“Paradise between the back porch, the urban jungle and the heavens above ... The album’s down-home grooves shine with an orchestral, massed-guitar luster that's often associated with Glenn Branca and Kane’s frequent collaborator Rhys Chatham. Layered electric and acoustic sounds create overtones that trick the listener into hearing nonexistent organs and harmonicas. In place of the mind-boggling beats for which he's known, Kane underpins these drones with a deceptively simple, forcefully executed shuffle. His swinging opuses exude bright, earthy euphoniousness instead of dark, cerebral dissonance: Witness the rollicking ‘Sis’ or the luminous version of the traditional ‘Motherless Child.’ Rarely does the avant-garde rock this hard."

—Time Out New York

“As co-founder of Swans and a volcanic drummer behind such notables as Rhys Chatham and La Monte Young, Jonathan Kane has provided the rhythmic foundation for several classic Downtown NYC landmarks. His music's intrinsic swagger is crucial … he side-steps cliché by marshaling his minimalist riffs to their trance-inducing limits, and deftly sparks a synaptic link between Neu!-style repetition and the hypnotic electric blues of Junior Kimbrough.”

—Pitchfork

"[Table of the Elements] has a livewire in drummer Jonathan Kane, whose CD "February" represents thrilling possibilities for its future. The music's tintinnabulatory rush is hypnotic and bracing, an evocation of the blues that harks backwards and forwards at once. It's the kind of music men might gather to play on a moonlit night deep in some rural hill country, with trouble in the distance and whiskey close at hand. It's the kind of music you might hear above a bodega, on an afternoon in the Lower East Side, with trouble everywhere and no end in sight. It's the kind of music Table of the Elements is all about."

—Steve Dollar

Rhys Chatham
A Rhys Chatham Compendium 1971-1989
2002

Table of the Elements
[Barium] TOE-CD-56
Compact disc

Rhys Chatham
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See: Selected Works: 1971-1989
2003

Table of the Elements
[Lanthanum] SWC-CD-57
3x compact discs, 112-page book, 96-page catalog, foil, lithography, multiple enclosures

Jonathan Kane
February
2005

Table of the Elements
[Radium] TOE-CD-88
Compact disc, custom enclosure, foil stamps

Jonathan Kane
February
2005

Table of the Elements
[Radium] TOE-LP-88
Phono LP

Jonathan Kane’s February
Arnold Dreyblatt
Rhys Chatham
Zeena Parkins
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad with Faust
Leif Inge
A Field Guide to Table of the Elements, Southeast Edition
2005

Table of the Elements
[Thorium] TOE-CD-90
2x compact discs, custom enclosure, booklet, 18 x 12” poster

Rhys Chatham (France/USA)
w/ “Die Dönnergötter” Guitar Army
+ Jonathan Kane + Ernie Brooks III
+ original artwork and projections by Robert Longo
Arnold Dreyblatt and the Orchestra of Excited Strings (Germany)
Jonathan Kane’s February (USA)
Tony Conrad (USA)
Zeena Parkins (USA)
San Agustin (USA)
Andrew Burnes/David Daniell/Thurston Moore Trio (USA)
Leif Inge (Norway) 9 Beet Stretch: 24-hour performance

Dubnium:
Table of the Elements Festival no. 3
2005

Table of the Elements
[Dubnium] TOE-105
March 15-16
2005
Central Presbyterian Church
8th and Brazos
Austin, Texas
Entry: South by Southwest festival pass
Producers: Jeff Hunt/SxSW

Rhys Chatham
Die Donnergotter
2006

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-801/TOE-LP-801
Compact disc /2x Phono LPs, gatefold jacket

Rhys Chatham
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See
(for 100 Electric Guitars)
2006

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-802/TOE-LP-802
Compact disc/Phono LP

Transmission
Transmission
2006

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-804
Compact disc

Jonathan Kane
I Looked at the Sun
2006

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-805
Compact disc

Rhys Chatham
A Crimson Grail (for 400 Electric Guitars, Electric Bass)
2006

Table of the Elements
[Seaborgium] TOE-CD-2006
Compact disc

Jonathan Kane
The Little Drummer Boy
2007

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-809
Compact disc

Jonathan Kane
Interview, Select PLaylist
January, 2008

Rhys Chatham
Jonathan Kane’s February
Megafaun
Paul Duncan
Collections of Colonies of Bees
Neptune
Ateleia
School of Seven Bells
+
Belong
Melissa St. Pierre (Japan)
Impala Eardrums: A Radium Sampler
2008

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-812/TOE-LP-812
Compact disc, poster, video/phono LP, white vinyl, 2x posters

Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All Stars
“GUITAR TRIO IS MY LIFE!”
2008

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-813
3x compact discs, 48-page book

Peg Simone
Secrets from the Storm
2010

Radium/Table of the Elements
TOE-CD-820
Compact disc

A Conduit for History Exploding in the Present Moment

TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS is a curatorial network and interdisciplinary platform, live-event presenter, and fine-arts publisher of print, audio, and film, lauded by Pitchfork Media as “a national treasure.” Since its origin as a record label in 1993, TotE has been dedicated to preserving, promoting, and promulgating works by international creators of radical innovation. The organizations’s 170-plus releases — along with influential intermedia festivals — comprise a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of sound, word, and vision.  Each unique project demonstrates how a publishing concern might romp wild, unbridled from the carousel of convention.

•     •     •     •     •

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”
—Grayson Haver Currin, Pitchfork

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism are beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, Jeff Hunt produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions — not ossified museum objects.”
—Thomas Peake, Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."
—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”
—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”
—Henry Rollins

“[John] Cale left the Dream Syndicate for the Velvet Underground; Conrad found a community in avant-garde film. But after Reed fired Cale from the VU and he was at loose ends, he and Conrad revived their string-drone collaborations. Some of these works can be found on the box set John Cale: New York in the 1960s, released in 2000 on Jeff Hunt’s Table of the Elements label. Hunt, who played a big part in Conrad’s return to music in the early 1990s, is one of the film’s most articulate expert witnesses to Conrad’s artistic achievements. … In 2000, Table of the Elements finally released digital remasters of three early-’60s Dream Syndicate recordings, which Hunt says appeared mysteriously in the mail one day, as well as the boxed set Tony Conrad: Early Minimalism, which includes one work that is actually “early,” Conrad’s divine Four Violins (1964), as well as other disks by Conrad, MacLise, and Jack Smith.”
Amy Taubin, Artforum

 

 

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All contents ©1992–2025 Table of the Elements ®2025 Table of the Elements. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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