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VOCSON 157LP
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Phonopoetics is the first ever survey of seminal Hungarian artist Katalin Ladik's sonic efforts. A thing of beauty, drawing from the period between 1968 and 1993, its two stunning sides shatter the lines between performance, the spoken word, fine art, and experimental music, offering the terms to rethink how each is understood. Born in 1942, Katalin Ladik has lived a wild and multifaceted creative life -- beginning primarily as a poet of the written word, expanding into experimental theatre during the mid-1970s, and ultimately becoming an artist whose practice also incorporates sound and visual poetry, performance art, experimental music, audio plays, happenings, mail art, collage, and photography, built around visual and vocal expression, as well as movement and gesture. Phonopoetics, Alga Marghen's remarkably diverse survey of Ladik's audio work, is a refracting lens into this dense and dynamic world -- a totem which belongs to a sprawling puzzle of highly nuanced personal, social, political, and existential themes, springing from the feminist and gender neutral concerns of Eastern Europe during the 1960s and '70s. The totality of Ladik's practice, particularly as it unfolds across the two sides of Phonopoetics, can be understood as a radical rethinking of the potential, manifestation, and application of poetry, as well as the fundamentals of vocalization. Delving toward the very origins of consciously created sound -- spoken or otherwise, her efforts unseat the divisions placed between literary, musical, theatrical, and visual disciplines, joining them through the fundamental need and right to express. With the excepting of two works, "Shaman Song / Sámánének" (1968), and "Ufo-Nopoetica" (1976-1993), the featured body of work was created between 1974 and 1979, a prolific period which also witnessed her working within the Novi Sad Theatre and Radio Novi Sad. Primal and poetic, with shamanic overtones and therapeutic mechanisms of liberation, capturing the image of an almost entirely unheard history within the field of feminist expression developed by pioneering figures like Simone Forti and Joan La Barbara. In the words of visionary sound poet Henri Chopin, Ladik is "a great, magical voice." Alga Marghen's issue of Phonopoetics places this little heard, and profoundly important artist into the center of your consciousness where she will no doubt remain. A vital entry in the field of sound art, historic Eastern European experimental practice, and sound poetry. Introduction by Henri Chopin. Edition of 300.
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3CD BOX
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NMN 160CD
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It's hard to overstate the importance of Philip Corner. For more than half a century he has been a cornerstone of the American musical avant-garde. Once a student of Otto Leuning, Henry Cowell, Olivier Messiaen, and Dorothy Taubman. A founding member of Fluxus, Corner made waves fast, creating a body of singular work, both on his own and within ensembles like Gamelan Son of Lion and Tone Roads, founded with Malcolm Goldstein and James Tenney, which has cut its way across the decades. Among Corner's most fascinating works are those created between 1962 and 1964, during the period when he was resident composer at the Judson Dance Theatre, one the great occurrences in the emergence of avant-garde dance, movement, Happenings, and performance art. Even today, it stands among the most important examples of collaborate create exchange in the history the American arts. Alga Marghen present a three-CD box, issued in early 2000s by and now out of print, gathering much of the work created during these important years in Corner's career, signed by the composer himself. Alga Marghen's triple box gathers On Tape From the Judson Years, and More from The Judson Years (Early 60s) Instrumental and Vocal Works Volumes 1 and 2, bringing you to heart of Philip Corner's brilliant practice and mind. Across the first disc Corner's tape works -- complex textures and sonority coming to life. The second disc is of an entirely different sort, featuring works created with a great many of Corner's closest collaborators and friends. Recorded at Judson, 1965, the disc features a knock-out cast of Ayo, David Behrman, Philip Corner, Malcolm Goldstein, Dick Higgins, Joe Jones, Alison Knowles, Jackson Mac Low, Charlotte Moorman, Nam June Paik, and Chieko Shiomi, and more. The third disc takes the ear further afield, with "Everything Max Has" (1964), a performance of Max Neuhaus solo recorded at the ONCE Festival (1965), captures the composer and percussionist taking down an overwhelming amount of equipment. It also includes Big Trombone (1963), with Jim Fulkerson improvising over tape collage, "Homage to Revere" (1962) a work for an ensemble of copper-bottom kitchen utensils, and "Punkt" (1961) for an ensemble of staccato sounds, and a number of other astounding works from the era. As a totality, Alga Marghen's three-CD set of Corner's years spent at the Judson Theatre, are a mind-boggling entry into an overwhelmingly exciting moment in time. Edition of 200, signed and numbered.
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ALGA 029LP
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Alga Marghen presents the new edition of Eliane Radigue's "Jouet Electronique" (1967) for feedback on magnetic tape and "Elemental I" (1968) for feedback of natural sounds on magnetic tape. This LP was first issued in 2010, and it's now presented for the first time with its own specific artwork and layout. Both works were recorded at Pierre Henry's Studio Apsome in Paris. Between 1967 and 1968, Radigue was Henry's assistant, mainly for the editing of L'Apocalypse de Jean (1969). Henry also put her in charge of organizing his sound archive; Radigue enjoyed doing this work, even if it took a long time. She decided to set the machines of the studio to do some work of her own. "Jouet Electronique" and "Elemental I" were born this way during her time as an assistant; working with feedback is something that Radigue learned through Henry. Do you remember Henry's Voyage (1969)? There's that fluid part which is made of feedback constructed with a microphone. Everything had to be set at a precise distance from the loudspeakers because that is the specific problem with feedback; one has to be at the right distance. Afterwards, these high tone recordings were slowed down in order to discover the deeper character of their color. This work with feedback was in the end quite limited and the composer preferred working with two reel tape machines to produce sounds. The first was set on the recording mode while the other was playing and it was the accidents happening in this phase that made the feedback richer. Fine-tuning could yield beautiful results: low pulsations, high-pitched sounds (sometimes both at the same time), or long sounds. All of these could be slowed down or accelerated, which gave beautiful source material. With "Jouet Electronique", Radigue had a lot of fun, hence the title. As far as "Elemental I" is concerned, it was the first attempt at something which was important to her based on the theme of the basic elements: water, fire, air and earth. Eliane had the chance to record in open air thanks to a small Stella Vox that Arman gave her in the beginning of the 1960s. Using it, Radigue built a minimal sound library, consisting of not more than ten reel tapes. This was the starting point; in 1968 she used these recordings for her work with two reel tape machines. New edition of 200, with liners by Radigue and portrait photos by Arman.
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TES 159LP
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One afternoon in 1975, friend and fellow music traveler, Harold Schroeder, showed up at Poo-Bah Record Shop where Tom Recchion worked selling records and experimental music to people, forcing them to buy albums that he swore would change their lives. Harold asked if Tom wanted to share in a studio space close to the shop. After seeing it Tom immediately said "YES!". They moved in and divided the space in half. On Tom's half he made drawings, paintings, performances, video, sculptures, installations, and music. Harold had his all set up for music with his newly acquired Steiner-Parker synth and guitars and things. At the beginning they played under the name The Two Who Do Duets. Soon the late-night jam sessions that took place in the back of Poo-Bah moved over to the fourth floor of 35 South Raymond. It was pretty beat up and derelict, the way one imagines an artist's studio to look. They could make all the noise they wanted. No one else was on their floor. The music heard on this LP has remained unheard since it was recorded and was created just before and right after the inaugural concert by the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) groups Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, and Ace & Duce. That concert took place in late January 1976. The sessions on this release feature members of the newly formed and expanded Doo-Dooettes, which now included Dennis Duck, Juan Gomez, Harold Schroeder, and Tom Recchion, as well as Ju Suk Reet Meate from Smegma and Ace, of Ace & Duce. 35 S. Raymond eventually became a sort of LAFMS headquarters, with Chip Chapman of Le Forte Four, artist and future Extended Organ vocalist/guitarist Paul McCarthy, and soon to become singer for Nervous Gender, punk/folk artist Phranc, who along with many other artists and musicians, moved into the building. 35 S. Raymond allowed for free expression and explorations of all sorts. Some wild parties ensued, not to mention the luxury of endless hours of experimentation. Parking was free and so was the art and music. Ace found the tapes for side one ("Tom's Studio") in his archive and Ju Suk Reet Meate found the tapes for side two ("50 Of Every American Are Machines") and edited them both for this release. No overdubs or remixing was employed. Luxury gatefold sleeve; Edition of 200.
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TES 158LP
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New primitive-suburban-folk music from Temple City and Pasadena, CA, circa 1973-4. This new edition is culled from the original unissued Smegma tape vaults of Ju Suk Reet Meate and represents the most pure expression of the insular sound-world that was spontaneously discovered as a group. Unlike 2017's Look'n For Ya (TES 154LP) no song forms are ever used, instead fearless group improvisational vocals take you on a strange shape-shifting journey through operatic show tunes, spirit visions and visits to a delirium motel room. The only exception is the title track "Abacus Incognito" that features poetry by Dennis Duck (Human Hands, Dream Syndicate, LAFMS...) with accompaniment by the family stereo console record player/radio unit and utilizing conventional instruments creating a strangely unique non-jamming sound. Except for the first track, all sounds were recorded casually in various band-members parents' houses while they were away... they would have been horrified! The final track is possibly one of the strangest concepts ever recorded, inspired by both the Lord Dunsany story The Three Infernal Jokes and the most popular record of 100 years ago, The O.K. Laughing Record (or OKeh), there is The Smegma: Laughing to Death Record. Edition of 200 (numbered).
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ALGA 043-2LP
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Restocked; produced in collaboration with the legendary Jac Berrocal's label d'Avantage, More Intra Musique is the second LP in Alga Marghen's series dedicated to previously unreleased recording by the drummer and experimentalist Jacques Thollot. While the furious Intra Musique free jazz first LP (ALGA 043LP, 2017) was centered on a live recording with Michel Portal, Eddie Gaumont, and Mimi Lorenzini at the Faculty of Law in Paris, on an evening in 1969, it is an unexpected Jacques Thollot that you encounter on this second LP, vivid and blazing even more than you might have already known. Jacques Thollot was a major force in the French free jazz scene, collaborating with artists at the level of Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Sonny Sharrock, Joachim Kühn as well as with French pioneers Jef Gilson and Barney Wilen. Starting from 1971 he released Quand Le Son Devient Aigu, Jeter La Giraffe A La Mer or Watch Devil Go on Futura and Palm Records, or some of the most relevant and revolutionary sonic masterpieces in France. More Intra Musique is free improvisations of course, but also synthetic jitters, musique concrete, and loop experiments, sketched pop songs, minimalist trances with African accents, or simply the promiscuity of a lullaby or the voice of a child posed like a bird in a Norman garden. These long-lost visionary recordings featuring Eddie Gaumont on prepared piano and Jacques Thollot on drums, piano, prepared piano, synth, and tapes are an absolute revelation which make you rethink everything you know about French free improvisation. Tape manipulation created as a potential background for a live set... Bursting rehearsal with Eddie Gaumont... Is the piano well prepared? Besides the stingy mention Intra Musique sticked on the reel, nothing is known of this recording. Edition of 350 copies.
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NMN 156LP
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Repressed. Alga Marghen present recordings from Luc Ferrari's Atelier De Libération De La Musique, a collective he created together with Martin Davorin Jagodic, Philippe Besombes, and Alain Petit in 1975 for a series of performances at the Galliera Museum in Paris. It was in those years that Luc Ferrari investigated open forms and created some of the most experimental and elusive works of his entire catalog. "Exercices D'improvisation", first recorded by Brunhild Ferrari with GOL, issued on PLANAM in 2010; but specially "Ou Donc Est-T-On?", a very complex piece forthcoming on Alga Marghen including both "Dance", issued on Alga Marghen on the occasion of the presentations at Centre Pompidou in 2009 and "Ephemere", issued on CD by Alga Marghen in 2010, as well as the "Labyrinthe De La Violence", an audio-visual permanent labyrinth for which Ferrari created four fantastic electronic music pieces forthcoming on Alga Marghen. After these experiences the composer decided to discontinue these open practices for a more controlled work in the studio. And within the "Labyrinthe De La Violence" installation Luc Ferrari conceived a series of electro-visual concerts to be performed by the newly created Atelier De Libération De La Musique. The collective included some of the most creative artists of the time: together with Luc Ferrari playing the electric organ you find on electric piano Martin Davoric Jagodic (whose masterpiece of electronic music titled Tempo Furioso was issued on Cramps in Italy that same year), on synthesizer Philippe Besombes (of Pole fame) and on sax, flute, and clarinet, Alain Petit (who was at the time collaborating with Besombes at the wonderful Besombes / Rizet double LP). These four artists met in February and March of 1975, rehearsing for a series of concerts to take place within the audio-visual labyrinth. It is the previously unheard recordings from these wild rehearsals which make up this incredible LP. The sound of Atelier De Libération De La Musique is a thrilling and overwhelming ride. Rattling, difficult polyrhythms play against droning, pulsing and simmering sonorities. These recordings are human and open, wild and incredibly ahead of their time. Obi strip; Edition of 500 (numbered).
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LP
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NMN 152LP
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Alga Marghen introduce Music With Memory, a new record LP by David Behrman focused on his '70s work with new small, inexpensive devices then known as "microcomputers" equipped with "memory" to be used in live performances and installations. Side A presents "Interspecies Smalltalk" with Takehisa Kosugi (violin) and David Behrman (electronics). A wild intertwining of two worlds of resonance, structure, and tonality, decades ahead of its time. Commissioned by John Cage and Merce Cunningham as music for the 1984 Cunningham Company dance titled "Pictures", it was made to be performed by Takehisa Kosugi playing violin in his uniquely personal style. Side B includes "Circling Six", an earlier version of a more extended piece titled "Leapday Night". "Circling Six" had six looping synthesizer phrases which could be played along with by the acoustic instrumentalist, on this recording by Werner Durand on saxophone. "Interspecies Smalltalk" and "Circling Six" were pieces for instrumental performers and a small computer-controlled music system that Behrman assembled during the 1980s. The electronic gear consisted of pitch sensors ("ears" with which it listened to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a video display, and a personal computer. The pieces were made with computer programs governing interaction between performers and the electronics. The software created situations rather than set pieces. The performers had options rather than instructions, and the exploration of each situation as it unfolded was up to them. Also on side B is a short track titled "All Thumbs" for two electrified mbiras (African instruments of ancient origin also known as thumb pianos, kalimbas, or zanzas). This piece grew out of a collaborative sound and video installation that George Lewis and David Behrman made for the opening of the Paris science museum La Villette in the spring of 1986. The metal tines of the mbiras were linked to sensors and to a computer music system. In this concert version, played together with Fast Forward, the piece was in several sections. All the sounds in "All Thumbs" were electronically generated. Includes liner notes by David Behrman and photos of the performances, as well as original programs of the Music With Memory Festival. Edition of 400.
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LP
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ALGA 043LP
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There are records that stimulate curiosity to the extreme, records that make you want to dissolve yourself into the intense and beautiful surprise this music will bring. It is undeniable to the delighted ear that this exhumed document contains all the assets of the historical output, of the record that one would dream of waiting for long if one had known it existed. This rough edit, done within urgency by Jacques Thollot, testifies of a unique experience: the concert of Intra Musique at the Faculty of Law in Paris, an uncertain evening of 1969. The devastating gab of the two acolytes Jacques Thollot and Eddie Gaumont made the concert take place, on the ploughed earth of May '68, in the same faculty where so much was discussed and, thanks to the success of the previous concerts of the association of students, that allowed the risk of hiring the thundering dream team. Unique because there will never be another replica of what Jacques Thollot called "a movement", involving Michel Portal (tenor sax), Mimi Lorenzini (guitar), the rare Daniel Laloux (tambour), Jacques Thollot (drums and tapes of recorded experiments, those that would build the skeleton of the magnificent Quand Le Son Devient Aigu Jeter La Girafe À La Mer LP on Futura (1971)), and Eddie Gaumont (guitar, piano), the instigators of this journey. Captain Eddie Gaumont will capsize shortly after, sunk by a too intensely dark life; sad coda putting an end to the project. There is also the undeniable whirling of the mentors and companions' spirits of Jacques Thollot, such as Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Bernard Vitet, and Jean-François Jenny Clark, and the hard to describe succession of precious moments: that oblique spiritual-jazz, that other staggering ballad, or that primitive fever of essential nervous flights, that almost psychedelic proto rock; alternations of radical free music to those magnificently classic, overwhelming achievements. Jacques Thollot is not just one of the greatest abandoned jazz composers: he is the one who abandons himself to all its forms. Co-produced with Jac Berrocal's historical d'Avantage label. Comes in a full-color gatefold sleeve; Edition of 350.
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3CD
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NMN 151CD
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Alga Marghen introduce a historical event, the publication of The Lower Depths, a three-CD set of previously unreleased unique piano sonorities by Charlemagne Palestine. In 1977, Charlemagne Palestine was regularly performing in his red and gold loft on North Moore Street in Tribeca, down the street from Magoos bar where all the local artists hung out back then. He was working on a trilogy called The Lower Depths, a work conceived during the crucial moment when he experienced one of the peaks of his creative power. The trilogy takes its name from the potentials of his Bösendorfer weapon which had lower notes than any other piano. The first section starts in the middle of the piano keyboard and the second section two octaves below, while the third section arrives till the very bottom of the instrument. It's a deep, thunderous, rumbling world that we experience. An extreme immersion in the depths of the dark side of strumming music. The Lower Depths is a central work within the history of musical minimalism, stretching and expanding what is understood and expected of an already singular voice. Edition of 300 (numbered).
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VOCSON 155LP
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In 1974, Ileana Sonnabend commissioned Charlemagne Palestine to create a limited edition, double LP in conjunction with a performance to celebrate the opening of her new Soho gallery at 420 West Broadway. Charlemagne made several recording attempts, first at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where they had a Bösendorfer Imperial Piano in their theater. He recorded "Bösendorfer + Voice", "Voice Piece" as well as some Bösendorfer tests, with Mayo Thompson as producer and Kurt Munkacsi as sound engineer. These ecstatic Swarthmore recordings, recorded late at night in the big empty theater space, represented the original elements on which Charlemagne Palestine later created the piano pieces for Four Manifestations on Six Elements (ALGAMARS 004LP, MAGNE 008LP). For more than 40 years since these recordings were made, Palestine never went back to listen to them, but recently on re-listening to these Swarthmore recordings with Alga Marghen, he found several blissful, arpeggiated piano and falsetto voice studies which he feels now deserve to be heard. Included in the Alga Marghen VocSon series, this LP of two previously unreleased 1974 recordings finally see the light of day. Edition of 405.
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TES 154LP
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In 1973, when Smegma (the band) was born they had only one rule: No Musicians! That way they could re-invent the musical wheel with a new primitive, suburban, anti-hippie approach. 44 years later perhaps the world is ready for the first full LP of this original, uncompromising sound. At the time, it seemed they thought they were on a solitary journey, but shortly after these recordings, it was discovered that there was another local group, The Los Angeles Free Music Society, that they shortly became a part of, and are a part of, to this day. Originally recorded in 1973-75 at the house in Pasadena they all lived in, these previously unreleased tracks feature vocals of a different kind. It includes the 1960s L.A. freak and street singer Wild Man Fischer reprising his dance tune "The Taster", a straightforward Memphis/rockabilly slow dance ballad "Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache", and examples of their unique "group singing" style that has to be heard to be believed. Opening and closing the LP are vocals by someone they had never met, a local C.B. radio operator whose handle was "Turkey Mon" and had such a hi-power transmitter that his signal was picked-up by the tape-head as they recorded! Several of these same folks (Dennis Duck, Ace Farren Ford, Ju Suk Reet Meate) are in the Smegma touring band as of 2017.
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TES 153LP
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Sidestepping all normal expectations on this album, Ju Suk Reet Meate (founding member of Smegma) directly goes about casting musical spells, utilizing primitive "inner mind" techniques on hammered dulcimer, tape loops, thrift store records, a homemade synthesizer, electric guitar, saxophone, mouth sounds, and manipulated christian radio broadcasts. Recorded in Portland, Oregon, these previously unreleased recordings reflect a similar "inner-mind over limited technique matter" aesthetic as the acclaimed but seldom heard classic Solo 1978-1979, originally released on Pigface Records in 1980.
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LP BOX/BOOK
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VOCSON 099LP
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A killer reading of José Luis Castillejo's TLALAATALA book by Fernando Millan, recorded in Madrid in 2001. Modern or advanced writing is a direct and independent medium, i.e. it realizes and gives presence to a set of relationships without the need of further dependence (as it happened till now in literature) on other media. Words, syllables, stories, sounds, psychology, music, etc., are no longer needed: advanced writing can do without intermediate elements. Modern writing is neither symbolic nor descriptive. Its purpose is the purpose of all modern art: to reduce necessity. The freedom achieved by writing (as a "medium") may perhaps become an inspiration (a "metaphor") of what could be achieved elsewhere (in the "reality"), independently and without imitation. Writing, perhaps the art more subdued to avidity and ambition, an instrument of subjection since it was invented by priests and legislators, has been the last of the arts to seek for its liberation. Writing itself created the worst of our servitudes that still rules and dominates the world: literality. Because without literality, any servitude to being of metaphorical and reflexive freedom would be impossible. Servitude exists and grows within the bureaucratic and technocratic literality which dominates the world with its laws, rules, and mechanisms. Freedom of comprehension, and therefore the liberation of writing, can be accomplished through the restoration of the metaphorical character of the so-called "reality", through the destruction of textual literality and the restoration of all the imaginary figures and persons of the psyche in front of the divination of the soul or the spirit. As proved by TLALAATALA, the liberation of writing must go through the elaboration of vacuous structures that should be perceived without being captured, without being fixed through numbers and signs. It goes through a writing where you can no longer state that "the written, written is", since it establishes an imaginary and metaphorical reflection of the vacuity and of the mutual relation of processes and phenomena. Comes in cardboard box with stamp; Includes the original-2001-press 400-page-creative-book with the same title; Edition of 80.
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2LP
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NMN 150LP
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A reissue of Antibarbarus, issued as a compact disc in 1998, was the first edition Walter Marchetti released on Alga Marghen. The Antibarbarus cycle of five pieces makes use of original tapes coming from the same recording sessions that originated some of Marchetti's major musical works realized in the '80s, collected in his two CDs: 1989's Vandalia (NMN 076-4CD/NMN 083-5LP) and 1984's Per La Sete Dell'orecchio (NMN 083-3LP). This former series of works presented some homogeneous and untouched sound sources in the "concrete" status of their inner - and necessarily chaotic - level of entropy. Nevertheless this operative and only in appearance "neutral" premise introduces an implicit mimetic transposition. This link between the "iconic" threshold of the acoustical material and its transposition literally deconstructs the prerogatives and the ideological categories of music composition. In Antibarbarus, the temporal continuum restores the mimesis of the phenomenal regression of musical time, crystallized in a framed-length which gets estranged from subjective domain. But the transfiguration of sound sources now deliberately intends to de-signify the analytical prerogatives of hearing. The sensorial perception is in such a way inhibited from an immediate comprehension of the acoustic reality so reproduced: canis reversus ad vomitum suum. In the late 1950s, Marchetti was able both to formalize a more critical aim towards the established lingua franca and absolutist ideology of musical avant-gardism and to expand the sense of artistic praxis, in line with an ethical and subtly political evaluation of aesthetic experience. Marchetti was inspired by Cage's poetics of indeterminacy and subsequently created, through a close and indissoluble association with Juan Hidalgo and José Luis Castillejo, an original and de-ritualized form of action-music which led in 1964 to the birth of ZAJ group. Marchetti's work relays, in its procedural level, upon a resolute de-functioning of the musical codes and impose this act as a reversed mimesis of the methodological statute of music composing. Namely, not a "degré zero de l'écriture", but its "reversal"; not a "denial of style", but "style of denial". In this perspective, Walter Marchetti's oeuvre condenses one of the rare examples of aesthetic radicalism consciously extended to music poetics. Comes in full color gatefold sleeve; Includes printed inner sleeves (with photos of "Musica da camera n. 182", London, Raven Row, 1989/2011 and "Music in secca", Milano, Fondazione Mudima, 2003); Liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo in English and Italian.
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VOCSON 095CD
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Key figure in Mexican conceptual art, Ulises Carrión was an artist, editor, curator, and theorist of the post-1960s international artistic avant-garde. Dear Reader. Don't Read, an A4-size, 272-page book with CD, issued in collaboration with the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid within the context of Carrion large retrospective, is focused on Ulises Carrión's personal and groundbreaking approach, managing to illustrate all aspects of his artistic and intellectual work. This includes books, magazines, videos, films, sound pieces, mail art, public projects, and performances, along with Carrión's initiatives as curator, editor, distributor, lecturer, archivist, art theorist, and writer. It is a significant body of original work structured to place a spotlight on every facet of his production. Without losing sight of the unclassifiable nature of his oeuvre, this book emphasizes Ulises Carrión's constant search for new cultural strategies and the extent to which his projects were determined by two fundamental themes: structure and language. These represent artistic guidelines influenced by a literary education, which he invariably struggled against, and are pervasive in his work. This duality corresponds to the exhibition title Dear Reader. Don't Read which illustrates his ambiguous relation to literature, a recurring theme in his work. Due to his interest in new art forms and innovative trends, Carrión actively participated in most of the artistic disciplines of his time. He co-founded the independent artist-run space In-Out Center in Amsterdam and founded the legendary bookshop-gallery Other Books and So (1975-79), the first of its kind dedicated to the presentation, production, and distribution of publications that were no longer literary texts nor about art, but rather books that were art or, as Carrión himself called them, "non-books, anti-books, pseudo books, quasi books, concrete books, visual books, conceptual books, structural books, project books, statement books, instruction books". Along with his artistic activities, Ulises Carrión developed a wide range of theoretical work having a great influence on young visual artists. It is fascinating to see that Ulises Carrión's theories are seemingly precursors to more recent art theories of the twenty-first-century digital world. During his most creative artistic period, he participated in the international mail art network which Carrión considered a kind of guerilla strategy.
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VOCSON 098LP
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Previously un-issued recordings from the Porn Art Movement (1980-1982), including five performances recorded live on Ipanema Beach in 1982, as well as a selection of previously unheard studio recordings of Eduardo Kac yell-poems. Kac fused existing coarse and curse words with parts of words, neologisms, salacious buffoonery, the anti-normative scribblings of toilet-wall graffiti, commonplaces, blasphemy, expletives, agrammatisms, incorrect orthography, slangy expressions, lexical exorbitance, general obscenities, the gross and the grotesque, into a new whole. His use of stigmatizing words in these Porn-poems transformed them from denigrating to empowering, through political critique and defiance. The LP also includes the "Manifesto Pornô" (1980) and four recordings of "Flatographic Poems" from 1982, in which Kac uses the flatus as a compositional unit and the mellifluous flow as material. "Flatographic Poems" have visual scores - one of which can be seen on the cover - for metabolic performances that combine meticulous precision with gaseous explosiveness of scatological resonance. Demanding a high level of self-mastery on the part of the performer, this anal poetry was the only series of works produced in the movement to literally explore the internal side of the body. Includes an LP-size 40-page full-color book with full documentation on the Porn Art Movement. Edition of 270.
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ALGAMARS 009LP
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"Edition limited to 30 copies. Art edition of PoorManMusic, a classic Fluxus work by Philip Corner from 1966 and first released by alga marghen in 2015. Edition limited to 30 copies. Including: A signed and numbered LP sleeve with hand-drawn calligraphy on front and hand-drawn score on the back, a signed and numbered black-vinyl LP record with hand-written labels, a signed and numbered print with hand-made graphic interventions, a signed and numbered score print, a signed and numbered 4-page printed text with graphics, dry leaves, a wooden comb, a metal ring, a piece of black and white fabric, four plastic bottle caps in different colors, two ropes, a date pit, a cherry pit. The whole magnificently presented in a luxury linen box. Homemade noise made by, among others, Philip Corner, Max Neuhaus, Steve Reich, James Tenney, Malcolm Goldstein, Jackson Mac Low, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, Carolee Schneemann, Jerome Rothenberg... the Technicians of the Sacred. Gift Event III: A Celebration for poets, musicians, and dancers, based on the orders of the Seneca Indian Eagle Dance and performed at the Judson Dance Theatre, Judson Memorial Church, New York City, March 21 and 22, 1967."
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CD
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NMN 100-2CD
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The Concerto For The Left Hand In One Movement, for piano, is the last unpublished composition of Walter Marchetti to be performed in public before the death of the author on May 12, 2015. This performance by Reinier van Houdt was recorded on April 29, 2015, at Onder De Linden in Valthermond, Netherlands, and is presented with liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo, translated from the Italian by Philip Corner. Composed in 1994, the Concerto For The Left Hand belongs to an ongoing series of works written between 1994 and 1997 -- along with "Con vista sui suoni," "Eight or Nine Movements for String Quartet," and "La perdita del tempo" -- which develop from a preceding composition titled "Canonic Variations for Orchestra on Prolapsed Time From Development to Hiccup of Black Cherry Jam." In these works Marchetti made a systematic and assertive return to conventional music notation, while also not excluding performance and installation practices and the use of pre-recorded "concrète" sounds which, since the '60s, had been his privileged field of action (a modality shared principally within the exquisitely iconoclast and desecratory activities of the ZAJ group). What was particularly interesting to Marchetti in this recourse to musical writing was the weakening of the meaning of the rigid normative apparatus of a musical score with the purpose of annihilating the factual potential of his system of prescriptions. The title alone is used to hide a paradox in which the notes to the performer intervene to subvert the following paradigm: "The pianist is obliged to hold a black umbrella opened over his head in his left hand during the whole performance of this concerto." From here the performer is confronted with two conceptually convergent possibilities in de-potentializing the apparatus of signs in the score: on the one hand, the restrictive imposition of the paradox by which the music cannot manifest itself while respecting the letter of the enunciation, which leads to the impossibility of the music's "existence" (i.e. the obligation of holding an open black umbrella in the same hand) or, on the other hand, the transgression of this encumbrance in favor of the implicit possibility of playing the score with the right hand, leaving the music subjected to its own manifestation no longer be able to coincide with its own realization -- "a magic made free from the lie of being truth." Limited edition of 300. Digipak with full-color booklet containing photos and the liner notes.
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LP
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NMN 100LP
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LP version. The Concerto For The Left Hand In One Movement, for piano, is the last unpublished composition of Walter Marchetti to be performed in public before the death of the author on May 12, 2015. This performance by Reinier van Houdt was recorded on April 29, 2015, at Onder De Linden in Valthermond, Netherlands, and is presented with liner notes by Gabriele Bonomo, translated from the Italian by Philip Corner. Composed in 1994, the Concerto For The Left Hand belongs to a series of works written between 1994 and 1997 -- along with "Con vista sui suoni," "Eight or Nine Movements for String Quartet," and "La perdita del tempo" -- which develop from a preceding composition titled "Canonic Variations for Orchestra on Prolapsed Time From Development to Hiccup of Black Cherry Jam." In these works Marchetti made a systematic and assertive return to conventional music notation, while also not excluding performance and installation practices and the use of pre-recorded "concrète" sounds, which, since the '60s, had been his privileged field of action (a modality shared principally within the exquisitely iconoclastic and desecratory activities of the ZAJ group). What was particularly interesting to Marchetti in this recourse to musical writing was the weakening of the meaning of the rigid normative apparatus of a musical score with the purpose of annihilating the factual potential of his system of prescriptions. The title alone is used to hide a paradox in which the notes to the performer intervene to subvert the following paradigm: "The pianist is obliged to hold a black umbrella opened over his head in his left hand during the whole performance of this concerto." From here the performer is confronted with two conceptually convergent possibilities in de-potentializing the apparatus of signs in the score: on the one hand, the restrictive imposition of the paradox by which the music cannot manifest itself while respecting the letter of the enunciation, which leads to the impossibility of the music's "existence" (i.e. the obligation of holding an open black umbrella in the same hand) or, on the other hand, the transgression of this encumbrance in favor of the implicit possibility of playing the score with the right hand, leaving the music subjected to its own manifestation no longer able to coincide with its own realization -- "a magic made free from the lie of being truth." Limited edition of 300. Full-color sleeve with printed inner sleeve bearing photos and the liner notes.
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LP
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NMN 093-3LP
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Alga Marghen presents a reissue of Intersystems' Free Psychedelic Poster Inside (1968). Intersystems occupied a difficult-to-reach critical nook between the many tropes that had established to frame the various artistic trends of 1960s. Announcing itself with a quivering beam of fluorescent sound, the beginning of Intersystems' Free Psychedelic Poster Inside feels as though it's slowly piercing right through your frontal lobe. Blake Parker's poetry is a dark glimpse into mundane domesticity and the suburbs. One can't help but sense that they're being brainwashed: the slow metamorphosis of sound is juxtaposed against Parker's even-tempered yet electronically-tampered-with speech. There are occasional hints at the twitchy energy of Peachy (NMN 093-2LP), but everything is braced by a spine of lean, cool tones, making Free Psychedelic Poster Inside a far more stark outing than either of its predecessors. Yet the sense of impending danger and general volatility found in the rest of the catalogue is still present - if not amplified. In contrast to Peachy, the shapes the music cuts are smooth rather than jagged, but one is never sure just when Parker's strangely uninflected voice will emerge from the blinding aggregates of pure color. While these clusters of glowing sustain assert an aggressive mesmerism, they serve as a primer for the ears, ominously readying them for virtually anything to happen. When something does, there's often a sense mild alarm on the listener's part even when said change comes in the form of a reprieve from the relentless swarms of high frequency - cascades of synthetic giggles, sliding slow elastic melodies, vigorous strobing modulations and bubbling passages of electronic fizz. Musician and insatiable collector Julian Cope, on his exhaustive online chronicle of all things rare and psychedelic, "Head Heritage" calls Intersystems third LP "one of the densest, most oblique collections of sound ever". Re-mastered by John Mills-Cockell. Mastered for cutting by Giuseppe Ielasi. Comes with original LP graphics as well as a new insert. Edition of 300.
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NMN 093-1LP
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Alga Marghen presents a reissue of Intersystems' Number One Intersystems (1967). Intersystems' works evoke the heightened awareness, intermittent psychosis, intellectual over-stimulation and giddy nihilism of an acid expedition. "Orange Juice and Velvet Underwear" may indeed be the most typically "Psychedelic" cut of Intersystems entire catalog. Its saturated crypto-Indian drone and bent acoustic guitar notes, are upstaged by Parker's lurid-sounding declamations and Mills-Cockell's fierce industrial clatter. From there, it all spirals further into a vortex of frayed cacophony and sober-yet-surreal orations. The sixteen-minute "Blackout Mix" is a perfect demonstration of just how tenuous their relationship was to even the furthest-out reaches of psychedelia in spite of their own pronounced use of related terminology. All curdled puddles of synth noise and caustic electronic howls, Parker's fragmentary deadpan bark both penetrates, and is enveloped by, the sticky sonic tapestry. He unfurls a series of disparate images, more-than-flirting with the mundane horror enumerated later (and more explicitly) by the likes of Throbbing Gristle. "Vox 3/13/67" is Number One Intersystems' second longest and arguably most varied piece. John's contributions span dimly elegiac textures, evoking distant chimes and striated choral voices. Parker delivers his writing as staunchly as ever, yet hacks certain words into syllabic mincemeat that spills violently and incoherently into the middles of sentences. It's by no means less anxious than other pieces on the album, but its tension is achieved through an eerily pronounced sense of breath and movement rather more aggressive means. Where elsewhere Number One Intersystems seems to forecast post-punk excursions into avant-noise antagonism, here there's more indication of Mills-Cockell's training and more canonical influences in its careful phrase-shaping. Featured throughout the album was a homespun instrument devised by John, dubbed "The Coffin", which was also employed live in their "presentations". Mills-Cockell recalls: "It was a 6 foot long box line with purple satin, housing a long plank strung with many parallel lengths of piano wire held in place with tuning pegs which were adjustable with a wrench we kept on board for the purpose. There were contact mikes which were switchable, just like on a Telecaster except that the switches could permit not only selection of different harmonic spectra when the instrument sounded, but of a variety of loudspeakers in various locations in a performance space." Re-mastered by John Mills-Cockell. Mastered for cutting by Giuseppe Ielasi. Edition of 300. Presented in the original Allied Records sleeve.
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NMN 093-2LP
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Alga Marghen presents a reissue of Intersystems' Peachy (1967). The sound work of Intersystems cannibalized stray bits of McLuhanism, psychedelia, Cagean experimentalism, and even the modernist gestural strains of nascent electronic music, yet it was all couched within a very particular DIY ethos. Peachy pushes the meticulousness of Number One Intersystems (NMN 093-1LP) even further and, as such, represents a more balanced amalgam of Intersystems' various disparate stylistic and emotional elements. The truncated opening cut "Experienced Not Watched" is deceptive, beginning with lush, tuneful organ swells that almost border on the ecclesiastical and washed-out metallic pulsations. Yet, the track comes to an abrupt end. What follows is thinner and more gestural, imbued with both poise and awkward buoyancy, owing more to musique concrète than anything on Number One Intersystems. Each sound is framed within ample negative space, inviting listeners to savor each moment, yet its dynamism, and boisterousness, mischievous character steer it well away from being too precious. This impression is reinforced by the decidedly rugged and opaque timbre of much of the sonic activity. Peachy's balance can also be attributed to its consistent flow. The album may superficially be divided into discrete tracks yet the pieces follow one another seamlessly, conveying a single arc, with many continuities and recurring motives. Many of these motives are just mere pithy jolts or shudders of white noise that dart in and out of the aural scenery. In "So They Took The Guns", it matches the gestural profile of the opening cut - it's suddenly lopped off, shifting decisively back toward a slice of Parker's grim narrative, planted squarely in the foreground amidst various percolating abstract chatter. Just as the musical textures have a more unified logic, Parker's texts are also more integrated into the total picture, both aurally and thematically. Despite its sharp veerings into death and violence, the abrupt leaps have a more absurd timbre, than one of abjection and morbidity. And the sudden shifts, of course, are complemented well by the restless intensity of Mills-Cockell's contributions. Parker's voice is subject to a wider spectrum of electronic treatments than before. They're also situated in various places, both spatially and within the mix. Re-mastered by John Mills-Cockell. Mastered for cutting by Giuseppe Ielasi. Edition of 300.
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3CD BOX
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NMN 094CD
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First historical edition! Limited to 500 copies. This three-disc box collects Number One Intersystems (1967), presenting the correct side sequence and (for the first time) the original tracks' sub-section divisions; Peachy (1967), with (for the first time) the correct track separations, timings, and titles; and Free Psychedelic Poster Inside (1968), with (for the first time) the original (double) track titles. All works remastered by Intersystems founding member John Mills-Cockell for this edition. The three-CD box includes full-color digipak sleeves and a 56-page booklet with two texts by Intersystems founding members Michael Hayden and John Mills-Cockell situating Intersystems in the contexts of contemporary art and music, a text by Nick Storring about the original three records and Intersystems founding member Blake Parker, the complete chronology of Intersystems Presentations, and 23 full-page images illustrating the dense evolution of this short-lived and essential mixed-media collective.
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4CD BOX
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TES 096CD
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On the occasion of the 2015 exhibition Le Caselle di Anton Bruhin at the Istituto Svizzero di Roma in Milan, Alga Marghen presents the complete edition of Anton Bruhin's 1977 cycle Vogelsang/Vogelsong/Vogelsung/Vögelsäng. If the idea of recording birds came from Bruhin's friend, the Swiss painter Hans Krüsi (this was a common practice for the art brut master, who layered recordings of the many birds sharing his living space into primitive multi-track sonic sculptures), Bruhin is able to use the same material to create a cacophonic and distorted world of unrecognizable nature, all in one low-fidelity stroke. In the 1960s, Anton Bruhin began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books (which he self-published with Hannes R. Bossert through April-Verlag), and drawing and writing poetry. Bruhin was a member of the first class to study at the F+F Schule für experimentelle Gestaltung in Zürich with Serge Stauffer, famous art teacher and specialist in Marcel Duchamp, where he came into contact with concrete poetry, Fluxus, and experimental music. Dieter Roth and André Thomkins are recognizable influences too. In the mid-1970s, Anton Bruhin was surely at the peak of his tape manipulation work. Always using poor techniques and equipment, he sculpted everyday-life sonic objects and turned them into very accomplished and yet totally experimental musical artifacts. The works presented here belong to this same period of expanded creativity, combining themes of excess and chaos with a pragmatic interest in simple structural schemata. To be consistent with the aesthetic quality of these works, Alga Marghen presents each of these four CDs in a silkscreened jewel case, with the four CDs housed in a numbered slipcase. Limited edition of 200.
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