Best of 2018

Double CD version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's third album Third (It's Always Rock 'N' Roll), originally released on Disjuncta in 1975. Third album from the French space-rock electro combo masterminded by Richard Pinhas. Heldon's darkest work lays another stone in their sonic mosaic: synths, drones, fuzz, and trippy improvisations. There's something wicked happening on Heldon's third album It's Always Rock And Roll. Richard Pinhas's essential attack of searing guitar and space-bound s…

**In stock this week** “In der Pause” (During the Pause) was the title of the last track on the b-side of “ “, the first album by Die Tödliche Doris. “In der Pause” was pause music, as well as the announcement of the interval between their debut album, released in 1982, and the box format project ”Chöre und Soli” that followed in 1983. The original sounds of “In der Pause” survived on a single audio tape dating from 1981. Now, about 35 years later, Chris Dreier and Wolfgang Müller have used the …

**A prescient vision of the next phases of listening space! Remastered reissue, first on vinyl** Released in 1995 ‘Wave Field’ was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O’Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter’s cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements - a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Brian Eno blend together. Here, the clangorou…

**30th Anniversary Edition. Remastered reissue, first on vinyl** Released in 1994 ‘Sound Mind Sound Body’ decrees the massive impact of discreet gestures; slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time In 1987, Rafael Toral began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless - almost fresher today than when they wer…

Annihaya present Rats Don't Eat Synthesizers, the long-awaited second album by The Dwarfs Of East Agouza. Hailing from the Agouza district of Cairo, Egypt, this brilliant trio consists of Alan Bishop (acoustic bass, alto sax), Maurice Louca (keyboards, drum machine), and Sam Shalabi (electric guitar). Following their acclaimed first album Bes (NAWA 005CD, 2016), this new full-length is composed of two hypnotic journeys: "Rats Don't Eat Synthesizers" and "Ringa Mask Koshary" which were recorded i…

Edition of 300, with a full-colour sleeve and insert. Two side-long mental bar crawls with these distinguished minds. Payment in kind, please! And definitely no cards; this is not Copenhagen. Burping the blues, straining for Schnapps, sweating for extra ice. Make mine a double!Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson (b. 1977) is an Icelandic musician and sound artist, founding member of Stilluppsteypa. Sigmarrson was born in Akureyri, Iceland and studied sound art at the Fachhochschule in Hannover, Germany f…

Sound Poetry is discipline which developed over the course of the 20th century. Firmly located between the worlds of fine-art and music, it places its emphasis on the sound and structure of words - the phonetic aspects of human speech, over explicit meaning. Of all the avant-garde and experimental creatives practices, it is unquestionably the most neglected. Its efforts remain almost entirely unknown beyond circles of devoted fans. Despite this, its has been remarkably influential. The Beat poet…

Lucky restock, totally sold-out at source **First-time vinyl reissue. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl, one time pressing.** The inter-disciplinary maverick John Duncan emerged in 1970s Los Angeles as a confrontational performance artist and, as the decade progressed, aligned himself with the experimental-music collective Los Angeles Free Music Society. His sound art appeared on various self-released cassettes and alongside artists such as Jim Pomeroy and Yoshi Wada on the L…

When the band Agitation Free came together in 1967 as a result of the merging of two Berlin rock groups, one of the most interesting groups in a dawning independent German music scene was created. With their improvisations between rock, jazz and new music, Agitation Free -- soon relegated to the not so flattering category of 'Krautrock' -- made musical forays into areas that few of their fellow German musicians had ever penetrated. At a time when most in Germany were still orienting themselves a…

The duo Anne-James Chaton and Andy Moor has produced original works where poetry and guitar combine in explorations of thematic axes. With the project ‘Heretics’, of which Tout Ce Que Je Sais (All I know) is the second part, they revive the most obscure, violent, erotic passions, summoning the great figures of their personal mythologies. In the company of Caravaggio, Marquis de Sade, William Burroughs and figures such as Jose Mujica, the duo immerses the listener in another world history …

**Edition of 200** One afternoon in 1975, friend and fellow music traveler, Harold Schroeder, showed up at Poo-Bah Record Shop where Tom Recchion worked selling records and experimental music to people, forcing them to buy albums that he swore would change their lives. Harold asked if Tom wanted to share in a studio space close to the shop. After seeing it Tom immediately said "YES!". They moved in and divided the space in half. On Tom's half he made drawings, paintings, performances, video, scu…

Eccentricity in music is tricky in that it's difficult to embrace it in moderation. There's risk of having it come off as either overly (and gratingly) deliberate, or teetering over the precipice into full-blown novelty. Pere Ubu co-founder Allen Ravenstine's Waiting For The Bomb is one of these rare exceptions where peculiarity, nuance and genuine warmth align in such a way that it's perched right on that edge and all the more evocative because of it. One of the album's most striking and disori…

For decades, library music has been a world of shadowy, mysterious depths - a place where only the most serious record heads dared to dive. It has no one genre, in fact it has them all and is one all its own. Often its artists come without a name. It’s albums, thousands upon thousands of them, were pressed but never released commercially, circulated within the film and television industries, but slowly, over the years, slipped out into the world. These LPs, the height of which appeared across th…

Beyond The End... Eternity was released in 1971 under the Nik Raicevik monicker as Narco NR102. According to www.twoheadeddog.com, "Raicevic is clearly still in the early learning-curve stages," which it a key LP to understand Nik's evolution and setting the path for more evolved works to follow. Besides his musical explorations, Nik was also an interesting painter. His paintings are auctioned from time to time, and are consciousness expanding works influenced by abstract cubism and surrealism, …

**Edition of 250** Following the release of Ambienti Coassiali’s Vol. 1 - Room 1-6 in 1988, the years and decades passed without another sound. For the few aware of them, it would have logically seemed that the project had been swallowed by the shadows of time. Then, in late 2017, came Spare Rooms, an incredible LP with clear conceptual links to the project’s debut - their first effort to emerge in 29 years. Issued by Artisti Del 900, the relaunch of legendary Italian imprint ADN, the album is n…

O YAMA O explores a certain domestic and democratic quality of everyday life, born through associations to folk music of Japan and a folding of myth, tradition, and routine; the non-spectacular and the sublime. Formed of musician and artist Rie Nakajima and Cafe OTO co-founder Keiko Yamamoto, the group has performed since 2014 at venues and festivals such as noshowspace, Ikon Gallery, Wysing Arts Centre, Supernormal, Borealis Festival, Mayhem, and allEars Festival.Nakajima’s performance often fo…

Deluxe reissue with a bonus LP of unpublished material housed inside a gatefold sleeve, and an instant download dropped to your account. Recital here presents the premiere LP by vocalist Ian William Craig (b. 1980, Edmonton). Ian, a trained opera singer,  delivers an elegant balance between theatrical and ambient sentiments. A Turn of Breath combines the essence of a choral LP from Angel Records or Deutsche Grammophon with the spontaneity of experimental home-recording. This collection hold…

Limited edition 7" single (600 worldwide) Contains "Deep Sea Diver", which does not appear on Gwenifer Raymond's debut LP, You Never Were Much of a Dancer

One of Treader’s most requested recordings sees the great UK free saxophonist Evan Parker on soprano and tenor saxophones, duetting with European birdsong. A fitting tribute to his friend, the celebrated soprano saxophone player Steve Lacy, who died in the year of its initial release. A titan of British free jazz, Evan Parker needs no introduction. His output, both as a bandleader and collaborator, are the stuff of legend. Within the history of the European improvised music, he’s everywhere - ha…

CD version. Includes liner notes (French and English). Wrwtfww Records announce the release of two never-released-before soundtracks by French award-winning composer, audio experimenter, electroacoustic, and musique concrète magician, and all-around sound visionary Bernard Parmegiani, sourced from the original reels, and with English and French liner notes. Les Soleils De l'Île De Pâques (1972), by French director Pierre Kast, is a sci-fi feature which secured itself a well-deserved place in the…

Sole release by this Colombian band that surfaces briefly after the Speakers, Young Beats, Ampex and Time Machine era comes to an end. The band boasts an Italian jazz-rock drummer Roberto Fiorilli and legendary Genesis Bassist Humberto Monroy. The record consists of one theme divided into two long experimental progressive ventures (Viaje I and Viaje II) of fierce, fluid and free collective improvisation with spacey feels and a rich texture of Hammond organ, guitar, bass, tenor sax, percussion an…

John Tilbury and Keith Rowe have performed together within the legendary improvising ensemble AMM, as well as in numerous other contexts over the years. Duos for Doris (2003) was their first meeting as a duo, E.E. Tension and Circumstance (2010) was the second before the 4CD box on SOFA, enough still not to know, was released in 2015. enough still not to know also introduces the norwegian video artist Kjell Bjørgeengen as a collaborator, in this case as the producer of the album. Bjørgee…

Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Jean Cohen-Solal's Flûtes Libres, originally released in 1972. In a dreamlike fictive and windswept Brittany, hippy pirates and wild women more or less inspired by Gérard de Nerval fight it out in a theater, the magic of which brings to mind Cocteau, and where musical improvisation has an important role: this is Noroît, a cursed film which was never released in cinemas at the time (1976), directed by the great Jacques Rivette, where Jean-…

LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's second album Allez-Teia, originally released on Disjuncta in 1975. Before making his own music in the early '70s, Richard Pinhas was a King Crimson fan. The British group has buzzed in Pinhas's mind for decades, but their greatest impact came early. When he first saw them play, Pinhas was struck by music played during intermission. "When I saw (King Crimson guitarist) Robert Fripp and Brian Eno perform in Paris later, I realized that the intermi…

Incredible homemade ethnodelic fantasies from London based artist Black Merlin (George Thompson) started a deep love affair with the remote island of Papua New Guinea. After his first album ‘Hipnotik Tradisi’, released on Island Of The Gods; George was intrigued to find a place drenched in culture and untouched by the western world.In 2016 George planned his first solo expedition, venturing out to meet the Kosua Tribe. Over the course of the next two years George would record the sounds of the K…

**Edition of 300 on clear vinyl. Timeless proto-electro/minimal synth/experimental (from Japan, 1980 on legendary Vanity Records) of the highest order ** Minimal Wave is honored to present a reissue of Sympathy Nervous’ pioneering debut album originally released in 1980 on Vanity Records out of Japan. Sympathy Nervous was Yosihumi Niinuma’s lifelong project which he started in his Tokyo living room in 1979. Through Sympathy Nervous, Niinuma was able to channel his energy into what he loved – bui…

Emotional Response and Ocean Moon come together for a special collaborative release, where Seahawks take the music of Woo on a journey to the inner sanctum. Immersive, psychoactive and phased to perfection. For those who know not the music of WOO, prepare to behold a rare and magical incarnation of transcendent beauty. Perhaps Seahawks most spaced out voyage since Vision Quest One: Spaceships Over Topanga Canyon, ‘Celestial Railroads’ is a psychedelic odyssey that goes way beyond the norm. Like …

Temporary reduced-price offer. Over the last couple of years, Song Cycle has emerged as a definitive champion of historic sound art, issuing long out of print recordings by a diverse range of figures like Christina Kubisch, Michael Snow, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as the legendary Poesia Sonora, Revolutions Per Minute, and Fluxus Anthology compilations. Their efforts have done immeasurable good, bringing this creative territory into wider view. Now, with a releases especially close to our heart…

Black vinyl edition. Reissue of extremely rare kosmische/electronic/experimental/ambient album by Didier Bocquet, originally released in 1977 on his own Kiosque D'Orphe label, in 100 copies, each with a hand-drawn/written cover effort by the artist. Inspired by the first wave of german kosmische sound-travellers (Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and the whole Berlin School spring inmediately to mind) but retaining that typical french urgency that places it close to Heldon / Pinhas, Lard Free or…

** Astonishing selection of tracks taken from privately released albums and obscure tapes by this obscure Texas-based loner musician under the influence of Cluster, Moondog, The Residents and Brian Eno** Second release on Passat Continu comes from the depths of Texas. “Basso Continuo” span works from the privately pressed LPs “In Human Terms” (1987) and “Texas Electric” (1989) and music released on limited cassettes during the early nineties. Charles Ditto created an intimate world of minimal 'p…

Transversales Disques present Electrucs !, a new release of never-released music by Francois Bayle. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the GRM, composer Bayle introduces some of his unpublished archives; pieces include the title composition, "Electrucs !" (1974) composed on a 1970s Synthi AKS synthesizer like an imaginary soundtrack, "Foliphonie" (1974) inspired by La Grande Polyphonie (1978), and "Marpège" (1995), dedicated to Bernard Parmegiani. Also included is "Cinq Dessins En Rosace…

The record you are holding in your hands is a previously unheard masterpiece of Israeli multimedia artist Ami Shavit. As a professor of both philosophy and art and established kinetic artist in the 1970s Shavit was fascinated with new and interactive technologies. While mostly focusing on visual art and mixed-media installations, a trip to New York in 1972 introduced him to synthesizers and triggered his curiosity to do some explorations into the world of music or "sound" as he preferred to call…

Souffle Continu present a reissue of Camizole's self-titled album, recorded in 1977. Is freedom worth more than mastery, construction and achievement? In replying yes, the utopians of Camizole clear show which side they are on. For them, musical creation must be as spontaneous as possible. To achieve this, it is better to put egos to one side to concentrate on collective experimentation, to be tried and tested in front of a live audience. Playing the card of unlimited and unhindered improvisatio…

Collaboration piece between two major players in the contemporary Italian electro-acoustic music scene. Alberto Boccardi has studied composition and music theory at Milan's Music Civic Academy and has frequently collaborated with Lawrence English, Nicola Ratti, or Maurizio Abate among others while Stefano Pilia is a prolific guitarist and electro-acoustic theorist with a massive body of work and compositions. He has collaborated with Mike Watt, Nico Vascellari, David Tibet or Valerio Tricoli to …

Outstanding late 70s creative/free album from France, originally published on the private label Promophone by the former leader of Chute Libre, Olivier Hutman on piano, featuring Denis Barbier on flute, Pierre-Jean Gidon on sax, Jean-Marie Laumonnier, JP Lobrot on drums, and graced by the Mino Cinelu's trance-induced drumming percussion. This underrated Lp reveals an amazing blending of influences, combining prog, avant-garde and free-jazz, this incredible 1975 album from the French underground …

Edition of 250. Recital presents a reissue of François Dufrêne's Cri-Rythmes, originally issued in 1977. A remastered vinyl issue of the impossible-to-find cassette by French sound poet Dufrêne (1930-1982), this LP holds tracks not available since then. Dufrêne swallows the microphone, gargles the capsule, then vomits up the cables. Claustrophobic, verbal seizures, revealing once more that Dufrêne is king and all the pages of poetic history now have his spit on them. Includes memorial/tribute wr…

** Previously unreleased material from 1983-1988. Edition of 260 copies on black vinyl with printed inner sleeve. Mastered by Graham Lambkin ** (The) Mudguards were a shadowy political art outfit active throughout the decade that saw the Thatcher/Reagan alignment lead us to the advent of the neoliberal nightmare we now all inhabit. This period in Britain was ripe with riots, strikes, social disorder and a general turbulence that ensured the gap between the wealthy and poor was an agenda at the f…

Sarah Hennies new album! 40 minutes of incredible music for solo vibraphone, performed by Lenka Novosedlíková in a 700-year old church in Kyjatice, Slovakia. "We discovered the church in Kyjatice three years ago during our irregular wanderings across southern Slovakia. We were completely enchanted by this well hidden medieval building standing over the village, surrounded by sunny fields and dense forests. We asked ourselves how we could bring life again to the church, how we could fill it with …

This milestone of the avant-garde music, published in 1974 by the historic Opus One, was a very significant political awareness. With Coming Together and Attica, Frederic Rzewski celebrates in music the famous revolt of the American prison in 1971. The texts of Sam Melville and Richard X. Clark make pulsating and alive the invocations of the prisoners; full of pathos, these fragments of life oscillate between a confessional tone and the hymn to freedom, in a touching emblem of compassion. The fi…

In recent years, the vinyl reissue has emerged as major aggregator of change - the means to discover and appraise the lost histories of remarkable musics from across the globe. Among the most striking and neglected of these, are the sounds which rose from the Spanish underground during the 1980’s and 90’s. Long coveted by collectors - this movement, washed in strange structures and ambiences  - mistakenly tied to broader gestures of New Age, is only beginning to receive the attention that it has…