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"I think Loren Connors is an artist who happens to use guitar, like I often joke that Werner Herzog is a poet who happens to use a camera."
— Jim O'Rourke

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Loren MazzaCane (Connors)
Five Points
Guitar Series Vol. II
1994

Table of the Elements
[Phosphorus] TOE-SS-15
7-inch single

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Loren Mazzacane Connors
Long Nights
1995

Table of the Elements
[Calcium] TOE-CD-20
Compact disc, poster, obi

“Mazzacane Connors's minimalist art, fragile yet forceful at the same time, gives a sound that encloses the most profound depths of a long forgotten America, a wellspring of melody that dissolves into a multitude of harmonics... It's almost superfluous to say that this music belongs to the realm of dreams, it's music for the mind, abstract and yet wholly present to itself and therefore totally concrete too."
Thierry Jousse, Forced Exposure

“Loren Mazzacane is one of those guitarist who has truly conceived his own instrumental language. That language speaks clearly and purely, and in short clusters of notes says more than most guitarists work says in a lifetime. His genius is rendered in his simultaneously abstract and intuitive improvisations; whether fragile and quiet or loaded with feedback, it all seethes with a gorgeous lyricism. Loren's work is as necessary and vibrant as ever, and you owe it to yourself to discover and explore the deep beauty of this guitarist's work."
Byron Coley, Forced Exposure

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TONY CONRAD (USA)
JOHN FAHEY (USA)
GASTR DEL SOL (USA)
BRUCE GILBERT (UK)
BERHNARD GÜNTER (GERMANY)
KEIJI HAINO + FUSHITSUSHA (JAPAN)
THURSTON MOORE AND FRIENDS (USA)
LOREN MAZZACANE CONNORS (USA)
JIM O’ROURKE (USA)
SPECIAL GUESTS

YTTRIUM
TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS FESTIVAL NO. 2

Table of the Elements
November 7, 8 and 9
1996

[Yttrium] TOE-29
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Avenue
Chicago, IL
Three-day festival pass: $25.00
Producers: Jeff Hunt and Kris Johnson

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Loren Mazzacane Connors
The Murder of Joan of Arc
Lanthanides Series
2003

Table of the Elements
[Praseodymiur] SWC-LP-59
Phono LP, silkscreen, luminous ink

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Loren Connors
Sails
2005

Table of the Elements
[Actinium] TOE-CD-89
2x compact discs, custom enclosure

To accompany guitarist Loren Connors (née Mazzacane) is to discover a strange and forgotten America, then venture irreversibly beyond. Connors is frequently pegged as an avant bluesman, and the blues are never far from the surface of his art—but what a shimmering surface. The brevity and lyricism of his improvisations bear the mark of haiku; the floating, expressionist tones reflect the influence of Mark Rothko; and as he conjures keening Celtic wails, Connors offers himself as medium to the ghosts of New York City Past.

With Sails, Connors enters the third decade of such intimate explorations. In the course of these two discs, we pass through saturated phrasings, slowly undulating drones, doldrumic introspection and squalls of white noise. The penultimate highlight is a duet with Connors' aesthetic compadre, the late, great John Fahey. It's an intuitive and seemingly predestined meeting of two enlightened fellow travelers: wily Fahey as the Dr. Livingstone of raw Americana to Connors' indefatigable Stanley. For his own part, Connors can evoke more clarity and purity in a short cluster of notes than most of his shred-happy contemporaries can muster in a lifetime—and with Fahey's passing, he may be justifiably considered this country's greatest living guitarist.

Ultimately, Loren Connors’ path, while not for the timid, is one of unspeakable treasure: a journey to the heart of brightness; a quest to penetrate a Terra Incognita of the soul.

“Connors’ trademarks … are consistently prominent and sublime, always inferring something that runs a little thicker than sound… It makes sense that the like-minded John Fahey even saluted Connors on his final album with a piece using, in part, the same wandering tones and atmosphere, showing that after the poetries and aesthetics of life are gone, after style and sense are gone, there is something much harder to deal with – that innate, tangible void that Connors has spent his life tugging at draws ever near.”
Dusted

“[Connors] is an American original in much the same sense as John Fahey or Jandek, in that he’s chosen a classically American form, in this case the blues, and in true pioneer spirit taken it off somewhere else, crossed it with other forms … and shaped it into a uniquely individual vision of the modern American myth Connors] has created a singularly expressive and unique musical vocabulary. In short, he still sounds like no one else.”
The Wire

“Loren MazzaCane Connors isn’t a cult hero for no reason. His music is awe-inspiring … a one-person gentle tornado, Connors can get deep into human feelings with a single guitar.”
Pop Matters

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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 farthest 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

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OWN THE ARCHIVE

(Posted by Within Things, May 18, 2023)

From 1993, US recording label 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. 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.

The label’s carefully cultivated archive now contains over 15,000 CDs and LPs, an impossible quantity to logistically or financially maintain. Rather than “recycle” the majority of these modern sound and design artifacts, Table of the Elements is making them available to the public via Within Things.

From rich bundles of obscure recordings, exclusive printed material, and limited quantity “holy grails,” Within Things is excited to help connect this important archive to the public. We’re very honored to collaborate with a label that helped define a path and inspire what we do, long before our store even existed.

Click the image above to be taken directly to the Table of the Elements section on our site, and stay posted for the announcement of limited offerings via our newsletter.

~~o0o~~

"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 music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

"How does someone begin to represent that in a visual manner? The trick involves some old-fashioned alchemy. Everyday commodity has to be constructed as both miniature museum and theater. No longer a mere object, it now becomes a site in which one can endlessly indulge a sense of wonder, love and, yes, obsession. It’s not often that someone can cast an influence on a broader design aesthetic — think Blue Note in the 1960s, with its hip Reid Miles album covers — but as this sizable body of work took shape, that’s exactly what happened.”

—Steve Dollar

“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, [the label] 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.”

—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 ©2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. 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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