Unseen Worlds is a record label releasing quality editions of unheralded and revolutionary, yet accessible, avant garde music.
REISSUES:
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UW01 - Blue Gene Tyranny Out of the Blue
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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. Blue is a Grammy-nominated composer and pianist who has performed on records by Robert Ashley (Perfect Lives), John Cage, and Laurie Anderson, yet this is quite different. 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.
"...my favorite avant garde pop record, with all the sublime kitsch and profoundly ironic relish of a pure postmodern moment... transferred to CD, Out of the Blue sounds still more vivid now. To use Peter Gordon's words, this is "gorgeous" music." - WIRE (UK), April 2007 issue
"Though sounding timeless, just try to find another album in which the AM folk pop stylings of Carole King rest heads comfortably with Poppy Nogood-era Terry Riley. Each of these four long tracks moves about though, from song to rock to minimalism and back, providing a wonderful entry into the world of this most cherubic figure of the American vanguard and modern classical." -Other Music, NYC
"... an ambitious and moving masterpiece that takes up half the record. It is 'Letter From Home,' an epistolary song in the tradition of Harry Partch’s 'Letter' (and Eminem’s 'Stan')." - The New York Times
"The best moments on Out of the Blue are as awkward and thrilling as Brian Eno’s pop experiments in the early ’70s ... 'Next Time Might Be Your Time,' a country-lite tune laced with flange guitars, sparkly synthesizers, and enough bassoon poppin’ to make a shadow blush, is one of the most off-handed and graceful pieces of pop fusion I’ve ever heard." - Stylus Magazine review
"...conveys a sense of personality as much as it does 'purpose'" -Paris Transatlantic
"Not for everyone, to be sure, but a very interesting, often very moving set of tunes." -Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen
"an eclectic pop/country/funk/sonic tone poem record that find precisely zero company in any genre I can think of." -Pitchfork Media, Out Music Column
"Needless to say, you probably haven't heard anything quite like this before. Sure, there are threads of several different genres and styles seeping through the release, and he dips into everything from Terry Riley-esque minimalism to straight-up disco funk pop. Despite the more AM Gold stylings in places, nothing is ever simple on Out Of The Blue as songs stretch out in length and take delightful instrumental detours... Odd and adventurous, but highly melodic" -Almost Cool
"Out of the Blue, originally from 1977 and reissued this year, never looks down its nose at pop, which actually makes it hilarious and revelatory-- Tyranny sounds like a foreign traveler who, not knowing the language properly, manages to do things with grammar and syntax a native speaker couldn't." -Pitchfork Media Forkcast
"Next Time Might Be Your Time" named a recent Gorilla vs. Bear Favorite
Why not?: a strangely solitary, but nicely written blog post by 'Record Guy.' Further proof that the blogosphere is a strange land.
UW02 - Lubomyr Melnyk KMH, Piano Music in the Continuous Mode
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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. Remastered from the privately produced master tapes with new artwork and an 8-page photo booklet.
"Surely one of the reissues of the year, Lubomyr Melnyk's debut album is somewhat analogous to Charlemagne Palestine's "Strumming Music," but with a more detailed melodic sense. Extremely listenable and fascinating, "KMH" is a major rediscovery that will change the way people look at official canon of 20th century minimal music. There's no reason he should be left out of the textbooks from here on out." - Other Music, NYC
"Lubomyr Melnyk immediately gets appreciated by this writer as a one-of-a-kind specimen, as I imagine his transcendent yet penetrating look while he’s still trying to locate that invisible point where music in its physical essence is left behind and more important issues of indivisibility and wholeness are emanated either by the spirit of the player or the sounds generated by his creativity. Passive listeners, fake musicians and mere record collectors can’t do better than just hope that something similar happen to them one day." -Massimo Ricci's Touching Extremes, September 2007
"Layers of notes are dextrously built up, seamlessly overlapping to produce a continuous, multi-dimensional sound strata. Trace elements of Debussy and Satie drift into focus, be the entire piece also recalls Charlemagne Palestine's shamanistic Bosendorfer excursions, or even the mechanical outpourings of Conlon Nancarrow's work for player piano. Melnyk's tightly patterned playing achieves a natural effect that relies less on sustained repetition and more on atmosphere. On the cover of this reissue, a photograph of low hanging, leafy branches suggest a kind of secret forest cave - the mood is perfectly in tune with Melnyk's dense piano playing, which evokes white shafts of sunlight shining through the foliage." -WIRE
"Credit due to new Texan reissue label Unseen Worlds for their work on KMH, especially after their great work on "Blue" Gene Tyranny's Out of the Blue earlier this year. And it features all of Melnyk's original liner notes, which means neo-spiritualist barking of the highest order-- he didn't even want to make the record, fastidiously explaining the use of six microphones, criticizing machines for their insensitivity to the piano's true "sound-curtains," ending with the florid and patently nonsensical entreaty to "let them come hear the music only if they want to." But if you do, don't expect it to fade into your carpet-- KMH isn't cold steel and hard angles; it's minimalism at its most lush, ornate, and taxing." -Pitchfork Media record review, 7.8 score
"Even though it went unheard by most for a very long time, I can honestly say that KMH is one of the more affecting pieces of minimal (if you want to call it that) music that I've ever heard. It has things in common with everyone from Steve Reich to Terry Riley and Charlemagne Palestine, and stands up next to any of them in terms of quality. It's the kind of seriously stunning music that's suitable for either detailed thinking or flat-out meditation." -Almost Cool
"Lubomyr Melnyk's music sounds like nothing else...One of its most striking attributes is its rhythmic complexity, which makes playing it a major feat of virtuosity; polyrhythmic patterns of three and four and seven and eight, for instance, going on simultaneously create an enormously rich contrapuntal texture, out of which new melodies are constantly emerging... Any fans of minimalism and maverick experimentalism with an immensely attractive sound should check out Melnyk's phenomenal performance of his unique music." -Stephen Eddins, All Music Guide, Five Stars
"pianist and composer Melnyk makes music that's lush + minimal, which could be a contradiction were it not for the often-gorgeous evidence on KHM." -Pitchfork Media, Out Music Column
"Melnyk certainly differentiates himself from the big names in minimal music, though, by the greater affinity to Romantic piano music evident in the sections of overlapping arpeggios... KMH is never exactly static, but when it's over you don't feel to have moved significantly from where you began. Rather, you're more aware of where you are – and, perhaps, the beauty of that place. This is how Melnyk taps into a rich vein of humanity." - Paris Transatlantic
"It has been ages since we have been so blown away by a new discovery, and not just a new performer but a new way of performing." - Aquarius Records, San Francisco
"I can easily imagine others finding the piece to be exactly what they’re after, perhaps if they find someone like Palestine too unrestrained. What Melnyk does, he does extremely well and with a high enough degree of obsessiveness to attain a certain level of fascination on that aspect alone." - Brian Olewnick, Bagatellen
"While Riley used tape manipulation and Reich used ensembles to craft their magical music, Melnyk only relies on his two hands to produce a steady flow of music that's so rich and vibrant that you can't believe that one guy alone was responsible for it." - Jason Gross, editor Perfect Sound Forever
"Imagine Reich's 'Piano Phase' as jacked up by Cecil Taylor (or if you're more classically inclined, Franz Liszt) and you have an idea of the melding of meditation and bewilderment." -Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages
UW03 - Carl Stone Woo Lae Oak
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First ever CD of Carl Stone's debut album, originally released 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.
"Stunning drone work, rescued from oblivion, and an absolute minimalism classic." - Forced Exposure
"Rich and great drone/minimal work that was previously only on a small-label pressing that didn't do the depth of the music justice. This release does!" - Wayside Music
From the album notes:
“Carl Stone’s ‘Woo Lae Oak’ is a nicely minimal work I like very much… He strips his materials down to fundamental characteristics to probe the realities he finds. Even simple materials can yield nearly an hour of inquiry… No matter what his source, he stays true to his personal methods.”
Phill Niblock
“Stone composes with electronics as Mahler composed for orchestra or Chopin wrote for the piano – with so sure a touch that the sounds arise from the quirks of the medium.”
Greg Sandow
"Woo Lae Oak, commissioned in 1981 by CalArts as a piece for radio broadcast or live performance, is a drone built on two sounds: an unspecified string, continuously rubbed for a tremolo effect, and air passing through a chamber-- a flute, or the sound of someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle. The sounds are recorded onto tape, layered, sped up, and slowed down. In the album's original liner notes, Alan Rich called it a "musical ground zero." But more than a ground zero, Woo Lae Oak is an amnesiac for itself, an ever-renewing blank slate. The problem with assessing records like this is that they rely on the listener's tolerance and imagination, which, comfortingly for all parties involved, nobody has any control over. Some might hear it as a gorgeous expanse, as therapeutic and undemanding as warm tea; others might hear it as foofy, inert bullshit peddled by charlatans to suckers who would stoop to intellectualize a rock.
But for the converted and reluctant alike, some qualities of Woo Lae Oak stick. When Stone layers his sounds, the overall picture doesn't expand, it blurs. No logic surfaces, no figure takes shape. As a result, it burdens its audience with freedom-- an impossibly unmemorable experience that feels different on every listen. And unlike many drones, Woo Lae Oak has no earthy, imperial frequencies, no rumble. Stone even named the piece after the Chinese restaurant of his choice, a self-effacing gesture that acknowledges peace as marketable chintz-- where other composers might aspire to recreate ancient prayer scrolls, Stone takes refuge in fortune cookies. Even when I can't fully immerse myself in it, I leave with the important lesson that there's no inherent grandeur to size, no necessary seriousness to serenity." -Mike Powell, Pitchfork Media
"Woo Lae Oak is one of those pieces that seems complete at every moment, paradoxically both dynamic and static at the same time." -Other Music
"like the best ambient music, it can be simultaneously ignored and listened to intently... 'Woo Lae Oak' imagines both misty Asian fauxscapes as well as filling up one's own personal space in the deepest sense." -Darren Bergstein, The Squid's Ear
"Simple things are not always good things, but in this case: wow." -Vital Weekly
"The nearly hour long mediation comprising Carl Stone's Woo Lae Oak plays like an Antonioni film for the sampledelic set. The ostensible perception of Stone's piece as a concerto for end-blown flute and over-caffeinated strings dissolves soon enough. Slowly, the solo woodwind multiplies into an ensemble, capable of superhuman sustain... invites comparison with David Behrman's On The Other Ocean." -Richard Henderson, The Wire (UK), May 2008
UW04 - Elodie Lauten The Death of Don Juan
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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.
"The Death of Don Juan remains an underground classic" -Kyle Gann
"A story of an artist's search for sincerity, and thus a parable of the artist in modern times" -John Schaefer, New Sounds (WNYC)
"This is one of the great lost experimental records of the 80s. Lauten has been around since the 70s, going back and forth between Paris and New York. THE DEATH OF DON JUAN is an opera, in the avant garde sense, but I honestly prefer it to any of Robert Ashley’s operas or the Philip Glass ones (except EINSTEIN). There’s a Fairlight on most of the record, but fear not, as you would never know that it dates from 80s. The first two tracks sound like Joe Jones meets Glass or Steve Reich, with harpsichords, trine (an electric lyre that Lauten invented) and Arthur Russell’s cello. “Death As A Shadow” recalls Meredith Monk’s “Turtle Dreams” but is even more haunting and doomy. Russell’s vocal on “Death As A Woman” even reminds me of MOONDOG 2 and sounds unlike any of his other work. Even the libretto is fab-A+" -Alan Licht
"a complete experimental work of opera that doesn’t seem much like an experiment, and even less like an opera — instead we get a multi-faceted, thoughtful slice of modern composition and a high point for second-wave minimalism." -Spencer Doran, North Coast Journal
"Unseen Worlds continues its streak of timely, avant-garde reissues with the release of Elodie Lauten's long out of print post-minimalist opera, The Death of Don Juan. Born in France and immigrating to New York in the early '70s, Lauten fronted the all-female, avant-punk band Flaming Youth for a few years before devoting herself to a life of composing acoustic, electronic and electro-acoustic music, partly at the urging of her one-time roommate, Allen Ginsberg, who gave Lauten her first electronic instrument -- a Farfisa organ he bought for her from the Fugs.
Lauten's first opera, composed in 1985 and premiered at Boston's ICA in 1987, The Death of Don Juan was met by great critical acclaim before lapsing inexplicably into obscurity. In recent years, however, there has been a renewed interest in the piece and it has been hailed as one of the major post-minimalist works of the '80s and "a great lost experimental record" by critics like Kyle Gann and Alan Licht. For many reasons Don Juan can be seen as both a way out of the reductive ends of minimalism as well as a great feat of musical synthesis. The tight repetitive patterns that open and appear throughout the piece are classic minimalism in the Philip Glass/Steve Reich vein, but as Lauten says, "I heard another layer of improvisation on top..." A devoted Tibetan Buddhist compelled by universal correspondences between frequencies, colors, planetary bodies, and well...everything, Lauten often structures her works on compositional matrixes she calls "Philosopher's Stones" -- esoteric looking grids of musical and extra-musical information that can be used to generate sequences of patterns, melodies and harmonies. Improvisers on this recording include guitarist Bill Raynor, Elodie Lauten herself on harpsichord and trine (a seven stringed lyre of her own invention), Peter Zummo on trombone and Arthur Russell ..o. Russell's unmistakable voice also figures prominently in some sections, in counterpoint to operatic soprano Randi Larowitz and Lauten's multilingual spoken and sung parts. Overall, The Death of Don Juan is a mysterious work, suggestive of a grand cosmic vision that attempts to include everything from the insistent, bouncing pulse of minimalism to the rich tonal subtleties of eastern music -- Lauten studied with LaMonte Young and Pandit Pran Nath -- and the emotional weight of early choral music. Lauten's investigation into the mythic nature of gender roles -- here, the aged Don Juan archetype encounters Death who is, of course, a woman -- provides yet another layer of meaning to an already dense fabric of associations. The reissue of this long-overlooked masterpiece of new music is sure to spark a new wave of interest in Lauten's work, which has continued to follow the myriad entangled threads laid out in Don Juan. Highly recommended and essential listening for fans of minimalism, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley, etc." -Che Chen, Other Music
"At her most conservative, she hugs traditions forged by Terry Riley or, to an extent, Steve Reich: motorized pentatonic-scale keyboard patterns overlapping endlessly, with melodies swelling out of the mix. In other sections-- "Duel" or "Despair"-- she hashes noise, samples, speech, and guitar, a marker of a time in composition where, especially in New York, "composers" could've easily been mistaken for lead singers or the homeless. (Among other downtown musicians on Don Juan, Arthur Russell, who traversed and unified art, rock, and classical worlds, plays cello and sings.) It's Lauten's unwillingness to settle-- Don Juan is alternately mystical and exuberant; it marches stiffly for minutes on end and then dissolves into noodling-- that makes it a milestone. As a recording, it has a remarkably diverse vocabulary. But the slang of 1985 is the vernacular of 2008, and even in Lauten's most beautiful moments, the work dates itself in distracting ways. Call it the unique burden of being an innovator. " -Mike Powell, Pitchfork Media
"This is not an opera in the conventional sense by any means; in fact, it is more a study of emotional and psychological scenes that take place in an almost mystical, meditative environment more in relation to Zen than Zemlinsky." -Steven Ritter, Audiophile Audition
"The libretto was written by Elodie Lauten and relates to “timeless Don Juan archetype (staged as an unseen character, screen character or a multiple) facing death in the form of a woman, with a complex emotional, sexual, political and spiritual subtext that addresses concerns of our time” The music is programmed from a matrix created by Lauten (The Scale of Number Seven(, but I’m not sure any of this is critical to experiencing the music. So what does the music sound like? Some of it reminded me of the best of Laurie Spiegel, and even part of Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, while other parts sounded like nothing else. In the end, however, the music defies description since it doesn’t fall into a neat package. And that’s to its credit—this is music to be listened to and experienced. I suspect that the work comes across differently in live performance, since it is an opera, after all. However, the music is very remarkable on its own, and I recommend anyone interested in minimalist or postminimalist music pick up this album." -David Toub, Sequenza 21
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