Folklore & Concepts
Folklore & Concepts, the latest release by Smegma—now five decades into their outsider avant-garde career—extends the band’s legacy of ritualistic collage, spontaneous improvisation, and anti-academic noise. Infused with tape, synths, prepared piano, horns, and voice, the album melds shamanistic energy with surreal group interplay, creating an unpredictable and stubbornly original sonic tapestry.
Minor Gestures
Minor Gestures' ~ 'Mion-phuingean' by Susannah Star & Band an extended folk session in mystical locations around the Govan stones, river Clyde & underground streamlets.
“tha mise gad fhaicinn,tha mise gad fhaicinn”arsa an caochan
“I see you,I see you”said the blind one
Nature
"I have been fascinated by the sound and potential of gongs since I first heard Stockhausen's Mikrophonie 1 in the late 1960s. When I moved to Oakland in 1999 I discovered the work of Karen Stackpole, one of the few percussionists in the world specializing entirely in gongs, and attended several of her performances. I always tried to imagine how I could combine my own sonic vocabulary with her incredibly rich array, and we enthusiastically agreed to a musical meeting which somehow kept being pos…
What We Do When in Silence
Huge Tip! * Limited edition of 300 copies, Embossed cover, comes with insert and postcard * Killer record here! Three Italian heavyweights doing what they do best - radical improvisation that sits somewhere between electronics, silence, and pure Mediterranean mystery. This is the real deal. Nicola Ratti, Alessandra Novaga, and Enrico Malatesta - three names you need to know if you're serious about contemporary improvised music.
The sound? Imagine if AMM had been born in Southern Europe with lapt…
Scratching At The Surface
“Scratching at the Surface” is a new collaboration from Erin Rogers and Kelsey Mines. This collection of striking vignettes dives deep into sonic exploration, weaving together powerful low-end resonance and shimmering high tones. Inspired by the sea’s raw energy and quiet beauty, Rogers and Mines craft a mesmerizing soundscape of undulating rhythms, bold textures, and immersive mystery.
Red Shifts
Redshifts marks the debut collaboration between artists Zeena Parkins and Cecilia Lopez. Recorded in January 2025, the album features a striking interplay between two singular instruments: Parkins’ self-invented electric harp and Lopez’s RED—a large-scale, handwoven electronic instrument made from speaker wire. This collection of pieces captures a vivid sonic dialogue between Parkins’ masterful, expressive performance and López’s sculptural approach to sound and instrument design. These are one-…
Tarabita Espiral
Friendships and musical ties that are born unpredictably and are woven through distance, allowed the fortuitous encounter of Tarabita Espiral. A trio made up of Colombian saxophonist and clarinetist Maria Valencia, Puerto Rican NY- based double bassist Brandon López and NY-based vibraphonist Matt Moran. These three vibrant artists eschew traditional roles to sculpt a musical landscape of restless motion and textural dissonance.
Valencia’s reeds seethe and spiral, channeling both fractured lyrici…
Abstract Forest
Tip! On this striking new CD, Joe Morris wields his guitar with deliberate restraint, building deep layers that breathe around Brad Barrett’s cello — its bowed lines resonating with both plaintive lyricism and edgy percussive accents. Beth Ann Jones anchors the trio with a sculptural bass, her tone rich and propulsive, providing an essential counterpoint to Morris' explorations. It's a beautifully measured session—each player deep-listening, unfolding subtle dialogues, and seamlessly shifting be…
Peel/Mondo
Ada Rave and Marta Warelis, two luminaries of Amsterdam’s improvised music scene, unite on Peel/Mondo to craft a compelling dialogue between saxophone and piano. Rave, an Argentinian saxophonist renowned for her bold tenor sound and innovative techniques, joins forces with Warelis, a Polish pianist celebrated for her sonic versatility and explorations of the piano’s timbral possibilities.
Points Of Convergences
This double album was recorded on the night of June 3, 2014, at Saint-Merry Church, in the heart of Paris. Beyond its architectural beauty, Saint-Merry possesses an extraordinary acoustic quality, which has shaped countless sonic experiences and left its mark on this recording. It was in this inspiring setting that we had the privilege of recording this music with Michel Doneda, in a moment of deep immersion, carried by the unique resonance of the space. The talented Augustin Muller masterfully …
An Episode Of Improvisational Smoke Recorded Upon The Cold Stone Of Sacred Ground
2025 stock 1992 release. Frank-O-Fest is a loose grouping of Milwaukee old-timers led & directed by John Frankovic, who recorded this in one cloudy session in a church in 1992. Utilizing percussion, sitar, bouzouki, trombone, pipe organ, jews harp, didgeridoo, bass, cello, bamboo & clay flutes & more, this is a long, form-defying floatation exercise in space-out improvisation.
Steady State
In a sonic dialogue that balances delicacy and depth, Clinton Green and Barnaby Oliver explore the shifting textures of acoustics and resonance. Employing bowed aluminum bowls, strings, and a grand piano, their work unfolds in patient layers that probe the very essence of sound and its environment, evoking an atmosphere of quiet tension and subtle transformation.
Melophobia
Melophobia spins tension out of spontaneous contact - Dave Tucker (guitar) and Pierpaolo Martino (double bass and electronics) improvise with sharp attention to rhythm, fracture, and digital manipulation, conjuring environments that threaten – and then dissolve – melodic order.
Semiotic Drift
Semiotic Drift is a living conversation - Maggie Nicols uses voice as a map to possibility, Matilda Rolfsson provides creaking, insistent percussion, and Mark Wastell frames everything in the deep resonance of amplified tam-tam. The work rides the edge between storytelling and pure abstraction.
Juno
Juno invites deep contemplation through slow-moving layers of sound - Barry Chabala’s guitar, David Forlano’s electronics, and Drew Gowran’s percussion work in unhurried mutual orbit, exploring patience, resonance, and negative space rather than technical bravura.
Ensemble A
Ensemble A is a turbulent meeting of three fiercely individual improvisers - Ignaz Schick harnesses live electronics and turntables, Anaïs Tuerlinckx dismembers and reinvents the piano, and Joachim Zoepf twists reeds into guttural shapes. The result is a volatile sound collage, sometimes blunt-force, sometimes eerily restrained.
Oneiric
Oneiric evokes drifting memories and waking dreams - an album created by Jane in Ether where recorders, piano, and violin/voice entwine in gauzy, tactile improvisations. Their music moves in soft spirals, trading clarity for a haze of overlapping tones and near-silence, aching toward something just out of reach.
Death in the Urban Jungle
Death in the Urban Jungle by Lance Austin Olsen is an expansive electroacoustic tapestry, weaving copper plate, shruti box, tape fragments, and wordless voice into a narrative of decay and emergence. Resonances and silences shape a listening experience as tactile as it is elusive.
Liminal Spaces
Liminal Spaces, by Ed Jones and Emil Karlsen, sketches a quiet but complex dialogue between saxophone and percussion. Their communication is fluid, as fleeting motifs and rhythmic fragments surface and dissolve, inviting the listener into the shifting boundaries of spontaneous improvisation.
Moon
Moon sees Simon Rose and Nicola Hein map a shifting terrain between breath and electricity. Baritone saxophone and microtonal guitar unfurl in subtle layers, crafting a microcosm where fragility and abrasion lie side by side, always moving, always searching.