New Arrivals / Last week
Breath Vessels
On Breath Vessels, Liz Allbee braids horns, tuning forks, sine waves and voice into a kind of speculative folk ritual, imagining a future orchestra of bodies and resonant objects sharing breath, charge and memory when the grid has finally gone dark.
Dalbergia Retusa
Extraordinary double LP of solo guitar music by Hans Reichel (1949-2011), curated by Oren Ambarchi. Twenty-three pieces from 1973-1988 documenting Reichel's radical instrumental rethinking: custom-built guitars with additional strings, moveable pickups, special capos. Sounds simultaneously strange and beautiful, from romantic lyricism to alien sonorities. Essential.
Clear Light
Singular 1967 Elektra Records gem by Clear Light, LA psychedelic band featuring future Doors bassist Doug Lubahn and CSNY drummer Dallas Taylor. Double-drum setup creates uncanny soundscape, it blends folk, rock, psych, classical. Undiscovered at release, now cult classic.
No Way Out
Essential 1967 garage-psych debut by Chocolate Watch Band, raw prototype of protopunk energy with volcanic guitar work and inflammatory vocals by Dave Aguilar channelling Jagger like nobody else. Distorted riffs, cosmic psychedelic legerdemain, killer covers of Stones material.
Now Jazz Now 100 Essential Free Jazz & Improvisation Recordings 1960-80 (Book)
277 pages. 196 x 268 mm. Open NOW JAZZ NOW and you're not just looking at a book - you're entering the minds of three lifelong obsessives. Byron Coley (music writer and critic), Mats Gustafsson (saxophonist, The Thing, Fire!), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth founder, solo artist) have spent decades accumulating, discussing, debating, and above all listening to free jazz and free improvisation. This book is the result of that shared mania. What they've created isn't a conventional history or a ra…
Muto Infinitas
2026 Repress. In Muto Infinitas, Catherine Lamb extends her distinctive approach to microtonality and just intonation, crafting a forty-minute dialogue for quartertone bass flute and double bass performed by Rebecca Lane and Jon Heilbron. The recording, realized without electronic alteration, invites deep listening, unspooling at an unhurried pace in a luminous acoustic field. Lamb’s music here is uncompromising in its patience: the two musicians linger in the borderlands of pitch and timbre, ca…
Follie del Divino Spirito Santo
Huge Tip! 300 copies. Originally issued in 1978 by Cetra, Follie Del Divino Spirito Santo emerges from a singular moment in Antonio Infantino's artistic practice - a moment when his early immersion in international Beat circles and avant-garde gestural music had crystallized into something entirely his own: a ritualistic and shamanic engagement with the musical traditions of Southern Italy.
From 1964 onward, Infantino had moved through collaborative circles with Vittorio Gelmetti, Sylvano Bussot…
Wunderkammer
On Wunderkammer, Jan Bang, Michael Francis Duch, Erik Honoré, David Toop and Mark Wastell assemble a single 38‑minute live trance of electroacoustic chamber‑drift, where Moe‑Repstad’s disembodied voice moves through gongs, bass and quietly uncanny objects like a ghost cataloguing its own reliquary.
Music for the Process of Dying
On Music for the Process of Dying, Homo dissolves language into a porous, five-part soundscape where breath, organ, flute, electronics and the outside world seep into one another, sketching a wordless vigil for the psyche as it approaches the threshold.
Lub
Lub arrives like a controlled implosion. On this debut full‑length, SOF - a Berlin‑based Portuguese artist steeped in metal, noise and the more hostile edges of underground sound culture - treats the album format as a site of self‑preservation through destruction. Rather than slotting into any familiar subgenre lane, these tracks rip up the social contracts of song form: riffs don’t resolve where they “should,” structures don’t flatter attention spans, and there is no chorus waiting to offer cat…
One For Archie
On One For Archie, Moor Mother joins Nicole Mitchell and Nduduzo Makhathini to turn a cancelled duet into a living monument, threading Shepp’s titles, politics and tonal language into a fierce hymn of gratitude, grief and ongoing struggle, paired with the incendiary, future‑facing “They’ve Got A Plan.”
Universal Light
Debut by a new string trio of Pelt and Elkhorn veterans with the wild card contributions of Kaily Schenker, creating a new variant of supremely pleasing acoustic-psychedelic-drone-Americana etc. “Lullaby>Summer Field” is an aptly named gentle rise, with Sheppard’s fingerpicked 12 string snaking through waves of elongated fiddle and cello. “Triode>Freedom” follows a darker minor-key ostinato with Gangloff’s keening melody over the top. “Freedom>Universal Blues” starts as a dirge and builds to a t…
Contra Madre
The late pedal-steel guitarist Susan Alcorn leaves a final surprise hinting at new directions left underexplored on her collaboration with Nomad War Machine, the improvising metal duo of drummer Julius Masri and guitarist James Reichard. Their death-metal-influenced pummel adds new fire to her molten flow across a suite of improvised tracks that show off the vast range and simpatico of the trio. Julius Masri and James Reichard of Nomad War Machine: An unexpected opportunity arose out of a catchi…
Interwoven
From the visionary collaboration of Japanese New Age master Ken-ichiro Isoda and electronic music magician aus (Yasuhiko Fukuzono). Minimalism distilled, ambient environmental music that soothes the mind and kindles the spirit. Drawing on Isoda’s deep legacy (notably his legendary work on Oscilation Circuit – Série Réflexion 1 from mythical label Sound Process) and fused with aus’ spellbinding melodies, Interwoven is ethereal healing sound: lingering piano, soft cinematic synths, field recording…
Wave Field
If you’ve been following the wanderings of prolific psychedelic magicians Elkhorn, you might be surprised that Elkhorn guitarist Drew Garder’s solo LP Wave Field is the most out and out “rock” record on VHF in many years. Working here in a small group with excellent players Tom Malach (guitar), Andy Cush (bass), and Ryan Jewel (drums), Gardner cuts loose on a set of propulsive and swinging material that allows him to greatly expand his sound into unexpected areas. “Rhizoid” starts with a sneaky …
Terceiro Solstício
Luz gélida(d)o montediluída em flor(es).
Delicate guitars, ethereal voices, tracks woven from sighs and layers upon layers, like secrets and small nocturnal rituals under the cold glow of the moon. Beautiful, evocative, and quietly transformative. The artist, cláudia simões, also known as alga, dedicates this work to winter: a season of introspection, stillness, and subtle magic. Let's enjoy the offering.
July, 2024, Montemor-o-Novo
Last year, Aires, Sã Bernardo, Sal Grosso & Vile Karimi inhabited the Blackbox at O Espaço do Tempo from July 3–6, part of CCA's curatorial project Jejum. Over four days, these artists and collaborators converge, creating shifting constellations of sound through solo, duo, trio, and quartet encounters. Each evening invites the public into the intimacy of open rehearsals, where structure dissolves into possibility, a daily ritual of improvisation where boundaries blur, and music becomes a living …
Death Notes
Together, Samuel Kerridge and Maxim 'Panda' Barron conspire against the living with their electrifying new project, Death Disco. Drawing deeply from the rebellious roots of punk and the DIY ethos, the duo has crafted with their debut album ‘Death Notes’, a sense of urgency and authenticity. Samuel’s fierce vocal work and electronics gives the album an emotional depth that goes beyond its aggressive nature, while Maxim’s pulsating rhythms keeps cutting through the atmosphere with skin-stripping p…
Tutto Bene Volume II
After the success of Tutto Bene, enjoy Tutto Bene, Volume II! I've culled my favorite new accordion-driven hits into one fabulous sonic adventure to feed your hungry ears!
Some of the songs were produced solo, one is a live recording from my performance with the Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto at the Triple Door, others are from the sessions that Ama Trio (AD/Madeleine Sosin/Abel Rocha) recorded at Gravel Voice sessions with Scott Colburn, as well as a rich collaboration with fellow-Seattle Composer…
The Schmetterling Variations
Since 1983 Dan Burke and his conspirators have dug through almost every facet of the avant sound plane, from early industrial pop deconstruction to blindingly minimal sound art to densely surreal found-sound collage, each unique approach bending and reconstituting the expectations and possibilities of each realm.
Plowing through layered field recordings, deeply rumbling tones, and eerie electroacoustic sounds with seamless transitions between cut-and-paste collages and manufactured drones, it’…
