Experimental / Free Improvisation

Tip! Sofa is thrilled to present the beautiful music of the Dutch snare drum player Etienne Nillesen with his new album “en.” With a snare drum only, Etienne explores simplicity of setup, movements, and material, developing music that is full of complexity and depth. Etienne’s technique is highly original, involving the use of a thin drum stick against the surface of a granular drum skin, which produces sustained pitches and harmonic layers. The product of his own groundbreaking research into th…

We are living through the same time. The worst day ever for someone might be a happy day for someone else. "The Days" are solo saxophone pieces of drama from someone's life.

Promise of Faithfulness was created during a winter in Brussels, between the search for new sounds and the interest of what we might call spirits in music. This debut solo album is a tribute to the last words of Albert Camus's speech for the Nobel Prize : "It remains for me to thank you from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to him/herself in silence every day."

Tip! Dan Blacksberg’s Psychic/Body Sound System takes a gutsy leap into a set of otherworldly sub-bass drones, fiery free jazz declamations, and melancholic sonic stories. This fully improvised album, recorded live with no effects or overdubs shows Blacksberg wielding his trombone like a seer across varied sonic environments, real and imagined. Woven together by poetic fictionalizations by Alex Smith and stunning artwork by James Dillenbeck, Psychic/Body Sound System is a trombone-driven reverie…

"Mogador" stands as a compelling exploration of the intersection between seemingly irreconcilable musical worlds: the experimental realm of analog electronic music and the deep-rooted tradition of Gnawa. This project is more than just a juxtaposition of styles; it’s a meeting of minds where the ancient and the modern, the analog and the organic, are woven together into a seamless auditory dialogue. What truly sets "Mogador" apart is the way Pedro Vian’s use of the EMS AKS Synthi and Buchla doesn…

In ‘Punti d'Incontro’ the sound is fragmented and broken up, just like splinters or bits of broken glass, into infinite pieces. Through the stages of duets and trios, Eugenio Sanna, Lucio Bonaldo and Michele Scariot give life to buzzings, high-pitched sounds, like pinheads looking at and observing each other with caution, forming strange, gelatinous agglomerates; bewildered melodies that are swallowed up through a visionary plot and enter, swallowed up, into the gaps of an infinite space, in a r…

Tip! *300 copies limited edition* Collaboration has always been at the core of Beins’s artistic practice. Reducing the line-up for the project at Morphine Raum to the duo format had pragmatic as well as creative reasons, allowing Beins more flexibility. ‘On a conceptual level, the idea was that I would play with different instruments or with a different set-up each time in order to present the breadth of my current work’, he explains. This notion also informed the selection of his partners, who …

Cosa Brava is an experimental rock and free improvisation group formed in March 2008 in Oakland, California, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Fred Frith. The band comprises Frith on guitar, Zeena Parkins on keyboards and accordion, Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Matthias Bossi on drums, Shahzad Ismaily on bass and The Norman Conquest on sound manipulation. All About Jazz described their music as somewhere between folk, Celtic, modern chamber, Latin, funk, Eastern, and prog-rock. Cosa Brava reco…

Encoder returns to his electronic deliriums with a new minimal, claustrophobic and voyeuristic work. Recorded on July 2, 2024 in San Rocco al Porto. Improvisation in the Bedroom using 3 microphones outside the window, electric bass - looper - sampler.Mastered by Angelo Bignamini

*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…

The trio of Neil Metcalfe, Philipp Wachsmann and Emil Karlsen has been working together as Spaces Unfolding since 2021. Created initially as a vehicle for acoustic exploration, the trio’s debut album ‘The Way We Speak’ was recorded in the acoustics of London’s St Mary’s Old Church. This time the trio is joined by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay (electronics), a practitioner offering multiple dialogues between instruments and electronics. Expanding on the initial idea of acoustic influence, the trio is…

300 copies only! First-ever vinyl pressing of the band's inaugural EP, 'Sleepy Jazz for Tired Cats', featuring new artwork and mastering by Marta Salogni. Established in 2013 by Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen, the duo operated until 2020 as a creative laboratory for the London-based musicians to explore beyond their traditional musical endeavours. They sought to deconstruct their usual sonic frameworks, venturing into a novel and unfamiliar auditory landscape. Their work seamlessly integrat…

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tomaga's debut album, 'Futura Grotesk', Hands in the Dark are re-releasing the long sold out record in a limited edition of 500 copies. The reissue is accompanied by the first-ever vinyl pressing of the band's inaugural EP, 'Sleepy Jazz for Tired Cats', featuring new artwork and 300 units available. Both records have been remastered by Marta Salogni for the occasion. Always in search of exploration, with an obvious obsession for deconstruction their norm…

On "Alene Et", Michaela Turcerová, a Copenhagen-based, Slovakia born musician, takes minutiae — the tiniest scrapes and breathiest hums — and distorts them into sprawling, collaged webs that barely resemble the instrument in its natural state. Each shard, when pieced together, makes a rhythmic, undulating sound born from the subtlest motions

*60 copies limited edition* “The ghost it is, who has come into possession of the Tao, reigns over gods and demons, and gives birth to heavens and earth. It kills the undying, and breathes life into the unborn. The sounds it creates, there is nothing it cannot still, nothing it cannot heave, nothing it cannot destroy, and nothing it cannot make.” In Chinese, “big ghost” is a phrase sometimes used to convey a sense of utter out-of-placeness. If you see a big ghost, you find someone who walks the …

*50 copies limited edition* Dusty Ballz (UK) and WV Sorcerer Productions (FR) join forces to present two new releases by Beijing-based noise/drone/doom metal group, Ghostmass. In Chinese, “big ghost” is a phrase sometimes used to convey a sense of utter out-of-placeness. If you see a big ghost, you find someone who walks the corporeal world in their own preposterous ways. A big ghost is not a ghost, it does not terrorise, but neither does it belong. It occurred to Li Weisi that this speaks to th…

Falter Bramnk, Philippe Lenglet (members of the Muzzix collective), and Samuel Bodart (Numero h.) have known each other for a long time, often crossing paths in various and diverse ensembles (always working with improvisation), but until now, never as a trio! A few years ago, they came together, and after a few concerts, they felt the desire to further develop their work and record it. For this project, they decided to blend plucked/struck strings (acoustic guitar surrounded and enhanced with a …

Born April 1966, in Marseille, Jérôme Noetinger discovered experimental music under the influence of the Déficit Des Années Antérieures in Caen. He is a composer/improviser/sound artist working with electroacoustic devices. Composing sometimes musique concrete in the studio, and performing improvised music using electroacoustic devices such as: the reel to reel tape recorder Revox B77 and magnetic tape, analogue synthesizers, mixing desks, speakers, microphones, various electronic household obje…

Tip! Picot is pleased to present the debut solo album by french percussionist Charles Dubois, inaugurating the label’s very first production. Charles Dubois has developed an all-terrain, rudimentary approach to percussion, blending wood, skins, bells, scrap metal, and other found objects. Entirely acoustic, this solo performance on augmented drums explores paradoxical spaces balanced between organic textures, improvised technoid patterns, mechanical movements, and raw sound materials. In this n…

The meeting of AMM guitarist Keith Rowe with Burkhard Beins on percussion, two studio sessions and one live recording, sparse and subtle improv of the highest standard.

Graveyard Processions is the first joint recording by Kai Fagaschinski and Yan Jun. The Berlin-based clarinettist and the sound artist and vocalist from Beijing blur the lines between improvisation on the one hand and record production as well as composition-after-the-fact on the other. The four pieces on »Graveyard Processions« work primarily with Jun’s voice and Fagaschinski’s playing and also add a plethora of other sounds to dizzying effect. This is the sound of two prolific artists—the form…

*100 copies limited edition* Selection of eight moments of cybernetic self-hypnosis, observe a tiny point and enter it. Associate sound impressions and abstract emotions, Nocola Henry's laboratory avatar.

A Bright Nowhere - Journeying Into Improvisation is an important audio-visual record of a landmark series of four concerts staged in London in 2022 when more than 30 musicians joined improviser, percussionist and animateur Eddie Prévost to mark his 80th birthday. The film takes a close look at improvisers who create music in the moment, free from the authority of a composer, score or conductor. Ranging from profound delicacy to subversive atonality, the “awkward wealth” of this music raises vita…

*80 copies limited edition* Recorded in autumn 2022 in the Baraque district, Louvain-La-Neuve (BE) edited and mixed at Atoma by Célia Jankowski & Valentin Noiret. Text side A taken from the children's catalogue of the first exhibition of Jean-Marie Massou's work at the Musée Arts et Marges in Brussels.

*75 copies limited edition* The unearthing of a song as a communal ritual, speaks of an intention that no longer sees itself but simply sees. “el rostro descubierto” embraces this way of seeing. Through streams of autonomy, impulse, and idiosyncratic sensibilities, the quartet coalesces around a commitment to the rigor of exploration and inquiry. The result is a collection of songs that reflect vulnerability, patience and care while exuding a binding trust in the process of collective creation. …

*Limited to 100 copies* "On the solo bagpipe release "Air Drain" Henry Birdsey (Half of Tongue Depressor) creates deep, haunting pieces that entrance the listener. Simple forms that evolve with breath and time."

*Limited to 70 copies* "Electric Shahi Baaja and Gaz recordings from southern France. Pushing out towards the reaches of stringed-instrument technique. Playing with structure and typical/a-typical sound. Based in tradition processed to confuse." - Sound Holes

*Limited to 100 copies* "This is the good stuff. Metal objects and lap steel guitar. Inhale deeply" - Sound Holes

*Limited to 100 copies* "Al Jones and Zach Rowden played a series of gigs down the west coast of Canada & the US last year. Here are a couple of those tape mangled sets." - Sound Holes

*Limited to 60 hand-numbered copies* "Ali Robertson used to be an improviser but he's not anymore. Ask him for the score for this tape so that you can play along at home." - Sound Holes

*Limited to 100 hand-numbered copies* "This is the first recording in 10 years after a hiatus of activities asBurried Machine, and also be the first release under my real name, Shin Chida. This is a collaboration release with Tom Karlsson who is a Swedish artist and also experimental musician, for the second time since my last release as Burried Machine in 2013, Stoned Mirror." - Shin Chida

De L’Angle Mort Trio is Claire Bergerault, Patrick Charbonnier & Lionel Marchetti. The three musicians collaborate for the first time as a trio. Their music explores new aspects of electroacoustic music, combining improvisational musical techniques with live electronics and dance music forms. “Aigue – Marine” consists of three compositions based on voice, electronics, accordion, and rhythmic elements. Claire Bergerault, Patrick Charbonnier & Lionel Marchetti improvise in a spontaneous way, creat…

begin form here... begin from here...our world lives when their world ceases to existbegin from here...with hopes, between silent skies, while world breathes again and the fever subsidesbegin from here...and to those who strike blowsbegin from here...while we keep goingbegin from here...while we mourn, we also fight We will be wherever the fires are lit! We will be wherever the fires are lit, a sort of sequel to Tashi Dorji’s first DC release Stateless, takes the torch and storms forward, with t…

Tip! *100 copies limited edition* This album is the third in a series of experiments exploring the magnification of the insignificant sounds. The chaotic but inherently repetitive patterns created by the interaction between the objects has been realised through a minimum of gestural action by way of a number of distancing strategies, such as the use of hand drills, film winders and motorised drills/screwdrivers. Astasie-abasie is a project of Ian Andrews which evolved out of a long running perfo…

Tip! Jean-Luc Guionnet & Jean-philippe Gross - AngleElectric surgery & saxophone hypnosis.Mental fusion & mountain structures.United forces, eyes in hands.Free 2024 tips: buy two copies and recreate your own psychoacoustics beats at home to impress the whole crowds during parties.

In Timo van Luijk's own words: This album is a bit of an accumulation of coincidences. It is the first recording session I did with Kris Vanderstraeten, back in 1994, together with Daniel Duchamp and Luis Ferin. The session recording had since disappeared from attention and 30 years later, while going through old DAT tape archives, I came across it by chance, initially even not knowing who/what it was...The tape started with a recording of cars, captured from my balcony in Brussels, where I live…

Led by his childhood experience, Jorge Queijo prints memories of travels and paths on the album themes with no limits in the discovery of new spaces and sound possibilities of the instruments used.

*2024 stock. 150 copies limited edition*  Susana Santos Silva: Trompete, Flauta Irlandesa, Caixa De MúsicaJorge Queijo: Bateria, PercussãoCarlos Guedes: Electrónicas Convidado Especial: João Menezes – Electrónica on “Desert Rush” Gravado na NYU, Abu Dhabi, 2017, por Sami NacachMasterização: Miguel CarvalhaisCapa: SupercobraDesign: Jettoki DB

Raw sounds from spontaneous playing, singing, and shouting by children aged 5 to 7, recorded on various occasions at home and in public spaces. They use (sometimes brutalising) pianos and synths, electric and acoustic guitars, percussion instruments of all kinds, analogue gear such as radios, vacuum cleaners, and old TVs, as well as anything else they can lay their hands on.

Isak Hedtjärn plays the clarinet — a straight, metal variant of the more common wooden B flat Clarinet. Kvarpan is Isak’s first ‘solo’ record, but you also hear him in ‘quartet’ with himself, too on this diverse suite of improvisations recorded ‘on location’ on a single day at Patons Malmgård — his usual practice spot just by where the ferries head over to Finland. We recorded until the throb of the boats and waiting cars took over.

  A polymath of undeniable musicality, Isak is a constant, alw…