TAKEHISA KOSUGI

CATCH-WAVE LP

Iskra (re-issue)

Limited Edition: 300 copies 

Massive drones created by mixed-media sound performances and installations, making use of daily materials and electronic technology, realizing the multiplicity of sounds in space.

Some info on the release: Takehisa Kosugi is without doubt one of the most important and influential figures of the Japanese avant-garde still performing into the 21st Century. Over the years he has worked with everyone from John Cage to Sonic Youth as well as being an active member of the Fluxus group and starting his own performance units Group Ongaku and the Taj Mahal Travellers. Known also for collaborations with Akio Suzuki, Steve Lacy, Takashi Kazamaki, Peter Kowald, Yuji Takahashi, Masahiko Sato, East Bionic Symphonia, David Tudor and David Behrman. Catch-Wave, originally released in 1975, features on side A "an excerpt from a meta-media solo improvisation" utilizing heavily-processed violin, voice, radio and oscillators (the latter modified via wind and light) to create a massive drone. Side B is "a triple performance by a solo vocalist" where a vocal phrase is taken and electronically modified until it loses any meaning other than as part of the wave form. Limited edition of 300 copies.   

Takehisa Kosugi  is a Japanese composer and violinist associated with the Fluxus movement. Kosugi is probably best known for the extraordinary experimental music that he created between 1960-75, first in the early 1960s with the Tokyo-based seven member ensemble Group Ongaku ('music group') and thereafter as a solo artist and with itinerant octet Taj Mahal Travelers (1969-75). Kosugi's primary instrument is the violin, which he sends through various echo-chambers and effects to create a bizarre, jolting music quite at odds with the drones of other more well-known Fluxus artists, such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, La Monte Young, Yoshi Wada and Henry Flynt. In 1963 Takehisa Kosugi composed for Fluxus 1 a musical piece called Theatre Music in the form of a rectangle of cardstock that bore the trace of a spiral of moving feet. This was paired with the instructions: "Keep walking intently". Since 1978, Kosugi has served as music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and lives in New York. 

Condition: Vinyl and cover lie in pristine new condition. This is an unplayed archive copy.

Tracklist

SHIPPING & PAYMENT

Shipping: Shipping for this LP is 7$ airmail in Europe / 9$ for the rest of the world
Registered mail: +5$
Insurance: optional
Combined shipping: BIG discounts
Payment: Paypal 
Packaging: I am a collector too and i know