Experimental / Free Improvisation

The hardcore noise improvisation duo featuring Martin Escalante, a ferocious noise saxophonist from Mexico, and Tatsuya Yoshida will release a CD featuring the complete recordings of their live performances in Kobe and Okayama from their previous 202…

*300 copies limited edition* Pressure is the medium of wind players. Wind instruments all sound thanks to pressure differentials, whether that’s the rush of wind over a lip plate or a steady, buzzing exhalation through pursed lips. Ka Baird and Chris…

German guitarist Olaf Rupp combines elements of traditional flamenco (rasgueados, arpeggios, picados) with the fractured cadences of Derek Bailey, fusing them together with a blast-furnace tone recalling John Lee Hooker's most blown-out extremes. And…

On Cooked, Oren Ambarchi folds his all‑star studio jam aesthetic into something gloriously unhinged. Two side‑long epics twist piano ripples, synthetic “voices,” mutant trumpet tones, electric Miles haze and digital pyrotechnics into a foot‑tapping, …

*200 copies limited edition* “For the last 6 years, New York sampledelia and synthesis rhabdomants Nuke Watch, duo of Aaron Anderson and Chris Hontos, also known for alternative projects and spinoffs like Beat Detectives and Weird Shit U.S.A. 2, have…

*2026 stock* With Unit of Time, Hans Hulbækmo and Egil Kalman aim to show that we can experience the essence of time through rhythm. How can the perception of time—both for the listener and the performers—be turned completely on its head by rhythm? B…

Double Amps emerged from a very specific situation. In early February 2025 a short tour through Belgium and the Netherlands took place with Dietrichs. For those concerts a dedicated stereo setup using two amplifiers was developed. Around that configu…

Sophie Agnel on piano and John Butcher on saxophones, live at the 40th Victoriaville festival on 18 May 2024: spontaneous compositions of inside-piano sounds, extended techniques and quick, attentive interplay.

*300 copies limited edition* Percussionists Mika Kallio and Janne Tuomi have each spent decades at the edges of Finnish improvised music. Oresme, their debut duo on Mustik Motel, takes its name from the 14th-century philosopher who argued that all pe…

The great master, improvisational pianist, and musical polymath Steve Beresford; John Edwards, one of the most important double bassists on the global free improv scene; and Mandhira de Saram, an exquisite violinist and former member of the renowned …

"Among all the paradoxes of communication, which improvisational musicians explore continuously as connoisseurs to create magic, there is the fact that they speak at the same time (something we are generally discouraged from doing). Not only that, bu…

There aren’t many all-female vocal groups in the world of improvised music, even fewer of them are working bands, and there are very few projects that are anything more than that. VoiceACT, conceived by Anna Gadt, is exactly that. VoiceACT is, above …

After the wild Afro-jazz fusion of Trancedance (reissued as BT118) and the meditative solo Christer Bothén Donso n’goni (BT133), legendary Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén returns to Black Truffle as part of a dream quartet completed by …

"There is a familiar species of experience. I believe it is nearly universal. Here’s the brief: we have not seen a person in a long time, someone with whom we were once close. For no good reason – no falling out, no unpleasantries at all – our paths …

"Autumn has always brought me bright thoughts and fruitful encounters. Barry and I, although we had known each other for many years — and although I had grown “into adulthood” musically through the influence of masters like him — had never had the ch…

Recorded by Karl Winand and Markus Massinger at artacts – Festival for Jazz and Improvised Music, Alte Gerberei, St. Johann in Tirol, Austria. Mixed and mastered by John Butcher  Sophie Agnel - pianoJohn Butcher - saxophonesPascal Niggenkemper - doub…

Chinese tradition tells the story of how one day, the Emperor decided to decorate the walls of his new palace. He summoned two of the most famous painters of the time and gave them two months to complete the paintings on the walls. One of the painter…

The duo of Camila Nebbia and Chris Corsano brings together two fiercely creative voices from the international improvised music scene. Nebbia’s searching tenor saxophone lines meet Corsano’s explosive, highly textural percussion in a set of spontaneo…

The new release by Ochibonoame captures the trio’s raw and searching approach. With Makoto Kawashima on alto saxophone, Louis Inage on bass, and Naoto Yamagishi on drums and percussion, the group navigates the volatile terrain of silence and eruptive…

The trio of Luciana Bass, Ezequiel Jaime, and Federico Isasti brings together three distinctive voices from Argentina's adventurous improvised music scene. Centered on Bass’s expressive sonic palette, their music is both volatile yet deeply attentive…

On Distractions for Trumpet & Ajaeng two radically distinct instrumental traditions converge in a study of texture, fragility, and focus. Kelley’s whisper-quiet trumpet tones and microscopic bursts of air intertwine with Kim’s bowed ajaeng, its coars…

Yara Asmar’s new album, “everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much”, presents 11 pieces recorded over the past year between the small town of Alfred in upstate New York and Beirut. These sometimes fragile and tentative sound sketches ref…

Mitsuru Tabata began his musical career in 1982. Since then, he has played a key role in many of Japan’s most influential underground and experimental groups, including Noizunzuri, Boredoms, Leningrad Blues Machine, YBO2, Zeni Geva, Acid Mothers Temp…

Lummer is the Swedish name for the now protected family of vascular plants (Clubmoss/Lycopodiaceae). Lummer grows slowly and the spores with which it reproduces can take 12—20 years to develop. These spores, known as Nikt in Swedish, were once ground…

Legendary Japanese experimentalist Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha) and London's fearless drummer Steve Noble took to the stage at Cafe OTO in 2012 for a monumental concert - with Haino's extreme treatments of electric guitar, and feedback, with Noble on a …

Futuro Ancestrale, the ensemble around saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Giuseppe Doronzo, was born from the idea to combine contemporary improvisation and non-western music traditions. In Elsewhen, electronics play a central role alon…

Danish experimental rock band Echo, Bravo presents "Glasfisk", a powerful new album that explores the space between chaos and clarity. Blending raw energy, poetic lyricism in danish, and adventurous improvisation, the record showcases the band's dist…

First CD re-issue on Spalax from 1988 of the debut album by one of the weirdest and most radical groups linked to krautrock, the free improvising duo of Paul and Limpe Fuchs.

Shutsumin, the debut recording from the generation spanning duo of Japanese legend Otomo Yoshihide, toggling between guitar and turntables, and rising saxophonist Kei Matsumaru, a native of Papua New Guinea, who moved to Tokyo after studying jazz at …

Double bassist and composer Henry Fraser announces the release of Pneuma, a new solo album out June 12 on Kou Records and recorded, mixed, and co-produced by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Jóhann Jóhannsson) and Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Marc Ribot). Across …

Tip! Man Eating Tree is the first solo album by Belgian-born, Oslo-based pianist Jonas Cambien. On prepared piano and electric organ, Cambien channels a soundscape of meditative repetition and oscillating rhythms. Cambien's background is dappled with…

Sound fragments unfold across Zurich, making loss, memory, and cultural change physically and acoustically perceptible. In The Rhythm of Design, Zurich-based fine arts duo Michael Meier & Christoph Franz explore urban displacement and its impact on t…

London-based musician Luke Cowan returns with SPRiNG!, a release that trades the slow-blooming architectures of Six Places for something more immediate, loose-limbed and provisional. Conceived as the first in a planned seasonal cycle, it documents a …

*300 copies limited edition* Reliques de Roses, musical tandem formed by two household names of the European underground: Laure Boer (Edition d’Art, Arbore...) and Tom Val (Orion Music Workshop, HWYUIOD...). Bridging the Berlin-Paris experimental con…

** Split 7”, Edition of 100 machine numbered copies w inlays ** Unexpected but needed split 7” between the Swedish tape loop & analog synth trio Organ of Corti and San Francisco guitar master Bill Orcutt! The OOC track is a dive deeper into their rat…

Invited in September 2011 by sound engineer Philippe Teissier du Cros, double bassist Bruno Chevillon spent two days improvising alone in the Lutheran Protestant Church of Bon Secours in Paris. The building is as much a protagonist as the player — it…

With Dans-sons as we are, Audrey Lauro, Christian Pruvost and Peter Orins deliver an album shaped by subtle shifts, restrained tensions and slow transformations of sound matter. A music of listening as much as gesture, where each intervention seems t…

This tape is the culmination of a series of collaborative performances between Kevin Coleman and J.W. Bird that took place in the latter half of 2024. It is meant to encapsulate the spirit and energy of those performances; spontaneous and communicati…

Setpieces captures Cath Roberts & Olie Brice at a new peak of focus and invention, distilling their long-running musical rapport into a set of raw, finely tuned improvisations. Roberts’ baritone lines carve out bold shapes and sudden whispers while B…

“Selections from the Gutter” brings NYC saxophonist Michael Foster with the longstanding rhythm section of Swiss bassist Christian Weber (of Sudden Infant), and German drummer Michael Griener, a longtime fixture of the Berlin scene. The trio brings s…