Experimental / Avant-Garde

Pieced together with musty samples from children’s exercise records, vintage drama, clunky British jazz and library records, this is an archaeology of emotion, an exploration of the power of not only childhood memories, but of the collective unconscious. Julian House’s own The Focus Group; oddly assembled sampledelic collages, stitched together from fragments of library cues and forgotten soundtracks. A beautiful, unhinged stream of consciousness that seems to prod at buried memories."Julian Hou…

Tip! Lucy Railton trusts in the nuance of her own creative instincts on an intensely modern, quietly radical new album, her second for Modern Love. Following her 2018 solo debut Paradise 94 (LOVE 108LP), and countless collaborations in the time since, Railton's diverse musical circles here bleed into each other, creating an insoluble testament to a lifelong pursuit of sound. The multi-instrumentalist further articulates her own tonal register, embracing her solo strengths and trusting the proces…

This is a presentation of Xexa's different sensibilities as a composer, musician and sound designer, mapping what are in effect her initial explorations with voice, rhythms, synths, ambience, ever searching for an organic final result. As a student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (London) between 2019 and a still fresh 2023, she presented in her third year a portfolio that included what we can now listen as "Clarinet Mood", the final track on "Vibrações De Prata". Her intention was to…

Somehow out of the blue they have returned with a killer new single called 'Uzi'. Built around the constant Blurt groove, a thrilling and catchy incessant guitar line and Milton's jazz sax that oozes Uzi elixir and his free form beat poetry it's a stunning and brilliant single. Still fronted by the charismatic Ted Milton the band are on fire and suddenly in the right place at the right time. The deserved fuss about the likes of the brilliant Colin Stetson and Shabaka Hutchins taking the sax into…

Started around a decade ago, "Overcloseness" has been a long time coming. It is Colorist's debut album on paper, but already has a magnum opus feel to it. The beginnings of Colorist lay in the Cologne music community. Being small, it was always influenced by the art and the film scene. (In fact, the label Magazine originates from the same crossing point.) The large cast of guest appearances underlines how much Antonio de Luca and Caroline Kox are in the center of that Cologne community. On "Over…

With over a dozen releases on Karlrecords, and a total output of more than 100 albums in general, Reinhold Friedl doesn't need much of an introduction to anyone interested in contemporary music / avantgarde: his ensemble zeitkratzer is as respected as it is feared for its radical approach on music, and it seems redundant to mention all collaborators and projects. Friedl is known for his unique piano sound, his advanced techniques, and his musical intensity paired with precise exuberant sound con…

New project by Apolline Schöser (half of Nina Harker) & Thomas Coquelet. Apolline & Thomas have been performing since 2022 under the Kou guise with 24 electronic harmoniums. Producing dense layers of tones & overtones. On their debut album Kou steers in another direction. The harmonium appears occasionally, but more prominent are delicate guitar pluckings, distant vocal effects, synths, flutes, piano strokes, a touch of musical magic and Apolline’s jazz not jazz vocals. As soon as the needle dro…

** 2023 Stock ** All the Way is a collection of radical re-workings of traditional and jazz standards such as “All the Way”, “You Don't Know What Love Is”, and “The Thrill Is Gone” (made famous by Chet Baker). It also includes a solo piano interpretation of Thelonious Monk's “Round Midnight”, and live voice and piano interpretations of the American traditional “O Death” and the country song, “Pardon Me I've Got Someone to Kill”. The album includes both electric live performances (recorded in Par…

Live at St. Thomas the Apostle documents Diamanda Galás’ volcanic May 2016 performance at St. Thomas the Apostle church in Harlem NY, described by the New York Times as "guttural and operatic, baleful and inconsolable, spiritual and earthy, polyglot and wordless, nuanced and unhinged." The concert, produced by Intravenal Sound Operations and Red Bull Music Academy, was composed exclusively of what Galás calls “death songs”.

2023 Stock. The very latest release on the beautifully presented Treader label comes Hot Chip frontman/vocalist and possible Gerry Anderson marionette Alexis Taylor, who threads together a series of instrumentals and pop songs with a little help from Garageband. There are some beautiful synth outings here: from opener 'Fireworks' straight into the creamy, organ-driven 'Plastic Man' which sounds uncannily like the intro to The Killers' 'All These Things That I Have Done' mixed in with a bit of Ca…

* ltd to 400, black vinyl, color silkscreened jacket with obi (white, dark blue), inserts and a postcard * Je prie pour que la goutte ne tombe pas (I pray that the drop does not fall) is the first international release by Japanese trio Chi To Shizuku. While they have released five albums and a 7” in Japan, their spectral, haunted rock songs haven’t yet reached a much wider audience overseas. With this album, then, a live recording taken at Koenji HIGH, Suginami, Tokyo on 23rd November 2021, the …

Live At Loft Shinjuku Tokyo Japan 23 July '81 (with Totsuzen Danball) is a jazz related improv/composition music live album recording by Fred Frith released in 1982.

Recorded and mixed by Chloë Sobek and Vijay Thillaimuthu. Mastered by Joe Talia.

**120 copies limited release. Pro-pressed CD in blood soaked white cardboard envelope. The blood is real. Assembled with red paper obi and thin inner- and outer sleeves. All signed and numbered on the backside of the blood soaked envelopes.** Tip! The Sunday lunches with his South-Austrian parents, the thick nearly rare beefsteaks accompanied by heavy red wine and uplifting Humpa and Schuhplattler music have carved an impression into Rudolf's mind, that still keeps burping up at times, but was e…

“Taming Power is an artist from Norway who has been quietly working in isolation and self-releasing music since as far back as 1998, with a substantial catalogue across all analogue formats yet seemingly little online presence or media attention. His music feels like a meditation on the present without any listener or audience in mind. There’s no flowery title tracks or double-entendre in the album names that offer us any clues to the work’s influence or objective, instead pieces are time-stampe…

This seminal, eponymous post-punk album by Japanese group Aunt Sally, fronted by experimental singer Phew, was first released by the iconic Vanity Records label in 1979. Over the past forty-plus years, Phew has forged a singular path through a wide range of styles - from free improvisation to pop - and has collaborated with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, members of Can, DAF, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Raincoats and more. But Aunt Sally is where she got her start and, despite the members’ young…

Tip! The second round of Cylene, Bonnet & O’Malley’s collaboration initiated in 2018 and continued without interruption since then in a slow stream of concerts, installations and recordings. A presentation of tones and resonances where harmonic intersections elevate from the deep and scale up to the far firmament in careful motion, drawing emotions viscerally from the chest, giving rise to the suggestibility of the soul.

Since forming in 1999, Suishou No Fune (A Ship Of Crystal), the vehicle for long-term musical collaborators Pirako Kurenai (guitar, voice) and Kageo (guitar), have been one of the most compelling groups in the Japanese underground. Their long, languorous songs are devastating in their simplicity, as though the gently sung ballads of the Velvet Underground’s third album were re-scored by the legendary Japanese free-rock gang, Les Rallizes Denudes. Their new album, 風は春、空は虹、愛は波間に隠れている (The wind is …

*Edition of 100.* "Live Recordings" presents MAW—the trio of Frank Meadows (bass), Jessica Ackerley (guitar), and Eli Wallace (piano/synth)—fully testing the possibilities of their creative dialogue in front of a live audience for the first time. Two concerts in Brooklyn and Saugerties, both staged in October 2021, display the performance of an acute democratic understanding, acquired across formative years of private sessions and conversation, including the late 2020 recording session that prod…

Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.

Travel, the 19th studio album by Australian improvisational trio The Necks, documents their recent practice of starting each day in the studio with a 20-minute trio improvisation. The recordings offer some of their most ecstatic and captivating music cut to tape. As bassist Lloyd Swanton puts it: “It’s a really nice communal activity to bring us together in focus each day, and some lovely music has resulted from it.” Although a straight “live” improvisation has never been recorded in the studio …

ErikM & dj sniff - Next Mix23.5.2023 / Next Festival Records. For this release, Next Festival Records dives deep into its archive to unveil a collaboration from Next Festival 2009 – one of the highlights of that year's festival – a tape by French musician, composer, visual artist and improviser ErikM & Japanese musician, curator, instrument designer and producer dj sniff. 13 years on, the sounds on 'Next Mix' still resonate, channelling the frenetic energy of free jazz, the looseness of plunderp…

*2023 stock* What once started as a series of mixes has been expanded into this compilation, which brings together genres like electronica, modern minimalism, folk, post-rock, avant-garde or modular music. Compiled by Martin Riedler

For the 36th installment of our Catalytic Artist Albums series, we are excited to present an exclusive collection of improvisations on nylon string guitar by the exceptional, Tashi Dorji. Recorded over the month of August, this record showcases Dorji's most recent work and explorations on the guitar. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

*2023 stock* "Phill is a sixty-something New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He says: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' The stills in the booklet are from slides taken in China, while Niblock was making films which are painstaking studies of manual labor, givin…

*300 copies limited edition* Making music is trying to start over again every time. It’s a matter of questioning and approaching. It’s never settling for the sound that fills the world around. It’s looking for a door in the sky. And maybe find it, open it, go beyond it. Rod Modell and Gigi Masin, this time together, are offering each other vibrations and insights. The former lives between two lakes, the latter between the Venetian lagoon and the sea. Everyone on their own shore, building electro…

From his early days with Henry Cow, Fred Frith was seen as a brilliant instrumentalist and improviser, but what has been overlooked is what a first-rate composer he is. This recording offers both aspects. His most complex orchestral composition and two selected improvisations with the Ensemble Musiques Nouvelles. Fred Frith, as an infusion of energy and inspiration. 'Something about this Landscape was commissioned by Ars Musica in 2018. I composed the piece during a residency at Lou Harrison's s…

Murmurists is a group of artists which convenes periodically to perform large-scale multi-media events using texts and graphic-scores composed and directed by Anthony Donovan. This CD, recorded over a significant span of time, draws upon such live and studio performances, channelling these years of diverse activity into a brand new work. Call it music theatre, sound design, documentary – as you will. I like slow work. This is the third, and I think concluding, iteration in album form of an inten…

"This is a new release on the Italian label Superpang. I first met Giovanni Di Domenico, an Italian musician living in Brussels, 15 years ago. We hardly ever had the chance to play music together, and when I went to Europe just before Corona, I made this album based on a session recorded in his studio. After returning to Japan, I edited and dubbed in additional synths and strings. A fresh collaboration with an old friend, I hope you'll give it a listen! Big thanks to Tony for the great design an…

"A couple of months before lockdown, the housing block where Tom White lived got covered in scaffolding. Residents were left in a building veiled by translucent white netting for months on end. This composition was made in this specific urban lockdown context: the fridge whirs, birds chirp on scaffold poles, electromagnetic activity & tape loops reverberate on the eardrums, within the home and out into the world. Composed of archive and site specific sounds, spring 2020. Medina Vibrations was ​o…

Recording live on a rainy night at Brussels in October 2017 “Pray For Your Prey” will capture your attention with it’s s striking power. An eclectic mixture of noise, experimental, free jazz and improvised music blended exemplary together creating a volcanic atmosphere.

*2023 stock* The album ‘DnT’ shows a collaboration that shares pure rock energy and electroacoustic manipulation, amplified drums and distorted tape, feedback and re-injection, live processing and diversion. A large tape loop was also set up on two supplementary reel-to-reel tape recorders to create a random memory, delayed and unstable, acting like a distorting mirror. This recording is the result of two days’ work at Centre Culturel André Malraux de Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France, in July 2018.

*2023 stock* All music by Lasse Marhaug and Otomo Yoshihide. Recorded on the 6th February 2011 at Tokyo Superdeluxe. Limited to 300 plates with a big center hole (black labels) housed in an all black cover with gold pantone 876c printed letters.

*2023 stock* The band MoE (Guro Skumsnes Moe, Håvard Skaset and Joakim Heibø Johansen) and electronic noise aviator Lasse Marhaug are both prolific staples of the Norwegian music scene on their own, but have over the years also collaborated on various other projects. Most recent on the Skaset/Moe acoustic side project Sult, that resulted in the notable album «Harpoon» (rated as one of the best experimental albums in Rolling Stones in 2016), and Marhaug and Skumsnes Moe's work on the soundtrack t…

"For the ear hears sounds from various combinations in accordance with the character of the melody and the instrument.” ─ Abraham Abulafia Eight collective improvisations based on small musical ideas extracted from modern classical guitar works that make a beautiful suite of music; evocative, spiritual, hypnotic... The pieces found here are the consequence of a de-composing/re-composing process where each musician previously immerses into the music, transforming and combining the notes and rhyth…

One of the most exhilarating shows he’d ever done, guitarist Chris Sharkey came away from his performance at the Fusebox in Leeds feeling alive. Just a few days before the world would slow, and two weeks before life in London would stop, keyboardist and 577 mainstay Pat Thomas, drummer Luke Reddin-Williams and Sharkey would go on stage to play for the first time together, having discussed and planned nothing. The improvisation, a gamble, worked. Recorded in one 50-minute track, one album, the pr…

**300 copies. 180 gram RTI pressing, comes with two inserts** this LP is one of two vinyl releases from recording sessions at the Chummery late in 2006. The Chummery was the Seattle home to Sun City Girls, Sublime Frequencies, Abduction, and The Sea Donkeys. In fact it was the last residence of Charles Gocher who passed away in there only a few months after this session. Along side this there is the highlight from NNCK's concert in Vancouver, British Columbia on that same trip.  This record foll…

Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first-ever release of 'Sunrise From West Sea', a mesmerising performance by Stomu Yamash'ta accompanied by Jazz pianist Masahiko Satoh (well known for his involvement in the New Herd Orchestra and his 'Belladonna of Sadness' soundtrack) and Taj Mahal Travellers founder Takehisa Kosugi on Electric Violin. The line up, also comprising Hideakira Sakurai on Electric Shamisen, is a spaced-out improvisational soundscape over the two LP sides. Remastered from t…

The "Produkt" compilation takes us back to the time between 1979 and 1984, when post-punk was the main expression of the underground movement. Bands in the wake of PIL and Joy Division came out like mushrooms after the punk crush. In this compilation you will find mostly unknown yet interesting productions. This is a 10 track album, all originally released on 7" from all over the world: from Poland to Sweden, from Yugoslavia to Denmark. A perfect item for both enthusiasts and completists but als…

"'Flow of shadows' is how I would translate the composite neolog title of this 1997 work for Orchestra Carbon and how I might describe the musical gestures therein. In seven sections, 'Rheo~Umbra' layers through composed materials, algorithmic strategies for the ensemble, and improvisations by various soloists. The algorithmic approaches include the 'transient additive pulse' where a percussive hit and its reverberations morph into a pulsing groove. There are also hockets and phased looping/tran…