Experimental / Avant-Garde

Tip! *2022 Stock. In process of stocking.* A turbulent quartet of Oslo-based improvisers brings the house down with two voices, bass, guitar, and drums ⏤ RIYL free voice, skronk, jazz negativity, dub effects, Naked City and Painkiller. Vocalist Agnes Hvizdalek delivers a unique form of glossolalia (think Monk, Eye, and animal sounds) backed up by noise-rock-influenced axe-grinders from the band MoE: Guro Skumsnes Moe herself on electric bass and voice and Håvard Skaset on guitar. Utku Tavil punc…

Tip! *In process of stocking* Ashley Paul is an American multi-instrumentalist/ composer based in London. Her intuitive process integrates free form song structures with a focused approach to sound. Using a complexity of instruments including saxophone, clarinet, voice, prepared guitar and percussion she creates a delicate palette, uniquely her own. I Am Fog to us sounds like a new evolution of Ashley’s work, it is silent shoegaze with hints of free jazz. Joan La Barbara on methadone is somethin…

*Limited edition of 100 copies.* "Disclaimer: Joachim Nordwall is one of those artists whose work I've been following for a long time, from the spastic no wave of Kid Kommando to the sprawling drone rituals of Skull Defekts, from the industrialized meditations of Saturn & The Sun, his collaboration records with the likes of Mats Gustaffson or Mika Vainio, to his multifaceted solo outputs, under his own name or the Idealist moniker... well you might get the point: I am a fanboy. So I write from a…

Bagman, an imaginary character dreamt up by this experimental jazz trio, roams around in the figurative soundscape, collecting sonic debris. From a piano played on the inside and outside, electronics, saxophones, drums and junk objects shape a frenetic musical environment. Captured live at Cafe Oto in London, Pat Thomas (Piano, Electronics), Raymond Strid (Drums) and Sture Ericson (Tenor, Soprano Saxophones) assemble fragmented sounds in haphazard, creative and thrilling directions. After years …

*Limited edition of 500 copies.* The world is breaking apart, but this trio holds it together. Made up of Jessica Pavone (Viola, electronics), Lukas Koenig (Drums) and Matt Mottel (Keytar, 3-string Guitar), all three players are drawn to the improvisational, experimental nature of their self-described, “free-range sonic stew,” a constellation of instruments served up for hungry ears. Their first performance together in 2019 was marked by the tragic, unexpected death of Steve Dalachisnky, a poet …

** 500 copies ** Recorded in just three days and released in 1973, mixing jazz, kraut and prog rock, Lard Free’s first album is a musical land-mark in the French underground scene. To this day, it still matches the perfection of their English and German fellows like Soft Machine and Amon Düül. A true masterpiece."Lard Free is a French psychedelic band, formed around drummer and keyboards player Gilbert Artman. He was the only constant member of the band on their few next albums. Music on their d…

Following their recent Difference and Repetition, A Musical Evocation Of Gilles Deleuze 2LP/CD this limited 7'' edition features The Tears of Nietszche on side A with Richard Pinhas as guest musician and Vecteur d'abolition on side B with the voice of Gilles Deleuze.  Formed in Paris in 1989, Palo Alto released his first album (a cassette) on the Italian label Old Europa Cafe in 1990. The year 2020 is therefore an opportunity to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this first stone, the founder of …

"After the first edition back in 1992 on Cthulhu Records, and the OEC re-edition in 2003 here comes the 3rd edition of this very seminal album! As for the first re-edition, to the album was added one unreleased exclusive track recorded during the same first Aurora recording sessions but never used on any album nor compilations. This album is to be considered a pioneers opera of neo-folk cabaret which has influenced many artists. A very controversial and politically incorrect album talking about …

"Finally here comes a re-edition of this great Ain Soph album! This new edition comes with a completely new designed artwork and an additional 3" miniCD containing a new audio track recorded in 2008 + a video track! The comeback of the Roman masters with the Aurora follower album : Oktober. A unique blend of Italian cabaret and true Italian folk songs. All is sung in Italian with Ain Soph's usual acoustic instrumentation and their typical keyboards... Songs in the way of Aurora but with an addit…

"Long time in the making. 16 years after Oktober and 26 after the seminal Aurora here comes a new chapter in the Ain Soph cult discography. Six surprising and very mature tracks. Sounds range from Velvet Undergound'isch Psychedelia to Dark-industrial, from European Cabaret to Beating-Danceable rhythms, from Crooner songs to Esoteric-Ritual... But most of all the entire album has this unique "magic and spiritual" feeling that only Ain Soph can create. Special guests: Vocals on "Ombre nel Silenzio…

*Limited edition of 500 copies, silk-screened sleeve, random green and rose artwork.* Alien Transistor present Alien Parade Japan, a joyous double-album compilation of groups from Japan’s indie-pop and avant-garde undergrounds, all of which feature brass or woodwind instruments as part of their line-up. Compiled by Markus Acher (Alien Transistor, The Notwist, Hochzeitskapelle) with plenty of support and help from his Spirit Fest bandmate, Saya (also of Tenniscoats), it features some familiar nam…

Tip! * Edition of 250 * Obstacle #79: Memory Is Current offers a sequence of works for player piano, a device which captured Rick Myers’ imagination in 2017. Divining a method from mathematical measurements and intuitive drawing systems, Myers obstructed piano rolls using adhesive tape. Performed in this altered state on a player piano in the hallway of Easthampton Machine and Tool in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the music embedded in the rolls was extricated from its history and given fresh life…

*Edition of 300. Includes Lyric Sheet.* In the old attic, among dust and dimness, I once found an old children's magazine, that opened itself on a photograph of three melancholic girls eating soup. A distant voice, quietly singing ravels of poems from the 19th century, all gone and forgotten long ago, is accompanied by monotonous loops, played on toy keyboards, or are they maybe a rustling and hissing of twigs on the roof? repeating gusts of wind, slightly moving curtains over a flaking window f…

Two improvisations from an astonishing Munich performance in May 2019 by the Berlin-based duo of Lucio Capece - bass clarinet, slide saxophone, room acoustics and mini-speakers & Werner Dafeldecker - double bass. "The two pieces were recorded last year during our live performance at the ‘Offene Ohren’ concert series in Munich. On the disc are two unedited improvised sets. Lucio and I have known each other for many years and play together periodically. So the music was maybe ‘pre-planned’ to some…

*In process of stocking. 200 copies limited release, CDr format* On Easter Monday of 2019, friends and colleagues reunited at London’s iconic improvisational space Café Oto. The four, Ken Ikeda (Synthesizer), Massimo Magee (Electronics, Saxophone), Joshua Weitzel (Shamisen), Eddie Prévost (Percussion) had met and played together many times in the years prior—usually in the context of Eddie Prévost’s London Improvisation Workshop—but had never performed a public concert together. The group's avan…

"No Songs Name, No Band Members Name, No Contact, No Nothing!!!". Mysterious 10" released on French label Yakisakana

'It was a match made in heaven, or rather on earth, at last year's 20th Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville. Five vocal artists on one stage—Dutch Jaap Blonk, Japanese Koichi Makigami, Canadian sound poet Paul Dutton, Englishman Phil Minton, and German new music singer David Moss—was indeed one of the highlights of the '03 Victoriaville Festival. Only mad vocalist Mike Patton was missing. These five men had never performed together on one stage, though they have worked wi…

** 14x7" Singles Boxset, limited to 128 numbered copies, celebrating Unrock's 25th anniversary as an entity ** The Well Known Strangers 7“ Singles Box Set documents the history of the Unrock singles (as we know it).  International dervishes galore….Fourteen singles, thirteen were originally released in the Unrock Series, or have been part  of our Saraswati Series and came first with the Early-Bird-Editions of the regular albums. Instead of the only missing single (Bill Orcutt/Sir Richard Bishop …

Sorry For Laughing is a project by Gordon H. Whitlow who is also a member of legendary US avantgarde collective Biota, formerly Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avant-garde, songwriting and free jazz. Their releases were published by their own self-produced label Dys between 1981 and 1986. By 1985 the group had split off into separate groups for visual and audio work. From that time, Mnemonists operated only …

** 2021 Stock ** This is the first solo release by Swiss drummer Peter Conradin Zumthor. "Another good example of the consistently high-quality musical output and the vitality of the scene in the supposedly oldest city in Switzerland. On his solo debut, released on the label of the highly esteemed Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth, the self-taught drummer from Chur presents a refreshing musical potpourri of his sound repertoire, developed over the years, in the form of seven interwoven comp…

*100 copies limited edition. In process of stocking* Fjord abounds in striking sonic images with a bold poetic sensibility which seems to open a world entirely its own as it deepens our experience of this world as it actually is. Field recordings are layered and blended with those of everyday objects and the occasional instrument in a dynamic assemblage which strips away the familiarity of a sound's source for the richness of its connotative potential. These fragmentary and repetitious sounds ar…

*100 copies limited edition* Ava Mendoza plays these songs. She makes them sing. Her technique is impeccable, but her playing is astonishingly expressive. She doesn't just bend blue notes; she wads them up into a ball and throws them up against a wall. She manipulates raw lightning, giving us a sound that is fluorescent and powerful enough to leave a trace of ozone in the air. Mendoza knows what she does better than almost anyone else on the planet, which is tell stories with her guitar. New Spe…

LP version. Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT 027LP, 2017), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums, and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia. The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie's travels in Indonesia a…

Burn the Night / Bruciare la Notte: Original Recordings, 1983–1989 is the first archival collection of music by the Italian minimalist composer Tiziano Popoli. In his music, Popoli framed the Italian avant-garde and New Wave of the 1980s through an architectural aesthetic distinctly detailed by a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, Roland TR-909 drum machine, and early sampling technology.

*2022 stock* Sapropelic Pycnic is the world debut of music presented under the name of "Ka Baird." While this record is a commencement of many sorts, it is in no way a mere beginning: Ka is one of the founding members of experimental psychlings Spires That In the Sunset Rise. Formed in 2001 out of the Chicago scene, and described by late guitar legend Jack Rose as a "female Sun City Girls," Spires' sisterhood of sound deepened the New Folk slant with an array of avant- and world-flavored directi…

Scuro Chiaro is the brand new solo album from Alessandro Cortini, following his recent collaboration with Daniel Avery. Scuro Chiaro means ‘dark light’, and the new album shares themes with his highly acclaimed previous solo LP, Volume Massimo. Cortini recently joined the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame as the keyboard player and bass guitarist of Nine Inch Nails.

2016 release. Pascal Comelade and Armand "Frigico" Miralles (member of Heratius) recorded the four tracks on Carré Noir Sur Fond Noir as a duo in 1980. Three test pressings were made, but the EP was never released - until now. French-Catalan musician Pascal Comelade, born June 30, 1955 in Montpellier, began making strange cover songs of rock and easy listening standards with such instruments as the singing saw, toy piano etc. He later developed an un-confoundable style, co-operated with artists …

Reissue of an obscure Early 90s album, Citron is a complete remix of the Czech heavy metal band Citron's 1990 release Vypustte psy!, or Release the Dogs. While spending an extended period in the Ostrava studio of Citron's leader Radim Parízek, FAT found itself with access to the original 24-track tapes of Citron's then-most-recent album. Working at night, FAT discreetly remixed the entire album to create Citron. Citron is a far cry from the original record's heavy metal sound, as FAT creates a b…

"This is also connected with exorcism. In the ruling system of medieval religion and politics, demons, devils, etc. were treated as viruses that could contaminate the governing system or as bad sectors inside the memory that caused malfunctions. Since the devil constructs a position value in the system through the body of a person possessed by the devil, it is necessary to find out the devil’s real name, that is, the prototype code or pattern information in order to expel the devil. Therefore, i…

Tip!! A singular exercise in Will Guthrie's discography, “People Pleaser”, a series initiated in 2017, sees the Australian partially put down his drumsticks and wear a producer cap for a result offering a resolutely singular perspective of / on his work with a very personal dimension. On the first volume, with a cover signed Stephen O'Malley sets the tone by diverting the chamaré Warhol influenced visual of the album “Unit Structures” by Cecil Taylor. The portrait of the free jazz pianist has be…

The renowned avant-garde artist Phew has returned to Mute for her forthcoming album New Decade. Working with voice and electronics, New Decade’s six new tracks define her as a master of her craft. Described by pitchfork as ‘a Japanese underground legend’, she was a founding member of Osaka punk band Aunt Sally, who broke up in 1980. Since then she has worked solo and collaborated with musical luminaries including as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jim O’Rourke, Ana da Silva (The Raincoats), Seiichi Yamamoto (…

‘Adventures In Reality’ was a short-lived but much celebrated fanzine, published in the early Eighties that documented the burgeoning post-punk scene of Britain in a wry, witty and passionate way. ‘The Complete Collection’ gathers together all thirteen volumes of the ‘zine in an A4 book.

These five albums by Klaus Janek appear to have been originally released in 2018, but were bundled together under the title almenrauschen in 2019 in nice colour-coded sleeves designed by Stephanie Roderer – I’ll refer to this aspect at the head of each review section – in an edition of 300 units. The name “almenrauschen” derives from the aural sensation perceiving a non intentional sound world and transforming it to musical sense-making. This bundle includes the following albums on vinyl: - Casp…

'Janek’s “source of inspiration” was apparently Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris and Janek’s own social observations in Prospect Park in New York City “…where I was living during the main research period for this work”. I’m not familiar with Lem’s novel, but if you’re expecting echoes or resonances from the soundtracks of either the Tarkovsky film or the George Clooney remake, I’m afraid you may be disappointed. On side A we find “Infinite Bang Part 1”, which is more solo contrabass and electronics…

'The first track on side A is “Violeros Revisitados”, which is a fight between the sounds made by Brazilian traditional musicians and the UHER Report 400 tape machine the sounds were recorded on. This source material was recorded by Gunther Kipfmüller in Northeast Brazil in the 1970s. Kipfmüller’s daughter, Milena , processes the raw material while Janek adds his contrabass and electronics to the mixture. Brazil born, Milena is also Berlin-based and works as”… a freelance soundartist, dramaturgu…

Magenta. Road at night. Its probably worth quoting from the sleeve-notes so you get an idea of what the intention is on this disc: “The album consists of music chosen from a pool of recordings made over a time span of 10 years and according to its expression composed ‘together’. All of the music was created through a practice of combining the compositional and performative act. The album making process consists of two levels: the music created in the past functions as material and is put into fo…

With their collaborative duo debut, Dean Spunt and John Wiese invite you to experience the frenzy of percussive space and discreet sound found inside The Echoing Shell.

*50 copies limited edition* "Packed with psycho-lounge atmospheres, enticing sounds between liquid and scratching, and well thought out quasi-narrative developments, the album immerses the listener in enveloping volutes of sound, amid melodic suggestions and robust quasi-punk waves." - A G Bertinetto, Kathodik As vinyl lovers from our younger days, Discus Music always hoped to revisit the format when economically viable and here is a "toe in the water" release. If it's a success, more may follow…

*285 copies limited edition* 'The latest entry in An’archives’ ‘Free Wind Mood’ series, Ki is a trio that pits long-time collaborators Tamio Shiraishi (saxophone, voice) and Takahashi Michiko aka Mico (drums, voice, vocoder, melodica, piano, percussion) against drummer, percussionist and vocalist Fritz Welch. They each bring a wealth of experience, from Shiraishi’s early moves in the Japanese underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – he was a founding member of Fushitsusha, and played with T…

**200 copies** The new Unexplained Sounds Group’s compilation of exploratory music and sound works from India intends to present a comprehensive collection of sonic practices that have emerged from the desire to break away from India’s traditional sounds, e.g. classical music and folk tunes, while simultaneously drawing on ideas and inspirations from these lineages and auditory heritages in the form of recurring motifs and sonorities as well as textures and open-ended compositions. It features B…