Last Things
Last Things, for bass clarinet, pedal steel guitar, piano, and electronic keyboards, was written for clarinetist Marty Walker in 1987, and has been subsequently performed (as a piece for bass clarinet and tape) by Walker at concerts across the U.S. Somewhat a rhapsodic call and response between bass clarinet and pedal steel guitar, it is constructed of seven connected sections (or songs) that over the length of the piece slowly build in intensity. As the piece progresses, each section expands in…
I'd Rather Be Lucky Than Good
I’d Rather Be Lucky Than Good is a new recording collaboration of Sam Ashley and Werner Durand. Sam Ashley’s mystic parables imbued with benevolent humor are drawn from a lifelong pursuit of a present-day shamanism. Werner Durand’s wind work on invented and traditional instruments stems from the minimalist tradition, routed through his unique study of obscure world musics. The two artists first met in Berlin in 1984 while Sam was touring Atalanta with Robert Ashley’s opera company, with whom he …
J. Jasmine: My New Music (Songbook)
Original printing of the 1978 J. Jasmine Songbook, which has scores, lyrics and images for all the songs on the "J. Jasmine: My New Music" LP. Printed but never distributed because of the book distribution house going out of business, this is a must-have item for fans of Humber and Rosenboom
The Cave
We were first made aware of this Brooklyn band by Gary Panter. When we asked Gary about some specific projectors for light shows, he said we'd be best off conferring with his colleague, Curtis Godino. And oh yeah, Curtis also helmed a dastardly psychedelic music unit called Worthless. Checking out some of Worthless's previous recordings for Beyond Is Beyond, Stupid Head, and Greenway, we were struck by the weirdness and seamlessness of their psych stretching; if ever there was music made for lig…
Knobby Knoll
Edition of 200. Lauri McNamara is one of the crazies who make the New England sub-underground such a richly interesting universe to inhabit. She worked off and on with the late, lamented Egg, Eggs, but her main focus has always been on solo performance, accompanying herself on ukelele. A few other people make their presence felt on her debut LP, Knobby Knoll, but let's not get bogged down in their details. 'Cause really, this is Lauri's show, no matter who else might be sitting in. Unlike the ma…
Femenine (Apartment House)
Femenine, composed by Julius Eastman in 1974, stands as a landmark for American experimentalism - bringing minimalist structure together with exuberant, open-form collaboration. In their intensely engaged rendering, Apartment House conjures music that listens as much as it declares. Simon Limbrick’s insistent vibraphone motif and a persistent field of sleigh bells anchor the performance, as piano, strings, winds, and keyboard join, layering intricate phrases, timbral color, and nuance. The music…
Dethick
In Dethick, three singular voices - Angharad Davies (violin), Rie Nakajima (sound objects), and Alice Purton (cello) - trace the edges of collective improvisation and material inquiry. The project began from a shared fascination with resonance: how certain preparations and actions could invigorate stringed instruments and inanimate objects alike, blurring the distinction between music, sound art, and noise. Each musician brings a distinct lexicon - Davies known for extracting spectral sonorities…
Works on Paper
Venezuelan-based composer/artist Gil Sansón and Canadian-based composer/painter Lance Austin Olsen began to work closely together via long distance in 2014. Their collaboration initially began when Olsen painted the CD cover of Sansón's release 'Immanence, A Life' (Makam 003) in 2015. Sharing a similar aesthetic in art and music with deep respect and understanding of each other's work, the two soon started to make music in collaboration through realizations of each other's graphic scores or pain…
Pleasure-Voltage
Benjamin Finger, James Plotkin, and Mia Zabelka craft a mesmerizing sonic world that buzzes and drones, glitches, and slithers, eventually careening into unexplored musical territory. Pleasure-Voltage was born in the mind (and studio) of Benjamin Finger -- a composer, electronic music producer, DJ, photographer, and film-maker based in Oslo, Norway who in recent years has become quite a prolific artist, expanding his stylistic palette from piano miniatures and off-kilter pop experiments to lyser…
In Another Lant Pt. 2
„The second part of the “In Another Land”-trilogy can be considered as the indispensable conceptual antipode to part I. It's everything that part I is not and vice versa. It's sculptural and it's not pursuing the idea of development, but it's neither static nor repetitive: The mostly short pieces, consisting of heavily treated snippets of recorded (electro-) acoustic instruments are circling around themselves, always aiming to show their core idea to the listener. The thing is the thing is the …
Taraxacum
**CD version** Incredible 1986 lost recordings, an amazing adventure of a musicological and botanical research on the psychoacoustic qualities of the green world. It's the investigation of an organic symbiosis, real and mysterious at the same time, between the pharmacological properties of the plant and the sound emitted by the same material essence. From the single natural element comes the vibration permeating the whole universe; an indissoluble binomial for which "everything that makes up exi…
Un Lloc entre Dos Records
Un lloc entre dos records stands as the third piece in Ferran Fages’s trilogy for guitar and sinetones, plunging listeners into an environment of memory, duration, and pure perception. Composed and performed by the Catalan musician on Another Timbre, the work deconstructs traditional guitar sonority, instead proposing a landscape shaped by precise tunings, persistent resonance, and the interplay of acoustics with brief, pure electronic sinewaves. Fages draws on the legacy of Morton Feldman, Alvi…
Aftermaths
Aftermaths assembles a series of solo piano meditations from Mark R Taylor, each miniature realized with extraordinary nuance by pianist Teodora Stepančić. Taylor’s writing gathers its force not from spectacle, but from distilled detail, calibrated pacing, and a disciplined embrace of small form. The works—ranging from twelve-second “flashes” to pieces that stretch over nine minutes - invite a listening experience grounded in patience, repetition, and subtle surprise. Taylor leverages the piano’…
A Cordes et a Cris
In the continuity of the two previous albums "Amir" and "Varech", Henri Texier records in 1979 the album : "A Cordes et à Cris" but with some guest for some titles musicians such as pianist Gordon Beck and violinist Didier Lockwood. While A Cordes et à Cris represents the third element in the trilogy of albums begun by Amir and Varech, it is was his first working with JMS, making it all that much more noteworthy as it reemerges in the imprint’s hands today. Recorded and released in 1979, it enc…
Who will listen to aches that Everyone has 7"
New on Penultimate Press. Limited to 150 copies. Who will listen to aches that Everyone has’ is a telaesthetic document of disquiet, distance, and disintegrating memory. Careful mantels, rumours of summer, a nocturne, the black inside; Septembers wither, sentiments wane, the chamber-band plays. Parlours are MB – violin, piano, spokes, hotel bell, lighthouse bell LR – cello ML – pianette LF – cutlery SM – silhouette
Towers, Open, Fire / Looking For Business
New on Penultimate Press. Limited to 150 copies. Notes from Penultimate Press: Nether neither either ether [C.B.]. Bad bad grace back for a death-affirming day. Hard-to-Reach claimants born in the wrong place (Bayern Tāmaki Makaurau, Arkhangel district), put out too tender & possessed by spite. 3 x negation = 15 years Philosophie Queen, 18 Meanstricken, meaning totgeschlagen! No end to the keratodermic bouzouki, knock-off Glock, plastic reed, Tascam Spiel. There’s nothing not superficial about i…
The South of the East
The South of the East is the debut album from Tenggara Trio, comprising of improvisors from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Like previous Lao Ban Records releases it has Yong Yandsen gargling, screeching, skronking and more on the tenor saxophone, but unlike previous releases, "The South of the East" is the most rocking (read: loud, aggressive, driving) release from Lao Ban Records hitherto. The other two members, Ikbal S. Lubys and Dharma both play electric guitar (with efx and objects), but…
Duo
This is the 4th CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri, the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. Suzueri uses prepared piano and several self-made instruments placed nearby to produce a variety of original sounds, which she combines in constructing her performances. Makoto Oshiro continues to create new sounds with the many new self-made instruments he devises. A duo performance by these unique musicians is recorded on this CD. Amid the drone formed by the roar of many sounds, suzueri f…
Fanzine Ink Dries Like Black Blood
200 copies. Black vinyl, white cardboard sleeve with postcard attached, stamped white labels, insert. Plays at 33rpm. Two new tracks from the Newcastle-based improvisor Joe Murray and his Posset, known from releases on Mantile, Chocolate Monk, No Basement Is Deep Enough and more. 'Fanzine Ink Dries Like Black Blood' was recorded on 9th Jan 2016 at Bookshop in Sunderland City Library. Mainly mainly made up of vocal-jaxx loops, dry breath and child chatter. It's the final four minutes of a longer …