Harry Smith's
Anthology of American Folk Music
Volume Four
2000
Revenant
No. 211
2x compact discs; 96-page casebound, cloth-covered book
"This two-CD set details the beginnings of both 20th century country music and bluegrass (The Blue Sky Boys’ 'Down on the Banks of the Ohio') as well as their roots in Appalachian/Celtic folk (The Carter Family’s 'Black Jack David'). The blues, and its impact on folk and rock & roll, is represented by Leadbelly’s epochal 'Packin’ Trunk' (a direct influence on Carl Perkin’s rockabilly classic 'Matchbox'), and the Memphis Jug Band’s rollicking, irreverent 'Memphis Shakedown.' Anyone wishing to explore the roots of these classic American musics would do well to acquire this edition of Harry Smith’s Anthology.”
Interview
Harry Smith's
Anthology of American Folk Music
Volume Four
2000
Revenant
No. 211
2x compact discs; 96-page casebound, cloth-covered book
“Today, it is impossible to overstate the historic worth, sociocultural impact and undiminished vitality of the music in Harry Smith’s Anthology, and Smith’s idiosyncratic scholarship and instinctive wisdom.”
David Fricke, Rolling Stone
Grow Fins:
Rarities (1965-1982)
1999
Revenant
No. 210
5x compact discs; casebound, litho-wrapped, 112-page book with slipcase enclosure; fluorescent and metallic inks; foil stamps; enhanced video content
“Captain Beefheart is the most important musician to rise in the Sixties, far more significant and far-reaching than the Beatles; as important for all music as Ornette Coleman was for jazz, as Leadbelly was for the blues.”
Lester Bangs, Rolling Stone
Grow Fins:
Rarities (1965-1982)
1999
Revenant
No. 210
5x compact discs; casebound, litho-wrapped, 112-page book with slipcase enclosure; fluorescent and metallic inks; foil stamps; enhanced video content
“Beefheart & His Magic Band were the first rock group to truly blow me away.”
David Fricke
“What Beefheart inspired was not a reproduction of his Delta atonality or famous multi-octave range, but a willingness to rethink rock from the bottom up.”
Spin
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues:
The Worlds of Charley Patton
2001
Revenant
No. 2112
7x compact discs; cloth-covered "78 album" with hardbound and softbound books and slipcase; foil stamps
“If I made records for my own pleasure, I would only record Charley Patton songs.”
Bob Dylan
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues:
The Worlds of Charley Patton
2001
Revenant
No. 2112
7x compact discs; cloth-covered "78 album" with hardbound and softbound books and slipcase; foil stamps
“So opulent it verges on the pornographic.”
LA Weekly
“5/5 stars … Easily one of the most beautiful collections of recorded music ever assembled.”
Amazon.com
“An artifact in its own right‚ elegantly packaged, digitally remastered and pitch corrected from the best available sources, the Revenant set could redefine the way listeners experience rare antique recordings.”
Blues Revue
“Recording of the Issue. Simply the best blues box set ever released, maybe even the best box set in any genre.”
The Absolute Sound
Screamin' and Hollerin' the Blues:
The Worlds of Charley Patton
2001
Revenant
No. 2112
7x compact discs; cloth-covered "78 album" with hardbound and softbound books and slipcase; foil stamps
“The magnificent “Worlds of CP” contains powerful Delta blues recorded in the late Twenties. Patton may have had the most frightening vocal delivery in American music – ravings mixed with powerhouse shouts.”
Playboy
“Fantastically monumental. If immersing yourself in this box of musical treasures doesn’t transport you back in time to the bedrock source of the blues, nothing will. This is a literal cornerstone of any blues collection. Fifty stars.”
ePULSE!
Country Blues:
Complete Early Recordings (1927-1929)
1998
Revenant
No. 205
Compact disc, 64-page casebound book, custom enclosure
“…packaged in a gorgeous 64-page hardcover book featuring rare photos and essays by Greil Marcus and Charles Wolfe. Boggs recently was included in the essential Smithsonian/Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music and the excitement around this stupendous release couldn’t be more fever-pitched.”
Sing Out!
“Boggs set down a handful of performances so strangely demanding as to lead a listener to measure what he or she knew of the American voice–any emblematic American voice, Huck Finn’s, Robert Johnson’s, Franklin Roosevelt’s, Barbara Jordan’s–against Boggs’s, to see if what one knew could pass his test. He created a small body of work so dissonant that like black gravity it can seem to suck into itself whatever music might be brought to bear upon it.”
Greil Marcus
I Said, This Is the Son of Nihilism
1995
Table of the Elements
[Argon] TOE-CD-18
Compact disc, laser etching, die-cut insert
"Keiji Haino doesn't do anything halfway, and in concert plays louder than audiences are used to; like The Who, he only performs with supersized Marshall amplifiers, and his guitar is so highly processed that the merest touch of a string sends off shock waves. It all looks like rock, but Haino's electric guitar music is to heavy metal what Stan Brakhage is to Hollywood. He makes a delicate art with all this heavy hardware, based on a piercing picking technique, repetitive, slowly mutating phrases, and a commitment to long-haul exegesis. Haino is compellingly sincere: stay with him, and he will move you."
Artforum
New York in the 1960s
2005
Table of the Elements
[Francium] TOE-CD-87
3x compact discs, wood case, lacquer, silkscreen, dyed-linen booklet
"You'd think Table of the Elements had cornered the market on historic minimalist documents. And they pretty much have."
Pitchfork
"John Cale is rock's international traveler. His work is a trans-continental drift of moons and maps, seas and seachange, envoys and ennui ... his eye has spanned the globe and his mind ranged as far from rock's parochial trails as it's possible to get ... his world is bounded only by the limits of his imagination."
The Wire
Sun Blindness Music
2001
Table of the Elements
[Rhenium] TOE-CD-75
Compact disc
Dream Interpretation
Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol. II
2001
Table of the Elements
[Gold] TOE-CD-79
Compact disc
Stainless Gamelan
Inside the Dream Syndicate Vol. III
2002
Table of the Elements
[Mercury] TOE-CD-80
Compact disc
"Shuddering rhythms at first sparkle like sunlight on water, before evoking the incandescence of a star going supernova. A reinvention of what we know of the past, and a treasure brought to light... Astonishing."
The Wire
"As devastating as the rock & roll on the Velvets' 'Sister Ray... Proves once again that La Monte Young's claim that he was the defining moment in minimalism is just insane."
All Music Guide
"These aural documents have been a long time in coming. They could have exploded the myth. Instead they are an awesome, concrete substantiation of all the excitement their long non-appearance has generated. They completely re-write the territory of minimalism with willful abandon and supercharged exhilaration. A revelation."
Monocular Times
052402 echo 4
Lanthanides Series
2004
Table of the Elements
[Dysprosium] SWC-LP-66
Phono LP, silkscreen
Image: Harry Smith
Christmas Ornament
c. 1978
Courtesy Harry Smith Archives
"The group features Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth) and Alan Licht (guitars/devices), Christian Marclay and DJ Olive (turntables), William Hooker (drums/percussion), Ulrich Krieger (sax/electronics), and most recently Tim Barnes (drums/percussion). To date the group has performed with the following films: Brakhage's Text of Light, Dog Star Man, Anticipation of the Night and Songs; Harry Smith's Mahagonny outtakes, Oz: The Approach to the Emerald City, and Late Superimpositions.
"This beautifully packaged LP is the group's first commercial release, and features original artwork by the late, great filmmaker, magician and alchemist, Harry Smith."
Outside the Dream Syndicate
30th Anniversary Edition
2002
Table of the Elements
[Lithium] SWC-CD-3
2x compact discs, book, poster, 92-page catalog, foil stamp, enclosure
"Out-machines Metal Machine Music."
Creem
"Whether you heard it in 1972, or in the present time, it still kicks infinitely. At its most basic, this an early fusion of the classical and avant-garde with the more rock and pop sensibilities of the day, something not seen since the Beatles' Stockhausen riff, "Revolution #9," and scarcely since. It couples minimal tones with an almost James Brown-like bass-kick bottom and relentless thrust. The results are prodigious, prophetic, powerful. To this day there's still nothing quite like its primitive, otherworldly chug... Together [Conrad and Faust] elevate into endless crescendos and cascades of holy sound, floating on an Om-like soundwave. Whether an initiate or a first-timer, this is something quite timeless."
Andy Beta, Luna Kafe
"Conrad invents a new musical language ... unbearably intense and gloriously ecstatic."
The Wire
"A terribly exciting, endlessly fascinating genre-bender ... absolutely exhilarating."
The Yale Herald
"Behold the glacier with an amplified pulse!"
Tower Pulse
Nightmare Alley
10th Anniversary Edition
2004
[Hydrogen] SWC-CD-201
Compact disc, lacquer, wood case, fluorescent enclosure, dyed-linen folio, metallic ink, gum adhesive, letterpress pin perforation
"Effortlessly switching between serrated noise and controlled feedback outbursts to delicate extended harp improvisations, Zeena Parkins' solo performance is a stunning display of her extraordinary talents."
All Music Guide
Table of the Elements Postage Stamps
2004
Table of the Elements
TOE-PRM-3 (promotional only)
Vellum, board, gum adhesive, pin perforation, metallic ink
Adnos I-III
2002
Table of the Elements
[Barium] TOE-CD-55
3x compact discs, poster vellum insert folio, 6-panel folder, 96-page catalog, litho-wrap enclosure
"A lot of the best new music can't be captured in sound bites - you have to listen for a long time. Of no one is that truer than Eliane Radigue, who lives in France, but whose unarticulated time sense brings her closer to La Monte Young in sensibility than to anyone in Europe. Listen to her exquisitely sculpted electronic works for two, three, even seven minutes, and you may hear nothing but a drone. But over a far longer period, her electronic drones thicken, begin to pulse, and change into complexly gritty textures so gradually that you suddenly wonder why you didn't notice the change. Over the long haul her works crescendos into glacially slow climaxes, bristling with harmonics, inducing in the listener an altered state of ecstatic spirituality."
Kyle Gann, Village Voice
Muni/Michel Piccoli
Guitar Series Vol. I
1993
Table of the Elements
[Nitrogen] TOE-SS-7
7" single, custom enclosure
"In the days leading up to Wilco's departure from Reprise, much was made about label concerns regarding the inaccessible sound of their fourth record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. And in a flurry of finger-pointing, no small number of digits were directed towards the man who mixed the album, composer/engineer/music man Jim O'Rourke. They're charges to which he pleads not guilty."
Rolling Stone
KEITH ROWE
DAVEY WILLIAMS
JIM O'ROURKE
HANS REICHEL
K.K. NULL
HENRY KAISER
Guitar Series Vol. I
1993/2004
Table of the Elements
TOE-PRM-1 (promotional only)
Compact disc, wood case, lacquer, dyed-linen libretto
Edition of 100
DEREK BAILEY
KEIJI HAINO
PAUL PANHUYSEN
LEE RANALDO
LOREN MAZZACANE
THURSTON MOORE
Guitar Series Vol. II
1994/2004
Table of the Elements
TOE-PRM-2 (promotional only)
Compact disc, wood case, lacquer, dyed-linen libretto
Edition of 100
DEREK BAILEY
KEIJI HAINO
PAUL PANHUYSEN
LEE RANALDO
LOREN MAZZACANE
THURSTON MOORE
Guitar Series Vol. II
1994/2004
Table of the Elements
TOE-PRM-2 (promotional only)
Compact disc, wood case, lacquer, dyed-linen libretto
Edition of 100
All photographs in this gallery: Bradly Brown
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