New Arrivals

[…] There is something slightly daunting about the notion of an improvising sextet. Do the casual math of instrumental permutations from six soloists to one sextet, adding in duos, trios, quartets and quintets, and you have something like 55 possible combinations. Literally anything might surface, but among the least likely is the superb music achieved here by Sestetto Internazionale, music that dances between the ideal poles of inevitability and unpredictability, inviting a sense of wonder. Lis…

"2022 was a shit show. I moved three times. I lived in San Francisco for a sudden moment in time. About eight months to be exact. But I jumped through a wormhole . An atmospheric anomaly that rippled across and through my familial center, taking us into a chaos of cardboard boxes, temporary living spaces, a collapse in our art practices, only to be pulled through the other end of the time warp, re-emerging back where we convened in 2019 in Tucson, Arizona--but now it is 2023 and life has changed…

Nice Music is thrilled to announce the long awaited new full length release from Melbourne/Naarm-based producer Andrew Cowie as Match Fixer. Tantalising with a string of self-released tracks over the last 3 years and following the cloistered urgency of instant NM classic 'Attempts' (2017), 'Hits For The Bin' populates the glowing expanse of his sound world with restrained beat structures, cloaked in Cowie’s signature lush drift and squelched melodic riffing. A foaming wave of relief when compare…

We are thrilled to introduce the world to the innovative sounds of the Japanese improvisational music trio ‘I-I’. Composed of three exceptionally talented musicians, Kazuhisa Uchihashi (guitar, daxophone, pedals), Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi (synthesizers, pedals) and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (percussion). This dynamic ensemble has embarked on a remarkable musical journey with their homonymous debut album. "There's no inspiration from others. We just played." With this raw and unfiltered approach to music, ‘I…

My Strong Will is a new album of "Ethiopian Classical Music" by Girma Yifrashewa. Recorded with Bulgarian musicians and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, the album is a return to where Yifrashewa completed his own conservatory training in the late 1980s and early 1990s, across both sides of the fall of Communism. Guided by Yifrashewa's piano, these chamber works bring the music of Ethiopia into a Western Classical format, uncovering meditative and emotional new vistas for both…

I Predatori Di Atlantide (AKA Atlantis Inferno) is a post-atomic movie directed by Ruggero Deodato in 1983. It narrates the adventures of Mike Ross (Christopher Connelly), Washington (Malik Farrakhan) and of a group of characters bound to the events revolving around the sinking of a Soviet submarine, close to Florida shores. A series of twists will bring the group on an island, just submerged from the abyss which is the mythical Atlantis. The score, unreleased if we pay exception to a 7” vinyl o…

Michal Vaľko, aka Line Gate makes a return to mappa with his third cassette for the label. Once again the material is deeply minimalist, but shows marked evolutions in the Slovak, Prague-based artist’s unique trajectory. This time comprising two relatively short pieces (compared to the 40- and 60-minute works previously published on mappa), 'Trap' is perhaps Line Gate’s darkest yet. Whereas previously his works focused on psychoacoustic phenomena, or highlighted the sacredness and timelessness o…

Tip! Musician and field recordist Action Pyramid finds magic in the everyday on Mardle, a compelling and confounding suite of hydrophone compositions revealing the sonic 24-hour cycle of the UK’s freshwater ponds. Rooted in Jack Greenhalgh’s sonic research on pond biodiversity, Mardle brings to the surface the delicate sounds of aquatic insect stridulations, plant respiration and photosynthesis - an ecology of otherworldly rhythms and alien hyper-sounds that feel more like early synth experiment…

Not that droney as often but circular, grainy, dreamy melodious doodles from Scotland's finest Fraser Burnett…. Might ring in your head just like a summer hit!

*100 copies limited edition* Sign Libra’s third album Hidden Beauty is an intimate voyage through feminine nature, guided by the arts of subtext, musical collage, and mysterious allusions. Enigmatic and mischievous, Sign Libra’s signature blend of evocative composition with lyricless, ethereal vocalizing is offered here with a new feeling of presence and closeness. Hidden Beauty is a chance not only to be heard but seen and felt: to release the invisible and bring fragility to the surface.

*100 copies limited edition* The opposite of closure is opening. The album Closures fractionally links back to Konspekt by mapping the condition of perception and feeling after the closure (of a certain) phase of life. Even though we’re talking about a concrete phase – the most painful loss so far – the pieces don’t revolve around it at all. What is taking place in the pieces is everything after June 2023. – “a lively joy (from life)”– “perceiving the environment”– “the world is a beautiful plac…

From our now-venerable, but ever thistle-sharp, Scots singer of new songs and old, comes a fifth full-length collection of traditional songs. Reaching down the centuries to unpack these numbers anew, Alasdair finds a set of eternal melodies – and with them, an unsettling number of surreal images that parallel the madness of our modern times.

Jesper Nordberg Trio is a group based in Copenhagen (DK) and Malmö (SE), featuring the double bass player Jesper Nordberg, violinist Stefan Pöntinen and trumpetist Ruhi Erdogan. With Nordberg's compositions as a starting point, the trio's playing can be characterized by close interplay, radical shifts, and having elements ranging from experimental improvisation, Balkan music, Scandinavian folklore, jazz and expressionism. Jesper Nordberg's warm tone and rhythmic displacements meet Ruhi's trumpet…

*2023 stock. 50 copies limited edition* After his oneiric, Casio-centric 'Nullpluss' that Kristian Tangvik released two years ago, the time has come for his next move. In Kristian's own words: "The Cod and the Cat has developed over the course of two years. It came to me in a dream. Some compositions arrived while traveling, others in a complete standstill. And so I have gathered a fresh combination of exceptional performers from the rich and exciting underground of Copenhagen's music scene, and…

Over the course of 20 years, German artist Black To Comm aka Marc Richter has pushed the limits of and merged the aesthetics of art, conceptual installations and music, coming in a wave of innovation alongside his peers Pita, Fennesz, Felicia Atkinson and later Sarah Davachi to name a few. His list of collaborations and commissions is long and impressive. Through it all Richter as Black to Comm has challenged assumptions, explored identity and confronted the concept of authorship itself. Black t…

*50 copies limited edition* The Delphi was one of the greatest silent movie cinemas of Berlin. It was in operation since the late 20s, it shone in its own golden era, was bombed during the Second World War, was closed and then reused as a warehouse; its walls faded, its floor grew mildewy and its facade today does not indicate anything about what once went on the inside. The interior itself maintains a faded echo of its former glory and its integration in this century’s 20s makes it a hidden gem…

*300 copies limited edition (hand-numbered).* Russell Burden (Being) is a sound and visual artist living on the south coast of the UK. His practice develops work that explores qualities of ambient perception, most often through the lens of hydrological, geological or biological processes. He has delivered gallery exhibits in various mediums including live cymatic feed, and dark space installation. Russell was also a member of The Humble Bee & Players and last year as artist in residence for a si…

*2023 stock* First two tracks and Side A of New Bodies. From Los Angeles, also of Open City – first full length-- single takes, live--Intensely physical and abstract music that constantly, unpredictably shifts and evolves. Impulse, memory and intent, laid bare in real time. Post-melody, post-groove sound. Concrete, brutal, yes fun-----

*2023 repress* There can be little more exciting or rewarding than listening to a band playing live and firing on all cylinders at the absolute peak of its powers, and the live performances presented here by Nucleus are no exception. They capture the group in arguably its finest incarnation right at the start of its long career, exhibiting a staggeringly high level of musical discipline matched by an equally impressive ability to improvise and solo. Nucleus began its long jazz-rock journey in 19…

*2023 stock* "What happens when you multiply limitlessness by infinity? You absolutely do not know. Which is why it's such a great idea to toss Henry Kaiser and Andrea Centazzo into the same reaction chamber. As one of the West Coast's premier freakers for some three decades, Kaiser has made a career of sticking his guitar in unpredictable places. Dude's also an experimental-film-&-lit buff and an ace scuba diver, and grows radioactive coral on Neptune.Meanwhile Centazzo has crashed regularly ou…

Airto Moreira and Flora Purim, the legendary King and Queen of Brazilian Jazz, have captivated audiences for over six decades with their vibrant albums and exhilarating live performances. With a dedicated global fan base including the UK's jazz funk and jazz dance scene to Japan's concert halls, the power couple continues to make waves in the industry – Flora's 'If You Will' (2022) album was even nominated for a Grammy! The duo met and came together musically in Sambalanço and the Sambrasa Trio.…

Yearly compilation album Radar by Keroxen returns with its fourth volume in the ongoing series of themed based albums showcasing the talents and misfortunes of carefully selected musical projects based or connected with the Canary Islands.

* ltd to 400, black vinyl, color silkscreened jacket with obi (white, dark blue), inserts and a postcard * Je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas (I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji HIGH, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the …

Curtis Cuffie (1955–2002) was an artist who lived and worked in and around the East Village from the mid-1980s until his untimely death in the early 2000s. He moved to New York from Hartsville, South Carolina, as a teenager and lived unhoused for long stretches of his adult life. Cuffie found local notoriety for the way he adorned the streets of downtown New York, collecting what the city provided, often sifting trash to stage on-the-spot sculptures along the Bowery and Cooper Square. His arrang…

After K Records founder Calvin Johnson found a copy of their official debut from Zero Records ‘Burning Farm’, in a record crate, he would release it in the United States, where it found its way to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. The resulting tour (and some of the greatest moments in rock music history) is now the stuff of legends! Recorded and released exclusively on cassette in 1982, Minna Tanoshiku Shonen Knife was the first ever release from Shonen Knife. Of the 89 total copies ever manufactur…

Infinitely adaptable, DeMerle's power and rhythmic elasticity underlines his bold presence and command of modern jazz drumming. By the time of 'Spectrum,' Les DeMerle's dynamic 1969 United Artists debut album, Les was a known, prodigious young drumming talent who had been wowing audiences through club and TV performances since he was a teen. The unheard gems was a recorded in 1967 by his band, Sound 67, which was lost in the confusing era at Atlantic Records, never to see the light of day. The a…

Huge Tip! 250 copies. A sinopia is an ancient preparatory sketch technique for a fresco. If you scrape the final work off the wall, the sketch remains; simplified and powerful in it’s starkness. Alessandra Novaga, an experimental guitarist/composer based in Milan, Italy found this historic technique resonated with an album she recently recorded with NYC-based drummer Kid Millions (aka John Colpitts of Oneida, Man Forever and many other projects). Italy’s cultural past is the often transcendent a…

*300 copies limited edition* "I’ve released various materials over the years under other names, Aiko has been materialized in 2022 through self-published music and with IIKKI it's the first official release that I am very proud of. Despite this, Aiko has been publishing in other forms since 2020, but always within the sphere of ambient music." "This album was born as a long-lasting sound continuum. It was then cut, stitched together and reassembled to give shape and restore unity from the fragme…

Tip! Surface World is pleased to share David Lee Myers (aka Arcane Device) and Toshimaru Nakamura’s Elements, a remote collection written and assembled in tandem at the suggestion of the label. Sharing an idiosyncratic approach to feedback-based sound generation and a commitment to their signature instruments (respectively, the Feedback Machine and the No-Input Mixing Board), the pairing lands during an especially fruitful period in their individual discographies. Harmonically dense, energetic a…

False Walls releases a solo album from Glasgow-born and London-based guitarist Kevin Daniel Cahill. Consisting of two long tracks, the album traces a steady progression as it moves through different environments — initially ambient and isolationist in tone, the work ultimately reaches a form of transcendence. Rooted in Kevin’s guitar-playing, though not immediately identifiable as such due to the deployment of tape loops and effects, the album foregrounds feeling and atmosphere, and its duration…

Tip! Gene Coleman is a composer, musician and video director, who has created over 70 works for various instrumentation and media. Central to his work is the inventive use of sound, image and time, and the desire to create experiences that expand our understanding of the world. Since 2001 he has explored the global transformation of culture and music’s relationship with video, science and architecture. Gene has been developing a series of works around concepts of Neuro Music and Transcultural Mu…

*300 copies limited edition* Film and media composer Lyonel Bauchet is best known in the electronic music world for his mastery of the Buchla modular synthesiser. Indeed this is the instrument that was in the foreground for his previous two DiN releases, The Secret Society (DiNDDL11) and The Diver (DiN68). However for his third album on the DiN imprint he has eschewed this familiar territory and instead focused on a collection of analogue gear from Soma Laboratory. Their most famous instrument, …

*300 copies limited edition* Stephen James Buckley aka Polypores returns for his second full album on the DiN imprint following on from his 2022 debut “Hyperincandescent” (DiN71). Though we’ve come to know a wide range of sounds from Polypores, it’s here on “Multizonal Mindscramble” that we get plunged into the outer reaches of the inner psyche. Flickering insectoid transmissions are laid atop slowly shifting walls of drifting oscillators, barely discernible chirps and static-encrusted filter sw…

Tone Science sub-label, from DiN records, continues to explore the world of modular synth music.

Arbitrary presents Terrain Vague – the debut of Danish group Mesmer. The album is a series of (deconstructed) live-recordings taken from three live concerts. The sounds on this record are taken from two years’ worth of sound research and creative outbursts with inspiration from field trips to the outskirts of Copenhagen. Intrigued by the auditive landscapes of places where nature and culture meet and challenge each other. Listening to the field-recordings led Mesmer to interpret the moods, music…

Other Minds is proud to present Jepson Prairie, a new album of recent work by Bay Area composer Tom Bickley. Jepson Prairie continues Other Minds’s tradition of presenting work by under-recorded yet notable composers. Bickley has long been a presence in American New Music as evidenced by his long-standing Deep Listening work and affiliation with the Cornelius Cardew Choir, among others. Despite his many years of composing and performing, Jepson Prairie is Bickley’s debut commercial release as a …

Established by members of the British brass-rock outfit IF with the former Osibisa percussionist Loughty Amao, Zzebra was a forward-thinking hybrid mixing jazz, rock, and world music. Chief songwriter/saxophonist Dave Quincy keeps the arrangements complex and Loughty injects the African element, former Elastic Band keyboardist Gus Yeadon and guitarist John Terry adding layers of melodic inventiveness. Yielding a progressive jazz style that roped in funk, blues, and west African rhythms, this ent…

Established by members of the British brass-rock outfit IF with the former Osibisa percussionist Loughty Amao, Zzebra was a forward-thinking hybrid mixing jazz, rock, and world music. Chief songwriter/saxophonist Dave Quincy keeps the arrangements complex and Loughty injects the African element, former Elastic Band keyboardist Gus Yeadon and guitarist John Terry adding layers of melodic inventiveness. Yielding a progressive jazz style that roped in funk, blues, and west African rhythms, this ent…

Further explorations into the dark past by Tholos Gateway. After the their first Aegean trip documented in their debut album, the trio formed by Colin Marston, Àlex Reviriego and Vasco Trilla returns with the second volume of the Tholos Gateway saga. The dark and ominous atmosphere of the previous album is still here, soaking the ritualistic bells, savage bass drones and dreamy synths in a mysterious fog.This time they count with the collaboration of Yoshiko Ohara (Bloody Panda) and Mick Barr (K…

*2023 stock* Other Days represents Nate Young's most labyrinthine incursion into the nether zone between waking life and nightmarish, cryptographic noise. The recordings stem from an exhibition of lathe-cut etchings and paintings by Young and his wife, Alivia Zivich, installed at Tokyo's Haus Gallery. The process involved designing original images for 22 8" x 8" pieces of acrylic, which in turn inspired 22 audio compositions which were then lathe-cut into the acrylic. The process of lathe-cuttin…