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LP
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TES 169LP
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Alga Marghen's third installment of Smegma's original "Suburban Primitive Avant-folk music" period (1973-1975) based in Pasadena, featuring three previously unreleased tracks from the deep vault of their home recordings. In the beginning, the band Smegma had only one rule. No musicians. Starting from scratch, they took the road much less traveled. They were inspired by outsider musical artists of the time such as John Cage, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, Wild Man Fisher, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, etc. and they recorded every experiment with youthful enthusiasm. Mostly they only succeeded in tormenting their own friends and neighbors (except for the few who joined the band) but somehow, they never chose imitation, but stumbles on a path that allowed past (shamanistic) and future (space) sounds to lead the way. The titled track gently pulls you in and carries you off with a way-out inner-mind group jamming/not-jamming trip, featuring prepared piano, modular synthesizer, human mouth sounds, pan pipes, tabla, and electric bass guitar. "Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow" (defiantly not the 1960s pop hit) rips you straight into a high energy New Years Eve Party jam, in a romping free jazz style with stream of consciousness vocals and exuberant alto sax solos. Side B starts with Beatnik finger popping and wild dogs barking from a record player, while breathless flute playing leads you down the rabbit hole of mysterious group vocalizing, including imitating the cry of the wild tropical parrots that lived in the palm trees in the front yard of the house in Pasadena that they had lived in. Always out of sync with their own time, 49 years later these tracks still throb and pulsate Beautifully with their own inner logic. Edition of 230.
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NMN 170LP
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Alga Marghen presents the last chapter from the Feedback Works documentation series, a brand-new LP including "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Danse des Dakinis", two previous unreleased tracks by Eliane Radigue. Among the works of fixed duration from the feedback period, "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is the link between "Jouet Electronique" (ALGA 029LP) and "Opus 17" (ALGA 045LP), and allows you to understand the evolution of her approach. "In Memoriam-Ostinato" is a game of mirroring symbols which glide into a non-measured, bent and elastic, temporality. Eliane Radigue's working method and her aesthetic direction are evident in this work from 1969: her very own unique temporal space of sonic experiences. Even though it bears the same name as the third part of "Adnos III", "Danse des Dakinis" is a peculiar work in Eliane's oeuvre. Conceived in a short time, with all kind of tapes from the composer's past work, it fluently shows a kaleidoscopic vision of Radigue's sensibility for sound. In 1998 she put together a curious self-portrait in sound. There is a feedback ostinato conceived around 1969 and which refers to "In Memoriam-Ostinato" and "Opus 17". All through "Danse des Dakinis" you plunge into the sound of a creek recorded at Mills College campus that brings you back to the field-recordings from the beginning of the 1960s, made on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. Such elements construct "Elemental1" (ALGA 029LP) as well. There are also some discreet interventions on the ARP 2500 synthesizer. It is indeed a peculiar work, which doesn't have the same features of her other compositions, especially at that time of her compositional path. There is an explanation for the composer producing this kind of sound material in 1998, and not limited to the sound waves of the ARP synthesizer. Invited to a workshop at Mills College in 1998, Eliane Radigue could not load herself down with her bulky instrument on such a trip. So, she left with just a few tapes taken from her own collection, drawn from different periods, and composed "Danse des Dakinis" with those old elements. There is tension in this composition, a certain wildness, an unpredictability of elements, those which are recognized as fundamental elements, which give structure to the universe. "Dance des Dakinis" is an intimate and wild symphony, alive and unpredictable, which is to be the next-to-last gesture of the composer before completely stopping her work with electronics.
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NMN 166LP
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Alga Marghen present Underground Altena, two visionary long-form works by Anima Sound, the radically freedom-pursuing Paul and Limpe Fuchs duo. 1973 represented a peak for Anima sonic explorations into sculptural sound at the crossing of krautrock, free jazz, and experimental music. Limpe Fuchs studied piano, violin, and percussion in Munich, but all changed in the late 1960s when she met sculptor Paul Fuchs and discovered there was much more space to experiment and discover her own way as in the sculptural environment she had the chance to work directly with materials. Paul first built a horn as a sculpture (the famous Fuchshorn) and started experimenting with its sounds. Then he built a pedal kettledrum adding things to it like woodblocks and welded a steel ring to the hi-hat stand that was strung up with several strings which Limpe played with her toes, or using a saw blade and a shovel. Even if in the beginning Paul and Limpe were more interested in experimental film, there were other communities like Amon Düül and Tangerine Dream and Anima started touring with them as well as with Popol Vuh or Xhol and very quickly became well known within this krautrock scene. After they were engaged in the Underground Explosion Tour 1969 and had made the Tractor Tour at 19 km/h between Munich and Rotterdam in 1971, came Friedrich Gulda who joined them in the early '70s. He was very fond of the duo and he especially liked Limpe singing and their way of just improvising. He was a famous arranger, but wanted to play in an improvising group. Later on, Anima was included in the infamous "Nurse With Wound List" and came the connection to Steven Stapleton who included them in the An Afflicted Man Musica Box anthology together with Jac Berrocal, AMM, Operating Theatre. Even if Anima was in fact part of the krautrock scene, they had a very distinct sound which was a result of the confluence of Paul's "visionary" sculptural world and Limpe's aural universe. Playing on self-built instruments also had a major role in building their specific sound which became more and more unique in the early 1970s as the Fuchhorn, the Fuchzither, the Fuchsbass and other sound sculptures were created. Heavily guided by Limpe's unique approach to percussion playing and vocals, with Paul delivering a striking arsenal of tonal interventions on his invented instruments, "Underground" and "Altena" plays like the outer reaches of free jazz dropped in an alien landscape. Howling and clattering, entirely free and spontaneous, while never losing the sense of deep consciousness, purpose and control.
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NMN 019CD
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2022 repress. On tape from the Judson days. Remember? When you made these things at home, on the best equipment you or your other poor friends could find? Electronic music from the 1960s. And you had that Japanese tape recorder with built-in mike; indeed, that was the only piece of furniture on your tatami floor on the Lower East Side that summer of 1961. This compact disc presents tape music recorded between 1962 and 1963 for the friends meeting once a week in a loft in NYC. The first track, "Lucinda Pastime", was the soundtrack for a dance piece by Lucinda Childs: "the tape was made in the kitchen sink, with primitive equipment and all the different kinds of plates and bowls in the house. The enjoyment of listening to this musique liquid at night, in bed, and always finding it too short." "Memories: Performances": "Ah yes... yes! The principle of this tape is the recombining of recorded performances from the past, my past, this time. Because the idea, and practice, of collage was really around in that time." "From Thais", was made on request of Yvorine Rainer, "collaging mostly extracts from Massenet opera, mix after mix to get thrown around fragments of the opening until the thin, otherworldly quality of the ending." "Oracle, a Canata on Images of War", was commissioned by the Living Theatre: "All sounds in violent counterpoint, made by me at home... playing with real noises, with a deliberately pulverized reality made of over-recorded close-miked crashes which even blew the machine's circuitry. Mixed into the 'Darkest White Noise' ever made." "Flares" used dancers and musicians and slides and lights in a total-space multimedia; this is the only piece on this compact disc which uses purely generated tape sounds. "Circus Tape" was for "a whole evening of inspired crazy-fun, from burlesque to creaking doors." All previously unreleased works presented in a digipack CD with 16-page booklet.
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LP
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VOCSON 082LP
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2022 repress. Alga Marghen present the first ever release of Illuminations, or Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti duo interactions, illuminated with dim red lights. In early 1970 Mort Subotnick asked Charlemagne Palestine to join his soon to be created Media Department at the new "Dream School of the Future" endowed by the Disneys to be called the California Institute of the Arts. Charlemagne and Simone Forti met there in 1970, when La Monte Young asked them to arrange a California concert for Pandit Pran Nath. They decided to try an improvisation session together and Charlemagne invited Simone the first time to the electronic music studio where he worked regularly. Their medium blended as a play of interacting sound waves and solid matter in motion as Charlemagne and Simone shared energy and focus. The three previously unreleased recordings on this LP were made between October and December 1971. The first take, titled "Illumination", is for two voices moving in the space with small bells and crystal glasses while Simone Forti plays the molimo, a corrugated tube meant for connecting the gas stove. The second take titled, "Wed Oct 13th 1971", has Simone and Charlemagne in a song dialogue as animals do. It was also at Cal Arts that Charlemagne Palestine first encountered a Bosendorfer Imperial Piano of Vienna. He played it often as Simone danced during their "Illuminations". Take three is a song sang in falsetto while playing the Bosendorfer Imperial in an arpeggiated style that predates the "strummings". Listening to these "three takes" 40 years later, they ooze a timeless, carefree mystical, magical, dreamy atmosphere that evoked the times of the late '60s to early '70s in Charlemagne and Simo ne part of the California Art Scene. Illuminations were a unique open spontaneous form of performance, ritual and prayer. Edition limited to 365 copies with an essay by both Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti, as well as photos of the performances reproduced on the LP front sleeve.
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VOCSON 161LP
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Alga Marghen presents the second and final chapter in documenting Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti seminal collaborations. The Meditative Sound Environments LP is more centered around electronic music and also includes a unique two-voice work based on Simone's chanting, the magically suspended "Simone Tape". All the tracks of this new LP present only previously unreleased recordings. Charlemagne Palestine met Simone Forti through Dr. Richard Alpert, a professor at Columbia University who went to India to study with a Hindu guru and he himself became a guru afterwards called Baba Ram Dass. Coming back to US he brought Pandit Pran Nath with him. It was a time when everybody was experimenting. All came with a lot of orientalism because people were into timelessness, meditation, and being stoned. It was in that atmosphere that Charlemagne met Simone because she also knew Pran Nath. Around that time Palestine moved from NY to California to work with electronic music at the newly invented school California Institute of the Arts. Simone was also living in LA and even though she was not officially connected to CalArts she knew many of the artists who were teaching there. In summer 1970 Simone Forti was invited by Allan Kaprow (one of the Deans of CalArts) to do an evening of dance at the Pasadena Art Museum and for this performance she asked Charlemagne Palestine to try developing a new kind of work together. It immediately clicked. In January 1971 in Pasadena they did their first Illuminations. All of a sudden, they were doing a new kind of jamming together. Everybody in the audience loved it because it was so dreamy and they found amazing how a man and a woman can act in that strange, very dreamlike oriental way as in trance, together. Other artists were mostly doing very structural works while with Illuminations it was totally like they were on magic drugs. These performances had certain fixed elements... the piano or some electronics like in "Meditative Sound Environment", the title track of this LP. It turned out they liked red lights so they started to always do it in red light. Also, they liked to do it in a resonant spaces. It became more an approach than a piece, because there were never two "Illuminations" that were alike. The aspect of Charlemagne's music that most inspired Simone Forti's imagination was his melodies. Sometimes their texture of repetitions and evolving variations were so close that the term melody doesn't seem to apply. Liner notes by Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti. Edition of 365.
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4LP BOX
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ALGAMARS 009BLP
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"Four signed LPs with hand-drawn sleeves edition of 30 signed and numbered linen boxsets also including a 112-page signed book with title page in calligraphy. Alga Marghen started their activities in 1996 soon to become a reference for experimental music, sonic arts and sound poetry publishing. Now in 2021 it's time to celebrate the 25 years of activities and we decided to start by presenting for the first time on vinyl some of most radical and uncompromising Fluxus events. Alga Marghen is therefore very proud to present Philip Corner Fluxstuff, a four-LP edition in linen box, limited to 30 signed and numbered copies, also including a 112-page LP-size signed book collecting some of the most relevant documents from the early days of Fluxus. Each LP comes with hand-drawn sleeve by Philip Corner as well as signed labels. The signed and numbered book also has an individual handmade calligraphy on title page. The 112-page LP-size book includes reproduction of scores, original posters and programs, diagrams, letters and testimonies by among others George Maciunas, John Cage, The Living Theatre, Carolee Schneemann, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Charlotte Moorman, Wolf Vostell, Emmett Williams, Tone Roads, Zaj, Alison Knowles, La Monte Young, Jackson Mac Low, Malcolm Goldstein and Max Neuhaus!"
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LP
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VOCSON 163LP
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In the mid-1970s Anton Bruhin was surely at the peak of his tape manipulation works. Always using poor techniques and equipment he sculpted everyday-life sonic objects turning them into very accomplished and yet totally experimental music artifacts. The works presented here surely are among the most accomplished results of his expanded creativity.
"InOut", a masterpiece for tuning whistle, mouth harps, flutes, toy and party gag instruments, percussion, bells, electric razor, model ship engine with propeller, birdcall whistles, CH-Phon, feedback speaker-microphone, siren, double shawm, falling down spoon, jew's harp (only two short notes), tearing scotch tape from the spool, ocarina, hair dryer and other noise makers plus occasionally radio tuner was recorded in Zurich between May 17th and May 22nd, 1981, on a Sanyo M7300L stereo radio cassette recorder with both integrated and external microphone. The recorder is in the recording standby position, both "RECORD" and "PAUSE" buttons are pushed. Then, Bruhin sings or plays a tone into the microphone. During this tone he releases the "PAUSE" button by pushing it. Subsequently he presses the "PAUSE" button again within a fraction of a second. Now the first short note is recorded. In InOut thousands of very short notes were added this way, like a patchwork, like an acoustic quilt with geometric irregularities and varied patterns.
"Rotomotor", subtitled "ein motorische Idiotikon", is a 28-minute long reading representing one of Bruhin's major works. Written in Zurich between 1976 and 1977, then recorded in August 1978 at Etienne Conod's Sunrise Studio. "Rotomotor" is a poetic Idiotikon of the Swiss-German dialect where, instead of the straight alphabetical order, the words are organized according to the similarities of their letters (each word differ from the previous one by just one letter). For this reading a delay equipment which repeated the signal after 0.6 seconds was used and each word is superimposed to the echo of the preceding one. On one hand this echo generates the rhythm of the performance, on the other it supports the acoustic metamorphosis of the words.
Anton Bruhin in the 1960s began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books, drawing, and writing poetry. Anton Bruhin was a member of the first class to study at the F+F School with Serge Stauffer, famous art teacher and specialist in Marcel Duchamp, where he came into contact with concrete poetry, Fluxus, and experimental music.
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LP
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NMN 162LP
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Alga Marghen presents Water Angels, an LP with previously unreleased tracks by Katalin Ladik, following the monumental Phonopoetics from 2019 (VOCSON 157LP). Issued in collaboration with acb Gallery, Budapest. "Water Angel", the title track, is a side-long work from 1989. It began its life containing a splice of "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana": and was first staged in an artificial fog on a lake at the 1989 Spoleto Festival in Italy. The texts include fragments of her own lyrics mixed with parts from James Joyce and Lewis Carroll in a kind of sonic-textual collage of processed sounds superimposed to environmental field recordings. One can also hear the composer Erno Király, her first husband, playing his self-built instrument called "zitherphone", a 58-stringed huge engine of sounds assembling five zithers in a single body, with pick-ups placed on some of the strings. The first part of "Water Angel" was used as a starting point for "Three Orphans", another composition juxtaposing electronically modified voice with recordings of folk songs, this time Hungarian. It's a kind of "adaptation of a Hungarian folk ballad", utilizing recordings done in Transylvania in 1940, registered with a wax cylinder phonograph and gathered by Radio Novi Sad. Thanks to the collaboration with Boris Kovač, the sound engineer for this project, the quality of Katalin Ladik's screams, whispers, chants, laughter, giggles is now significantly improved, and in some ways the subtle nuances of her virtuoso interpretation find here their most powerful rendition. Also presented on this record are three and never before issued works created by Katalin Ladik in collaboration with the composer Svetlana Marasch at the Electronic Studio of Radio Belgrade in 2019: "Electric Bird", "White Bird" and "Ice Bird". Combining extended vocal techniques, processing and modular synthesis, these tracks confirm the artist's radical temperaments that helped to define her work during the '60s and '70s, while pushing it further into new territories thus revealing an artist with almost no peer in the experimental landscape today. Edition of 300.
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NMN 165LP
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Alga Marghen presents the uncompromising El Artilugio, a previously unreleased sonic assault presented in 1968 under the auspices of Walter Marchetti's Zaj in Madrid. Manuel Calvo was a forerunner and a protagonist of geometric abstract painting in Spain between the '50s and the '60s. His personal poetic research was close to that of other artists developing the principles of an analytical art in opposition to the main currents of informal art and lyrical abstraction. Experiences that projected Calvo in a more international dimension, especially through the short but significant collaboration with Galerie Denise René in Paris, a leading European art gallery in that period and catalyst for artists producing geometric abstraction, kinetic art and optical art. The end of the collaboration with Denis René, as well as a short stay in Brazil at the beginning of the military dictatorship, led Calvo on one hand to a critical vision of the established art system and its dynamics, and on the other hand to the radicalization of his libertarian ideas and the upturning of his artistic strategies. Back in Spain, in 1966 and 1967 he decided to become independent from the art system by opening a studio in Calle Alcantara in Madrid and transform it into a taller-exposición, or a laboratory where he could held a permanent exhibition of his works. A space open to public with no temporal limits aiming to reverse the functional paradigm of a standard exhibition space. Calvo was attracted by the idea of using light and movement as materials for his work, a principle originated from kinetic art which he discovered while in Paris some years earlier, and at the same time he wanted to criticize the mechanistic, repetitive and predictable process of cause and effect as the only factor activating people's perception in front of these kinetic artworks. With these premises Calvo created for this space El Artilugio, a participatory permanent installation where the effects of light variations were randomly activated through simple buttons by a no-longer passive audience. This way the installation not only became an open structure with unlimited possibilities of random variations, but through the use of a reel-to-reel recording machine and a pre-recorded magnetic tape it also introduced a sound element, activated during the process, something that represented an absolutely new element within that cultural specific context. The idea came after finding an old electric engine at the Rastro, the ancient flea market in Madrid. A young Catalan anarchist who worked as electrician and who was passing by the taller-exposición in Calle Alcantara managed to repair it and make it work. Once the engine had been started through a process similar to the one used for the lights, Calvo recorded its parasitic noises which he would then reproduce through the reel-to-reel machine during the participatory installation. To this first sonic component of the tape he associated, by contrast, a second part with the recording of an Austrian soprano singer reading out phonems, alliterations of single words, tongue twisters and texts in different languages, repeated in an obsessive way in a style similar to sound poetry. The tape ends with a coda of parasitic noises from the engine, still manipulated with push-buttons, fading out in a glissando. Gatefold sleeve; includes LP-size, eight-page booklet with exclusive photos from the installation as well as a text by Gabriele Bonomo; edition of 250.
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Book
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SOFTNEED 023
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Alga Marghen in collaboration with Expanded Media Editions present the final issue of Soft Need, a publication centered on the work of William Burroughs and expanding its deep influences into contemporary consciousness. Founded by Udo Breger in 1973 as a reaction to the aftermath of a three weeks' stay across Xmas and New Year's with Gysin and Burroughs, Soft Need had its roots in the underground press of the previous two decades and at the same time became a prototype for the forthcoming fanzine scene. Even if only three numbers were issued in the '70s (SN#8 in 1973 followed by SN#9 in 1976 and SN#17 The Brion Gysin Special in 1977, all in print-runs of 300 to 500 copies) it quickly became a legendary publication for both Burroughs fans and those interested in counterculture experimental poetry artists' editions. Almost half a century later, the last edition Soft Need 23 is now issued including exclusive material by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin as well as multi-media contributions by eighty international authors and artists. Issued in an edition limited to 431 copies Soft Need 23 is a 260-page art book reflecting on the contemporary relevance of historical works by Burroughs and Gysin within the frame of the Beat Generation. Dedicated to Ian Sommerville, the English electronic technician and computer programmer who was collaborating with Brion Gysin to development of the early Dreammachine and programmed the computer-generated random sequences that the poet used in his early cut-ups, the book present 190 illustrations, literary essays, photographs, poetry, visual art, caricature, memories and a vast array of ephemera by William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, Louise Landes Levi, Gregory Corso, Jean-Jacques Lebel, John Armleder, Paul-Armand Gette, Peter Weibel (director of ZKM Karlsruhe and curator with Udo Breger of The Name Is Burroughs show in 2012), Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Sonic Boom, Papiro, James Grauerholz, Robert Wilson, and many others. A large format (32x24cm) book printed in 4/4-color and featuring a thread-sewn visible binding. 950 grams. 260-page book edition of 431 copies.
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7"
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PLANAM 323EP
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Planam present the first 7" edition issued in its catalog, the split-single with consonant musicians Sonic Boom and Papiro. Originally produced as contribution for Soft Need 23, a book on Burroughs/Gysin edited by Udo Breger, this 7" is hereby available in its shiny and beautifully repackaged edition. Former Spacemen 3 mastermind and alchemist producer Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember, E.A.R., Spectrum) offers an unreleased instrumental version of "Just a Little Piece of Me", an overture for West-Coast-Style synthesizer and harp, starring a repeating ardent theme. Papiro, who was also responsible for the vivid cover artwork, engraves his side with the electronic lullaby "Dream Journal (for Udo)", written purposely for Breger, as the title suggests, and released exclusively for this single. Papiro and Kember are known for their gallant trips between experimental and meditative abstract worlds. This single shows their ability to touch the soul during these ventures. Edition of 200 copies in glossy full-color sleeve.
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2LP
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NMN 164LP
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Capturing the four soundtracks conceived in 1975 for the multimedia/audiovisual performances at Galiéra Museum in Paris, the previously unreleased Labyrinthe de Violence stretching across two LPs represents a peek into Luc Ferrari's creations connected to his Atelier de Libération de la Musique experiences. Luc Ferrari was always keen to disrupt habits and engrained practices, to open his mind to new ways of apprehending the world of art, considering it not so much as a separate realm but as an inroad into society. In keeping with the spirit of 1968, he advocated taking part in daily life, casting a critical, but amazed, eye on the world around us, and always questioning the meaning of the occupations and preoccupations the world imposes. From the 1970s, Luc also wished to shed the solitary status of the artist, and to truly communicate with society. He thus gathered around him a group of people from different backgrounds with an aim to create, together, new ways of working and new forms of expression that would address unusual audiences rather than traditional concert audience. Having created his Studio Billig in Paris in 1973, Luc wanted to make the most of that place to promote exchanges with other artists, to share, think, and improvise together. This is what gave rise to the Atelier de Liberation de la Musique workshops, whose objective was to "Liberate music from the constraints of style and esthetics." The idea was precisely to free the artist from abstraction, leading him to perform accessible and intelligible actions; to promote the imagination; to use the dramatic dynamism of sound and image to trigger ideas; to ignore the sensational and instead to observe our social environment and daily life with an intuitive eye-ear; to invite the visitor to come up with their own analysis. This craving for collaboration led Luc Ferrari to create, in 1975, a collective of musicians with Martin Davorin Jagodic, Philippe Besombes, Alain Petit and David Jisse. That year, they worked at Labyrinthe de Violence, a looped audiovisual labyrinth which evoked the violence of contemporary society, and was a reaction to the political situation of the time. It was a multimedia work, spread across four rooms, on the following themes: Power/Profit/Violence/Pollution. Each side of this 2LP set reproduces the sonorization of one of the four rooms in the Museum, automatically mixing in the central space. The same recordings focus on questions of utopia through many of the same themes. As in the rest of his work, pleasure was also at the heart of these pieces. First press limited to 500 numbered copies; gatefold sleeve.
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LP
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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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2022 restock. 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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2022 repress. 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. With liners by Radigue and portrait photos by Arman.
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LP
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TES 159LP
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Limited 2022 repress. 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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NMN 152LP
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2022 restock. 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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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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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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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 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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