Best of 2024
Tenor
There are lots of outstanding Joe McPhee LPs. Nation Time being chief among them, but there's also Pieces Of Light, Oleo and Topology. The Poughkeepsie, New York-based multi-instrumentalist, by now an international star of free music, has amassed a daunting discography, no doubt. If you want to peer deeply into the soul of Joe McPhee, however, there's no way around it, you need to spend some quality time with Tenor.
" Tenor is McPhee's first solo record. He did not set out to make it. It was an …
Sei Note in Logica
Roberto Cacciapaglia is an Italian composer and pianist who started out in the fertile Milan avant-garde scene of the 1970s, which included Franco Battiato, Giusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, Francesco Messina, among others. After studying at the conservatory, he worked at RAI's Studio of Musical Phonology – an electronic music laboratory similar to NDR/WDR in Germany, GRM/IRCAM in France or BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Originally released in 1979, Sei Note In Logica (Six Notes In Logic) is Cacciapagl…
Whatevershebringswesing
A founder member of Soft Machine, Kevin Ayers embarked on a solo career in 1969, signing to EMI's Harvest label, for whom he would record a series of wonderful and stylistically eclectic albums. 'Whatevershebringswesing' was issued in November 1971 and saw contributions from David Bedford, Robert Wyatt and Mike Oldfield. Featuring such classic tracks as 'Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes', 'Song from the Bottom of a Well' and 'Whatevershebringswesing', the album is regarded as one of Kevin's finest. …
Ad Hoc
Repressed! Black recycled vinyl with offset-printed covers. 'This recording was done on a four track tape recorder. Meaning the process of recording was a bit different this time around. Most of the tracks had to be recorded more or less in one take all the way through which means more room for mistakes. As I didn't have the ctrl-z option of the computer I had to try and fix my mistakes by turning them into features. This problem solving on the fly approach is why I'm calling the record ad hoc'…
Dream House 78'17"
** Magenta vinyl version. Comes with download card. ** Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux.
Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wav…
Rhymes With Water
Much-needed repress. For his premiere recording on God Records, Phill Niblock confirms his minimalistic musical approach and composes two monumental pieces for flutes and additional voices, respectively. Commissioned by Erik Drescher and Natalia Pschenitschnikova, Niblock again delivers an almost stripped, uncompromising one-way sound monolith. Tremendous, straight, and to the point... Personnel: Phill Niblock - composition; Natalia Pschenitschnikova - bass flute, voice; Erik Drescher - glissand…
Symphony for Improvisers
Biggest Tip! 180 gram Vinyl Edition. Recorded in 1966 and released by Blue Note Records in August of 1967, Don Cherry's Symphony for Improvisers features Gato Barbieri, Henry Grimes, and Ed Blackwell, all of whom had appeared on Cherry's previous album Complete Communion. Also featured are Karl Berger, Jean-François Jenny- Clark, and Pharoah Sanders. The abum received a rating of ***** on AlMusic, with reviewer Steve Huey string that, "Even though the album is full of passionate fireworks, there…
Bleed
Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
Music for a Bellowing Room
Big tip! Sarah Davachi returns with “Music for a Bellowing Room”, the first ever release of her audio / visual collaboration with the artists and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Sprawling to an incredible three hours of sublime, minimalist drone - composed for tape loops, synth and delay - that draws the ear toward microscopic shifts and details, we've adored every second of this truly monumental work.
Live at SuperDeluxe - Volume 1
Trost Records returns with a blasting gut-punch of an LP, with “Live at SuperDeluxe - Volume 1”, a full throttle body of improvisations from the all-star quartet of Akira Sakata, Jim O'Rourke, Mette Rasmussen, and Chris Corsano - never before captured on tape - live at legendary Tokyo venue, SuperDeluxe. Riding the wire between free jazz and noise, it's nothing short of powerful, real-time advocation of socio-political importance of free improvisation that leaves you on the edge of your seat fro…
Psycotron - 1
** 2024 Much-needed repress, Llimited edition of 150 copies, silkscreened covers and printed insert. ** A hazy, claustrophobic bridge between minimalism, drone, creative conceptualism, ambient music, and noise, we’re thrilled to offer the first ever vinyl reissue of Nord’s “Psycotron - 1” - one of the greatest and most sought-after holy grails of early Japanese Noise. Recorded by Hiroshi Oikawa only a handful of years before his complete disappearance and originally issued in 1984 as a cassette…
juHrop
Limited and numbered edition of 250 copies. Die-cut box, 5 inlays and extensive booklet (Libretto). The opera "juHrop" was recorded with great effort at the Studio für Komische Musik Berlin and at the studio of Diamanda Galas in New York from 1996 to 2001. It is orchestral music produced with electronic devices and voices of Chinese singer Wu Jiang, David Moss, Diamanda Galas, Udo Scheuerpflug, Margarete Huber and the Moabiter Motettenchor. It was broadcasted in full length on "Deutschlandradio …
Hi-Nology
Gatefold packaging. Terumasa Hino is undoubtedly one of the most famous Japanese jazzmen. Learning the trumpet at the age of nine, he began his career as a professional musician by playing in the orchestra of an US Army base, before joining Hideo Shiraki's Quintet and then forming his own band in 1964. On Hi-Nology, his brother Motohiko Hino appears on drums, Hiroma Suzuki on electric piano, Kumitsu Inaba on electric bass and Takeru Muraoka on tenor sax. The inspiration from the "electric period…
Labyrinthe!
Big tip! An expedition in sound in 10 sequences: Enfoncement [Deep Sink], Gouffre circulaire [Circular Abyss], Noyau secret [Secret Core], Apesanteur [Weightlessness], Entrailles [Entrails], Four solaire [Solar Furnace], Fissures [Cracks], Mer intérieure [Inner Sea], Éruption [Eruption], Remontée [Ascension].
Labyrinthe ! is not only a very unique piece in Pierre Henry’s masterful repertoire, but also a remarkable demonstration of his compositional skills and musical singularity. Indeed, for thi…
We Have Dozens of Titles
The first release from Gastr del Sol in over 25 years is nigh! Like a bolt echoing back from the blue, We Have Dozens of Titles restrikes the iron of Gastr del Sol, plunging us back into the maelstrom of David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke’s all too brief (but ultimately, long enough to change everything incisively) run together between 1993–1998. For We Have Dozens of Titles, Jim and David reconnected to assemble nearly an hour of previously unreleased live recordings — including their final performa…
Spectral Evolution
After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his musi…
The Sounds of Sound Sculpture
Tip! In 1973, the Sound Sculpture Show took place at the Vancouver Art Gallery. An LP audio catalogue (with a booklet) of the exhibition, entitled “The Sounds of Sound Sculpture”, was released in 1975 under the supervision of the Canadian sound sculptor John Grayson and US composer David Rosenboom. Grayson had edited an important early book on the field, “Sound Sculpture”. The LP included rare takes of Rosenboom and Grayson, amongst others, playing famous pieces by pioneering sound sculptors inc…
Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche
Tip Tip Tip! Christian Schoppik aka Läuten der Seele brings his “Water” trilogy to a close with his new album ‘Die Reise zur Monsalwäsche’ (The Journey to Monsalwäsche) following up ‘Die Mariengrotte als Trinkwasseraufbereitungsanlage’ (2022, Hands in the Dark) and ‘Ertrunken im seichtesten Gewässer’ (2023, World of Echo). This final instalment takes the listener on a sacred odyssey searching for the fulfilment of one's (or is it his own?) spiritual destiny, from beginning (‘Entschluss, Abschied…
Mess (Akt IV)
150 copies made available for international distribution, limited LP edition including an insert with drawings, score and notes. Over the past two years, Lorenzo Abattoir's work has focused on researching various breathing and amplification techniques to create a sort of non-verbal language through which to express the sounds of an 'inhuman' being. A key element of his work is the relationship between spiritual practices and unusual methods of audio processing, mainly focusing on the use of micr…
I-A-K Interplanetary-Abyssal-Kite
Xing presents the new LP I-A-K Interplanetary-Abyssal-Kite by Francesco Cavaliere, fifteenth release of XONG collection - artist records. The release is on white vinyl, in a limited and numbered edition of 150 copies, including a collector's edition of 35 copies, each accompanied by a foulard-kite designed by the artist. I-A-K Interplanetary-Abyssal-Kite is a composition by Francesco Cavaliere, part of his Abyssal Creatures project based on an ensemble of concave blown glass sculptures that reca…