New Arrivals
Kataklisma
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy.
Like Odysseus, the four musicians that gave life to this project traveled into several different situations with a narrative approach; improvisation is a musical p…
Magnitude
"Jeremy Brown might be a new name to many listeners of this music. He is a Professor of Music at the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada who teaches improvisation, is the Director of the University Jazz Orchestra and the Saxophone Ensemble and is a notable and prolific scholar of music. He is a busy professional musician who plays saxophone, flute, clarinet in classical, and jazz settings. He is a virtuoso, who is very highly regarded in Canada and elsewhere. I met him when I was the Killam …
Play Off
*In process of stocking* Play Off is the new record by the composer Vasco Mendonça, performed by Drumming GP and edited by Holuzam. Resulting from the accomplice creative partnership between Vasco Mendonça and the ensemble led by Miquel Bernat, all the works on this disc (which includes an unusual piece for countertenor and percussion, from poems by Terrance Hayes and Tracy K. Smith) are commissions from the group to the composer, under the Composer in Residence programme in 2019/2020.
At this l…
Ripples On The Surface
*In process of stocking* Releasing music since 2006, Tiago Sousa is one of most talented and heartfelt pianists of his generation. His compositions are soulful, generous, and mindful. He has released records on Immune, Discrepant and for years oversaw Merzbau, a visionary Portuguese label that inspired many in the mid-2000s. After years of flirting, we are very happy to announce Tiago's first release on Holuzam, “Ripples On The Surface”.
The opener “Sunflowers” sits close to Steve Reich – “Music…
Double Action
Twin Cosmos is not only the name of the musical output of fraternal twins Morihito & Yasuhito Ito, but more philosophically, an album that encapsulates, “the universe of twins”.
The pair were born 1953 in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture. A port city 50 kilometres west of Nagoya, famous for its chemical plants. Despite their surroundings, they grew up in an environment that fostered learning and self-expression. From an early age, they began to carve out their own paths.
Morihito was fascinated with sc…
Advanced Process
Heads have been after Otakar Olšaník and Jan Martiš's Advanced Process for a long time. That's because "coincidentally-cosmic disco" packed with spaced-out, smacky-synth dynamite tends to become sought-after. Originally slipping out on the mighty Coloursound in 1986, the label described the sound as "contemporary synthesizer underscores played by computers; depicting future technologies in today's process." If they'd just added "acid-drenched", they'd have been closer to nailing it.The A-Side is…
Black Box 3
* Edition of 500 * Arbitrary presents the third in the Black Box series of releases by Mads Emil Nielsen. The release, which showcases a more sample- and grid-based side of the Danish musician/composer’s work, is part of a sequence of publications with music and audio originally made for theatre, radio soundtracks and more.
Black Box 3 is based on sound pieces produced for Sprækker (Cracks), a dance performance & installation in Denmark, 2021. The starting points for these pieces are improvisati…
Transition
*In process of stocking. Limited coloured vinyl LP + MP3 download code (comes in different coloured vinyl, we cannot guarantee which one you will receive)* Stockholm's Havenaire follows up a series of head-turning ambient releases on the likes of Shimmering Moods, Polar Seas and Glacial Movements with a limited new long player on Past Inside The Present. Across six slowly shifting soundscapes he layers up his misty-eyed chords into music that is designed to empty your mind but that also gently s…
Back To The Body
The journey from trauma to healing and understanding inspired Andrew Oda’s beautiful new album: "Back To The Body". More delicate and plaintive than his previous work, but no less adventurous in its broad palette of synthetic and acoustic sounds, this music is the topography of a descent into the wisdom of the body, “as frightening and unsafe as it may feel” as the composer puts it. A sweet piano, a gently plucked guitar, and a mournful cello sit alongside garbled synth melodies, rustling field …
Wat Dong Moon Lek
Carl Stone continues his late career prolific renaissance with a new album of sculpted, tuneful MAX/MSP fantasias. Stone “plays” his source material the way Terry Riley’s In C “plays” an ensemble – with a loose, freewheeling charm connected to the ancient human impulse to make sound, melody, and rhythm from anything. Stone’s unique technique simultaneously focuses and sprays sound like a symphony of uncapped fire hydrants. Is this techno, avant-garde, sound art? It’s simply (or rather fantastica…
The Plains At Gordium
The Plains at Gordium was composed from June to August 2004 and is dedicated to Charlotta Kotik. The incentive to compose the piece came from a percussion group in Brno, Czech Republic, who asked me for a piece of music. Not being a commission-disciplined composer, I wrote a piece for six percussionists, while the Czech group, DAMA-DAMA had only four members and could not perform it. The size of the piece also defies the scale of a standard percussion piece, 1,290 measures over a 108-page score.…
Art Large
Union Editions presents Art Large. Recorded in São Paulo, Brazil, 1999. All Music Written and Produced by Art Large.
Lead Me Where NPCs Sleep
Union Editions presents Lead Me Where NPCs Sleep by Kinked. Composition, mixing and editing by Lapo Sorride as Kinked, mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi, pitched voices on "Dimanche" and "Occhi Di Neodimio" by Melodie Husquin, on "Serenada For NPC" by Bob Hermit. Composed between January and July 2022 in Asile185, Turin. Photo by Dario Terraglia.
Aster Screw
Union Editions presents Aster Screw. Recorded at 199X Studios, "Soda Caustica" Feat. Blind Spot, "Electric Music" Written by R.B. James.
MMM Archive 2017–2021
Reissue of all the three unobtainable tapes from MMM Records in a double cassette box set together with a fourth unreleased album "Love Letters" by Aloe Vera. The now defunct record label described itself as: "We want pieces of music that are inspiring, universal, blah-blah-blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic and sentimental."
Terraforma Journal – Issue #1 (Magazine)
The Terraforma Journal is a new editorial project by Terraforma. A biannual publication exploring the intersection of sound, art, ecology and culture at large. Issue #1 focuses on the expanded notion of the festival—intended as a collective, multilateral, interconnected manifestation of dynamism. The theme unfolds through a multiplicity of layers to acquire new and unexpected definitions. Terre Thaemlitz, Fabio Sargentini, Shiraz Arts Festival, Beuys 2021, Alice Bucknell, Angela Rui, 2050.plus —…
Black Sound White Cube (Book)
German language, hard cover. 124 pages * The fact that the White Cube produces, records and celebrates primarily white sound is an aspect of its ideology that even its staunchest critics have never mentioned. The white 'audiology' of the White Cube has always been generously overlooked, or as it might be better to say, 'overheard' - and this despite the many occasions that the White Cube's regular and irregular activities would offer to a critical ear willing to listen. But the White Cube truly …
Frost
Reissue of an obscure Italian minimal album from the 80s. Recorded in Northern Italy in 1989 by Michele Tadini, this release effortlessly fuses ambient and library overtones with the influence of early digital electronic music, underlined by an ethereal atmosphere eerily reminiscent of the best soundtracks by John Carpenter. Seemingly unplaceable in time and space, it is both Italian and world-spanning.
A young, free-reined musician with a rich music vocabulary and avant-garde sensibilities pour…
Dress
* Edition of 500 + 16-page booklet *By the mid-1990s, there was a quietly thriving underground in Wellington, New Zealand, made up of a number of loosely aligned operatives - Surface of The Earth and their World Resources imprint; Fever Hospital and 8 Dec, and the music made by the members of The Garbage & the Flowers after that group temporarily dissolved in 1992..." One of those rather short-lived groups was Dress, who on record consisted of Yuri Frusin and Helen Johnstone from The Garbage & t…
Blue in Green (Book)
Hardcover, cloth binding, dust jacket The latest work from the veteran novelist called “one hell of a writer” by James Baldwin, “wonderfully wry” by Donald Barthelme, and a “writer’s writer” by Ishmael Reed, Blue in Green narrates one evening in August 1959, when, only eight days after the release of his landmark album Kind of Blue, Miles Davis is assaulted by a member of New York City Police Department outside of Birdland. In the aftermath of Davis’s brief stint in custody, we enter the straine…