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Artist: ART FLEURY Title: I Luoghi Del Potere Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $25.00 |
| "Art Fleury was born in Brescia, Northern Italy, in the mid-70s. They were still in their teens when they had the opportunity to open for the group Area at the famous Parco Lambro Festival in Milan (1976), in front of fifty thousand people. In the following years they extensively toured and played with Henry Cow, and in 1980 they were finally able to produce and release their first record, I Luoghi del Potere (The places of power), which they started recording in 1977. Superficially (or intentionally) included in the prog genre, I Luoghi del Potere (originally conceived as the soundtrack of an imaginary movie), is a very personal and radical experience, at times recalling Fausts free-form Kraut riffing, or the industrial sound collages of Nurse With Wound. The music is articulated through an outstanding dynamic juxtaposition of instrumental parts, with frequent structural and harmonic fragmentations, and a diverse array of unusual sound elements: from a sort of brass-band progression to radio frequencies, from cacophonic intermezzos to expressionist tape-collage techniques. Through this free flow of sounds, only apparently casual, the group wanted to expose the alienation, the folly, the hopes and fears of their times, through a creative act that pushed to the limits their expressive means." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: ÿ Title: s/t Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $17.00 |
| "Die Schachtel is proud to present ÿ, a group of young and very talented Italian musicians who, picking up the best of the Italian avantgarde heritage, are able to create a very personal music mixing elements of free form improvisation and experimental rock, with a hint of exotic percussion and electronic background. The result is certainly one of the most fresh and unexpected listening experiences coming from Italy. ÿ (which is the first and the last letter of some Scandinavian alphabet) is a young trio of musicians on violin, exotic percussions, theremin, guitar, synth and piano, who have created a remarkably original world of sound. Although one can hear occasional influences from kraut rock style and the early minimalism, this sound is uniquely Italian in its sense of sound, space and time. An imaginative, meditative, bizarre, courageous and nostalgic music consisting in spontaneous compositions and improvisations, lately arranged by Xabier Iriondo - the result of four or five long free-form improvisations, resonating of minimal drones à la Conrad, largos for piano that sound like a raw Cilio, strange electrified noises, and percussive inventions. And much more. Since some time, we were playing with the idea of launching a series dedicated to the most creative Italian music of to day, and this seemed to be the perfect start. It took some production & arrangement magic and a crystal clear CD mastering and boom: the first Die Schachtel "Zeit" (time) title is now ready." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: BACHI DA PIETRA Title: Non Io Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $17.50 |
| "Bachi da Pietra (The stone worms) is a two-men band whose dark and resonating music wraps around tunes of desolate candor and lyrics (in Italian) as dark and imaginative as broken love can be. A relentless drumming hovers over a huge wash of ride cymbal and a deep, plaintive voice, which is able to capture sadness, anger and yearning. The entire album is a visceral emotional journey: the dissonant blues-based songs develop around the steady drone of the singers voice, a trance-inducing vocal presence singing of grim meditations on life that are crafted and performed with disarming sincerity. Just like the mysterious and enigmatic characters that orbited their doom-laden, disturbing world, Bachi da Pietra is an unpredictable band that leaves the listeners feeling vulnerable, moved, and sometimes totally spaced-out." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: BOSETTI, ALESSANDRO Title: Exposé Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $17.50 |
| "Based on a series of 33 musical ideas written, printed, framed and exposed in a recent installation in Milan, Exposé is the first of a new cycle of works as well as the result of Alessandro Bosettis fascination with speech loops. The mesmerizing voice of Audrey Chen, endlessly repeating the same sentence over the entire duration of each piece, is full of musical nuances, and it rewards close attention. The result is a weird and fascinating experience, that takes the listener through a surreal sonic space. The misty, microtonal electronics and instrumental layers are arranged and recorded in an extremely precise fashion. The slowly shifting speech-derived rhythmical patterns provide a subtle, low-key backdrop to the vocal parts, perhaps suggesting the option of adopting an ambient-like listening strategy, while at the same time the use of headphones will enhance the works strangely compelling blend of the surreal and hypnotic." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: BOSETTI, ALESSANDRO Title: Exposé + Art Format: CD/Art Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $76.00 |
| Limited art version, signed/numbered edition of 33 copies. "Audio CD + 34 art sheets in a special cover with hand drawn translucent dust-jacket, numbered and signed by the author. This limited edition includes the 33 art sheets presenting the musical ideas that generated the compositions on the CD. The complete series was printed, framed and exposed in a recent installation at the OArtoteca art gallery in Milan, in March 2007. The minimalistic design is the result of a collaborative work with Die Schachtels designer Dinamo, who has typographically interpreted Alessandros surprising conceptual scores, expanding the music into a visual territory that gives a completely new listening perspective to the fascinating music of this very creative musician." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: CHIARI/DANIELE LOMBARDI, GIUSEPPE Title: +/- Format: LP + CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $60.00 |
| "LP+CD special limited edition release by Fluxus composer Giuseppe Chiari and Futurist pianist Daniele Lombardi. Each LP is hand-numbered, and contains two art prints by Giuseppe Chiari, housed in a very original fold-out cover. The CD is hand-numbered and signed by Daniele Lombardi. The total selling copies of the bundle edition are limited to 130. Giuseppe Chiari was one of the leading names associated first with Fluxus (being the only Italian member of the interdisciplinary art group since 1962) and later with conceptual and performance art as well as sound art. Coming from a background of different disciplines, he established new theoretical and practical standpoints in relation to music and art: his approach was always irreverent, walking the tightrope between to do or not to do, to say or not to say, while continually challenging the limits of language. The Die Schachtel vinyl LP (titled +/-) features some of his previously-unreleased and most intense pieces for piano, the musical instrument par excellence and emblem of conformist sound with which Giuseppe Chiari has a love-hate relationship, bestowing on it equal measures of ridicule and praise. It is also an amazing document of his last concert, with Frederic Rzewski (playing the 1964 groundbreaking piece "La Strada"), Giancarlo Cardini, Daniele Lombardi and Giuseppe Chiari himself. The limited CD edition by Daniele Lombardi, published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at MUDIma Foundation in Milan (2008), is the reissue of a 1978 piano sound exploration entitled Costellazione, based upon a map of sky constellations, planned as the first step in a large work focused on the exposition and "performance" of constellations maps, planetaria and maps of the heavens. It is a perfect counterpoint to the Chiari Edition, and it is housed in a custom-made, silk-screened natural cardboard case, inserted in the fold-out cover together with the LP. " - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: CHRISTA PFANGEN Title: Watch Me Getting Back The End Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $17.50 |
| "Christa Pfangen are Andrea Belfi and Mattia Coletti. The name is an homage to Nico, although the music has obviously no relation with the icon of the New York avant garde scene. They belong to the new electroacoustic/improv/avant-rock scene which is taking shape in Italy and includes such names as 3/4 Had Been Eliminated, Valerio Tricoli, ÿ, Stefano Pilia and others. Working with percussion, treated guitar and an array of different objects and noises, they have given birth to a dynamic work of great beauty and reverberating rhythms, oscillating between avant-folk and electroacoustic music." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: CILIO, LUCIANO Title: Dell Universo Assente Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $22.00 |
| "Deluxe triple-folded CD digipak with the lost work of Luciano Cilio, a Neapolitan avantgarde composer who committed suicide in the early eighties and whose music is absolutely stunning, deep and melancholic, placed between avantgarde and the most adventurous prog. It includes the legendary Dialoghi del Presente 1977 LP along with several unreleased tracks; liner notes by Jim ORourke. 24 pages booklet." From ORourkes liner notes: "These recordings sound as they feel self contained, introspective, and determined, you can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, as in Bill Fays Time of the Last Persecution or in Nick Drakes Pink Moon: this enormous weight that is bearing on its creators, the absolute need to exorcise it from their lives, a moment in time where you are invited to hear artists truly in contact with their existence. Luciano Cilio holds that moment in time, an authentic emotional testament, something to be cherished..." - Die Schachtel. "This developing Italian label is setting a new standard for high quality modern composer artifacting -- extremely impressive!" - FE. Great record! |
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Artist: CLEMENTI, ALDO Title: Punctum Contra Punctum Format: CD Box Set Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $20.00 |
| "Aldo Clementi marks out the distance with an absolute refusal to provide narratives, whether of tension resolved, or simply of that logically unending succession of states of being so dear to many of his contemporaries. His materials, whether gathered from a tonal past, generated as a jeu desprìt from the names of dedicatees, or produced by a purely abstract process, are projected into a rotational steady state that has no logical end or beginning." - David Osmond-Smith, 2005. "On the occasion of his 80th birthday, Die Schachtel is proud to present "Punctum Contra Punctum", a deluxe compact disc box dedicated to Aldo Clementi, one of the most important figures of Italian music of the 20th Century. Born in Sicily in 1925, he studied piano and later composition under the guidance of teachers such as Goffredo Petrassi and Bruno Maderna, who also introduced him to electronic music at the RAI Studio of Phonology in Milan. Like many composers of the period, he employed serial technique early in his work, to abandon it later on in favor of a very personal, ingenious and unique method for creating new music. Blessed with extraordinary skills of invention and assimilation, Clementi may be the one living composer for whom "genius" is not too strong a word. His musical language is extremely articulate and profound, resulting in a fascination with obsessive repetitions, collages, canons, and incredibly complex rhythmic textures which have to be heard to be believed. At the same time his music maintains to stay fresh, dynamic and highly enjoyable. A must-have for all the modern music lovers, and a great discovery for the most adventourous and prepared listener. Deluxe white and silver-foil design CD-box edition, complete with a lovingly designed 64-page booklet in English and Italian." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: CURRAN, ALVIN Title: Under the Fig Tree Format: LP Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $28.00 |
| "Two masterpieces of the early 70s by Alvin Curran, released by Die Schachtel for the first time ever. Using VCS3 live electronics and environmental sounds, Alvin Curran created a hypnotic and meditative transcendency of minimalist beauty. Limited deluxe vinyl LP edition. "The two works presented here are seminal pieces of two genres from which a great part of my musical practice springs, and to this day, continues to evolve from. Under The Fig Tree is, in fact, the realization of one monophonic piece contained in my well known early collection of single line melodic compositions entitled Music For Every Occasion. The version I present here was originally made for a performance of trombonist Giancarlo Schiaffini, playing against the recording. It is realized by myself playing a VCS3 (Putney) synthesizer, one of the first in a famous line of portable electronic synthesizers from the early 70s. Notable are electronically produced timbres which approximate acoustic flutes, clarinets, trombones and tubas -- long before the availability of multi-track tape machines, these tracks were recorded on multiple Revox tape recorders and mixed on a custom-made mixer. The Magic Carpet is, remarkably, my first sound installation, long before that phrase came into our daily vocabularies. It was inspired by a project of my dear friend and sculptor Paul Klerr -- an American with Italian-Jewish roots, who lives in Rome. He had this brilliant idea to fill a gallery with steel and gut wires, to which I suggested that he was actually building a fantastic musical instrument which could even be played by the visiting public -- so my intervention in this spontaneous collaboration was to figure out how to amplify this jungle of long steel wires -- which I did with simple contact microphones placed at various connecting points; and further adding a vertical element of sounding glass chimes plus aluminum and brass tubing and occasionally placed metal chimes." -Alvin Curran |
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Artist: GROSSI, PIETRO Title: Combinatoria Format: Double CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $25.00 |
| "A comprehensive guide to the core recordings of one of the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical musicians from Italy, this 2CD box deluxe edition captures Pietro Grossis original vision, presenting a wide selection of his studio early recordings, beautifully remastered to preserve the enduring quality. Pietro Grossi used to playfully define himself as pigro (trans. "lazy"), but he wasnt lazy at all! Few musicians have been working everyday at such a cracking pace, creating, teaching and writing -- and when we listen to his music, we should bear in mind how this complex figure of musician, cellist and composer, and also visual artist, has developed creative thinking in a path where a blend of very different aspects organically cohabited. Since the late 50s, Grossi was convinced of the potential of the "new sound" and was totally obsessed with pioneering it, to the point where he would found the S 2F M (Studio di Fonologia Musicale di Firenze) in 1963 -- which made its headquarters in Florence at the Conservatorio, and then in his apartment -- spending days and nights on end splicing tapes and working with various modified machines to create his abstract soundscapes. The two CDs feature his first analogical electronic music, as well as some S 2F M studio works by colleagues such as Vittorio Gelmetti, Gruppo NPS (with Teresa Rampazzi) and Albert Mayr, while the second disc is focused on the prototype computer-generated sound synthesis." -Die Schachtel |
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Artist: GUACCERO, DOMENICO Title: Rot (1971-73) Format: LP Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $31.00 |
| With Electronica Viva members Alvin Curran, M. Hirayama, W. Branchi. "Die Schachtel is proud to present two brand new releases, both dedicated to Domenico Guaccero, an important Italian composer/musician of the 60s, very active in the fields of avant garde, electronic and aleatory music. The "ROT" LP edition is the 4th in the "metallic" series, dedicated to the masters of Italian electronic music, and it will soon be followed by a great and unpublished work by Marino Zuccheri. With the great Alvin Curran at the synth, "ROT" is a lost gem of raw musical power, one of the most exciting pieces of electroacoustic music around." "This provocative and very advanced multi-media work, was conceived from the beginning to include purely notated music, improvised music, and recorded music on tape which the composer could manipulate, redesign and remix (long before that concept existed) and create yet another layer, or sonic strata with those sounds." (Alvin Curran). "The electroacoustic parts of Rot are now available for the first time ever in a limited vinyl LP edition (350 copies), with a gatefold wallet cover, silver foil design on silver, diecut letters, custom inner sleeve and a 4-page booklet in English and Italian. The second piece on the LP (CMPSZN 2), for eight treated pianos, is a powerful and mesmerizing concrete/electroacoustic piece that takes to the limits the sonic possibilities of the instrument, but still remaining musical and highly enjoyable." - Die Schachtel. Another amazing production from Die Schachtel. SOLD OUT |
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Artist: INSIEMEMUSICADIVERSA Title: Format: CD Box Set Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $24.00 |
| "Another remarkable package from the jet-setting Die Schachtel label." - FE. "Much more than just a CD, this edition encapsulates the true spirit of Die Schachtel. It really is a box full of surprises; a journey into the sound of a unique group and the mind of a genius composer. The white industrial cardboard box includes an audio CD, a 12-page booklet, five graphical scores plus Roulette, a clock-like gadget originally used as the score of the aleatory composition with the same title. The music on the CD includes the digitally re-mastered edition of their only (and impossible to find) LP, privately pressed in 1977, plus two previously unreleased long compositions, for more than an hour of a great musical experience. About: Insiememusicadiversa (Different Collective Music): A remote part of the world staged the hidden and extraordinary musical utopia of Insiememusicadiversa, an experience of collective music that devoured and assimilated the seeds of the musical avant-garde of the second half of the twentieth century, mixing Cage and Cardew, DIY aesthetics and free jazz, fluxus and electronic/concrete music, nihilism and mal de vivre. Founded in Umbria (a region of central Italy) in the early 70s by Terzilio Mancinelli, creative genius and visionary composer, Insiememusicadiversa was the representation of Sound as a way of living, as a devouring obsession, a breathing and pulsating paradigm. Its a lucid delirium in which every single sound was -- surprisingly -- rigorously determined (each composition is annotated with mind-blowing graphical scores). Insiememusicadiversa was looking for collective music, often played with self-built or invented electronic instruments, including in its timbre-filled landscape the remains and debris of music shattered into tiny fragments." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: NIBLOCK, PHILL Title: Six Films (1966-1969) Format: DVD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $27.00 |
| "Die Schachtel in collaboration with O artspace proudly presents a deluxe DVD featuring six experimental films by New York-based composer, photographer and filmmaker Phill Niblock from the late-1960s. Anybody familiar with Niblock would probably characterize his work by the sound of his long, sonorous drones, producing rich overtones usually combined with a visual element -- since before moving into composition, Niblock was an active photographer and filmmaker. While he usually is known for his films from the Movement Of People Working series alongside performances of his music, Niblocks early works stand apart as unique objects. The integrity and consistency of his style is fully on display in these seldomly-seen or screened 16mm sound films wonders that include: Morning (1966-1969) from an idea by Phill Niblock and Jean Claude Van Itallie, filmed by PN, text by Lee Worley and Michael Corner, with members of the Open Theater group. Starring Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Cynthis Harris, Sharon Gans, Joseph Chaikin; text read by Lee Worley, James Barbosa, Barbara Porte, Dorothy Lyman, Michael Corner. Black & white 16mm film. The Magic Sun (1966-1968) with members of the Sun Ra Arkestra, music by Sun Ra and the Arkestra. Filmed on high-contrast black & white 16mm film. Dog Track (1969) -- a film by Phill Niblock, with a found text read by Barbara Porte. Color 16mm film. Annie (1968) -- a portrait of the dancer Ann Danoff, with a sound collage soundtrack. Color 16mm film. Max (1966-19) -- an image collage film/portrait of percussionist/sound-artist Max Neuhaus, with a collage soundtrack by Max Neuhaus. Black & white 16mm film. Raoul (1968-1969) -- a portrait of the painter Raoul Middleman, with extensive use of time-lapse film technique. The soundtrack is improvised by Raoul Middleman and Phill Niblock. Color 16mm film. Limited edition of 500 copies. NTSC, all-region DVD, stereo, 4:3 format. Run-time: 65 minutes." -Die Schachtel |
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Artist: PETRONELLA, ANGELO Title: Sintesi da un Diario Format: CD Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $17.50 |
| "Angelo Petronella has been working as a composer and sound artist for many years, and has developed a very personal vision on the narrative qualities of acousmatics, which he pursues with millimetric precision and obsessive passion. In Sintesi da un Diario (Abstract from a Diary), he has created a rich and complex soundscape made of distant and future memories, imaginary places and countless possible stories." - Die Schachtel. |
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Artist: RAMPAZZI, TERESA Title: Musica Endoscopica Format: LP Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $31.00 |
| "Following the acclaimed CD edition released by Die Schachtel in 2008, heres the long-awaited limited "silver" LP edition of Teresa Rampazzis incredible early electronic music. It differs from the CD edition with the inclusion of "Metamorfosi," a previously-unreleased and magnificent drone piece. Teresa Rampazzi, a seminal yet very little-known female Italian composer/musician, founded the NPS - Nuove Proposte Sonore -- an experimental music collective formed in the late-60s. She was also one of the founders and main figures of the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, a computer music research center active from the early-70s at the University of Padua. It would be easy to see electronic composer Rampazzi as Italys equivalent of Daphne Oram or Delia Derbyshire, those long-neglected pioneers behind the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. But zoomed in closer, though, a more intriguing picture begins to emerge: Musica Endoscopica is in fact an immersive journey into a futurist-ic/early digital electronic music with dense, long drone pieces made of complex textures that explore the computers capacity to produce endless variations of source material, at times anticipating some of the electro-feel to emerge in the years to follow. A welcome return of Die Schachtels celebrated "metallic" series vinyl LP editions, dedicated to early electronic Italian composers. Housed in a deluxe silver cover with silver foil design with a custom inner sleeve and a 4-page booklet in English and Italian." -Die Schachtel |
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Artist: ZUCCHERI, MARINO Title: Parete 1967 Format: LP Label: Die Schachtel Country: Italy Price: $31.00 |
| "Marino Zuccheri was the sound engineer of the famous Milan RAI (Italian Broadcasting Company) Electronic Music Studio, and he worked with Berio, Nono, Maderna, Cage, Pousseur among the others, and he gave birth to some of the great masterpieces of early electronica. He was the one who actually knew how to operate the machines (oscillators, tapes etc), and thats why Umberto Eco (the philosopher and world famous novelist - i.e. The Name of the Rose - who worked at RAI and especially with Berio on "Thema-Omaggio a Joyce") wrote: «Who is one of the most performed contemporary electronic composer in the world? Marino Zuccheri, the sound engineer of the RAI Studio of Fonologia in Milan. Illustrious figures in the history of contemporary music arrived there with State grants; but after many months, they still couldn⿿t figure out how to handle the machines. Then Marino (who, working with Berio and Maderna, had become a wizard), started mixing tapes and producing electronic sounds: that is why some of the compositions now being performed all over the world are by Marino Zuccheri.» (Umberto Eco) In 1967 the world-famous painter Emilio Vedova was appointed by the National Government to create an installation for the Italian Pavilion at the Montreal Expo. Vedova came up with this great idea of using small glass slides, especially created to reproduce his abstract painting, and then projected on the asymmetrical walls of the Pavilion. He then asked Nono to compose some electronic music. Nono had no time, and suggested to ask Marino. He replied: "I could do something, but keep in mind that I am no composer". The result is Parete (Wall) 1967, a spectacular and intense 30-minutes loop of pure and intense electronics, a magmatic cascade of harsh sounds and deep drones, and a fantastic counterpart to the vibrant and expressionistic painting of Vedova. As in Marinos word: "I used some previously recorded sounds, the result of an early research: they were really rough material. I created a great loop, which intersected another one, a 30 meters, 30-minutes tape ring. It was so long that it extended out of the Studio room, my colleagues thought I was gone totally nuts. You heard this very loud timbrethe music interacted freely with Vedova⿿s visuals, it really was a free encounter between sound and light." This great work has been totally forgotten since today. This record is in fact a world premiere, and the final act of justice towards a man that contributed so much to the birth and development of Electronic Music. PERSONAL NOTE: We have received the tape directly from Marinos hands , taken from his archive. He has been dreaming for years to have it released, and he was totally enthusiastic about our project. Unfortunately he was very old and sick, and he died a few months ago, before we could give him the actual record. It surely is one of our greatest regrets, although we think that justice is done, after all." - Die Schachtel. |