12/7: Af Ursin, Sarah Hennies, DJ Vivid Oblivion

 

AF Ursin

Sarah Hennies

DJ Vivid Oblivion

December 7, 2024

7pm

Presented with Shared Shapes

Secret Williamsburg residence

(address TBA to ticket holders)

SOLD OUT

Over nearly three decades, the Belgium-based Af Ursin has released a steady stream of alchemical recordings both solo and in collaboration with the likes of Anne Gillis, Christoph Heemann (as In Camera), and Andrew Chalk (as Elodie). With antecedents within both the more esoteric strains of industrial musick and the classical avant-garde, it would be tempting to call Af Ursin a torchbearer for a hallucinatory approach to expansive sound if not for the hushed, chamber ambience of much of his output. Candlebearer seems a more apt metaphor for the blurred timbres of his structured improvisations; a music that passes intimately through darkness without entirely illuminating it.

In addition to his La Scie Dorée imprint, Af Ursin runs the Metaphon label, dedicated to publishing electronic and instrumental music from the 20th century, with a focus on Belgian composers as well as the music of Michael Ranta—an American composer and percussionist best known as a performer of choice for Stockhausen, Jean-Claude Éloy, and Luc Ferrari. Ranta serves as the connective tissue linking Af Ursin with Sarah Hennies, who has undertaken a recording project documenting never before heard Ranta chamber works mostly composed in the 1970s while he was living in Taiwan. This November, Important Records issued Transits: Volume 1, the first in this series.

Sarah Hennies is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. As a scholar and performer she is engaged with ongoing research about the percussion music of Iannis Xenakis. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College and her work has been released by Blume, Black Truffle, and New World Records. For this event, she performs with cowbells and singing bowls given to her by Michael Ranta.

10/16 - 11/13: Conrad Schnitzler - The Cassette CONcert exhibition and performance at Ergot Records

 

Conrad Schnitzler: The Cassette CONcert

an exhibition organized with Gen Ken Montgomery 

October 16 - November 13, 2024

Ergot Records

32 E. 2nd St.

New York, NY 10003

Conrad Schnitzler was born in 1937 in Düsseldorf and studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys before abandoning all of his sculptures in a grassy field and turning his attention to experiments with synthesizer and tape. He was an early member of Tangerine Dream and a founding member— alongside Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius—of Kluster, with whom he recorded three LPs before leaving in 1971, prompting the changing of the spelling of their name to Cluster. He also founded a short-lived Krautrock super group called Eruption, with a revolving membership that included Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching as well as members of Embryo, Agitation Free, and Amon Düül.

A non-musician in possession of one the first Synthie A synthesizers in 1970, Schnitzler turned to cassettes as a means of layering various single-voiced tracks to create larger compositions that were distinct and recognizable, yet constantly in flux. He first created the Kassettenorgel (cassette organ), consisting of two large black cabinets containing six stereo tape decks, all internally wired to a stereo output through which he could feed pre-recorded cassettes of his choosing. This concept was extended to mobile cassette actions, often carried out in public spaces, during which Schnitzler would wear a belt of walkmen wired to a megaphone built into a metal helmet worn on his head.

These practices culminated in the creation of the Cassette Concert, which Ken Montgromery has defined as:

a method of composing and performing electronic music in a dynamic way [consisting] of a group of recorded cassettes containing single tracks of a larger composition, intended for live performances that can be given anywhere in the world, at any time, by anybody. When these groups of cassettes are played simultaneously, the combined sounds constitute the basic, although variable, form of the composition.

One of Schnitzler’s closest collaborators, Montgomery was the first authorized conductor of the Cassette Concert. In 1989, he created his own performance venue, Generator Sound Art Gallery—located at 200 E. 3rd St. in the East Village—featuring an octophonic sound system specifically designed to conduct Schnitzler’s Cassette Concerts in a weekly series, presented in pitch black, called Music in the Dark.

Shnitzler was prolific until his passing in 2011, releasing hundreds of recordings of idiosyncratic electronic music on labels like Edition Block, Egg Records, Sky Records, and Generations Unlimited—a label he founded in 1987 with David Prescott and Montgomery. He dreamed of a Thousander Program, a Cassette Concert for one thousand cassettes, which has yet to be realized.

The exhibition features a selection of photos, collages, ephemera, and a drawing related to Schnitzler's Cassette Concert project and collaborations with Montgomery.

To mark the opening of the Conrad Schnitzler: The Cassette Concert, Gen Ken Montgomery CONducts a Cassette CONcert at the shop on the evening of October 16th.

10/1: Bridget St. John live at Ergot Records

 

Sunday, October 1st at 8 pm

Bridget St. John

with DJ Robert McNeill

Ergot Records

32 E. 2nd St.

New York, NY 10003

SOLD OUT

In 1969, legendary BBC DJ John Peel founded Dandelion Records to release the debut LP by Bridget St. John. Produced by Peel and featuring John Martyn on second guitar, Ask Me No Questions would be the first of three astonishing folk records for the label by the English guitarist and singer-songwriter, possessed with a husky voice that might evoke that of Nico’s if not for its generous warmth and emanation from a place of intimacy and connectedness. Still, St. John’s is surely a Sunday morning music, one that finds calm and delight in life’s elemental cycles. Her sage mantras, both original and borrowed, have the power to be at once cathartic and gently enlightening. Alongside ageless themes of love and loss, her songs explore a city/country dialectic, finding a pastoral tranquility within urban life that can prove especially therapeutic for New Yorkers on the grind. Indeed, after recording a fourth album for Chrysalis in 1974, St. John moved to Greenwich Village in 1976 and has kept a relatively low profile ever since. In addition to her own music, St. John appears on Kevin Ayers’ Shooting at the Moon, Michael Chapman’s Deal Gone Down, the Nick Drake covers compilation Green Leaves, and, most recently, CS + Kreme’s Orange. She is absolutely a peer to each of these artists, a member of the continuum of great British folk masters, and we’re honored to be hosting her at the shop.

5/13: Joanne Robertson and Kool Music live at Ergot Records

Saturday, May 13th at 9 pm

Ergot Records

32 E. 2nd St.

New York, NY 10003

SOLD OUT

In March, we wrote of Joanne Robertson’s recent Blue Car LP:

“Collected from Joanne Robertson’s archive of unreleased solo recordings, these songs were put to tape as a form of diary entry, impressionistically chronicling her emotions over a ten year period. Like her best work, the gossamer vignettes provide an immediate charm, but seem to slip away as easily as they appear, fleetingly present for but a moment. With repeated listens—and believe us, you’ll want to keep flipping this platter ad infinitum—the diamonds emerge from the rough, a quality all the more arresting in this era of quick fixes.

Listeners unfamiliar with Robertson’s work might recognize her angelic voice from her numerous collaborations with/as a member of the Dean Blunt project. On about our 20th listen as we write now, we’re reminded of the heavenly light of Shelleyan Orphan, Loren Connors’ ephemeral blues, Sibylle Baier’s solitude, Pink Reason’s bummer trip, and the hypnotic fingerpicking of Sun Kil Moon—those are all compliments of the highest order.”

Dial-A-Poem Reading

We are overjoyed to announce that we have sealed vintage copies of the bulk of the Giorno Poetry Systems discography, as well as John Giorno’s debut LP Raspberry / Pornographic Poem, in stock now at the Ergot Records shop. In order to celebrate the renewed availability of these indispensable documents, as well as the legacy of Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem and Giorno Poetry Systems projects, Ergot Records and the John Giorno Foundation present an evening of poetry readings at the shop on Tuesday, April 12th, featuring two members of the inaugural Dial-A-Poem group as well as others who have worked with Giorno over the years and poets of a younger generation now carrying the torch. We will also have a functioning Dial-A-Poem phone installed at the shop between April 12th and 18th.

With readings by:

Penny Arcade

Anselm Berrigan

David Henderson

No Land (with Luke Stewart)

Anne Waldman

Tuesday, April 12th from 6:30-9pm

Ergot Records

32 E. 2nd St.

New York, NY 10003

Proof of vaccination and masks required.

Inspired by revolutions in vanguard painting, sculpture, music, and dance, poet and performance artist John Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems in 1965 as a vehicle for using modern technology to connect poetry with new audiences. In 1968, his Dial-A-Poem project provided the world with access to poetry that could be heard rather than just read, via a telephone hotline that connected each caller with a random two-minute reading by poets that included William Burroughs, John Cage, Anne Waldman, Jim Carroll, Aram Saroyan, Bernadette Mayer, Ted Berrigan, and David Henderson. Dial-A-Poem was subsequently exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Museum of Modern Art, with recent installations at SFMOMA and the New Museum. In 1972, Giorno Poetry Systems began publishing vinyl albums of recorded poetry, starting with compilations of the Dial-A-Poem poets before expanding over the ensuing two decades to include long-form performance poetry as well as lyrical music by the likes of New Order, Hüsker Dü, Diamanda Galàs, and Coil. The breadth of the Giorno Poetry Systems’ aesthetic is remarkable for uniting poèsie sonore, the New York School, the Beats, the Black Arts Movement, no wave, industrial culture, and punk under the cohesive umbrella of oral poetry. Its albums’ track lists read as indexes chronicling a who’s who of New York’s downtown scene and beyond, providing ample material for research into under-appreciated figures as well as opportunities for interdisciplinary connections.

Ergot Records, the shop

Records, tapes, and related books of all genres bought & sold in the East Village!

Ergot Records

32 E. 2nd St. New York, NY 10003

Ph: 312-351-3232

Hours: Wed-Thu 11am-7pm, Fri-Sat 12-8pm, Sun 12-6pm, and by appointment

#004: Dominique Lawalrée - First Meeting LP
(a co-release with Catch Wave Ltd.)

SOLD OUT

Dominique Lawalrée (b. 1954) is a composer born and based in Brussels. First Meeting is Lawalrée's first archival release to date. Culled from four different albums originally self-published on his private label Editions Walrus, circa 1978-1982, this compilation highlights the composer's unique sense of ambient and minimal composition. Originally considered for release on Brian Eno's Obscure Records, Lawalrée's music is now no longer hidden.

In this collection the listener finds the sounds of piano, synthesizers, percussion, Wurlitzer, organ, and voice, all performed by Lawalrée. Using these tools Dominique creates miniature themes that gallop across the speakers in slow motion, stretching our normal sense of dynamics and color, effortlessly widening the stereo plane. On “Musique Satieerique,” Dominique pays homage to the influence of Satie with simple repeated piano figures and a lush field of organs and flutes. And on other selections, like “La Maison Des 5 Elements,” he takes a more wistful, ambient approach, layering keyboard lines, and invoking found/tape sounds to create a hypnogogic world of his own. Childlike in its playfulness and surreal to the bone, the music spins like a carrousel placed inside the Rothko Chapel. Lawalrée’s sense of timbre, tone, and overarching composition is like an impression of a home movie whose charm lies in its knowledge of intimacy, shared by few. An incantation of innocence.

"a quiet, understated music that is both touching and elegant"

—Gavin Bryars

"what is most affecting is the feeling of parabolic calm that can emerge from this music, ascending gradually. It's atypically devoid of New-age cliché, closer somehow to a secular revelation than to any protracted or consensus bliss."

—Keith Connolly, BOMB Magazine

"Part of the charm of Lawalrée's work, and perhaps why he never broke through into broader consciousness, was the obliquely personal nature of his albums, which sometimes felt like improvised sound diaries, or like incremental explorations of deeply indivualistic themes… A beautiful rediscovery."

—Jon Dale, Uncut 

"Harold Budd is an obvious reference point, but Lawalrée's brilliantly economical music eschews the grand, systematising ambitions of most minimalist music, and has a tactility and sense of particular time and place that places it closer to Angelo Badalamenti, Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, or even Broadcast. This may be the first meeting, but hopefully not the last." 

—Derek Walmsley, The Wire

Distributed by:

Light In The Attic (USA/Canada)

Kudos (UK/World)

Virtual Label (USA)