Participating Labels

Albany Records

Albany Records was established in 1987 by Peter Kermani, a former chairman of the American Symphony Orchestra and board member of the American Composers Orchestra. The label’s mission has been to make available underrepresented works by American composers such as Morton Gould, Peter Mennin, David Diamond, and Eric Ewazen. With over 800 discs represented in DRAM alone, Albany provides a healthy cross-section of the twentieth century American composer of opera, orchestral and chamber music, also branching out to include many works from the classical and romantic canons by composers such as Handel, Rossini, and Schubert.

Artifact Recordings

Artifact Records is part of the non-profit, artist run organization, Ubu, which supports experimental music and performance originating from the San Francisco Bay Area.  Artifact’s catalog represents composers and performers that “thrive in the cracks between the commercial, academic and classical music establishments”, and is predominantly electronic in nature.  Representative composers and performers include Mark Trayle, John Bischoff, Tim Perkis and Larry Polansky. 

b-boim records

Austrian composer and trombonist, Radu Malfatti writes music that strips away the edifice of the composer and leaves what can, somewhat naively, be described as a purity of sound and silence.  His music is a form of architecture to the ear, dealing with the basic building blocks of form, material, and structure in interesting new ways.  

Malfatti works with these elements in a series of pieces that are featured on his own label, b-boim records, which DRAM proudly presents as one of its newest collections.  The works by Malfatti and some like-minded composers and collaborators, such as Jürg Frey and Michael Pisaro are intense studies in the construction of musical work through the confrontation of organized sound and the relative disorganization of silence in performance.  The easiest connection to make is to the composition of John Cage and Morton Feldman, Erik Satie and Thelonious Monk, but these works take that aesthetic to a new extreme. 

BMOP/sound

BMOP/sound, the label of the acclaimed Boston Modern Orchestra Project, explores the evolution of the music formerly known as classical. Its eclectic catalog offers both rediscovered classics of the 20th Century and the music of today's most influential and innovative composers. BMOP/sound gives adventurous listeners a singular opportunity to explore the music that is defining this generation and the next.

Cedille Records

Cedille Records was founded in 1989 by James Ginsburg, then a 23 year old law student, as a project of the Chicago Classical Recording Foundation. Its mission was to promote music being made by Chicago’s most talented musicians and composers. Composers predominantly featured include Easley Blackwood, James Ferris and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Often the music of these composers and many others is performed by windy city musicians such as Rachel Barton Pine, Jennifer Koh, Alex Klein, Patrice Michaels, Eighth Blackbird and the Pacifica Quartet. The repertoire found on Cedille is not purely Chicagocentric though. A significant portion of their catalog also features showcase performances of the classic masterworks of Europe.

Cold Blue Music

Cold Blue Music features Southern Californian minimalist and post-minimalist composers such as James Tenney, Chas Smith, Harold Budd, Ingram Marshall and Peter Garland. Cold Blue started in the early 1980s as a vinyl only label, releasing short works by electronic and electroacoustic composers on a series of 10” and 12” EPs and LPs.  Despite a 15-year hiatus, the label still maintains a commitment to the minimalist aesthetic with newer releases by Charlemagne Palestine and John Luther Adams and short CD single releases of works by West Coast composers.

CRI, Inc.

CRI (Composers Recordings, Inc.) was founded in 1954 by Otto Luening, Douglas Moore and Oliver Daniel. Moore was a well-established American composer, Luening was just beginning his work with Vladimir Ussachevsky, with whom he would help found the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in 1958, and Daniel was a promoter for such American musical luminaries as Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison. CRI was dedicated to the promotion of new music by American composers, releasing over 600 recordings on LP, cassette and CD over its 49 year history, CRI includes works by Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Harry Partch, Ned Rorem, Roger Sessions and Charles Wuorinen, to name just a few. In 2003, CRI was forced to go out of business due to financial pressures. Ownership of the CRI catalogue was assumed by New World Records in 2006, since which time New World has worked to maintain the availability of many CRI titles that had gone out of print or never before been digitized.

Dartmouth Archive

Jon Appleton (b. 1939) is a composer of both acoustic and electro-acoustic music. He is well-known for his help in developing the Synclavier, an early synthesizer and sampler that has become prized in pop studio and electronic music recordings. For 38 years, Appleton was the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. He is currently a visiting professor at Stanford University.

The Dartmouth Archive of Jon Appleton’s works feature some of his most iconic and popular compositions, including the early tape piece, Times Square Times Ten and 1967’s Chef d’oeuvre, arguably his most commercially popular work. Other notable works are his pieces that capture the sound and atmosphere of island culture, Japan and Europe, like Narita Airport Rock, and Nyckelharpen Variations. Also featured are a number of insightful interviews and live performances by Appleton himself on the synclavier. A helpful starting place for the newcomer is Struggling to Be Heard, an excerpt of Appleton’s autobiography, read by the composer and accompanied by some of his most important works.

Read more about Jon Appleton

Deep Listening

Curated by experimental composer/theorist/improvising performer Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening Recordings is committed to “music and sound works that transcend cultural boundaries and stretch the mind.” Primarily an outlet for the Deep Listening Institute and Oliveros’ own work, the recordings focus on music involved with Deep Listening, a philosophy and practice developed by Pauline Oliveros that, “distinguishes the difference between the involuntary nature of hearing and the voluntary, selective nature of listening. The result of the practice cultivates appreciation of sounds on a heightened level, expanding the potential for connection and interaction with one’s environment, technology and performing with others in music and related arts.” The Deep Listening catalog has a concentration on electronic music, drone and free improvisation.

Edition Wandelweiser Records

 Edition Wandelweiser is a product of the Wandelweiser Group, an international aggregate of composers including founders Antoine Beuger and Burkhard Schlothauer, Austrian trombonist Radu Malfatti (of b-boim records), American guitarist Michael Pisaro and others.  The concentration in this music is on silence and the way it prepares and resolves sound.  Most of the works are cd length in scope and require a focused listening, but are incredibly rewarding to their dedicated audience.

Einstein Records

Einstein Records' world of sound, like the aesthetic of the time, is no singular style, but offers the output of a community built around Jim Staley, namely Staley's collaborators within the New York Downtown scene, such as John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Elliott Sharp and Shelley Hirsch; as well as his cohorts that shared time, space and blossoming musical ideas from the University of Illinois, including Morgan Powell, Michael Kowalski and others from a collective known as the Tone Road Ramblers.

Anything was a potential avenue for musical exploration, and any source materials and sound making devices (electronic, classical, rock/pop, non-musical) were considered usable, even “dirty” amalgams of various styles and degraded samples. Roulette was a crucial venue for this burgeoning community, and Einstein documents the growth of those musicians, and furthermore, the world of composer-trombonist and Roulette Director Jim Staley.

Firehouse 12 Records

Firehouse 12 Records documents the work of creative musicians active in a particular place and time.  Firehouse 12 is a performance space and recording studio located in New Haven, Connecticut.  Owner and chief engineer Nick Lloyd began the Firehouse 12 imprint along with acclaimed cornetist and composer Taylor Ho Bynum to document the music of some of America’s leading practitioners in the jazz and creative music idioms.

The label has quickly become a major force in jazz, presenting the first records led by young stars such as Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, and Mary Halvorson as well as documenting recent major works of creative improvised music legends such as Anthony Braxton and Bill Dixon. 

Almost all of the recordings have been impeccably documented in the Firehouse 12 studio during live concerts or studio sessions.  The attention to detail in the recording process is quickly becoming a trademark of this series, as is the freshness of the music made by its label roster. 

Frog Peak Music

Frog Peak is an artist run organization that specializes in publishing the writings, scores and recordings of their member artists. The organization attempts to provide an arena for their composers to become publishers along the lines of Kenneth Gaburo’s idea of “publishing as an eco-system.” Besides Gaburo’s writings (Lingua Press), Anthony Braxton’s tri-axium writings and composition notebooks and the word works of Australian Chris Mann, the Frog Peak label features the works of such underappreciated experimental composers as Larry Polansky, Anne LaBerge, David Rosenboom, Daniel Goode and David Mahler.

Lovely Music

Lovely Music was founded by Mimi Johnson in 1978. Originally only releasing early operas by Johnson’s husband, Robert Ashley, Lovely has become one of the longest active labels exclusively for new and experimental composition. Besides Ashley, Lovely has released multiple recordings by other such leading American experimentalists as Alvin Lucier, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Eliane Radigue, David Tudor and Annea Lockwood. From Ashley’s dramatic reworking of the operatic form to Lucier’s groundbreaking work with acoustic space, Lovely has consistently been at the forefront of post minimalist composition.

Mode Records

Mode Records is a New York based label primarily concerned with composed music from latter part of the 20th century to the present day. Especially notable are their projects to release the complete recorded works of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi and Christian Wolff. Far from just concentrating on the 1950s New York and Darmstadt schools, Mode has also already released significant recordings from a diverse group of composers such as John Luther Adams, George Cacioppo, Jason Eckardt, Anne LeBaron, Phill Niblock, Lou Harrison and Gerard Pape.

Mutable Music

Mutable Music was founded by Thomas Buckner, a new music baritone and also the founder of the legendary 1750 Arch Records. Concentrating primarily on new chamber and electronic compositions and free improvisation, Mutable has released a large amount of work featuring Buckner, Roscoe Mitchell, Earl Howard and Tom Hamilton. Mutable’s catalog features everything from solo documents and chamber works by AACM members Mitchell, Muhal Richard Abrams and Jerome Cooper to electronic experimentalism by Hamilton and Noah Creshevsky.

New World Records

New World Records (incorporated in 1975 as Recorded Anthology of American Music, Inc.) is dedicated to the documentation of all styles of American music, many of which have been ignored by the commercial recording companies.  An essential resource for students, scholars, librarians, teachers and the general public, New World's catalogue currently includes over 400 CDs and embodies the widest spectrum of American music -- from Native American to jazz, 19th century classical to electronic, opera, musical theater, folk and beyond.  New World Records is a non-profit organization.

Open Space

Open Space Recordings documents the musical offerings of Open Space Publications and the Open Space Magazine, a forum for artists, writers and composers to publish experimental work. The recordings concentrate heavily on the works of J.K. Randall and Benjamin Boretz and consist mostly of experimental works utilizing electronics or electroacoustic techniques. Most works are performed by the composers, but such new music stalwarts as Harvey Sollberger, Martin Goldray and Margaret Kampmeier make appearances as well.

Peacock Recordings

Since 2000, Peacock Recordings has been an outlet for some of the freshest voices in experimental composition and improvisation.  Based in Brooklyn, New York and managed by composer/violist Jessica Pavone, Peacock has provided an outlet to a group of young composers mainly working in the minimalist mold.  Improvisation and experimentation stand side by side in the work of many of these artists, especially in the work of such composer/performers as Aaron Siegel, Jackson Moore, and Jason Cady.

Pogus Productions

Pogus productions is the brainchild of Al Margolis, a.k.a. If, Bwana and former founder of the Sound of Pigs cassette label. Releases concentrate on electronic, electroacoustic and experimental music that is “uncompromising, non-commercial and definitely not for everyone (unfortunately).” Besides being the primary outlet for If, Bwana’s recordings, Pogus has released important works by Annea Lockwood, David Dunn, David Rosenboom, Kenneth Gaburo and Pauline Oliveros ranging from modern chamber music to live electronics to tape collage pieces.

Porter Records

Porter Records represents the extreme eclecticism in musical taste that has blossomed in the 21st century through the internet and its effect on globalization of all kinds.  Founder Luke Mosling has curated a large selection of new music that swings from the 70s free jazz of Philadelphian Byard Lancaster to the Finnish psych-jazz of Heikki Sarmanto all the way to featuring new composition and improvisation from New Yorkers such as Nate Wooley and Matt Welch.

Skirl Records

Skirl Records is an artist run collective that highlights what is known as the "New Brooklyn Scene", which is exemplified by a fusion of jazz, electronic music, contemporary composition and avant-rock.  Musicians such as label head Chris Speed, saxophonist Andrew D'Angelo, drummer Jim Black, and guitarist Mary Halvorson create energetic and genre-challenging music on this small and highly independent label. 

XI Records

XI Records was founded by experimental composer Phill Niblock for the promotion of his work and the work of other artists working specifically with sound and acoustics.  XI’s releases tend toward drone and ambient elements. Much of the work of Niblock, Ellen Fullman, Tom Johnson and Eliane Radigue found on the label is more concerned with the micro-elements present in two or more tones interacting than in a more traditional contrapuntal setting. XI also represents many modern New York post-minimalist composers such as Alan Licht, Michael Schumacher, Peter Zummo and David Watson (New Zealander living in New York).