"During Holiday Records' long friendship and incredibly prolific collaboration with Hartmut Geerken -- who sadly left this planet on October 21, 2021 -- he never ceased to surprise. He lived many lives, traveling the world as an employee of the Goethe Institute, playing with other incredible musicians, and being smart enough to record most of the concerts he did. His archive is in fact full of treasures, and any conversation with him could lead to the rediscovery of unheard master tapes preserving true music gold. It was during the one of these conversations we had at his house - while searching for pictures to be used for the 50th anniversary reissue of Heliopolis (HOL 124LP) -- that he pulled the original score of Music for Angela Davis No. 2 out of a folder, saying with a smile: "Let's see... I should have the complete recording of this one"!
Recorded at Nile Hall, Cairo, on December 4, 1971, Music for Angela Davis is a 24-minute composition that encounters two full ensembles -- respectively conducted by Geerken himself and Hubertus Von Puttkamer -- playing simultaneously without listening to each other, rising and falling within a brilliant and structurally complex expression of call and (non) response. Collective improvisation in its most heightened and sophisticated form.
As described by Geerken in the liner notes: "One of my attempts with the Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble was my time-related, but timeless composition Music for Angela Davis. I divided the ensemble into two groups of roughly the same size, each with a conductor, and both groups played simultaneously, according to the different hand signals of the conductors, without one group reacting to or considering the other. The only two-tone sequences consisted of the music-able notes of the name Angela Davis, i. e. a-g-e-a and d-a s. The composition was an attempt to get together in society through the medium of improvisation and a protest against the racial measurements of the American governments." Unreleased archival recording; single-sided LP; edition of 500." - Holidays.
After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.
This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).
Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.
Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.
Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).
So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
