Best of 2023
Tonic 19-01-2001 (LP)
Celebrating its one hundredth release, Black Truffle is honoured to present a major archival discovery: a stunning document of the only performance by the trio of Tony Conrad, Arnold Dreyblatt and Jim O’Rourke. Across a two-night programme organised by David Weinstein at legendary New York experimental venue Tonic in January 2001, Conrad, Dreyblatt and O’Rourke presented individual projects before performing a collaborative set each night, the first with members of Dreyblatt’s ensemble and the s…
Africadeus
Bomb! Spiritual, intimate and revolutionary, yet firmly rooted in Brazil's folklore. Africadeus was the breakthrough album of the mighty Naná Vasconcelos, in which he discovered the berimbau to the world and took the instrument to a universal level. Having played in the shadows for other artists such as Milton Nascimento, Gato Barbieri or Som Imaginario, Naná is here finally in the spotlight. Recorded in 1973 in France for Pierre Barouh's Saravah label, this is the album that definitely imprinte…
A Circle of Grey
Super tip! *150 copies limited edition* Xing presents the new LP A Circle of Grey by Valerio Tricoli, eleventh release of Xong collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited numbered edition of 150 copies. The collector's edition consists of 20 copies accompanied by a unique cassette tape loop, titled and signed by the artist: 20 short compositions, each developed from a different sonic fragment of the record.
A Circle of Grey is an electroacoustic composition blending …
One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling
"A puzzlingly great album. Ah, the halcyon days of bungled Kurt Weill renditions, overactive splicing hands and tape-loops lasting only a few seconds before being smudged by hyper fast-forwarding, like a random, operatic battle of thermopylae as re-created by members of NWW. Faced with omnipresent latter-day refined-aesthetic cognescenti, whose duty it is to remind one of the gravity of modern music, I find myself defending such gut-level joyous stupidity and its gung-ho determination to vertigi…
Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé
CD Edition with Obi. This is a masterpiece album released in 1993 on Alchemy Records by Masonna, a solo project of Mazo Yamazaki who is acclaimed as one of the leading artists of Japanoise along with Merzbow and Emergency Staircase. It is finally being revived on vinyl! Cascades of electronic noise, a psychedelic touch and vocal belching mixed together constitute the ingredients of Mademoiselle Anne Sanglante Ou Notre Nymphomanie Auréolé, the double-barreled name for Masonna. Maso Yamazaki found…
Live at I.U.C.C. 4/27/80 (2CD)
**333 copies, one-time pressing** Volume 11. 2 disc set documenting the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in concert at the Immanuel United Church of Christ - April 27, 1980. This is the eleventh and final concert that Tom Albach recorded at Immanuel United Church of Christ. Easily ranking as one of our favorite performances of the series, its also destined to be considered one of the greatest Arkestra live recordings, brimming with intense energy and culminating in the 1-2 punch of a blazing “Lelan…
Live at IUCC 2/25/79
Volume 2 out of 11. Edition of 333 copies, one-time pressing. This is the last recording with Jesse Sharps as the Bandleader before he left for the Army. An incredible afternoon of music and a fitting “Departure” for a Jesse, a true pillar of the 70’s Arkestra. Macrame was originally released in 1979 on the IUCC 2LP, it is presented here, in a raw transfer of the master reel. Mykowski’s 1st Fifth is nothing but pure fire with those blistering solos by Sharps, Session, and a very special reading …
Symphony No. 107 - The Bard
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Symphony No. 107 –The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by John Cage and David Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz. Early re…
Dance Of The Spheres
Rainbow Generator are Australia’s first true experimental electronic music group. Consisting of David Labuschagne aka Mojo, and Rob Greaves aka Ras. Starting in the mid-70’s, the pair took it upon themselves to begin exploring the possibilities of the sonic dimension and with an ‘open mind’ began investigating the interface between psyche and sound. In 1976 David established the ‘Lectric Loo’ studio in Woolloomooloo, Sydney. Known to the ‘heads’ as simply the “Loo”, the 3-story building was owne…
Sphæra
A 16-channel piece inspired by astrophysics, the mystery of the pre-Big Bang era and some of the uncanny motions of the unconscious mind, where strangeness meets the ordinary.
Superlike
Edition of 300 copies. Giovanni Di Domenico has now achieved a personal and unmistakable style within contemporary minimalism. His music always expresses a state of concentration, of recollection and contemplation toward a focal node. Repetition is experienced as alchemical state, as truth contained in the small nuances of change, in a crescendo that never reaches a climax. The atmosphere is intuition and is made up of a few compositional touches. To compose is to make synthesis, to unearth puri…
On a Day of Crystaline Thought
Beyond rare private press album from 1974, a fantastic mix of progressive rock with acid-folk, spaced-out psychedelia and cool conceptual / soundtrack vibe. Pete Fine is a virtuoso acoustic and electric guitarist and also a self-taught composer and orchestrator. After playing with psychedelic hard-rock trio Flow in the early 70s in New York, Pete, influenced by classical composers like Anton Bruckner, started to focus on his 12-string guitar, composing music in a symphonic style.
“On A Day Of Cr…
Sinopia
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…
Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned
** Special edition of 300 copies on Transparent/black marbled vinyl housed in reverseboard printed sleave with printed inner sleave. Comes with lyric booklet, poster and postcard inserts ** Formed in 1968, The Plastic People Of The Universe – named after a Mothers of Invention song and heavily influenced by Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground – were iconic figureheads of the Prague Underground, a loose collective of Czech poets, philosophers and artists considered a threat by the Communist g…
Out of the Playground
Sofa Music is proud to add the powerhouse flutist Alessandra Rombolà to its ranks with Out of the Playground, documenting Rombolà’s latest commissions and collaborations for solo flute and electronics with composers Daniela Terranova, Jan Martin Smørdal, Ingar Zach, and Lasse Marhaug. The album’s five contributions, drawing on Rombolà’s polyvalent musical background, are united in their mission to venture “out of the playground” of scenes and genres, as Rombolà puts it. Across these incisive, ex…
Zoomachia Disc 1
*Edition of 200* First emerging during the mid 2000s in the field of experimental electronics, the Italian born, Berlin based artist, Francesco Cavaliere captivated us back in 2021 with ‘Viridescens’, his brilliant duo with Tomoko Sauvage issued by Marionette. With a handful of noteworthy releases having appeared since, he now returns with ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’, a remarkable fable bridging the territories of spoken word and electronic and electroacoustic composition.
For the better part of the last…
Il Calore Animale
*Edition of 200* Ginevra Bompiani is most likely unknown for fans of experiential music. In Italian literature and thinking, however, she is highly regarded writer, editor, translator, essayist, and academic, whose fiction, particularly, is informed by linguistics, feminism, and literary theory, and verges on the surreal and the fantastic, making her interdisciplinary effort, ‘Il Calore Animale’, collaborating with two of the most singular voices in contemporary experimental music - Caterina Ba…
Sirene
* Deluxe edition of 200 copies, comes with an insert * This is a project by Bruno Dorella (Ovo, Ronin, Sigillum S) and Stefano Ghittoni (The Dining Rooms, Le Petit). Inspired by the mythological character, both male and female, fortune-teller and fugitive, that has lived multiple lives, Tiresia is also the name of one of the main character in the movie “I Cannibali” (1970) by director Liliana Cavani.Played by Pierre Clementi, he is a sort of mystic that speaks an obscure language trying to rise …
Nuova Sauna Possibile 2
The visionary Italian imprint, Ivreatronic, returns with yet another quest into the shadowy reaches of the contemporary Italian underground with a brand new batch of three LPs, Tiresia’s “Sirene”, Hawaii8 & Friends’s “Archivi 1999/2021”, and Alien Alien / Prokofiev / Foresta’s “Visioni Fuggitive”. Issued on vinyl in individual editions or as a special bundle of four LPs, whether regarded singularly or collectively, they represent a fascinating immersion into electronic process that spans a remar…
Planeta Lamma
200 copies. Though often compared to Frank Zappa, Moondog, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, Jandek, and Father Yod, Damiao Ferreira da Cruz, better known as Damiao Experiença, it's a truly unique outsider multi-instrumentalist (without any real capability to play any of the many instruments he uses) compulsive hoarder from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Reportedly born on September 27th, 1935 in Bahia, Damiao lived an unhappy childhood and ran away from home at the age of 10 to escape the mistreatment by his…