Experimental / Free Improvisation

Friends and musical cohorts since the early 1980s, these three master improvisers come together to perform a freewheeling set of outrageous and mind-blowing improvisations. Recorded at Roulette, founded in 1978 and one of New York’s most adventurous venues, the music is full of surprising twists and jumps from one mood to another with mercurial synchronicity. Dedicated to the memory of Downtown theatrical genius Richard Foreman, “Alchemical Theatre” presents nine pieces of tele-pathic, counter-i…

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…

Tip! *100 copies limited edition* Russian modular synthesist Ilia Belorukov, now based in Serbia, and Alex Riva, a Zurich-based flutist, here focusing on woodwind recorders. The pair have performed with Notice Recordings alum Jason Kahn, and toured as a duo with the novel instrumentation they use here, presented on “Wrestling for Futility”. The pairing is not a combination we hear often, and Belorukov and Riva seem to relish in the obscurity and uniqueness of the timbres and textures conjured by…

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 …

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 reflect the times as Yara steps out, as if onto ice, into a new life on a new continent. She works with unfamiliar instruments, new materials and new sounds to build on her intimate style; homemade mechanical music boxes and a personal archive of family…

Dark Kitchen, the latest collaboration from Tom Jackson and Daniel Thompson, emerges as a striking exploration of sound and emotion. Released through Confront Recordings, a label renowned for adventurous and boundary-pushing music, this album exemplifies the duo’s deep commitment to improvisation and sonic innovation. From haunting textures to dynamic interplay, Dark Kitchen offers listeners a richly layered experience that challenges the conventional boundaries of modern music. Jackson and Thom…

Confront Recordings proudly presents Towers of Silence, an evocative new album by acclaimed artists Don Malfon and Vasco Trilla. This release explores sonic landscapes that blur the boundaries between experimental jazz and ambient improvisation, inviting listeners into a deeply immersive auditory experience. On Towers of Silence, Malfon and Trilla weave intricate textures and haunting melodies, crafting a soundscape both intense and contemplative. Their masterful interplay demonstrates a profoun…

“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.

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-…

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…

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…

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.

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 …

kÖök continues their journey into the unknown and invites vocalist Sarah Camille and folk musician, Harding fiddler and harpist Tuva Færden into their musical universe. Over a few days in the studio, the four musicians have played and experimented with sound and interplay, and the result is a unique soundscape consisting of poetry, improvised Norwegian folk tunes and extended use of instruments, voice and space. The music and song titles paint a picture of a gloomy world, but with hope for a bri…

French cellist Martine Altenburger and British guitarist John Russell recorded this live performance at the Musique en Mouvement Festival in Jarny, France in November 2008. Altenburger, Toulouse-based and conservatory-trained, moves between performances of Cage and Scelsi and improvisation with sound explorers like Michel Doneda and Lê Quan Ninh (who mastered this session). Russell, a London hardcore improviser, brings decades of experience to this encounter. One reviewer describes listening to …

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.

Bassist and composer Joseph Franklin returns to NM for a wildstyle heat exchange, actioned live in collaboration with synthesist, composer and improviser Ben Carey. Modestly, this one does what it says on the box, however ‘a thousand tiny mutinies live’ revises motifs and prompts from Franklin’s solo bass and extended technique LP for NM in 2024 with spectacular license, captured in stunning high resolution audio. Surrounded by an encircling audience, Franklin’s fragmented acoustic cycles issued…

Culmus (Latin for "stalk") marks the latest chapter in an ongoing collaboration that began in September 2023 and continues to evolve. As co-inhabitants of a shared ecological and mental space, Franki Wals and Chang Deng-yao navigate a sonic continuum that bridges the human and the non-human, creating a piece where electroacoustic improvisation productively meets the indeterminate resonances of wind-activated plant matter. These materials intertwine and form a subtly layered aural tapestry, where…

Duo improvisations for shakuhachi and ney recorded in Ealing, west London, July and October 2007. Clive Bell (shakuhachi) and Bechir Saade (ney) - two deeply committed improvisers working at the intersection of traditional practice and contemporary exploration - unite for their first recording as a duo. An entirely acoustic affair. Both instruments are made of plants from the same grass family - the shakuhachi from bamboo, the ney from reeds - and share fundamental similarities in timbre, breath…

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 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 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 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 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 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.

2025 Stock. 300 copies. Jac Berrocal and David Fenech have been recording together for over a decade, a partnership that has produced albums with Ghédalia Tazartès (RIP) and Vincent Epplay, and led to performances alongside Felix Kubin, Jean-Hervé Peron, Jean Noel Cognard, and Thierry Müller (Illitch). Their work together occupies a distinct zone in French experimental music—playful without being frivolous, structured without being rigid, drawing equally from free jazz, musique concrète, and the…

Selected Works 1985-2005 by Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors assembles eleven transformative pieces from two decades of percussive ambient innovation. This 2025 repress captures their hypnotic blend of ceremonial rhythm, improvisation and deeply spiritual overtones, threading together global traditions and ecstatic energy to create immersive soundscapes meant for both movement and contemplation.​

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, 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 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.

The Duke of Wellington is a vivid portrait of Derek Bailey and John Stevens in spontaneous conversation, recorded live at a London pub in 1989. The set captures their dynamic synergy; jagged guitar and agile percussion interlock and diverge in an unrepeatable display of free improvisational skill.

Within (2) / Appearance (2) by Michael Pisaro-Liu presents a contemplative exploration of duration and silence, foregrounding gradual transformation. These extended works for guitar and double bass, created with Michael Francis Duch, reward patient listening and engage with resonance and subtlety over spectacle.

Porch Music documents No Hope Orchestra, an ambitious large ensemble led by Paul McCarthy and featuring core members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. Recorded live at The Box gallery concert in Los Angeles, the project harnesses a vivid assembly of improvisers—Mitchell Brown, Elaine Carey, Dennis Duck, Ace Farren Ford, Juan Gomez, Mike Gonzalez, Joseph Hammer, Keith Lubow, Nathaniel Mellors, Joe Potts, Rick Potts, Trevor Rounseville, Alex Stevens, Molly Tierney, and John Wiese. This releas…

Mont-real (Split) brings together Sam Shalabi and the duo of Mike Gangloff & Liam Grant for a two-track release on Carbon Records. The split, out October 24, 2025, showcases Shalabi's singular experimental approach alongside Gangloff and Grant’s free-folk, string-driven improvisation, bridging Montreal’s avant scenes with Appalachian-influenced drone and psych.​

Refracting beatifically through realities and mirages flickering along his aural parade route, Animal Collective’s Geologist rides the high country on a hurdy gurdy of many colours. Via the mystery science of musical engagement, we take his sonic kaleidoscope of encounters into our own experience as we listen. That’s the beauty of Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, the debut solo transmission of the heart and soul and life and times of Geologist.

Reality Is Not a Theory by Mark Fell and Pat Thomas is a vivid collaboration exploring the friction between theorized structure and lived musical experience. By fusing Fell’s technologically limited triggers for creativity with Thomas’s exploratory improvisation, the album reimagines not only electronic and jazz vocabularies but also notions of time and agency, rendering a shifting landscape where each moment is both calculated and unexpected.​

Suns of the Heart, the sixth solo album from Colin Fisher, unfurls a suite of intricate, emotionally charged improvisations that blend treated guitar, elemental electronics, and gestural samples. Across six movements, Fisher crafts an enveloping soundworld where each texture pulses with meditative warmth and restless sonic curiosity.​

condition (record/cover): EX/VG+. One of the rarest artifacts from Italy's most radical composers collective! Formed in Rome in 1964, the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza brought together extraordinary minds - Franco Evangelisti, Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi, Mario Bertoncini, Walter Branchi, Giovanni Piazza, and Jesús Villa Rojo - in unprecedented experiments with collective improvisation. This 1975 release, their fifth album, captures the ensemble at their sublime best. Delicate ac…

*Edition of 100* K/S/R (Ben Kujawski, Abigail Smith & Justin Rhody) have been performing and recording together since 2022. Recorded by the band themselves during a full week of day-long sessions - violin, percussion, lap steel, accordion, flute, guitar, harmonica, and rhodes piano were each stretched, damaged & made to sing through various extended techniques. The trio's non-concentric approach to collective improvisation mirrors the dark harmonic density and symbiotic formal structures of the …

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.