Best sellers
Great Star Theater, San Francisco
Joëlle Léandre and Lauren Newton have been performing together for nearly 30 years, having met in the mid-1990s in Paris. Throughout that time, they have always favored exploring the textures of music that are not arranged conventionally but rather are scattered, diffused, and dispersed through layers of sound. The voice’s high notes forge a variety of color fragments, while the low notes of the double bass create substance and depth. These two components remain inseparable as the sound settles …
Luminous
Two giants of improvised music Barry Guy and Gerry Hemingway joining pianist/composer Simon Nabatov, for a concert recorded live in Loft, Cologne, Germany on 30-31st October. Simon Nabatov - piano, Barry Guy - double bass Gerry Hemingway - drums, marimba
Boston Tenor Index
CD Edition. Alga Marghen returns with what might just be their most historically significant release to date, “Boston Tenor Index”, comprising three, never before released compositions - “Index”, from 1969; and “Tenor” and “Boston III”, both from 1972 - by Phill Niblock, that represent some the earliest works in his catalogue to have ever appeared. Truly stunning in audio terms, and an absolute revelation toward understanding how Niblock arrived where he did a few short years down the road, it’s…
The Magic Of Ju-Ju
Opening with the 18+ minute track of the same name, Archie Shepp’s ‘The Magic of Ju-Ju’ takes on a fevered pace as the centrepiece of this date from 1968. Shepp lets loose from the beginning as he’s joined by Beaver Harris, Norman Connor, Ed Blackwell, Frank Charles and Dennis Charles, all on percussion. The initial pace never dissipates throughout the title-track’s run. The additional tracks on Magic of Ju-Ju are a departure from the first, sitting more in a traditional realm. The album is a va…
Echos Pastoraux
Beautiful new album by Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luyk (with Daisuke Suzuki on percussions and Ian Middleton on "accidental sounds"). Andrew Chalk is one of the most appreciate musician in this category floating between drone and ambient music, and his meeting with Timo Van Luijk has created an amazing disc, able to emphasize the slow, limited gestures, movements elegiac elegance, but still so heavily controlled. Each faint seems to have a gesture meaning. Here you can hear a flute (connected to …
Third Ear Band
For many bands, having all their gear stolen would be catastrophic. For Third Ear Band, this unfortunate 1968 incident opened a portal to beneficial change that would ultimately define one of British experimental music's most singular statements. Now, Antarctica Starts Here presents the first-time vinyl reissue of the group's self-titled 1970 sophomore album - often called Elements due to its elemental track titles - complete with new liner notes by Dave Segal that illuminate this remarkable cha…
The Blue Hour
Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht.
Father, Son And Holy Ghosts
*Edition with 44 pages booklet. In process of stocking* This album is a bit difficult to pigeonhole, as most of the early Embryo work is. The opening number sounds if anything, like an outtake from Miles Davis' Jack Johnson soundtrack, but with lead guitar sound more prominant. Then, gears are switched, and you are listening to acoustic folk guitar and sitar, which melts into a cool ostenato riff flanging around, that just builds and builds, with countermelody on Violin (or Veena?) and guitar we…
The Harmonic Series Volume 2
A collection of long-form works in just intonation by Kali Malone, Duane Pitre, Catherine Lamb, Tashi Wada, Byron Westbrook, and Caterina Barbieri. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu
Seeds
This long-awaited LP reissue of a European jazz treasure released in 1969 and led by multi-reedist Sahib Shihab!
Bedlam
The English blues revival played a crucial role in shaping a new generation of performers and spawning diverse sub-genres. Emerging from this movement, the hard rock revolution ignited with the powerful riffs of Cream and their contemporaries, paving the way for a fresh wave known as the “British invasion.”
Among the impactful yet brief contributors to this era was Bedlam, a four-piece band that released a single studio album in 1973. At the heart of the band was the formidable drummer Cozy Powe…
Give the Vibes Some
Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal's 1974 Palm masterpiece receives its first proper reissue. Recorded during Parisian exile, this exploratory album showcases revolutionary vibraphone techniques across four essential tracks - a crucial document of jazz's global underground network.
Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello
Tip! "Feldman's last composition, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, was completed in 1987; although its instrumentation largely corresponds to that of Piano and String Quartet, with one instead of two violins, it differs in almost every other respect from the composition written only two years earlier, for here, in contrast to Piano and String Quartet, Feldman makes every effort to integrate the piano into the string section, and the basic formal components of the composition are no longer staves, as…
Jebel Tariq
Jebel Tariq has strong hand drum beats throughout but still maintains a very moody feel. It was undoubtedly these very elements that lead Jeremy Keens to state it was"balanced between the ambient and beat sides" of Bryn's work. It goes beyond just these elements though. There are whispered voices changing to strong ululations, frequent flute"samples" and then the bass. There are parts where the deep throb of the electric bass element gives a very dub feel and then there is the use of acoustic ba…
Love is Here - The Complete Paris 1975 ORTF Recordings
Biggest Tip! Limited edition 2-CD Digipak. Includes a 12-page booklet with rare photos from the actual performance by Christian Rose, and an exclusive essay by longtime Down Beat contributorKevin Whitehead. Transcendence Sounds - the groundbreaking new archival imprint from Elemental Music - makes its stunning debut with the complete, previously unreleased concert recording of spiritual jazz titan Pharoah Sanders captured live at Paris's legendary Studio 104 on November 17th, 1975. This extraor…
Les Années 1967-1984
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* Metaphon is thrilled to present this collection of 14 phenomenal electronic and electro-acoustic works by French composer Fernand Vandenbogaerde, realized between 1967 and 1984. After his science studies Fernand Vandenbogaerde (1946) studied at the Conservatoire de Roubaix and did various classes and courses with a.o. Jean-Etienne Marie, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bruno Maderna. He wrote analyti…
Silent Movies
“Silent Movies is a gorgeous and insular detour for downtown guitar visionary Marc Ribot, a dude best known for frenetic Tzadik -endorsed aggro-jazz, wild excursions with Cuban music, atonal balloon-rubbing antics, and percussive ejaculations on any number of Tom Waits albums. The album is a meditative and sober hour of solo guitar work that ranges from gorgeous to foreboding, everything played with the meticulous unspooling of bittersweet black-and-white slapstick. Its 13 tracks were all compos…
Endless
First-generation American Primitive guitarist Richard Osborn studied with Robbie Basho in the late 60's. 40 years later, Osborn finally recorded, appearing on Tompkins Square's 'Beyond Berkeley Guitar' comp in 2010. 'Endless' is his first widely available solo guitar album. [Osborn has] an unhurried, quiet spirit of adventure, a love of ringing strings and slowly revelatory meditations on the natural world. - Acoustic Guitar Magazine "He's a student of mine and he's better technically t…
Winter Songs
A reissue of the brilliant second album by Art Bears, a band/project featuring Fred Frith, Chris Cutler and Dagmar Krause, formed in 1978 after disputes over the musical direction within Henry Cow. 'Winter Songs', originally released in 1979, placed Art Bears in the forefront of the Rock In Opposition Movement. Art Bears' intense and brutal avant-garde approach on the album comes across as primordial expression, which is nailed down by Krause's violently charismatic voice. As a piece of music re…
Diamanda Galás In Concert
CD is packaged with an 14x28 inch poster and eight page booklet with lyrics and translations. . Diamanda Galás In Concert is not simply a live album. With nothing but a piano and the full expressive range of her extraordinary voice, Diamanda Galás strips away the comforting patina of time, tradition and stylistic convention to expose and express the raw human emotion that is the living heart of a song. It explores an eclectic range of material; rembetika, soul, ranchera, country and free jazz, a…