The string quartet Current that provides the centerpiece of Adams’ new album dates from 2016, when Spektral Quartet commissioned the composer to write a short work that became the 12-minute study Quartet Movement. Though that piece stands alone, Adams sensed that it might also be used as the basis for something larger, so over the next few years he expanded its scope. The present five-movement work, completed in 2019, was co-commissioned by Spektral Quartet and Cal Performances, with additional …
Huge Tip! * Limited edition of 100 copies only. Special folded cover * Less a tapestry than an errant strand of lunatic fringe, Yado Tasu – Hotel 10KM ’s pulls us through a jungle of abandoned airwaves, smoky jazz clubs, and lost VHS tape with the guiding hand of Yado Tasu’s distinct brand of kitchen-sink bedroom-funk. Imagine a soundtrack Richie Unterberger might dream up for his conversation pit and you’re almost there. More than just record-collector music, Yado Tasu – Hotel 10KM is the grogg…
Tense from the first note and decisively uncompromising ‘GHSTING’ is the debut collaboration by Polish artists Alex Freiheit and Aleksandra Słyż, an incredibly unique piece of work that mixes fiction, spoken word poetry, theatrical antics, dense synthesis, acoustic ensemble and dark landscapes all set within the backdrop of a sinister Eastern Europe hotel. The resulting sound is menacing, humorous, harmonious, tumultuous, and at times quietly erotic. Alex Freiheit, a poet and vocalist, is widely…
*100 copies limited edition* "The pedal steel is an oddity among instruments. Invented in the early 1950s, it soon became a standard bearer for American country-western music. It is an instrument with enormous potential, which has been tied at the hip, even among its best players, to country music with little tolerance for innovation. Among the very few who stretch themusical and artistic boundaries of this difficult-to-play instrument is the British pedal steel guitarist Gary Peters whose new a…
Nippon Cultural Broadcasting (= Bunka Hōsō) is known for airing Toshiro Mayuzumi’s composition for “Works for musique concrète X.Y.Z.” the very first Japanese work of musique concrète. Now, for the first time, the long-lost broadcast recordings produced by the director of that era are being released! These include a piece by Yori-aki Matsudaira's father, Yoritsune Matsudaira, created by repeatedly dubbing instrumental material, as well as an experimental work unique to Bunka Hōsō, produced throu…
Vocalized electronics & intellectual kicks. Cervicals are shaking, neurons are chatting. Hello and thank you experimental France. The Americans envy us for having them. Decadent improvisations & raw virtuosity since 2006. 1803 concerts to their credit. 732,715 kilometers of road covered. A buttock forever and ever in the underground charts. Another one shamelessly coveting the MTV Music Award 2037. That's all, yeah.France Sauvage was banned from playing even before starting in the basement of th…
Ignacio Cordoba, an improviser and composer from Madrid based in Copenhagen, and Agata Ciurkot, a Polish pianist, improviser and composer residing in Berlin, first met in the fall of 2017 at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen. Both navigating across jazz, free-improv, and contemporary composition, Agata was drawn to Ignacio's mastery of the sound produced by his machines and effects. In the summer of 2018, Ignacio travelled to Berlin to visit Agata, and they recorded “Ethereal, Basal”…
New tape from Michael Mørkholt, made during his winter residency at Polychrome. "Naturspil, Automatmusik, Syngeskål". The pieces are performed on an acoustic singing bowl and a self-invented digital system, an electroacoustic composition principle for triads and rhythm in pure atmosphere. The principle is that the tonal relationships are mirrored in the rhythmic. A computer program with an amplitude-controlled trigger records a sound clip each time the singing bowl is struck. The sound clip is d…
Funeral Danceparty began in 1979 in Newcastle. Their debut cassette, The Curiosity Shop (1980), was advertised in the national weekly music paper Sounds in the established DIY fashion of the era: interested parties were requested to send a blank cassette and a self-addressed envelope. Approximately 100 copies reached destinations worldwide. A national fanzine review compared the music to Cabaret Voltaire, Faust, and The Residents. Their second cassette, The Attractions of Fixed Interest, was als…
The Kiyosato Museum of Contemporary Art was located in Kiyosato, Yamanashi prefecture from 1990 to 2014. It was a private art museum with a permanent exhibit based on a collection of unrivalled scale. The museum also collected and mounted exhibitions on the work of radical contemporary composers, including John Cage. The museum’s primary informant on music was sound designer Yutaka Hirose, one of the pioneers of Japan’s environmental music (kankyō ongaku) movement in the 1980s. In 1992, the muse…
*In process of stocking* Mauricio Takara and Carla Boregas have long been key players in the experimental and underground music scene in São Paulo, Brazil and have recently relocated in Berlin. Grande Massa D'Agua (Great Body of Water) is their second album as a duo and it sees them continue to explore themes related to water as they dive into uncharted musical depths. In discussing the duo's relationship with water, Mauricio said: “...In the beginning of the pandemic we decided to take a turn a…
"Garden Variety" explores interdependence and intimacy through the emergent behavior of percussion instruments. Inspired by Anne Carson’s concept of Eros, the series blurs sonic identities, creating a composite instrument from motion. Amplification invites listeners into a tactile, resonant sound world.
How To Unravel is about how we might fall apart, and how we find the ways to come back together again. The first half follows all of the paths that lead in circles, the tangled yarn that never finds the end. But it holds on. It’s stronger than you think. The second half is how we untangle and get made whole. Some of the recordings were done live at Half Moon Studios in Toronto, while others were done remotely and shared, then crafted carefully to find their ways together. The album brings togeth…
*300 copies limited edition* Drawing from field recordings collected during a trip to Japan, boring tables saturates sonic vignettes in sentimental key, replaying familiar traces of lived experience into something more abstract. The seven tracks on mathematical model 0010, Luca Quartarone's debut album, trail through evolving tonal expanses that envelop the environment in a perpetually expanding haze of serenity. Though sonic fragments hail from the everyday, the compositions themselves inevitab…
With centuries of history, traditional instruments carry physical vibrations shaped by human breath and touch. In contrast, electronic music generates vibrations through inorganic principles such as electrical signals and circuits. When the subtle tremors of traditional instruments resonate with the intricate tones of electronic sounds in an improvised dialogue, performers from distinct realms expand each other’s languages, creating a new sensory experience.
The project album Ancient Moment mar…
On Sielun Kuilu, Abysse Des Âmes distil their dark noir avantgarde into an even thicker, slow‑moving venom: electro‑acoustic shards and brittle surfaces drift in a black ether where every gesture feels weighted and terminal.
'Relativity/Only' is Clinton Green's clearest refinement of the dutiful and curious work he has cultivated over several years in recording his gently automated percussion experiments. Green conjures a celestial zoom view of a very private cosmos, using turntables as a source of movement and various static or suspended instruments and repurposed objects, captured in a softly endless world of binaural ambience. Unable to repeat a single step or rhythm given the mostly hands off methods Green emplo…
This is my ode to corn in 3 parts, all featuring corn as corn himself. There are 6 pieces composed for 7 handmade instruments, made entirely out of different parts of corn, with some thread and wood glue as well. There is a cornfield recording, taken on a day they were harvesting just under a mile or so away. And there is a musique concrete type of piece featuring field recordings and the instruments.
This album was made during my residency at Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska, surrounded by infin…
Textures of belonging, relentlessly woven into the epigenetics, layer upon layer, building palimpsests of human existence that are both fragile and resilient, with nothing but a wobbly strand of DNA. The way our grandparents' experiences spill across our systems, the way their grandparents’ experiences formed them in the first place, like a busy cityscape humming in the background, keeping the flow, making things operate, and despite their physical peril, hearts still flicker and divulge poetry …
***80 copies*** The inspiration for this work came out of a tragic loss. I felt an overwhelming pull to create these two pieces following the sudden death of my father-in-law. In the tradition of the form of Zen Buddhism that I practice there is a ritual that is performed for 49 days following the death of a loved one. During this period the grieving chant the name of Ji-Jang Bosal, “the bodhisattva of transitions,” everyday for an extended time during meditation. The Buddhist mythology of this…
Recorded during a residency in Tenerife powered by Keroxen Festival and Discrepant back in 2020 - amidst the pandemic, no less -, the duo of Carlos Godinho and Mestre André return after their 'Mãe D'Água' debut on Sucata Tapes and an entry on Keroxen's Aquapelago Series through a split with tropical druids Lagoss. Mostly captured in performance through a quadraphonic system placed inside a huge disused fuel tank, with a few tracks recorded out in the open throughout the island, 'Lava Love' evoke…
Berlin-based British composer, percussionist, and instrument maker Bex Burch was invited to spend a month in the US by International Anthem in Summer 2022. Burch immersed herself in the label's creative community and listened to what it gave her, making field recordings and allowing There Is Only Love and Fear to emerge from the collaborations and environments she encountered. Sessions for the album spanned multiple non-traditional recording spaces including a storefront in Bridgeport, Chicago a…
Composed by Takahiro Kawaguchi. Performed by Shinjiro Yamaguchi, Satoshi Kanda, Kanako Kawaguchi and Takahiro Kawaguchi. Droplets of water are set to drip from three infusion containers suspended from the ceiling, each at a different speed. Each of the three players produce sound by rubbing with their fingers a wine glass that catches the droplets from one of the containers, with the scale changing according to the amount of water that accumulates. The first track documents this process for te…
Independent Television unspools as a delirious, inside-out broadcast from the suburbs of perception. Arek Gulbenkoglu and Matthew Revert orchestrate a hall-of-mirrors soundtrack where the casual and the uncanny trade places, inviting listeners to attune themselves to the mutable psychic frequencies flickering just beyond the edge of comprehension.
** Edition of 300 ** I met Sugai Ken a few years ago in Tokyo, outside the Dommune radio studios. His personality and music, a very special brand, touched me. His music is a coded vision of a dream world. A trade that is progressive yet traditional - in the most positive sense of the word. Recently out of the blue, Sugai San sent me a collection of personal field recordings he made of folklore groups and public performances in Tokyo, Toyama, Kanagawa, Kyoto, Tottori, … The close listener already…
Born in Tokyo, 1978. Lives and works in Kanagawa. Takashi Makino graduated from Cinematography / Sound Recording course at Department of Cinema at Nihon University College of Art, Japan in 2001 and he studied about film, lighting, and music under Quay Brothers at Atelier Koninck QBFZ in London in 2001. Makino gained his skills relating to film and videos while he was undertaking coloration as a Colorist on various filmography, CF, and music videos from 2001 to 2011. He has been started screening…
""A Synonym for Repetition" weaves together a tapestry of parallels, all intricately linked to Japan. The project initiates with a collaboration with a Tokyo-based musician, which ultimately fails to materialise during Jason Kolar’s recent visit to the country. From an original approach that has to mutate in its starting phase, the record was conceived from the beginning to embody a sincere homage to Ryuichi Sakamoto, also a Tokyo native. Shaping ideas within the context of a city with a vibrant…
Austere and uncanny, Old Tales Retold finds Yan Jun and Taku Unami delving into narrative fragmentation and acoustic twilight, constructing an album that feels less like a recounting and more like listening in on the pulse of folklore as it dissolves. Sonic atmosphere fractures as much as it reveals, leaving the listener suspended between recollection and anticipation.
*50 copies limited edition* Franz Kirmann returns to Bytes for his eighth solo album, available exclusively on Bandcamp from October 29 on cassette and download (released on all platforms on November 5). The “Almadies” are long wooden boats used by Senegalese fishermen. It is also the name of the neighborhood where Franz grew up, in the suburbs of Dakar near the Atlantic Ocean.
"These new compositions are the result of sound experiments conducted over the past few months and reflections on the c…
*150 copies limitede edition* Originally released on Umor Rex on cassette a year ago, “El Sol de los Muertos” deeply shaped the evolution and vision of Mexican producer Concepción Huerta’s sonic work, becoming a reference point for a kind of experimental sound deeply connected to Latin American critical thought. This is the second album in a series of four special, limited reissues to be released in 2026 to mark the 20th anniversary of Umor Rex.
Crafted entirely through subharmonic structures an…
Tip! An essential repress of the monumental 2020 album. Finomehanika was Rijeka-based Robert Merlak's first solo release in two decades since "Albumski" on pioneering avant-garde techno label Phthalo which put him on the map next to fellow artists as diverse as Dntel, Daedelus and James 'V/Vm' Kirby.
Merging piano and field recordings, Merlak moves between musique concrete, ambient, and neo classical, crafting great layers of depth and ambience combining the frayed melancholia of Vladislav Delay…
Reveries is Zach Frizzell, Marc Ertel and Damien Duque’s first album for over three years, and follows the success of their debut Liberamente. Together, the trio craft delicately textured and slowly unfurling sonic vistas, occupying a unique aural domain that lies between guitar-driven drone music and modern classical compositions. With their individual projects they are incredibly prolific, but Dawn Chorus releases are few and far between and Reveries represents a refined evolution, leaning mor…
'Journey Test' is composer and pianist Tristan Eckerson's first album under the moniker of Purple Decades, his new ambient project. While his past work has focused largely on solo piano, Purple Decades is an exploration into soundscapes, electronic textures, and hypnotic musical environments. While many tracks on the album still feature piano or keyboards in some form, the compositional approach is accompanied by extensive work with reverb, foley, and orchestral electronic arrangements, and some…
2024 stock. Hardcover. Since the 1970s, California-based bioacoustician and musician Bernie Krause (born 1938) has recorded more than 5,000 hours of natural habitats, including at least 15,000 terrestrial and marine species from all around the world. At once poetic and scientific, this sound archive reveals the musical harmony and orchestral organization of animal vocalizations. It also reveals that the great animal orchestra, increasingly threatened by human activities, now risks being reduced …
*2025 stock* Astro-Darien is a 26-minute sonic fiction about the break-up of Britain narrated by synthetic Scottish voices and framed as an eponymous video game. It is the 2nd vinyl release on Hyperdub’s sub-label Flatlines and its dark green 10” comes packaged in a triple gatefold sleeve, with artwork by Kode9’s long time collaborators Lawrence Lek & Optigram. Whereas the first release on the label, Mark Fisher and Justin Barton’s ‘On Vanishing Land’, wove an audio essay around a walk along t…
Krope is a six-part conceptual album by Belarusian sound artist and producer Anton Anishchanka. Rooted in archival folk songs recorded between the 1960s and 2000s, it transforms fragile voices of the past into living, cinematic sound worlds. Created in collaboration with ethnographer Iryna Vasilyeva, the album weaves Belarusian traditional music with field recordings, acoustic instruments, and analog synthesizers — an immersive journey where memory, landscape, and resilience converge.
Flowing as…
Hanu Hansa is the nomme de guerre of TJ Blake, a visual artist and musician based in Atlanta, Georgia. Known for his work in various mediums, he is perhaps best associated as a member of Lotus Plaza (Kranky) and Lyonnais (Geographic North, Hoss). Sonically, his music explores the intersection of ambient and electronic modes, often drawing inspiration from the contemplative nature of his visual work. Sonically, his music explores the intersection of ambient and electronic modes, often drawing ins…
'Cupar Grain Silo' is Sam Annand's first release on the Blackford Hill label. Its nine tracks blur the lines between ambient electronica and sonic history, as synthesised melodies and rhythms reverberate through the extreme acoustics of the disused Cupar Grain Silo in Scotland. Built in 1964 as a sugar store, the silo towers 60 metres above the surrounding Fife countryside. Its industrial life was short: in 1971 it was closed, and barring a short period as a grain store, remained empty for decad…
*2022 stock. In process of stocking.* Formerly a musician, cinematographer and lighting designer with The Residents and a student of "Blue" Gene Tyranny, Philip Perkins issued this astounding release on his own Fun Music label in 1983.
Perkins often worked in topographical realms, crafting environment-enriching soundscapes, albeit on a micro level. Taking cues from minimalism, environmental field recordings and home-baked ceremonial mantras, King Of The World is a meditation on the lives of thre…
The Hemphill Stringtet:
Curtis Stewart - violinSam Bardfeld - violinStephanie Griffin - violaTomeka Reid - cello
All music by Julius Hemphill (Subito Music Corporation).Recorded, edited, and mixed by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio.Mastered by Paul Zinman, Soundbyte Productions.Cover photography by Nina Contini Melis.Artwork + design by TJ Huff (huffart.com).
The Hemphill Stringtet would like to thank the Aaron Copland Fund and Continuum Culture for their generous financial support.
We would also …