Experimental / All styles

Few contemporary composers have created instruments as singular as Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument, and fewer still have explored its possibilities with the depth and invention documented on Elemental View. This six-movement work, performed in collaboration with The Living Earth Show, transforms an industrial-sized space into a resonating chamber where 136 precisely tuned strings create what can only be described as environmental music in its most literal sense. Fullman has spent decades …

Six pieces from a concert at Het Apollohuis in December 1987, unearthed by Black Truffle. Guitars and bass tuned by Dreyblatt and played with E-Bows and Panhuysen's motorised plectrums, plus a Mattel toy drum machine, pedal steel harmonics and a bird whistle.

Big tip! Sarah Davachi returns with “Music for a Bellowing Room”, the first ever release of her audio / visual collaboration with the artists and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sprawling to an incredible three hours of sublime, minimalist drone - composed for tape loops, synth and delay - that draws the ear toward microscopic shifts and details, we've adored every second of this truly monumental work.

The tamburium is an instrument Hennix built: eighty-eight keys, each one triggering a recording of a precision-tuned four-string tambura. Documented in Berlin in 2017, it was her first solo release since 1976 and came out two months before she died.

Five pieces for justly tuned piano and electronics. After a trilogy of long-form records, Pitre shortened the pieces, which gave him more harmonic room to move rather than less.

Scottish composers Andrew Wasylyk and Tommy Perman are back with a new collaborative soundtrack album, 'House With A Curse'.

First reissue of the private press album recorded in 1980 by Puerto Rico's The MD's: ten raw, catchy songs between punk, proto-hardcore and new wave with a prominent Minimoog, plus an insert of previously unseen photos and notes.

First reissue and first vinyl edition of the 1995 album on which Rita Marley sings songs by Ignacio Scola and Gregorio Paniagua, sophisticated experimental pop rooted in soul and Jamaican music, with a side of remixes by Suso Sáiz.

CD reissue of Volcano The Bear's 2006 LP, the first release on their own Volucan label: theatrical improvisation, musique concrète and ethno-folk. Four-panel gatefold sleeve, limited to 444 copies.

CD reissue of Volcano The Bear's first mini-album, issued by Pickled Egg in 1999, with two bonus tracks from a 2006 lathe-cut 8" on Alt.Vinyl. Oversized gatefold cover, limited to 444 copies.

Eight Untitled pieces by Francisco López made in 2011 from field recordings gathered around the world, from Tokyo and the Amazon to Bogotá and Lima: short snapshots and processed collages of animals, objects and weather. Limited to 444.

A later album by the French avant-garde trio DDAA, active since 1977: six restrained, elaborate '(a)tonal songs & noises', 51 minutes, with Christine Coënon on voices. Oversized A5 gatefold cover, limited to 444 copies.

Dariusz Wojtaś (Hati) recorded Tibetan bowls, field recordings and vintage reverb units in Toruń; Z'ev processed and mixed them in London into two long, shifting metallic drone pieces. A5 gatefold cover, limited to 350.

Unknown versions and unpublished tracks from Column One's early years, remastered by Robert Schalinski, in an oversized cardboard sleeve with 8 postcards and liner notes by Till Kniola. Limited to 500 copies.

Early Column One: the remastered Dream Box Experience LP (1994), alternative versions from the This Is My Dream 7" and an unpublished track, in an oversized sleeve with 6 postcards and liner notes by Till Kniola. Limited to 500.

Late-90s guitar pieces by Loren Connors, most on vinyl for the first time: the unrealized 1996 double 7" Battle of Clontarf, The Five Points EP, the Star of Bethlehem suite and Gershwin's I Love You, Porgy. 180g LP, edition of 300.

Chris Shields on organ, Ed Atkins on voice and Magnus Kaslov recording, live at KoncertKirken in Copenhagen in 2024: the organ reduced to air leaks, mechanical hesitation and shifting overtones. Liner notes by Sarah Davachi, edition of 200.

First vinyl by Long Swan Tongues, the improvised drone duo of Alex Wilson (Gnod, Ghold) and Edd Sanders (Kalkin, Red River Dialect): two long, thunderous pieces for four-stringed instruments on 180g vinyl, mastered by Miles Whittaker.

On its latest album „Music For Air“, the Berlin-based interdisciplinary duo GAMUT INC explores new possibilities of the computer-controlled pipe organ — from hypervirtuoso excess to nuanced automation and rhythms beyond the fixed grid. Composed and recorded during a two-week residency in Toulouse, the pieces move between harmony and noise, conjuring a euphorically intoxicating maelstrom of overlapping, accelerating sound.

For over ten years, Brussels-originals ladr ache have dipped their toes and vocal chords in all matter of musical mischief as only they know how. With éclats z, their latest recorded offering, new canons arise that belong to no place or genre. Between the layers of chant, other voices turn up in old tongues and secret languages, gliding alongside pipes and electronic warps, pulsing in time with the granularity of choice. Recorded over two years in different times and spaces, the living textures …

*218 copies limited edition* An LP split between old friends of the weirdo American Underground converges on this 180 gram slab of adventurous out-sounds blurring the boundaries of genre. The duo of Max Nordile and Justin Clifford Rhody deliver high energy bursts of noisy free jazz and a live, slow-burning piece (titled Semi-Rural) that rings reminiscent of Lol Coxhill and Loren Connors carrying out a ritual invocation far from the red carpets of Hollywood. Prior to this album the duo had only r…

*40 copies limited edition* We’re living through a difficult period to be publishing creative music (which is really the least of our problems!) And the 7” format seems to have taken an exceptionally hard blow, with apparently little interest from pressing plants in making the format affordable again. But at Physical we’re thoroughly convinced that the little record is a perfect platform for big ideas, and we plan to stay a believer despite financial hardship and almost zero commercial viability…

*200 copies limited edition. 5 different cover designs—all outer and inner sleeves are unique // Two 30x30 cm inserts + 4-page lyric sheet + A4 "History of Ashburn County"* Ashburn County is a French-American project that emerged in Louisiana in 2011. Coming out of the mind of Leroy Delbert Quebedeaux, these songs and soundscapes have been telling the stories of the inhabitants of this imaginary county set in the remote rural parts of the Deep South. Inspired by literature and cinema, this music…

*300 copies limited edition* A quiet intensity permeates Chantal Michelle’s music, like a veiled flame. Even at its most spare and delicate, an undulating tension unsettles the ear through wavering microtonal interference and uncanny spatial juxtaposition. She takes seriously the mandate of the composer to foster new relationships between various types of sounds, bringing together disparate field recordings, instrumental stems, and the sounds of circuitry in unheard configurations. Resolution is…

Originally presented as a quadraphonic fixed media piece.  Designed by Philip Marshall. Covert artwork by Owen Schuh. Indifferent Rocks Are Rearranged into a Dam takes various - and sometimes competing - understandings of “Interval”, “isolation” and “distance” as its point of conceptual and compositional departure. Taking its title from a line in Elaine Scarry’s book The Body in Pain, Indifferent Rocks… explores different forms of detachment and abstraction present both in the piece’s making, as…

2026 Repress! Custom die-cut rigid slipcase, 5 CDs in double card sleeves, 96 page perfect bound book including an interview between Seymour Wright and John Chantler and additional texts by silvia tarozzi, magnus granberg, nate wooley, valerie mol, pär thörn and lars grip and drawings by guillaume delcourt and aliocha delcourt. Limited Edition of 500 copies.  [Ahmed] is the quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (double bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums) and Seymour Wright (alto saxophone). Togethe…

Documentary recordings of Hartmut Geerken and Michael Ranta’s November and December 1976 tour of the Middle East and East Asia. Geerken is known for his long relationship with Sun Ra (including compiling a discography), but he wears many other hats too: musician, film-maker, archivist. Ranta is a percussionist best known for his famous “Improvisation Sep.1975” collaborative record with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi. This is a CD reissue of an LP boxset, originally released in 2010 as the …

'Throughout their careers, both Annette krebs and taku unami have explored the areas between composition and improvisation, innovation and repetition, music and ambient sound. On motubachii, their distinctive styles come together to form a whole that is monolithic yet widely varied, simple yet impossible to fully grasp. Annette krebs studied music and concert guitar in Frankfurt-Main, and has lived in Berlin since 1993. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between improvisation and c…

Mark Wastell and Matt Davis met and first played together in a workshop led by Eddie Prévost in London during the spring of 1996. Soon after, Wastell was invited to join Chris Burn's Ensemble, in which he played with Phil Durrant for the first time. Subsequently, Phil and Mark worked together in the quartets Assumed Possibilities and Quatuor Accorde, documented on Rossbin and Emanem CDs, respectively. The debut trio concert by Davis/Durrant/Wastell took longer to organise than any of the partici…

That said, "Weather Sky" is another thing altogether. Bruno Meillier invited Toshi to play a duo concert in St Etienne with AMM's no-concessions table guitar master Keith Rowe, and took them into the studio the day after to record for Erstwhile. Sensitivity to pitch is less important here (Rowe, remember, hasn't tuned his guitar since the early 1960s): the album's three tracks are real slow-burners. Rowe can be agile and aggressive when he wants to, but his preferred working method is to lay dow…

Sachiko M and Ami Yoshida, both from Tokyo, met in 1997 and formed the duo of Cosmos the following year. Sachiko M has developed a unique style utilizing a memory-free sampler, creating pure, piercing sine waves with the device's built-in test tones and noise. She has also recently begun exploring the use of contact microphones, as documented on the second track of Tears. Sachiko has worked extensively as a solo artist, in groups such as Filament, I.S.O., and Hoahio, and in duo with Toshimaru Na…

"The first word that came to mind on playing Extracts was understatement, with an almost oriental minimalism and profundity on display. At times I was forced to check whether sounds were coming from the speakers or from outside. However, this is a far cry from the Radu Malfatti school of implied music since it is very much about close group interplay. Simon H. Fell's sonorous bass is of particular note, underpinning, colouring and giving the proceedings a kind of still, stately authority. Likewi…

Don Cherry's downtown Paris funk masterwork Home Boy, Sister Out, produced in 1985 by Ramuntcho Matta and originally released by Barclay in France only, finally gets a worldwide release on Wewantsounds. Featuring French post-punk muse Elli Medeiros, avant-garde poet Brion Gysin, and cult Senegalese drummer Abdoulaye Prosper Niang (Xalam), this is a unique soundbite of Paris in the early '80s at its coolest when funk, jazz, and new wave were mingling with sounds from Africa, Jamaica, and Latin Am…

On The Mild Temper, Kevin Drumm stretches his language of drones, electronics and micro‑acoustics across six hours, fashioning vast, slow‑shifting fields of frequency where restraint becomes a kind of pressure and detail blooms only if you stay. Mastered by Jim O'Rourke.

Heavenly Arms – featuring Otomo Yoshihide – is a bold new sonic journey that bridges experimental sound, improvisation, and emotional resonance. The record, released in collaboration with the visionary Japanese composer and guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, showcases a meeting of worlds where free improvisation collides with delicate melodic structures.   Across its tracks, Heavenly Arms captures the raw immediacy of live interaction while preserving an intimate, cinematic atmosphere. The album moves f…

What does a venue sound like? One might approach this question by assessing the technicalities of how it handles sound: the room acoustics, the quality of the PA etc. Instead, this trio seek answers by enlivening those loose inanimates strewn silently around the venue’s edges – whatever the players could find throughout the backrooms and corners. Pots, pans, dud domestic appliances and old bicycles are hauled up from the groundfloor basement of Punctum in Prague, along with a few stones and tree…

*In process of stocking* Since 1995, Cindytalk has continued in both group and solo form, across live performance and recordings. During this period, Cindytalk increasingly embraced improvisation in live settings and electronic work through recordings. A series of solo and predominantly electronic albums on the Editions Mego label, from The Crackle of My Soul (2009) to The Labyrinth of the Straight Line (2016), saw another formidable body of work developed. Most recently, Of Ghosts and Buildings…

Huge Tip! Further Explorations follows on from Gentle Fire’s 3CD retrospective box set Explorations, released in 2020. These new archive recordings came to light in the process of unearthing the tapes for the 4CD box set by their fellow Stockhausen collaborators Intermodulation. The pieces used on this CD are taken from two sessions recorded for German radio in 1973 and 74, one for Sender Freies Berlin and the other for Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt. These beautifully recorded and preserved p…

The music on Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! feels both impossibly detailed and eminently human. The album’s twelve pieces are layered and interwoven, tonally and rhythmically complex––moiré-like patterns of interaction and tessellation that play out for both mind and body, full of sonic warrens with an inescapable groove. An electrifying leap forward for the band’s shared language, Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! aims to liberate the listener into a spiritual, ecstatic, and…

As the title suggests, the second installment of Otomo Yoshihide Solo Works is a collection of works that pay homage to Christian Marclay, the turntablist who was one of his biggest influences. Merkley was a pioneer of turntable improvisation in the early 80's in a way that was completely different from the context of hip-hop DJing, and at the same time, he is one of the leading contemporary artists. It is no exaggeration to say that the impact of encountering his performances and works is one o…