Sub Rosa is a record label based in
Brussels
Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
specializing in
avant-garde music,
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
,
world music and
noise music. Directed by
Guy-Marc Hinant
Guy-Marc Hinant (born 1960 in Charleroi) is a Belgian poet, writer, publisher, music producer and cinematographer. In the late 1980s Hinant, together with Frédéric Walheer, founded the Belgian record label Sub Rosa which specializes in avant-gar ...
and Frédéric Walheer, Sub Rosa has released over 250 titles of experimental,
drone music
Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters – called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy audio programs with relatively slight harm ...
,
noise music,
Musique concrète,
ritual music and
film music
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to e ...
. The label has released archival material related to prominent twentieth-century avant-garde figures such as
Marcel Duchamp
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...
,
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
,
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
, and
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, Constructivism (art), constructivism, surrealism ...
. Sub Rosa also releases material from a number of important electronic music composers, such as (
Luc Ferrari
Luc Ferrari (February 5, 1929 – August 22, 2005) was a French composer of Italian heritage and a pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music. He was a founding member of RTF's Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRMC), working alongsid ...
,
Henri Pousseur
Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist.
Biography
Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 t ...
,
Tod Dockstader
Tod Dockstader (March 20, 1932 – February 27, 2015) was an American electronic music composer and sound designer. He is particularly regarded as one of the first American '' musique concrète'' composers.
Biography
Dockstader was born in Sain ...
,
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik (; July 20, 1932 – January 29, 2006) was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super h ...
,
Francisco López); and traditional music from around the world in anthologies of
Inuit
Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...
sound, the
Master Musicians of Joujouka
The Master Musicians of Joujouka are a collective of Jbala Sufi trance musicians, serving as a modern representation of a centuries-old music tradition. The collective was first documented by Western journalists in the early 1950s, and was b ...
,
Tibetan music
The music of Tibet reflects the cultural heritage of the trans-Himalayan region centered in Tibet, but also known wherever ethnic Tibetan groups are found in Nepal, Bhutan, India and further abroad. The religious music of Tibet reflects the p ...
and
Bhutan
Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...
ese music, recorded by
John Levy)
History
Sub Rosa was established at the end of the ‘80s, and expanded its catalogue in the mid-‘90s through the release of
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
. The soundtrack album by
Laibach
Laibach () is a Slovenian avant-garde music group associated with the industrial, martial, and neo-classical genres. Formed in the mining town of Trbovlje (at the time in Yugoslavia) in 1980, Laibach represents the musical wing of the Neue ...
for the
Neue Slowenische Kunst
Neue Slowenische Kunst (; NSK; German: "New Slovenian Art") is a political art collective that formed in Slovenia in 1984, when the Socialist Republic of Slovenia was part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. NSK's name was chosen to refl ...
production
''Baptism'' was one of the labels' early releases. The name ''Sub Rosa'' was deduced from the first sentence of
Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari
Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næs ...
's book ''
A Thousand Plateaus
''A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia'' (french: link=no, Mille plateaux) is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. It is the second and final volume of their collaborativ ...
'' and derives from the Latin expression
sub rosa
''Sub rosa'' (New Latin for "under the rose") denotes secrecy or confidentiality. The rose has an ancient history as a symbol of secrecy.
History
In Hellenistic and later Roman mythology, roses were associated with secrecy because Cupid ga ...
: literally translating as "under the rose," and figuratively meaning something secret or undercover. Over its three decades of operation Sub Rosa has gained cult status through its publishing of music that doubles as historical
cultural artifact
A cultural artifact, or cultural artefact (see American and British English spelling differences), is a term used in the social sciences, particularly anthropology, ethnology and sociology for anything created by humans which gives informa ...
s.
Anthology Series
Since 2001, Sub Rosa has been releasing
Guy-Marc Hinant
Guy-Marc Hinant (born 1960 in Charleroi) is a Belgian poet, writer, publisher, music producer and cinematographer. In the late 1980s Hinant, together with Frédéric Walheer, founded the Belgian record label Sub Rosa which specializes in avant-gar ...
's ''
An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music'' series, completed as the formidable seven double volume experimental compilation in 2012. The project curated
noise music and
electronic music
Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroa ...
al recordings from the last hundred years by both obscure and leading sound artists like
John Cage,
Captain Beefheart,
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Cente ...
,
Sun Ra
Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...
,
Ryoji Ikeda
Ryoji Ikeda (池田 亮司 ''Ikeda Ryōji'', born 1966) is a Japanese visual and sound artist who currently lives and works in Paris, France. Ikeda's music is concerned primarily with sound in a variety of "raw" states, such as sine tones and noi ...
,
Einstürzende Neubauten
(, 'Collapsing New Buildings') is a German experimental music group, formed in West Berlin in 1980. The group is currently composed of founding members Blixa Bargeld (lead vocals; guitar; keyboard) and N.U. Unruh ( custom-made instruments; p ...
,
Johanna M Beyer,
Morton Subotnick
Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the foun ...
,
Sonic Youth,
Stephen O' Malley,
Francisco López,
Steve Reich,
Cabaret Voltaire, and
Mika Vainio
Mika Tapio Vainio (May 15, 1963 – April 12, 2017) was a Finnish electronic musician. He was best known as a member of Pan Sonic. In addition to his real name, he recorded under the aliases Ø, Kentolevi, Philus, and Tekonivel.
He has worked wi ...
.
Electronic Music Observatory
Guy-Marc Hinant and Dominque Lohlé have also run a film production outfit since 2000, OME (Electronic Music Observatory, or Observatoire des musiques électroniques). OME produces documentaries on avant-garde music since World War II. A film on
David Toop
David Toop (born 5 May 1949) is an English musician, author, curator, and Emeritus Professor. From 2013 to 2021 he was professor of audio culture and improvisation at the London College of Communication. He was a regular contributor to British ...
's record collection entitled ''I never Promised You A Rose Garden: A Portrait Of David Toop Through His Records Collection'' is one of a dozen completed projects.
They also have made a documentary on
noise music in China.
See also
*
List of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
File:Bingola1011b.jpg
Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...
References
External links
*
*
* Sub Rosa o
Boomkat* Sub Rosa US Distributo
* Sub Rosa UK Distributo
Cargo Records* official site
{{authority control
Belgian record labels