Best sellers
Synthetic Water Music
"In the dream, people didn't need water any more. People's minds became computer chips made of stone." (August in the Water, dir. Sōgo Ishii, 1995) There is a pivotal scene in “August in the Water” where the surface of a pool turns into a stone wall. The water that gave the protagonist's life its meaning becomes a threat. As you fall through this stone wall, you appear in a set of underwater coral-reef corridors, and one of the most beautiful musical themes begins to play: Aquatic Ambience, comp…
Sub Re
Kassel Jaeger (aka François J. Bonnet) returns to Shelter Press after Swamps / Things, Shifted in Dreams, and the recent reissue of the classic Zauberberg, co-composed with Akira Rabelais and Stephan Mathieu. With this major new album, entitled Sub Re, Bonnet continues his long exploration of the musical possibilities of sound, extending the concrete approach developed at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, the historic and essential Parisian studio that Bonnet has been directing since 2018. Sub…
Mayday Royale
Remarkably, Tim Depraetere is releasing his debut solo LP only now. It feels like he’s been one of the strongholders of the Belgian underground for years. Which he is, really. We were introduced to his work when he was a member of Maan – the duo that only did one LP (on Kraak) and had a very strong live reputation. After that, he’s been around with, among others, Camargue, Tina, and as a collaborator with Annelies Monseré. And since a few years, also as Goldscammer. Thus far, Tim has released a …
Peace & Blessings
Nat Birchall goes back to the source. Not Coltrane this time, but the record that led him to Coltrane in the first place.
In 1973 a schoolboy in Lancashire ordered a triple LP from his local record shop after reading about it in Black Music magazine. It was Grounation, by Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari - hand drums, chanting, poetry, and the tenor saxophone of Cedric 'Im' Brooks, soulful and untamed, heard years before Birchall ever put on a John Coltrane record. When he finall…
23
*2026 stock* The final and complete anthology of Zos Kia recordings known under title 23 is now released on a limited vinyl set with different artwork and remastered specially for vinyl by Martin Bowes of Attrition at The Cage Studio. Zos Kia was formed by John Gosling (Mekon), John Balance (Coil) and Min – with guest Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle, Coil). Their one and only album, Transparent, was released on August 23rd 1983 by the now defunct Nekrophile label in Austria. The…
Mystical Obscurant
Across four decades, Andrew Chalk has built one of experimental music's most singular bodies of work. Mystical Obscurant gathers new recordings into a survey in miniature — drifting guitars, blurred keys, and loop-based vignettes sharing one unmistakable atmosphere: a subjunctive music of suggestion, where memory unfolds at its own pace.
Clay
*Limited Edition* Delve into the mesmerizing trio work of Japanese pianist Yosuke Yamashita, accompanied by the exceptional reed performances of Akira Sakata. This collaboration, a highlight in 70s Japanese jazz, epitomizes a robust avant-garde impulse. Drummer Takeo Moriyama adds a thoughtful and spacious dimension to the ensemble, navigating the dynamics adeptly. Sakata's clarinet produces searing sounds, and his alto saxophone exhibits formidable force. The album includes an extended renditio…
Open Air: The Complete Saxophone Quartet Compositions of Julius Hemphill
This recording brings together the forty known compositions for Saxophone Quartet by Julius Hemphill (1939-1995). These works were composed between 1978 and 1989 for performances with the World Saxophone Quartet. These compositions are, with the fewest of exceptions, written specifically “on” the saxophone quartet. He will at times set a piece written for his small-group ensembles onto the saxophone choir, but in the main, this music is created on and through the saxophones. He uses the saxopho…
The Hands of Grace
Touching homebuilt compositions from celebrated American novelist, playwright and poet Ishmael Reed, channelling a long life immersed in jazz culture. A joint in-house production from ANF and NYC-based label Reading Group.
You’re never too old to learn something new. Reed credits bebop with keeping him and his friends out of reform school because they were too busy listening to records at each other’s houses to get into trouble. Finding fame as a distinguished writer, he found his way back to…
Kino Variants 1967-1986
Continuing their longstanding explorations of unexpected and adventurous territories of sound, Von - the imprint run by filmmaker and sound artist Carlos Casas and cofounded with Nico Vascellari - is pleased to present Kino Variants 1967-1986, the first-ever collection to illuminate the vast body of work created by the Uzbek composer Rumil Vildanov during the second half of the 20th Century. Offering a rare glimpse of liberated creative spirit operating behind the Iron Curtain, this engrossing d…
Main Lines / 1967
In September, 1967, three of the primary ensembles of free music in Northern Europe gathered for a mini-festival on Radio Bremen: the Manfred Schoof Quintet, the Peter Brötzmann Quartet, and the Irène Schweizer Trio. Pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach appeared as part of the Manfred Schoof Quintet, but in these sets, which mixed the dozen members of the ensembles, as well as presenting them on their own, Schlippenbach in fact either led or was at the center of several groupings, presenting two …
What Is the Difference Between Stripping & Playing the Violin?
Miya Masaoka's orchestra, recorded live in San Francisco in 1995 and 1997 with George Lewis, Vijay Iyer, Trevor Dunn and others: strings, Asian winds, shamisen, electronics and turntables under her whole-body conduction.
Romance
The Portuguese percussionist turns drums and cymbals into generative sources: seven tracks of spectral tones, sub-bass rumble and warbly VHS tones, shaped by electronic manipulation and by the chromatic dissonance of Carlo Gesualdo.
Rumors of Noizu: Hijokaidan and the Road to 2nd Damascus
This is the real Japanese Noise bible.
Patience (After Sebald)
One of the most singular and quietly devastating works in The Caretaker's long catalogue. Out of print for over a decade, Patience (After Sebald) returns in a 2026 pressing on History Always Favours The Winners, limited to 500 copies.
Conceived by James Leyland Kirby as the score to Grant Gee's feature-length documentary of the same name, originally released in 2012, the album traces a path through the work and shadow of the German writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001), following the long coastal walk …
Distant Thunder
*2024 stock* The Yamashita Trio on tour in Germany in 1975 had a miraculous encounter with free improv genius Manfred Shcoof! This is a too hot live recording of the live performance with Yosuke Yamashita, Akira Sakata, Takeo Moriyama, and Manfred Schoof, who responded aggressively with their whole heart and soul!
Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds
From Lawrence English: "I like to think that sound haunts architecture. It's one of the truly magical interactions afforded by sound's immateriality. It's also something that has captivated us from the earliest times. It's not difficult to imagine the exhilaration of our early ancestors calling to one another in the dark cathedral like caves which held wonder, and security, for them. Today the ways in which sound occupies space, the so-called liquid architecture, holds just as much wonder, albei…
Sow Your Gold In The White Foliated Earth
Staggering, career-defining work from Norwegian vanguard Helge Sten (aka Deathprod), who drives relentlessly forward on this illuminating new tome, using Harry Partch's extremely rare metal and glass instruments to pen a major new work that’s been years in the making and somehow resets modern experimental mores. Truly one of the most exceptional, most unclassifiable albums we've heard in ages - one that does a rare thing of having immediate impact - only to further expand deeper into the psyche …
The ECM Recording
The three albums Reich made for ECM between 1978 and 1982, reissued as facsimile sleeves in a card box: Music for 18 Musicians, the Octet / Music for a Large Ensemble / Violin Phase LP, and Tehillim. Cut all-analogue from the original tapes.
Total Space
Cologne, Cornet Studios, January 1975. Rolf Kühn on clarinet with a band that reads like a German jazz roll call: his brother Joachim Kühn on piano and electric piano, Philip Catherine on guitar, Gerd Dudek on tenor and soprano, Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Bo Stief on bass, and two drummers, Daniel Humair and Kasper Winding.
Kühn chose not to record in the MPS studio in the Black Forest and brought in the engineer Wolfgang Hirschmann instead. In his own account, quoted in MPS's reissue note…