Best of 2025
Riddles of the Sphinx
Lost 1977 electronic score by Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge, crafted with enigmatic Denys Irving on modified Moog/ARP synthesizers delivering ten hypnotic sequences of minimalist repetition. Transferred from BFI archives after master tapes vanished, this new 300-copy reissue follows the long out-of-print 2016 edition. Essential Riddles Of The Sphinx finally unearthed.
Collines / Racines
Tip! Rarely has the term "soundscapes" seemed as appropriate as for 'Collines' and 'Racines,' these two long, captivating pieces for cello and Loopstation, respectively inspired by the landscapes of Gaume and the Forêt de Soignes. Gwen Sainte-Rose superimposes the sound layers of her compositions and sculpts the sound material. This CD nestled in a wooden box which, like a small cabinet of curiosities, also contains multiple photographic inserts by Beata Szparagowska and the graphic designer Cor…
Meditate & Destroy
200 numbered copies, with handmade and buffered cover. Contains a A4 insert. Les Disques Omnison announces the release of Meditate & Destroy, the long-awaited debut LP by Leandro Barzabal and Céleste Gatier, a duo that has been making waves in experimental circles across France and Argentina. Following stunning live performances throughout France and a successful tour in Argentina alongside French noise musicians Cigve (Catherine Guesde) and Vomir (Romain Perrot), Barzabal and Gatier have distil…
The Yellow Box
As trans-Atlantic alchemists pulling from a shared dialectic that somehow encompassed both postmodern deconstructionist tendencies and a delightfully subversive sense of poptimism, it’s easy to see how David Cunningham and Peter Gordon immediately hit it off upon initially meeting each other back in the late-1970s at the height of their youthful transgressions. Having initially worked together on the second Flying Lizards’ LP fourth wall, with its ingenious fusion of dismantled rhythms and rearr…
Match / Soliloque 1&4 / Antifonia
Nicolae Brînduş's Match / Soliloque 1&4 / Antifonia reissues the composer’s most eccentric works from the PHTORA cycle (1968-1972), blending collective improvisation, spectral tradition, Romanian folklore, and free jazz into a mesmerizing tapestry. Tape manipulations and reverberation add depth, while Ana Golici’s sleeve art captures the album’s vivid sensibility.
μP RPF78
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* An anthology of the intensely arresting work of Robert Fesler (1936-2023), revealing many of his compositions (1975 -1987) created with his self-built synthesizers, with as pinnacle the μP RPF78. All music composed and recorded by Robert Fesler at his home on rue Cour Boisacq in Bierges, Belgium.With profound simplicity and devotion, Fesler paints a hermetic inner world with strong emotions of confronting solitude, sensual alienation and trauma…
Ziua Fără Sfârșit
Before spectral music had a name, Romanian polymath Corneliu Cezar was crafting electro-acoustic revelations. Ziua fără sfârșit collects his 1967-75 recordings - radical explorations of natural resonance that predate Western spectralism by a decade.
Irma
In 1977, for Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, I made a version of Irma. These notes arise from that experience and explore how the piece can be performed. Irma is an unusual score—printed on a single 50cm x 50cm sheet. Its notation consists of verbal fragments from Tom Phillips' A Humument, referencing “libretto,” “decor and mise-en-scène,” or “sounds.” These categories are arranged separately, with stave notation at the bottom. At first glance, it appears indeterminate—requiring preparation before …
Ensemble Pieces
A split album by Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars, released in 1975 as the second title on Brian Eno's imprint Obscure. The album includes two pieces by Hobbs and one each by Adams and Bryars. Side A opens with the experimental compositions of Hobbs, followed by Adams’ spoken-word and orchestral work, while Side B concludes with Bryars’ dissonant, frontier-classical ambient piece, featuring contributions from Brian Eno and Derek Bailey. "Aran" and "McCrimmon Will Never Return" (19…
And I Heard a Voice
Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Pärt’s music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer – a relationship that builds on the almost half a century long artistic partnership between Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher. Of the ensemble’s ECM New Series recording The Deer’s Cry, the BBC Music Magazine wrote that “the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, bre…
Arctic Summer
"The richness of these recordings cannot be overstated." — A Closer Listen
Lacinia
Returning to Die Schachtel with his fourth full-length with the label, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, delivers “Lacinia”, a new, immersive cycle of compositions, delving deeper into the realm of metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, weaving astounding arrangements of sonority from a palette of synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion. Resting at a refined intersection of the acoustic and elect…
Music / Sangam
Paris, 1978. Don Cherry walks into a French studio with a suitcase full of instruments nobody expected and meets Ustad Ahmed Latif Khan for the first time. No rehearsal, no plan, just two musicians who recognize each other immediately as kindred spirits. What happens next is one of Cherry's best efforts - an album only hardcore fans know about, recorded in Paris, released only in France in 1981, disappeared, and now back again in a special edition that demands attention. This is what "world musi…
Banshee / Basse Brevis
Limited split LP, black vinyl in poly-lined inner sleeve. Co-commissioned by Radio France and INA grm, Basse Brevis by Canadian composer Sarah Davachi was premiered at the Présences 2024 festival, which was dedicated to Steve Reich. Drawing on her own minimalist approach, Sarah Davachi explores, with extreme care, the weavings and complex relationships between the timbral, spatial and durational components of music. Using developments that can be appreciated over time, the composer manages to cr…
Zur Mitte / Hindurch / Hinauf
**Edition of 200 with artwork by Lutz Beckmann and liner notes by Ralf Hoyer.** Released on occasion of his 75th birthday, Edition Telemark presents the first LP since 1986 by German composer and sound artist Ralf Hoyer. Hoyer's versatile new music oeuvre includes works for chamber ensembles, choir, orchestra, chamber opera, as well as electronic, electro-acoustic and multi-media pieces. Hoyer grew up in East Berlin where he worked as a sound engineer for the GDR record company VEB Deutsche Scha…
Love
Last copies, sold out at source * Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded in 1969 by the pianist Ole Mathiessen, the bassist Henrik Hove, the saxophonist Jesper Nehammer, and drummer Jon Finsen, Tordenskjolds Soldater was one of the great - albeit short-lived - projects in Copenhagen’s thriving scene of free improvisation and jazz of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Across the proceeding decade or so, Denmark had provided…
Give the Vibes Some
Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal's 1974 Palm masterpiece receives its first proper reissue. Recorded during Parisian exile, this exploratory album showcases revolutionary vibraphone techniques across four essential tracks - a crucial document of jazz's global underground network.
Learning
‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the la…
Magnetism
Super Tip! Kali Malone and Drew McDowall have orbited each other's work for over a decade, their individual explorations of sustained tones and harmonic space suggesting an inevitable collaboration. When they finally entered McDowall's Brooklyn studio together, what emerged on Magnetism transcends mere musical compatibility. Malone has spent recent years extending the legacy of Éliane Radigue, redefining what electronic minimalism can accomplish through pipe organ and synthesizer. Her compositio…
Fire of God's Love
Sister Irene O'Connor’s Fire of God's Love, reissued by Freedom To Spend, is a visionary 1976 private-press recording from Australia, blending devotional song with experimental electronics and echo-drenched vocals. The album’s raw spirituality, home studio inventiveness, and tape manipulations grant it a unique place in outsider pop, now made newly available to contemporary listeners in beautifully restored form.