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Documentary recordings of Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta’s November and December 1976 tour of the Middle East and East Asia. Geerken is known for his long relationship with Sun Ra (including compiling a discography), but he wears many other hats too: musician, film-maker, archivist. Ranta is a percussionist best known for his famous “Improvisation Sep.1975” collaborative record with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi. This is a CD reissue of an LP boxset, originally released in 2010 as the …

In the ever-expanding constellation of transnational electroacoustic collaboration, Marja Ahti and Manja Ristić present Transference, a profound investigation into the movement and transformation of energy between distant practices and places, arriving August 8, 2025 via Erstwhile Records. Transference emerges as what the artists describe as "a dialogue of sonic gestures and traces of visits to places and the spirit that occupies them." This collaboration transcends geographical boundaries to cr…

Tombstones is a collection of twenty songs composed by American composer Michael Pisaro-Liu between 2006 and 2010, journeying into experimental pop with pieces that are "experimental or indeterminate but still a song". This disc features eleven songs under the artistic direction of the Lille-based pianist Barbara Dang. Dang and six members of the Muzzix collective (Yoann Bellefont, Ivann Cruz, Raphaël Godeau, Peter Orins, Christian Pruvost, Maryline Pruvost) recorded the pieces in June 2020, wit…

This was the 10 PM set on 9/11/11, and makes for a perfect pair with the Rowe solo - two very different extremes. Where the Rowe set is in your face visceral, Unami and Malfatti created a gentle atmosphere within the pitch-black room (lit solely by Unami's visuals) and an overarching cumulative feeling in the listener. The too-perfect-to-be-scripted intro and outro frame a set that's almost not there, a radical recording even by ultra-minimal standards

Something very cool about erstaeu 002's existing in such a different world than its numeric predecessor (and 003 is altogether different as well). After the sublime compressive intensity of "Dystonia Duos", "Sinter" injects vast amounts of oxygen into the room, air swirling and echoing in huge spaces, light shimmering and hazy. In metallurgical terms, sintering is the making of objects from powder and "powdery", especially with a metallic connotation, isn't the worst term you could use for much …

'Throughout their careers, both Annette krebs and taku unami have explored the areas between composition and improvisation, innovation and repetition, music and ambient sound. On motubachii, their distinctive styles come together to form a whole that is monolithic yet widely varied, simple yet impossible to fully grasp. Annette krebs studied music and concert guitar in Frankfurt-Main, and has lived in Berlin since 1993. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between improvisation and c…

ErstLive 003 is from the duo of Burkhard Stangl and Christof Kurzmann, titled 'schnee_live', the final show on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. Stangl and Kurzmann began working as a duo in late 1999, releasing Schnee in 2000, and playing numerous concerts over the past four years throughout Europe, the US, and Asia. schnee_live documents how much their duo has changed since the initial recording of Schnee, which was the first time they ever played together as a duo.

Ever since Otomo got into his minimal misuse of stereo equipment phase, a collaboration with Swiss toaster torturers Voice Crack was on the cards. Although Otomo's refraction of high end sinewaves around cranial interiors may not seem like an ideal partner for Norbert Mšslang and Andy Guhl's usual industrial clang, attempts have obviously been made to find a common ground. There's an intense focus upon the fine detail of the unfolding electronic fields, with the Swiss duo providing a constantly …

Over the past decade, Swiss-based Günter Müller has collaborated with many of the most prominent Tokyo-based musicians, recording CDs with Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Masahiko Okura, and Toshimaru Nakamura. Points and Slashes is the latest of these, a duo collaboration with guitar wizard Tetuzi Akiyama.It's impossible to pin down Akiyama, a musician of diverse interests and activities, with a brief description. He has been playing electric guitar since he was 13, and formed his fi…

Mark Wastell and Matt Davis met and first played together in a workshop led by Eddie Prévost in London during the spring of 1996. Soon after, Wastell was invited to join Chris Burn's Ensemble, in which he played with Phil Durrant for the first time. Subsequently, Phil and Mark worked together in the quartets Assumed Possibilities and Quatuor Accorde, documented on Rossbin and Emanem CDs, respectively. The debut trio concert by Davis/Durrant/Wastell took longer to organise than any of the partici…

That said, "Weather Sky" is another thing altogether. Bruno Meillier invited Toshi to play a duo concert in St Etienne with AMM's no-concessions table guitar master Keith Rowe, and took them into the studio the day after to record for Erstwhile. Sensitivity to pitch is less important here (Rowe, remember, hasn't tuned his guitar since the early 1960s): the album's three tracks are real slow-burners. Rowe can be agile and aggressive when he wants to, but his preferred working method is to lay dow…

The five tracks on neuschnee form an ambitious meta-song suite, with the various lyrics and musical styles combining to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The design is again from Berlin designer Marion Gerth, previously responsible for The Magic ID-till my breath gives out on ErstPop. The front cover juxtaposes a satellite picture of snow with the Mao Zedong poem 'Snow', which the musicians discovered in a book bought while on tour in Beijing. "After a long phase of experimental…

Sachiko M and Ami Yoshida, both from Tokyo, met in 1997 and formed the duo of Cosmos the following year. Sachiko M has developed a unique style utilizing a memory-free sampler, creating pure, piercing sine waves with the device's built-in test tones and noise. She has also recently begun exploring the use of contact microphones, as documented on the second track of Tears. Sachiko has worked extensively as a solo artist, in groups such as Filament, I.S.O., and Hoahio, and in duo with Toshimaru Na…

"The first word that came to mind on playing Extracts was understatement, with an almost oriental minimalism and profundity on display. At times I was forced to check whether sounds were coming from the speakers or from outside. However, this is a far cry from the Radu Malfatti school of implied music since it is very much about close group interplay. Simon H. Fell's sonorous bass is of particular note, underpinning, colouring and giving the proceedings a kind of still, stately authority. Likewi…

Don Cherry's downtown Paris funk masterwork Home Boy, Sister Out, produced in 1985 by Ramuntcho Matta and originally released by Barclay in France only, finally gets a worldwide release on Wewantsounds. Featuring French post-punk muse Elli Medeiros, avant-garde poet Brion Gysin, and cult Senegalese drummer Abdoulaye Prosper Niang (Xalam), this is a unique soundbite of Paris in the early '80s at its coolest when funk, jazz, and new wave were mingling with sounds from Africa, Jamaica, and Latin Am…

splendid double CD set documenting César Bolaños - one of the leading artists of the Latin American avant-garde of the mid 20th century -  amazing early electronic work. The recordings bring together for the first time a definitive edition of his work on a double CD, the music have been digitalised directly from the original tapes and really have a fabulous clarity. So much music these days is labelled as experimental but I often I ask myself if it's creators are genuinely experimenting. That ce…

This CD is pure aural pleasure. The Santur sounds (something) like a Chinese chen (or perhaps a Korean Kay-a-gum), but it has (a bit) more body. Kupper composes with high merit, leading the listener on a trek that won't soon be forgotten. You must be focussed on LISTENING, or you'll religate it (incorrectly) to the "background" stack...Leo Kupper was born in Belgium in 1935. He worked with He…

Both pieces are intended to aid the listener in times of spiritual change, but are just fine for 'everyday' use as well. Highly recommended." Charles S. Russell, Ear Magazine The two works on this cd - Tara's Room and The Beauty of Sorrow were composed and performed by Pauline Oliveros and recorded in May 1987. Previously only available as a cassette and long out of print." (Deep Listening) "The beauty of sorrow" was played by the composer on a small accordion tuned in just intonation and using …

The long awaited soundtrack of the Ghostdance music and dance collaboration between Oliveros and Paula Josa-Jones, commissioned by Lincoln Center Out-of -Doors. "The Gkostdance collaboration with choreographer Paula Josa Jones began in Monterrey Mexico supported in turn by two month US/Mexico Exchange Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and FONCA. Together with our host—composer/ ethnomusicologist Arturo Salinas—we attended El Dia de los muertos in Chalco to help inform our work…

Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing career that includes long and established collaborations with figures of the likes of Steve Lacy, Charlie Haden, Mal Waldron and Paul Bley. This session, recorded in Paris at the Ramèse Studio Du Village in 1979, sees an explosive collaboration by the t…