Best sellers
This Is Trick Step
It’s almost here! Genius UK improviser Pat Thomas is about to debut his first-ever 577 Records solo album – and abstract hip hop has never sounded so good! The much-anticipated ten-track This is Trick Step flawlessly showcases the artist’s distinguished approach to modern music. It immerses us in an almost 3D listening experience that creatively melds texture, depth, and mental stimulation.
“Imagine an Alternative Universe where JDilla and Morton Feldman collaborate: this is the result,” Pat …
Smile
Tip! *Japan import with Obi Strip* In 1967, drummer Takeo Moriyama joined pianist Yosuke Yamashita’s group, later forming a legendary trio together with saxophonist Seiichi Nakamura in 1969. This group consisting of Moriyama, Yamashita, and Nakamura became known worldwide as one of Japan's leading free jazz combos. Moriyama left the group in 1975 and later returned to the scene in 1977 with the Flush Up live album, where he evolved and deepened his musicality in a more melodic and rhythmic direc…
Spectres #05 – Diffusion
The fifth issue of the annual publication dedicated to sound and music experimentation, co-published by Shelter Press and Ina GRM – Groupe de Recherches Musicales, on the theme of diffusion and dissemination.
Synths, Sax & Situationists: The French Musical Underground 1968-1978 (Book)
530 pages! While music fans worldwide celebrate Germany's Krautrock revolution, the equally radical French underground scene has remained largely hidden from view. Ian Thompson's groundbreaking Synths, Sax & Situationists finally illuminates this extraordinary movement that emerged from the revolutionary ferment of May 1968, revealing a generation of musicians who produced some of the most distinctive and vital experimental music of the entire decade.
At the dawn of the 1970s, French musicians …
Upper Air Observation
2025 stock 1992 release. Flutist Barbara Held presents works by Alvin Lucier, Nils Vigeland, and Yasunao Tone and a composition of her own. Known for her collaborations with composers, Held has beautifully chosen and performed this wide-ranging sampling of contemporary musical styles. Vara features Joseph Kubera on piano.
Alvin Lucier: Navigations
“It is not enough just to play the right notes at the right time in the right way; one must also have the right consciousness. It places the performer in the role of explorer of the interior in order to produce, and being still in order to be active.” — Pauline Oliveros "These words, spoken by Pauline Oliveros, remind us of how fundamental an influence Alvin Lucier has had on the development of new music and its interpretation; they remind us of our role as explorers of sound, and of the irresis…
Further Beyond
"The history and culture of improvised music have been shaped by manifold concepts of freedom, but one in particular explains Amado’s aesthetic. It is his reference to Sam Rivers’ declaration: “Freedom does not mean unconditional renunciation of melody and rhythm, but the freedom to choose what I want to play.” It was this freedom to that led Rivers to punctuate his epic trio sets with grooves and essays on perennials like “Wheatleigh Hall.” Rivers also eschewed the labeling of his music as impr…
Moondog
*2024 stock* Debut album, originally released in 1956. The blind Kansas native showcases his talent for the minimal & avant-garde here, w/ compositions driven by percussion & Japanese-inspired melodies, complimented by street sounds, recitations, & animal noises. Bizarre even for today's standards, it's a wonder this was released over a half-century ago.
Ritual of Light
"Ritual of Light" is the first full length from Descending Pharaohs. Recorded in mid-2022, it marks the band in its first year as a trio with a sound that is mainly implemented by the conventions of guitar, bass, and drums and enhanced by rich textures created by Turkish saz-baglama, greek tzoura, and oud as well as drone-driven electronics. Their influences run deep in the realms of 70s electric Arabic/Anatolian, spiritual jazz, and krautrock, but they project these influences towards a modern …
FRKWYS Vol. 18: Extended Field
FRKWYS Vol. 18: Extended Field witnesses Horse Lords and Arnold Dreyblatt in deep collaboration, melting minimal composition and polyrhythmic invention into a sprawling sound experiment. The album pulses and stretches, dissolving genre boundaries and conjuring a space where tradition is not static, but ever-evolving.
The Kallikatsou Recordings
*Warehouse found* 180g vinyl, 2024 repress - digital download included "I’ve never met Rod Modell (Deepchord) in person, but we have met through music. He found an obscure cassette of Chi music (from ’86), sent it to Astral Industries and paved the way for the release (30 years later) of ‘The Original Recordings’ in 2016. Since then, we’ve exchanged ideas and good music. I sent Rod a preview of ‘The Kallikatsou Recordings’ - he really liked it - and here came the idea for a remix of ‘Lanterns’. …
Extension Red, White & Blue
1985 super rare tape, original copies ** The legendary ICP Orchestra (Instant Composers Pool) pushes sonic boundaries with their super rare tape-only release, Extension Red, White & Blue. A vibrant fusion of free jazz, avant-garde experimentation, and razor-sharp improvisation, this album captures the ensemble’s signature irreverence and mastery in a format as raw and immediate as their live performances. Extension Red, White & Blue is a riot of color and sound—a testament to ICP’s half-century …
Cardamom & Laudanum
Tip! Emerging from a thick spiralling haze, is the debut album from Mystic AM - a new project from Rod Modell and label founder Ario Farahani. Conceived as an immersive fictional soundtrack piece, the release tells the story of a traveller, some centuries ago, and the rather intense metaphysical experience he unexpectedly stumbles into whilst taking shelter on a hot desert night at Zein-o-Din Caravanserai, near Yazd in Persia. Dusk envelopes the vast barren landscape as the protagonist enters th…
Crookt, Crackt Or Fly
Drag City is proud to announce the reissue of “Crookt, Crackt, or Fly,” the groundbreaking album by avant-garde duo Gastr del Sol. Originally released in 1994, this record stands as a landmark in experimental and post-rock music, now remastered and available once again for a new generation of listeners.
Formed by David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, Gastr del Sol emerged from the fertile Chicago music scene of the early 1990s, pushing the boundaries of rock, folk, and modern composition. “Crookt, Crac…
Flak
**Edition of 400** 'Flak' is an excellent 10" release offering two diverse pieces. Side A is a heavy, densely layered drone piece comprised of harsh, grating sounds all over the sound field, but sliding from start to finish with remarkable constancy. It's a truly beautiful noise, rather like some of David Jackman's earlier work as Organum. Side B is a field recording, untreated, unfiltered, recorded outdoors, with a great hiss that is very much present in the mix. This second track seems to comm…
The Serpentine Similar
The Serpentine Similar, the seminal debut studio album from American experimental rock innovators Gastr del Sol, is now available on Drag City. Originally released in 1993 by TeenBeat Records and reissued by Drag City in 1997, this album marks a pivotal moment in experimental and post-rock music. Formed from the ashes of the post-hardcore band Bastro, Gastr del Sol features guitarist David Grubbs, bassist Bundy K. Brown, and additional percussion by John McEntire. Recorded in Chicago’s Experimen…
VEIL + e/tape remix (Gems Under the Horizon 3)
Multidisciplinary Brussels-based artist Sagat steps up with a new mini album on the Basic Moves side label, Gems Under The Horizon, featuring a remix by Slovenian ambient bird e/tape. A few years ago, Wiet Lengeler, aka Sagat was invited by Basic Moves to create a live visual show using an analogue video synth setup to accompany a 5-hour dj set by e/tape at Face B in Brussels. From that moment on, the synchronicity between the two artists was clear - and this EP is the result.
Besides his visua…
Clouds
Composed between 1972 and 1976, Clouds marks one of Lars-Gunnar Bodin’s most fully realized attempts to fuse electronic music, vocal writing, and visual dramaturgy into a single, inseparable organism. Often described as a pioneer of Nordic electronic and text-sound art, Bodin approaches this piece less as a “work for tape” and more as an advanced form of musical drama: three women singers, three dancers, eight-channel electronics, and slide and film projections all occupy the same conceptual pla…
Floral Shoppe
*2022 stock.* "[...] By no conventional logic should Floral Shoppe have made it beyond the deep-internet realms it emerged from. But like candy-colored mold, its power has rapidly spread while its then-teenage creator Ramona Xavier, the Portland artist now known as Vektroid, has remained an elusive figure, simultaneously a pioneer and an outlier. Her album remains one-of-a-kind in its depiction of anxiety and crisis rendered through waves of numbness that range from deeply unsettling to artifici…
Gagaku Suites
Tip! Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century.
The recordings partly reflect …