:: Available items from this Label ::
Albert Ayler / In Greenwich Village
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Vibrant in sound and vision, Albert Ayler’s In Greenwich Village is a landmark statement in free jazz and a career high-point for this truly original artist. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this classic album on vinyl for the first time domestically in 30 years.
Glenn Branca / The Ascension
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Glenn Branca’s first full-length album The Ascension is a colossal achievement. After touring much of 1980 with an all-star band featuring four guitarists (Branca, fellow composers Ned Sublette and David Rosenbloom, and future Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo) with Jeffrey Glenn on bass and Stephan Wischerth on drums, Branca took his war-torn group into a studio in Hell’s Kitchen to record five incendiary compositions. Originally released in 1981 on 99 Records, The Ascension effectively tears down the genre-ghettos between 20th century avant-garde and ecstatic rock ‘n’ roll.
Crime / Murder By Guitar
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
San Francisco’s first and only rock ‘n’ roll band, Crime loomed over the entire Mabuhay Gardens scene with their blistering 1976 single Hot Wire My Heart. The group’s loose, damaged rock ‘n’ roll was as immediate as it was controversial. They were punk by any definition, yet shunned the label with a guttersnipe sneer. Their meticulously cultivated aesthetic of S&M graphics and police uniforms produced some of the era’s most indelible imagery. One of their finest moves was playing in the San Quentin prison yard.
Crime / San Francisco’s Doomed
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Culled from 1978-79 studio demos and rehearsal tapes, San Francisco’s Doomed captures the frenzy of CRIME’s sound in a fittingly loose, devil-may-care framework. Side one is a gloriously unpolished assault of classic, gutter-level punk with vicious live set staples like “Feel The Beat” and “Piss On Your Dog” taking marquee placement over the more well-known singles tracks. Side two finds CRIME taking aim at the so-called New Wave, augmenting their attack with ripped odes that bear the direct influence of science fiction and rockabilly on the group. Few recordings from US punk’s first wave match the raw intensity heard on San Francisco’s Doomed.
Alvin Curran / Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico (Songs And Views From The Magnetic Garden)
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
American composer and multi-instrumentalist Alvin Curran has remained one of the great emblems of experimental music for the last half-century. In 1966, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva, a seminal gesture in collective free improvisation. In the early ’70s, his solo work would become a crucial bridge between minimalist traditions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico, Curran’s solo debut, was recorded by the artist himself and issued on Ananda, the small Italian imprint started by Curran and fellow composers Giacinto Scelsi and Roberto Laneri. The piece itself was put together in the winter of 1973 and presented for the first time at Teatro Beat 72 (Rome’s The Kitchen).
Henry Flynt / Graduation
(2 x Vinyl LP) – Superior Viaduct)
Graduation, recorded between 1975 and 1979, was meant to be the debut of his avant-garde hillbilly music. The album’s title track is a slow, twisted ballad that unfolds like a funeral dream over dirge-like country riffs. “Celestial Power,” the album’s 20-minute closing track, is an entrancing minimalist composition performed strictly with oscillating vibrato guitar. As Flynt explains, “I aspire to a beauty which is ecstatic and perpetual, while at the same time being concretely human and emotionally profound.”
Henry Flynt / You Are My Everlovin’
(CD – Superior Viaduct)
You Are My Everlovin’, Flynt’s first published musical work, finds the composer in peak form at a lower Manhattan loft in late spring 1981. Featuring solo electric violin and pre-recorded tambura, this sinuous performance elegantly brings together disparate vernaculars – Southern blues, modal jazz, Appalachian fiddle, North Indian raga – into a new and bracing whole.
La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela – 31 VII 69 10:26 – 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 – 3:11 AM The Volga Delta
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela’s first full-length album is often referred to as “The Black Record” due to Zazeela’s stunning cover design, complete with the composer’s liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.
Byard Lancaster / It’s Not Up To Us
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
It’s Not Up To Us, Lancaster’s 1968 debut as a leader, was originally released on Vortex, a subsidiary of Atlantic responsible for first albums by Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett and Sonny Sharrock. Featuring guitarist Sharrock (another Berklee alum), It’s Not Up To Us is true fire music – fusing elements of free jazz, soul/R&B and traditional folk song.
Raul Lovisoni / Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Of all the releases on Italy’s legendary Cramps Records, Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina’s seminal LP from 1979 has long remained among the most beloved. Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo not only introduced the world to the work of two gifted composers, but also is notable for being produced by electronic pioneer Franco Battiato. A sister album to Prati Bagnati would be Giusto Pio’s breathtaking Motore Immobile, likewise graced with the maestro’s gentle hand around the same time.
Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo‘s meditative title track, inspired by René Daumal’s surrealist novel Le Mont Analogue, features Messina on synthesizer and Michele Fedrigotti’s impressionistic piano, while on Lovisoni’s “Hula Om” and “Amon Ra,” solo harp, crystal glasses and Juri Camisasca’s radiant vocal drones further ascend into the stratosphere. Skirting the outer edges of ambient, new age and experimental music, Prati Bagnati has a transformative beauty unlike anything else.
Joe McPhee / Nation Time
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
“Originally released in 1971 on CjR, an imprint started expressly to document McPhee’s music, Nation Time has a sense of urgency and inspiration. Additional material from those December days would later appear on Black Magic Man, Hat Hut’s first release. In fact, the first four records on this seminal Swiss label all featured McPhee.
“Nation Time was largely unknown a quarter century or so later, when it was first issued on CD through Atavistic’s Unheard Music Series. On Corbett vs. Dempsey, we reissued the album along with all known tapes leading up to and around it as a deluxe box set, but the standalone LP has long remained incredibly rare. Now is the time for a new generation of freaks to lose their shit when settling into the cushy beat of ‘Shakey Jake’ and answer McPhee’s call with the only appropriate response: It’s NATION TIME.”
Screamers / Demo Hollywood 1977
(12″ Vinyl EP – Superior Viaduct)
“These songs were recorded a few months after the Los Angeles punk scene began. These five statements of intent transcend Punk and project forward into the future: to the analog synth wave of the late ’70s and beyond, to the present day, four decades later, when they finally receive an official release. Sourced from the original reel-to-reels, they are a revelation compared to the countless copies that have been circulating by multiple generations of tape-traders. Here, for the first time, is the Screamers’ initial and legendary manifesto.”
Sonny Sharrock / Black Woman
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
“Originally released on the Vortex label in 1969, Black Woman may be the universe’s first true statement of guitar skronk majesty. It also represents Mr. Sharrock’s first date as a leader and stands as the sole documentation of a band that well-understood the essentials of energy. Besides Sharrock’s explosive guitar, the band features the omni-directional percussion mastery of Milford Graves (then in the midst of recording Love Cry with Albert Ayler), the gorgeous post-tongue vocalizing of Sonny’s then-wife Linda Sharrock, the sinuous bass presence of Norris Jones (later known as Sirone) and some of the most explicitly abstract piano work ever recorded by Dave Burrell.”
Suicide / Alan Vega . Martin Rev
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
After crystallizing a reputation for confrontational live performances and releasing their essential debut LP, Suicide went into the studio to record their stunning follow-up. Producer Ric Ocasek lends a pop sensibility to the band’s sound, constructing an atmosphere at once light and catchy, yet still crazed and venomous.
Takehisa Kosugi / Catch-Wave
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
“Mano-Dharma ’74” features improvised violin drones and voice with various oscillators, echo delays and layered tape experiments that the artist made in New York in 1967. While Kosugi’s continuously changing spectrum of sound shifts gradually (almost imperceptibly), photocell synthesizers create ultra-low frequencies to disturb the crestless sound waves. The brighter the light is, the harsher the noise becomes.
Tony Conrad With Faust / Outside The Dream Syndicate
(Vinyl LP – Superior Viaduct)
Outside The Dream Syndicate, originally released in Europe only in 1973, is a stunning debut. Two side-long tracks – “The Side Of Man And Womankind” and “The Side Of The Machine” – show just how far Conrad had moved beyond his minimalist peers. Werner Diermaier’s repetitive drum beat and Jean-Hervé Peron’s stripped-down bassline conjure a tense, ascetic groove, while Conrad’s seamless violin, initially so controlled, reveals a surprising adaptability. The music shifts almost on a subliminal level, pushing and pulling to the drone’s internal pulse.