Infinito Nero / Le Voci Sottovetro
1999 release ** Both peculiar archaism and highest sensitivity characterize this quiet, while extremely tense sound landscapes of the Sicilian composer Salvatore Sciarrino.
Salvatore Sciarrino’s music-theatre piece Luci mie traditrici (Oh my deceitful eyes) was originally based upon the colourful life of the composer Carlo Gesualdo, but when he discovered that Schnittke was also busy on an opera on the same subject, Sciarrino changed track and eliminated all references to the great madrigalist i…
Spaces
'Spaces' is an ode to the joy of live performance. It expresses Frahm’s love for experimentation and answers the call from his fans for a record that truly reflects what they have witnessed during his concerts. Breaking the convention of a traditional live album, 'Spaces' was recorded over the course of two years in different locations and on various mediums, including old portable reel-to-reel recorders and cassette tape decks. The decision to select takes that have people coughing and cell pho…
Alina
It's unlikely that many will have missed the fact that ECM - an unparalleled home for groundbreaking music, whose catalog has predominantly been restricted to the CD format since the 1980s - has begun releasing stunning, beautifully produced audiophile vinyl pressings of a select number of their most in-demand releases. Among the most requested to receive this treatment, Arvo Pärt's 1999 full-length, Alina, has long topped their list. Finally, such a dream has come to be with its multiple render…
Midmeste
Australian composer-performers Judith Hamann and James Rushford have worked together in countless projects for two decades, perhaps most notably in Golden Fur, their trio with Sam Dunscombe. Black Truffle is pleased to announce Midmeste, their first work as a duo. Its title is Middle English for ‘the middlemost point’, alluding to how the piece builds on the points of overlap between the highly personalised musical languages Hamann and Rushford have developed in recent years.
Performed on cello …
Cracked Glaze
Matthew Wright’s album Cracked Glaze is performed by virtuoso vocalist Sofia Jernberg, Ensemble Klang (Michiel van Dijk, Erik-Jan de With, Anton van Houten, Pete Harden, Saskia Lankhoorn and Joey Marijs) and Wright’s improv/electronic group Spheric Totemic (Mandhira de Saram, Neil Charles, Alexander Hawkins, Stephen Davis and Matthew Wright). The 46-minute piece was performed live, and is built around a ‘spine’ of one long, descending scale which takes nineteen minutes to unfurl, and which then …
De Reditu Suo
In this sonic journey, the cello gets lost and finds itself again within the folds of electronics—like an ancient soul echoing through the chaos of the present. Inspired by the words of Rutilius Namatianus in De Reditu Suo, this work unfolds as a pilgrimage between past and present, between whispered voices and archaic melodies that dissolve and reassemble in the reverberation of primordial frequencies.
Distorted Gregorian chants, deep drones, and fragments of lost voices intertwine to form a so…
Opus
In the autumn of 2022, knowing his time was running out, Ryuichi Sakamoto summoned every ounce of his remaining strength to give us one last, definitive performance. Opus is that performance - a solo piano concert capturing one of the world's greatest musicians in his most vulnerable and transcendent moment. Curated and sequenced by Sakamoto himself, the twenty pieces wordlessly tell the story of his life and his vast body of work. The selection spans his entire career: from his pop-star period …
Experiments in Musique Concrete by Nippon Cultural Broadcasting
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…
Monochromes II
‘Monochromes II’ is a collection of thirteen solo piano pieces written and performed by Berlin-based composer/pianist Quentin Tolimieri between 2023 and 2025. This is Tolimieri’s second release on elsewhere music, following the 2022 triple album ‘Monochromes’ (elsewhere 022-3). In this new triple album, Tolimieri delves even deeper than in his earlier Monochrome pieces to explore the countless sonic possibilities and resonances that the piano can produce. Aiming to allow the inherently interesti…
Pianosequenza Vol. 2
Tying every symbol to an idea has made the world manageable, but also predictable. Suspending the pact, delaying to denominate, letting sound remain pre-conceptual for an instant leads to confusion; nameless, all things slip away, lose direction and blend in with the background noise. Here lies the danger of pure indifference where all things are indistinguishable and listening risks becoming pure perception. It is not a question of refuting meaning, but rather of embracing that latency where fo…
Complete Works for Multiple Piano
In Complete Works for Multiple Piano, Morton Feldman’s quietly radical writing for three or more hands is heard as a three‑hour continuum of hushed, hovering sonorities, where time dilates and the piano becomes a shared, breathing instrument.
12 Trombones & Percussion Densities
Bonecrusher creates an immersive sonic landscape that captivates listeners, drawing them into a world where chords crackle, howl, and vibrate eerily. Founded in 2020 by trombonist and composer Matthias Muche in Cologne, the ensemble showcases its latest work through four innovative compositions. Each musician explores the trombone’s capabilities with meticulous detail, crafting evolving sonic states that morph fluidly, resembling a tightly woven net.
The ensemble faces a unique challenge; those …
Fables
This is the first widely distributed release for Isabel Pine after a series of self released EP’s and singles on Bandcamp. She studied classical music on viola from the age of 3 through into college, where she was on a path to be a performer in a large ensemble, but eventually left after feeling frustrated and limited in a world that did not provide much of an outlet for individual creativity. But the doors of perception really opened when she moved to British Columbia and was exposed to the raw…
Fleeting Future
*2026 much needed repress!* Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and inspirational debut. The crea…
Paper Braids
*200 copies limited edition* "Paper Braids came out of a long collaboration between me and the wonderful musicians of the Kali Ensemble. Through a series of workshops, residencies, and performances over the course of four years, we built up a collective practice focused on three topics: listening as the basis of musical interaction, awareness of how sound interacts with the performance space, and using that spatial awareness as a basis for both the duration of individual sounds and the temporal …
Presque Rien No.1 / Société II
Originally issued in 1970 within the third suite of LPs comprising Deutsche Grammophon's Avant-Garde series, the French composer and electroacoustic pioneer Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien No.1 / Société II stands among the most important and groundbreaking albums issued within the canon of 20th Century avant-garde and experimental music. Containing two radically distinct works, Presque Rien No.1 (1967-1970) and Société II (1967), it doubles as a near perfect illumination of the incredible range of c…
Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden
Containing what are easily among the important and celebrated works by Tōru Takemitsu, arguably Japan's most important and celebrated 20th Century avant-garde composer, 'Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden' was originally issued by Deutsche Grammophon in 1980. Had the Avant-Garde series not concluded nine years prior, it certainly would have been contained within its ranks. Illuminating a crucial juncture within the composer's career which not only found him fully embracing ac…
Con Slancio
“These performances, by Heinz Holliger and Marie-Lise Schüpbach, are simply astonishing in their fluency,” wrote UK magazine Gramophone of Holliger’s album Zwiegespräche, and the description applies with equal pertinence to con slancio, with its inspired and inspiring play of energies. The title piece, which opens the programme here, was written by the Swiss composer and nonpareil oboist as a tribute to musical partner Schüpbach: “Since I began playing in duo with Marie-Lise, I’ve been fascinate…
Perseverantia
On Perseverantia, Vadim Neselovskyi turns his lyric, classically infused jazz language into a meditation on endurance, carving spacious, song‑like structures where fragile melodies, sudden storms and long silences feel like different faces of the same stubborn hope.
Différences / Sequenza III & VII / Due Pezzi / Chamber Music (LP)
Five pieces for solo instruments or small ensembles spanning from 1951 to 1969, recorded under the direction of the composer himself and performed by Cathy Berberian and Heinz Holliger a.o., released on Philips' "Modern Music Series" in 1969.