Experimental / Abstract

* Limited Deluxe vinyl box with yellow vinyl and insert 299 copies only * This is the third and final installment from The Silverman’s cassette archive which had been gathering dust in a dark cupboard- and it’s a special one, especially for those who hold the “Shadow Weaver” and “Malachai” albums close to their hearts. It’s hard to downplay the importance of the show presented here.  Four years earlier, in 1989, The Dots anxiously anticipated their first show in Chicago (a city they viewed as on…

First vinyl reissue of the landmark 1966 debut album by Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Exact replica with gatefold sleeve (+ additional bonus CD). Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form. A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the free improvisation, the album was originally released on Rca, and played by musician…

LP version. Back in 2020, Kafé Hærverk, Oslo's live hotspot for a wide range of jazz and experimental music invited Master Oogway to do monthly concerts from August to December, bringing along a guest for each occasion. Two had to be moved to 2021 due to Covid restrictions, but the other three were recorded for possible use later. Initially, Rune Grammofon thought about doing a "best of" from all of the recordings, but after further listening it soon dawned on the label that the concert with Hen…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* "There is a particular approach to improvisation which can seem slightly strange when you first encounter it, although it's been around in free improv at least since the days of the AACM, and so probably since free improv existed at all. This approach finds a commonality with field recordings of "exotic" musics rather than with the studio, and seeks, one way or another, to embrace that commonality in a non-contradictory way. Rohstoff represent one way of doin…

** Edition of 700 copies, duotone artwork on inner & outer sleeves ** Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators. Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug's first collaborative work was the Quantum Entanglement LP in 2014. The project lay dormant until Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson invited them to open fo…

**Edition of 200. 12" Vinyl LP. Risograph print cover** The ability to create moving music with no words, no beats and no conventional instruments is rare, but San Francisco Bay Area-based modular synth artist Austin Cairns - who records under the name r beny - is such an example. Belgian label Dauw are reissuing his first four albums separately and as a box set. Saudade was his third overall and the first of two full-lengths released in 2018 alone.

Original copy of the long out of print LP album. First pressing from back in 1993, Tahta Tarla is a collaborative recording based apparantly upon long wires strung through the woods with the wind activating some of these wires with each artist seeming to be in charge of the production of one of two sides. For Toniutti's half, the scrabbling textures and aeolian drones are mostly left unprocessed with bellowing rumbles, eeries echoing, and peculiar hisses that seem to come from nowhere in particu…

**Edition of 200 copies, black and silver screen-printed sleeve, housed in a heavy duty library style plastic sleeve with re-sealable strap flap** Timber Rattle's most cohesive and essential release, 'Phantoms of Place' is an exploration of physical space, place and tradition, and an interpretation of life and death in the arcane wild. Timber rattle is a kind of "pyche-pastoral" hymnal which seems to be as informed by noise shows in west coast basements or the revolutionary spirit of poet Jean G…

Almost completely unknown in the west, Masahiro Sugaya has been composing and producing music since the 1980s in an exceptionally wide range of fields and practices. From arrangements for musical acts like the acoustic guitar duo Gontiti to acousmatic diffusion at spaces like Paris’s Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), Sugaya’s reach is almost exhaustive in its breadth, but it was in the 80s bubble-era kankyō ongaku scene that he first found his musical voice. Horizon, Volume 1 presents a wind…

This foursome is resolute in its acceptance of communal responsibility and creation. Vocalist Kyoko Kitamura sings and speaks in wordless flurries matching Taylor Ho Bynum’s brassy exhortations on cornet. Cellist Tomeka Reid and guitarist Joe Morris worry and pluck their respective strings, applying speed and torque in the loosing of spidery cascades of crinkled and crenelated tones. Pitch and timbre differentials are a big part of the interplay with instruments juxtaposed in bursts of activity.

Amidea Clotet's Trasluz is the result of research into the sound and textural possibilities of the electric guitar treated as a source of sound amplification. Clotet creates spontaneous, raw and vivid soundscapes, which call for the importance of the present moment, of knowing how to listen to what surrounds us and to ourselves.

The Industrious Tongue of Michael Foster is a 2-part work probing the most intimate and sensitive glands of the saxophone's internal architecture. This work is dedicated to several filmmakers whose work explores the erotic extremities and complexities of contemporary intimacy which has served as a focal point of inspiration for this album: Hisayasu Sato, Takashi Ishii, Naomi Tani and Jacques Rivette.

Moskus conveys their perspective of the world with vivid improvisation in a genre-free universe.   In their In their most recent release, “Papirfuglen”, the ensemble further solidifies their position as one of the most cutting-edge and transfixing voices in the newest generation of both Norwegian and international jazz. They have a unique musical approach, with a combination of infectious playfulness and a headstrong penchant for experimentation. And with these tools Moskus takes yet another ste…

In 2021, the international contemporary music festival Only Connect commissioned an interpretation from I Like to Sleep of the first movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila symphony. A project which initially led to a 15-minute piece performed at the festival, with the trio re-writing the music of Messiaen, but also rewriting the music of their own. Messiaen as a reference and compositional tool may be heard in the album for those really listening for references. With “Sleeping Beauty” the tr…

Helge Sten, Ståle Storløkken, Arve Henriksen and Jarle Vespestad celebrate 10 years as Supersilent, the groundbreaking quartet with their first studio album in almost 5 years. Their music lives in a no-man's-land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. Yes, we say composition because when listening it´s not far fetched to think it could have been, although everything here is improvised, as it has always been with Supersilent. With ”8” they have yet a…

This fourth Supersilent installment once again features the tantalising quartet lineup of Helge Sten (aka Deathprod), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizer), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), and Jarle Vespestad (drums). If you haven't encountered their work before, Supersilent 4 is a good place to start - a sumptuous arrangements of tracks often described as "Death Jazz", though the title is somewhat misleading. Deathprod's arrangements and production techniques loom large over these amazing pieces, coating th…

Debut triple CD by a Norwegian deathjazz improvising unit! The group features Helge Sten (audio virus), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizer), Arve Henriksen (trumpet), and Jarle Vespestad (drums)." Many hours of studio recordings, which have been trimmed down into this debut. "Difficult music, perhaps, but also playful and stunningly beautiful, always trying to stretch the limits." New packaging, now comes in an elaborate fold-out digipak.

** Edition of 300 copies. Album includes booklet of 12 pages with photos and liner notes ** Manongo Mujica is a Peruvian percussionist, composer and visual artist. His constant search for sounds, from native to electronic, has even led him to compose music from silence. Norway’s Terje Evensen specialises in improvised modern jazz combined with electronic elements, creating spacious and dramatic soundscapes of profound intensity. Paracas Ritual, the new album by Manongo Mujica and Terje Evensen, …

In the 1990s David Shea was a regular on the downtown scene working with Anthony Coleman, John Zorn, Zeena Parkins, Shelly Hirsch and many others. Since 1998 he has been living and working in Brussels collaborating with some of Belgium's finest classical musicians, and performing his exciting solo concerts. Classical Works II, his third release on Tzadik, is the definitive document of Shea's new musical direction, bold integrating sampling technology into the classical concert music tradition. T…

* LP 300 copies. Translucid green vinyl, offset printed covers, stamped labels * Omertà is comprised of five musicians from a handful of projects that line the interior of France’s experimental underground, notably La Société Étrange, releasing limited edition pressings on labels like Standard In-Fi, Desastre, and La Novià. Each of the members, and their associated groups, possess krautrock’s stealthy octave climbing and open feel, dub’s intimate incorporation of analog electronics and generally…

*Limited edition CD housed in a digipak and obi strip.* 'Kannazuki' - the traditional name for the tenth month of the year in the Japanese lunar calendar - is a truly unique moment, a glimpse into a one-off improvisation of a quartet of musicians (Haco, Takako Minekawa, Dustin Wong, Jára Tarnovski) which took place in Tokyo in 2017. Recorded by Hideaki Hayashidani at Nanahari, the moment is described by the musicians as a “musical adventure”, a “translucent entanglement”, and a moment of deep re…

*100 copies limited edition.* Granny Records presents Elsewhere is a negative mirror by Mark Vernon. Made from recordings found, taken or gathered in Scotland between 2000 and 2020.

A new trio from three master improvisers in the great sax / bass / drums tradition. This suite of compact pieces sees the players move between pure jazz skill and areas where extended techniques on all three instruments take the music into more textural and abstract areas. Paul Hession has played percussion with a wide range of improvising  musicians from around the world including Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann and Marshall Allen. Bassist Michael Bardon featured in the Nat Birchall Quartet and S…

*Limited to 30 hand-numbered copies.* "Το All My Hideous Children" collects some of Alice Kemp's emphatically uncanny rites of evocation. Stripped of conventional music interpretation, "To All My Hideous Children", out now on Coherent States, is music from a different world; A sound art work soaked in a dark, raw & disturbed experimental intensity that exhibits Kemp's dream state connection to nature. An audio documentation of eerie recitations, shadows, eroded sounds, field recordings, macabre …

*Gatefold sleeve, includes printed inner sleeves & 32 page booklet.* Following the "Minna Miteru" compilation, released in 2020, Morr Music announces a sequel, dedicated to Japanese indie music, overflowing with surprises and welcome discoveries. Like its predecessor, "Minna Miteru 2" is compiled by Saya of Tenniscoats, with the support of Markus Acher (The Notwist). It’s also another part of the Minna Miteru universe, alongside retrospective albums by The Andersens ("There Is A Sound", 2020) an…

Tip! "Language is the Skin" is the fourth full length release by New Monuments, the quartet co-led by Don Dietrich (Borbetomagus) and Ben Hall (Graveyards/Bill Dixon). Hall and Dietrich continue applying pressure to the structure of the relationship between saxophone and percussion. "Language" branches out to include totally new forms, line-ups, and instrumentation. New to the band, replacing C. Spencer Yeh, are Don's 25 year-old shredder daughter Camille adding 'cello, big Stockhausian refriger…

*100 copies limited edition* Sun Araw first released the Prayer Tapes in two separate volumes back in 2012, a set of long form improvisational solo work you would easily be forgiven for missing given the prolific activity of Cameron Stallones around that turn of the decade period. They're more than worth a revisit now, heady, zoned-out excursions that seem to emerge in a fog of purple-y gloom. It's typically humid exploratory work from Stallones, that beautifully dense Sun Araw sound that plays …

‘Naomi’ - the debut album by Portuguese duo HRNS - flickers gently between vulnerability and security, between being here and being there. This is music for contemplative, tired moments, when the immensity of space seems most striking. And as planes continue to fly over our heads, we all slowly drift further and further apart. But not everything is lost; perhaps our paths will cross again one day. "There’s an impressionistic worldview behind this music, as if the listener is drifting through the…

*Limited edition of 600 copies, three-sided 180g vinyl.* Dedicated to an independent Chechnya. On the front cover, there is a Coat of Arms of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria during the first First Chechen War for Independence. 'Chechnya Over Dub' was originally released by Staalplaat as a part of Fatah Guerrilla in 1996.

Tip! ** A massive new double album from Blod and the first CD-only release on Discreet Music. In the artists' own words: "ABBA was recorded during the summer of 2021 in my garage in Mölndal outside of Gothenburg. I believe the album has some kind of loner ambient lo-fi vibe all over it. I have tried to create a warm feeling permeated by longing and loneliness. It's far from a happy album and it contains no hit songs, but I think there is a feeling of hope present throughout both discs." Edition …

Tip! ** An audio postcard from the Discreet Music family featuring new music from Astrid Øster Mortensen, Jon Collin, Blod, Charlott Malmenholt, Hugo Randulv, Sewer Election, Skogar, Incipientium, Leda, JJulius, Amateur Hour, Arv & Miljö, Klas Trollius and Treasury of Puppies. Edition of 500 copies in jewelcase with 16-page booklet

Tip! Aube is a noise project by Akifumi Nakajima, born in Kyoto in 1959. Since the 1980s, he has been using synthesizers and other devices to create small-scale sounds as a hobby. In 1990, he was in charge of the music for the installation "Water 1990" by the artists Soichi Arichi and Takashi Sasaoka, and in 1991, he began his external musical activities as Aube. The same year, he released his debut cassette "Hydrophobia" on Vanilla Records. In 1992, he established G.R.O.S.S., an independent lab…

The new record by Eric Chenaux is his most immaculate and pristine. Say Laura perfectly incarnates the counter-intuitive interplay of instrument and voice that Chenaux has been revealing and revelling in throughout the past decade: his gently unhinged juxtaposition of resplendently smooth, seductively assured singing and puckish, frazzled, thoroughly destabilized guitar could come from no other musician. The five wandering, wondering ballads on Say Laura bring Chenaux’s semi-improvised but keenl…

"We begin with the flickering, fire-like erraticism of the first track. Despite bearing the title of “Snow”, I’m drawn to imagine the very opposite: an intense heat that billows and dwindles across the stereo frame, suddenly erupting from left to right as if devouring an oil slick, promptly receding through oxygen exhaustion. To what extent are these fizzing, crackling chords – presumably electronics, but ultimately too distorted to accurately identify – under Hahn’s control? To what extent does…

In December 2021 just before Christmas Holy Tongue played an intimate live show at Servant Jazz Quarters in London. The show was recorded and is presented here on cassette in its entirety as a snapshot of the continually evolving Holy Tongue live experience.

LP only. Limited Edition of 130 copies. These 37 minutes mark a turning point in Uhlig,s work. "Genmaicha: At the opal seashore (the last full length Aalfang Mit Pferdekopf-album on Mystery Sea, October 2005) was a already a vague hint of what comes now: Uhlig on the peak of low volume. "VIVMMI is divided into five segments accompanied by a host of verdant birds and the melancholic and peaceful humming chords of an old droning piano (and without much doubt: completely out-of-tune). As if someone…

'It was the unexpected event of the 2005 FIMAV festival: avant jazz legend Anthony Braxton joining noisy bad boys Wolf Eyes on-stage. But it did not come completely out of left field. A few months earlier at another festival, the 60-year-old saxophonist had attended a performance by the Michigan noise trio and was transformed, buying a copy of everything the band had to sell that night. The man had been hit in the face by noise music. At the 22nd FIMAV, Braxton was scheduled to play a duo concer…

Sapropelic Pycnic is the world debut of music presented under the name of "Ka Baird." While this record is a commencement of many sorts, it is in no way a mere beginning: Ka is one of the founding members of experimental psychlings Spires That In the Sunset Rise. Formed in 2001 out of the Chicago scene, and described by late guitar legend Jack Rose as a "female Sun City Girls," Spires' sisterhood of sound deepened the New Folk slant with an array of avant- and world-flavored directions drawing t…

Pascal Comelade's Wings On Rocks EP includes three tracks: an extract of the soundtrack for Bob Wilson's ballet Wings On Rocks (1999) featuring Richard Pinhas on guitar, a previously unreleased track from 2009 and a new version of "The Nothing Twist", recorded with The Liminanas, featuring Xarim Aresté on guitar. French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade, born in 1955, began making strange cover songs of rock and easy listening standards with such instruments as singing saw, toy piano etc. He late…

Tip! ** Edition of 200** A collective six-track vinyl LP is delivered from the elektronik city of Goteborg, Sweden. Loaded with passionate, atmospheric and meditative waves, featuring Nachdenken, JPS, Peter Davidson, Robert Leiner, Weltwagen and Eels for Pleasure