Experimental / Contemporary

Tepih unites Samo Kutin, Gaudenz Badrutt, Tomaž Grom, and Jonas Kocher — four musicians bound by years of collaboration within the Šalter Ensemble, a fertile meeting ground for Swiss and Slovene experimental music. Their debut album Šablona presents a music of layered coexistence: sonic found objects, fractured melodies, irregular pulses, and shimmering electronic textures inter twine. Rather than striving for unison, these contrasting elements evolve in parallel, responding to one another in a …

Composer, harpist, improviser, and educator Zeena Parkins has been a mainstay of the Downtown scene since 1984, performing with Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bjork, Ikue Mori, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, and countless others. Her newest project, years in the making, pays tribute to the fearless American visual artist Jay DeFeo. Zeena captures DeFeo’s bold experimentalism and love of beauty with a lush, exotic extended work for harp and percussion. Performing with her on a unique instrument built by leg…

The first track is Transient '64, produced in 1964, composer Yoriaki Matsudaira. In the production process, a cluster of sine waves with a transient tone, referred to as 'transient sound', was created. The second track is Assemblages for Tape, produced in 1969, composer Yoriaki Matsudaira. Until now, electronic music has used sound sources with fixed waveforms, such as sine waves, sawtooth waves, square waves, and white noise. With these oscillators, it is impossible to create free tones. The ph…

“The body’s relation to the social is inseparable from, and of the same relation to the world, not a relation of objectification but a carnal intertwining prior to any reflective judgement.” -Rosalyn Diprose

For Jack was written in 2024 for pianist Jack Yarbrough. I was inspired by Jack’s many performances of my music; how he approaches my soundworld with a beauty of touch and an attention to pacing. This piece is approximately 50 minutes long and, with a few exceptions, it is extremely quiet and spacious. Many thanks to Jack for asking me to write this piece and for playing it so beautifully. Jack Yarbrough is a pianist working in the fields of contemporary and experimental music. Largely devoted t…

*17 copies limited edition* Tristesse Apotropaïque is the mesmerizing new sonic statement from the trio Apparet! (Jeanne Gorisse / Julien Goussina / Marina Levallois), released via the adventurous nanopublisher MMLI. Recorded live in Lorfou just before the winter solstice, this unique project brings together Gorisse’s double bass, Goussina’s piano, and Levallois’ imaginative synthesizer and effects setup, born from a spontaneous, joyful musical encounter that channels playful experimentation and…

*2025 stock* The project is a musical composition that employs the technique of deriving and expanding upon the fragmentary. It is an investigation that is, in advance, lost in the midst of stories that come back again and again, told in disorder, illuminated from other angles or revealed by new links. Les Mortes is a sonic saga that brings together three musical ensembles with different aesthetics navigating among these bits and pieces of a whole of which we have only the echo. Stories of a fun…

2004 release ** Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Christian Wolff and Robin Schulkowsky recorded at Poggiolo fram, Pozzuolo, Umbria, Italy on April 22-24 2003. The album includes fifteen tracks performed by Christian Wolff - composition, melodica, Robin Schulkowsky - percussion. "Rooms talk to me. I send out a sound, the space answers. The first message I picked up from the old barn in Umbria was 'yes'.Christian Wolff and I had been thinking, speaking about, even planning a CD with…

Matchless Recordings presents a collection of early works by Brown, written 1952-64. The album includes eight tracks performed by Dal Niente projects:  Simon Allen - vibraphone, marimba, percussion harmonicas, various sound-producing media; Peter Bevan - trombone; Bridget Carey - viola; Tania Chen - piano; Robert Coleridge - piano; Francesca Hanley - flute; Nicolas Hodges - piano; Mieko Kanno - violin; Lore Lixenburg - voice; Zoe Martlew - cello; Mannon Morris - harp; Fiona Ritchie - vibraphonem…

Arriving just four months after his previous release, Tombed Visions obsession with the work of guitarist Takashi Masubuchi continues with the release of 'Styx'.

Microcanonical Ensemble is an album woven with subtle paradoxes, balancing stasis and movement, resonance and decay, improvisation and composition, precision and raw performance. While the echoes of Morton Feldman, Jürg Frey, and the Wandelweiser scene whisper through their music, the group's contrasting approaches, coupled with an openness and fragility, create a sound that is rustic and fallibly human. With purely acoustic instrumentation, the quartet of Takashi Masubuchi, Wakana Ikeda, Tom So…

Echo of Being / Grace in Rot is a powerful sonic meditation on grief by the duo Neti-Neti, composed of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and percussionist Matt Evans. The project originated from improvisation sessions born out of personal loss, evolving from an intimate exchange into a practice that bridges the personal and the political.

"The initial idea was that this collaboration should reflect a dialogue between two artists who have not yet met and that it should express something about the gulf between them, both literally and metaphorically. In the exchange of materials and ideas something is inevitably lost along the way – whether it be misunderstandings due to interpretation, language, slippage of meaning or simply things going astray. From the outset we decided to make a feature out of what might be lost in this interch…

Venerable composer and pianist Charlemagne Palestine revisits his seminal 1976 work ‘The Golden Mean’ in duo with enigmatic artist Rrose, reprising a dialogue started 10 years ago when Rrose was studying at Mills College and looking for a score to Charlemagne’s amazing ‘Strumming Music’…“In 2018 the Festival Variations in Nantes commissions Palestine to perform The Golden Mean, reworking the piece for two pianists. Palestine chose Rrose to join him in this new rendition of the work. Together, th…

2014 release ** New compilation of works by emerging west coast composers who somehow belong within a John Cage lineage. Music by James Tenney, Michael Pisaro and their students, Mark So, Michael Winter, Chris Kallmyer, Tashi Wada, Liam Mooney, Scott Cazan, Laura Steenberge, Cat Lamb, Quentin Tolimieri and Casey Anderson. "A compilation of work by twelve composers, ten of whom studied with James Tenney and/or Michael Pisaro (who are also represented by pieces here) at Cal Arts, performed by a qu…

2009 release ** "The first Stockhausen I ever heard, back in college, was Microphonie and I've always remained partial to the general family of sounds elicited therein. So it's not surprising, all else aside, that I'm drawn to the music here, derived from the excitation, via bows and strokes of a 60" tam-tam much like that used by Stockhausen, sensitively played by Greg Stuart. The added flavor, as is Pisaro's wont, is the integration of sine tones pitched very close to the range of the tam-tam …

2013 release ** "what do you do, if you work with just intonation and wish to write a piece for organ? you have to deal with the relation between equally tempered and over- or undertonal (just) intonation. 2001 i had several opportunities to make a study of some wonderful instruments. this eventually put me on the path towards this composition.in this piece only those frequencies of the organ sound that have close to whole-numbered ratios (+/- 6 cents) to a fundamental (in this case C’ at about …

'Dog FM is the debut release by the London-based duo of field recordist Oliver Chapman and poet Phoebe Eccles. Combining Chapman’s seemingly banal snapshots of a family car journey with Eccles’ fantastic, reflective spoken verse, Dog FM deftly transports the listener through a series of uncanny and oft-times bizarre audio travelogs where tension and expanse alternate to disorientating effect. By exploring the dynamics of a typical close-quarters family exchange, and with repeated use of ‘canine’…

*200 copies limited edition* More than a decade after his last full album, Kim Hiorthøy returns with Ghost Note, released by the Belgian label Blickwinkel. Though his music has quietly existed in the background—shaping contemporary dance, film, and theatre—this album brings it into focus once more. Ghost Note is an exploration of sound on the edge of presence and absence, a fictional world that is both constructed and organic. Using mostly digital technology, Hiorthøy created a set of instrumen…

London-based Ciaran Mackle (Breathing Heavy, Ashcircle, Cliff Edge, etc.) is an Irish musician working primarily with sampling and improvisation. Sitting Still for a Living, is his first eponymous work.

*300 coipes limited edition* Only a clarinet sings – minimal, quivering, wavering. Breathing mad notes in the cracks between notes, weaving a dazed, fuzzy kind of magic. The latest recordings by Museum of No Art are tripping – floating in suspense, somewhere out in the irrational corners of the world inhabited by the haunted elegance of Ben Bertrand or Bernhard Herrmann. But still, entirely her own – a quiet revolt of classical clichés in search of a new dawn for lunatic woodwinds. She sings thr…

The legendary double bass master is not appearing in our catalogue for the first time, but for the first time we have the honour of publishing music that has not appeared on Paul Rogers' albums many times before. A recital for solo double bass! If one could wish for the bass to speak, we believe that it does so most fully and poignantly when played by this wonderful master.

In 2023, sound artist and composer Weston Olencki toured across the American South. Beginning in their hometown in South Carolina, they snaked a circuitous path from the mountains of West Virginia to the banks of the Mississippi River. As the miles accumulated, so did the initial seeds of new work. Instruments and artifacts they acquired hitched a ride in the backseat, while songs and sounds filled their portable recorder: water in its various states, the familiar insectoid buzz of those summer …

I fell into a deep sleep of reason Everything broken and hence when I woke up from that deep sleep of reason it all made sense A Unique Artistic Partnership. This project represents a distinct and carefully considered artistic endeavor. Developed by Mark Springer (Rip, Rig and Panic) and Neil Tennant (The Pet Shop Boys), it combines a suite for piano, quartet, and quintet with vocals, accompanied by lyrics offering thoughtful introspection. The collaboration explores the intersection of divergen…

Tip! *100 copies limited edition* Cylinder Plus is the first entry in a series of records by TRAC (Teddy Ryles & Alexander Cooper). After meeting at Oberlin’s Timara department in 2012, the duo continued to exchange technical and musical ideas while working on respective solo projects. TRAC, in a nod to Calvin Mooers' early Text Reckoning And Compiling programming language, was formed in 2023 to combine approaches to composition, sound source and form. Cylinder Plus, built from reconstituted dig…

In 2015 Bernhard Lang was approached by Sebastian Berweck, to compose a piece for his Berlin-based Synthesizer-trio Lange // Berweck // Lorenz.Considering his musical background and his roots, Lang saw this offer as double opportunity, one of them being a chance to compose an ultimate tribute to one of his musical heroes, electronic pioneer, Klaus Schulze. On the other side, Cheap Opera #1 „répétitions“ turned out as Lang's most political piece to day: his mercilles comment on fake patriotism...…

Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.

"From Scratch New Discantus Quintet is a 60 minute long piece for two horns (Soprano and Tenor sax), double bass, a percussion set (bongo-drum kit), one electronic instrument (analog synth) and piano. Depart from the subharmonic scale, present through 10 stable sustained tones that act as a Cantus firmus, in the way composers Pérotin or Léonin worked in the XII century, initiating what is technically considered ‘counterpoint’, yet in this case, from scratch. This Cantus firmus acts as a context …

Rotations+ is a trio project of Sven-Ake Johansson with German turntablist Ignaz Schick and Austrian trumpeter Franz Hautzinger recorded live at the beloved Berlin experimental venue KM28 in September of 2023. The collective improvisations are instilled with a deep interest in color and timbre, and each track offers a fresh perspective. While Johansson toggles to accordion on the album’s final track, squeezing tender lines alongside Hautzinger’s moody brass and Schick’s scratch-pocked layer of w…

A new piece by minimalist / experimental composer Phill Niblock (1933 - 2024), co-composed and performed by Anna Clementi & Thomas Stern. Intense, menacing layers of thick drones and alien sounds.

2005 release ** Arte Quartett: Beat Hofstetter, soprano saxophone; Sascha Armbruster, alto saxophone; Andrea Formenti, tenor saxophone; Beat Kappeler, baritone saxophone Terry Riley, vocals, piano and harpsichord (Uncle Jard) A free spirit, maverick par excellence, creator of a personal compositional style that has spawned entire generations of epigones, Terry Riley (b 1935) embodies the best aspects of the American pioneer spirit, the positive and uncorrupted image of America (and California in…

'When the Distance is Blue' is Macie Stewart’s International Anthem debut. The Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist, composer, and improviser describes the collection as “a love letter to the moments we spend in-between”—a letter realized via an intentional return to piano, her first instrument and the origin of her creative expression. Here Stewart creates a striking and cinematic work through collages of prepared piano, field recordings, and string quartet compositions, one that gives shape to …

The year 2022 was the 10th anniversary of the opening of Ftarri’s physical store in Suidobashi, Tokyo. To mark this milestone, several solo concerts by musicians with whom Ftarri has had close ties since the time of its predecessor, Improvised Music From Japan, were held in the Ftarri store performance space in autumn 2022. The musician who performed on October 3 was Otomo Yoshihide. That day Otomo planned to play turntable only, but when he spotted the store’s harmonium, he had the idea of usin…

Gilles Aubry’s musical work focuses on the intersection of traditional music and Artificial Intelligence.

Percussionist extraordinaire Valentina Magaletti recorded live at Colourful Storm's showcase at Cafe Oto in 2021. Intricate, textural longform percussion pieces comprised of traditional drums, found objects, voice and electroacoustics conjured to hypnotic effect. A rare solo recording, following collaborations with Laila Sakini, Yves Chaudouët, Marlene Ribeiro and outings for Blume and Takuroku. Extremely curious listening for fans of African Head Charge, The Necks, and followers of Magaletti's …

2009 release ** "Tom Hamilton is unquestionably among the most inquisitive minds around. Local Customs explores some obscure notions about music theory and performance practice, leading to sound combinations that are at once unsettling and yet somehow familiar. One discovers that there is very little in Local Customs that follows from conventionally intentional music writing. It is perhaps better to regard it as a group of artifacts of little-known origins, modified through new transformations i…

Big Tip! *Limited to 600 copies on black vinyl with three sleeve colour variants: 300 x red, 200 x green and 100 x blue (not available for wholesale). You will receive a mix of green & red covers* A Queer Anthology of Drums - "a percussive collage of low-fi frequencies documenting a journey that never took place" (Takuroku), a home recording capturing Valentina's ritualistic free-improv essence, is now being presented to audiences across the world by bié Records, via both streaming services and…

Fierce, complex and multi-layered progressive sounds from this significant drummer / composer.

*2025 stock. 30 copies limited edition* Renowned experimental guitarist and avant-garde musician Eugene Chadbourne presents Milanesa / Astral Traveling, a bold new release available now via the German label Frei zum Abriss Kollektiv. This two-track album showcases Chadbourne’s signature blend of free improvisation, wit, and boundary-pushing soundscapes, further cementing his status as a true pioneer of the underground music scene.

Evan Parker and Matthew Wright’s Trance Map project has included improvised live events across Europe and the US, involving other invited guest performers, with various Trance Map+ recordings released on Intakt and FMR Records. Since 2020, Trance Map+ have undertaken ambitious streamed and networked performances, connecting with musicians around the world from The Hot Tin venue in Faversham, Kent, UK. In 2022, this resulted in Transatlantic Trance Map, a simultaneous performance between seven mu…