Search - Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt :: A Field Guide to Table of the Elements: Southeastern Edition

Generations of record collectors have spent valuable chunks of their lives poking through vinyl bins in search of unknown pleasures, or rambling though the piney woods with their ears cocked for a high, lonesome sound. Even revolutionary sounds can come and go with the scarcest trace. That's part of the power they hold over the ardent, would-be listener. The truth is out there. Since 1993, Table of the Elements has spoken that truth, focusing on musicians whose light shimmers outside the frames of convention and registering the ripples of music that are too essential to die or dissolve into the common currency. The label's 100-plus releases are a vital contemporary archive, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider musics. This two disc sampler is more than a summary of label highlights; the performances make a statement as bold as their visceral impact and as rich as the conceptual process that underpins their creation.