Feb 24
Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue, Edited by Lawrence Kumpf and Charles Curtis, «Blank Forms» 10, Blank Forms Editions, Brooklyn, NY, 2025
seen from China
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seen from France
seen from South Korea
seen from China
seen from T1
seen from China
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Russia
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seen from United States
seen from China
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seen from United States
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seen from United States
seen from Japan
Alien Roots: Éliane Radigue, Edited by Lawrence Kumpf and Charles Curtis, «Blank Forms» 10, Blank Forms Editions, Brooklyn, NY, 2025
Charlemagne Palestine - DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS!!!!!!!!! - two new longform pieces for bells
DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms Editions’ very first and long-out-of-print release appears on vinyl for the first time: a cathartic street recording of the maximalist composer’s 2018 musical eulogy for his late friend Tony Conrad, performed on the bells of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, where the two first met. Two mesmerizing “klanggdedangggebannggg” sessions in the Quasimodo of 53rd Street’s inimitable, trance-induced style. Design by Alec Mapes-Frances A1: Recorded on March 21, 2023, at CHARLEWORLDDDDD, Brussels, Belgium, by Lawrence Kumpf. B1: Recorded on April 8, 2017, at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, New York, by Ben Manley and on May 7, 2017, at Saint Thomas Church, New York, by Adrian Rew. Mixed by Robbie Lee.
Simone Fattal, Music for Our Time, (lithograph), «Portraits for Blank Forms», Blank Forms / Blank Forms Editions, Brooklyn, NY, 2025, Produced at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, New York, NY, Edition of 30 [© Simone Fattal]
Lippard Arkbro Lindwall, How do I know if my cat likes me?, (Vinyl/LP, CD, Digital album), BF-074, Blank Forms Editions / LB008, La Becque Editions, 2025
Catherine Christer Hennix, Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord, (Limited Edition LP, CD, Digital album), BF-071, Blank Forms Editions, 2024
Ellen Arkbro, Nightclouds, (Vinyl/LP, CD, Digital album), BF-070, Blank Forms Editions / LB007, La Becque Editions, 2025
James Fulkerson, James Fulkerson, (LP/Vinyl), IR 0017, Irida, 1980 (then Blank Forms Editions, 2021) [midcenturyclassical]
VA - Irida Records: Hybrid Musics from Texas and Beyond, 1979–1986 - how about a 7 LP set of experimental music from the 80s? (Blank Forms Editions)
Irida Associates U.S.A., an obscure and short-lived record label formed by composer-performer Jerry Hunt, offers a glimpse into the revelatory world of new music and composition in the artist’s native Third Coast. Based first in Dallas and later in Hunt’s home outside the rural town of Canton, Texas, Irida presented the innovative and daring experiments—into aleatoric methods, environmental acoustics, improvisation, homemade technologies, and more—pursued by Hunt and his select collaborators, primarily working in or near Texas between 1979 and 1986. Irida’s brief and compact output—seven non-sequentially numbered LPs released in unknown quantities—shared work by artists whose practices often challenged the limitations of vinyl recording. Hunt called the label a “vanity project” and frequently talked of a tax loophole he could claim if it all went belly up, but in its short lifespan Irida captured a tremendous period of creative experimentation by the artist and his friends and collaborators. This boxed set gathers Irida’s complete discography for the first time. These records include early attempts by Hunt to record his generative and highly permutable scores and performances on vinyl in Cantegral Segment(s) 16.17.18.19. / Transform (Stream) / Transphalba / Volta (Kernel), as well as his only composition for piano, “Lattice,” on Texas Music (both records 1979). The label distributed solo and group recordings by those in Hunt’s circle as well, including Larry Austin’s electroacoustic, syncretic compositions in Hybrid Musics; James Fulkerson’s unique, extended techniques for the trombone on Works; a fusion of three overlaid compositions in Dary John Mizelle’s Music of Dary John Mizelle; spontaneous pieces and riff-based “character improvisations” in Music of BL Lacerta by the four piece “orchestra in miniature” BL Lacerta Improvisation Quartet; and experiments in compositional “mapping” by external structures in Cartography, featuring Austin, Gene De Lisa, Robert Michael Keefe, and Rodney Waschka II. Accompanying the boxed set is a richly-illustrated reader with a detailed essay on on the label by Lawrence Kumpf and Tyler Maxin; never-before-published archival materials; newly commissioned reflections by Fulkerson and the composer Jerry Willingham; as well as an interview with Hunt and ephemera including album and concert reviews, artworks, posters and flyers, and correspondences from the musicians and composers involved. The Irida boxed set is released as part of Blank Forms’s extensive program dedicated to Jerry Hunt. This program includes the first institutional exhibition of the artist’s video and sculptures, Jerry Hunt: Transmissions from the Pleroma, presented at Blank Forms from February 16 to May 31, 2022; the republication of Partners, a memoir-cum-biography by the artist’s long-time romantic partner Stephen Housewright; the forthcoming anthology Blank Forms 08: Transmissions from the Pleroma; and a vinyl reissue of the last record released in Hunt’s lifetime, Ground: Five Mechanic Convention Streams (1992).