Electronic / Synthesizers

Available on CD (or any other format) for the first time outside USSR, Soviet composers perform their works on the legendary ANS synthesizer.

2005 release ** "The man behind the album is the keyboard player and composer Lars Boutrup. After years in the business with rock, silent movie music and classical music. Performance as well as composing, in all sorts of different constellelations. Lars Boutrup is now releasing his first solo album. Music for Keyboards is an album with both beautiful numbers to reflect on and sense the universe to. There are also moments where you can have a laugh and freak out to funny synthesizer sounds and me…

*300 copies limited edition* ‘Low Fidelity’ brings us up to speed with Mats Lindström’s actions of the past dozen years in a range of seven works spanning live recordings and studio commissions, all sharing a certain bloody-minded, uncompromising focus on atonality and arrhythmic structures. Definitely one for harder-nosed noise and avant garde fiends, the set fits very neatly within iDEAL’s roster of brutalists, with whom Lindström shares a taste for sounds, spaces, and rationales that test the…

*200 copies limited edition* John Duncan's "SAXMIX" is one massive piece of contemporary experimental music, which lets noise collide with free jazz and extreme minimalism. Duncan is a master when it comes to these things, and he is an artists constantly evolving, mutating and challenging. The sax thing then? JD has invited some of his fav sax players to collaborate with him; Mats Gustafsson, Antoine Chessex, Martin Escalante, Dror Feiler and Ulrich Krieger. Did I say MASSIVE? Well, it is. Schei…

Masahiro Sugaya is a Japanese composer with a prolific career in music for film, television, and the performing arts. Renowned for crafting soundscapes that invite deep contemplation, his music blends synthesizers, field recordings, and traditional Japanese instruments, achieving a delicate balance between minimalism, ambient, and folk influences.  In addition to his experimental compositions, Sugaya has been a pivotal figure in Japanese television and cinema. He collaborated with NHK, Japan’s n…

Following up on 2021’s Scuro Chiaro, Nati Infiniti is a 40-minute piece split into five movements, based on an immersive audio installation that Cortini originally created for the Sónar Lisboa festival in 2022 where it was presented across four floors of the Museu de Lisboa’s Moagem. Cortini later debuted the live performance at Berlin’s Atonal festival in 2023, reimagining the work as a unique, evolving dialogue. The record is mixed by Grammy nominated recording engineer, producer, and mixer Ma…

Melancholic dancefloor & dancing melancholy.Machines in emotive moonwalk version.The French government renamed them after one of their concerts.

Third CD from the acclaimed collaboration between Andrea Marutti (Amon, Never Known, among others) and Giuseppe Verticchio (Nimh). Spread out over two CDs and totaling over 100 minutes, there's a lot to absorb here; organic, textural ambience that's murky and abstract, uncurling like tendrils of smoke before coalescing into a simulacrum of shadowy figures, to turbulent, more immersive post industrial sounds that prowl the depths of subterranean caverns and forgotten, still radioactive ruins. Fea…

Second chapter in the Hall of Mirrors saga, a project that hides the fervid minds of Giuseppe Verticchio/Nimh and Andrea Marutti/Amon. Another long and fascinating journey among the ruins of lost and ancient civilizations, among desolate landscapes forgotten by time.

Hall of Mirrors is a new musical project formed by Giuseppe Verticchio (Nimh) and Andrea Marutti (Amon). The music is in the similar vein to the respective works of these two Italian artists. Consequently it provides a handful of dense, droney, shimmering electronic sequences that dissipate into distortion and black noises.

These two are friends. You can tell. They converse with each other, musically speaking. They connect in the way that only really happens when words aren’t needed to explain what you’re getting at. You’ll know when you listen because you’ll hear the trust between them. No fear of self expression to be found here, it’s direct. They’ve each done great things. Brilliant releases on wonderful labels of varying types, shapes and sizes. They might even have had a hand in running some of them. You can l…

*300 copies limited edition* Clothilde’s new album sounds like a constant departure from almost everything. Up until now, her music pieces seemed uncontrolled, a total commitment to the machines. She was, somehow, in between us - listener, audience - and the idea of a machine producing sounds she doesn’t seem to control. Of course, none of this was entirely true, she was mostly in control, but the fantasy, the orchestration of it was beautiful. It was sci-fi-ish, Metropolis-magnificent. In “Cros…

Big Tip! Başak Günak is a Istanbul-born, Berlin-based sound artist and composer, also internationally known as Ah! Kosmos in the field of electronic music. Her work includes sound art, performance, sound installation, composition for theater and contemporary dance.  In her forthcoming solo album Rewilding, Başak Günak has worked with the themes of (auto-)rewilding, foraging and decay, while also incorporating sounds she has gathered from her sound art and sound installations. “Rewilding” embodie…

A new album by Simon J Karis, the follow up to 2017's 'Madrugada'. Widely available digitally and in a limited CD edition, housed in a deluxe bound A5 book of watercolour illustrations by Andrew Chalk. Mastered by Kane Ikin.

The only solo album by Armand Mirallès (Heratius leader) recorded in Montpellier between 1984/1985 on a cassette tape

Released in an elegant matt varnished three panels ecopack with an amazing artwork of our lovely illustrator Mastereaster. Edition of 400 copies. Backwards is really proud to present the first Massimo Magrini solo work. Massimo Magrini is well known for his main project Bad Sector.  "Vrachnas" is inspired by hypnagogic hallucinations and presents one long track full of drones, noises, distant voices, surrealistic soundscapes, fragmented sounds...for a real journey into the obscure side of mind. …

*250 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* Cade is Bruno Dorella and Giovanni Lami. We come from different backgrounds and trainings, but we found a common ground in our open view to different disciplines, and our curiosity towards unorthodox approaches to music. "Cade" is our first ever album to be released, part of a wide archive of sessions that we recorded in 2019-2020, with no kinds of pressure. Dorella plays some traditional instruments such as guitar and percussions, while Lami…

Obliques presents Poème symphonique. Electronic music composer Jonathan Fitoussi revisits Symphony No. 1 “Titan” by Gustav Mahler as part of a world creation commissioned by Radio France. Concert recorded live in the large auditorium of La maison de la radio on November 18, 2023, Paris. Limited Edition clear vinyl LP - No Digital

*200 copies limited release* Elevator Bath and Sedimental are honored to co-release the newest work from legendary Texas-based electronic musician Rick Reed, arguably the linchpin of Austin's experimental scene for the past few decades. Reed's distinguished reputation has been justifiably lauded and this new collection of works is thus cause for celebration. The Symmetry of Telemetry, Reed's first new release since 2018, was recorded at his home studio during 2020 and 2021. Reed employs Buchla a…

The first compilation diving deep into the Portuguese experimental scene from 80-90s on a double LP special edition. Iconic figures such as Telectu, Luís Cilia, Nuno Rebelo or Carlos Maria Trindade are featured on the compilation which comes with extensive liner notes. Unveiling an unheard scene: Glossy Mistakes presents "Atlantic Mavericks: a Decade of Experimental Music in Portugal 1982-1993" Glossy Mistakes is proud to announce the upcoming release of "Atlantic Mavericks: a Decade of Experime…

Picture Music’s eponymous, self-released promo cassette remains the only trace of the late night gatherings of friends in mid-‘80s Brisbane, Australia. Nowadays a fêted and rarely seen collectors item, ‘Picture Music’ stands as testament to their long nights-into-mornings spent together, making music and partying by the cool of night and candlelight as their equipment would simply overheat and crash in the sub-tropical heat of daytime.Concocted in a share house in the South of Brisbane in the mi…

Alessandro Cortini's acclaimed 'Forse' series is available for the first time on CD including an exclusive disc of 'Forse' performed live. Packaged in matte coated digipacks housed in a heavy duty tip-on style outer box. 2021 digital master by Stephan Mathieu.  Composed using only an original Buchla Music Easel, an incredibly rare electronic music instrument designed by Don Buchla, the Forse series features long, romantic compositions full of voluminous, bombastic tones and dripping with thick t…

*2022 stock.* To pour some out for one of their heroes, the cosmos’ own Sun Ra, Bitchin Bajas simply cut a slice of their own DNA and amplify it! Or something like that: they clearly vibe with Ra in hypno-symbiosis, setting the controls of their analog synths for the heart of Sun. Bonus mixtribute: a heartfelt doff to Queen Wendy C, sythnaut and another mother!  Chicago three-piece Bitchin Bajas dust of their synthesizer collection to reinterpret some of Sun Ra's most memorable tunes, from 'Spac…

Compilation of tracks originally recorded for DSS side projects Opus Vix Inchoatum and A Secret Person during the early 1990s. All sounds generated with an Ensoniq EPS Cover photos and artwork by Paolo Beltrame

Reproduction of this 1981 collection, issued by McGill University (making it the other covetable French-Canadian collegiate-issue Electro-Acoustic side ... along with the Bengt Hambraeus “Concrète & Synthesizer Music” set) covering the work of three Québécois composers :: Claude Caron, Serge Perron, and Ted Dawson.Caron’s side-length “Japa” is a gorgeous (extended) stretch of post-Philip Glass modal fury, replete with churning arpeggiated analogue synths & a nice, light, wafting tonality. On the…

We are immensely pleased to welcome into the HDK catalog Mr. Graham Simpson, a champion of electronic music who was hidden in his little house up there in the north east of England. It is reductive to place Graham's music under a specific tag because he is able to release amazing albums in any genre or subgenre that can in some way be traced back to the definition of electronic music. Albums like this “Electrical Storm at the Micro Station”, which will surely make rejoice the lovers of old recor…

Here we go again: Gnoll is back! The brutal dungeon-synth ensemble was this time involved in a collaboration of epic proportions called… Faer the WandererFaer is a Conan-esque character specifically invented for HDK by the English writer John Reppion (co-author with his wife Leah Moore of masterpiece comics such as Albion and Wild Girl, fresh from collaboration with... Iron Maiden!): Faer the Wanderer is a tribute to the glorious heroic-fantasy paperbacks of the 70s, but with typical vibes of th…

Composer and synth fantasist Ori Barel attempts to bash '90s electronica against dadist Krautrock and avant classical music on the ambitious 'Alkaline River'. Think Plaid jamming with Art Bears and Faust and you'll have a good line into this one. There's an admirable level of mayhem to 'Alkaline River' that we can't help but admire. Barel clearly has a lot of love for his influences, and his willingness to take music that's at polar ends of the genre spectrum and find its harmonies is already wo…

Concept focused on courage and defeat, as grandiloquent as it is introspective, "Last Guard of Honour" collects all the material produced by Sir Sagremor between 2021 and 2023: epic and romantic dungeon-synth that acts as a soundtrack to bloody battles and heroic exploits.

The state51 Conspiracy is proud to announce Wacław Zimpel’s long-awaited fourth solo album, ‘Train Spotter’, due for release on 31 March 2023 on state51 Records.

Author and musician Rupert Lally composed an original soundtrack to accompany his 2021 science fiction novella ‘Solid State Memories’. Drawing on influences such as Trent Reznor and John Carpenter’s soundtrack works, Lally made use of a vast array of vintage synth equipment and keyboards.Solid State Memories tells the tale of Dr. Alexandra Wells, a Neuroscientist working in the field of memory, who wakes up one morning with her partner Rachel seemingly disappeared from her life. The night before…

* 200 copies, splatter colour vinyl * Anden Enhed is a new Danish duo, working with analogue synthesizers sequenced in and out of time. Their music is generated from system orientated improvisations and is concerned with cyclic forms and organic periodic shifts. The record moves across six states of vibrant dynamics in which grand narratives give way for a preoccupation with timbral and rhythmic microstructures. The music can be perceived as an abrupt meditation; utopian and self-absorbed in its…

**100 copies** Unrest is a word that comes to mind listening to Maria da Rocha new instalment “nolastingname”. She’s been around for a few years, living between Lisbon, Berlin and Stockholm, releasing records with Maria W. Horn (“Pink”, 2015) or on her own (“Beetroot & Other Stories”, 2018). She studied classical music (violin) but her solo musical career steps away from it, putting her foot down on electronic and experimental music. “nolastingname” was recorded in Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudi…

Last copies, reduced price **Limited Cloudy Blue Sky Vinyl Edition 4x LP Box Set of 500** Echoes, Spaces, Lines collects Trans-Millenia Consort, Plot Zero, and Spectre, the first three albums by the late West Coast composer, healer, and medium Pauline Anna Strom. Restored and remixed from the original reels by Marta Salogni, newly remastered, and adding Oceans of Tears, a fully realized but previously unreleased album exclusive to the box set, these first official reissues are the definitive enc…

2024 stock. Jon Appleton, Sydney Alonso, and Cameron Jones set out to create a new digital synthesizer at Dartmouth College’s Thayer School of Engineering in 1972. They considered the computer-controlled synthesizer superior to analog because of its “ability to create, by digital means alone, time-variant timbres which make all natural sounds interesting to our ears.” This 1976 recording presents the results of their effort—four different compositions, one each by Jon Appleton, Lars-Gunnar Bodin…

2024 stock. Released in 1976, Rhythmania and Other Electronic Musical Compositions spotlights the sounds of a specially assembled Moog Synthesizer (a type of analog synthesizer). The variety is impressive: from birdcalls and the sounds of machines in a factory to waltzes. Pieces such as “Cosmic Dance of Shiva” and “Hear the Clock Tick” are “composed of natural sounds recorded through a microphone,” rather than generated electronically like the “Triptych” fugues. This album also highlights electr…

Magazine only. We're marking 50 years of American synthpunk oddballs Devo in this month's Electronic Sound. The band’s co-founders Mark Mothersbaugh and Jerry Casale are in superb form for our cover feature, talking about their current tour – they're playing three gigs in the UK next month – and their forthcoming 'Art Devo 1973-1977' triple album. The pair recall their formative years at length, a story which involves the extended sonic assault of audiences, monsters high on nitrous oxide, wardr…

*200 copies limited release* Timeless sounds merge into a singular experience, giving birth to "L'Immagine di Me, Lontano," where timeless samples, devoid of memory, reimagined through the constant employment of granular synthesis, blend with echoes of distorted strings and distant pianos. Sounds excerpted from the sonic fabric of the world metamorphose into fragments of emotions, suspended between reality and imagination. The recordings, rich with unknown atmospheres, unveil their deepest essen…

In 2019, Vancouver artist Kristen Roos came across a floppy disk for sale on eBay containing the Commodore Amiga version of Laurie Spiegel's 'Music Mouse'. This was one of the first intelligent instruments for personal computers, created by Spiegel in 1985 as an interactive and playable MIDI sequencer for the 68k era of Macintosh computers. Curious, he bid on the item and ended up winning it for a few dollars. Upon investigation, the simple and intuitive nature of its interface appealed to him, …

*200 copies limited edition CD in 6-panel digisleeve* The idea behind "Methexis" is to take some of the foundational concepts of jazz such as interplay, timbral research and improvisation, and render them in a predominantly electronic context. The compositions were sketches, for example various modes of interactions and three modal macro-areas were indicated on the piece "Methexis", while "On Silent Haunches" is an improvisation for solo electric piano structured on the final four chords of the …