The first minute and a half of Altered Realities seems to be a minimal and slightly quirky bit of electroacoustic music. Near the end of that first 90 seconds, however, one begins to suspect that one has been listening to a rather long “hook,” and sure enough, a guitar enters playing a simple little tune […]

People who are immensely talented should do more things. The two guys who constitute Busratch are immensely talented. They’ve only done one other project that I know of, which I haven’t located yet. memorium is wildly entertaining and exhilarating. You can still find it, if you search, though copies are getting harder and harder […]

I first listened to this on lp, which gives an extra dimension of surface noise to the endeavor that cd copies will never have, viz. Marclay’s lp that comes sans sleeve. If you are old enough to remember radio, you will wet yourself at the opening of Grand Surface Noise Opera Nr. 3. If […]

Tod Dockstader was a cult figure back in the seventies. At least in my house he was. This was back when KPFK still ran an electronic music show every Saturday night, and everyone who listened to that show was snapping up Owl records like mice. Well, it’s no news any more that Dockstader is […]

Yes, you can still spell common words backwards and get strange and lovely effects ybereht. Or perhaps I mean htiwereht. Either way, this is one of those strange under the radar discs that appear and disappear without a ripple. This hasn’t quite disappeared, luckily. If you don’t live near L.A., and cannot make it […]

This was the first Heiner Goebbels I heard, even though friends of mine had been praising Der Mann im Fahrstuhl for some time before. The opening is deceptively simple and naïve, so much so that my heart sank. But then the trombone cuts across that naive little tune, and then there’s some subtle but […]

Fritz Hauser is my favorite percussionist who doesn’t use objects and electronics. That is, he’s neither Chris Cutler nor Gino Robair. But for what he does, he’s the best, I think. And if I’m wrong, I want to know who’s better, so I can get all of their cds, too. Pensieri Bianchi is pretty […]

The first Gerhard I ever heard was the Prausnitz recording of this symphony on an Angel lp. If you’ve only heard this on the currently available cds, you haven’t really heard it, although Matthias Bamert’s recording is close. What neither of the cds do is play the tape part loud enough, so it sounds, even […]

This disc was my introduction to all four of these people. Needless to say, I soon had all the discs of all of them I could find. And I haunt the stores, looking for the next new one. With the first two, that used to be easy. It’s more difficult now, but you can […]