New Arrivals
Constants
*2024 stock* UK-based artist Chris Herbert is a man of intermittent communications. Over the past decade he has published a select oeuvre of crushingly lush and elegant records. Fittingly then, Constants, his new edition for Room40 is a transmission from an overtly private realm. Working in a relative vacuum, beyond the reach of contemporary electronic music trends, Herbert has focussed his interest in intuitive composition. Drawing on a mixed musical palette and interweaving sounds sourced from…
Ballad(s) for Quiet Horizons
*2024 stock* Incredible collection of Scott Morrison's audio visual works. Presented in a gatefold monochrome printed and matte laminated jacket with insert cards.
Trystero
This debut full-length album of Stockholm-based composer and electroacoustic experimentalist Theodor Kentros, could easily be interpreted as 'just' an assemblage of pieces written between 2021-2024. Named after the paranoid hallucination (or, if said hallucination is real, the underground secret mail system) figuring in the 1966 Thomas Pynchon novel ‘The Crying of Lot 49’, it should rather be perceived as a very distinct, coherent stream running through his output during these years.
The six tra…
Dry Routine
*200 copies limited edition with hand-stamped coffee stained sleeves and insert* 5 decided and minimal arrangements of raw organic waste, tired motors, and idling electronic signals. Sound sources that are unmistakably worldly, spun into Ochu’s signature malaise, making them impossible to place. A continuation of the trajectory established on his preceding albums Unproduktiw and Lähmung des Wartens, this time while a slightly noisier edge.
One for One
*200 copies limited edition* Renowned French alto sax and organ player Jean-Luc Guionnet is also an outstanding composer. "One for One" is a work that Guionnet composed in 2015. Santiago-based guitarist Cristián Alvear (born in 1979) is active on the contemporary classical and experimental music scenes inside and outside Chile. Juan Sebastián Lach (born in 1970) is a composer and keyboard player from Mexico. In 2013 Lach released the album "ISLAS," a collection of his chamber music compositions,…
Every Hand Is Lunatic That Travels On The Moon
*100 copies limited edition* Since moving to Europe from Los Angeles in 1990 Jason Kahn has been a fixture on the European improvised and experimental music scenes. He lives in Zürich since 2000, where he is also active as a writer and visual artist. Tours and exhibitions throughout Europa, the USA, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Egypt, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Turkey, Singapore, …
Dungeon Weed
*80 copies limited edition* "Dungeon Weed" is a minimalist fantasy-synth/new age album, but also a 28-pages comic-book which you will find inside the cassette case. Behind the name The Story Of Khelise lies a French artist who, in the dual role of cartoonist and musician, created this fantasy album/comic for HDK. The Story Of Khelise's enchanting music will transport you to a world of soft colors and dazzling lights: free your mind and prepare to travel on the wings of imagination. For lovers of…
Nightmare Realm
In a forgotten age, on a vanished continent, the Nightmare Realm cruelly thrived. Warlords shared power over barren and arid lands, massive armies of heavily armed soldiers guaranteed a fragile peace under the sky. Everything in this unfortunate world had a sinister aura, fear was the dominant feeling in the heart of every creature.
Today (fortunately!) even the memory of this distant and gloomy world has disappeared. In fact, there are few historical testimonies that have come down to us from t…
Morning and Evening Ragas Vol.4
*100 copies limited edition* Limited to 100 Numbered LPs housed in thick silk screened cardstock. The new chapter in the Decimus 'Morning And Evening Ragas' saga which has already reached volume 4. Pat Murano playing at his absolute peak. Intense and loud, this is totally rad. Open, free and beautiful.
Ephemeral Shapes
We have a special relationship with Ivo Perelman, so when his latest trio with Cuban-born and hugely respected pianist Aruan Ortiz and Spanish-born but French-based friend of our label Ramon Lopez finally came about, we felt that their first studio meeting had to be in our catalog. Their first album, Ephemeral Shapes, was recorded in Catalonia's Rosazul studio under the delectable ear of Ferran Conangla himself. We are all the more pleased that the band has entered the roster of the famous Akamu…
Ruins
Ultimately, this 1984 EP by the Ruins - of which Spittle DepenDance now offers a valuable reissue enriched with additional material from the period that has remained completely unreleased until now - is a testament to the band's innovative spirit and its role in shaping the Italian new wave scene, landing moreover to international acclaim and acclaim even over the following decades. With its mix of electronic experimentation and dark pop sensibility, it remains essential listening for fans of a…
Føkt Mose
All songs written and performed by Erlend Smalås and Trond Wiger. Recorded and mixed in GODSterminalen by Trond Wiger for Alt for Høyt for Langt for Kort Forlag 2023. Mastering by Karl Klaseie, Øra Mastering. Chorus lyrics På gli by Stig Aarskog
Tri Dela
Šalter Ensemble operates on the border between free improvisation and composition, focusing on collective processes as a central part of its practice. The project is an international electro-acoustic ensemble initiated in 2017 by Jonas Kocher in collaboration with Zavod Sploh Ljubljana and Izlog Festival Zagreb, and has since performed at numerous venues and festivals in Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, Switzerland and Serbia.The ensemble consists of outstanding personalities from the Swiss music scen…
Stranger Becoming
2024 stock. The Swiss-based trio Koch/Loriot/Kocher formed in the summer of 2020 has kept developing a distinct musical identity ever since. The band makes use of insistently repeated motifs, broken melodic lines and occasional tonal harmonies cohabiting with pure sound production. The three musicians develop their respective materials in tension with each other: they are able to merge their sounds at any moment, but just as well might evolve their individual voices for a long time in parallel, …
Jonas Kocher plays Christian Kesten & Stefan Thut
2024 stock. Christian Kesten - Untitled (solo for accordion). (Written for Jonas Kocher and premiered in Paris in April 2014). "The accordion contains some remarkable mechanical characteristics. In the highest register of the right hand, the last few buttons don’t play the expected tones. The pitches are simply too high. The necessary reeds would be too small and fragile to produce them. These buttons transpose the tones an octave down. The buttons in the neighbouring octave do play the expected…
A Curious Mix of People: The Underground Scene of '90s Austin
A twisting path through Austin’s underground music scene in the twentieth century’s last decade, narrated by the people who were there.
Jinxed By Being
What might appear to be the most unlikely collaboration of 2024 proves also to be one of the most invigorating listens of the year! Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance are in full aural/metaphysical alignment in their mutual effort to become Jinxed by Being. On first listen, it becomes immediately clear that this fusion of Shackleton's bass-heavy cosmic dread and Six Organs' ritual folksong makes total sense. Longtime listeners know that both Shackleton and Six Organs of Admittance have been u…
The Needle and the Lens: Pop Goes to the Movies from Rock 'n' Roll to Synthwave
*2024 stock* How the creative use of pop music in film—think Saturday Night Fever or Apocalypse Now—has shaped and shifted music history since the 1960s. Quick: What movie do you think of when you hear “The Sounds of Silence”? Better yet, what song comes to mind when you think of The Graduate? The link between film and song endures as more than a memory, Nate Patrin suggests with this wide-ranging and energetic book. It is, in fact, a sort of cultural symbiosis that has mutually influenced movi…
At the Vanguard of Vinyl: A Cultural History of the Long-Playing Record in Jazz
In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s. The LP’s increased fidelity and playback capacity allowed lengthy compositions and extended improvisations to fit onto a single record, ushering in a period of artistic exploration. Despite these innovations, LP production became another site of negotiating the uneven power relations of a heavily segregated music industry. E…