Bleak Bliss

WHAT'S THE POINT?

The intention is to promote people who make beautiful music.

The intention is to introduce you to the people who have been carving their own path...with no care for what anybody thinks.

We try not to post things that are still for sale but sometimes post things that are not easily available. If you like what you hear, then find these people and tell them how great they are.

Better still, tell them and then seek out their new releases and buy them. We add links, when they are reliable and active, so that you can keep track if you so wish.

Always go straight to the artist or the label where possible. That way, the money goes straight to the people responsible for this art. These people rely on our support to keep going and make more quality releases!

Please feel free to leave comments as you go along...at least then we know you appreciate this stuff (or otherwise) and you're not just a bunch of freeloading file collectors.

If you made this music and we have pissed you off by posting any of this, please leave a comment in the post and the offending articles will be removed.

Angus MacLise / Tony Conrad - Dreamweapon III

This is one of a series of previously unreleased collaborations lifted from Angus' tape archives released to accompany a Belgian exhibition celebrating his life and work more than 30 years after his death.

LP courtesy of Boo-Hooray in 2011.

Dreamweapon III

Tony Conrad with Faust - Outside The Dream Syndicate - Alive

... and this is the escape recorded live at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London on February the 17th, 1995. Jim O'Rourke is here on guitar as well ... he gets everywhere don'tcha know.

CD released on Table Of The Elements in 2005.

It's Alive

Tony Conrad with Faust - Outside The Dream Syndicate (30th Anniversary Edition)

I've always been tempted to think of this as his escape from the Theatre with Faust as his getaway drivers ...

Originally recorded in 1972, this is the double CD edition released on Table Of The Elements in 2002.

It's Outside

La Monte Young - Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung Vol. 1

... and of course there is more. Whilst these are listed as La Monte Young releases (at times) they sit much more comfortably as Theatre Of Eternal Music recordings.

Another no label double CDr from 2003.

Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung

La Monte Young - Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung Vol. 2

More hypnagogic hallucinations that were originally broadcast on various radio stations before being converted to reel to reel bootlegs that were eventually digitised, reissued and then ripped and uploaded to a music blog. That's progress?

No label double CDr from 2003.

Der Zweck Dieser Serie Is Nicht Unterhaltung

va - 2:00 Matinee - RRRecords Live In-Store Performances Every Saturday Afternoon

What I wouldn't give to be at one of these shows! Apparently, the legendary RRRecords shop had free concerts every Saturday at 2:00 in the afternoon. Lots of bands played, but from the sound of this album not a lot of listeners showed up to hear them. There are some names you might recognize, others you won't: Crank Sturgeon, Idea Fire Company, Quarreling Xenophobic Waitresses, Save Yourself, Lance Gargoyle (this guy sounds like he brought in a crowd!), Commode Minstrels in Bullface, Foom, more.

va - 2:00 Matinee - RRRecords Live In-Store Performances Every Saturday Afternoon

La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela / The Theatre Of Eternal Music - Dream House 78' 17"

This is the sound of that razor edge where the trip is about to turn bad and you are hanging on for grim reality. Academically terrifying but retrospectively exhilarating once the ride is survived. Well, there was this one Killing Joke gig when ... oh, yeah ... concentrate ...

The first track is as spectacularly unhinged and delirious as anything I've heard. The second is the sustained come-down drone. Don't forget kids, quarter of a tab first and don't re-dose until you are sure you're ready.

Originally released on Shandar in 1974 before being re-released on Aguirre Records in 2016.

Dream House 78' 17"

La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela - The Black Record

A side of suspenseful Sufi throat singing drones followed by "Sine Wave Drone" electronics that presage the future direction of music by a long way.

LP originally released on Edition X in 1969.

Untitled

EA80 - "25"

A 7" single on collector-bait reissue label Was Soll Das? Schallplatten, marking the 25th anniversary of EA80. Though it doesn't specify where the songs came from, it's believed that they were from the band's 1980 demo tape. The record was released in an edition of only 125 copies, so it sells for stupid money today. The record had a sticker over the center label, so you had to break a hole in it in order to play the thing. Or, you had to buy two copies. (full disclosure: between the husband and I, we bought five copies).

EA80 - "25"

The Theatre Of Eternal Music - The Theatre Of Eternal Music

... and this is exactly the same people. They appear to be collaborating.

A wonderful "no-label" LP from 2013.

The Theatre Of Eternal Music

Marino Zuccheri - Parete 1967 Per Emilio Vedova

Engineer at the Milan electronic music studio where luminaries like Luigi Nono, Henri Pousseur and Luciano Berio (among many others) recorded. This is a piece from 1967 (duh), reissued on wax by Die Schachtel in 2005. There was also a CD containing this piece, unsullied by having to flip the record halfway through, plus other music tacked on, but alas I do not have that one to share.

Marino Zuccheri - Parete 1967 Per Emilio Vedova

John Cale / Tony Conrad / Angus MacLise / La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela - Inside The Dream Syndicate Volume I: Day Of Niagara (1965)

As far as I know, this had done the rounds as an almost unseen bootleg tape and had never "officially" seen the light until this release. Given that these sounds were never meant to be recorded, and the source material, audio fidelity is patchy but still adds to the mystery and majesty. Unfortunately, it's eventual release saw some old wounds reopened. The people named as contributors constitute the core of the "Theatre Of Eternal Music" who were a wide ranging set of artists working with La Monte Young (and all of the Dream Syndicate compositions probably sit more comfortably within the "Theatre" context). However, La Monte Young took great exception to the presentation of this work as a collaborative composition and employed legal services to leave people in no doubt that he claimed sole authorship. The apparently long sustained bitterness does nothing to detract from the seminal importance of the work of these people at this point in history. Just enjoy it for what it is.

CD released on Table Of The Elements in 2000.

Day Of Niagara

Luciano Cilio - Dell'Universo Assente

A very lovely album from 1977, the only solo album to be released by Luciano Cilio before his suicide in 1983. Naturally, Die Schachtel sprang to the rescue in 2004 to remaster, reissue and expand this truly fantastic music. Warning: not for tough guys who only come here for Black Leather Jesus cassettes.

Luciano Cilio - Dell'Universo Assente

John Cale - New York In The 1960s

This splendid collection of tones and drones saw the light of day courtesy of the tape archives of Tony Conrad. When released, these were announced as the three volumes of "Inside The Dream Syndicate" and signaled all kinds of shit hitting the fan (more of which later). Anyway, for now, let's just say that the first disc "Sun Blindness Music" doesn't appear to have anything to do with the series. For Velvet Underground obsessives (so that's all of us then), other than John, you also get Sterling Morrison and Angus MacLise.

This is the triple CD box-set reissue released on Table Of The Elements in 2006.

New York In The 1960s

Enore Zaffiri - Musica Reticolare

Electronic music recorded in Turin from 1965 to 1968, released by Die Schachtel in 2004.

Enore Zaffiri - Musica Reticolare

Tony Conrad - Slapping Pythagoras

Apart from the man himself, the guitar section is David Grubbs, Kevin Drumm, Dylan Posa, John Corbett, Thymme Jones and Jim O'Rourke. The latter produces it and Steve Albini records it. Y'all been way hap! Now crack on.

CD released on Table Of The Elements in 1995.

Slapping Pythagoras

Franca Sacchi - En

Previously unreleased work from 1969 to 1972, unearthed and reissued by (who else?) Die Schachtel in 2004.

Franca Sacchi - En

Tony Conrad - Early Minimalism Volume One

Without Tony Conrad would anything else exist?

Four CD set with a bit of cd-rom malarkey released on the exemplary Table Of The Elements in 1997.

sound

enhanced minimalism

Cornelius Cardew - The Great Learning

And to prove that a great idea doesn't die easily, in Poland a cast of 60 reclaim all seven paragraphs of the Great Learning 29 years after the great man's death.

Spectacularly immersive four disc set released on Bôłt in 2010.

Great

Learning

The Scratch Orchestra - London, 1969

A brief snatch of some of the first public performance by the Scratch Orchestra on the 1st of November 1969, at Hampstead Town Hall in London.

A welcome sight of the almost unrecorded collective on this 10" released on Die Stadt in 1999.

London, 1969

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