Classical Music Vinyl 383 Items

Henrik Schwarz and !K7 are proud to announce a collaboration that will bare many different musical fruits. The first of these is a brand new label called Between Buttons, curated by Henrik and focused on acoustic sounds and contemporary compositions. Between Buttons will be in partnership with !K7’s own neo-classical hub 7K!, and will kick off with a new mini LP by Schwarz entitled Works Piano, followed by an EP entitled Aphorisms by Syrian artists Khaled Kurbeh & Raman Khalaf Ensemble. Mixing up old and new technologies, experimental and more classical approaches, the label will see Schwarz forge new paths in his own work, as well as curating material from the peers he has worked with over the last 15 years. Mainly made up of acoustic sounds, piano, string quartets, self-built instruments, percussion and intriguing classicist elements with a modern twist, there will be EPs from piano virtuoso Bugge Wesseltoft, as well as other electronic producers wanting to show themselves in a different, more 'unplugged' light. “In these times of constant turbo mode, likes and thumbs-up, we need to go back to basics,” says Henrik. “We want to move away from the idea that relentless hasty productivity is a must, and instead take time to create space, to let ideas mature and to focus the mind on subtler sounds.”
Works Piano will be a four track mini album that uses a Yamaha Disklavier as the starting point and reimagines it, reworks it and alters it with various digital and recording technologies. One track is a created with a reactive algorithm and one is composed purely from altered and processed piano sounds.

When Laila Sakini's debut album ‘Vivienne’ arrived in 2020, it felt like the record we were waiting for to map out our tangled reactions to an uninvited reality. Never self-consciously strange, it revealed itself slowly and cautiously, like a shadow in the corner of the eye, or an alchemical symbol in a bowl of alphabet spaghetti. This time around Sakini has worked her unique world-building to an even finer point, forming six tracks around a theme that's so close to our heart it's almost beating in time. Initially inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski's 1991 arthouse classic "The Double Life of Veronique", the cult Polish director's enduring modern fairytale that serves as a cosmic rumination on identity and choice. Detailing two identical women - both singers, both in love - the film lets one live as the other dies, forcing us to consider the implications of art and endurance in the face of life's myriad challenges.

Sakini takes Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner's influential score for the film and uses it as a jumping-off point for ‘Paloma’, bending the more grandiose moments into baroque awkwardness on opening track 'Fluer D'Oranger' and evoking the mood of scene-setting cues 'Weronika' and 'Véronique' on the recorder-led 'The Light That Flickers In The Mirror'. And while Preisner's score zeroed in on the musical virtuosity of the film's lead characters, Sakini reinterprets that as a metaphor for self-discovery. Playing piano, violin, glockenspiel, timbale, recorder, and occasionally singing, Sakini captures a mood of innocence that immediately transports the listener back to simpler times. Her music isn't self-consciously simplistic, but forcing herself to interface with instruments impulsively rather than studiously, her sounds are all heart, no filigree.

In spirit, it reminds us of cult Canadian album "The Langley Schools Music Project", a collection of 1970s recordings of school kids singing rudimentary renditions of pop songs in a school gymnasium. That album's genius was in the bottling of hope and innocence: the feeling of joy from hearing and wholesomely interacting with music that's known and loved without a sense of hierarchy or desire for cultural clout. Sakini subtly subverts this by evoking the amateur spirit in the most bewitching way; instead of sourcing her ideas from Bowie, Fleetwood Mac and the Beach Boys, her stock is the established art canon, and by reforming those sounds she makes an insightful comment on intellectualism and access. European classical music is all too often trapped behind the frosted glass of respectability and assumed skill - craft replaces spirit, and technique replaces soul. By approaching these gestures from a different angle, Sakini softens the edges sonically and intellectually, finding music that bubbles with emotion, and most strikingly - hope.

Her choice of instruments and the way she interacts with them allows us to feel as if we're not only listening but contributing. It's a bottom-up way of absorbing art that's traditionally been top-down, and a reminder that we're all part of the experience, whether we're humming along to the remnants of a theme as it dribbles out of an ear in the shower, or dreaming of spotlights in a parallel life that may or may not be real. Sakini's music is nostalgic in a sense, but nowhere near the buttered popcorn and high-fructose candy migraine of the Netflix/Spotify algorithm generation of regurgitated churn. She makes sounds that remind us of what time and experience may have stolen from us, and how we might recover it. We're gagged.

Cologne - based composer and multi - instrumentalist Ozan Tekin’s second studio album “Anarya” will be released via Gülbaba Records on May 27 th . Tekin winds his musical journey back from Cologne to Adana with a long layover in Istanbul in “Anarya”. A triangle of migration drawn by musical notation and performance. The album is composed of 14 tracks and each one of them is a sound story that echoes Tekin’s distinct memories from these three cities. “Anarya” is the end product of a process in which Tekin and his upright piano co - tuned each other. It is an artistic representation of the idiosyncratic phenomenon called stimmung in German; a spectrum of tones, moods and atmospheres expressed in personal and instrumental terms. Tekin concludes the piano conversations from his previously released EPs in 2021 (“Anarya I” and “Anarya Ii”). The remarkably catchy melodies and immersive melancholic arpeggios fl ow throughout. The transposed narrative of “Anarya” sprung up from its roots when Tekin came across with a 66 - years old worn out piano in Cologne. Mesmerized by its unique sound, he felt the urge to make recordings with this piano before it fell apart. Aft er spending months learning its mechanics, Tekin recorded his second album with the old upright piano he repaired and brought back to life. The uneasy changes in time signatures and ambient ornamentations with gloomy synths of 80’s, lush strings and room tones set up the atmospheric stage of “Anarya I” in the first five tracks. Following six tracks of the album attempts to revisit Tekin’s emotional and episodic memories in Istanbul. His unaffected absorption into piano music in the first two parts of “Anar ya” are followed by his coyishly joyful tracks later in the album: an idle “ode”, a lost “lament” and a colorful “jam”. These three tracks blend the neoclassical, jazz and ambient sounds of Cologne and Istanbul with sentiments of childhood and rascality in Adana. The piano conversations of Tekin throughout “Anarya” are accompanied by his analogue synthesizers, vocals, bass guitar, Hanitra Wagner’s violin and Berke Can Özcan’s drums , percussions and vibraphone, and Emre Malikler’s mix and mastering. The sou nds of collaboration go deeper and louder as the album’s tracks move forward and Tekin’s memories go backwards simultaneously. Anarya gitmek (“to go back”) is a vernacular saying from Tekin’s hometown Adana and Tekin makes a figurative attempt to migrate b ackwards via the compositions that came into being in his most recent home, Cologne. Having been born out of an upright piano, Tekin’s compositions have instrumental origins, however, due to his constantly mutating sense of belonging, his melodies can’t be pinpointed to any specific heimat . Tekin’s continuously transforming music is an invitation to his listeners to explore and experience his music in their own terms. Tekin’s personal memories that shape “Anarya” is open to new forms of sonic exploration and rearrangement. This openness lies in Tekin’s determined faith in not to be entrenched in any single genre. The immersive intimacy radiating from the collaborative piano conversations in “Anarya” is an invitation signature to his music’s current and fut ure followers. Text by Mehmet Ekinci

"Absence of the loved one is a theme running through both films, but during the creative process we never discuss with the Havels the themes, symptoms or attributes of the characters. We do not specify any meanings. Our collaboration is intuitive, based on interconnectedness. We neither explain things to each other nor analyse. From the outset we have a common goal: to quieten the viewers’ perception, to attune them to certain vibrations by visual, musical and acoustic repetitions, thus enabling them to focus on every tiny detail, every subtle aesthetic quality, so that by the end of the film they have a sense of reconciliation. In fact it is a state similar to meditation or prayer. The aim is being shown Mercy. Each time, the linking of the filmed images with Irena and Vojtech’s music has uncovered a new quality that we have named: a commentary on eternity. Characters cease to be determined by their senses, psychological motivations, or the times they live in. They find liberation in the stream of eternal time." /Václav Kadrnka

"We would like to thank all our friends, sound engineers and musicians. The main thanks go to director Václav Kadrnka, his family and all his collaborators for the precious opportunity to assist them in creating both films. We have worked on our music for the film Saving One Who Was Dead for three years. We met with Václav, discussed the screenplay while it was being born and many other things. We have gradually prepared several working versions that included compositions for piano, Indonesian gamelan, gongs, Tibetan bowls, bells and mini-bells. Yet, step by step, we made it simpler and simpler and eventually only kept violas da gamba, organ and chanting. Everything else was redundant. We made most of the recordings of the compositions for viola da gamba in a church in Prague. The composition for organ was recorded in Milan where we performed a concert shortly before the pandemic arrived in December 2019. We tried to record it in various churches in Bohemia but it was not until the church in Milan that we found the best sounding organ.

As for Little Crusader, we recorded the music for the film after it was completed. We had several versions and used the piano version for this album. Together with Václav, we searched for instruments that would work the best for this Medieval story. Eventually, we opted for harmonium with simple chanting which accompanies the character little boy Jenik. Violas da gamba intertwine, move close and then apart from each other the same way as paths of little boy Jenik and his father who is searching for him. Simple chanting and Tibetan bowl accompany scenes with little boy Jenik’s mother who awaits them at home. Trombone and saxophone are like metal swords and the knights’ armor. Violoncello and viola da gamba walk in the rhythm of horse’s hooves, in the rhythm of heartbeat of both the horse and his rider – a father searching for his lost son." / Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi

Jozef Van Wissem- Lute, Electronics, Beats, Electric Guitar, Found Bird Sounds. In 2013 van Wissem won the Cannes Soundtrack Award at the Cannes Film Festival for Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive ". In December 2017 Jozef van Wissem was invited to perform the madrigal depicted in Caravaggio's painting The Lute Player (1596) at the Hermitage museum of Saint Petersburg. In 2022 three of his works were used for in the soundtrack and trailer of Irma Vep (HBO). His completely unique musical world can be easily verified by his collaborations, especially that these relationships are also strengthening his own musical character. He worked together with Zola Jesus, Tilda Swinton, Jarboe as well as with his long-time collaborative partner, also his friend, Jim Jarmusch. "La Cinémathèque Française in Paris commissioned me to write and perform the score at the presentation of the restored version of Nosferatu. I was a bit overwhelmed by its success. It was sold out. I wasn't going to repeat it. But people kept asking. In the beginning the soundtrack was more improvised and reactive to the images but after a few times the audience kind of showed me the way. To start with a few notes and building the score slowly to a dense slow metal ending. I found an old 7-inch single with recordings of extinct birds on a market, I electronically processed and added them to the score . " Manipulating the sounds of electric guitar in alternate tuning he manages to create the feeling of fear, equal to the experience of the victims of Count Orlok. "To me Nosferatu personifies this Death Bird of the Plague. The Black Death depicted in the film offers a timeless parallel with contemporary society. The vampire Count Orlok infests the city with rats and people are infected with the plague. They must quarantaine. This provokes hysteria. Much like nowadays".

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Limited White Teal & Beige Vinyl.Spencer Zahn's second record for Cascine emerged from a series of piano sketches born of daily improvisations in Kingston, New York, where he relocated during the pandemic after 14 years in the buzz of Brooklyn. Inspired by the space and pace of upstate life, he explored a more restrained, resonant mode of playing, letting chords delay all the way to silence, until the seeds of songs took shape. Zahn accompanied himself on upright bass, finessing each piece without cluttering it, focusing on the notion of "the instrument in a room.Recruiting long-time collaborator Andy Highmore for piano duties, the duo booked time at Figure 8 Recording in Prospect Heights to craft the lulling, lyrical 12-track suite of Pale Horizon. The tonality of the instruments was central to Zahn's vision, fusing them to feel like a single entity, with upright bass blending in an elegant gradient with the low strings on the piano. An air of Keith Jarrett and Ryuichi Sakamoto hangs over the collection, acoustic and unhurried, stately but subdued, ruminative daydream melodies heard on the breeze in a quiet garden.

Behold! I Make All Things New is all instrumental and consists of sparse works for lute and electronics. There are no vocals this time. It is more a return to the minimal neo classical style of his early work. It was written and recorded in lockdown in Warsaw and Rotterdam between 2019 and 2021. Jozef van Wissem is an avant garde composer and lutenist playing his all black, one of a kind custom made baroque lute all around the world.Jozef van Wissem is an avant garde composer and lutenist playing his all black, one of a kind custom made baroque lute all around the world.According to the New York Times "Van Wissem is both an avant-garde composer and a baroque lutenist, and thus no stranger to dichotomy". His completely unique musical world can be easily verified by his collaborations, especially that these relationships are also strengthening his own musical character. He worked together with Zola Jesus, Tilda Swinton, Jarboe as well as with his long-time collaborative partner, also his friend, Jim Jarmusch. The timeless value of his work can be described by one of his previous interviews: "_the lute goes against all technology and against all computers and against all the shit you don't need."

To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Luc Ferrari's birth Transversales Disques is very glad to announce the release of Photophonie, unpublished archives, spanning 1973-1992, revelatory collection of commercial, commission and secret music by electroacoustic music pioneer Luc Ferrari.
« Photophonie » (1989) / Music for the photographic exhibition of Alain Willaume.
« Il était une fois » (1973) / Commissioned by the G.M.E.B.
« Trans-Voices » (1992) / Curated by the American Center, Paris.
« Leica » - (1977) / Advertising for the Leica camera.
Affiliated with French Radio’s Groupe de Musique Concrète, co-founder of the GRM with Pierre Schaeffer in 1958, Luc Ferrari (1929-2005), major figure of musique concrète and electroacoustic music, broke away to pave his own path of individualistic expressions of minimalist music, musical theater, field recordings, orchestral music and soundtracks…

Eight years after its original release in 2015, and sold out upon release, Umor Rex finally presents a vinyl repress of Sirens, by Kara-Lis Coverdale and LXV. This new edition is limited to 500 copies and comes with revised artwork.

Inspired by the link between seduction and violence, Sirens comprises a series of timbrally vast anamorphic pieces that poise the voice as a newly imagined tool of multiplicity. Processes of sample manipulation, signal processing, routing, and source design inform instrumental writing and performance in feedback until intertwined, flickering between states of conflict and consonance. Apparitions of the schizophrenic voice are at one moment fractured and cold and at the next full of warmth and vivaciousness, embodying velvet rituals of romanticism in the digital age.

Ultimately, Sirens is music for ambitious dreamers: surreal sound portraits sound like the warmth of the world laid over an ice cold virtual altar. LXV’s vocal truncations and fleshy sound palettes depict the archivation of the breath and aural fantasies of the flesh which Coverdale sets amongst a vast and unconfined landscape of deeper and unknown force. Harmonically active and dynamic orchestrations underpin post-sacred tonalities while brooding pipe organs, sphinx flutes, and hailstorms of metallic percussion characterize uniquely disjointed discussions between disparate compositional ontologies. At times violent and at others serenely peaceful and seductive, these pieces, at their most powerful moments illuminate a felt space between cybernetic energy and the body.

Composed and recorded by Kara-Lis Coverdale and David Sutton. Mastered by John Tejada. Cover photograph by Cody Cobb. Layout by Daniel Castrejón.