Alga Marghen Downbeat | Electronica | Leftfield 11 Items

Some of the earliest works by American composer Phill Niblock, including three never before released pieces: "Index" (1969), "Tenor," and "Boston Iii" (both from 1972). Until now, it's been impossible to encounter Niblock's compositions from earlier than the 1960s, a reality thankfully rectified by the long overdue publication of this Boston/Tenor/Index LP on Alga Marghen.

"Tenor" (1972) represents the first evolution of Niblock's musical thought towards the aesthetics of microtones, overtones, and drones which the composer would develop in following decades. The piece was recorded by the photographer Martin Bough on tenor saxophone and gradually dubbed back and forth by the composer in his New York studio. "Boston Iii" (1972) was recorded at the Intermedia Sound studio in Boston with Rhys Chatham (flute, voice), Martin Bough (tenor saxophone), and Gregory Reeve (viola, voice); the composer himself also contributed with his voice. The LP also includes "Index" (1969), an improvised sound performance by the composer himself. Guitar (both its body and strings), fingers and fingering fuse in a vehement action around which barely listenable sounds and resonances vibrate. Considering the extended pulsation as an organic blend of impulse, rhythm, drive, strength, vitality and passion, the end of this sole solo in Niblock's complete oeuvre is not defined by the fixed duration of the piece but as the consequence of the tiredness of the performer. The music changes according to the loudness of playback. The interaction of the upper harmonics changes especially, with much richer overtone patterns being produced at louder levels.

"alga marghen prsents the second and final chapter in documenting charlemagne palestine and simone forti seminal collaborations. the new "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. 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 "illuminationss". 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. this kind of collaboration between man and woman was uncommon at that time. mostly other artists were doing very structural works while with "illuminations" it was totally like they were on magicness 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. edition limited to 365 copies with liner notes by charlemagne palestine and simone forti."

"alga marghen proudly presents "water angels", an lp with previously unreleased tracks by katalin ladik, following the monumental "phonopoetics" from 2019. "water angel", the title track, is a side-long work from 1989. it began its life containing a plice 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 kovac, 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."

""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. 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 you consciousness where she will no doubt remain. a vital entry in the field of sound art, historic eastern european experimental practice, and sound poetry."

"the sixth gollaberration features a rather odd encounter indeed! it all happened when matchless vocalist ghedalia tazartes challenged gol dada-style quartet. ghedalia threw in the game his pan-africanasian singing techniques blending gypsy, jewish and trans-continental flavor. gol exceeded on electric mandoline, jew's harps, percussions, janotron, flutes, electric guitar, bass guitar, electronic garage and voice. together with ghedalia they developed into what became a "bal musette" for mentally disabled. reaching at some points the sides of rock that doesn't roll, this sonic attack jumps from topic to topic as a ritualistic anthology of unknown "ritournelles". such a decadence was hardly contained in the neutral environment of the swiss cultural center in paris where the recording took place on feb 22nd and 23rd, 2011. tired liver resonances accurately rendered by the acid yellow cover created by dennis tyfus. a mountain peaks journey below the very heart of no-where europe to be consumed gently without skis on. one-time pressing edition limited to 400 copies."

"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, mouthharps, 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 minutes 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. as always in anton buhin poetics, a very simple concept perfectly accomplished. anton bruhin in the 1960s began organizing happenings and performances, creating sound works, designing and typesetting his own books (which he self-published with hannes r. bossert through april-verlag), 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."

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. 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.

Alga Marghen proudly presents Luc Ferrari's Atelier De Liberation 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 catalogue.

Alga Marghen proudly presents the first ever release of "Illuminatios", or Charlemagne Palestine and Simone Forti duo interactions, illuminated with dim red lights. In early 1970 Morton 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 oooozza timeless carefree mystical magical dreamy atmosphere that evoked the times of the late 60s to early 70s in Charlemagne and Simone 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 photos of the performances reproduced on the LP front sleeve.

Two previously unreleased collages for magnetic tape, both realized at the Studio di Fonologia Muisicale RAI in Milan. These pieces are precious testimonials to Aldo Clementi's intense and ongoing interest in electronic music in the 1960s. The electronic composition »Collage 2« from 1960 was his first experiment with electronic music. »Collage 3« dates back to 1966. It's an electronic collage on »Michelle« by The Beatles.