Jacqueline Humbert & David Rosenboom
Daytime Viewing
UW10 LP / CD / Digital - Released June 2013
Daytime Viewing (1979-80) is an extended narrative song, based on a casual analysis of daytime television drama and the audience phenomena such programming addresses. The piece explores the use of fantasy as a survival mechanism against loneliness, illustrating the human compulsion to inflate the mundane to mythological proportions. A central female character weaves tales, using threads of personal experience and the idea of TV as friend, as mantra, and as transformational window between imagined spectacle and the pedestrian plane.
The Expanding Universe
UW09 LP / 2CD / Digital - Released September 2012
The Expanding Universe is the classic 1980 debut album by composer and computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel. The album is reissued here for the first time in a massively expanded two-CD set, containing all four original album tracks plus an additional 15 tracks from the same period, nearly all previously unreleased. Some of the already well-know works included in this set are "Patchwork", the complete "Appalachian Grove" series, and "Kepler's Harmony of the Worlds", which was included on the golden record launched on board the Voyager spacecraft. The pieces comprising The Expanding Universe combine slowly evolving textures with the emotional richness of intricate counterpoint, harmony, and complex rhythms (John Fahey and J. S. Bach are both cited as major influences in the original cover's notes), all built of electronic sounds.
Il Bestiario
UW08 Limited Edition Mini-LP CD - Released June 2012
First time available since its original release on the Italian Ri-Fi label, Maria Monti's 1974 LP Il Bestario is a rare item even in its native country. Monti is an Italian singer and actress with a noteworthy career, performing as a cabaret singer in the 60s, an ambitious avant-garde folk artist in the 70s, and starring in films by directors such Sergio Leone (Fistful of Dynamite) and Bernardo Bertolucci (1900) all the while. In addition to lyrics by the infamous poet Aldo Braibanti, Il Bestiario features arrangements and synthesizer from legendary avant-garde composer Alvin Curran, as well as the soprano saxophone of jazz-great Steve Lacy. The music of Il Bestiario is a prime example of "the new art-song" of the 1970s, as Alvin Curran calls it - lush, dynamic and full of intelligence and beauty.
Detours
UW07 LP / CD / Digital - Released January 2012
Detours is “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s first album of new piano works since 2003’s Take Your Time. A beautifully recorded collection of tracks composed between 2004 and 2010, Detours belongs to a rarefied class of supremely listenable and beautiful piano albums that are not encumbered by any new-age shabbiness. It possesses the sort of timeless and elegant romanticism so unpretentious and accomplished it seems to at once effortlessly canonize itself.
Fifteen Saxophones
UW06 LP / CD / Digital - Released April 2011
First ever reissue of this little known classic from founding Philip Glass Ensemble member Richard “Dickie” Landry. Following two jazz LPs issued on the Chatham Square label (which he co-ran), Dickie Landry released Fifteen Saxophones, a set of 1974 recordings done with engineer Kurt Munkacsi, on the Northern Lights and Wergo labels in 1977. Fifteen Saxophones simultaneously demonstrates Landry’s boundary-pushing saxophone and his understanding of the minimalists’ long-form treatises on sound. Using intricate Revox tape delays, Landry’s strong personality as a player shines through a brilliant wall of sound. It is unsurprising Landry was a fixture in the same New York scene that spawned artists like Richard Serra – something equally monumental exists in the pieces found on this album.
Piano Works Revisited
UW05 2CD / Digital - Released March 2010
A 2CD collection of piano works by postminimalist composer Elodie Lauten - most of which is available for the first time ever on CD. The albums Piano Works (1983) and Concerto for Piano and Orchestral Memory (1984), both reissued here in their entirety with remastered sound, incorporate found and prerecorded sounds into lyrical, minimalist piano works in a highly personal, even baroque, style. They are deeply meditative and expansive but do not require the epic lengths enjoyed by Glass, Reich, Riley. Contemporary luminaries Arthur Russell and Peter Zummo contribute to the Concerto. Also included in this set is Lauten's performance of her later masterpiece Variations on the Orange Cycle (1991) and other previously unreleased tracks.
The Death of Don Juan
UW04 CD / Digital - Released July 2008
CD debut of this 1985 post-minimal landmark by Elodie Lauten, featuring performances by Arthur Russell and Peter Zummo. Lauten has been active in the downtown New York classical and punk scenes since moving from France in the 1970s. The Death of Don Juan is a breakthrough for its bold, lyrical minimalism in concert with a dramatic sensibility that is deeply faithful to the modern existential emotional experience. Originally self-produced and released as a small LP edition on her own label, it has been touted ever since by Kyle Gann, who adds notes to this edition, and was recently included on one of Alan Licht's Minimal Top Ten lists.
Woo Lae Oak
UW03 CD / Digital - Released February 2008
First ever CD issue of Carl Stone's debut album work, originally issued on Joan La Barbara's Wizard Records in 1983. Woo Lae Oak is a 54 minute tape piece based around minimal samples of strings and wind which layer, deconstruct and reform into an expansive, shimmering whole. Remastered for CD, with original artwork and new accompanying notes by Phill Niblock.
KMH
UW02 CD / Digital - Released May 2007
Lubomyr Melnyk's debut album from 1978, KMH, is an unheralded touchstone of minimalism. Performing solo on piano with a speed that suggests multiple pianos playing together in harmony, Melnyk nearly brings out the full sound of the instrument all at once. His music is lush and maximal yet it possesses the restrained, slowly evolving nature found in music by artists like Steve Reich and Terry Riley. Melnyk developed his unique approach to minimalism while working with dancer/choreographer Carolyn Carlson (who also worked with Igor Wakhevitch) in Paris during the 1970's. Carlson's influence led Melnyk to create music that is dramatic enough for the stage yet meditative enough for deep listening, a version of minimalism with the engimatic traces of Satie.
Out of the Blue
UW01 CD / Digital - Released January 2007
For the first time on CD, "Blue" Gene Tyranny's first album from 1977 (originally one of the first Lovely Music releases) is here - beautifully remastered, with new artwork and 24-page booklet. Composing for what is essentially a chamber rock ensemble, a cast of female vocalists, and himself on the Polymoog and RMI synthesizers, Blue has created a song-cycle that reflects his intensely melodic and free piano technique in a polished studio record. Out of the Blue elegantly combines adventurous New Music technique, the style and appeal of pop music, and the grace of classical music to form an unclassifiable and totally revelatory whole. Endearing, exciting, familiar yet unlike anything else - this is a very friendly record.
