This is a collection of most of the 1984 album “Glass Tube”, which was After Dinner’s first album + some other stuff, plus 30’ of live material by this Japanese new music rock band, who predated the current huge interest in all things "Japan".
Characterized by leader Haco's vocals, this is subtly detailed, almost pastel, progressive Japanese music; they don’t sound like ANYBODY else!

“Can't say I've heard anything quite like this. Truly awesome in its presentation, it's hard not to want to...

"This disc will play in stereo on a CD player and with film and 5.1 surround sound (or stereo) on a DVD player or computer. The music, as always, is prodigious, sounding like a small band, but played by one person in real time (as the film attests). In this format, you can also see the instrument close-to - a highly rebuilt and extended giant Sardinian guitar - with many sympathetic and extra strings, motor driven hurdy gurdy wheels, whirling strings, springs and other appendages, played, like a cello...

Dagmar Krause-vocals Chris Cutler-drums, electronics Fred Frith-guitars, keyboards, violin, etc.

This was the 3rd and final album by the successor band to Henry Cow. I'm not really sure why (short playing length? the press had gone onto other things to champion? it wasn't released stateside, unlike the first two?) but this one slipped under the radar of a lot of folks, compared to their 1st two.
It's a very bleak, but also a very solid work. And very clever and sly in its own way - who...

"Six years in the making, this is the sixth CD released by ReR from the visual/sonic art group Biota. Unique in their history and method, Biota painstakingly construct complex, organic structures that mix extensive studio processing and musique concréte techniques, with a highly eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electronic resources - from kit drums, through mediaeval winds, strings and barrel organs, to early experimental electronic instruments. Their works are always performance driven and interleaved...

With John Greaves and Chris Cutler. Follow up to the masterly Just Woke Up, sporting great new songs and guests including B.J.Cole, Geraint Watkins, Adam X, Chris Stamey, Bob Drake, Stoffer Blegvad.

“Described as a "fusion of Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, cross bred with English humorist Jon Hegley", Peter Blegvad has carved out a unique position as performer, songwriter and cartoonist. This is his third solo album on ReR.
The 1996 release "Just Woke Up" was a big critical success; Hangman's...

“"Instrumental Album Of The Year: 1984” – Folk Roots

“Wow. This is probably the greatest album from the 80's I've ever heard, and who knew such an unbelievably amazing folk album was even made in the 80's? Apparently not many...which is such a shame. For fans of folk guitar this album is a must.”-rate yourmusic

In the early 1980s, Andy was a member of The Lowest Note, who released singles on Woof (Tim Hodgkinson’s label) and was part of the London underground scene tied into the extended .

The Camberwell Now were led by Charles Hayward, the drumming/vocalist mastermind behind This Heat, and was the band that he formed immediately after This Heat broke up.
They were released an album and 2 EPs in their lifetime, and this includes all of them in complete, chronological form, plus a track from a sampler.
Their sound was very informed by the This Heat esthetic, with more creative usages of drones than before and some incredible basswork.
While they didn't always quite...

Lol Coxhill-soprano sax
Charles Hayward-drums
Hugh Hopper-bass
Orphy Robinson-vibes, steel drums
with
Robert Wyatt-cornet

The first release (and sadly the only one) by this improvising group of established figures from the creative rock and improvised music scene in Britain. They've been together for a few years now, plays shows when circumstances permit, and it's great that they've finally documented something. This pretty quickly finds its feet, finds a groove and keeps.

''Digital recordings from the Nordlydd Contemporary Music Festival and Berlin's Tacheles from 1991. Plus the historic prescient noise-music 1978 analogue recording from Limoges as a bonus. All singing, all dancing, all hell let loose. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee...'' -Chris Cutler

"The finest composer who ever worked in the medium of sounds assembled on tape"-OP

"The legendary collaboration between a leading American Musique Concrete composer and an instrumental ensemble directed by James Reichert where, for I think the first and to date only time, there was full integration of the written, played and manipulated sounds. The instrumental parts were derived from 'cells' of concrete sound and in turn were electronically transformed (in Robert Moog's then state of the art...

Part 1: Bob Drake-all instruments and voices
Part 2: Live a La Borde Basse
Bob Drake-guitar & lead vocals
Kavus Torabi-guitar and vocals
David Campbell-bass and vocals
David Kerman-drums and vocals

What a great concept! Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Bob records an album as he always does; he plays all the parts himself. But he's got this nifty band he assembled. A VERY nifty band, actually! What a shame to waste them!
So...he sends them the most basic elements of

"52 songs of strange events, places and things. Includes 20 original paintings by Ray O'Bannon"-Bob Drake.

"The songs are brief, amusingly creepy or creepily amusing (takes your pick!) with really nice creepy/cool paintings to accompany the mood. Perhaps the scariest thing is that each of these miniatures is a fully formed, fully orchestrated and complete structure - no lazy snippets here - and Bob plays all the parts with his famously Paganini-esque virtuosity in spooky variable-tempo synchrony..

Faust are a rightly legendary experimental German ensemble from the early 1970's. This is almost all of their two posthumous albums which feature the unreleased "Faust V/Faust Party 3" album and other lost recordings before they dissolved in the 70's.

A good performance of music for dance, all performed by Fred (via extensive overdubbing).

"Any new record from Fred Frith, one of the world's leading avant rock guitarists and composers, is a major event. Accidental was commissioned by a British choreographer who lives in Amsterdam, Paul Selwyn Norton, for a dance piece made with the Batsheva Company in Tel Aviv.
For Fred it's a return to basics, a series of deeply contrasting moods achieved with the simplest of means. Throughout the CD...

"In 1996, at the end of a two year residency, Fred organised an event at L'Ecole Nationale de Musique de Villeurbanne in France involving as many of the students as possible, grouped according to their departments - early music, rock, African drumming...

This is the soundtrack to the film which followed Fred touring & playing in the late 80's, when he was actively on the road all the time. This functions as a sort of a 'best of' sampler, featuring many aspects of his work, some of which can be found on other albums, but most of which is only available here.
This includes many great players: Tom Cora, Haco, Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, Rene Lussier, Bob Ostertag, Lars Hollmer, Eino Haapala, Iva Bittova, Hans Bruniusson, Joey Barron, and many many others..

“The long-awaited follow up to their first release on Derek Bailey's Incus label and a kind of prequel, going back to the time when Fred was playing home-made instruments and John was using mouthpieces and duck-calls as much or more than alto sax; this was back in the New York glory days when 100 new ideas popped up somewhere every day, and these performances lie right at the fringe of what most people would accept as "music".
Anyone wanting to get back to one of the roots of what later became known..

"This album was born out of studio improvisations by Glandien with drummer Chris Cutler (Pere Ubu, Henry Cow, Cassiber), and avant tuba player Michael Vogt (Berlin Symphony Orchestra). Listening back to the tapes, the group agreed that the results were a failure. This did not stop them from ripping through a storming live set at Berlin's Anorak club the day after the studio session, but the general mood was that the recordings should be scrapped.
A year later Glandien decided to re-look at the...

"Susanne Lewis and Bob Drake met in 1980 at a Denver recording studio where Bob was working as an engineer. They immediately discovered a musical kinship and have continued to play and record in various projects since, notably Hail, but also Denver legends Thinking Plague and 5UUs.
Their first LP (Venus Handcuffs, 1986) was recorded in an abandoned yoghurt factory, the second (Gypsy cat and Gypsy Bird, 1983) followed soon after. At about this time Bob got a job as a sound-effects engineer for a horror

"Ad Hoc Records' new, four-panel digipack reissue of The Hat Shoes debut album will be especially welcomed by lovers of intelligent and thoughtful progressive music, with a hint of Romanticism.
Originally released in 1991, Differently Desperate is a studio offering of diverse avant-pop songs by a 'super-group' comprised of members Bill Gilonis (The Work), Catherine Jauniaux (Fluvial), Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now) and Tom Cora (Skeleton Crew, Curlew). There's also a slew of well-known...

The last of the Henry Cow albums on Virgin, this includes their amazing final BBC session; 25' of Henry Cow perfection, a small taste of the famous shows that they performed with Robert Wyatt and a lot of purely free improvisation or prepared free improvisation, which is what they were doing live at this time.
This has been out of print for a bit now and is always in demand, and it has been remastered by Bob Drake and sounds significantly better to my ears!

"Originally released in 197

Note: These copies are the original issue of this CD on the ESD label at a special price. Very few available.

The final Henry Cow album, & along with their first, this is my favorite of their many great works.
This stuff is the ultimate in humanly impossible to play works, but there they are playing it!
One side of Tim Hodgkinson's composerly insanity (no wonder he gave up composed music for the improvised life! How does one top this?) and one side of Lindsay Cooper's fine works....

"This is the first digital issue of Belgian songsmith Catherine Jauniaux’s classic recording from 1983. Her main co-conspirator is Tim Hodgkinson (Henry Cow, The Work), himself a mainstay in the world of modern, experimental music.
Together they perform a work which defies both categorization and genre labeling, offering up almost as many different styles of music as the instruments that played them. Besides capturing what could arguably be Catherine’s most unique and auspicious vocal work, this....

“This is the big one. Digipacked. Historic. Unmissable.”-Chris Cutler

More Encores was originally released as a vinyl record in 1988, and is composed entirely of records after whom each track is titled. Artists whose vinyl artifacts are subjected to Marclay's treatments include: John Zorn, John Cage, Louis Armstrong Fred Frith, Ferrante & Teicher, Maria Callas, Jimi Hendrix, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin and Marclay himself!

"Christian Marclay was the first non-rap DJ to make an art.

Tito Pueblo-vocals
Bill Gilonis-guitar (of The Work)
Ilja Komarov-bass
Trixa Arnold-drums

"Tito Pueblo, aka Rob Murphy (Orchestre Murphy), has been responsible for some terrible lapses of judgement & taste. Here he gives us an album of post-Beatles pop songs that deal with the key issues of our times - drinking, sex, love, melancholy, obsession, & drinking. Expect fake French accordion, ludicrous cowboy songs & Flamenco rip-offs."-Chris Cutler