ReR Mini- Update May 2009. Click For Infos.‏

NEW ReR RELEASES

NADIA RATIMANDRESY and MATTEO RAMON AREVALOS
Messiaen et autour de Messiaen for ondes Martenot and piano [£12] ReR OM1
A signature collection of exquisite works for onde Martinot and piano by Olivier Messiaen, N’Guyen Thien Dao, Jacques Charpentier and Tristan Murail, exploring the many voices of this extraordinary instrument. The onde (or ondes musicales or le Martenot) was first demonstrated at the Paris Conservatoire in 1928 and immediately attracted the attention of Varese, Milhaud, Koechlin, Jolivet,  Honegger and Messiaen, who all wrote for it – cumulatively ensuring its survival. Although only a year younger than the theremin, the onde is a far more sophisticated, complex and versatile instrument, not least because of the combination it offers of pitched and glissando tones, and the wide range of filters and different resonating media through which it can sound: loudspeakers, gongs, sympathetic resonating strings and reverberant enclosures. The compositions here exploit every unearthly aspect of the instrument and are beautifully performed: a remarkable and exquisite collection.  L

BLAST 4tet
Sift [£12] ReR Blast 02
This is the second release, after a long wait, from this unique ensemble. Equally at home with the discipline of composition and the tightrope of improvisation Blast (now Blast 4tet) have evolved a fluid, pointillistic, unfathomable but transparent musical language that seamlessly integrates – over very short durations – highly complex writing and very free ranging improvisation, allowing the two languages to merge and combine into a new kind of logical exposition that makes sense but can’t be reverse-engineered into its component parts. This is a music that lives through detail and exposition; neither resolving into composition, nor able properly to be understood as improvisation. In this respect Blast have solved a problem that has defeated many in the last 40

HEINER GOEBBELS
The Italian Concerts [£12]  IDA 0242
With Chris Cutler, The Icarus Ensemble, Sira and Boubacar Djebate, Johannes Bauer, Tiziano Popoli, Jocelyn B. Smith and the Orchestra of the Teatro Popoli, Bologna, conducted by Yoichi Sugiyama, this is a rare release from one of the pioneers of contemporary cross-platform composition. Working with montage, superposition and elements of different musical languages, Heiner sidesteps genre to concentrate on the material. This CD comprises four high quality (world premiere) recordings that feature a disparate set of compositions performed at a three-city festival organised by Angelica in 2007. The Italian concerto/Tutti Writing marks a now vanishingly rare live appearance from Heiner in an extended duet with Chris Cutler, concluding with TuttiWriting, in which they are joined by the Icarus Ensemble. This is followed by Ou bien Sunyatta for Kora, Voice and Orchestra, Die Faust im Wappen, derived from a story by Franz Kafka, for trombone (Johannes Bauer) and orchestra and So that the blood dropped to the earth, for orchestra and voice adapted from Surrogate Cities. These are remarkable and substantial pieces.

VRIL
The Fatal Duckpond [£12] ReR Vril 2
Award-winning soundtrack to the film by Horst Gack, (Prix Ultra de Concourse Lumiere, Ulm, 2009: Best Soundtrack). After a break of six years, Chris Cutler, Bob Drake and Lukas Simonis, now with added ingredient Pierre Omer, present the second volume of recordings by the elusive VRIL – a band who revive and update both the great institution of the guitar instrumental and the now sadly neglected practice of collective arrangement, intense rehearsal and live studio performance. Appropriate to the half century that has passed since the birth of the form, these hits dodge about, get bored easily and blend both concentration and complexity with the still indispensable traditional qualities that made the genre great: hummability, crafted sounds, nifty arrangements, ridiculous gimmicks and ensemble playing. ‘Neither tribute nor parody, these enigmatic pieces are never more nor less than exactly what they are’…. wrote Lothar Preen in his Melbourne concert review….’but perfectly realised’. With film stills, misleading sleeve-notes and storyboard by the Diogenesian recluse Frank Key.

LAST RELEASES.

BAKU: SYMPHONY OF SIRENS
SOUND EXPERI.MENTS IN THE SOVET AVANT GARDE – ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS AND RECONSTRUCTIONS of 74 KEY WORKS of MUSIC, POETRY and AGITPROP from the RUSSIAN AVANT GARDE 1908-1942
Clothbound 72 page 25 x 14 cm book with two CDs. [£27]  ReR RAG 1, 2
CD1: The Symphony of Sirens. In 1922 Arseni Avraamov composed and conducted a visionary public sound event, activating the entire port city of Baku: its factory sirens, the ships horns of the  entire Caspian flotilla, two batteries of artillery, several full infantry regiments, trucks, seaplanes, 25 steam locomotives, an array of pitched whistles and several massive choirs. Constantly referenced but forever lost, this extraordinary event is here painstakingly reconstructed and spatialised to approximate the original experience. Plus 39 other priceless sound works, including the legendary Victory over the Sun and other lost documents of Malevich, Dziga Vertov, Nikolai Foregger & his Orchestra of Noises, Sergei Prokofiev, El Lissitsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, Ivan Ignatyev & The Ego Futurist Group, Mikhail Matiushin, Alexei Kruchenykh, Georgi Yakoulov, Konstantin Melnikov, Igor Severyanin, Vasilisk Gnedov, Vladimir Kasyanov & The Futurist Circle, David Burliuk,  Elena Guro, Olga Rozanova, H₂SO₄ Group, Simon Chikovani, The Nothingists, Vasily Kandinsky, Danil Harms, Igor Terent’ev, Mikhail Larionov, The Psycho-futurists group, Vasily Kamensky, Varvara Stepanova and Roman Jakobson.
CD2: Enthusiasm! The Dombass Symphony (1930)  is possibly Dziga Vertov’s most revolutionary achievement: a symphony of abstract industrial noise for which a specially designed giant mobile recording system was constructed (it weighed over a ton) in order to capture the din of mines, furnaces and factories. For Vertov, the introduction of sound film didn’t mean talkies, but the opportunity to collage, montage and splice together constructions of pure environmental noise. In addition, this CD collects together for the first time a definitive library of original sound documents from the Russian Avantgarde: contemporary recordings of Alexander Mossolov, Julius Meytuss, Roman Jakobson, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Lili Brik, David Burliuk, Sergei Esenin, Vasily Kamensky, Semen Kirsanov, V.I. Lenin, Anatoly  Lunacharsky, Alexandra Kollontay, Leon Trotsky, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelshtam, Ilya Ehrenburg, Marina Tsvetaeva, Naum Gabo, Noton Pevsner and Dmitri Shostakovich.
BOOK: A comprehensive overview of the complexity and breadth of the many early C20 Russian avantgarde movements, followed by detailed notes and contexts for the individual recordings – including summary biographies of the main actors; additional work notes about the process of the extraordinary Baku reconstruction; a bibliography, rare photographs, web research links, artwork, facsimiles of contemporary documents, a comparative timeline of European and Russian Avantgardes and the first English translation of an article by Avraamov about the symphony. This is a definitive library collection, some seven years in the making and possibly our most important release of recent years.  L

HENRY COW
40th ANNIVERSARY BOX SET Volumes 1 & 2
9 CDs and 1 DVD with 2 substantial books – in two solid Boxes.  LIMITED EDITION.

Assembled over 15 years, this collection gives for the first time some idea of the breadth and depth of Henry Cow’s work. Always very much a live band, performance was their metier, and a concert might range far – always driven by an intense dialogue between tightly knit compositions and radically open improvisation. The officially released LPs tell at best only half this story, and one purpose of this definitive collection is to set the work back into its broader context. These are all previously unreleased recordings and include many compositions and improvisations new to anyone who only knows the official releases, as well as documentation of a number of one-off projects and events and – where different or remarkable enough to justify inclusion – live versions of parts of the LP repertoire. Many of these recordings are high quality radio transcriptions taken directly from the original masters, others are less hi-fi, but justified, we think, by their historic and musical quality. It has all been carefully transferred and re-mastered by Bob Drake to the best audio quality that current technology allows without interference or tampering – a million times better than the terrible bootlegs that are swimming around. Altogether, these 9 CDs embody some extraordinary, and occasionally prescient music and, taken together with the officially released albums, make it possible at last to get some impression of the extensive ground Henry Cow covered in it’s 10 short years. Finally, there is the DVD: 80 minutes of the 1976 Cow (with Georgina Born and Dagmar Krause) performing many unreleased pieces as well as Living in the Heart of The Beast, Beautiful as the Moon &c. This is the only known video recording in existence – professionally made, multi camera – and has not been recovered since its original broadcast (just scour U-Tube, HC is conspicuous by its total absence).  And last but not least, there is a great deal of written, photographic and textual documentation. Since this will probably be the last and definitive collection, it has to be thorough. For reasons of fairness and cost we have decided to split the set into two boxes – which can be bought separately or together. VOL 1 covers the period 1971 to the 1976 Hamburg radio show which documents John Greaves’ last concert with the band, as well as the extraordinary Trondheim concert from the quartet tour that immediately followed. VOL 2 takes the story through to 1978 and includes more previously undocumented compositions as well as the Bremen radio recording. The Stockholm CD belongs to this second box, which also contains the DVD. L

HENRY COW
The Road Volume 1 [£47]  L

HENRY COW
The Road  Volume 2  [£49]  L

HENRY COW
The Studio [£47] The complete re-mastered  Henry Cow studio recordings in the third matching box: Legend, Unrest, Desperate Straights, In Praise of Learning and Western Culture. L

COW BOX ON THE INSTALLMENT PLAN.
COW INSTALLMENT UNIT [£12] We know it’s expensive, and that’s a problem. But it really is expensive to make, and there’s no way around that. However, from feedback we’ve had we can proposes a special payment method. If you desperately want the box but just can’t spend so much at once, you can buy in instalments (at £12 per CD) and we’ll send the boxes with CDs 5 & 10, as well as the extra box for the studio CDs.  At any time you can pay the balance and get the rest of the set all at once (when you win the lottery, for instance). Hopefully this will make it a more manageable proposition for some of you.

Instalment unit Vol 1                               [£12] Instalment unit Vol 2           [£12] Instalment unit Vol 3           [£12] Instalment unit Vol 4 & 5    [£24] Instalment unit Vol 6  (optional)                    [£12] Instalment unit Vol 7           [£12] Instalment unit Vol 8           [£12] Instalment unit Vol 9           [£12] Instalment unit DVD                                [£15]

SUN RA
Nidhamu/Dark Myth Visitation Equation [£12] ARTYARD
These two LPs, on one CD, taken with Horizon, complete the Egypt trilogy. Nidhamu was in fact the second release of the series, half recorded at the Balloon Theatre and half at a concert at Hartmut Geerken’s house in Heliopolis. It’s a remarkable document: austere, and very out there. Eeliopolis sessions aoppear on lectric keyboards and an eerie Discipline No.11 set the scene, and after some solo Moog there’s a spooky miniature Discipline No.15 introducing another long Moog and keyboards solo: 35 pretty abstract minutes that just slip by. Dark Myth Visitation Equation follows (it was the first LP release, and has also been known as Sun Ra in Egypt Vol 1 and Nature’s God). The first tracks are from a Cairo TV broadcast and the whole collection features the more familiar groove-based pieces characteristic of the period, interspersed with yet more Moog and electric keyboard solos. June Tyson reappears for To Nature’s God and the highly eccentric Why go to the Moon? Classic.

Special Offer: HORIZON and NIDHAMU/DARK MYTH [£20]

ELIO MARTUSCIELLO
To extend the visibility [£21.25] DVD  By Name
In a limited Edition of 2000 numbered copies this DVD comes in a threefold art DVD case with a full colour 48 page book offereng substantial exegetical essays (in English and Italian) by Tim Hodgkinson and Sebastiano Giacobello) and additional artwork by Ale Sordi and Ester Curcio. It s is a fully integrated electronic composition/animation exploring and aestheticising the contemporary fact of the digital unification of visual and aural data. It is also a meditation on the earth, its fragility, order, chaos, art and hubris. In six explorations, using all manner of digital processing techniques Elio animates abstract sequences of imagery derived from satellite pictures of our beleaguered planet and a mixture of concrete and synthetic – always highly composed and processed – sound. It is neither a film with soundtrack nor a composition with pictures but rather a contribution to a still unfamiliar medium, a rather demanding medium. Essentially it is a domestic installation, or the C21 multimedia version of a small print edition.

SPECIAL DISTRIBUTION

EAR & NOW
Eclipse  [£10]  Wallace 117
Xabier Iriondo, Alberto Morelli and Paulo Cantu, with various guests who, in different combinations, cover organs, harmonium, piano, autoharp, acoustic, electric and prepared guitars, trombone, various winds, percussions, exotic string instruments and some processing. The pieces are essentially composed but moderately abstract and very interestingly orchestrated. Unusual. The overall feeling is somewhat cinematic and very transparent, though enigmatic. It’s also economical and often surprising. Altogether a substantial record, nicely packaged and at a specially discounted price from ReR. Limited edition of 500. Go on..

THE RECOMMENDED SAMPLER LIMITED JAPANESE FACSIMILE EDITION [£35] BY NAME.
We have a handful of these beautiful reproductions of the original gatefold double LP release with the extra mini CD. CDs are the same as the ReR jewel case edition, so this is for collectors.

GARETH WILLIAMS & MARY CURRIE
Flaming Tunes [£14.10]  LALR 06
After leaving This Heat, Gareth went to south India to study kathakali, returning to the UK a couple of years later to attend London University. He also stepped slowly back into music and in 1985 he and Mary Currie released Flaming Tunes – which circulated in hand-coloured cassette boxes, now rare as hen’s teeth. A CD reissue has been a very long time coming, but here it is.

ANA MARIA AVRAM, IANCU DUMITRESCU
iO String Quartet  [14.10]  ED.MN.1025
Four radical pieces for a great – and young – American string quartet who give life and power to four intense compositions (3 for quartet, one for quartet and tape). Spectralism is slowly becoming more accepted and located in the listening world, and the reduced nature of a string quartet, combined with the great sensitivity of these players, urges minute concentration on the part of both performers and the listeners (digital silence also helps) which is repaid in an edge-of-seat, time-locked existentiality. The four pieces move in different directions and are saturated with detail, the compositions seeming to rise out of the grain of the performance, rather than being an anachronous imposition upon it – a tribute to the vision and skill of the composers, who tread a perilous path between precision and dependency – demanding immediacy through prevision, open scoring and will; a dangerously ambiguous endeavour that erases the power relations between individuality and collectivity at the point of realisation. There are three pages of clunking text by Ben Watson in the accompanying booklet that, to this reader, seem completely inappropriate – an incomprehensible antithesis to the subtlety, depth and sensitivity of the music. Unhappily the delivery of this text as part of the concert is included as an unannounced final track on the CD.  toe-curlingly inappropriate. But skip-able.

TRISTAN HONSINGER & MASSIMO SIMONINI
Call me Us  [£12.50]  IDA 025
Cellist Honsinger and pre-existing media manipulist Simonini with a piece that falls between radio art, music theatre and… and what? A highly unusual performance in 10 parts that deploys its materials sparingly and intelligently and, through a combination of skill, spontaneity and ambiguity, arrives at something seemingly too controlled and precise to be improvised, but too complex and wilful to have been composed. In a world of its own; this is confident, eccentric, and highly musical. Simonini’s choice, use and development of both plundered sources and real time manipulation is masterful. A one-off.

OTHER

SUN RA
Live at Slug’s Saloon, Summer 1972 (6xCD set)
[£40.13]  Transparency 0313
Sun Ra and the Arkestra played every Monday night at Slug’s Saloon in NYC for five years. This is the first released documentation of this long residency, comprising two complete shows (six hours) which show the Arkestra emerging from their psychedelic phase and moving back toward its jazz roots.

SUN RA
Live in Cleveland [£14.10]  GY29
Unusual 1975 concert with classic band including June Tyson and a vibraphone.

BOB DOWNES OPEN MUSIC
Crossing Borders [14.10]  RR011
Bob Downes’ Open Music was everywhere for a few years, never really part of any of the British niche communities (free improvisation, jazz, psychedelia) though touching all of them; like a musical workshop, trying new ideas, mixing composition with improvisation and searching for new sounds, a group formally impure and the better for it. This recording recovers four excellent and substantial studio recordings from the late ‘70s, never previously released, now nicely packaged and re-mastered. They range from the tuneful through the improvised to the exotic, and with guitarist Brian Godding, trombonist Paul Rutherford, bassists Barry Guy and Maggido and drummers John Stevens and Denis Smith, this collects some formidable contemporary talent.

REVOLUTIONARY ENSEMBLE
Beyond the boundary of time  [£14.65]  17532-2
Active in the ‘70s, and exceptional even then, this trio – Leroy Jenkins (violin), Sirone (Bass) and Jerome Cooper (drums) reformed in 2004. This concert was recorded a year later. Cooper has added Balophone and some electronics to his repertory but essentially this is just improvisation at a really high level by elder statesmen who know what they are about.

PETER ABLINGER
33-127 [£14.65]  Mode 206
A venture over the edge – it’s what we need labels like Mode for. You’d need to be in a certain mood to listen to this but in that mood it might touch something deep. Essentially, this is a conceptual piece that seems to transcend its concept, becoming a phenomenological piece, touching on the ineffable. Supremely pointless; somehow gripping. And if it doesn’t work that way, then it’s just annoying. The content is easily told: Ablinger plays descending scales on a clean electric guitar, constantly interrupted by chaotic street-noise – which is accompanied by busy, dirty guitar. That’s it. No durations are regular, nothing is repeated (although the structure is of endless irregular alternation) and nothing develops or evolves. If it works, why does it work? The sleeve notes and back-story in this case for me undermine a piece that I think needs to be taken on a purely sensational level. Worth attention I think,

The NATIVE SHRUBS
Of the Santa Monica Mountains  CD-EP [£7.70] Long out of print CD-EP containing only 3 songs – each an epic – by the 1994 band uniting Joe Moe, Michael Webster and Marc Doten (all heavily featured on the 2008 Mainland by Joe Moe). As you’d expect these are unusual, epic, tricksy, high quality one-of-a-kind songs, with a nod to Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. Moe sings – and he can.

MICHAEL WEBSTER
Lotus Festival  [£14.65]  LT66
Los Angeles maverick, author and co-author of many of the songs on the luminous Joe Moe’s Mainland, here with his own collection of highly individual songs, the closest influences discernible being Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. Fine arrangements, head turning musical twists, generous instrumentation and excellent lyrics. Very limited supply.

MICHAEL WEBSTER
Report  CD-EP [£7] By Name
5 recent songs by the uncompromising Webster. If you like his other work, you’ll want this. Musicians with their own aesthetic, a lot of serious skill and a devil-may-care attitude to success and popularity are an endangered species. This CD looks hand made and comes in folded card package with texts on an enclosed sheet. Of course it’s good. Do your duty.

PIERRE BASTIEN & DOMINIQUE GRIMO
Ragtime Vol 2 [£14.65]  IPS 0308
Mechanical instrument builder and brass-player Bastien, here mostly working with turntables in his own unique way, teams up with author and French music fringe legend Dominique Grimaud (credited here with ’microgrooves’, and sometimes mandolin, Moog and autoharp) to build up fascinating hybrid pieces that are tuneful and simple in a sonically inventive, fluid and complex way. The stars won’t fall out of the sky, but this is one of those eccentric byways that belongs in class of its own.

ROBERTO DANI
Drama  [£14.10]  2009/2
An 8 piece suite for solo percussion (and prepared zither) by percussionist Dani that succeeds where many others fail: it’s composed enough to establish expectations that can be manipulated and improvised enough to surprise and find unrepeatable moments; it’s masterful with dynamics and texture and it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

FRED FRITH and the ARTE QUARTETT
Still Urban  [£14.10]  Intakt CD 155
A 2004 commission for saxophone quartet and guitar (Fred). Good quality radio recording. Open, mostly very sparsely melodic form, with accompanying environmental recordings and solo interludes.

FRED FRITH and the ARTE QUARTETT
The Big Picture  [£14.10]  Intakt CD 156
Two pieces here: the title work, about 14 minutes of very open music for saxophones (often unrecognisable) piano and percussion, which could have been much longer. This is followed by Freedom in Fragments, commissioned by the Rova Sax Quartet in 1994 and recorded by them. This version (it’s a modular piece which can be assembled in any order) is very different from the Rova recording, and includes 7 new sections.

LAURIE SCOTT BAKER Gracility (dbl CD) [£18.50]  MNCD012
In the mid to late sixties Baker was much involved with Cardew, AMM, Tudor, the London Improvisers and then the Scratch Orchestra, as well as jobbing in Hair and with Manfred Mann and Alex Harvey, soon falling into the ambit of the so-called Canterbury scene. Moving about then. These are original documentary recordings of 4 performances of Baker’s pieces, made between 1969 and 1975 that feature Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe (their only recording together), Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Jamie Muir, John Tilbury and the Scratch Orchestra. Whatever else, that makes these important historical documents. The title piece (Baker, Bailey, Briars and Rowe, with their amplifiers turned all the way up and them trying to play quite softly) is 71 minutes long and gives a good flavour of the period, Pibroch, with Evan, is a snippet at 5.57 but very lyrical and exquisite (and not at all like the Evan we know today), Bass, Chants and Cues features a trio of John Tilbury (Lowry organ), Laurie Baker (fretless bass, VCS3 and pedals) and Jaime Muir (Drums) which starts a bit like Terry Riley and ends a lot like Faust – and finally Circle Piece is a rare, good quality, recording of the Scratch Orchestra. The sleeve notes are also interesting since they show the many interconnections that existed at the time between contemporary art music, the free improvisers and fringe rock and pop. It was a moment that didn’t last.
In its way a gem.  L

ELECTRONIC, CONTEMPORARY.

SOURCE RECORDS 1 –6
Music of the Avant Garde 1968 –1971 (Triple CD)
[£26]  P21050-2
A 3 CD reissue of the celebrated 6 x 10” LP set that came with the New Music journal Source in 1973.
It’s an all-star cast: Works by Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Larry Austin, Allan Bryant, Alvin Lucier, Arthur Woodbury, Mark Reiner, Stanley Lunetta, Lowell Cross, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Alvin Curran and Annea Lockwood, and performances by the above and Gordon Mumma, David Tudor, Fred Rzsewski and Kurt Bischoff.  Some well known classics appear: Robert Ashley’s Wolfman, David Behrman’s Wave Train, Alvin Lucier’s I am Sitting in a Room, Annea Lockwood’s Tiger Balm and Alvin Curran’s Magic Carpet. There are a few pieces exploring the new PDP 10 computer, and interesting works for invented, modified or electrified instruments, sound sculptures and pure electronics. These are historic recordings, there is plenty of variety and there are many excellent pieces included. Electricity plays the starring rôle.  L

ANTHOLOGY OF DUTCH ELECTRONIC TAPE MUSIC VOL 1 1955-1966 (dbl CD)  [£19.50] BASTA 3­9182-2
A long awaited reissue on CD of the near legendary limited edition LP series, edited by Dick Raaijmakers, released by Donemus in 1978. These are works by Hans Kox, Ton de Leeuw, Jan Boerman, Jaap Spek, Rudolph Escher, Henk Badings, Dick Raaijmakers, Frits Weiland, Tom Dissevelt, Axel Meijer, Robbert van de Neeve, Peter Schat, Tom Bruynel, Will Eisma, Klaus Gorter, Luctor Ponse and Berend Giltay. With thorough, essential and informative notes, and a history, by Raaijmakers and the individual composers. L

ANTHOLOGY OF DUTCH ELECTRONIC TAPE MUSIC VOL 2  1966-1977 (dbl CD)  [£19.50] BASTA 3­9183-2
A long awaited reissue on CD of the near legendary limited edition LP series, edited by Dick Raaijmakers, released by Donemus in 1978. There are works by Jacob Cats, Tera de Marez Oyens, Jos Kunst, Gilius van Bergeijk, Franz von Doorn, Thomas Arras, Simeon Ten Holt, Victor Wentink, Louis Andreissen, Peter Smith and Tony van Campen. With thorough, essential and informative notes, and a history, by Raaijmakers and the individual composers.

XENAKIS
Hibiki Hana Ma, Polytope de Cluny [£14.65] Mode 203
A gem. Hibiki, an electronic composition, was written for the now legendary Federation of Iron and Steel pavilion at the1970 World fair in Osaka – a massive space with 700 speakers under the floor and a further 128 distributed throughout the auditorium and suspended in the air. The result is massive and deeply impressive, even in stereo, and is a classic of the genre. It’s accompanied here by the 1972 Polytope de Cluny – designed for the Roman Baths at Cluny and employing as its visual component a highly complex, calculated programme of laser projections (see the dvd) the sound continues in the vein of Hibiki Hana Ma, though its mood is less stark.  A very welcome release. L

XENAKIS
Complete String Quartets [£14.65] Mode209
Unheard at time of printing.

MUSIC FROM STANFORD
Various [£14.65]  innova 705
A fascinating collection of 8 pieces performed by students and faculty at Stanford University (including Brian Fernyhough and  Mark Applebaum) which ‘reflect a broad range of aesthetic issues, including fragmentation of structure, complex layering of musical time and  narrative vs non-narrative discourse..’ The CD delivers what it says on the label – these are all highly evolved, complex – and very different – pieces, each of which has something useful and gripping to say. Especially great are the pieces by Marisol Jiminez (for 3 percussionists – impossible sounds beautifully deployed), and Per Boland (for a small ensemble including the ‘electronically prepared piano device’: 12 electromagnets deployed above the frame of the piano to amplify string resonances). Contemporary music may be in a mess but at Stanford obviously critical faculties are not dulled and excellence is expected – and selected for. An exemplary collection of unknown composers with real ideas. L

ART HISTORY

MUSICA ELETRONICA VIVA
MEV40 : 80675 (4 CD set)  [£36] Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) – the live-electronic/electroacoustic Amercan/Italian counterpart of AMM was founded one evening in the spring of 1966 in a room in Rome. Members at various times have been Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, Richard Teitelbaum, Karl Berger, Allan Bryant, Steve Lacy, George Lewis, Garrett List, Carol Plantamura, Gregory Reeve and Ivan Vandor. Their importance is hard to underestimate. The contents of this box, selected by core members Curran, Rzewski, and Teitelbaum, cover the best recordings: SpaceCraft, Stop the War, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Pt. 1, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Pt. 2, New Music America Festival, Ferrara, Italy, Mass. Pike. Unheard at time of going to press.

BOOK

DOUGLAS HENDERSON
Playback…no rewind button (Book plus CD) [£18] By Name
60pp 27.5 x 21.5 cm. full colour hardback art book that documents the work of the imaginative New York engineer and sound artist Henderson, now resident in Berlin. With a musical background (PhD in composition at Princeton, dance commissions, work with John Zorn, Zeena Parkins &c., 2 gold records and a Mercury prize for his mastering work..) Henderson’s work is nevertheless intensely visual; a proper marriage of ear and eye at a sophisticated level. And sharp ideas. The CD is organised and mastered to make sense on its own terms. Text in German and Englsh. Plus biography

OF INTEREST

·PERFECT VACUUM
– A guide to the music of the 21^st century [£12] XX33
The work of Lukas Simonis and Amos/Xentos/L Voag/too many aliases to list, with various guests covering a wide range of electronic and acoustic instruments. Highly eccentric pieces very elaborately and sharply packaged. Some will want it just for the cover and classic gong parody photograph.  And who could blame them?

·YUGEN PLAYS LEDDI
Uova Fatali [£14.65]  ALT 005
Tommaso Leddi, one of the compositional mainstays of the Stormy Six of yore, returns with a more chamber orientated but still cross-media rock-inflected collection of compositions for guitars,mandolin, bass, drums, violin,  several keyboards (inc. mellotron, organ, piano and synthesiser) percussion and reeds.

STOP PRESS

BACK IN STOCK

·UP MURPHY STREET [£12.50] Reissued by El Frenzy, offshore home to Bing Selfish Enterprises, this ambitious multi-instrument collection of eccentric  songs is available again, while stocks last.

HAIL
Turn of the Screw [£12]  ReR H1
A box of this classic showed up. While they last…

PETER BLEGVAD
Just Woke Up [£12] And a  box of this classic showed up. While they last…

SAMLA MAMMAS MANNA
10 CD Box [£150] INCLUDES POSTAGE. By Name.
I won’t begin to try to describe the dramas involved finally getting a few copies of this.
But we have them at last – and they are out of print already, so these are the last available few, for whoever is still looking. Samla Mammas Manna was one of the really great bands of the ’70s, were founder members of RIO and remain a glowing example of how intelligence, musicianship, imagination and innovation could be applied infectiously to the best of rock. We have a handful of this limited edition, expensive, beautifully produced boxed collection of all their releases on 8 CDs, all re-mastered, with lots of (mostly live, nicely recorded) bonus tracks. Each album is individually packaged in Japanese mini-album sleeves that immaculately reproduce the original artwork (right down to the infamous “scissors” which, in the old days, prompted the buyer of the double album to snip it in two); each mini-sleeve is individually wrapped in re-sealable cellophane and each disc slips into the mini-sleeve in protective gauze. This is great music in luminous packaging and, for those who care, highly collectible. Contents: Samla Mammas Manna, Maltid, Klossaknapitatet, For Aldre Nybegynnare – Schlagerns Mystik, Familiesprickor, Snorungarnas Symphonie (for some Bildcirkus which is someone else entirely).

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Please let us know. Thanks.

If there are any good local record shops who you think would like to stock our CDs, please send an address and we’ll contact them; our CDs should be cheaper in shops that way if we bypass the intermediaries.

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VINYL
Only one or two copies of each available, highest email bid by June 12th will get them..

2 copies of Unrest (gatefold)
2 copies of Western Culture
1 copy of In Praise of Learning
1 copy of Hopes and Fears
1 copy of The Last Nightingale
1 copy of Fluvial
5 copies of Perfect Worlds

MALCOM GOLDSTEIN
Early Electronic/Tape Collage Music [£15] By Name
Excellent.

IANCU DUMITRESCU/ANBA MARIA AVRAM
Musique Directe [£15]  By Name
Excellent.

WILLIAM S BURROUGHS
Breakthrough in Grey Room. [£15] By Name

SPECIAL:

THIS HEAT: Japanese Box Version

A strong double box with each CD packaged in a perfect cardboard facsimile of the original LP, plus the box booklet (in English) and the unreleased Live CD. The CDs are the same pressings as the UK edition, so this set is for collectors only. But it’s beautiful, collectible and long out of print. We dug a few up moving things around. Yours for
£95

THE POINTS EAST BOX

Historic numbered art edition: 12 CDs, book and box [£58]  pe/box

We are slowly moving toward a number that may make this release possible but we are not there yet..

The Rock experiments of Eastern Europe were no less interesting (though they were somewhat rarer) than those in the West, but they went undocumented for years – they made no commercial or official CDs and could not tour. Concerts were rare even in their own countries. Outside, to all intents and purposes, they didn’t exist. To begin to redress this lack, in the late ‘80s,  Recommended launched Points East, a label dedicated only to this music. Because of its historical importance – and musical excellence – we plan to manufacture a very limited edition of the 8 PE LPs (re-mastered on CD), plus 3 or 4 extra CDs filling in further details of the music of the various territories in that time, mostly taken from other Recommended releases as yet not reissued – including the extraordinary ‘Raab’ and Zygmunt Krauze’s luminous ‘Folk Music’- plus a couple of CDs with samples of other groups from the time and new materials by the original artists. All the CDs will be in facsimile edition, fully re-mastered, in a box with a fat book outlining the way it was in the old East and the way it is now, as well as a more general overview of experimental music in each of the territories. In other words this will be an historic documentation of a missing part of the history of progressive and experimental music, a documentation much needed. It will be made to our usual standards and very thoroughly documented, but we want to make it as cheap as possible – since this for art’s sake; it’s certainly not a commercial proposition. So we will try to keep the 12 CDs, box and book down to £58 – close to cost. However, origination, manufacturing and production costs will be huge, and we will only be able to make it if there is sufficient interest and enough pledged advance orders. To that end, if you are interested in this project, please subscribe – just write in and say you want your name put down, we will not take any money until and unless the box is actually realised. If and when we reach a viable number, we will announce the issue, confirm your subscriptions and go ahead.

– The original PE series was:
BORIS KOVACS. Ritual Nova 2 (YU)
ZGA. Zga (Riga)
STRANGE GAMES, Strange Games (Russia)
DER EXPANDER DES FORTSCHRITTS. Der Expander &c. (GDR)
BORUT KRZISNIK Currents of Time (Slovenia)
KAMPEC DOLORES Levitation  (Hungary)
REPORTAZ. Reportaz (Poland)
PULNOC. Midnight Mouse (Czechoslovakia)
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OTHER OFFERS

1. ReR LOSS LEADER

With each update we offer one £5 loss leader to encourage wider listening. This Update it’s

BOB DRAKE – Little Black Train.

2. MORE NEW STUFF – BUILD  A LIBRARY.

From each update I will select those CDs I think most remarkable or important – those which I think should be in any living library – and offer a discount for anyone buying them all. There will be 2 categories must have and essential history. Offers will be available for either or both together. If you find this essential library idea useful, I will slowly work backwards and compile a list from the whole catalogue.

This update’s must have library items:

1. XENAKIS
Hibiki Hana Ma, Polytope de Cluny
2. NADIA RATIMANDRESY and MATTEO RAMON AREVALOS. Messiaen et autour de Messiaen for ondes
£21 (save £4.67)

ESSENTIAL HISTORY

1. SOURCE RECORDS 1 –6
Music of the Avant Garde 1968 –1971
2.  LAURIE SCOTT BAKER Gracility
3. MUSIC FROM STANFORD

£52  (save £8.85)

The LOT  £ 70

3. RER MUSIC CLUB: SERIOUS DISCOUNTS

People keep asking. So, for those who want, we can automatically send you all our new releases (and press only promotional material) as soon as we get them – at a very serious discount. This can also include all our American Sister company Ad Hoc’s titles. Ask us for the leaflet or visit the website for details.
NEW

CLUB MEMBERS MAY ALSO SUBSCRIBE BACKWARDS, THAT IS, RECEIVE EARLER CDS AT THE SAME DISCOUNT. ASK FOR DETAILS WHEN YOU JOIN.

4. FRIEND OF FRED VOLUME 3.

To become a Friend of Fred costs 95 pounds (45 now and 50 when we send CD No.5, You get the ARTIST SIGNED LIMITED EDITION  of Vol 3:
8 CDs with a special signed book with Fred’s notes on the works, the process of their composition and recording, related photographs and other documentary materials. You get the CDs as soon as they come out, the signed book, occasional other additional materials and 1.50 pounds off any other Fred CD you buy from us during the subscription period – whatever label it’s on.

Volumes 1 and 2 can still be purchased separately at £100, with the signed book.

NOTE. Members of the ReR record club will get the book free as part of their membership.

5. MORE INCENTIVES:  10%  ADHERENT DISCOUNTS

Every 11^th CD* you buy from the catalogue, whatever it is, will be a gift from ReR. There is no time limit on this. Effectively it reduces our prices by a average of £1.20 per CD, which makes us competitive even with collapsed US dollar suppliers and enables us to deliver very good prices for regular buyers: a £12 CD becomes £10.80, an ReR title £9.80 – and they are all still post free. You get the discount as a free CD on your 11^th order. We’ll keep track. Register with your first purchase as an ADHERENT. Since there is no time limit, even if it takes 4 years to get to the 11^th, it’s still free.
·For counting: Double CD = 1.5 CDs, a triple as 2, boxes of 4 as 2.5, boxes over 5 as 3.
·Any order of 15 CDs at once gets you two free CDs (the two cheapest)
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MEMO COLLECTOR SUBSCRIBE:
ART editions often come out in small numbers and sell out very quickly. To be notified immediately, or in advance, of any new releases of this type, please send your email address to us with the message IMMEDIATE ART NOTIFICATION PLEASE.

NOTICES

The ReR Newsgroup

sign up at

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/ReRmegacorp/
– for advance news of concerts, new releases, ReR artists’s activities, commentary, and communication with fellow enthusiasts.
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79 Beulah Rd Thornton Heath. Surrey CR78JG. UK.
Phone 0208.771 1063, Fax 0208 771 3138
www.rermegacorp.com
rermegacorp@dial.pipex.com

ReR Megacorp
79 Beulah Rd.
Thornton Heath
Surrey CR7 8JG
UK
44 (0) 208 771 1063
www.rermegacorp.com