Pioneering Composers

Musique Concrète, mixte, ou acousmatique - 1910 à auj

Imprec Sampler

Patterns Of Consciousness

Scratches on the Readable Surface

Concerto For Bassoon, String Orchestra, Harp And Piano/ André Jolivet

pre-order: IMPREC.com
release date: 11.25.22
format: 2LP

Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in a double LP edition of 500 copies with 100 copies on clear vinyl exclusively for Imprec mailorder customers. 

     15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

       Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go. 
 
      Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music. 

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere. 

Press: 

"This return of Dockstader is something to cherish, not just because his output has been so limited and scarce but because what we do have is so intriguing, persuasive and cliche-free; the music of an inspired explorer who trails in nobody's slipstream."  The Wire

Unequivocably awesome...Grand in scope, colossal in sound. Mimaroglu Music 

One of the great figures of musique concrete composition. Dusted 

Somewhere in the invisible night, the signal remains strong, broadcasting anew. City Page

Tod Dockstader - Aerial 2 - 2LP - available 11.25.22

Available now via: IMPREC.com

The Well & The Gentle, two of the major works of Pauline Oliveros, are presented here in a first time reissue on double vinyl in a gatefold sleeve with extensive liner notes.

If Oliveros had followed a more conventional composer's path she may have, all social obstacles aside, been considered among the major minimalist and contemporary classical composers of her time. However, Oliveros approached composition in a more egalitarian manner. She wrote music for musicians to interact with or, in the composers words, she wished to create "an inclusive and interdependent and unfolding world of relationships."

Oliveros' propensity towards inclusion is part of what makes this work so remarkably distinctive. The Well & The Gentle is carefully crafted, allowing performers to participate in the creation of the work. Players are asked to collaborate, focus, react and make imaginative choices. Only then can the performers "pass through stages of awakening to the possibilities inherent in making music, working together, leading to the essence of what can shape musical impulses and individual freedom simultaneously."

Unlike most major composers of the era, Oliveros' work focuses on collaboration and improvisation. Lacking in the rigidity that often defines minimalist work of the era. For Oliveros, the processes involved in making music are as fundamental as the music itself. Oliveros creates, as Arthur Sabatini put it so eloquently in the liner notes,

"A world in which sound and the practices entailed in making music merge; become, at once, source and atmosphere, energy and essence, presence and dynamic."

Pauline Oliveros "The Well & The Gentle" - 2LP - Release Date 3.10.23

Гудковая симфония, "Symphony of Factory Sirens" by Arseny Avraamov is one of the most influential - yet forgotten pieces of electronic/industrial music.

Produced by Arseny Avraamov, it was performed as a public event in Baku on November 7, 1922, it celebrated the 1917 October Revolution. He was also able to create a powerful and immersive sonic experience that celebrated the modernity and technological advancements of the Soviet Union.

Volksmusiksendung posts music for educational value only.

Arseny Avraamov - Symphony Of Factory Sirens

2LP available directly from Imprec.com

"This is where you have been forever and will always be forever."
Stuart Dempster, speaking about what it feels like to be in a cistern where time seems to stop.

Stuart Dempster created Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel in the same cistern where the legendary Deep Listening album was recorded. Reverberating with powerful, deep tones, this double LP is intended as a companion to the acclaimed Oliveros/Dempster/Panaiotis album Deep Listening. 

Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel is one of the deepest drone albums ever recorded. Nine trombones, didjeridu and Tibetan bells fill the massive two million gallon cistern with dense sonic reverberations that are both haunting and healing. 

Packaged in a heavy duty paper sleeve printed with metallic gold ink to match the Deep Listening design.

Stuart Dempster - Melodic Communion (edit) - Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel 2LP

LP available via Imprec.com 

Mirage is a cosmic collaboration between the Silver Apples and Makoto Kawabata of Japan's Acid Mothers Temple. Packaged in a deluxe jacket printed with metallic silver ink.

Dragonfly's First Flight, taking up the full side A, features Simeon Coxe and Kawabata Makoto jamming over familiar Silver Apples hypnotic rhythms. Fans of both groups will delight in the interplay between Simeon's keyboard and Makoto's drone guitar feedback soloing.

Side B ranges from free-form freakouts to ambient poetry readings by Simeon with Japanese translation spoken by Makoto. Future Reminiscence, which closes side B, is a song that sounds like a long-lost Silver Apples track.

Mirage is dedicated to the memory of Simeone Coxe who died September 8, 2020 while this project was being assembled.

SILVER APPLES + MAKOTO KAWABATA - Mirage - LP

Mix of three excerpts from our upcoming 3LP/2CD archive of Else Marie Pade's electronic work.

Else Marie Pade Electronic Works- Excerpt Mix

The Complete Sonambient Collection features all 11 Bertoia Sonambient releases newly restored from the original master reels. A heavy duty box holds 11 CDs each packaged in replica sleeves and a 100 page booklet contains a lengthy historic essay, a Smithsonian interview with Harry Bertoia, exclusive Sonambient era material from the Bertoia archive,  photos of the Sonambient barn during Harry's lifetime and updated with many shots of the barn today.  Also included are reflections on Bertoia from David Sefton, Tom Welsh, David Harrington (Kronos Quartet) and all three of Bertoia's children.


In the late fifties Harry Bertoia began working on long-form improvised compositions by utilizing pure acoustic tones produced using his own pure metal sound sculptures.   Bertoia coined the term "Sonambient" to desribe the music of his sculptures and the lush overtones they evoked, renovated a barn on his property deep in the PA woods, and often recorded his nightly sessions in the barn using 4 overhead microphones and a 1/4" tape recorder. Bertoia dedicated the last twenty years of his life to his Sonambient work and in 1970 he released the first Sonambient LP. In 1978, in the final months of his life, he selected recordings from his archive and produced 10 more Sonambient records. He would not live long enough to see these records in person. 

Harry Bertoia "Mellow Tops" from The Complete Sonambient Collection  11 CD  Box - Available 12.5.15

Violin: Lelie Cristea
Piano Accompaniment: Tamilla Guliyeva
Sound Recording by Arthur Jogerst

Darius Milhaud |  Corcovado for Violin & Piano

LIVE@ The Percy Grainger Museum (Dani Kirby - Vocals, Mat Ward - Bass)

Olivier Messiaen: Oraison, arranged for Electric Guitar and String Quartet (2019)

Pre-order available now. Release date: Jan 31, 2020

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Deep Listening, we offer you the definitive double LP combining the classic, complete original 1989 release with selected tracks from the Deep Listening Band’s 1991 album The Readymade Boomerang.

This elegant double LP is packaged in a gatefold sleeve with original and updated recollections from the performers, the recording engineer and a mesostic from John Cage, to which these recordings are inextricably linked.

Recorded in a cistern, this double LP reverberates with brilliant sonic clarity and masterfully improvised performances combining live electronics, vocals, trombone and accordion. Deep Listening is a classic in the fields of improvisation, minimalism, ambient/drone and modern classical.

Listen with attentiveness, listen while lying down, listen with headphones - as recording engineer Al Swanson entices the listener to become a virtual performer in selecting the many different ways to perceive these phenomenal tracks. Whatever you do, listen deeply.

Oliveros - Dempster - Panaiotis "Deep Listening" 2LP - 30th Anniversary & First time on vinyl!

Hot on the heels of our crucial Deep Listening double LP is another essential reissue enjoying its vinyl debut on Important Records. This is the first in a 3 part series of vinyl releases for Tod Dockstader's Aerial 1-3.


      Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in a double LP edition of 500 copies with 100 copies on clear vinyl exclusively for Imprec mailorder customers. 

     15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.

       Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go. 
 
      Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music. 

Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.

Aerial 1

Tod Dockstader - Aerial 1 - Mix - 2LP Pre-Order Now

ELSE MARIE PADE & JACOB KIRKEGAARD
SVÆVNINGER

IMPREC382   LP

Else Marie Pade (born December 2, 1924 in Aarhus) is a Danish composer. An educated composer, Pade pioneered electronic music and concrete music in Denmark. In 1954 Pade became the first Danish composer of electronic and concrete music. She knew and worked with Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen.  Pade was active in the resistance during the Second World War, and was interned at the Frøslev prison camp from 1944 till the end of the war. An archival collection of Else Marie Pade's electronic work will be released on Important in 2013.

Jakob Kierkegaard is a Danish artist who explores sound art from a scientific perspective. He has released 3 solo records and a collaborative work with Phillip Jeck for the esteemed Touch label.

 Despite an age difference of 51 years, Else Marie Pade and Jacob Kirkegaard speak a similar musical language and are prominent listeners and communicators of sounds that we tend to overhear. For the first time these two pioneers are collaborating on a new work: SVÆVINGER investigates the variations that one can hear when sound waves collide. Both artists have previously worked on this phenomenon; Jacob Kirkegaard in his work Labyrinthitis (2007) and Else Marie Pade in her work "Faust Suite" (1962). For their new joint piece SVÆVINGER, they remixed some of Pade's early (and hitherto unreleased) sound experiments with some of Kirkegaard's recordings from his own ear, thus leading the audience straight into the undiscovered labyrinths of their own hearing.