Loren Mazzacane Connors
Jean-Marc Montera
Thurston Moore
Lee Ranaldo
MMMR
1997

Xeric/Numero Zero Audio
XER-CD/LP-99
Compact disc/phono LP

As members of Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo continue to pump the most radical tenets of American experimentalism into the heart of rock music; in recent years they have also extended their reputations as world-class improvisers. French phenom Jean-Marc Montera records for the legendary FMP label and has collaborated with an amazing host of free-music luminaries, including Evan Parker, Paul Lovens and Han Bennink. However it is the keening blues wail of Loren Mazzacane Connors that leads this expedition of electric guitars to the furthest reaches of a vast, cinematic soundscape.

Recorded by Martin Stumpf (Phillip Glass, David Bowie) at Sonic Youth's Echo Canyon Studios, NYC.

"This is great improvised music. It is beautiful and complex and, most importantly, it breathes. As good and as moving as anything you'll hear this year."
John Fahey

William Hooker/lee ranaldo
The Celestial Answer
2005

Xeric
XER-CD-102
Compact disc, custom enclosure

As individual performers, William Hooker and Lee Ranaldo are explosive. As collaborators, they are thermonuclear. A kinetic, avant percussionist and poet, Hooker is one of New York's most important band leaders, having fronted groups that included David Murray and David S. Ware. Ranaldo leads the improv supergroup Text of Light, whose fluid membership includes Hooker, as well as Christian Marclay, Tim Barnes and Mission of Burma's Roger Miller — and of course, he's a co-founder of the indefatigably experimental Sonic Youth.

With The Celestial Answer, Hooker and Ranaldo have created a work of blindingly brilliant, elemental force. Rays of white guitar noise penetrate clouds of analog synth; molten drumming blasts across free-form poetics. The dynamic is beautiful and inspired — a simple cold-fusion of intuitive interaction and boundless sonic freedom. These are thoughtful and emotionally attuned artists. Open your ears and they'll take you on a soaring voyage through an ecstatic firmament, into the howling mouth of infinity.

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 experimental audio, electroacoustics, free-improvised performance, sonic sculpture, microtonality, and modern composition. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of sound and vision.  Each project demonstrates how a publishing concern might romp wild, unbridled from the carousel of convention.

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"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.”

—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

All contents ©1992–2025 Table of the Elements ®2025 Table of the Elements Ltd. 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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