Best of 2020
Prisma Interius VII & VIII
* Edition of 500 * In Catherine Lamb's Prisma Interius series the unpredictability of the outside articulates the field of perception through precise bandpass filters, while acoustic instruments and musicians guide the unfolding of its harmonic space. A series of nine pieces exploring the potential of the Secondary Rainbow synthesizer, an instrument developed in 2016-2017 with Bryan Eubanks, that uses the live environment outside the performance space as a noise generator for basic subtractive s…
Lena
**CD version** "A primal force of something... real. I have listened back and forth to the new album of Anna Högberg's “Attack” numerous times now and it hit me like a split axe in a split second: this music is for real! Wham Bam! This is liberating music. Allowing music. It hits me just as the split axe hits the wood. Without hesitation, but still very sensitive. Pure power does not cut the wood automatically. No fancy flirts with post-this and post-that. Just the force. Of itself. This music i…
Locomotion
Tip! Colored vinyl edition. This grooviest French jazz-funk and avant-garde album features Henri Texier and Bernard Lubat led by by the famous French pianist Martial Solal, and was originally released in 1974 on the PSI label. Solal is the dynamic keyboard behind a shadow-strafing suite of spidery rhythms and inquisitive jazz gestures, effortlessly binding avant instrumental dexterity with cool blue harmolodic sentiment in a timeless style.
So good...
Ghostly Agents
**Regular edition of 350 copies, gatefold sleeve** John Driscoll is a composer who is a founding member of Composers Inside Electronics (CIE) and collaborated on David Tudor’s Rainforest V starting in 1973. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe with CIE, David Tudor, Phil Edelstein, Douglas Dunn & Dancers, Maida Withers & the Dance Construction Co. and as a solo performer. His work has focused on robotic instruments, music for dance and compositions and sound installations for unique …
Peter der Große / Gudbrandsdal
Two of Henning Christiansen’s tape works from the 1980’s, Peter der Große op. 174 (1986) and Gudbrandsdal op. 178 (1987), are now released for the first time by the Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology.
Jankélévitch Sextets
Apartment House play Antoine Beuger’s exquisite hour-long piece from 2004. Wonderfully immersive and absorbing sounds that feel as if they are touching eternity.
Complete Recordings
Deluxe, spot gloss-printed, massive three-hour box set collecting the full work of Herbert Joos (one of the most celebrated musicians in Lithuania’s avant-garde scene) 1968-1973 units, the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe and Four Men Only
Explorations (1970 - 1973) 3CD Box
The first ever survey of the seminal British experimental music collective, Gentle Fire, "Explorations (1970 - 1973)" offers a remarkable and previously unavailable glimpse of their activities during the early 1970s.
Again & Again
This is the third and final chapter of a project/research on "minimalisms" that the Italian flutist Manuel Zurria, acclaimed instrumentalist and passionate lover of the more adventurous contemporary music, began in 2007. The double CD include near two and a half hours of music, which reveal how much different the approaches to the beloved "minimalist" verb can be. And how much an inquiring and participatory interpretation can lead to exciting results. In this brilliant collection Zurria not only…
Contemporary Jazz Mass
Tip**Edition of 300 copies. Remastered reissue, released in conjunction with the artist** James Tatum's stunning, spiritualised Contemporary Jazz Mass is one of the only true jazz masses ever released. Inspired by Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts, Tatum's masterwork was recorded on its first ever performance at St Cecilia Church in Detroit, and released on his own private label in 1974. At the time Ellington’s Concerts were quite controversial. Whilst they contained scriptural references they d…
Vanity Records CD Box-sets bundle
This bundle gathers together the four recently issued Vanity Records Box Sets, and includes 27 CDs in total:Various - Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos' (11CD Box)Various - Vanity Records 'Demos' (6CD Box)Various - The Vanity Box Vol. 1 (5CD Box)Tolerance - Vanity (5CD Box)Here's details about the contents of each box-set:Various - Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos' (11CD Box)CD-1 & CD-2 Various - Music 1 & 2Music (or Musik) was a compilation originally released in 1981 as a double vinyl b…
Tempo De Fratura
A joint release between Litoral Records and Três Selos in Brazil. One of the first independently released Brazilian records, Alcides Neves’ debut LP ‚Tempo de Fratura’ is reissued for the first time on vinyl, alongside his second release ‚Des (Trambelhar) Ou Não‘. Hailing from the Brazilian North East, Alcides Neves released his debut album a few years after moving to São Paulo, in 1979. The LP’s release coincided with the emergence of the city’s seminal Vanguarda Paulista movement, which led so…
Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Vol. 1
Edition of 500. "Here is the first volume of protean solo improvisations recorded by Loren Connors in his artist's garret in New Haven, Connecticut. It was committed to tape on February 20, 1979 and pressed to vinyl soon after. As with the two earlier LPs on Loren's Daggett label, singer/recorder-player Kath Bloom also appears on this record, although only on the second side. Those prior LPs were both issued in 1978, The first was Acoustic Guitar/Gifts a split LP with Loren solo on one side and …
Alvin Curran, Roberto Laneri, Giancarlo Schiaffini, Frances-Marie Uitti, Tony Ackerman, Bruno Tommaso
Beat 72 Lost DateDigipack CD edition. An unearthed treasure from the '70s Italian avant garde archives! A previously unreleased recording from the legendary Beat72 club in Rome in 1973, featuring a one-off Italian-American all-star ensemble with Roberto Laneri founding member of the experimental vocal group Prima Materia, maverick American composer Alvin Curran co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva. Trombone specialist Giancarlo Schiaffini from the historical Gruppo di improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Cello vir…
Domestic Exile
**Exclusive Clear Vinyl Edition, 100 copies** Mental Experience present the first ever reissue of Steve Piccolo's debut album from 1982, Domestic Exile. A hidden gem of minimalist beauty, mixing a post-punk/DIY/lo-fi aesthetic with art-rock and spoken poetry. Steve Piccolo has been active since the mid-1970s in music, theater, performance art, sound installations, video and film soundtracks. In 1979, he started with the Lurie brothers the "fake jazz"/no wave band, Lounge Lizards. Domestic Exile …
Schwingende Luftsäulen 3
Here the third and final chapter of “Schwingende Luftsäulen” the series dedicated by Werner Durand to the Pan-Ney, the wind instrument of his own invention. In confront with the first two volumes this one represent a sort of flashback. In fact the five pieces on the CD present “early” works, mainly created in the first half of the 90s. “Still Another Ocean” was composed in June /July1991 in Ile de la Réunion, in the wonderful house of Frédéric Borne.
“M-Ocean” was composed in the summer of 1994 …
Axis/Another Revolvable Thing 2
Axis / Another Revolvable Thing is the second installment of Blank Forms’ archival reissues of the music of Japan’s eternal revolutionary Masayuki Takayanagi, following April Is the Cruellest Month, a 1975 studio record by his New Direction Unit.
Ken Clinger
Tip! A full frontal dive into the secretive, cult catalogue of Ken Clinger, rounding up lost recordings and his entire oeuvre 1983-1988, we are talking about 30 titles published over 26 cassettes by this hyper-productive, most overlooked but fetishised home-taping cult hero, carefully selected for your greatest pleasure. Mutant songs, hypnotic spoken words, obsessive synthesizers, in a must-check payload for fans of Nurse With Wound, Edward Ka Spel, Coil and the like.A legend of "cassette cultur…
No Paris / No Harm
Tip! *180 gram vinyl, reverse board jackets. True to original pressing layout with a clean loud remaster.* Recorded 1987 & 1988 in Tokyo and Paris. Junko, Jojo & T. Mikawa blaze through 3 tracks of their signature disjointed noise terrorism.
6 - Interface
LP version. Bureau B present a reissue of Heldon's 6 - Interface, originally released in 1977. A brilliant moment occurs right at the end of Heldon's sixth album, Interface. The album's final song, its side-long title track, builds up slowly into a roaring tornado of fiercely mutating drum patterns, effervescent synth work, and guitar licks that wail into the atmosphere like an abandoned astronaut. Then, after nearly 19 minutes of highly futuristic avant-garde space rock, this ultramodern music …