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Experimental /

¡Ay!
Tip! Lucrecia Dalt channels innate sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where traditional instrumentation encounters adventurous impulse and sci-fi meditations on atemporality in an exclamation of liminal delight. Dalt’s introspective approach to composition, last surfaced on her entrancing 2020 album No era sólida, refracts across ¡Ay! in a subconscious spectrum of the music genres she absorbed as a child. Treasured sounds and syncopations of bolero, mambo, salsa, and…
sisbiosis
*In process of stocking* Erstwhile presents sisbiosis, collaboration album by Clara de Asís and Ryoko Akama, mastered by Taku Unami. Photography by Clara de Asis (black and white) and Ryoko Akama (color). Six-panel digipak. Clara de Asís - electronics, percussion, field recordingsRyoko Akama - amplified objects, field recordings Track 1, 2: recorded and mixed by Clara de Asís in Leymen, France in May 2022 Track 3, 4, 5: materials recorded by Ryoko Akama and Clara de Asís in Leymen, France and Ho…
The Actress
Erstwhile presents The Actress, Vanessa Rossetto's solo album. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, designed by Matthew Revert. Double CD, six-panel digipak.
Through A Room
Using the looped-and-screwed methodology of Both, Nace takes a seismic step, building the process into a larger compositional process, employing guitar plus tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, quelle est belle and the nu Nace ax of choice, taishōgoto. Phrases talk to and obliterate each other, expanding and emerging into brave new unheard vistas.
Broken Gargoyles
Employing a vast array of advanced vocal and instrumental techniques, Broken Gargoyles is arguably Diamanda Galás' most intellectually, sonically and viscerally formidable work to date. The album finds the visionary artist deftly probing the weaving, warping transformation on the nervous systems of her post-traumatic soldiers and dying diseased. The album's first part, "Mutilatus," contains the Georg Heym poems "Das Fieberspital" and "Die Dämonen der Stadt," and concerns the suffering of the sol…
Elements
*In process of stocking.* Since my piece Terrible Fake (Piano, Drums, 2013) and especially Darkroom (Clarinet, Vibraphone, Sampler, 2017), I've been trying to to integrate some grooves into classical contemporary idiom. Since those experiments were mostly for smaller setups, this time I wanted to transfer it into the larger one in order to get more possibilities to work with different textures and coloring within harmonic structures of clusters and chromatic movements of melodies. Constant trans…
The Art of No-Art
*Includes a 364 pages, 12" x 8" bound book & PDF. Digital audio download. Limited edition of 100 hand-numbered.* A new book of scores by artist and composer Philip Corner (b. 1933). The Art of No-Art is a collection of 385 new graphic scores written between 2019 and 2022. Each score is a single-page meditation based around octaves. Though written mostly for piano, the scores could be arranged for other instrumentation (for those with fewer than an 8 octave range). The Art of No-Art explores the …
Airs
*2022 repress. Limited edition of 600 copies.* Over the 23 years since Loren Connors’ Airs was first published, it has drawn a thick circle of fans. Gently recorded to cassette tape in 1999, (with wonderfully subtle multi-tracking), Airs is comprised of a series of brief electronic guitar poems. Intimately composed with the patience and purposeful hesitation we have reverently come to expect from Connors. Lyrical melodies recur in different forms throughout the LP, as shifting figures in a dream…
Models of Duration
*Limited edition of 400 copies.* The latest from the uncompromising John McCowen is a split release between Dinzu Artefacts and Astral Spirits. Models of Duration follows the same trajectory as McCowen's other amazing solo releases - Solo Contra (International Anthem, 2017), 4 Chairs in 3 Dimensons (Astral Spirits, 2018), Mundanas I - V (Editions Wandelweiser, 2018) but is also a whole world beyond those. McCowen continues to focus on extended possibilities of the clarinet family as well as acou…
Transparent Waves
*2022 stock.* When does our experience of sound become "music"? In the tradition of John Cage and Morton Feldman, in which sounds – and silences – can just be themselves, Thomas DeLio plays with the spaces between your ears as much as the sounds he puts there. In short, be advised this album is replete with clicks, silences, and brief sound events. Stripped bare, it plays with time and space and the minimum conditions for music. It gives the term ‘experimental music’ meaning. DeLio’s approach to…
Galaxy Heart
Galaxy Heart is the companion album to Phosphenes (Nov 2021) and completes an intensive body of work that Montréal composer-violinist Jessica Moss wrote, performed and self-produced in deep isolation throughout 2020. As A Closer Listen wrote in its Top Ten Modern Composition list for 2021, "few musical voices represent so well the estrangement and intensity of our times; Moss is among the best of them." Galaxy Heart consolidates this assessment, revealing the more exploratory and extemporaneous …
An Eternal Reminder of Not Today
At the Moers Festival 2018, OXBOW got together with Peter Brötzmann to deliver a memorable performance, bringing out the best of two legends in their very own genres while playing old and new Oxbow songs together.
To Sail, To Sail
One of the most profound solo statements to date from a musical master who has been crossing musical borders for over three decades! Concentrating exclusively on the acoustic guitar, Fred Frith stretches himself and the instrument like never before, performing with the eloquence and grace of a master in peak form. With a prodigious technique and elegant sense of maturity he draws upon a lifetime of study and experience to bring together influences as diverse as classical, blues, folk, gypsy and …
Tenno
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The second in a series of releases by the legendary downtown pioneer Teiji Ito presents his postmodern masterpiece Tenno, blending Japanese, African, Carribean and Western musical instruments with sound effects, voice and electronics to create the most startling long form composition in his catalog. Born in Japan in 1935, Ito moved to New York and worked closely with Maya Deren, Jerome Robbins and Julian Beck creating music for film, dance and theatre for ne…
Watermill
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The fifth CD in Tzadik’s initiative to make available the music of Teiji Ito presents his undisputed masterpiece Watermill. Created in 1971 for the controversial ballet by Jerome Robbins and named for the town on Long Island where Robbins had a peaceful country home, Teiji draws upon Chinese, Tibetan, African, Native American and Japanese ceremonies in creating what many consider his most profound compositional achievement. Based on the ideas of cycles—years…
La Vie Tue
Costes practices the scorched earth policy. Everything you can listen to after it is made paltry and lighter than air. This is also what we recognize important records. They are not necessarily fun but replace all the others. The killed life is a major disc, stupid and brilliant, regressive and decisive, a political record and in its way more ecumenical and unifying than all the speeches of national reconciliation. 500 numbered copies.
Invisible Design II
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Invisible Design II showcases Bill Laswell playing a series of "compositions" -- that feel more like improvisations -- completely solo, a decade later follow-up to Invisible Design that appeared in the Tzadik Composer Series in 1999. Laswell plays fretless and eight-string basses, and uses loads of effects to create either sonically atmospheric backdrops or multi-layered bass parts to accompany himself on these ten selections. The results are busier than tho…
Ghost Caravan
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* The venerable composer and keyboardist Ståle Storløkken follows up his previous Hubro release (and solo debut recording), The Haze of Sleeplessness, with a second solo album performed entirely on pipe organ and recorded at Steinkjer Church by Stian Westerhus. While the Norwegian Grammy-nominated 'The Haze of Sleeplessness' used a whole keyboard-museum’s worth of antique synths and contemporary digital software to create its vast array of sounds, everything o…
Come Out From The Shadows Volume 5 (Parzkricht)
*Limited edition of 199 copies.* Legendary Pink Dots open-air live-section at "Parzkricht / Rotterdam" in 1983. These recordings from the park have been floating around the World Wide Web for some time, but never as a complete show. This offering fills in the gaps and completes the puzzle. Tracks 1-3 are taken from the Vpro Radio recording of the show, while the rest was never broadcasted in full. "They Don't Horses.." did appear on a compilation cassette many years ago (Recloose Live Series Num…
Dust
*Limited edition of 300 copies. 2022 stock.* For a number of years now, Sion Orgon has been crafting music that fuses abstract electronic mulch with the kind of bright melodies one would expect from a shiny pop group. Using avant-garde sensibilities and a vision partly shaped by his affiliation with both Thighpaulsandra and Coil, the Welsh producer/musician has never been afraid to push these into areas most artists of a similar disposition would never be bold enough to touch. At once catchy, ps…