Classical Music 247 Items

Transversales Disques proudly presents Alain Goraguer Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes. French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music. During that same period of time, Goraguer wrote two rare and beautiful scores using the same masterclass arrangements. On L’Affaire Dominici (1975), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavinet D6 baroque textures, wah-wah guitars and slow-paced drums that clearly reminds La Planete Sauvage’s atmosphere. The same can be said about the score of Au delà de la peur (1975) with its descending clavinet melody, twanging bass riff, funky drums and flashes of bended electric guitars. This record also includes never before released tracks found in the vaults of French national radio: beautiful and timeless orchestral compositions recorded at Studio 105, Maison de la radio.

Explore the sonic landscapes of Trobollowitsch's latest vinyl release, where trumpet strains intertwine with resonant energies, able to fold, deform, and compress time and space so deftly that one has the impression of hearing echoes of distant worlds and times - 'everything everywhere all at once.'

Post-punk/new wave hero Ann Margaret Hogan’s second album of solo piano and field recordings for Downwards is a box of subtle wonders, mastered by Veronica Vasicka and highly recommended if yr into Satie, Virginia Astley, Sarah Davachi. A weight of history flows through Hogan’s keys with a stark intimacy, beautifully illuminated by naturally effortless, quietly grand songwriting. It’s a direct continuation of the landscaped themes and atavism of 2020’s ‘Honeysuckle Burials’ and the ‘Reversing Into Tomorrow’ collaboration with Karl O’Connor, vividly capturing the slow passage of time in a way that has quite literally compelled us to stop the relentless mind-grind for its 40 minute duration on more than one occasion. After previous fixations on the iron age forts and burial mounds of the Clywdian Range in North Wales, Hogan transmutes the scenery of her more immediate locale, Oxton on The Wirral - from the cadence of its red sandstone landmark Thor’s Rock, to memories of its boating lake, for example - into a quiet yet ravishing suite inflected with traces of wildlife and industry recorded on long walks, all subsumed within a deep blue estuarial atmosphere silted by the strange reality of life in the current era, echoing the surreal, sunny period when the album was conceived. A generation on from her pivotal work with spar Marc Almond and likes of Deux Filles and Nick Cave, and forty generations since The Wirral hosted, as she says “a Norse parliament at Thingwall”, Hogan weaves time and place into a reflective, funereal sort of parlour music, turning daily ambulations amid the gorse and under luminous skies into gorgeous, life affirming and intimate self expressions. The eight pieces are mostly improvised and flow with a free, fleeting concision from the palpable warmth of ‘Forgotten Prelude’ and bluesy ache of ‘Fragile Elements’ to more funereal modes in ’Mesto’ and ‘Funeral Cargo’ suggestive of a Viking burial soundtrack. At its core, ‘Wolfswalzer’, a dedication to her one time collaborator and erstwhile Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür - is described by Hogan as “a simple waltz of coffee, food, friends and music”, and ‘Impromptu’ is the album’s slowest, soaked in the feeling of atmospheric immanence that defines the album’s timeless appeal. It’s an unspeakably moving album, words really do it no justice.

close to NM. Original inner sleeve

Light Tan [Bone] vinyl. Cover with small beginning of seam split on top spine, closer to NM

Record is close to NM.

Flawless Pink Vinyl. Includes all inserts, except Obi-strip. Cover is close to NM.

Ben Glas (b. 1992) is an experiential composer based in Berlin. Through ephemeral compositions Glas' work questions preconceived notions between the acts of passive hearing and active listening. In seeking to discover open ended forms of music and pragmatic listening perspectives, Glas' compositions focus on the realms of subjective perception and cognition, via the use of acoustics, psychoacoustics and space as tools for sonic composition. His work has been exhibited and performed internationally, including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (pica), Glasgow's Radiophrenia Festival, the Soundwave Biennial (sf) and the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (cica). He is currently receiving his M.A. in Sonic Studies at the UdK.
Ben Glas writes… "Anonymous Sextet for Perverted Piano is a conceptual performance piece that combines a traditional grand piano, six long-distance remote controlled vaginal/anal vibrators and the prolonged use of the piano's sustainer pedal.
The six vibrators were strategically (and preparedly) placed atop of the strings of a various grand pianos (and one harpsichord), while random strangers around the globe connected to and operated the sex toys remotely. After the random and unwitting performers had befriended and synced-up with a catfishing account linked to the six individual vibrators and controlled by three different smartphones, they then sent vibrational patterns and pulses to stimulate their assumed target. The then-kinetic vibrators bounced, slid and bopped aleatorically through the tonal possibilities that the piano and piano's soundboard itself permits. The piano's sustain pedal was held down throughout the performance, elongating the triggered notes and the good vibrations.
All tracks on side A are performed by those unwitting performers, while side B's single track was performed with (more than) a little help from my friends (Anonymous (1), Genesis Victoria, Harry Hudson-Taylor and Hayden Dean)." – Ben Glas, Berlin, 16 February 2023.

Picture disc!

Vinyl close to NM

White vinyl.

Wavy grave rave for better tomorrow.

Another first-time-on-vinyl release from Koko, Ballads For Bass Clarinet (previously a Japan-only CD) comprises a couple of waltzes, a blues, a Monk-ish suite-like piece, a free-ish drums and clarinet interlude, and finally an elegy to civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer.

David Murray leads on bass clarinet, managing to go both deep and soaringly high; it sometimes sounds like two different instruments are being played. Backed by John Hicks (piano), Ray Drummond (bass) and Idris Muhammad (drums), Murray’s quartet is tight and the recording superb, with a warm and intimate sound.

Highly recommended.