Experimental / Acoustic

New collection of Adam Bohman's signature cut-up found text pieces and intricate close-mic'd improvisations with homemade stringed instruments and small objects. Guaranteed to get your mouth watering and head spinning. While the ordinary well-adjusted citizen is liable to whitey within 30 seconds, those of us with stronger constitutions will be unfazed by the regressive babbling state you may find yourself in. Hold fast, you are one joyous step closer to enlightenment. "Adam Bohman has been oper…

Guitarist Lee Underwood’s syncretic blend of jazz, folk, and blues was a tremendous force behind Tim Buckley’s genre-stretching late 60s/early 70s music – but his 1988 acoustic guitar opus California Sigh has remained a unsung footnote to his story. Until now! This first time vinyl-edition reveals Lee’s free-floating acoustic moods, with synths and co-production from ambient avatar Steve Roach, as a soulful work of tranquility and transcendence.

Tip! Just when you think you’ve heard everything you want to hear from a solo piano record, something comes along that challenges your preconceptions all over again. Efstathiou has been developing a unique language with the instrument for some time, building up a reputation for idiosyncratic preparations and extended technique. All that’s illuminated in flickering candlelight on ‘Edge of Chaos’; moody and deliciously ambiguous, it’s based on mathematical systems, specifically the transition stat…

"O Most Noble Greenness is a collaboration across centuries between Du.0 and Hildegard von Bingen, a German abbess and composer from 1100 A.D. Though separated from the composer by the remove of time, language, geography, and instrumentation, we nevertheless felt Hildegard’s presence as a living, breathing source of inspiration. Channeling Hildegard’s visceral embodiment of natural and mystical imagery, we deconstruct her song "Item de Virginibus" to uncover new sonorities and form. Throughout t…

Seven inch split between Fugu & The Cosmic Mumu and Death Sentence: Panda!

'Making a journey to a Bright Nowhere' series - marking Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday. Volume 2, Cafe OTO 16th July 2022

Almufaraka brings together the breath and voices of Gaëlle Debra, Patrick Guionnet, and Maryline Pruvost, alongside the sound textures of skins, wood, and metal played by Peter Orins. This quartet explores all technical means to create a music that is both archaic and avant-garde, drawing inspiration from a mythical primitive tradition. By recreating a form of serenity, the music immerses us in an original sonic imagination. The recording offers a journey through the full sound spectrum, from th…

We are living through the same time. The worst day ever for someone might be a happy day for someone else. "The Days" are solo saxophone pieces of drama from someone's life.

Promise of Faithfulness was created during a winter in Brussels, between the search for new sounds and the interest of what we might call spirits in music. This debut solo album is a tribute to the last words of Albert Camus's speech for the Nobel Prize : "It remains for me to thank you from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to him/herself in silence every day."

Tip! Dan Blacksberg’s Psychic/Body Sound System takes a gutsy leap into a set of otherworldly sub-bass drones, fiery free jazz declamations, and melancholic sonic stories. This fully improvised album, recorded live with no effects or overdubs shows Blacksberg wielding his trombone like a seer across varied sonic environments, real and imagined. Woven together by poetic fictionalizations by Alex Smith and stunning artwork by James Dillenbeck, Psychic/Body Sound System is a trombone-driven reverie…

*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Katie and Lucio met over the internet almost every Tuesday for one year, composing two pieces, rehearsing, talking about their lives, and recording. The desire to play together began after exchanging work and perceiving a deeply common approach to bass clarinet playing, to sound, and to music. The two pieces offered here are based in a very distinctive but still strictly coherent approach in relation to the work they intend to do. Phase to Phase 1 is a ce…

*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Masahide Tokunaga is a Tokyo-based alto sax player/improviser who carries out extremely distinctive performances comprised mainly of long tones. On the Hitorri label he has released the improvised performance CDs "Alto Saxophone 2" (2015) and "Bwoouunn: Fleeting Excitement" (2017), as well as "while your master is sleeping" (2020), on which he performs a composition by Taku Sugimoto. With the exception of that composition recording, "Masahide Tokunaga" is…

*2024 stock* This is the third Out of Standard!! compilation dedicated to the French oblique musics we like. The former two where edited in the 8o's in the cassette format. Artists featured were Armand Miralles (Heratius Music Corporation), Aversion Sonore, Costes, DDAA, Denier du Culte, Die Form, Dz lectric, Etant Donnés, Moly, La STPO, Les 3 Phallus, Nu Creative Methods, Orient-Express, Pascal Comelade, Stenka Bazin, Toupidek Limonade, Vivenza, Vox Populi. This time we have French underground …

Temporary Super Offer!  Christoph Gallio and Markus Eichenberger, both born in 1957, have known each other since the early eighties and have played together a lot during this time, listening to music, visiting bars and occasionally taking a dip in the Rhine. At some point, their paths got lost until they crossed again in 2018 to regularly sound out their musical languages and create something new. Their performance at the "40 Years of WIM Zurich" festival remained unforgotten for many. Eichenber…

Temporary Super Offer! ”In its sum, Draw From The Source recounts a multidimensional journey whose sources and paths constantly cross. Marco von Orelli and Sheldon Suter reveal a lot about themselves, about their individual idiosyncrasies and about their common feelings in this performance carried by finest lyricism. But behind this journey from the north to the south, from urban stagnation to Mediterranean lightness, there is also a call for us to reflect on the true nature of our existence in …

Temporary Super Offer! 'Even a cursory revisiting of Houle and von Orelli’s previous recordings confirms that the stark forum afforded by a horn duo strips their music to its essentials, their shared ability to make unorthodox forms and materials sing and dance being the most salient. Fresh, distanced, and potentially transformative perspectives abound on this album, and not just about the music of any other artist; but, more importantly, the tug and pull between the continuity represented by tr…

*150 copies limited edition* A place, a microclimate, a voice, a microphone. Monophonic recording made on 13 April 2023 at the old cooperative cellar in Paziols. Recorded on a single channel, the sound sources are reduced to being close or distant. Reproduced on your loudspeakers, they reintegrate a space and resonate there. Plein Vent is a proposal to artists to record in a particular place of their choice, making a space resonate with intimacy. Unique cardboard sleeve stamped with the title, n…

Falter Bramnk, Philippe Lenglet (members of the Muzzix collective), and Samuel Bodart (Numero h.) have known each other for a long time, often crossing paths in various and diverse ensembles (always working with improvisation), but until now, never as a trio! A few years ago, they came together, and after a few concerts, they felt the desire to further develop their work and record it. For this project, they decided to blend plucked/struck strings (acoustic guitar surrounded and enhanced with a …

Tip! Picot is pleased to present the debut solo album by french percussionist Charles Dubois, inaugurating the label’s very first production. Charles Dubois has developed an all-terrain, rudimentary approach to percussion, blending wood, skins, bells, scrap metal, and other found objects. Entirely acoustic, this solo performance on augmented drums explores paradoxical spaces balanced between organic textures, improvised technoid patterns, mechanical movements, and raw sound materials. In this n…

Lukas de Clerck brings the telescopic aulos, which his new interpretation of long-form expression coaxed forth on this tremendous recording. Lukas de Clerck explores a niche of archaeological research in music; the aulos is a historical Greek instrument that Lukas analyzed and reinterpreted by a luthier in modern times—navigating this impression as an artwork or living sculptural object, as there is an absence of historical partitions or written information about how to recreate technique on the…

*300 copies limited edition* A collection of marvelous songs from the 13-year old Jayden Mont from Belle Vernon, PA, USA. Home recorded brilliance in the American lo-fi tradition of early K Records, Daniel Johnston, Shrimper stuff etc. Raw and heartfelt real music. Curation and sequencing by Gustaf Dicksson. Comes with a booklet containing the full e-mail conversation between Jayden and Gustaf leading up the record. Front cover artwork by Derek Erdman.

*100 copies limited edition* Gianfranco Piombo plays accordion, accompanied by a windscreen wiper motor as percussionist and a fan that makes two truck shock absorbers sing. This little orchestra unfolds in a hypnotic, repetitive drone. A poor man's trance, made up of vibrations, harmonics, gasps, nerves and electricity.

Tip! Here's the last will and testament of Usurper. The final curtain on two decades of heroic toil in the experimental/noise/improv/no-audience underground. Over the course of their twenty year existence, Usurper developed into one of the most original and uncompromising groups to emerge from the early 2000's sub-sub underground, always pushing themselves (and audiences) to new territory. They were fearlessly experimental, with seemingly limitless reserves of creativity. Their performances were…

Ted Byrnes is a drummer/percussionist living in Los Angeles. An alumnus of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA, he comes from a jazz background and has since made his home in the worlds of free improvisation, new music, electro-acoustic music, and noise. Ted primarily works in ad hoc improvisational settings, but has long standing improvisational groups including duos with Jeff Parker, Chris Cooper, Charlie Mumma, Sam McKinlay, William Hutson, and a trio with Jacob Wick and Michael Foster…

"Limitation Is Necessary is the third set of music by Massachusetts-based string genius Lloyd Thayer we've had the honor of releasing. This follows the Duets LP (with percussionist Jerome Duepree) on which lloyd split his playing between a Weissenborn lap guitar and a 22 string Chaturangui, and the Twenty20 CD which was all done on a double-necked Weissenborn. Both of these album deep and monumental explorations of mesmeric string textures filled with elements that ranged from Indian Classical t…

*200 copies limited edition* In 2019, ‘porous structures’ was released, the first album by the quartet Machtelinckx/Badenhorst/Cools/Gouband. The album won the Klara for ‘Best Belgian Jazz CD’. In September 2024, ‘porous structures II’ will be released, a new album by a quartet led by Ruben Machtelinckx, this time in the company of Fredrik Rasten, Frederik Leroux and again Toma Gouband. What remains is the choice for acoustic and fragile sounds, comprehensible to the listener but with an underly…

*150 copies limited edition* ‘This here empty room’ is a collection of thirteen miniature compositions for solo acoustic guitar and solo piano. Pieces i until vii are played by Frederik Leroux on steel-string acoustic guitar, pieces viii until xiii are played by pianist Heleen Van Haegenborgh. This album is another exploration of the acoustic space, as you might expect from Leroux. What is new is the purely composed nature of the music, giving Leroux full control over the soundworld he wants to …

Since emerging in the early 1980s the French bassist, composer, and vocalist Joëlle Leandre has ignored the gaps between improvised and composed music, jazz and new music, inventively braiding post-Cagean concepts with the free jazz ferment she witnessed first-hand growing up in Paris. Accordion master and fellow countryman Pascal Contet was initially rooted in contemporary music, helping to bring it back as a viable, versatile instrument in experimental music, but throughout his long career he’…

*300 copies limited edition* "Martina Verhoeven is a Flemish pianist who likes to seek musical adventure, in different line-ups. The album Martina Verhoeven Invites contains two sessions recorded at Cafe Oto in London on July 23, 2023. During the concert, Gina Southgate made the painting that appears on the cover of the sleeve, which manages to capture the action of the musicians perfectly, as far as I am concerned - lots of color, lots of movement, and a special way of playing together. Two lon…

Reading Group is thrilled to announce a new album from the celebrated trio of Fred Moten (voice), Brandon López (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). Following the release of their 2022 self-titled debut album, also on Reading Group (RG23), the trio has been developing their improvisatory language in concerts across North America and the UK. While growing from their first album’s perpetually restrained simmer, their infamous live shows explore a propulsive, relentless, and massively energet…

*75 copies limited edition* Featuring the 1885 pipe organ of Chiesa di San Martina a Maiano and using musical materials derived from Vincenzo Galilei's Fronimo (1581), these pieces articulate the evocative possibilities of sustained tones and low tessituras. The protracted durations of these skeletal structures foreground their lush and often unexpected harmonic progressions, each moment revealing a world of subtle mystery and drama.

*75 copies limited edition* Hold Music is a pair of expansive long-form loop pieces for alto saxophone and electronics, intended to be listened to on infinite repeat. Entrancing and prismatic, constantly spiraling, this is a music that adapts to any listening situation – equally well-suited as accompaniment to daily activities as it is rewarding to the concentrated listen.

*75 copies limited edition* Henry Fraser bores into the sound of the double bass to explore the endless patterns of its otherwise hidden contours. The instrument acquires its own dynamic landscape, its own body, and its own mode of perception – opening a space of acute, granular perceptivity in which presumed boundaries are blurred: between center and periphery, sonic and tactile, instrumentalist and instrument, performer and listener."When the poet, Charles Olson wrote, “the HEAD, by way of the…

Fohn brings connection, displacement and new identities into the moment, on pastoral debut album Seanteach - informed by island life, marine folklore and musical tradition.

Ubagabi is a baroque solo violin album recorded in 2019 reinterpreting the myth of Ubagabi, a chicken turning into a fire ball. This album is now finally released on a silk-screened CD, fully equipped with a flammable booklet, an insert, and all fits in a hand stamped rotisserie bag. Mastering by Guillaume Lespinasse.

Evening Air is the result of Loren Connors and David Grubbs’s first trip to the recording studio in the two decades since their first duo album, Arborvitae (Häpna). Arborvitae stood out for its spellbinding, utterly unhurried meshing of electric guitar (Connors) and piano (Grubbs). With this long-awaited return, Connors and Grubbs take turns trading off on piano and guitar, with Grubbs at the keyboard for the two gently expansive pieces on the first side and Connors taking over the instrument fo…

Melos Kalpa formed in 2019 around the vision of Tom Relleen; a quintet of musicians employing unconventional instruments and strategies to make music that exists somewhere at the intersection of improvisation, minimalism and sublimated reverie. Musicians Agathe Max (Abstract Concrete, Papivores, These Towns), Jem Doulton (Thurston Moore Group, Too Many Things), David John Morris (Red River Dialect) and Tom Relleen (Tomaga) perform via the conduit of producer Marta Salogni’s intricate tape prepar…

*100 copies limited edition* With a microscopic focus on the snare drum, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy extracts and manipulates its sound in a variety of tunings whilst maintaining a precision and simplicity of method and form. This exercise is a common one for the artist, in which he limits both the instruments used and the techniques with which its sounds are processed — in this case using only reverb and hard EQ-ing to engineer the final outcome. Even with these self-imposed restrictions, there is a…

*In process of stocking* ‘A grain of Earth’ is the first solo venture and expression of several years of working with instant compositions and the timbral possibilities of an acoustic piano. This has been wrapped in an idea of realities beyond our perception, and a thought that we are a part of a big organism where everything goes endlessly bigger and smaller in scale of size, time and speed. Everything moves in constantly interfering waves of energy; echoing and reflecting, in ceaseless dance o…

This recording documents the first ever meeting between Susan Alcorn and Catherine Sikora. When musicians improvise with each other, a space is created that is unique and specific to the musicians who are playing. With Susan and Catherine, the space that presented itself was enormous, with great freedom and tonal flexibility, opening up endless possibilities for expression.