Experimental / Contemporary

Australian, Copenhagen-based composer Calum Builder delves into a sonic journey inside the body of his dismantled pipe organ.

Pianist Bas Bulteel has been actively exploring the boundaries of solo piano work for several years now. This resulted, among other things, in his first solo album Eye Of The Storm, which was released in 2024 on W.E.R.F. Records. In the compositions for that album, he drew inspiration on the one hand from the minimalist school and on the other from contemporary avant-garde pianists. However, his hunger for experimentation was not satisfied after just one solo album. Shortly after finishing the a…

*120 copies limited edition* Shell I is the second edition on Edições CN by Brussels sound artist Florence Cats. It is a magical collection of 23 edits for voice, field recordings, theremin and piano. Cats’ recorded piano rehearsals and singing sketches reminds us of Cornelius Cardew works. They are at the heart of Edições CN, where a sketch or rehearsal holds as much, if not more, truth than a definitive composition. A melody line from Debussy passes by. Waves crash in the distance. Sails and f…

“In 2022, with the closing of Mills College imminent and my bicoastal life coming to an end along with it, I requested of my colleagues works I could perform to mark this loss, honor the school's great legacy, and conclude the thirteen years I spent teaching there. They all graciously agreed. Lament for the Maker is the title of a Jack Spicer poem originally published in San Francisco, in 1963.” There are three recently commissioned works for solo harp and the final piece, berlin bedroom, an ong…

*29 copies limited edition* A ritual object disguised as a release. Or perhaps the other way around. This limited edition of 29 units pairs a new work by Renato Grieco with a hand-forged bronze tuning fork designed by Swiss artist Alfatih and crafted in Naples by Ettore Palombi. Each fork takes the form of a small carcass - part amulet, part relic, part sculpture. Weighing roughly 30 grams, its resonant frequency hovers at the edge of silence: a tone you feel more than hear, a vibration that lin…

The exhibition, "Old Instruments From the Future, New Instruments From the Past  (and  Characters)((by Artificial Intelligence))," was held from May 27 to August 4, 2024, as the 15th-anniversary celebration of Kanazawa Art Gummi. This project involves faithfully constructing  physical versions of instruments designed by AI, interpreting the playing methods suitable for these  instruments, and drawing music from them. This special edition will be added a CDR reissued long out of print his early w…

*80 copies limited edition* "What wonders can be found within a single square meter? Inspired by George Haskell’s book The Forest Unseen, field recordist Tomáš Šenkyřík decided to limit himself to a meter of wetland near his house, only to discover that the area was so blessed in biodiversity that it might even be too big. A warbler comments from the weeds; a buzzard flies overhead. But beneath the surface of the water, the real wonders are found. The plants yield the subtle sounds of photosynth…

*2026 stock. 40 copies limited edition* "Ganz im Gegenteil – the title of Andy Klingensmith's new album – roughly translates to “quite the opposite”. This element of a slightly surprising shift in perspective is at the core of the record. Equally inspired by the pain and catastrophes caused by human ignorance and the vast natural beauty of the Death Valley (the lowest point in North America), Ganz im Gegenteil was composed and assembled using recordings which explore the tactile sounds of variou…

*2026 stock. 60 copies limited edition* "Vstal is a collection of seven songs created in a dialogue between the experimentalist and composer Manja Ristić and the meticulous observer and field recorder Tomáš Šenkyřík. The album takes listeners on a journey across the European continent, from Ristić’s home on the Adriatic coast to the Czech-Austrian borderlands and the Moravian floodplain forests, which have long inspired Tomáš Šenkyřík’s sonic explorations. This broad scope, sensitively linking t…

2022 Jon Collin's LP release on Laboratorio Palestro. Repressed this year on Early Music.Cover photo by Maximilian Rossner Mastered for vinyl by Giuseppe Ielasi

Tip! *200 copies limited edition* This project, entitled Transmissions From The Radio Midnight, started around 2006, when I acquired a Sony TCM F59 — an AM/FM radio and cassette recorder combined in a slim, handheld body. Since then, whenever I went on a trip, I would throw it into my suitcase and take it around with me. No matter which country I was in, upon returning to the hotel room I made a habit of listening to the radio into the late hours of the night. As soon as I would snuggle into bed…

*2025 stock* "In experimental music, artists are often praised for taking risks, yet it's seldom that the conditions that inspire and enable their plunges into yet-unknown realms are discussed. The powerful music found on Hopeful Monster, the partnership between acclaimed Toronto-based pianist Eve Egoyan and Costa Rican-born, British composer-musician Mauricio Pauly (who now lives and works in Vancouver), is a testament to the vitality of these very conditions. Their collaboration began in 2018 …

'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 …

Studio Mule is proud to present the first-ever vinyl edition of Banka, the 1991 CD-only masterpiece by Shinsuke Honda. Renowned as the guitarist of the legendary band Hachimitsu Pie, Honda’s work on the album Silence is widely celebrated as one of the most remarkable achievements in Japanese ambient guitar jazz. Now, with this release, Banka joins that legacy on a beautifully crafted double LP. Building upon the spirit of Silence while exploring new depths of refinement and sound, Banka offers a…

Unterhaltungen mit Larven und Überresten by Läuten der Seele (Christian Schoppik) unfolds as a haunting electroacoustic collage. Looping fragments from vintage “Heimatfilme,” field recordings, and diverse instruments evoke a surreal, dream-prone nostalgia. The album balances hypnotic repetition with spectral detail, drifting between tenderness and uncanny unease.

Four beautiful pieces for acoustic objects, performed, recorded and assembled by an Italian composer whose reputation has soared in recent years after previous CD releases on Col Legno, Neos and Another Timbre . Oltreorme is Coluccion's second work for acoustic objects (no musical instruments, electronic devices or post-production treatments) and suggests a new direction in Coluccino's music, engaging with notions of silence more closely and explicitly than in his previous compositions. M…

An ace technician who studied at the New England Conservatory, Erez Dessel is in no way conservative. Indeed, his bracing approach to the keyboard and deeply intuitive sense of form can be explosive, uncorked energy summoning references to Cecil Taylor and the Don Pullen/Milford Graves duets, and an almost Russian Romantic darkness – imagine an improvised Mussorgsky – offset by keen emotional intelligence, with joyful melodicism and an airborne quality. And nestled within Dessel's playing there'…

Henry Dagg and Evan Parker improvised together for the first time as part of the Free Range series in Canterbury, Kent, on December 2, 2021. For the performance, Evan played soprano saxophone, and Henry developed a new electronic instrument called the Stage Cage, to both process Evan’s live sound as well as generate its own sounds. The Stage Cage includes four valve test-oscillators, a pair of ring modulators, frequency shifter, chromatic zither, and a variable tape delay system (consisting of t…

Drummer/composer Booker Stardrum delivers a new powerful solo album Close-up On The Outside (27th Feb 2026), his first for We Jazz Records. The new record sees Stardrum (also a member of SML) doubling down on the earthy tactility of human sound and communication while also exploring rich, electroacoustic landscapes. The album, released on LP and digitally, involves Stardrum's close collaborators Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Logan Hone and Michael Coleman. While…

*100 copies limited edition* Solo Suono is the first collaboration between saxophonist Filippo Ansaldi and electronic musician Simone Sims Longo, both based in Cuneo, Italy. Solo Suono is an album between acoustic gesture and electronic treatment, beyond the classical while starting from the classical. Breath, amplified mechanics, residual sounds, expressive freedom, and different forms that integrate electroacoustic composition. Passing through looped gestures, electronic processes, and concret…

Any sense of where we were gone is music obsessed with the infinite within the minute, with the mercurial, breakable, with shifting, sifting, cohering, and digressing. It is an improvisational framework in five parts for chamber ensembles, prepared piano, and electronics, written for and played here by my good friends. It steals inspiration from postmodern fiction, obscure geometry textbooks, and poems about time. This is a live recording of the first performance “To do. To do something, to do g…

*100 copies limited edition* A handbag purchased in Tokyo in the early 2000s reappears in the present, containing a series of personal items: a T-shirt, a CD, five cassettes, and three mini-DVs. Sifting through the material, Barbara Signer rediscovers all kinds of forgotten memories and hidden traces of the past. While the video cassettes were recorded in the streets of Tokyo at the turn of the millennium, the audio tapes contain music from Nick Kamen to Vivaldi, as well as the artist’s own voice…

*80 copies limited edition* Composed for a multichannel live diffusion of wind instruments at Cinema Bellevaux in Lausanne, Switzerland, on June 16th, 2023. Sound samples by Freddie Murphy, Giovanni Lami, Mauro Sambo, Martin Mayes and Alexandra Manda.

On Disquiet, The Necks stretch their immersive, shape-shifting sound across three discs and more than three hours of labyrinthine, patient intensity. This twentieth studio recording marks the 39th year of the band's existence, representing both a culmination of their extraordinary journey and a bold leap into uncharted sonic territory. Meticulously recorded and sculpted, the four extended pieces on Disquiet see Tony Buck, Chris Abrahams, and Lloyd Swanton pushing at the outer edges of their coll…

Soufflements Cardinaux invites the listener into a cartography of breath: Ensemble In(dé)fini map the four directions through extended techniques, hushed noise and prismatic overtones. Winds, strings and electronics trace invisible weather systems, turning each exhalation into a fragile, shifting architecture of sound.

* Five hours of electroacoustical compositions, recorded during the first thirty years of the Berlin festival “Inventionen”. Box set with two audio CDs and a multichannel (surroundsound) DVD * Mindblowing two re-releases of Edition RZ LPs that are now available in this double CD box with additional tracks, as well as a mainly acousmatic DVD that features electronic tracks by a variety of electroacoustic composers. The present DVD contains mainly acousmatic music. This is when a pure "tape piece"…

Recorded live at Conservatorio Nicolini, Piacenza, Italy, May 22. 2015 during "Musiche Nuove a Piacenza" Festival. Limited edition 980 handmade and individually hand numbered copy in papersleeve, with 21,50 x 21,50 miniposter © 2015

**Edition of 118 numbered audiophile golden CD** Best known as producer and mainman behind Dark Companion Records and the reborn Manticore Records, Max Marchini gives birth to his first solo album where he plays all instruments except for two collaborations with avant-garde singer songwriter Paola Tagliaferro and the amazing pakhawaj indian drum playing of Akhilesh Gundecha. This album was intended as a present for his friends for Dark Companion’s 5th anniversary, but eventually label insisted t…

Apartment House give new life to Julius Eastman’s irrepressible ensemble piece from 1974. Unbounded energy and clarity of sound. Unmissable. Read the following interview with the Apartment House's director, cellist cellist Anton LukoszeviezeWhen did you first play Julius Eastman's music, and when had you become aware of it?I first performed Eastman's music in 2016, which was a revelation for me, as the extant scores are rather fragmentary and incomplete, some are even just transcriptions from ar…

Borderland Melodies, composed by Jürg Frey and interpreted by Apartment House, features three chamber works that exemplify Frey's subtle balance of melody, structure, and quiet innovation. The music explores gradual transformation, intertwining voices, and the shading of tone and silence, creating a meditative sound world where every phrase and rest feels considered and essential.

*350 copeis limited edition.  Comes with 16-page booklet of program notes * In the 1960s, Robert Ashley pioneered the American avant garde with the ONCE Group and festivals, before irrefutably changing the face of American opera later in the 20th century. Buckner, in addition to running the fabulous 1750 Arch record label in the 1970s and 80s, is a noted baritone who has collaborated for decades with the likes of Roscoe Mitchell, Annea Lockwood, and the late Noah Creshevsky, amongst countless ot…

For Sara(.es), who has resonated with numerous musicians, this is a special solo live recording, her first in about a year. Weaving together the sounds of bells, water-emitting instruments, harmonica, crystal bowls, triangle, and more, an energy-filled piano solo unfolds. From 1 May to 14 June 2025, the solo exhibition ‘Prayer’ by artist Keiichi Ikegami was held at Gallery Nomaru, the home of .es (dot es) and the base for Utsunomiya MIX. Following the sudden passing of Satoshi Hayashi, former di…

January 2025, Osaka contemporary art gallery ‘Gallery Nomart’ hosted Hideo Takashima's solo exhibition ‘Fill with Empty’. This was Takashima's first exhibition at Nomart, and featured the first live collaboration between British heavyweight drummer/percussionist Roger Turner and sara (.es). The exhibition title ‘Fill with Empty’ refers to ‘a state filled with margins that contain diverse possibilities,’ according to Takashima. Takashima explains that the exhibition title, ‘Fill witt Empty’, refe…

Moondog singing Moondog? Really! even goodness knows, Moondog doesn't sing a song; he shows you how it goes."

*100 copies limitede edition* Experimental guitarist Christoph Götzen proudly presents Transmission - Live In New York, a powerful new live album that captures the raw energy and intricate textures of his latest performances in the iconic city. Recorded in front of an enthusiastic audience, this album showcases Götzen’s masterful blend of electric soundscapes, abstract rhythms, extended techniques and immersive atmospheres.

*100 copies limited edition. 2CD edition contains the entire album, LP contains only the Maria Chávez recordings* Big tip! Repeat Until True works to build a musical ontology. This is a collection of recordings made by Zach Cooper, Odeya Nini, and Maria Chávez. It’s an exercise in composition via rule-based improvisation using contrabass, the human voice, and turntables. Taken one step further, the contrabass and voice versions were committed to vinyl and used as score and material for Chávez’s …

Norwich trio Germ Lattice - Joe Barton, Micky Donnelly & Louie Rice - follow 2024’s Gipping Through the Ages LP with Corpusty, written in a new studio, poised to watch the demolition of their old space from across the street. Each track unfolds in real time, combining bass, drums, voice and synthesiser with live tape manipulation, performance and playback is blurred into one shifting surface. Corpusty moves slowly through collapse and renewal, ending with the thirteen-minute drift of Old Glory f…

Tip! Welcome to the 20th Century: "My point of departure for the octet was to treat the ensemble as a flock of clarinets and develop swarm-like scenarios. At the same time, I thought of the 8 players as a kind of acoustic 8-channel-installation with the musicians surrounding the audience. This could be seen as an expansion of the stereo analogy we sometimes work with in The International Nothing. While The Nothin’ is all about developing a very personal language of new sounds with self-invented …

"Their differences intensify the soundscape. Francesca Gemmo provides a sensitive, contemplative, but deceptive lyricism, with memories of the wistful antique modes of Satie or Debussy’s impressionist palette twisted into shadowy subterranean echoes and knotted note clusters. Magda Mayas imaginatively extends Henry Cowell’s innovations of touch and timbre, alternately coaxing and attacking, releasing previously concealed phantom textures, percussive episodes, near-electronic hues, and micro-alte…

"Richiamare" is an attempt to create a bridge to the past, a connection between absence and precariousness as a vivid action of the present. The French Suite No. 3 by J.S. Bach is a piece that accompanied me for many years during my growth and studies as a musician. It made me confront the difficulties of the instrument, the need for dedication and the tendency to reach a higher stage of awareness. Many years later, that same piece resonates in my memory in a different way. It has created its ow…