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Experimental /

Real Magic Vol​.​1
*300 copies limited edition* Treader is proud to announce the first solo release from label-founder John Coxon. Best known for his work in Spring Heel Jack and Spiritualized, as well as extensive collaborative work with J. Spaceman, Evan Parker, Charles Hayward, Han Bennink and Pedro Reyes to name a few, it was perhaps inevitable that recent times allowed Coxon the space and time to experiment on his own. Real Magic Vol. 1 is the result of a year’s worth of early morning recordings made during 2…
Elements
Tip! Surface World is pleased to share David Lee Myers (aka Arcane Device) and Toshimaru Nakamura’s Elements, a remote collection written and assembled in tandem at the suggestion of the label. Sharing an idiosyncratic approach to feedback-based sound generation and a commitment to their signature instruments (respectively, the Feedback Machine and the No-Input Mixing Board), the pairing lands during an especially fruitful period in their individual discographies. Harmonically dense, energetic a…
Crusts
"Piano and reeds duet. More precisely, Didier Fréboeuf, the pianist, is also credited for clavietta and objects and the prompter Jean-Luc Petit, tenor and sopranino sax as well as contrabass clarinet. Three Crusts. Not badly chosen title compared to the improvised music that they play towards each other: these two do not stay on the surface of things. They work in depth on their exchanges by developing a nice variety of playing modes both on the keyboard and in the strings and on the reeds. I ap…
jouent pour Stephane Guillaumon qui danse sans faire de bruit
Duo live electronic improvisation by Jean-Marc Foussat and Leo Remke-Rochard. Recorded at the Dojo in Villeurbanne, France, on January 7th, 2023.
Les Beaux Jours
"Intense and stormy "vintage" electronic music - ethereal loops or organ or keyboard effects - synalgias of the unresolved - (AKS by Jean-Marc Foussat) goaded and torn by the extreme bites of the soprano saxophonist (Guy Frank Pellerin). The feeling of duration of their improvisations (22, 19 and 25 minutes) diminishes as the spells fall in this weather of the emerging moment. A nice variety of games in the game phases means that we no longer follow the order of the music, nor its logic. We find…
Madly You
"Most Americans discover European improvised music using a map dominated by Amsterdam, Berlin, and London, which dwarfs and shoves the rest of the continent to the margins. At some point, however, even they realize the land lies differently. Yet, extensive exploration is required to correct the proportions, label the tributaries, and overlay the trade routes. In this endeavor, recordings become the coordinates that begin to flesh out the map's heretofore blank spaces. Madly You is valuable in th…
Terrain Vague
Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague – the debut of Danish group Mesmer. The album is a series of (deconstructed) live-recordings taken from three live concerts. The sounds on this record are taken from two years’ worth of sound research and creative outbursts with inspiration from field trips to the outskirts of Copenhagen. Intrigued by the auditive landscapes of places where nature and culture meet and challenge each other. Listening to the field-recordings led Mesmer to interpret the moods, music…
Misting
Nice Music presents 'Misting' the first solo full length from MP Hopkins since 2016 and his debut release for the label. Hopkins' solo work to date via the likes of Regional Bears, Penultimate Press and Thalamos fitfully caresses tape collage, found sound, speaker feedback and electroacoustic techniques. 7 years on from 'Blue-Lit Half Breath', 'Misting' immediately arrests with vibrant frequency and fidelity, yet no less fidgety or labyrinthine in its crypticised patterns of non-literal investig…
Manifestation of Perceptual Variables Latent in the Environment
*2023 stock. 250 copies limited edition* On March 17, 2021, Tetuzi Akiyama, Ayako Kataoka and Kiyomitsu Odai gave a concert at Ftarri in Suidobashi, Tokyo. This CD is a complete recording of the two sets they performed that day (25 and 34 minutes respectively). Akiyama played electric guitar; Kataoka used turntable, electronics and voice; and Odai performed on computer. Internationally renowned improviser/guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama lives in Tokyo and performs frequently both in Japan and overseas.…
M21
Underpinning the foundation of “M21” are some incredible low frequency drones created by amplifying the hum from portable record players. Ugly contact sounds from touching the arms, noise and scratches: all kinds of sounds fly past, warped into a tough, tenacious sound world. "So this is how you push turntables into revolt! Divorcing them entirely from their original purpose, into a repeating infinite amplification of motors (rotation) and cartridges (contact). Essential!" - Otomo Yoshihide
CHARRRLLEEMMMA GGGNEELANDDDDDS SS​”​”​”​”​”​” CCCRREATTO RRSSSSSCCCARILLON NNN​”​”​”​”​”​”​”​” DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz ferrrr SSSOFTTT DIVINI TIESSSSS​!​!​!​!​!​!​!​!​! with STTT THOMASSS ‘​’​’​’​”​‘​”​DINGG GDONGGGDINGGGzzz zzzz ferrrr TONYYY​’​’​’​’​’​’​’​’
DINGGGDONGGGDINGGGzzzzzzz!!!!!!! In the newest record by the iconoclastic Brooklyn-born composer Charlemagne Palestine (b. 1947), find two mesmerizing works for carillon, the keyboard-controlled bell tower derived in the 16th century. On side A, a new piece recorded at the artist’s studio in Belgium—a high-ceiling, stuffed-animal-packed paradise he calls Charleworld—among friends and “divinities,” his name for the thousands of plush toys he’s amassed since the ’60s. On the flip side, Blank Forms…
Rubbed Out
2023 Stock. The very latest release on the beautifully presented Treader label comes Hot Chip frontman/vocalist and possible Gerry Anderson marionette Alexis Taylor, who threads together a series of instrumentals and pop songs with a little help from Garageband. There are some beautiful synth outings here: from opener 'Fireworks' straight into the creamy, organ-driven 'Plastic Man' which sounds uncannily like the intro to The Killers' 'All These Things That I Have Done' mixed in with a bit of Ca…
Kris Gruda Plays for You
"It's tempting to view guitarist Kris Gruda, a North Carolina resident, as part of a lineage of demented Southern avant-pickers stretching back to Chadbourne, and while that's not false, it's unnecessarily reductive. Gruda is but one particle in a contemporary wave of traveling minstrels plying the interstates and unnumbered highways of the Deep South, navigating between pickup gigs in urban centers from Asheville to Baton Rouge to Jacksonville to Amarillo, dipping into the free jazz songbook an…
But Everything Now Left Before It Arrived
*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …
La preuve
La preuve is a rearguard action. Most of the people who inspired it are dead or retired. Old teenagers flay their former loves. They bear witness to a bygone era, but happily embraced, digested and spat out. Everything was still possible. Or possible at last. Psychedelia opened the doors of perception. Romanticism wasn't relegated to a dull formatting, a cheese without a rind. The group Poudingue, which started out ten years ago, has some fine leftovers. These are the crumbs from purgatory. The …
Whiplash
*200 copies limited edition* Recital is thrilled to present the first full-length vinyl LP by sound artist Asha Sheshadri. Whiplash combines elements of sound poetry, diary-like narration, and delicate incidental music. Sheshadri has crafted a unique and marvelous album here: "This record is an alternate approach to the autobiographical 'confessional' – I wanted to stitch together some pivotal sketches in self-understanding and forgiveness. While their designs may seem affectively disparate, the…
The Dream My Bones Dream
*2023 stock* Riding the rails down to the past and back to the future, Eiko Ishibashi considers the unknown lives that her own family has lived, set to expansive pop travelogues evoking the work of pioneers like Joni and Scott Walker, while pushing further, always further....
Immediate Music III
Olavi Louhivuori Presents "Immediate Music III" - A Boundary-Pushing Musical Triumph with drummers Glenn Kotche and Tony Buck
Prove, Esorcismi
*2023 stock* Sampler of some iconic Italian experimental, electronic and jazz musicians active in the 90s (some of them up till now).
Be Quiet​!​!​!
Sax player Junji Hirose and guitarist Kazuo Imai, both Tokyo residents born in 1955, are renowned Japanese improvisers who have long propelled the country’s improvised music scene. Australian drummer Darren Moore, who is currently based in Singapore, carries on his performance activity while also teaching at Lasalle College of the Arts. Darren Moore lived in Tokyo for several years in the mid-2010s. Since then he has often visited the country and performed with Japanese musicians. In 2022 he cam…