★Room40
Analapos
Matte laminate CD, embossed artwork, insert card and 28 page book. In 1979, Akio Suzuki recorded a performance, ’New Sense Of Hearing’, at the Nagoya American Centre. During the performance, Suzuki used voice, turntables, glass harmonica and his self…
StereoAkuma
In June 2019, Masami Akita, better known as Merzbow travelled to Australia to take part in Room40’s Open Frame festival. Across a week he delivered a series of performances to sold out audiences in Sydney and Melbourne. The performances were viscera…
132 Ranks
132 Ranks for Pipe Organ was composed by Olivia Block in 2016-2017, as a commission for LAMPO and The Renaissance Society. Block composed the piece specifically for the enormous Skinner Organ at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in Chicago. The world premi…
Illustrations For Those Who
Polish producer Tomasz Bednarczyk returns to Room40 with Illustrations For Those Who, his first full length edition in almost a decade. Across the late 2000s, Bednarczyk created a series of acclaimed ambient recordings that married the unsteadiness o…
At The Still Point Of The Turning World
Joana Gama and Luís Fernandes's new offering At The Still Point Of The Turning World, borrows its title from T. S. Eliot's poem "Burnt Norton". It is a record of restless motion, lilting and pulsing with a sense of gentle determination. Born out of a…
Love Songs
The music of Australian artist Thembi Soddell resides in a zone of unrelenting darkness and physical affect. Working at the nexus of raw emotion, sound design, and musique concrete, she creates sound worlds that are effortlessly dense and abyss-like.…
Moon Field
On Moon Field, Rafael Toral breaks new ground, it is his first edition that moves outward, beyond the Space Program series. This collection of three extended and interlocking works, mark the beginning of a transitional period into a new phase. Buildi…
The Collection
From Nicola Ratti... "These recordings were made during a relatively long period of time, not continuously, over several months in my studio. Nothing was been planned in advance, not any idea of album or approach. Nevertheless I easily recognize …
Glitter in my tears
Glitter in my tears’ marks the 20th anniversary of Janek Schaefer’s career as a recording artist, having now released 30 albums. His music is best comprehended through examining his time as an architect, and how that forged his innate sense for const…
Piano I
“The Piano has been an instrument that has woven its way in and out of my life since I was a child. I grew up listening to great classical and jazz players, prepared piano and electronic experiments, extended techniques and later the incredible works…
Memory Fragments
Pierce Warnecke presents a chasmic solo debut LP with Memory Fragments for Room40 offering his most expansive, personalised vision of electro-acoustic abstraction. Nine tracks cover a broad spectrum of tones within his chosen subset, from doomy keys …
MRI
Room40 continues the publication of a series of editions from American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg with a remastered and expanded edition of the previously self-released MRI. Best known for his work with the seminal outfit Swans, Westberg'…
Pain Avoidance Machine
In late 2014, feeling stifled by the negativity of the Australian political discourse, the narcissistic excess of social media, and facing a long summer of migraine-inducing heat, I turned to the prepared piano as a refuge. I was coming out of an …
Interlacing
Ross Manning is one of Australia's best-kept secrets. Since 2010, Manning has been behind a series of increasingly profound explorations into light and movement. These installation works seek to reveal spectrum and frequency in patterns that often…
13
Room40 inaugurates its series of works by American guitarist and composer Norman Westberg with 13. Best known for his work with the seminal outfit Swans, Westberg's output beyond that group is sprawling and restless. His name recurs and ripples throu…
Moon Light Reflecting Over Mountains
On Moon Light Reflecting Over Mountains, Tokyo's Chihei Hatakeyama evokes an instrumental poetic grace that marks him out as one of the icons of his generation. Drawing upon a broad swath of aesthetic references, he seamlessly melts glacial ambient…
White shadows in the south seas
It's difficult to know how to summurise the meandering journey that has been the life and times of Mike Cooper. Having just celebrated his 70th year of mischief making here's what we can tell you... A young Mike Cooper can be spotted playing a beatni…
Wege
Wege translates as 'path' and it's a fitting title for the latest rendering from master percussionist and experimental composer Andrea Belfi. The albums' four pieces act as orientation points through some imaginary sonic landscape. Wege is Belfi's fo…
Narrow
Steinbrüchel’s Narrow is an album of reduction and transformation. Like much of Steinbrüchel’s recorded work, the genesis of Narrow stems from a singular idea concerned with the notion of ‘static development’. Working with a limited palette of source…
The Oansome Orbit
The Oansome Orbit is the latest work from Australia’s electronic godfather Pimmon (known to friends as Paul Gough). Over the past decade and a half, Pimmon has carved out a unique space for himself amidst through producing a series of masterfull…