of the accordion. Simplicity, complexity, surprise, familiarity -- and all without undue fuss. The result seems exotic and new. It is also one of those releases that just fell through the door in an unassuming package and an absolute minimum of explanation. So there's not a lot more to say: Radio Banana is a record that wears its heart plainly on its sleeve. There's nothing hidden. It doesn't play by any genre rules, or fashion rules; it's just someone's idea of music. It's not sampled or assembled out of parts; it's just played, the old way, by human beings. The combination of elements may be inscrutable, but it was this combination, Aki says, that he wanted to hear. Aki Peltonen was born in 1963 and lives in Pori, a small town on the west coast of Finland, where he owns and runs a recording studio and a small P.A. company. Although he plays the accordion throughout, he says his main instrument is the guitar."

Artist:	BIOTA
Title:	Tumble
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BCD

A 1989 release, their first intended strictly as a CD issue. A loose, studio-only collective from Colorado, Biota's reputation is based on an unparalleled ability to create a reality-shaking wall of dense sound, though they generally limit themselves to acoustic instrumentation ("treated" to devastating levels). Pure sound aesthetic and attention to detail dominates every second of their various releases; few American sound artist collectives have ever maintained such sonic integrity for so long. "...where nothing is quite in focus, timing is distinctly idiosyncratic, and landmarks loom in and out of the fog."

Artist:	BIOTA
Title:	Object Holder
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BCD4

Biota's fourth CD finds the band expanding into new, almost recognizable styles (ie. songs!). "...the group's 12th major release... and its first to involve the singing of Susanne Lewis and percussion of Chris Cutler. These new voices join the delicate, Satie-like piano of C.W. Vrtacek amid the circus fray. The usual Biota trademarks are still present: dangerous studio-based sound processing, unsteady, tripping rhythms, strange, medieval fanfares, and undersea melodies featuring bizarre instruments."

Artist:	BIOTA
Title:	Invisible Map
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BCD5

"If fans of Biota were shocked by the pop songs that appeared for the first time on the previous Biota release, Invisible Map is going to send them reeling. They are sung by Genevieve Heistek, from the same school of Montreal musicians who spawned Godspeed You Black Emperor. The songs provide a central point around which Biota hang their esoteric production ideas. Crazy shawms suddenly spurt out of the mix, unsteady tripping rhythms from the drums counterpoint interlocking guitars, and unsettling sound processing pushes the material to the edge of oblivion. The tracks were built up from solo accordion or rubab, drums and guitar, and the whole piece is woven into an ambiguous cinematic journey. Mixing and effects were applied in real time, 'by hand'. This gives a wonderful spontaneous feel to the music, and Biota have made an art out of accepting and working with freak accidental effects."

Artist:	BIOTA
Title:	Half A True Day
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BCD6

"Six years in the making, this is the sixth CD released by ReR from the visual/sonic art group Biota. Unique in their history and method, Biota painstakingly construct complex, organic structures that mix extensive studio processing and musique concrète techniques, with a highly eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electronic resources: from kit drums, through medieval winds, strings and barrel organs, to early experimental electronic instruments. Their works are always performance driven and interleaved with successive stages of lamination, imbrication of parts, and radical pre- and post-processing. 'As the title suggests, in this new work a portion of a cycle -- a repeating segment of time -- is explored. We employed repeating and overlapping motifs of different lengths, allowing their staggered interaction to produce varying degrees of harmonization, dissonance, masking and reinforcement. Unpredictability of outcome was furthered by electronic processing -- both manual and automated, random and predetermined -- and by the appearance, taken out of context, of unrelated passages taken from earlier projects. Real-time performers had to interact with this instability as they constructed their contributions, and later as they gave form to the final composition. Although there are elements of chance at work in the process, the eventual architecture is intentional, and carefully worked. Mixing was done by hand and without the aid of computers, then the composition was assembled and integrated digitally.' --William Sharp, Biota. The interaction of staggered, overlapping elements reveals a changeable truth about the whole as the parts variously harmonize or dissent; reinforce or cloak one another in their unfolding. The project is, at heart, about uncertainty. Players encounter the shifting interplay between previously recorded parts juxtaposed with instrumental snippets -- out of context -- introduced from the group's archives. Electronic processing programs are employed to apply semi-random and semi-intentional alterations to the proceedings."

Artist:	BLAST
Title:	Altra Strata
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BLAST1

"Blast are a Netherlands-based avant rock and jazz quartet notable for compositionally complex music. Since forming in 1989, the band has worked to develop a sound both dense and kaleidoscopic, which uses elements of both intense composition and free improvisation. On Altra Strata, they play like a heavy metal band who've discovered new instruments and new music. With the addition of new drummer Fabrizio Spera of the Italian improvising ensemble Ossatura, there's an even greater emphasis on improvisation here than in the past, and this should strongly appeal to the new brigade of appreciators of free-music in this post Sonic Youth world. Altra Strata is a vibrant combination of influences from 20th century classical, the Rock In Opposition bands of the 1970's and a violent approach to free and composed avant music."

Artist:	BRAINVILLE 3 (DAEVID ALLEN, HUGH HOPPER, CHRIS CUTLER)
Title:	Trial By Headline
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BV3-1

"Three old hands out of Soft Machine, Gong and Henry Cow stretch already elastic musical material into various shapes, tie it in knots and generally have a good time. These high quality recordings combined with seat-of-the-pants playing make for a lot of feature and color, underpinning a music that is constantly in shape-shifting motion. Compiled from recent concert recordings in Berlin, London and Tel Aviv, this clutch of extended songs should be to the taste of anyone familiar with the protagonists, or who longs to hear a little more straightforward instrumental playing in place of computers, heavy production and highly-sanitized post-production. Well-seasoned musicality, fast-thinking and relaxed conversation at the edge of chaos."

Artist:	WOODBURY, BRIAN
Title:	Variety Orchestra
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BW1CD

"The Variety Orchestra is a sparkling new CD of melodic post-modern jazz compositions. The music is built around a one-of-a-kind line-up combining a driving jazz rhythm section, Latin and Big Band horns, and the down-home Americana of pedal steel, banjo, fiddles & accordion. This mix is peppered with tabla, new music violin, tone rows, NYC bar band, Satchmo cornet growls, and a 15th century brass chorale. The CD features phenomenal players from both coasts -- a who's who from New York's downtown and LA's experimental music scenes."

Artist:	CUTLER, CHRIS
Title:	Solo
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CC1

"Here at last, a solo electronic drum album from Chris Cutler, one of the world's most respected drummers. Sampling had become the electronic musician's instrument of choice, but early on Cutler decided this was not for him ?- it was too inflexible and non-interactive. He preferred to make and process sounds in real time, giving a direct, visceral and organic feeling to his playing, and allowing him to build compositions intuitively. Over the last seven years the kit has become fully electrified, with a sixteen-channel mixer, and an array of effects pedals. Drum sounds can be whipped up and down octaves, doused in wildly different reverbs, sent into eternal delays or unexpected reversals -- the whole gamut of possible effects can be applied to each individual drum or cymbal. This is the instrument heard on this CD, in recordings made at recent concerts in Europe and the USA."

Artist:	CUTLER, CHRIS
Title:	Twice Around the Earth
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CC2

"Compiled from source sounds that have been recorded in 81 different global locations, this remarkable new album collapses the planet into a Sargasso Sea of sound. The material was taken from Cutler's daily half hour radio programme for Resonance FM: Out Of The Blue Radio. 'The idea,' he explains, 'was to open a virtual window on to a different soundscape every day; to put the listener for 30 minutes into someone else's ears, somewhere in the world.' 247 contributors sent in 30 minute recordings made in real time at a location of their own choosing, but in the time window of the London broadcast (between 23,30 and midnight GMT). Cutler again: 'These were simple blocks of time whose content was uncontrollable. Contributors could choose where to be and what to be doing, but beyond that, whatever happened, happened.' The three pieces on this CD were made using only this material, unaltered, but organised into complex, self-generating narrative sequences. While relating to the specialised world of sound art and soundscape, these pieces go further: into meditations on listening and hearing; into the helpless drive of the human brain to locate meaning and generate pattern and significance. But also, and mainly, it's a fascinating hour of listening, delivering en route, puzzles, amazing coincidences and, tantalising fragments left unresolved: the earth keeps moving."

Artist:	CUTLER, CHRIS
Title:	There And Back Again Volume 2: On Memory
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CC3

"Like its companion Twice around the Earth, There and Back Again is derived from a selection of the 365 location recordings made for Cutler's daily Resonance FM radio program, 'Out of the Blue Radio' (2004-2005). It takes extracts from 44 of these environmental recordings to explore -- amongst other things -- the way memory works, and how the experience of passing time is constructed. That's subtext. More important, it should make enjoyably complex listening: surprising, serendipitous, mundane but alien -- the commonplace transfigured. There and Back Again offers an agglomeration of inadvertent sounds, made haphazardly by the world -- and some of its inhabitants that were never meant to survive, and were certainly not meant to be listened to repeatedly. And yet... since about a quarter of the locations, though not the extracts are the same as those on 'Twice,' reading across the two CDs adds another dimension of listening to the memory puzzle that these fleeting but permanent works explore. There and Back Again was commissioned by Deutschland Radio Kultur and was the subject of a special presentation at the Tesla sound art centre in Berlin."

Artist:	CUTLER/FRED FRITH, CHRIS
Title:	Two Gentlemen In Verona
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CCFF3

Chris Cutler: electrified drums/flotsam. Fred Frith: electric guitar/voice/jetsam. Recorded live April 16th, 1999 at Interzona -- Verona, Italy. "There must have been something special going on in Verona last April. By far the most aggressive of their duo albums, it leads us via howling fuzz guitar & machine gun percussion into walls of post-rock improvisation, obsessive industrial rhythms, and levels of excitement rarely generated by two people on a stage."

Artist:	CUTLER, CHRIS AND THOMAS DIMUZIO
Title:	Quake
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CCTD1

"This is ex-Henry Cow, Art Bears and Pere Ubu drummer Chris Cutler in improvised collaboration with electronic drone master Tom Dimuzio, recorded live in Portland, ME and Lowell, MA, 3/99. Chris performs on electric drum kit, Pin mikes & piezo mikes, Boss multi effects unit, pitch shifter, whammy pedal, digitec pds 8000, egg slicer, bows, steel bars, and beaters. Tom performs on digital sampler, shortwave radio, and CD player. The sampler allows for live sampling and processing, taking feeds from Chris, the shortwave radio and CD sound sources. A maelstrom of subterranean scrappings, violent tectonic displacements, and occasional cataclysmic beats. Watch out for the sustained notes and and melodies pouring out of the electrified drum kit. In Cutler's hands, the whole instrument is wired like an electric guitar, then Dimuzio reprocesses it all, draping the soundscape in yards of black velvet. Having said all of that, the music can also be surprisingly subtle & gentle."

Artist:	CUTLER, CHRIS AND THOMAS DIMUZIO
Title:	Dust
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CCTD2

"The two teamed up in '99 for a series of concerts and an album, Quake, where they laid down the fundamentals of their partnership; subterranean groans, vast drones and tectonic clashes. Dust follows in wake of this seismic activity. Cutler's amalgam of electrified drums and lo fi gadgets produce just about every sound imaginable, while Dimuzio's sampler captures and replays sounds and textures, simultaneously adding its own interjections. Once again its hard to tell who's doing what, as the sound melds into massive interweaving structures."

Artist:	CASSIBER/GROUND ZERO
Title:	Live In Tokyo
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$24.00
Catalog #:	RER CGZ2

"This double CD teams the renowned avant rock band Cassiber with Tokyo's finest, the now dis-banded Ground Zero, featuring Otomo Yoshihide. Disc one is the only available live recording by Cassiber of their one & only Tokyo performance, from 10/92. Disc two features a collection of sampled & remixed works with the source materials taken from disc one and put together by Ground Zero.This re-worked material is the final Ground Zero recording project." Cassiber are the trio of Christoph Anders, Chris Cutler and Heiner Goebbels. Their music is very much in the vein of old-school art-progressive and I don't doubt that some younger Ground Zero fans are going to be pretty much melted into oblivion attempting to listen to them (it's never been easy). Otomo's resampling, however, enters into some most pleasurable territory via some almost ambient recontexturalization and this is a fine bookend to the Ground Zero legacy. File under GZ and enjoy it while you can.

Artist:	CHARMING HOSTESS
Title:	Punch
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CH1

"Charming Hostess hail from Oakland, California and are part of a the region's 'Weird music scene' which also spawned such bands as Fibulator, Eskimo, Faun Fables, Japonize Elephants and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, three of whom -- Nils Frykdahl, Carla Kihlstedt and Dan Rathbun -- are also members of Charming Hostess. Led by hyperactive troublemaker Jewlia Eisenberg (who made a fearsome impression with her Tzadik CD debut), the Hostesses here are an extraordinary 7 piece band: tight, a little rockish, comprising bass, drums, guitar, fiddle, various horns, accordion and other occasional instruments (singing saw, for instance) -- but the work is distinguished by the amazing vocal arrangements (everyone sings, and exceptionally). Full of additive rhythms stretched harmonies and pinpoint playing, this is evolved material, executed with great skill -- and great looseness. Some traditional pieces from Bulgaria, Palestine, Transylvania and Southern America appear in very personalised arrangements alongside original songs that lean on zydeco and traditional American folk music."

Artist:	MARCLAY, CHRISTIAN
Title:	More Encores
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CM1

"Since 1979 Christian Marclay has been experimenting, composing and performing with phonograph records. His interest in records, both as objects and bearers of sound, is expressed through sculpture, performance, video and music. In performance, he mixes a wide variety of records on up to 8 turntables, fragmenting, repeating, altering speeds, playing the records backwards, etc. More Encores was originally released as a 10" vinyl record on No Man's Land (Germany) in 1988, composed entirely of records after whom each track is titled. "John Cage" is a recording of a collage made by cutting slices from several records and gluing them back together into a single disc. In all other places the records were mixed and manipulated on multiple turntables and recorded analog with the use of overdubbing. A hand-crank gramophone was used in "Louis Armstrong". More Encores is a classic slice of primal Plunderphonia, the natural companion to John Oswald's suppressed Plunderphonics masterpiece, featuring a series of viciously beautiful vinyl collages from this important and influential sound sculptor and turntable terrorist." Other tracks are based on the music of Johann Strauss, John Zorn, Martin Denny, Frederic Chopin, Fred Frith, Arthur Ferrante & Louis Teicher, Maria Callas, Jimi Hendrix, Jane Birkin & Serge Gainsbourg & Christian Marclay.

Artist:	VA
Title:	Contemporary Music
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CMCD

Six Classic Concrete, Electroacoustic and electronic works, 1970-1990 by: John Oswald, George Katzer, Lutz Glandien, Jaroslav Krcek, Steve Moore, Richard Trythall. "Musique Concrete is created by recording various sounds on tape and modifying them in some way. The term was created by Pierre Schaeffer, an early pioneer of this style, to differentiate it from 'normally' composed music, Musique Abstraite. Concentrating on found sounds or natural occurrences, the results of such alterations and manipulations cause the original recordings to express themselves in new and unique ways. This CD collects some of the very best pieces ever constructed; Each piece is a classic, influential, indispensable work, including: John Oswald - 'Parade' (1986) : uses a cube factor increase in tape speed to plunderize several existing versions of Satie's classic, and then fragments and alters the result accordingly."

Artist:	DRAKE, BOB
Title:	13 Songs and a Thing
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CTA13

"In 13 Songs we encounter complex Henry Cow type rock, heavy metal chords, Turkish influenced manic acoustic guitar, horror movie soundtrack music, and flashes of old time rock n roll. And that's just the intro! Later on Bob gets mean and dirty with his fingerpickin' guitar, a music full of dead stops and unexpected changes of texture. He occasionally sings in his pure, Yes-like choirboy tones, spitting out twisted lyrics. A dog lets off a couple of barks in unexpected places. So nothing new then; just another crazed mix of Hillbilly music, Frank Zappa-like composition, mordant wit, and some fantastically heavy guitar and drums. Bonny Prince Billy meets Beefheart via The Beatles."

Artist:	DRAKE, BOB
Title:	The Skull Mailbox
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CTA9

"Bob Drake was one half of Indie rock group Hail, and still plays bass with ruthless avant rockers The 5UUS. As a producer, he's worked with everyone from Ice T to Englebert Humperdink. Another card in Drake's hand is the bizarre series of solo albums he's produced in the last few years, with no one else there to curb his wild imagination. Little Black Train introduced us to his version of Death-Country, and Medallion Animal Carpet followed up with what sounded like a collaboration between Bonnie Prince Billy and Captain Beefheart. And now there's Skull Mailbox. With this CD Drake has lost it altogether. Strange little picked guitar pieces are the basis for grotesque songs; a seance goes horribly wrong, headless ghosts fly about, and everyone ends up dead, or locked in the cellar, or both. Interjections by massed choir and orchestra suggest a 19th Century comic opera, and influences are as diverse as the Beatles and Henry Cow. Occasionally drums pop out of the far left of the speaker, vocals far right, grunging noises appear without warning, and everything has a rotting compost quality which makes it sound like it was recorded in a decaying barn -- which indeed it was!"

Artist:	DRAKE, BOB
Title:	The Shunned Country
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CTASC01

"On his fifth full album for ReR, virtuoso bass player, guitarist, producer, studio engineer and composer Bob Drake presents a new collection of 52 very short songs on uncanny themes, illustrated in the exquisite 24pp full-colour booklet with a set of 20 commissioned paintings by Ray O'Bannon. Perhaps the scariest thing is that each of these miniatures is a fully formed, fully orchestrated and complete structure -- no lazy snippets here -- and Bob plays all the parts with his famously Paganini-esque virtuosity in spooky variable-tempo synchrony -- packing more ideas and material into 50 seconds than most could manage on an entire album. There is complexity here, disguised as simplicity; production genius disguised as eccentricity; the pursuit of an aesthetic of exquisite imperfection. These are ears that have heard beyond technical perfection (too easy, once you have the trick) and moved on to something else."

Artist:	CUTLER/ZEENA PARKINS, CHRIS
Title:	Shark!
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER CZ1

"Recorded live, Shark! captures all the onstage excitement, artistic agony and electronic ecstasy of UK drummer Chris Cutler and Detroit born harpist Zeena Parkins' concerts together. Both players can be heard attacking their instruments conventionally and outrageously, reinventing and deconstructing the shape and sound of drums and harp to produce music that caresses one minute and bites down hard the next...comes across as being frenzied, untamed and wholly unpredictable."

Artist:	DUMITRESCU/AVRAM/CUTLER/HODGKINSON/HYPERION ENSEMBLE, IANCU
Title:	Musique Action 98
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER DACH1

"Four contemporary works recorded live, with one composition each by the four above. '[They] have become leading figures in contemporary classical music, developing a musical language that sweeps boldly from very small scale insect like sounds to vast noise laden soundscapes. In recent times they have attracted a lot of attention from musicians outside of the classical field, as the music is relevant to the post-ambient, post noise, post classical aesthetic which is the sound of the moment.'"

Artist:	ARCANE DEVICE
Title:	Engines of Myth
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER DLM1

"There is a strange new electronic music about, where the musicians play no conventional instruments -- not even synthesisers or samplers. They simply set up electronic equipment to feed back on itself. Amongst the first to use this method, and perhaps the very first to work with no inputted sound at all, was David Lee Myers. The record he made under the name Arcane Device, in 1988, is a marvelous concoction of sonic vignettes, and an epic attempt to wrest vast archetypal noises from the stuff of the universe. The end result sound of this music is like a mixture of Brian Eno's ambient series, Tod Dockstader's post-cartoon soundscapes, machine sounds from an industrial dump, and more than a few wacky echoes of experimental pop musicians, from Faust to Autechre. It's incredibly varied for music that has been produced by an automated process, and Engines of Myth threatens to give electronic music a good name; it's both challenging and accessible, and has a fabulously spontaneous feel."

Artist:	KIRALY, ERNÖ
Title:	Phoenix
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER EK1

Superb introduction to a largely unknown avant-garde composer/instrument builder; one of the most important ReR releases in a while. "The music of little known East European composer Ernö Kiraly has finally been preserved -- a collection of original works that will impress and amaze all students of contemporary classical/electroacoustic composition, along with those who have only recently discovered the sound worlds of Pierre Henry and Harry Partch. Kiraly's experimental music stems from two sources, the first of which is his country's traditional folk music, while the second is Edgard Varese, whose 'Poeme Electronique' had an incredible impact. Thus the high pitched gypsy violin, the energetically strummed guitar and the eerie rumble of electronic music come together to create a marriage of sounds that are both ancient and modern."

Artist:	MARTUSCIELLO, ELIO
Title:	Unoccupied Areas
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER EM1

"This is a quiet masterpiece. Five tightly focused electroacoustic compositions that are austere, rich, strange and brilliantly executed. Elio has an ear like a bat and a serious antipathy toward cliché, and he never relies on repetition for structure; these pieces seem rather to grow out of themselves in surprising but somehow logical ways like perfect exotic blooms. His is also a music of extremes, never theoretical but always grounded in the grain of the sounds themselves. Working with sounds taken directly from the world -- in 'A@travero', the electronic world: disembodied voices from answering machines, radio, Television, CDs, cinema and the internet; in 'Proiezioni', the cinematic world of machines: cameras, projectors, empty film spools, and so on for each piece which starts with the collection of similarly connected materials. The final track, a hommage to Pierre Schaeffer, draws directly on Schaeffer's own captured recordings, taking, as concrete music does, already cooked materials as just another kind of raw ingredient. The sources may be quotidian, but they are not mundane. And they have been refined and polished and stretched and squashed and buffed and etherised to the point where they are like polished steel, reflecting something in a distorted plane, resembling something as a Brancusi might, but unfamiliar, transfigured."

Artist:	FAUST
Title:	BBC Sessions +
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER F5

"Of the five CD's in the box, only the BBC Sessions, derived from a John Peel radio session, has never been available before on CD. The radio session was first broadcast 1/3/73, and is 20 minutes of pure Faustian hell. The Lurcher is a kind of electric period Miles Davis slouching drum rhythm, augmented by stabs of horn and electric guitar. Krautrock is a 12-minute post Velvet Underground riff, drone and noise-driven meditation, far superior to the version on the Virgin release Faust IV. The session ends with Do So, an outrageously corny slice of sixties pop. The remaining 30 minutes of the CD is prime Faust, culled from the ReR LPs The Last LP and Munic and Elsewhere (which could not appear on the ReR CD release Faust- 71 Minutes for reasons of space). They feature splattered repeating percussion, half heard voice-overs, stray dogs, renaissance music played by kazoos, the surreal song 'We Are the Hallo Men', and alternative and wonderful versions of the classics So Far and Meer."

Artist:	FAUST
Title:	Faust
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER F6

Single disc , remastered version (as included in the Wumme Years box, in digipak. "Inventors of Kraut Rock, iconoclasts extraodinaire, Faust are key figures in the history of rock music. In the early 70's, along with Can and Kraftwerk, they re-invented pop as an art-form with a specifically European attitude. Virtually imprisoned by svengali producer Uwe Nettlebeck in their studio at Wumme, near Hamburg, they overturned our whole notion of what makes a pop record. They improvised with industrial noise, generated bizarre hypnotic grooves, created shockingly wilful studio collages, and dabbled with every conceivable musical genre sometimes simultaneously. Kurt Grapner, a Deutsche Gramaphon engineer who was seconded to the project, furnished Faust with innovative effects units and built a spontaneous recording environment which perfectly complemented Faust's conceptual ideas, satirical humour, and insane passions. After twenty years in the wilderness Faust re-formed in 1993, and have been touring and releasing new albums ever since. Their re-appearance has only served to bolster the legend, and the box set of all Faust's early work, from 1971-73, was released by ReR to tremendous acclaim. Though part of the box set, this 1st album has been unavailable for years as a single issue, so we're quite happy to offer it again. It is arguably Faust's finest hour, and has stood as a landmark in the annals of Rock music for over 3 decades."

Artist:	FAUST
Title:	So Far
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER F7

Single disc version (also available on a Collector's Choice two-fer) of the all-time-classic 2nd Faust album from 1972. Originally issued by Polydor. "Inventors of Kraut rock, iconoclasts extraodinaire, Faust are key figures in the history of rock music. In the early 70s, along with Can and Kraftwerk, they reinvented pop as an art-form with a specifically European attitude. Being light years ahead of their time, Faust are arguably the most important figures in the progression of rock music."

Artist:	FAUST
Title:	The Wumme Years: 1970-1973
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	5CD
Price:	$75.00
Catalog #:	RER FB1

"The ultimate collection from the legendary inventors of krautrock. This 5 CD set contains all Faust's early classic albums, a John Peel session, and unreleased early material. The 40 page booklet is stuffed with unpublished photos, stills from Super 8 footage from the famous studio at Wumme, and revealing interviews with many of the key players in the Faust story. CDs: Faust (the famous clear first album), So Far (the famous black second album), The Faust Tapes (for the first time ever with a track listing), 71 Minutes (The Last LP and Munic and Elsewhere LPs), BBC Sessions (classic radio session plus substantial extra material). Interviews include band members Jean Herve Peron and Jochen Irmler, with a memoir from Blegvad. Reclusive producer Uwe Nettlebeck and legendary sound engineer Kurt Graupner speak here for the first time. Many of the photos illustrating the book are from private collections, and have never been published." This box set is a limited edition and it's long term availability is not likely. The enclosed albums will be available as individual CDs in the future, but the booklet is exclusive to this box set.

Artist:	FRITH, FRED
Title:	The Previous Evening
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER FF1

"Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the events, and dynamic markings in this section were also determined using chance methods." Performed by: Christian Kaya (clarinets), Claudio Puntin (clarinets), Heike Liss (perc.), Bernd Settelmeyer (perc.), Bernd Weber (voice) and Frith (voice & all other instruments and manipulations).

Artist:	GOEBBELS/ALFRED HARTH, HEINER
Title:	Hommage/Vier Fäuste für Hanns Eisler
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	2CD
Price:	$24.00
Catalog #:	RER GH1

"A long and extraordinarily fruitful partnership started here -- continuing through the Sogennantes Linksradikales Blasorchester -- where Alfred and Heiner picked up Christoph Anders, the three of whom then went on to co-found Cassiber with Chris Cutler. A critical success in its own time, this duo recorded two more CDs before parting company, each more musically open than its predecessor. These first two sorties are a kind of jazz-inflected, punk-inflected, highly spirited and imaginative series of adapted Hanns Eisler compositions, as well as some original pieces by the duo itself, who between them cover a lot of instruments, and combinations of instruments, and -- ah youth -- are never less than hurling themselves into their performances. Heiner went on, after Cassiber, to become one of Germany's leading music theatre writer and directors, as well as composing for the ensemble modern, orchestras and opera companies (he had an orchestra premiere to mark the opening of the Festival Hall complex in London on July 12th). Alfred went on to form several other bands, including Gestalt et Jive before relocating to Seoul in Korea, where he now lives and works. He is currently part of Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Orchestra. Both original LPs have been re-mastered for this release by Bob Drake."

Artist:	GROUND ZERO
Title:	Consume Red
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER GZ2

Repressed. Domestic issue of the sampling masterpiece first issued by Creativemandisc in Japan. Yet another phase in Omoto Yoshihide's Sampling Virus Project. Consume Red is the first of a three volume series, and acts as Ground Zero's original document for the set. [Volume 2 (Conflagration and Volume 3 Consummation on the Creativeman label are now o/p]. Consume Red consists of Ground Zero sampling the music of Korean national treasure Kim Suk Chul, playing Hojok (literal reed streams with bagpipe-like intensities), accompanying on Shamisen, turntables, periodic noise interjections, etc. It's one 60 minute "ambient" piece, beautifully paced and powerfully presented. "Hints at the beautiful chaos ahead. A work that is spiritually uplifting and terrifying as a single squalling blast from an ancient sounding horn is overlaid with a steady building sound collage of sampled noise static, guitar overload, instrumental anarchy , and a drum duo who hammer home a beat that is subtly constructed yet relentless in its attack...will surely be regarded as one of the year's major recorded highlights."

Artist:	HAIL
Title:	Hello Debris
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER H3

"Hail are Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake, probably best-known for their work with the Colorado-based band, Thinking Plague. On this, their third ReR release, the duo explores more of the heavy, grunging, artrock side of things, aided and abetted at times by synthesizers and keyboards. Susanne's clear compositions, and heavy-handed, clever wit are augmented by Bob's inimitable production crafting, giving Hello Debris a raw and passionate feel: perfect frequencies, excellent vocal delivery, great guitar/bass/drum work, and some of the more radical recording/mixing aesthetics to date are all presented with a sense of immediacy and urgency."

Artist:	5UU'S
Title:	Hunger's Teeth
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	RER 5UU1

Artist:	KOVAC, BORIS
Title:	Ritual Nova 1 & II
Label:	RECOMMENDED (UK)
Format:	CD
Price:	$17.00
Catalog #:	RER BKCD1