Experimental / Avant-Garde

During the summer of 2013, Xiu Xiu frontman Jamie Stewart and producer Shahzad Ismaily traveled to Sigur Rós’s personal studio in Iceland. Having access to the space for only one day, Stewart worked on setting down his interpretations of American and Caribbean spirituals using a 1953 Silvertone guitar given to him by his father (producer Michael Stewart), the man who introduced him to religious thought and folk music.  The resulting album, Unclouded Sky, explores themes of death and faith over t…

Stoned to Death is super happy to be part of this again. We are releasing a cassette edition of Xiu Xiu's new album called Oh No. This album is a collection of 15 killer duets and collaboration with the likes of Haley Fohr, Fabrizio Modenese Palumbo, Chelsea Wolfe or Liz Harris. Xiu Xiu is one of the hardest working bands of this century. Oh No is their 15th studio album (and we don't count all the collaborations such as XXL, boxes of seven inches, eps, experimental outputs etc.). They are alway…

Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva joins Swedish composer Alexandra Nilsson for their new album debut Radio Two on Superpang. Composed and recorded in residency at the legendary EMS in Stockholm, "Radio Two" presents the duo in full-tilt, engaging joyfully with sinuous figures, contrasting textures, and dynamic extremes throughout the album's six compositions. Disinterring at the perimeters of sounds both possible and impossible within the sonorities of their respective instruments, Santos…

* 300 copies * A critical meditation on variations of Orientalism practiced by Arabs themselves, as well as those who were born and raised within the diaspora. It originally began as a documentation of extended drum techniques, but eventually morphed into a project of more ambitious scope. Having an open timeframe, Julius Masri gave himself reasons to include all the instruments he obsessively picked up and learned over the years. The work accumulated intentions and guiding principles, and it be…

* 200 copies. 7" vinyl record with poly, two-sided jacket and dust sleeve * Tetuzi Akiyama plays and explores the guitar with both a primitive-instinctual and technically advanced playing style. Ranging from acoustic minimalist reductionism to maximal full throttled ampli­cation, he seeks to energize, electrify, and connect his own body into his playing and performance. His solo albums cover the realms of Americana-fi­ngerpicking, acoustic slide guitar atonalism, noise, drone, and hi-amp’d in­fi…

"Entry" is the last remaining track from the late 1979 recordings at Pathway Studios that produced the 4AD 12" Wheel In The Roses the following year. At six minutes, too long for the studio side of that release, the track has been transferred from the original master tapes, cleaned up and is accompanied here with an instrumental version. Tightly-wound, with the typical Rema-Rema elements of Moe Tucker-style pounding (cymbal-free) drums, relentless basslines and Marco Pirroni's feedback-laden gui…

*2022 stock. Limited edition of 300 copies.* The first release of 2021 by i dischi di angelica is an archive recording documenting a trio of musicians that emerged from the Bologna music scene between the end of the '80s and the beginning of the '90s: Luigi Lullo Mosso (double-bass player and performer, both solo and with Vakki Plakkula, Specchio Ensemble, Roy Paci, Vincenzo Vasi, Guglielmo Pagnozzi, Alessandro Bosetti, etc.), Massimo Simonini (sound manipulator with N.O.R.M.A., Tiziano Popoli, …

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.

»Hoya«, the first collaborative record from Fhunyue Gao and Sven Kacirek, is a site of encounters. There’s the encounter between two different media and artistic conceptions: Gao, on the one hand, a stage director | performer | musician based in Switzerland, a frequent collaborator of Annalena Fröhlich’s, Thom Luz’s and many others, who works for a most colourful variety of venues all over Europe and is a member of the music association Bongo Joe. Kacirek, on the other, an established musician l…

*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…

*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…

Special bundle of the two seminal Walter Smetak albums re-issued by Buh Records, among the most sought-after releases in the canon Latin American experimentalism, channeling mystical religion, Afro-Brazilian ritualistic traditions, microtonality studies, and open, collective improvisational processes,

Astral Spirits presents the debut duo recording from Alex Cunningham (violin) and Claire Rousay (percussion) entitled Specifically the Water.Alex Cunningham is a violinist, improviser, and visual artist based in St. Louis, MO. His work explores free improvisation, drone, noise, and minimalist composition. Cunningham has recently performed with Mark Shippy, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Stefan Gonzalez, and Lisa Cameron and has ongoing collaborations with Chris Trull (under the Apathist! moniker), Kev…

*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…

*Edition of 300* Reissue of the now long sold-out debut album (2014) by the guitar and saxophone duo of Aoki Tomoyuki (Up-Tight) & Harutaka Mochizuki. Initially limited to 200 CD copies only, this record features 9, reverb drenched, mourning pieces characterized by this duo's specific melancholic language via guitar and alto saxophone. Immediately evoking the Velvet Underground inspired electric and echo filled ballads of The Rallizes Dénudés, it is also augmented with haunting horn improvisatio…

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 …

*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…

*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…

Double CD reissue of this legendary dark psych minimal masterpiece! "The music on this bizarre double album from 1972 is somewhere between gothic horror and psychedelic. Don Bradshaw Leather was apparently some kind of British occult group who self-released this album with no credits. (Also, on the record cover the name is spelled “Bradsham-Leather,” not Bradshaw Leather, as it is referred to in everything from the Nurse With Wound list to the book and web guide on early U.K. psychedelic rock -T…

First recordings of ten guitar pieces commissioned by Marco Cappelli from New York Downtown composers including Marc Ribot, Ikue Mori, Elliott Sharp and Otomo Yoshihide, played on an amplified classical guitar with sympathetic strings and MIDI control.

** CD housed in a 4-panel digipak. Comes with 12-page booklet ** Tone Glow Records is proud to present a special archival recording of Paragraph 1 and Paragraph 7 from Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning. Conducted and formed by American composer Dean Rosenthal, the Montréal Scratch Orchestra featured 14 or so like-minded experimental music enthusiasts who performed the pieces at Redpath Hall on the McGill University campus in 1996. This release arrives on Cardew's 85th birthday and follows Ro…

From Mantua and Bayreuth to warehouses and wilderness, opera composers have often created dramas for particular kinds of spaces. Now add planetariums to the list. That hemispherical stage of scientific wonderment is the perfect venue for James Dashow’s monumental opera, Archimedes. After witnessing some epic laser and electronic music shows that took place in science museum theaters, Dashow – a distinguished electronic music pioneer – decided this venue would be perfect for bringing the Ancient …

Reading Group is thrilled to introduce the debut LP from a new improvising group of three singular artists: Fred Moten (voice), Brandon López (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). López and Cleaver have been improvising together as a duo for a number of years, over which they’ve developed a secret, unspoken language of organically growing repetitive figures in a wide range of sonic palettes. López and Cleaver have long been recognized as some of the most vital voices in contemporary experim…

A survey of Moondog’s earliest recorded works – many of them unreleased until now – through a collaboration by Mississippi Records and Lucia Records.

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Active since the mid-’60s, Alvin Curran is one of America’s most courageous and outrageous musical mavericks. A true forefather to the Downtown scene, his music embraces the dialectics of composition/improvisation, tonality/atonality, minimalism/maximalism, electronic/acoustic and more. Alvin’s use of the Shofar in experimental music making goes as far back as 1988, and this long awaited release features several compositions for Shofar and electronics, rangi…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* 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 th…

*100 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Dinzu Artefacts presents 1995 by Andreas Brandal. Unearthed tape loops from the artist's childhood home consisting of recordings on destroyed and damaged cassettes as well as shellac records played on a gramophone. Newly mixed and edited.

*100 copies limited edition. In process of stocking.* Dinzu Artefacts presents La vie des objets by Charles Barabé. Kaleidoscopic textures of crackling noise and subterranean drones woven from a ubiquitous 'silence.' Vinyl records sampled and processed through a modular system further isolating and magnifying the sound.

* 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…

*2022 stock. Limited edition of 100 copies.* 'Gestes croisés / Gesti incrociati' it is the first collaboration between Pierre Gerard and Luigi Turra, and with this work they confirm their poetics, inclined to radicalism and exploration of a universe made of details often cultivated through a silence that generates expectations and rewards attention. A work that reaffirms the duo's forged connections with the modern avant-garde, electroacoustic improvisation and with fragments of abstract and min…

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

For Avant-Garde / Improvised Music enthusiasts, this is a Holy Grail!

Eclectic Maybe Band is the creation of Guy Segers, a player / composer / producer first prominent as bassist with legendary band Univers Zero, and subsequently active in many live and studio projects. “Again Alors?” is the third release by EMB which brings together detailed studio work with the creativity of real time improvisation. Using different groupings from within a large ensemble cast, which includes many well-known names, Guy has created an album where half the tracks are drawn from live…

*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Playfield has never played inside. Daniel Carter, a multi-instrumentalist and the founder of 577 Records, has always pushed to make sound more real, relying on outdoor performance and New York City's auditory ambience, to orchestrate his pieces. This practice, which is fundamentally improvisational and experimental, opens any final recording to the unpredictable nature of strangers' sound and offers a rich texture of a moment in time. Importantly for the artists,…

South Korean Pianist Eunhye Jeong believes that, "after you travel far away from home, you get to know yourself more fully." Her new album, End of Time, is an existential exploration of that self-discovery, imbued with the spirit of the moon bear that lives in the Taebaek Mountains, a presence she was told about growing up. Throughout the album's three extended tracks, "Embark,"  "The Latitudinal Bands," and "The Elemental Life," she interfaces with a celestial, linear elegance, veering from a s…

Nichunimu is a Chilean improvisational trio working at the edges of free jazz, ritualism, noise, minimalism and krautrock music. Since 2014, Benjamin Vergara (Trumpet), Nicolás Carrasco (Synthesizer) and Matías Mardones (Percussion) have been inspired by repetition, textures and friendship through the sound, focusing on circular shapes in music that bind them together. Based between the cities of Valdivia and Santiago, their members have also collaborated on projects like La Kut, Cariñito 3, Dub…

Tip! Extended guitar hero Oren Ambarchi returns with Shebang, the latest in the series of intricately detailed long-form rhythmic workouts that includes Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Like those records, Shebang features an international all-star cast of musical luminaries, their contributions recorded individually in locations from Sweden to Japan yet threaded together so convincingly (by Ambarchi in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger) that it’s hard to believe they weren’t breathing the s…

Tip! *In process of stocking. 300 copies limited release* Over almost three decades of activity, Marhaug has carved out notoriety as a solo performer, a prolific collaborator (working with everyone from Sunn O))) to Jim O'Rourke) and as a busy producer, who's notched up credits on some of the most striking-sounding albums of the last few years. This new album was created as a swan song for the infamous Oslo studio that he's inhabited for 17 years, prior to his move back to the Arctic Circle wher…

*2022 Stock.* Orvonton (15th Hour from Klang, 2007) is for Baritone and Electronic Music. The electronic music element is derived from 3 extracted layers from Cosmic Pulses (The Stockhausen Edition no. 91), specifically Layers 4-6. This CD features the baritone vocal of Jonathan de la Paz Zaens. As a bonus, the electronic music is also presented without the soloist part for rehearsal.- Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

*2022 Stock. In process of stocking.* The new album by critically acclaimed Indonesian duo Senyawa is being co-released by 44 different labels worldwide, and School of the Arts presents a Russian version on cassette. It features the full album as well as two extended remixes: Moa Pillar’s 14-minute heavenly ambient and a 24-minute poisonous drone collage by Ivan Zoloto.   Senyawa’s music combines extended vocal techniques of Rully Shabara and homemade instruments built and played by Wukir Suryad…