Meditations on Space, Volume One
*300 copies limited edition* Since their forming in 1999, Theme have released six albums and performed live sporadically in a variety of incarnations, even including Faust's Jean-herve Peron on bass at a number of shows many years ago.
'Meditations on Space, Volume One' is the seventh album and represents the first volume in a two-part set. Consisting of one piece of music (spanning around 40 minutes in total) that's broken into seven parts, it sees the core duo of Stuart Carter and Richard John…
Chamber Music for Lawn Mowers
*180 copies limited edition*
Did you know, a clean-cut lawn is a desire we inherited from the British? Yes, the British dumped this pleasure into our collective consciousness. Those humorless Victorians who enjoyed having their black pudding on the lawn. They came to this uninspired impression while mis-looking at Italian paintings. Yes indeed, while gazing at these paintings they mistook green lanes for green lawns. Thus it became hip. Every stuffed truffle commanded his gardener to cut the gra…
The Subliminal Paths
*70 copies limited edition*
Haarvöl – electronicsEventless Plot – piano, objects, field recordings, tapes, electronics
Sun Dog
*100 copies limited edition* "When Kabas first left its mark on the Belgian music scene with Abel (2016), nothing could have prepared you for where they would find themselves nearly one decade later. Not that the quartet needed extreme makeovers or abrupt stylistic switches. On the contrary, every step Thijs Troch, Jan Daelman, Nils Vermeulen and Elias Devoldere have taken since their first debut feels like a logical next one. This is not the sound of calculation or imposed transformation, but o…
When Your Way Gets Dark
Recorded on September 13-14, 2023 at Ting ShuoHear Say in Tainan, Taiwan.
Recording, mixing, mastering and cover designby Jason Kahn.
Much gratitude to Alice Hui-Sheng Chang and Nigel Brown for all their help and warm hospitality during my stay in Tainan as resident artist at Ting Shuo Hear Say. Also many thanks for the generous financial support from Stadt Zürich Kultur, Pro Helvetia, and Fondation SUISA which made my trip to Tainan possible.
Rides Again
Tip! *100 copies limited edition* Eternities is an intuitive collaboration between bass clarinetist Katie Porter and sound artist Bob Bellerue. Their work is inspired by deep presence, resonant feedback, melodic drone, and overtone magic, in the fluid realm between intention and indeterminacy. They use harmonic tones from wind instruments played within feedback systems to create multidimensional spectral drones.
This release is live recordings from 2023 and 2024 full of lush clarinet timbre and …
Fuse Modulations
Composed by Fredrik Rasten for the quartet Asterales, the long form piece Fuse Modulations unfolds through a series of modulations in extended just intonation harmony. With a deep collective attention to real-time intoning on their instruments, the quartet dwells in sustained timbral fusion and slowly sculpted melodies; shaping the tetradic harmony of the piece into a spectral unity of tactile brightness and spacious bass. In a state between long-form minimalism and an imagined or slowed down ea…
Là
Là is an immersive, politically charged sound journey – a lament for the Al Naqab desert in Palestine. It is the result of a collaboration between Sirah Foighel Brutmann, Eitan Efrat, Laszlo Umbreit, and Ot Lemmens. The album combines acoustic instruments like flute and cymbals with processed electronics and mechanical sounds.
The track Ensemble is made from sound recordings of eleven 16mm film projectors, playing simultaneously and in intervals, creating a texture centered around a single pitch…
On a Tuesday and a Wednesday
*200 copies limited edition* Blickwinkel presents ‘On a Tuesday and a Wednesday’, the first collaboration between Pierre Bastien and Casper Van De Velde. The album captures what the duo has been working on during a 2-day residency at Werkplaats Walter (Brussels), invited by the label. In their improvised sessions, they quickly found a way to merge Bastien's renowned mechanical sound sculptures with the playful and detailed style of percussionist Casper Van De Velde. The result is a blend of intr…
Campo Amaro
*75 copies limited edition* Campo Amaro is the fourth album by Rosso Polare, the Milan-based duo of Cesare Lopopolo and Anna Vezzosi. These compositions were inspired by observing the waterways that surround the fields of various Italian regions, the so-called ditches (fossi), bodies of water that are often polluted, but may also be full of flora and wildlife, lined with bitter and edible herbs. Throughout this land, small and distant chants emerge, twisted traditional songs of resistance or mad…
Public Detail
*75 copies limited edition* Operating since the late 2010s, Vienna-based sound artist the concept horse has quietly amassed a distinctive and diverse discography, drawing inspiration from the rich traditions of musique concrète, noise, plunderphonics, microsound, and free improvisation. “Public Detail” follows releases on labels such as Falt and czaszka [rec.], as well as the artist’s own eë editions, and neatly encapsulates the polyglottic breadth of the project. Patinaed piano loops and wistfu…
Top Natural Drum
Following releases on West Mineral and Lillerne Tapes, Iggy Romeu’s inimitable Mister Water Wet project makes its Soda Gong debut. “Top Natural Drum” feels like a double entendre ode to digging culture, drawing equally from the plantlife in the dirt and the grooves in the stacks. Tracks like opener “Soak” concoct a haze of resonant ceramic/wooden percs, skittering drum programming, and addictive yet diffuse melodic and harmonic textures. Dusty-fingered nodders like “Caged at Last”, “Classicfit,”…
Schokolino Choco Loco
"As I sit down to pen these words for Stilluppsteypa's latest vinyl release on the enigmatic Futura Resistenza label, I find myself jumping back a year or two, reminded of the profound impact this Icelandic ensemble has had on the northern landscape of experimental arts for four decades. Emerging in the early 1990s, Stilluppsteypa began their journey as a punk-oriented band with multiple members. However, their insatiable curiosity for the unconventional soon led them to explore more abstract an…
Glass Colored Lily
This is the first release from the Japanese shinobue and flute player Yuki Fujiwara. Boarding Yuki's musical ship feels as if the pier exists in a strange space between the past and the future going to a journey to a land which is not here anymore and is not still there. A deep connection to the music world of Toru Takemitsu!
''But Glass Colored Lilly is not just a modern take on Japanese traditions, not at all. Small details on the production and small scale contributions from all the musician…
A Hiss of Light
A Hiss of Light is the first recording made by sound artists Alanas Gurinas and Sholto Dobie. Both artists work with acoustic sound sculptures and self-made instruments made with everyday materials. In the case of Gurinas, vibrating and taught paper objects emit pulsing sine tones, organic chirps and shimmering noise that drift like weather fronts whilst in Dobie’s work, air is the main material, compressed and channeled through a set of valves, tubes and timers, into pipes of various origins.
I…
Rilievo
"For many years, I collected every new Merzbow release. I stopped when I realised I couldn’t keep up with playing them; some were still in their shrinkwrap after a year. I didn’t keep up with Merzbow’s output in the last 15 years and only heard what I was sent. I had no idea what a collaboration between Merzbow’s Masami Akita and Agencement’s Hideaki Shimada would be like. The latter is a violin player whose first two LPs from the late 1980s are classics with hectic playing and might include som…
Transients I/O
*2022 stock* Transients I/O, the debut solo release from Andreas Kühne, captures a hidden city at the edge of the Earth. Based on field improvisations recorded from 2018–2020 in Murmansk (the largest city above the Arctic Circle) the two-part electro-acoustic album uses the sounds of objects across Murmansk to speculate on the identity of this remote city – and how its young inhabitants adjust to living there.
For Transients I/O, Kühne recorded site-specific musical improvisations with objects i…
Esperando a Florian
Swims presents the disruptive dream-team of Kit Records founder Richard Greenan, Buenos Aires based cello experimentalist Violeta Garcia, and South African violinist and composer Galina Juritz. "Esperando a Florian" is the result of Violeta's London residency in 2022. Recorded in one take, and with a simple setup of violin, cello, electric bass, and analogue synths; the music is a tender conversation between three voices, pushing and pulling at the edge of dialogue, hesitance and reflection. Rec…
Island Slang
A meeting of minds and bodies on a heady percussive trip with no clear destination, captured live at Espacio Cultural El Tanque in Tenerife. With both imaginary and lived in tropical sceneries coalescing the two units, both Tenerife's Lagoss and Kampala's Abagwagwa (aka Nihiloxica) find a common thread to disentangle cartographies. As if it was bound to happen. As it did.
Taking Abagwagwa's relentless barrage of polyrhythms as a starting point to jammin' excursions that never falter into self in…
Elkwort
*200 hand-numbered copies limited edition* Ben McElroy is a folk/experimental/ambient artist based in the UK. He has released prolific albums since his 2016 debut "Bird Stone" for Whitelabrecs. Notable releases since then include 2018s "The Word Cricket Made Her Happy" for eilean rec. and 2022s "How I Learnt to Disengage From The pack" on The Slow Music Movement (which was folk album of the month in the Guardian). Ben also performs live around the UK (and potentially further in the future). "Thi…