The second and final of the 'second wave' line-up of 5uus (basically Dave Kerman, Bob Drake and Sanjay Kumar + guests). This is considered by many people to be their best period and I would probably agree.

"Second installment from monster band 5UU's, featuring rock complexity, extraordinary production (by bassist and singer Bob Drake) and high energy precision mixed with eccentric song-writing. People that work this hard are becoming an endangered species. Extraordinary."-Chris Cutler

"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...

"Three old hands out of Soft Machine, Gong and Henry Cow stretch already flexible musical material into one shape after another, then tie it in knots and generally have a fun with it. High quality recordings combined with seat-of-the-pants playing keep the tension high, underpinning a richly labile music, full of shape and colour that is constantly in motion. Compiled from recent concert recordings in Berlin, London and Tel Aviv, this clutch of extended songs should be to the taste of anyone familiar...

A very great collection of unreleased live and studio recordings from the very exciting post-Henry Cow band of Chris Cutler.

"Cassiber (phonetically: 'a message smuggled out of prison') crashed like a locomotive into the 'Deutsche Neue Welle.'
Founded by Heiner Goebbels, Alfred Harth, Christoph Anders, and Chris Cutler (his first major project after News From Babel), Cassiber managed to fuse materials and attitudes drawn from experimental rock, fringe jazz, punk, pop, plunderphonics...

"Like its companion ‘Twice around the Earth', ‘There and Back Again’ is derived from a selection of the 365 location recordings made for Cutler’s daily Resonance FM radio programme ‘Out of the Blue Radio’ (2004-2005). It takes extracts from 44 of these environmental recordings to explore - amongst other things - the way memory works, and how the experience of passing time is constructed. That’s subtext. More important, it should make enjoyably complex listening: surprising, serendipitous, mundane but...

"Tod Dockstader and David Lee Myers are two pioneers of electronic music, but from very different epochs. Dockstader started working with optical sound in the 1950s, later working with vast Telefunken tape recorders that became so hot they had to be left overnight to cool down. His electronic soundscapes (Lunar Park and Apocalypse among them) are now being rediscovered and given the respect they deserve. Pond is his first new album-length piece since 1967.
David Lee Myers, on the other hand, made...

Bob's fifth album is another of his completely uncategorizable works. Bob performs on vocals, strings (guitars, bass, violin, etc.) keyboards & real drums, making these sound like a band effort.

"The latest collection of twisting, turning instrumentals and songs, and another instant classic. If you didn't venture down this way yet, now is a good time to start. In a category of one, Bob undermines musical, technical and production norms with a breathtaking amalgam of broken rules and unimaginable..

"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.

Janet is a great, great, classically trained guitarist who plays a unique, personal music, usually for solo and/or prepared solo guitar. She's been quietly working for a long time and this, her third release, recorded with the equally great, great (but better, better known) Fred Frith will bring her a lot more attention, which she fully deserves.
Having had a rare chance to see her perform in the East (she opened up for Boud Deun at one of their final shows in 1998), the fact that the public at...

Gravity is one of Fred's most enduring & endearing works. It was his first post-Henry Cow solo album, and he recorded it with the backing of The Muffins on one side of the original album and Samla Mammas Manna on the other + Marc Hollander.
It's the closest thing to a progressive rock disc that Fred has ever released and it's a tuneful yet still avant progressive rock work. This is a classic and is highly recommended!

“1980's GRAVITY represented guitarist Fred Frith's first major break from.

"This is a retrospective compendium of Fred's work over the last 17 years, with a lot of new material, perfectly put together and exceptionally listenable start to finish- an enlightening journey. It's my favourite of Fred's works in recent times. Close composition for electric and acoustic resources, tapework, concrete constructions, songs, sound effects and noise-art improvisations."
Guests included:
Iva Bittova, Tom Cora, Jean Derome, Haco, Tim Hodgkinson, Lars Hollmer, Rene Lussier...

“With an all-star line-up that features Tenko, John Zorn and Christian Marclay (with guest Jim Staley on trombone), Technology of Tears started life in New York in 1986 as a dance commission by Rosalind Newman.
Fred took this opportunity to experiment with Henry Kaiser's brand new synclavier (the absolute state-of-the-art sampling and processing technology of the time - Henry had to take out a second mortgage on his house to buy it). It was the sophisticated sampling that fascinated Fred, and the...

“The first from Bill for a long time, this is an abstract aural collage recorded between 2003 and 2006, over long distances by mail, that operates somewhere between soundscape and radio art, assembling environmental recordings, bits of broadcasts and other modified found sound into a very personal sound diary or imaginary journey.”-Chris Cutler

"Bill Gilonis (of the great post Henry Cow band, The Work) and Chantale Laplante worked on Zürich-Bamberg intermittently for three years. The CD comprises...

"This album is gorgeous. I picked it up expecting some crazy experimental thing because it's a Haco project, but what I ended up hearing was an achingly beautiful collaboration of slow, climaxing songs, inventive string technique, and head-bobbing goodness. This is a really, really good disc."-Eon Fontes May

"Charismatic singer, lyricist and performer Haco came to the fore in the early 80s with the group After Dinner, a sublime incarnation of surreal, direct, and offbeat Japanese/European pop...

Second and final Hail album. Songs by Suzanne Lewis and Bob Drake, both ex-Thinking Plague - a punky cross between Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd and early Jefferson Airplane. This time, Bob Drake and Susanne Lewis are joined by some guests: Dave Kerman, Chris Cutler, Bill Gilonis.

“There's very little information available on this band but the Internet suggests they are part of the late-80s Rock in Opposition and avant-prog scene -- in fact, other albums by Hail are tagged as avant-prog on this site..

Charles Hayward is, of course, best known for his drumming and vocalizing feats with This Heat, Camberwell Now and Quiet Sun, but in addition to doing some improvising work, he has released a number of solo albums contsructed out of his excellent drumming, distinctive voice and single drones made from keyboards, melodica, etc. I saw him perform at RIO in 2009 and it was a real treat to finally see the great man behind the kit and in full voice. This is his first in quite some time and is a good one...

This is high quality live Swedish radio recordings from Goteborg (1975 - with John Greaves) and Stockholm (1977 - with Georgie Born). The sound is great here; Bob Drake worked from the original 8 track and stereo 2 track masters and you can finally hear Tim's follow-up masterpiece to "Living in the Heart of the Beast", entitled "Erk Gah". There's also some nice improvisations and other tunes and Fred's never otherwise released "The March", which is a really great one as well. Highly recommended...

"Maksymenko plays drums with the force and power of a thousand supercomputers, he composes with the originality of a team of duck billed platypuses writing a sequel to Gravity's Rainbow, and he's more fun to listen to than Disneyland."-Henry Kaiser.

This is a collection of some of the very small but very great work by drummer/composer Michael Maksymenko, best known - if at all - for the amazing album and EP he did with the trio Kraldjuranstalten.
It collects eight tracks by Kraldjursanstan...

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

"Now in their twenty-fourth year, the Necks' new release, Mindset, their sixteenth album features two starkly contrasting tracks: the pulsating, raw, 'Rum Jungle' and the slower building, rather hypnotic 'Daylights.' Polyrhythms imbue both pieces with powerful forward motion, embroiled with which ethereal piano patterns interweave with bass, drums, electronics, churning Hammonds and noise-guitars. Drummer and percussionist Tony Buck writes: Mindset shares some elements in common with our previous album...

“Dark and majestic, News from Babel remains ahead of their time.”-Michael Draine

“The second record by this group (Lindsay Cooper, Zeena Parkins and Chris Cutler) with invitees Robert Wyatt, Sally Potter, Phil Minton and Dagmar Krause who sing, and Bill Gilonis (of The Work) who plays occasional guitar and bass, and who also produced the recording.
These are extended songs, unusually orchestrated and arranged and not much like anything else recorded before or since. Re-mastered and...