★Confront Recordings
Melophobia
Melophobia spins tension out of spontaneous contact - Dave Tucker (guitar) and Pierpaolo Martino (double bass and electronics) improvise with sharp attention to rhythm, fracture, and digital manipulation, conjuring environments that threaten – and th…
Semiotic Drift
Semiotic Drift is a living conversation - Maggie Nicols uses voice as a map to possibility, Matilda Rolfsson provides creaking, insistent percussion, and Mark Wastell frames everything in the deep resonance of amplified tam-tam. The work rides the ed…
Juno
Juno invites deep contemplation through slow-moving layers of sound - Barry Chabala’s guitar, David Forlano’s electronics, and Drew Gowran’s percussion work in unhurried mutual orbit, exploring patience, resonance, and negative space rather than tech…
Ensemble A
Ensemble A is a turbulent meeting of three fiercely individual improvisers - Ignaz Schick harnesses live electronics and turntables, Anaïs Tuerlinckx dismembers and reinvents the piano, and Joachim Zoepf twists reeds into guttural shapes. The result …
Oneiric
Oneiric evokes drifting memories and waking dreams - an album created by Jane in Ether where recorders, piano, and violin/voice entwine in gauzy, tactile improvisations. Their music moves in soft spirals, trading clarity for a haze of overlapping ton…
Death in the Urban Jungle
Death in the Urban Jungle by Lance Austin Olsen is an expansive electroacoustic tapestry, weaving copper plate, shruti box, tape fragments, and wordless voice into a narrative of decay and emergence. Resonances and silences shape a listening experien…
Liminal Spaces
Liminal Spaces, by Ed Jones and Emil Karlsen, sketches a quiet but complex dialogue between saxophone and percussion. Their communication is fluid, as fleeting motifs and rhythmic fragments surface and dissolve, inviting the listener into the shiftin…
Moon
Moon sees Simon Rose and Nicola Hein map a shifting terrain between breath and electricity. Baritone saxophone and microtonal guitar unfurl in subtle layers, crafting a microcosm where fragility and abrasion lie side by side, always moving, always se…
The Duke of Wellington
The Duke of Wellington is a vivid portrait of Derek Bailey and John Stevens in spontaneous conversation, recorded live at a London pub in 1989. The set captures their dynamic synergy; jagged guitar and agile percussion interlock and diverge in an unr…
Within (2) / Appearance (2)
Within (2) / Appearance (2) by Michael Pisaro-Liu presents a contemplative exploration of duration and silence, foregrounding gradual transformation. These extended works for guitar and double bass, created with Michael Francis Duch, reward patient l…
Live At OTOOTO & Permian
Tip! *2024 stock. 300 copies limited edition* "On Live At OTOOTO & Permian, two guitarists from Japan, Taku Sugimoto and Takashi Masubuchi, ask a series of unresolved questions – about time, about interplay, about tonality. Those who know Sugimoto’s …
At Sound 323
Originally released by Confront in 2013 on compact disc as The Complete August 15th 2001. Now freshly remixed and remastered in 2023 for release on a delux double 180g white vinyl LP set and digital. Recorded at Sound 323, London by Tim Fletcher on 1…
Cumino in Mia Cucina
** Edition of 300 ** Acoustic nylon strung guitar is not something I usually play but a visit by Duck Baker to our home in Rome inspired me to dig out my Brazilian version. I met Duck at Stefan Grossman’s house in the late seventies and embarrassed m…
A Thousand Sacred Steps
We owe this session to a touch of happenstance and a measure of forethought. Chris Abrahams was in London with The Necks for a residency at Café Oto, the capital's enterprising and valuable haven for adventurous music. Mark Wastell asked him whether,…
A More Attractive Way
** Edition of 500 + 20 pages booklet ** A More Attractive Way is a comprehensive study of live performances made by IST between 1996 and 2000. This set begins at the very outset of the group's career and features their debut concert at Club Orange in…
Frequency Disasters
Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, three bodies in a room sonically engaging are even less so. Beresford’s architectural narrative drives Magaletti and Martino’s rhythmic interventions into compell…
Beaming
Further on from a few phone conversations last week (graciously enabled in the first instance by the ever-generous Alan Skidmore) and the swift dispatch from Germany of the demo disc, I'm very excited to announce that Tony Oxley, one of the great for…
Virtual Company
Simon H. Fell : double bass. Mark Wastell : violoncello, percussion. Derek Bailey : (virtual) guitar. Will Gaines : (virtual) tapdance. Recorded at Cafe OTO, Dalston, London; 2nd March 2018.
An in concert, virtual Company performance from IST (on thi…
Sound Mirrors
The UK’s network of crumbling sound mirrors - an early form of radar - supply cues for blues experimenter Mike Cooper and pivotal improvisor Mark Wastell (Company) in an inquisitive collaboration on Wastell’s Confront Recordings. The strange, austere…
The Map Is Not the Territory
Max Eastley: arc (electro-acoustic monochord)Fergus Kelly: invented instruments, found metals, electronicsMark Wastell: tam tam, metal percussion, piano frameRecorded at Studio 3, Stoke Newington, London on 8th March 2017 by Rupert Clervaux. Edited, …