{"title":"Charlemagne Palestine","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"charrrlleemmma-gggneelanddddds-ss-cccrreatto-rrssssscccarillon-nnn-dingggdongggdingggzzzzzzz-ferrrr-sssofttt-divini-tiesssss-with-sttt-thomasss-dingg-gdongggdingggzzz-zzzz-ferrrr-tonyyy","title":"CHARRRLLEEMMMA GGGNEELANDDDDDS SS CCCRREATTO RRSSSSSCCCARILLON NNN DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS!!!!!!!!! with STTT THOMASSS DINGG GDONGGGDINGGGzzz zzzz ferrrr TONYYY","description":"\u003cp\u003eDINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms Editions’ very first and long out-of-print release appears on vinyl for the first time: a cathartic street recording of the minimalist composer’s 2018 musical eulogy for his late friend Tony Conrad, performed on the bells of St. Thomas Episcopal Church where the two first met. Two mesmerizing “klanggdedangggebannggg” sessions in the Quasimodo of 53rd Street’s unmistakable improvisatory style.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePerhaps more than any of his contemporaries in the bustling, cross-disciplinary downtown New York arts scene of the ’60s and ’70s, Charlemagne Palestine has embodied the notion of the artist as playful polymath, testing and transcending nearly every creative form imaginable in his more than six-decade career. Originally trained in Jewish sacred singing to be a cantor, he began his artistic life as a musician, studying piano and accordion, accompanying figures like Tiny Tim and Allen Ginsburg on percussion, using early synthesizers as an assistant to Alwin Nikolais, and eventually landing a long-running gig as the carillonneur at Midtown’s St. Thomas Episocal. This libertine spirit of experimentation soon led to adventures in other aesthetic arenas: making kinetic light sculptures with Len Lye, devising choreographed performances with Simone Forti, and producing over a dozen visceral videotapes with the Castelli Gallery. In the ’70s, he was particularly prominent on the burgeoning loft movement, becoming well-known for his sparse, intense, and exacting long-form piano concerts, that seemed to bend the very nature of time and space. Beginning in the ’80s, he spent decades in self-imposed exile from the new music scene, absconding to a palace in Europe and privately honing his hermetic sonic and visual practice, until his resurgence among record fanatics in the mid-’90s.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Blank Forms Editions","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50490172014923,"sku":"2102307","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/Charlemagne_Palestine_-_CHARRRLLEEMMMA_GGGNEELANDDDDDS__5dde682a_thumbnail_4.png?v=1727653965"},{"product_id":"ttuunneesszz-duh-rruunneesszz-blue-tb7-series","title":"Ttuunneesszz Duh Rruunneesszz (Blue TB7 Series","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960’s when he bought two prototype ‘Buchla’ tone generators. “Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960’s.There were Moog’s around New York state. but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. so after all this time visiting The MoogSound Lab is like a dream come true for me.....to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad i am still around and able to be making musics i first dreamt of 50 years ago”. These two releases come from our second ever UK lab session and is the first Charlemagne Palestine Moog Sound Lab. All electronic long form drone works from an archive of six recordings. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Moog Recordings Library","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50497908900171,"sku":"1040454","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/8f940b74-c41c-4210-b0d6-34540db29382_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727734846"},{"product_id":"interrvallissphereee-blue-tb7-series","title":"Interrvallissphereee (Blue TB7 Series)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCharlemagne Palestine first started using electronic instruments in his music in the late 1960’s when he bought two prototype ‘Buchla’ tone generators. “Electronic instruments were very rare and exotic in the 1960’s.There were Moog’s around New York state. but they were only in universities who preciously guarded them from us young composers. so after all this time visiting The MoogSound Lab is like a dream come true for me.....to have so many oscillators all singing together is a truly beautiful experience. I am so glad i am still around and able to be making musics i first dreamt of 50 years ago”. These two releases come from our second ever UK lab session and is the first Charlemagne Palestine Moog Sound Lab. All electronic long form drone works from an archive of six recordings.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Moog Recordings Library","offers":[{"title":"LP","offer_id":50497913880907,"sku":"1040455","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/15fc3553-2fea-4136-9769-f81f31229c7b_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727734919"},{"product_id":"liquiddd-changesss","title":"Liquiddd Changesss","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMCVCVP\u003c\/i\u003e turns sound into a stream - In four tracks, they give us a place to float, a deep pool of water and we listen to what is underneath. Continuity is the world we navigate, an eternal vibration with all its nuances. Inside the water, there's no difference between playing and finding the truth \"non contextual and fluid \" that carries us through time. In \u003ci\u003eMCVCVP\u003c\/i\u003e, Carbon and Palestine open a window for us to stare into the vortex where sound lives: pianos in abandoned rooms, a mysterious voice with a dress, dusty tables and painted clouds, low light, blue walls, mirrors, echoes without a ghost. A fine line between mysteries that remain close, the wish to be dissolved in playful darkness. Each sound is alive and has a story that continues. Staring are the open eyes of all the people who were. Not a scary one, just the story of being. \u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"5RC","offers":[{"title":"Blue | LP","offer_id":50526853464395,"sku":"2000980","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/a2086722422_10_be644c82_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1728049023"},{"product_id":"the-organ-is-the-world-s-greatest-synthesizer","title":"The Organ is the World’s Greatest Synthesizer","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"UTF-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFor over six decades, Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947, New York) has been a pioneering composer, performer, and multimedia artist, celebrated for his ecstatic sonic explorations and ritualistic, metaphysical performances. Emerging from the cross-disciplinary New York art scene of the 1960s and ’70s, he helped shape a heretical edge of minimalism alongside figures like Conrad, Riley, Niblock, and Glass. Trained as a Jewish cantor and later as the carillonneur at St. Thomas Church, Palestine cultivated a deep fascination with resonance and overtone—an obsession that evolved through his use of percussion, early synthesizers, and monumental piano works, influencing artists from John Cale to Nick Cave\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnimated by a spirit of ecstatic play and what he calls his \"meschugge\" (Yiddish for 'crazy') sensibility, Palestine’s universe blends the sacred and the absurd, filled with soft toys, ritual gestures, and immersive sound environments. Rejecting the »minimalist« label in favor of a maximalist, 'spontanimalist' approach, he creates long-form, resonant performances that transform spaces into vibrating, living organisms—opening portals into the nature of time, sound, and devotion.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the same vein, the aptly titled live record \u003cem\u003eThe Organ is the World’s Greatest Synthesizer \u003c\/em\u003e– performed during the Sonic Acts Festival at Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk in 2025, and taking its title and cover art from a drawing realized by Palestine himself during the concert – adds to his opaque yet vibrant personal mythology and intimate transcendence, marking a return to the Staalplaat catalog after \u003cem\u003eFffroggssichorddd\u003c\/em\u003e (2020) and \u003cem\u003eMusic for Big Ears\u003c\/em\u003e (2001).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeginning with a resonating bell and his falsetto overtone singing, then surrendering to the endless, wild soundscapes of tone-feeling and beat frequencies generated by the church’s organ, across 40+ minutes, single sound sources evolve into clusters, entangle fully with one another, and establish their own spatial existence and aural architectures. We witness the traces of something that can be described as a perpetual performance, a test for the ever-changing interaction between artist, instrument, space and, ultimately, us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSince Palestine has always defined his execution as a form of anti-composition - of simply \"being in the music\" as if inhabiting a space - the true power of \u003cem\u003eThe Organ is the World’s Greatest Synthesize\u003c\/em\u003er lies in encapsulating a moment of Palestine’s practice in its most authentic, live dimension. Sound becomes at once subtle substance and strange telluric force, animating physical forms from some unknown channel beyond and within, accessible only through our sensorium. The point in this liminal temple of tone, timbre and frequency is not to learn anything but to simply enter. Palestine earns once again his self-given title of contemporary shaman by keeping this sonic portal open, allowing us to witness and make it last.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Staalplaat","offers":[{"title":"LP - Black","offer_id":56263185334603,"sku":"R2042-1774","price":37.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/b66897af-48c1-7021-5457-ccb3eae37d01.jpg?v=1767955258"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/charlemagne-palestine.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}