Best of 2017
Pays Noir
Previously unreleased, the three tracks on Pays Noir come from recording sessions held at the same time as those for the cult album No Man's Land (FFL 026LP), produced by Jef Gilson in 1976, and published on vinyl by Souffle Continu Records in 2017. Singled out at the time of its release by Actuel, Rock & Folk, and Melody Maker, the tabula rasa of No Man's Land is the result of free-flowing experiments born of chance, if the two musicians are to be believed. Indeed, their approach to free im…
Metafisiche del Suono
CD version. For fans of the Italian avant-garde, few names inspire the loyalty and devotion offered to the percussionist and composer Lino Capra Vaccina - a perfect emblem of the country’s extraordinary movement of musical Minimalism. He first gained note as a member of Aktuala, a project which laid the groundwork for a entire generation of practitioners following in their wake - creating a hybrid of rock, avant-garde, and ancient musics, while incorporating a diverse number of sonic traditions …
Nord 1st Album
First ever official reissue after 36 years! Remastered and expanded edition, it remains one of the holy grails of DIY electronics from Japan. Hazy and drugged, this entrancing 1981 recording by the infamous Nord is a must-have for anyone who is into claustrophobic and destroyed ambient of the most disturbing, affecting kind. "Nord, consisting of Satoshi Katayama and Hiroshi Oikawa, were one of the leading groups in the Japanese underground music scene of the 1980s. The group's two members now pe…
Improvisie
Bamboo present the first ever reissue of Paul Bley's Improvisie, originally released in 1971. Recorded Live March 26th, 1971 at Club B14 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Improvisie is a part of the 1971 trilogy of Paul Bley and Annette Peacock's combined experimental recorded work. Together with recent reissues of 1971's The Bley Synthesizer Show (BAM 7020CD/LP) and 1972's Dual Unity (BAM 7018CD/LP), Improvisie is taken from a compelling period for two iconic figures of the free jazz movement, and the…
Goodbye Future
One of those amazing groups from the early 70s German scene – the kind of outfit who were doomed to failure right from the start, but didn't ever let that stop them from making some incredible music! The sounds here came about as a result of the dwindling Tomorrow's Gift lineup woodshedding in a schoolhouse in rural Germany – experimenting freely with all sorts of timings, styles, and instrumental combinations – then refining the whole thing down to their core lineup of keyboards, bass, and drum…
The Mecanoncentric Worlds of Pierre Bastien
Discrepant present a magical live recording from the legend that is Pierre Bastien, showcasing his mecanoid orchestra at its intricate best during a performance at Studio M, the historical studio-concert hall of Radio-Television of Vojvodina, Serbia. Around 1986, French composer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre Bastien started creating and building his own orchestra called Mecanium: an ensemble of musical automatons constructed from meccano parts and activated by electro-motors, that "play" on a…
Insalata Statica
**A real find. In the best way this is a record that is immediate and enduring. Limited to just 300 copies for the world, we urge you to grab one while you can** The new solo LP by Giovanni Di Domenico, Insalata Statica comprises a single album-length composition, initially a suite of six distinct parts that have been weaved together to form a kaleidoscopic whole. Composed and performed almost in its entirety by Di Domenico himself, the music takes listeners from passages of melancholic introsp…
Nachtflug / Atem des Windes
Peter Behrendsen (b. 1943) is a Cologne-based radio producer, performer and composer of experimental music. He started concerning himself with electro-acoustic music in 1972, was a member of Josef Anton Riedl's ensemble and assistant to Klaus Schöning at the WDR radio play studio (Studio for Acoustic Art). In Cologne, he organized numerous concerts and festivals for experimental music, most notably BrückenMusik, a series of concerts in the box girder of the Deutz bridge. He regards John Cage, Al…
Kanon / Torsi
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler (b. 1934) is a German composer of minimalist and reductionist contemporary music. His name is still most closely associated with his long-time position as radio editor and producer for New Music at the Hessian Broadcasting Corporation (Hessischer Rundfunk), but his own compositional oeuvre – beginning in 1955 and continuing until now – has in the recent years attracted more attention with various concerts and several releases.Having attended the Darmstadt International Sum…
New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle (New Jazz 1976 & 1977)
A stunning new 8 CD box set, comprised of recording from New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle between 1976 & 1977, and issued by the German imprint B.Free, offers a mind altering vision of just that. Toward the middle of 2016, B.Free released a sprawling 11 CD box of recordings from the 1974 and 75 incarnations of the New Jazz Festival Balver Höhle. As remarkable as it was, the following years seriously upped the game. Found within this new box are complete performance recordings of ensembles led by s…
Hippotigris Zebra Zebra
Souffle Continu Records present the first vinyl reissue of Cohelmec Ensemble's Hippotigris Zebra Zebra, originally released in 1971. The Cohelmec Ensemble celebrate, above all, the pleasure of collective music-making. A group without a designated leader, they base their approach on reciprocal listening, but also on a dialogue between written and improvised material, in which all members have an equal responsibility whatever their instrument. This is even demonstrated in their name: COH as in Jea…
No Man's Land
Souffle Continu Records present a reissue of Jean-Francois Pauvros and Gaby Bizien's No Man's Land, originally released on Un-Deux-Trois in 1976. Whether it is with the label Palm, or for Un-Deux-Trois, Jef Gilson has produced some of the best albums of French free jazz and improvisation. But that's not all: he also offered perfect recording conditions enabling some of the fresh young talent to emerge, including Daunik Lazro, André Jaume, and Jean-François Pauvros, all three of whom released …
La Chasse De Shirah Sharibad
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Workshop De Lyon's La Chasse De Shirah Sharibad, originally released in 1975. In France, in the years 1960-1970, musicians pondered over how to transpose the political struggle of free jazz onto a completely different political terrain. One of the first to do so was pianist François Tusques (agitator, theorist and militant) who recorded 1965's Free Jazz (CACK 020LP), and then continued with Le Nouveau Jazz (1967), French equivalents to th…
All My Circles Run
All My Circles Run is the fourth full length release by Montreal-based electro-acoustic composer Sarah Davachi and her second outing for Students of Decay. In a move which may surprise followers of her previous output, the five compositions on this record eschew synthesizer entirely, each focusing on a different instrument, including strings, voice, organ and piano. What remains consistent however is the striking attention to detail and commitment to investigating tonal possibility that c…
Key
One of the great overlooked artifacts of the New York avant-garde, Meredith Monk’s debut album - Key, is a revelation - leaping over the decades with a vision as radical as the day it was made. Originally privately issued in 1971 - now emerging in the hands of Tompkins Square, across its sides, the human voice unfurls as its rarely been heard - the origins of Monk’s seminal body of work, and a near perfect lens into the awe inspiring nature of the era from which it sprang.Within avant-garde prac…
Ten Years Alive On The Infinite Plain
In the years following his reemergence into the world of music in the 1990’s, until his untimely death last year, Tony Conrad was a towering presence in American experimental music. He was it’s grand patriarch. A monolith. A beam of light shining on the future and past. Beginning with his efforts during the early 1960’s, Conrad set the terms for how experimental practice is currently understood and pursued, yet with a vision and being so completely focused on the present, it was often hard to re…
Gerry & The Holograms
Well–documented as one of Frank Zappa’s favourite ever groups and instantly recognisable as the BLUEprint of 80’s Mancunian electro pop, the inflated alter–egos of Gerry & The Holograms (and their unrivalled brand of conceptual sarcastic synth pop) successfully remodelled, ridiculed and redefined plugged–in punk before hitting the self–destruct button and burying the evidence under a pile of hand–mutilated microgrooves for over 35 wet summers.
Having risen from the electronic embers of Manchest…
Sir Robert Williams
Originally Oba Loba is a project of Norberto Lobo and João Lobo in order to satisfy their desire to compose music for a band. Their debut album, Oba Loba, released in 2015 and critically acclaimed, has been described as a canalising music (Clive Bell in The Wire). Comparisons with Tom Zé or Jim O'Rourke were made to try to qualify a music hard to categorize. Recorded in May 2015, Sir Robert Williams is the second album of the sextet. While most of the songs are composed by Norberto and João L…
Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York
**We're over the moon to present this truly legendary 1973 mind-expanding Eastern-influenced/ecstatic/free jazz LP, reissued for the first time ever** Die Schachtel present the first vinyl reissue N.A.D.M.A.'s (Natural Arkestra Da Maya Alta) Uno Zingaro Di Atlante Con Un Fiore A New York, originally released in 1973. Comprised of Davide Mosconi, Franco Pardi, Gustavo Bonora, Inez Klok, Marco Cristofolini, Marino Vismara, Mino Ceretti, Otto Davis Corrado, and Talia Toni Marcus, within the histor…
Studio 12 - Recordings 1980-84
Wonderful limited 444 Collaboration-Release between VOD and Blowpipe to celebrate one of the most exciting dutch 80’s Tape-Labels. Musical harvest of Studio 12, the postpunk cassette label of the Haarlem Dutch Ultra movement. Beginning of the 80's artists and musicians mingled in squatted places to create, in the true DIY-Vain, an unique blend of minimal- electronics, drones, soundscapes and tribal music.
Bands like Nexda, Smalts, Vitaal, Die Krü Blødt, Cargo-Cultus still sound fresh and exci…