Experimental / Abstract

Having completed his military service as a naval radio operator, Gunther Wüsthoff was in the midst of his German and fine art studies when he encountered Rudolf Sosna and Jean-Hervé Peron. It was May 1969 and each of them had a guitar so they decided to make music together. Polydor International headhunter Uwe Nettelbeck tracked them down on February 23 1971, prompting them to form the legendary krautrock band Faust with three other Hamburg musicians a few days later. Wüsthoff stayed with the ba…

**250 copies** The sound of the violin is a product of tension and release; the hair of the bow pulls back the violin’s string over and over again and, when the tension gets too great, it releases. The resulting vibration disturbs the air around it which travels in waves, exciting our ear drums and becoming sound. This confrontation of energy with air—the alternation of potential and kinetic energy—occurs over and over again in microcosm: catching, holding, tensing, and releasing. As listeners, …

Liz Harris of Grouper under the name Nivhek: Mellotron, guitar, tapes, field recordings and broken pedals, made during residencies in the Azores and Murmansk and at home in Astoria, Oregon.

Waiting for your next breath is a double photographic book that includes four different photographic stories by Stefano Gentile and Monica Testa, whose shots have as object of investigation the landscapes of abandonment. Those that once were spaces for social relations (cinemas, parks, hospitals and so on), have now become temples of ruin: marginal, forbidden, dangerous, inaccessible. However, without indulging in the simple 'painting of ruins' so dear to Piranesi, they draw from the decadence o…

Score for indeterminate ensemble by Swiss composer Stefan Thut (2012), here realised by Cristián Alvear, Cyril Bondi and D'Incise. The piece is governed by three categories of sonic material - 0 for faintly coloured noise, 1 for amalgam of noise and pitch, 2 for pure pitch - circulated across six pages and as many rounds in an ever-shifting structure of repetition and turn. A rigorous taxonomy of sound material in the lineage of Wandelweiser and post-Cage indeterminacy.

Angharad Davies, violin. Rhodri Davies, electric harp, melodica. Michael Duch, double bass. Lina Lapelyte, violin, voice. John Lely, objects, electronics, melodica. John Tilbury, piano.They perform three new works by Jurg Frey, Sarah Hughes and John Lely, plus an extended group improvisation.

Three orchestral pieces played by the Janacek Philharmonic with Charles Curtis on cello. In Diamonds, split orchestras draw diamond shapes in the air through glissandi and unisons, the orchestra used as an instrument for hearing rather than for expression.

Gen Ken Montgomery ran a tiny record shop and sound art gallery called Generator in downtown New York — one of the first such spaces in the city — and it was from here that his practice took shape. A self-taught autodidact with no formal training in music or art, Montgomery built his first tape in 1981, Gen Ken and Equipment (150 copies), from cheap synthesizers, toy instruments, household gadgetry, and electric machines: an ice crusher named Icebreaker, an aquarium pump, a refrigerator, a shoe-…

On msg rcvd, Neptune employ an array of new techniques and methodologies to explore indeterminacy and difficult phenomena such as feedback.  Moving away from guitar feedback, this record features amplified drum feedback as well as the introduction of two new ‘feedback-organ’ machines.  Developing their career-long interest in arranging and deploying found sounds, Neptune continues to use their sonically peculiar guitars built from pieces of found metal, but add to this new devices to pick and ar…

L.R.J. Martens, the visionary behind the Dolphins Into The Future project, presents Eternal Landscapes, a mesmerizing sonic collaboration inspired by the artwork of Belgian visual artist Ada Van Hoorenbeke. This extraordinary album captures the essence of tropical aquatic environments through two immersive compositions that blur the boundaries between natural soundscapes and musical abstraction. These ethereal landscapes transport listeners through similarly tropical aquatic zones that Martens h…

The trio of Michel Doneda, Christoph Schiller and Jonas Kocher performing music of delicate tension and great assurance recorded in the spectacular church at Ligerz, Switzerland.  "Music of delicate tension and great assurance, recorded in 2010 in the spectacular church at Ligerz, overlooking Lake Biel in Switzerland. "The generous acoustic of the church influenced our playing. We had to deal with space and silence....I think you can hear that in our music" Jonas Kocher

Alga marghen was the first label to issue on CD the 4 record LPs that Ghedalia Tazartes privately produced between the late 1970s and early 1980s, therefore contributing to the diffusion of this music among the new generations. At the same time Ghedalia Tazartes' music defined the high standard level of the alga marghen label in its early days. These great recordings are still available in their original CD editions and no surprise that alga marghen has now the privilege to bring you the pleasur…

The World’s Longest Melody is a collection of experimental music written for the guitar by composer/guitarist Larry Polansky (b 1954). The guitar has long been an important component in Polansky’s musical explorations, and this CD has grown from the enthusiasm for his work by the musicians of the Belgian electric guitar quartet ZWERM. The acoustic and electric guitar are featured both solo and in small and large combinations; a few pieces not originally conceived for the instrument are also pre…

Named after the slow loris—an animal beloved by Patrick Farmer and Sarah Hughes for its shy, gradual movements—this London trio creates music that moves at a similarly unhurried pace. Farmer (natural objects, e-bow snare, tapes), Hughes (chorded zither, piano, e-bow), and Daniel Jones (turntable, e-bow, piezo discs, electronics) recorded these three pieces at Middlesex University in 2009, producing what Richard Pinnell in The Watchful Ear describes as "a calm but invigorating massage of the eard…

In 1987 the Morass tape was released. One studio side. One live side. Totally killer. The studio side was recently re-released as bonus material on the Nattering naybobs CD (Harbinger). We decided to re-release the live side on vinyl. And to add 15 minutes of extra material. Astounding unreleased live recordings from 1986. Full colour artwork and labels. Black vinyl bag.

Barcelona's Octante—Ruth Barberán (trumpet, speaker, microphones), Alfredo Costa Monteiro (accordion, objects), Ferran Fages (oscillators, pick-ups), and Margarida Garcia (electric bass)—create what one reviewer calls "a crackling and crunching kind of sound" that's "utterly condensed." The quartet has essentially become "one common music machine" where distinguishing individual instruments becomes nearly impossible. The two extended improvisations (each around 29 minutes) recorded in Barcelona …

Recorded at Ashtray Navigation's basement in Leeds - November 2007 Phil Todd, Melanie Delaney, Bill Kouligas, Christelle Gauldi. Total lo-fi psychedelic sound. Classic UK underground filth. Limited to 300 copies.

Vinyl Format. Fantasma Parastasie sees the pairing of Aidan Baker, of the Ambient Doom band Nadja, and Tim Hecker, two of Canada's brightest musicians in the world of abstract electronic music. This release, divided in seven movements, blends together to form a fluid example of a collaboration that works. Unlike those collaborations where artists throw some sound files back and forth via the internet, this release is the fruit of various real-time recording and mixing sessions the two artists wo…

A split CD of works by Noah Creshevsky (4 tracks) and If, Bwana (3 tracks). While on the face of it this may seem a somewhat odd pairing, the pieces recorded here comment on and highlight each other. And an aural adventure is indeed in the offing. Trained in composition by Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Luciano Berio at Juilliard, Noah Creshevsky has taught at Juilliard, Princeton University, and Brooklyn College. He was director of the Center For Computer Music (1994-2000) and is currently Profes…

This double disc set includes some of the most unusual sounds you will have heard from Carl Michael von Hausswolff. The story goes like this. Von Hausswolff was chosen by the 1997 Istanbul Biennal to create a sound installation for Atatürk Airport. His classic sound combining low frequency rumblings, very monotonous oscillations and hissy non-narrative sequences was deemed too confusing for the commutors. It was feared, von Hausswolff’s sound installation might be mistaken for an alarm and would…

Bob Downes is most often thought of as a jazz flautist, composer and group leader, but throughout his varied career that has included such diverse musical activity as working with the John Barry Seven and playing on Egg's second LP, he also had his own fluid conceptual group Open Music with principle bass player Barry Guy and drummer Denis Smith. Other players that passed through Open Music include Chris Spedding, Kenny Wheeler, Ray Russell, Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Harry Miller, …

No effects, EQ or noise reduction were used in the making of this album, the fifth by this fantastic Brattleboro duo. Sarah Smith and Zach Phillips (aka Bruce Hart, Jordan Piper Philips, Nals Goring, etc.) assemble mostly keyboard-oriented skeletal pop gems from the softest imaginable bones. Sarah Smith sings like a torchier version of the Young Marble Giants' Allison Stratton, singing lost fragments from the Randy Newman Songbook. Smith's guitar playing seems effortless but planned out with a t…

Second edition of Paradigm Discs Variations compilation, originally released in 1998. Another collection of lesser-known and infrequently recorded artists living in London. Beautifully packaged and musically focused -- unlike so many "experimental" compilations loaded up with 30-second toss offs by "name" artists, this features nine pieces of ultra-quality sound fabrication, with the intent of providing durable home listening. Features: Akemi Ishijima (crackling electroacoustic genius), Michael …

First album by Glenna Van Nostrand, a Cambridge, MA-based performance artist obsessed with archaic telecommunication hardware. Using solo vocals run through an old telephone, amplified by a variety of radios, her work creates its own rhythms through hypnotic layering, repetition and the imperfections built into her chosen delivery system. Alternately ethereal and cracked, her performance takes simple kernels of thought and speech, creating mystifying vistas of otherness that hint at the eternal …

Recorded in concert at Gallery Den, Tokyo on April 5, 2000. Thanks to Masae Tanabe, Gallery Den.

Recorded and mastered at Amann studios Vienna September 2003 Packaged in a generic clamshell keep case.

The predominantly Viennese quartet Polwechsel have exhaustively explored the grey areas between composition and improvisation, electronic and acoustic, jazz and classical for much of the past decade. Austrian Christian Fennesz, while initially a guitarist, is primarily known for his abrasive yet melodic laptop explorations on labels such as Mego and Touch. Wrapped Islands documents the much-anticipated first meeting of these two driving forces of contemporary music. Bassist Werner Dafeldecker an…

Released in DVD case size super jewel box. Structures with monochromes on reports of the Golden Number 1,618033989. Recorded July 23, 2002 at Big Jesus Burger, Sydney.Mixed and mastered October/November 2002.

This third full-length by London improv collective Morphogenesis was released in 1996. Formed in 1985, Morphogenesis consisted of seven people at the time of recording, but for all the sessions, except the live track, the line-ups are amalgams of various members and instrumentation. All tracks are free improvisations that were recorded direct to two channels and later edited with no other post production. Recorded between 1993-1996. "Shorepoints" was recorded live at the LMC Festival 1994. Featu…

"the piano's harmonic figures meet with computer sounds unexpectedly within a slowly changing acoustic environment. piano pixies sing and dance serenely in a virtual space while the noises from the instrument insitage dialogues with the computer. the music is tranquil, never aggressive and is at almost every moment polyphonic in the good old sense of the word. pretty often, the two musicians play on two different planes so that in spite of the slowness of the whole thing, the resulting complex r…

"between", for me is about the tension and space between objects, and how we might occupy this area, to reside if you like between the conventions, to locate the flexibility that comes from de-theorizing the dogmas. It seemed to me as if Toshi and I were navigating a route through a familiar part of town, where each of the buildings stood for and represented expectations, styles, outcomes and histories. We wanted to resist entering the buildings and to stay between. The cover art and photo attem…

Live recording, Musique Action Festival, Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy, France, May 26, 2001. Thanks to Dominique Répécaud and Nicolas Franer. C+P GROB 2004 Packaged in a six-panel Digipak.

These recordings are solo efforts on electronic organ - the awesome Vox Continental, guitar and viola as well as collaborations with saxophone player Terry Jennings, violinist Tony Conrad, Velvet Underground guitar player Sterling Morrison and the VU's original drummer Angus MacLise. Thanks to Tony Conrad, who was a co-member in La Monte Young's group The Dream Syndicate, these tapes are finally available to the public.

Duets for harmonium and whateveraphone. These pieces are starkly out of character for both individuals, but no less excellent.

Recorded live 2000 at Berlin (1) and 2001 at Graz, Wien (Vienna) and Berlin.