★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 then dissolve – melodic order.
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 edge between storytelling and pure abstraction.
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 technical bravura.
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 is a volatile sound collage, sometimes blunt-force, sometimes eerily restrained.
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 tones and near-silence, aching toward something just out of reach.
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 experience as tactile as it is elusive.
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 shifting boundaries of spontaneous improvisation.
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 searching.
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 unrepeatable display of free improvisational skill.
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 listening and engage with resonance and subtlety over spectacle.
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 music will recognise here a certain tension, and a feeling for the apposite; these two traits have been core to his playing and composing since he first introduced himself to the broader listening public, in the ‘90s, with albums like Opposite. Masub…
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 15 August 2001
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 myself by replying to his question about what did i play by answering "you probably wouldn't understand", assuming he only played folk music. He produced from his bag and gave me a copy of a record with him, Henry Kaiser, Eugene Chadbourne, Owen Maerc…
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, if he had any spare time whilst in the city, he’d be interested in doing a studio session as a duo.
The two have met a number of times over the years (including once in Berlin when Chris came to hear The Sealed Knot, the trio which Mark inhabits wit…
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 London and charts its way through further gigs in London, Billericay, Norwich and Cambridge. “A completely different intensity, but an intensity nonetheless,” Jo Fell reflects in notes accompanying A More Attractive Way. Her husband Simon, to whose …
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 compelling short stories about dancing, dressing in rags, dreaming, swallowing, flight, famine, transformation, and dystopias/utopias. Frequency Disasters are pianist, improviser and composer Steve Beresford, percussionist Valentina Magaletti and bass playe…
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 forefathers of European improvised music, will be releasing a disc on Confront Recordings. I've played the demo about fifteen times in the last three days and it's absolutely incredible. Tony is 81 years old and as evidenced here, is still making except…
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 this occasion the duo of Simon H. Fell and Mark Wastell due to the snow-bound absence of Rhodri Davies) together with pre-recorded fragments of Derek Bailey and Will Gaines. IST’s Virtual Company calls on ‘the powers of improvisation’ (D. Bailey) to int…
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 relics of WWI were erected between 1916 and the 1930s and are found dotted along the South East and North East coastline of England, sometimes in farmer’s fields who’ll let you in for a look if you ask nicely (out to my guy in Boulby).With Cooper ma…
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, mixed and mastered by Fergus Kelly. Produced by Mark Wastell.