Best of 2026
Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni
** 3LP Boxset, 192 page illustrated book by Majid Bita, Postcard, Classified Government documents ** In an age that demands hyper acceleration, kinetic flashes and byte voracity, Blak Saagan sticks out like a sore thumb with a sprawling body of work that requires attention and unlocks profound symbols and meaning with every passage. After a 5 year gap, the Venetian composer returns with his most personal and openly political statement yet, ‘Un Sequestro Lungo 10.000 Anni’, a staggering 108 minu…
The Great Learning
Limited and numbered edition, featuring original artwork and a newly designed, beautifully crafted collector’s sleeve with new liner notes by Bradford Bailey, and pressed on 180g vinyl. One of the most quietly radical entries in Deutsche Grammophon's legendary Avantgarde series - the run of albums issued between 1968 and 1971 that did more than almost any other label project to document the experimental music of its moment - returns to vinyl. Recorded in London in 1971, the Scratch Orchestra's r…
SOS "In A Sentimental Mood"
Gatefold LP edition + OBI. There are few figures in improvised music quite like Akira Sakata. A marine biologist by training, he surfaced in the early 1970s inside the Yamashita Yosuke Trio, one of the most ferocious units Japanese jazz has ever produced, and for half a century since he has gone entirely his own way: bandleader, relentless collaborator, singer of strange incantations, a man who can make an alto saxophone sound like grief and slapstick in the same breath. Born in 1945 near Hiros…
Maris Stella
On Maris Stella, Tristan da Cunha turns isolationism into liturgy, reimagining the Marian figure of Our Lady, Star of the Sea as a beacon inside abandonment. A single, slow‑burning minimalist opus folds post‑drone, neoclassical gravity and choral haze into a seaborne ritual where guitar, viola, bass and drums behave like a reconfigured orchestra.
Cooked
On Cooked, Oren Ambarchi folds his all‑star studio jam aesthetic into something gloriously unhinged. Two side‑long epics twist piano ripples, synthetic “voices,” mutant trumpet tones, electric Miles haze and digital pyrotechnics into a foot‑tapping, brain‑scrambling, joyously cuckoo ride that still feels meticulously shaped.
Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden
Containing what are easily among the important and celebrated works by Tōru Takemitsu, arguably Japan's most important and celebrated 20th Century avant-garde composer, 'Quatrain / A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden' was originally issued by Deutsche Grammophon in 1980. Had the Avant-Garde series not concluded nine years prior, it certainly would have been contained within its ranks. Illuminating a crucial juncture within the composer's career which not only found him fully embracing ac…
Acustica
Composed between 1968 and 1970 and originally issued by Deutsche Grammophon in 1972, there are arguably few works within the canon of 20th Century experimental music as beloved and sought after as the Argentine composer Mauricio Kagel’s Acustica. Created for “experimental sound-producers and loudspeakers”, comprising electroacoustic material assembled on 4-track tape in 1969 at Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in Cologne, and acoustic material for 2 to 5 musicians, scored over roughly 200 filing-ca…
Oblivion Seekers
On Oblivion Seekers, Ben Vida turns everyday speech into a glowing maze: neutral‑toned duets, drifting chamber textures and collaged overheard phrases dissolve meaning and sound into one long, entrancing mantra of language in motion.
L'Oeuvre Musicale En 12 CD
**Finally repressed, absolutely recommended!** An incredible box-set with 33 compositions from 1964 to 2007 that includes a 92-page booklet in French and English. The best way to enter the world of Bernard Parmegiani, French composer of musique concrète, member of the GRM group.
Thresholds
On Thresholds, Andrew Anderson assembles a disquieting tapestry of foley‑like detail, field recordings and dream logic, a vinyl debut where precise sound art slips into phantasmagoria, hovering at the edge of memory, image and pure atmosphere.
Particularly Dangerous Situation
*150 copies lmiited edition* Ian Wellman's “Particularly Dangerous Situation”, his first release for Elevator Bath and first vinyl LP, is a meditative, at times harrowing, interpretive document of the catastrophic California wildfires of 2025. Wellman's stunningly descriptive field recordings plus his signature tape loop textures and sampled drones combine for a dramatic ten-part narrative that is both frightening and sorrowful in its depiction of calamitous events. "On January 7, 2025 Southern …
Let the Spirit Out/Live at 'Mu' London
Big tip! This is it! Chicago spiritual jazz master Kahil El'Zabar delivers one of the most powerful live recordings in recent memory! Captured over two unforgettable nights at "mu" in London - July 15th & 16th, 2024 - this is music as ancient ritual, as communion, as healing force. El'Zabar created new material specifically for these performances, alongside reimagined arrangements of classics like Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", Gershwin's "Summertime", and Duke Ellington & Juan Tizol's "Caravan".…
Pillars
On Pillars, Francesca Flora & nobile build a haunted architecture out of nothing but voice and machinery. Flora’s sighs, screams and murmurs are dissected and reassembled into slow-motion laments and grotesque lullabies, as if Ballard’s singing statues had learned to confess, choke and glow from within.
Katcharpari
** Audiophile reissue from the original masters, 180gm vinyl pressed by Pallas, laminated hand-glued gatefold cover. Limited Edition. ** Katcharpari is the second solo album by Italian jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava, recorded and released in January 1973 and considered a cornerstone of the jazz-rock/fusion genre. Recorded in Milan and released on the German label BASF, Rava himself described it as his "breakthrough album." Thanks to the critical acclaim this work received, Rava caught the attention …
Beautiful United Harmony Happening, The Education of an Amphibian
* 150 copies Small repress* “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” / “The Education of an Amphibian” - the second release by Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera - is also dedicated to the output of John Tchicai following his return to Copenhagen during the mid 1960s. Comprising two pieces, remarkably, this single LP effectively bookends a rich period of activity for the saxophonist, capturing one of his earliest group formations as a leader from 1966, as well as one of his last…
Music From the Other Side of the Fence
A collection of previously unreleased material (between '75 & '90) by Enno Velthuys.Compiled by Hessel Veldman.
Lummernikt
Lummer is the Swedish name for the now protected family of vascular plants (Clubmoss/Lycopodiaceae). Lummer grows slowly and the spores with which it reproduces can take 12—20 years to develop. These spores, known as Nikt in Swedish, were once ground into an extremely flammable light yellow “old woman’s gunpowder” that was used for early theatrical pyrotechnics. Volatile and explosive, Lummernikt requires careful handling. There is something of the small scale dangerous in Finn Loxbo’s Lummernik…
Appearance/Music for Solo Performer
Big tip! Beyond Rare! These historical recordings of a 1967 concert at Hope College in Michigan involving John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi and David Tudor, performing compositions by Ichiyanagi and Alvin Lucier, were recently discovered in an archive in Japan. The Lucier piece, "Music for Solo Performer", was the first musical composition to utilize human brainwaves; this 1967 performance, released here for the first time, is an early realization of the piece, featuring Tudor, Ichiyanagi and Lowell C…
Intégrale Acousmatique
200 copies. 3LP special edition in screen printed linen box + 8 page booklet + download code. Metaphon is pleased to present this première edition, which brings together a near-complete collection of the acousmatic works of Liliane Donskoy, recorded in the 1970s and 1980s. Liliane Donskoy (*1933) is a French, classically trained pianist, music teacher, and composer of both instrumental and acousmatic music. She began her musical training at an early age, undertaking private piano studies with Yv…
Albumin
Tip! Jim O'Rourke and Jos Smolders teamed up again after their first collaboration, Additive Inverse from 2021. Over a period of three years, both artists worked in sessions of a day, each in their own studio.The result is sometimes like a warm cloud of sounds, suddenly breaking up into a rhythmic, irregular pattern, after which it dives into introverted mindsets. The music is in constant flux. The project followed the same workflow, but this time Jim took the lead and kicked off with a salvo of…