★Sofa
Alloy
In 2015, Lemur started a collaboration with German pianist Reinhold Friedl. Friedl is the leader of the international ensemble Zeitkratzer, working at the intersection of improvisation and composition. In this respect, Friedl's experience and working method have much in common with the ideas and working methods Lemur uses. Not least through an interchange between work with large and small ensembles.In collaboration with Reinhold Friedl, we focus on the use of extended playing techniques, form ex…
Hereafter
Sofa is proud to mark its 100th release with the stunningly beautiful double album Hereafter, a new major work from guitarist/composer Kim Myhr, written for the 15-piece Stavanger-based ensemble Kitchen Orchestra. “Hereafter can be seen as a meditation on mortality and transience”, Myhr explains. “It was written at a time where the prime minister of Norway told the country’s population that ‘you have to be prepared to lose someone dear to you’. It was like taken out of Tarkovsky’s “Sacrifice”. T…
Lineaments
Sofa is proud to release a new solo album from Fredrik Rasten, following his fantastic Six Moving Guitars (released on Sofa in 2019). Lineaments consists of two long-form solo pieces performed by Rasten, for an extended instrumentarium of guitars, voice and sine waves. Lineament I and II proceed from two different plucking patterns played on one acoustic and one electric guitar, both sharing a specific tuning from where the two pieces explore diverging tempos and structures. Humming voice, sine …
Out of the Playground
Sofa Music is proud to add the powerhouse flutist Alessandra Rombolà to its ranks with Out of the Playground, documenting Rombolà’s latest commissions and collaborations for solo flute and electronics with composers Daniela Terranova, Jan Martin Smørdal, Ingar Zach, and Lasse Marhaug. The album’s five contributions, drawing on Rombolà’s polyvalent musical background, are united in their mission to venture “out of the playground” of scenes and genres, as Rombolà puts it. Across these incisive, ex…
Musica Liquida
*In process of stocking* Ingar Zach’s new album Musica Liquida is the first audio document of his ongoing artistic research project at the Academy of Music in Oslo. The project is called The Vibrating Drum and focus on vibration of the membrane, activated by vibrating speakers in contact with the drumskin. Musica Liquida is Ingar Zach’s 7th solo album, and we find him diving into an ocean of sound and orchestrating the complexity of interfolded layers in the impressive acoustics of Emanuel Vigel…
Kraftbalanse
*In process of stocking* Sofa Music continues to release the work of the extraordinary Norwegian composer Jan Martin Smørdal. Recently he was awarded the prestigious Arne Nordheim Composers Prize for his creative work. Kraftbalanse is a a composition for piano, alternating current and strings, written by Smørdal in collaboration with artist Øystein Wyller Odden. The piece is based on Wyller Oddens prior investigations on the sound of the electrical grid and was part of Oslobiennalen First Editio…
Threads
The new solo album, threads by the California-based trombone player Mattie Barbier is a multilayered personal investigation. It was recorded in The Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangley, Colorado in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
a feeling of place. a calm space to be present in during a space of chaos. of quarantining in a very conservative place as a non-binary person where your welcomeness is tenuous. of uncertainty of where non-binaryness fits as a parent- of still being a dad? or treat…
Trending
*2022 stock.* Sofa Music is proud to welcome a new project on board. It’s Propan, a duo comprising the two Norwegian vocalists; Natali Garner and Ina Sagstuen. On their second album Propan continues its research within the frameworks of the song form and presents a psychedelic, and more delirious landscape than on its first, somewhat more electroacoustic album, Baby. The duo explores the meeting point between improvised music and studio production, and builds the album around Propan's well-estab…
Husene våre er museer
Oker is an acoustic improvising quartet based in Oslo, consisting of Adrian Fiskum Myhr on bass, Jan Martin Gismervik on drums, Torstein Lavik Larsen on trumpet and Fredrik Rasten on guitar. The music combines material from expanded instrumental techniques with open tonalities and deconstructed grooves. It can be described as rich textures in gradual change, but also as responsive and spontaneous. The ensemble balances between airy gestures and dense collective blocks of sound.
Oker is ma…
Playmates
Muddersten was established as a trio in 2015, and released their first album, Karpatklokke, on SOFA in January 2017. Their highly unique trio have been presented at festivals like Le Guess Who? and All Ears. While the music from their first album was developed during a tour in Russia in February 2016, the music on Playmates was recorded during four intense days at the SOFA studio in Oslo in September 2017. The front cover of the Scandinavian trio Mudderstens new release “Playmates” give as…
Cut Air
Jim Denley has been playing flute since 1969 - after 50 years of a curious love/hate relationship with the instrument this is his first solo flute-only recording. He aims to situate this music within a global outlook, with a pacific perspective. Being from a continent, Australia, where there is no flute tradition, he’s taken cues and elements from flute traditions that still have power and currency — the European flute with it’s purity, brilliance and dexterity, the earthy simplicity of bamboos …
A Pond in My Livingroom
A pond in my living room’ is the second solo album of Montréal-based sound artist and wind player Philippe Lauzier, and his debut album for SOFA. On this record Lauzier is using multiple tracks of bass clarinet to create a luxuriant field of overtones and meticulous micropolyphonies. The result is a beautiful record with overlapping and long mesmeric sequences of sound.
Philippe Lauzier (b. 1977) is an active musician from Montreal, Canada. Working with several projects, Lauzier has been touring…
Silfr
Sofa has been following Vilde&Inga since they started playing together back in 2010 and when they contacted us with the music from Silfr, there was no doubt in our minds. On Silfr they continue to develop the remarkable interplay from their first album, Makrofauna (ECM), but this time they turn the level up a couple of notches. On Silfr Vilde&Inga presents chamber music of international caliber. Each piece on the album dives into a microclimate which eventually reveals small musical pearls. The …
On the silver globe
Sofa is proud to release “On The Silver Globe” – the debut album of the duo of Kim Myhr and Lasse Marhaug. The album originated as a commission from the MetaMorf art biennale in Trondheim for the two musicians to collaborate on a 8-channel piece for the 2016 edition. The morphing of Myhr and Marhaug proved to be a good match, the two had known each other for years but never worked together, and in the process of making “On The Silver Globe” found this collaboration should be more than a one-off.…
Melting into foreground
Henrik Munkeby Norstebo, trombone, half clarinet, electronics.Melting into foreground is the second solo album from trombone player Henrik Munkeby Norstebo, and his debut on the SOFA label. The first track is solo trombone. No effects. He is using the whole spectre of his instrument, from pure tones to noise and the barely audible, in an attempt to find the balance between the intuitive and the strictly constructed. About the second part, Henrik says that all the electronic sounds stems from one…
The unknown knowns
Klaus Ellerhusen Holm, alto saxophone & clarinet. Tor Haugerud, drums & percussion. Kim Myhr, guitars & objects. Martin Taxt, tuba. Muringa navigates playfully in a polarized world of opposites. Between speed and tranquility, industry and flora, violence and tenderness, noise and silence, chaos and order; Muringa gives the listener the hegelian third choice. The group consists of four of the most active improvising musicians from Norway. All occupied with other SOFA-projects such as Mural…
Selektiv hogst
Tetuzi Akiyama (guitar), Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board), Espen Reinertsen (saxophone & flute), Eivind L¿nning (trumpet), Martin Taxt (tuba). Selektiv hogst, meaning selection cutting, is a continuation of the music developed on the album Varianter av d¿de trær, released on SOFA in 2008. Since then, the quartet has performed numerous concerts in Japan and Europe, finding a particular way of making music together. 'Selektiv hogst' sees the former quartet of Tetuzi Akiyama, Marti…
Asymmetrical Music
The new cd with Norwegian composer Eivind Buene and his composition, asymmetrical music. This is Sofa first release with a written score, but it doesn't mean that improvisation is abandoned. On the contrary, asymmetrical music focuses on the meeting point between composition and improvisation. The two soloists, Ivar Grydeland guitar and Ingar Zach Ð percussion, are improvising as a duo but also on another level, with the written score. The members of the Ensemble featured on this disc are also v…