Rune Grammofon : Where should I start?

I just got a 3CD set by Circulasione Totale Orchestra, which is a biggish band led by saxophonist Frode Gjerstad - blaring free jazz mixed with electronics, plus the guitarist from Noxagt.

Supersilent 6.

I like what I've heard of Supersilent 9, too, but I haven't spent enough time with it yet.

Supersilent 9 is great if you like early Tangerine Dream a lot (which I do). None of them (and they're down to a trio btw; the drummer quit) are playing their usual instruments. Instead, they're all playing Hammond organs.

Holy balls, that Alog track on FatCat is pretty great!

It's totally got the Alog electronics-meets-clanky-homemade-instruments sound but with this whole African feel to it. Twelve minutes long and it just keeps travelling right on out there. Well worth hearing here:
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=309

I just got a 3CD set by Circulasione Totale Orchestra, which is a biggish band led by saxophonist Frode Gjerstad - blaring free jazz mixed with electronics, plus the guitarist from Noxagt.

this is very good. manages to be continually involving over all 3CDs.

shining's 'grindstone' is easily my favourite RG album, not to mention one of my favourite albums of all time. incredible jazz/prog/metal/baroque lunacy.

Any thoughts on the recent Phonophani? Or anything else on the label, for that matter?

Mixed feelings about this label. Should love but...

I repeat - ...

I'm actually surprised that you don't, admrl. Alog particularly seem right up your alley.

I know right

Lost track a bit. Have I missed anything good?

Forthcoming

Albatrosh - Yonkers CD
Alog - Unemployed CD/4LP
Jono El Grande - TBA
Elephant9 - Live LP
Scorch Trio with Mars Williams - Live LP

Sat up far too late last night listening to Deathprod.

Alog - Unemployed CD/4LP

^ excited about this! Love Alog so much.

Anyone hear the Susanna album from this year?

(Not sure what it says about a) me or b) Rune Grammofon but I'd have been more likely to pick it up had it been released on the latter).

I didn't. Is it all in Norwegian? Not sure if that's a good or bad thing actually.

A new Susanna? When did this happen?

Didn't particularly like the sound of the samples for this at Amazon (though these could be missing a lot of the detail/production which makes her other recordings so special).

That said, I am enjoying a Susanna revival.

Echo the excitement for new Alog.

Another one:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/nov/10/susanna-wallumrod-giovanna-pessi-review?CMP=twt_fd

Was listening to this new RG title the other night--really enjoyed it:
http://www.themilkfactory.co.uk/st/2011/10/humcrush-with-sidsel-endresen-ha-rune-grammofon/

that last scorch trio was a little on the cack side "melaza" imo

Anyone heard the new Susanna album?

Susanna: worth seeing live?

(I feel slightly fearful that seeing her live will put me off her).

Aside from this year's Susanna album, haven't bought any RG since Alog's Unemployed. Am I missing owt?

Susanna was very good live. I was a bit fearful that I would be put off the albums but haven't been.

the spunk albums are all amazing

oh, btw,
shining's "grindstone" & "in the kingdom of kitsch..."
definitely worth a shot.
they devolved into a king crimson / meshuggah humourless prog-metal outfit after these two, but on these two we get digitally distorted melvinsisms, & maidenesque gallops which are interrupted by itchy/scratchy honking saxes & no wave fart funk rhythms, seesawing accordions, operatic bits, vocoder, theremin, swoony morricone-60's giallo-isms. it sounds like a recipe for a disaster ( which in my book = mr bungle ) however these are truly remarkable - through-composed albums - sublimely silly & ballsy.

re. Susanna live - I was struck by Deathprod's guitar playing ... or rather, his use of space/not playing. He knows when to be quiet.

Not strictly Rune Grammofon but new Susanna: Susanna and Ensemble Neon - The Forester

Barely one year after the Rune Grammofon-release of critically acclaimed “Wild Dog”, Susanna returns with a new album. Released on her own label SusannaSonata on CD, vinyl and download in September 2013. Susanna is known for both her own songwriting, with songs such as ‘Believer’ and her huge range of highly personal interpretations of other people’s songs. She is an intensely arresting performer; holding audiences captive with her hypnotizing vocal timbre and the powerful, all consuming sound of her band, her concerts are truly magical. Active for more than a decade, through eight albums so far as Susanna and the Magical Orchestra/Susanna/Susanna Wallumrød, the Oslo based artist has recently been taking great steps towards greater independence and autonomy, while increasing the range of her considerable talents as a songwriter, vocal interpreter and producer. Combining the antique notes of the Baroque theorbo, woodwinds and strings, and Susanna’s sparse piano, ‘The Forester’ a co-production with the Norwegian Ensemble neoN – features Susanna’s strongest songwriting to date.

‘The Forester’ began to take shape when composers Julian Skar and Jan Martin Smørdal requested some material from her to arrange for the Norwegian contemporary music group Ensemble neoN. Picking from new tracks and several already released songs, the composers made new arrangements suited to the eight-piece group, and extended the title track into a fifteen-minute, three-part suite in which dark woods shroud a wanderer in a symbolic landscape of searching and loss. Being lost, or deliberately straying from the chosen path, are recurring themes on ‘The Forester’, whose subject matter ranges from disturbing natural environments to alien visitors, painted on an eerily exquisite canvas that recalls Mark Hollis, Tim Buckley, Kate Bush and Claude Debussy while remaining uniquely Susanna’s soundworld. Recorded entirely live in one single, emotionally intense day at Oslo’s legendary Rainbow Studio, produced by Deathprod and Susanna and engineered by Jan Erik Kongshaug. ‘The Forester’ captures Susanna’s composition, and all the nuances of her distinctive voice, in neoN’s deceptively simple chamber-folk tapestry. Rob Young (The Wire, author of Electric Eden)
Tracks:

1/The Forester I, II & III 2/ Hangout 3/Oh, I Am Stuck 4/Intruder 5/Lonely Heart

https://soundcloud.com/susannawallumroed/susanna-and-ensemble-neon-oh

You don't really expect Radiohead/Coldplay comparisons in RG press releases:

Stian Westerhus & Pale Horses: Maelstrom (CD/2LP)
CD –
PRICE: 119,00 NOK
COMING
2LP –
PRICE: 199,00 NOK
COMING

The 2LP vinyl edition includes an exclusive 10-minute track not available elsewhere.
The first 500 copies include the CD version of the album.

Stian Westerhus is best known as one of Northern Europe’s most fascinating abstract guitar stylists. His recent album Didymoi Dreams with vocalist Sidsel Endresen was a unique pairing of extreme guitar abuse with gibbering vocal explosions. As well as collaborations with Puma, Nils Petter Molvær, Jaga Jazzist, the Britten Sinfonia and others, he has released three acclaimed solo albums on Rune Grammofon since 2009. In Pale Horses, an electronic rock trio formed with keyboardist Øystein Moen (Jaga Jazzist) and drummer/percussionist Erland Dahlen, songs are given the freedom to ebb, flow, elongate and contract, much like a more improvised set. Breaking out of a verse-chorus mould, debut album Maelstrom is a deluge of fluid and highly emotive tracks that rely on the superb musicianship and unforgettable vocals of the leader, who proves himself capable of expressing pain and joy in equal measure. Perhaps the most obvious similarities – surprisingly – are with the experimental side of Radiohead and Coldplay, but you’ll also hear traces of Scottish bedroom romantics The Blue Nile and the psychedelic solemnity of late Talk Talk. A track like ‘Bed On Fire’, which rises from subtle digital textures to a full-on guitar solo, fully reveals these players’ exploratory backgrounds; while ‘Chasing Hills’ might have sat comfortably on Radiohead’s leftfield-swerving Kid A.

We do recommend the vinyl edition. In addition to the bonus track it sounds really good.

Released 28.03.14

Minibus Pimps: "sounds something like a flock of rabid seagulls pecking flesh from rotting cadavers on a radioactive, post-apocalyptic beach invaded by alien craft," according to Boomkat.

There will be a new Hedvig Mollestad Trio album, Enfant Terrible, in April.

^^^^
Just been listening to this, on first listen it doesn't sound as good as the last one, but still pretty damn good.

New Susanna & Jenny Hval album coming up:

https://soundcloud.com/susannawallumroed/jenny-hval-susanna-i-have-walked-this-body-album-out-in-august

(Felt sure I had posted this so apologies if this is elsewhere, too).

Great label. Recent Motorpsycho releases there find them at the top of their game, I think. Other faves:

Bushman's Revenge – A Little Bit Of Big Bonanza (2012)
Phaedra – The Sea (2011)
Bushman's Revenge – Thou Shalt Boogie! (2013)
Bushman's Revenge – Never Mind The Botox (2012)
El Doom & The Born Electric – El Doom & The Born Electric (2012)
Fire! Orchestra – Exit! (2013)
Hedvig Mollestad Trio – All Of Them Witches (2013)
Supersilent – 6 (Rune Grammafon, 2003)
Bushman's Revenge – Jitterbug (2010)
Hedvig Mollestad Trio – Shoot! (2011)
Svalastog – Woodwork (2006)
Supersilent – 8 (2007)
Huntsville – For The Middle Class (2006)
Elephant9 With Reine Fisk – Atlantis (2012)
Ultralyd – Inertiadrome (2010)
Thomas Strønen – Pohlitz (2006)

I haven't looked lately at what else they've come out with this year. Recommendations?

The upcoming Fire! Orchestra album, Enter, is great. It's a studio disc, not a live one like Exit, but just as sprawling and awesome.

Found two compilations I'd made ...

1. Alog - Drunk DJs
2. Svalastog - Reconnecting Joints
3. Phonophani - Cook Islands
4. Spunk - Thing That Hurts
5. Arve Henriksen - Opening Image
6. Information - Sufficient Sunlight
7. Spunk - Det ...
8. ? - Dance!
9. In The Country - Viggo
10. Biomekano - A Radical Co-ordination
11. ? - Holography
12. Alog - Idea Changing Liquid Alchemy
13. Phonophani - The Boiling Fjord Orchestra
14. Deathprod - Dead People's Things
15. Svalastog - The Wood Metal Friction
16. Alog - Fires for Burning

1. Deathprod - A Dream For Ted Greene
2. Arve Henriksen - No Horizon
3. Susanna - Goodbye
4. In The Country - Ashes to Ashes
5. Svalastog - Timberwork
6. Phonophani - Take Off Your Wooden Coat
7. ? - Neil
8. Phonophani - The Atlantic
9. Humcrush - Mono Hum (live)
10. In The Country - Everyone Live Their Life
11. Susanna - Forever
12. Alog/Spunk - Picnic Avec (live)
13. Alog - Son of A King
14. Susanna - Lay Your Love On Me

In the sort of geeky mood where I may end up compiling a third volume.

Will any one be buying the new Henriksen?

"Supersilent 12" coming in September.

djh - do you mean chron / cosmic creation, or is there a newer one?
( chron / cosmic creation is flipin ace - frosty COLD hassellisms not so much trumpet, more textures )
both henriksen/ tatsihisa yamamoto / giovanni di domenico discs are way awesome and worth searching out.
been digging elephant9 recently (stale storlokken goes jon lord / hansson&karlsson via white hot rollicking fusiony whipcrack sense of rhythm)

oh "places of worship"? that was perhaps a little bit "meh". all things being relative, though y'know pretty grand in the overall scheme of things despite the cloying (and "cloying" is sometimes a problem w/ henriksen) concept and one of his co-conspirators doing a sylvian-u-likey vocal

There's a new one, The Nature of Connections, due next week or so.

ohh thanks didn't know. write-up on the RuneG site sounded a bit lacklustre, but the soundcloud tuneage turned me round:https://soundcloud.com/rune-grammofon/hambopolskavalsen

I know I ask this on an annual basis ... but any (new) recommendations?

I presume there are people who follow the label *properly*?

I'm mildly tempted by RCD2173 - Espen Eriksen Trio: Never Ending January.

^ Anyone heard this?

https://soundcloud.com/espen-eriksen/05-brian

It sounds nice from clips.

Not technically Rune Gram but there's a new Susanna album on its way:

https://www.normanrecords.com/records/158502-susanna-triangle-

Hmm ...

Deathprod ‏@Deathprod · Apr 12

Deathprod and Supersilent will be joining the label Smalltown Supersound @supersound for future explorations. More news to come.

This sounds nice, from the clip:

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/23342-towards-language/

"I know I ask this on an annual basis ... but any (new) recommendations?"

Also, there's a new Susanna album of covers (Not on RG) coming up plus a Bonnie Prince Billy album of Susanna covers ...

Have been playing the first compilation mentioned above (in 2014) this evening.

Ridiculous thought for the evening: might try and compile the Supersilent albums I own into a single disc "Best of".

"I know I ask this on an annual basis ... but any (new) recommendations?"

The Terje Rypdal-tribute cd "Sky Music" is pretty good.

Thanks - will check it out.

I put the first of those (homemade) compilations on Spotify, as my original CD is unplayable. There are a couple of gaps where I've not been able to figure out tracks:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0L1ItHNuc9sLjYqtcUw8ra

The new Elephant9 record, 'Arrival of the New Elders', is really something. Didn't know whether to put this in a rolling jazz thread or w/e, but it's the business. Like a spiritual electronic jazz record. Crazy good musicians.

I loved Psychedelic Backfire 1, so you are speaking my language.