Rarefied Airs
*200 copies limited edition* “Rarefied Airs” is the debut album by Glasspack, duo of Henry Birdsey and Ian McColm. Both Birdsey and McColm are part of an extended New Haven (CT) musician family (think of Stefan Christensen, Shirese, David Shapiro, Center, Figured, Tongue Depressor etc.). In Glasspack they fuse Birdsey’s bagpipes with McColm’s computerized sounds to hammer out rock solid modern fourth world music masterpiece.
“Rarefied Airs” offers two long pieces (both ticking at almost 19 minut…
Awlaⱪta / Afar
*60 copies limited edition* In mid-December 2021, Mamer flew from Ürümqi to Shenzhen to play a few booked gigs. Afterwards, he decided to stay on for a marathon music residency at the Old Heaven bookstore. From Dec 13 to 27, Mamer performed 14 concerts in 15 days, unreservedly presenting his vast creative world to a small but dedicated audience, who followed him throughout this journey. These performances were announced on each day with a theme decided often last minute, free admission offered. …
Taipei, Beijing
*60 copies limited edition* Xu Shaoyang makes music about the fragmented beauty of everyday life. Over the years, he has sustained a fresh spirit of amateurism by travelling and performing in many different parts of the world, occasionally as a member of the avant-pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. His songs are made of simple tunes, sometimes silly sometimes smart, sometimes delivered with a “backing band” of improvising musicians who he met and collected along the way. Sometimes the karaoke work…
To Step Outside And Keep Walking
1994 release ** Packaged in oversize cardboard sleeve. A four-artist compilation of electronica experimentation, this album includes pieces by Randy Grief, Art Simon, Contact with a Curve and Jocelyn Robert.
Psychotic Reactions & Lightnin' Rag
2004 release ** "Here an hybrid instrumentation entangling blues and electro-acoustic music re-plays for us the complete history of recorded music. There is no deferred time between the instrument being played and the reworking of the recording parameters. All movements are connected in real time, as close as possible to the body. Hands on the tapes, fingers on the strings, fresh blood is springing, free from conventions, as if to abolish the principle of separation our society is built on. It’s…
Nuits Sans Nuit
Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila return with Nuits Sans Nuit, their second collaboration following their Baba Soirée debut from 2023.
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…