Announcing Open Symmetry; New York-based composer Tristan Perich’s first release on Erased Tapes. The 50-minute work for 3 vibraphones and 20-channel 1-bit electronics is performed by the dynamic French group, ensemble 0, who return to Erased Tapes following their 2023 collaboration with Peter Broderick. Perich’s music spans the electronic/classical divide, with explorations that pair string instruments, piano, organ, and other acoustic instrumentation with custom-built 1-bit electronics. Open S…
Five pieces for justly tuned piano and electronics. After a trilogy of long-form records, Pitre shortened the pieces, which gave him more harmonic room to move rather than less.
Sarah Davachi's first book, From the Ruins of the Literal: Critical Organology, Timbre, and the Poetics of Affect, published by her own Late Music imprint. The title is borrowed from Paul Ricoeur, whose account of metaphor locates meaning at the point where literal sense gives way. Davachi turns that idea on the study of instruments and timbre, disciplines she sees as long governed by empirical, neuro-cognitive and modernist assumptions. Her objection is not that measurement is wrong but that it…
This album presents Annea Lockwood’s complete concert piano works, born from a deep collaborative journey. It culminates in a new version of Ceci N’est Pas Un Piano, where voice and memory resonate through the piano’s frame via transducer speaker.
'SOVT' is an album containing one 55-minute piece, written for piano by Sarah Hennies in 2017. SOVT stands for Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract which refers to vocal exercises that strengthens the voice by helping the vocal cords vibrate more efficiently. One may practice SOVT exercises by singing with a straw in the mouth which regulates air pressure and reduces strain on the vocal folds. Hennies encountered these exercises in a class on so-called “voice feminization” for transgender women which also …
** Gatefold sleeve, Obi ** One of the universal experiences of life on Earth is staring, neck craned, at the cosmos. The vastness of one's internal life meets the vastness of space, and in that moment those perspectives fuse in a state of wonder and curiosity. Space As An Instrument, the new album by French artist and musician Félicia Atkinson, invites listeners to explore the phantasmic landscapes created in such transformative encounters, when the mind is open and receptive to its environment.…
Three works by Peter Garland, Another Sunrise, Dreaming of Immortality in a Thatched Cottage and I Have Had to Learn the Simplest Things Last, for pianos, harpsichord, voices and percussion, with Aki Takahashi and Essential Music.
Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their a…
Acclaimed NYC composer, producer and saxophonist Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on "Of Shadow and Substance".
"First, the booklet notes. If you pine for Gertrude Stein speaking circles around herself, meaning what she doesn’t mean, and not meaning what she means, you’ll probably like Tom Johnson’s non-sort-of-explanation of his magnum keyboard opus, An Hour For Piano. The composer prefers that you don’t read his notes while listening to the music. In fact, don’t read them before you play the CD for the first time. Listen to the piece first. Then, if you’re feeling artsy, put on the CD again and read the…
There are moments of silent depth in which the winter of the scalpel of meaning and the spring of the sound-born, unleashed body look upon the world fully present. When the notes at last are heard, the ordered world is their indistinguishable score. The ritual of process is that which carries. The process of ritual is that which brings moments both transitory and immortal, apprehended by musician, seer, clairvoyant, herald; the welling tones that emanate from the crystal salt of shattered primor…
*100 copies limited edition* “It's rare that I'm able to give an album my fullest recommendation without trepidation. (...) Bersarin Quartett is one such album. There's nary a misstep, every potential danger has been avoided and smoothed out to present the optimal audio experience for your dollar. (...) Something this good can't possibly be real." The Silent Ballet (8.5/ 10)
Almost all reviews concerning Bersarin Quartett’s self titled debut album chorused this paean. Four years later he’s back …
Deathprod, a.k.a. Helge Sten, has been deeply embedded in the Oslo music community for decades, but his brooding soundscapes and deliberate process make him seem sometimes like a phantom. Sten is a founding member of Supersilent, adding his sounds and treatments to the avant jazz leanings of that powerful collective, and he has collaborated with artists as diverse as Biosphere, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones. But Occulting Disk is the first new Deathprod album in 15 years; his attention to d…
First vinyl by Long Swan Tongues, the improvised drone duo of Alex Wilson (Gnod, Ghold) and Edd Sanders (Kalkin, Red River Dialect): two long, thunderous pieces for four-stringed instruments on 180g vinyl, mastered by Miles Whittaker.
An exquisite artifact from the 1970s Italian scene, this vinyl reissue of Toni Esposito’s remarkable and overlooked 1974 untitled debut LP, also referred to as “Rosso Napoletano”, resonates with astonishing polyrhythms and genre-defying tonal innovations, seamlessly blending the ecstatic with fluid jazz, progressive rock, and experimental elements. A true revelation rescued from the depths of obscurity by a visionary artist who worked with everyone from Luciano Cilio to Don Cherry, it can’t be m…
**1.000 copies, 2019 stock** Born in Brooklyn, Alan Vega was reared on the rock'n'roll sound of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, but originally struck out on a career as a visual artist and light sculptor, making pieces out of electronic debris. Seeing Iggy Pop fronting the Stooges at the New York State Pavilion in 1969 was an epiphany for him: "It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks, you could create situations. That show was the first time in my life when the audience and the stage m…
**1.000 copies, 2019 stock** Born in Brooklyn, Alan Vega was reared on the rock'n'roll sound of Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison, but originally struck out on a career as a visual artist and light sculptor, making pieces out of electronic debris. Seeing Iggy Pop fronting the Stooges at the New York State Pavilion in 1969 was an epiphany for him: "It showed me you didn't have to do static artworks, you could create situations. That show was the first time in my life when the audience and the stage m…
Le Très Jazz Club keeps on exploring Japanese jazz and the Three Blind Mice catalog with the reissue of this amazing 1976 record by drummer George Otsuka. Unavailable for more than forty years, the album is released for the first time outside of Japan. Physical Structure is an amazing jazz-fusion record featuring Fumio Karashima on piano and Fender Rhodes and Shozo Sasaki on tenor sax. Check the surprising and sublime cover of Naima which alone justifies to get this record! Personell list: Georg…
Tip! Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.
Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lamp…
Tokyo Dreaming is a superb selection picked from the highly collectible Nippon Columbia label and its Better Days sub-label. Wewantsounds have teamed up with journalist and Japanese music expert Nick Luscombe. The selection mixes electro, synth-pop, funk, and ambient and includes many sought-after rarities and hidden gems which have never been released outside of Japan and the set has been newly remastered by Nippon Columbia. Nippon Columbia, one of Japan's oldest music labels is also one of its…
Huge Tip! Small repress. "I stood on top of the mountain and looked out over the landscape. It was so beautiful that my chest hurt. The light vibrated, time stood still, and the contours dissolved for a moment. Everything had changed; I felt it then. I took their little hands so as not to lose contact with the ground. Then we ran down the mountain, scraping our knees. Still, we didn't make it. You had already put away all the nautical charts, loosened the moorings and steered out among the skerr…
2026 Repress! Custom die-cut rigid slipcase, 5 CDs in double card sleeves, 96 page perfect bound book including an interview between Seymour Wright and John Chantler and additional texts by silvia tarozzi, magnus granberg, nate wooley, valerie mol, pär thörn and lars grip and drawings by guillaume delcourt and aliocha delcourt. Limited Edition of 500 copies. [Ahmed] is the quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums) and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone). Togethe…
Recorded 29th May 1977 at A Day in Solidarity with Soweto: A Fund Raiser, Harlem Fight-Back, 1 East 125th St., New York Violinist Billy Bang made his recording debut as a leader with the Survival Ensemble, the first working band he ever led, on New York Collage in 1979. Bang, saxophonists Bilal Abdur Rahman and Henry Warner, bassist William Parker, and percussionists Rashid Bakr and Khuwana John Fuller played incendiary free jazz more clearly indebted to the New York avant-garde of the precedin…
2026 stock Doug Carn made four records for the Black Jazz label, more than any other artist, and each one topped the previous release's lofty standard. Adam's Apple was his last (1974) album for the label, representing the final note in his staggeringly creative crescendo. It was also the first record without Jean Carn, but Carn and crew (John Conner and Joyce Greene) don't miss a beat on the vocals. And the band is absolutely sick, featuring reedman Ronnie Laws and fellow Black Jazz recording a…
Reese and the Smooth Ones was captured during the same revolutionary Paris session as Message to Our Folks, but stands apart as a two-part, 40-minute odyssey of unchained invention.
Published on the 50th anniversary of the original printing, Black Art Notes features writings by Tom Lloyd, Amiri Baraka, Bing Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, and Francis and Val Gray Ward. “If there is one lesson the post–civil rights period has taught us, it is that those most likely to shape the destiny of Black Americans in the next decade are activists and artists, who may possess additional skills as organizers,” writes Ward in “The Black Artist—His Rol…
A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers. Edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman, and Larry Neal between 1968 and 1969 and published by Baraka's New Jersey–based Jihad productions shortly after the time of the Newark Riots, this experimental music magazine ran poetry, position papers, and gossip al…
Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir),…
The impact of Weldon Irvine’s music across a wealth of genres cannot be overstated with his jazzy piano playing and compositions regularly passed down to newer generations. Artists like Q-Tip and Mos Def are noted admirers of the jazz-funk artist, and the distinct sounds of Irvine echo across the ages in samples etched into hip-hop history. The album version of Time Capsule was originally released in 1973, and this is a brand new 10 inch EP edit aimed at DJs looking to incorporate its album trac…
Digitally remastered edition of this 1974 album, a true holy-grail for Deep and Spiritual Jazz collectors around the world. This album was originally independently released to raise funds to combat the ongoing drought in the Sahel region of Africa (an area covering parts of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Chad, Darfur, Sudan and Ethiopia). During his lifetime Roy Brooks released precious few solo albums. Black Survival, the Sahel Concert at the Town Hall was originally released on the smal…
Strut presents an exclusive reissue of Experience Unlimited’s 1977 debut album, Free Yourself, featuring a brand new interview with bandleader and co-founder ‘Sugar Bear.` This seminal recording blends soul, jazz, and funk-rock, laying the foundation for Washington D.C.'s go-go scene. Experience unlimited had originally started out in 1973 when they met at Ballou Senior High School in South-East D.C. and came to the attention of Black Fire Records’ Jimmy Gray after winning a school talent compe…
Originally released in 1967, Ayler's first LP on Impulse! and arguably his best for the label. "During 1967-69 avant-garde innovator Albert Ayler recorded a series of albums for Impulse that started on a high level and gradually declined in quality. This LP, Ayler's first Impulse set, was probably his best for that label. There are two selections apiece from a pair of live appearances with Ayler having a rare outing on alto on the emotional 'For John Coltrane' and the more violent 'Change Has Co…
A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes more than 30 years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Standing on the verge of spiritual jazz aesthetic, his music remains timeless & unforgettable after it's longstanding creation. The first album by the group Rise Vision Comin was released in 1976, and features among others Wallace Roney on trumpet, Clarence Seay on bass and Agyei Akoto on sa…
McCoy Tyner looked towards Africa on his stunning 1970 album Extensions, a far-reaching exploration of Black identity that marked the masterful pianist’s fifth recording for Blue Note Records. After leaving John Coltrane’s band Tyner had moved from Impulse to Blue Note and made his enduring post-bop classic The Real McCoy in 1967. In the following years Tyner steadily expanded his musical scope: writing for a 9-piece ensemble on Tender Moments, exploring the textures of a piano-vibes led quartet…
Sun Ra is better known to most as a musician than a poet, but he identified equally as both. My Words Are Music provides direct access to the sentiments of a poet who never called Earth home. The spoken word album hosts an inspired array of artists who personally chose their favorite Sun Ra poems to recite. Freed from the page, his poetry acquires an unexpected simplicity and poignance it possessed all along. This all-star and intergenerational lineup of artists conjure wisdom from his words: sp…
The sounds of late '70s and '80s east coast avant-garde jazz, soul, and punk rock are well documented, but in Nothing but the Music Thulani Davis gives us something beyond, delivering a collection of synesthetic, transportive documentary poems that breathe anecdotal and impressionistic life into a sonic-social history about which most can only speculate. Davis' verse takes free flight with its muses, scatting and leaping off the page and the shoulders of the musicians, nightclubs, and choreograp…
One for the ages here. Unearthed from the ESS archives and officially released for the first time ever, a previously unknown half-hour from cosmic mythologist and sound scientist Sun Ra's 1971 U.C. Berkeley course "The Black Man in the Cosmos." Ra's soft-spoken intensity is underscored by the sound of chalk on the board as he ambles effortlessly through his potent and prescient ideas. The class session closes with two musical tracks, a piano version of "Love In Outer Space" and a blistering Moo…
If being the founder and chairman of Third World Press Organisation - the largest independent black-owned publishers - wasn't enough for activist and poet Haki R Madhubuti, he is also credited with a lesser-known yet remarkable music career. As the bandleader of Haki R. Madhubuti and Nation: Afrikan Liberation Arts Ensemble, Madhubuti combined his razor-sharp spoken-word poetry with a band of incredible musicians to create an unforgettable experience of avant-garde and spiritual jazz.
The second…
Recital presents a newly unearthed recording of an interview between Sun Ra and composer Charlie Morrow recorded at his New York studio in 1989. This voice-only recording develops more like a kaleidoscopic sermon than any standard interview.