Experimental / Free Improvisation

2026 stock Forgetting You Is Like Breathing Water, the self-titled debut from the duo of trumpeter Will Evans and guitarist, synthesist, producer and multi-instrumentalist Theo Trump, arrives like a vault revelation. It feels like a decades-old yet newly unearthed masterwork of gorgeous ambient improvisation, the sort of thing scholars live to research and shepherd into deluxe reissue. The patient, crystalline chords that swell and resonate like a series of confessions; the textured brass murmur…

Tip! “Logrende tunger” documents the first meeting between accordionist Kalle Moberg and saxophonist Kei Matsumaru — both extraordinary instrumentalists who pay great attention to the purely sonic qualities of their instruments, but also share a profoundly complimentary understanding of harmony and form. The duo was introduced by mutual friend and colleague Jim O’Rourke, whose inner ear suggested that the two might create something special together. And indeed, the recording O’Rourke made of the…

First recorded work by Swedish drone composer Mats Erlandsson and double bassist Gus Loxbo, friends for 25 years: free improvisation, electroacoustic drone and doom, reshaped in the studio through digital processing and tape work.

Joanna Mattrey on viola, Camila Nebbia on tenor sax, Camilo Ángeles on flute and Violeta García on cello, recorded live at Jazzwerkstatt Bern in 2024: strings, winds and breath in a shifting collective language.

Pianist Irene Aranda's trio with saxophonist Don Malfon and vocalist Ami Yamasaki, whose echolocation vocal practice meets Malfon's extended saxophone techniques in an absorbing improvised language.

Third album by Glass Triangle, Zeena Parkins on electric harp, Mette Rasmussen on alto saxophone and voice and Ryan Sawyer on drums: a studio session moving from delicate passages to dense, kinetic interplay.

Colombian reed player María Valencia, on alto saxophone and clarinet, and Argentine cornetist Leonel Kaplan in an intimate improvised duo recorded in Belgrade in 2025, patient and full of textural invention.

Solo cello and voice by Julia Biłat, recorded live near Berlin: splintered harmonics, rough bow textures and resonant drones in improvised compositions that move like a passage through shadow.

Cellist Elisabeth Coudoux and guitarist Chuck Roth, who plays unprocessed and unpedaled, in a free improvised duo of shifting densities, extended techniques and fragile silences, recorded in Philadelphia in 2025.

Drummer and percussionist Sofia Borges and saxophonist Yedo Gibson in a tense, searching duo recorded in Lisbon: objects, prepared sounds and tenor and soprano lines in improvisations built on texture, pressure and close listening.

Jessica Pavone's sixth solo viola album builds on the open strings and their sympathetic resonances, with electronic effects as a playing partner and guest appearances by Fred Frith on guitar and Joe Lally on bass.

Solo guitar by Swiss improviser Florian Stoffner: six pieces he recorded himself at Bee Street studio, mixed by John Butcher, stretching the instrument's vocabulary through texture, space and spontaneous invention.

Minutiae is the first full-length release form Stockholm’s Ināra Quartet, made up of brothers Kasper (guitar, banjo, mandolin) and Mauritz Agnas (bass, cello), Johan Graden (piano, harmonium, synths) and Mischa Grind (percussion). Drawing on wide performance and composition experience in free improvisation, jazz, and composed new music, the quartet have carved out a unique niche where radical approaches to rhythmic organisation and group interaction are wedded to immediately accessible, folkish …

Renowned saxophonist, woodwind player, bandleader and composer Tamar Osborn stands at the heart of the UK’s forward-thinking music movement. A multi-instrumentalist whose genre-slipping creativity has made her the go-to voice for artists within the new wave of jazz and improvised music, Osborn now unveils her most ambitious and exploratory project to date. Well known and highly regarded as a bandleader and featured player across a wide number of groups - most notably her modal ensemble Collocuto…

Oruma is a trio formed by Ola Rzepka (drums, zither, percussion), Artur Rumiński (electric guitar) and Mat Barski (electric guitar). At its foundation is the musical dialogue previously developed by Rumiński and Barski as a guitar duo and documented on the albums “On the Margin” and “At the Junction”. Their encounter with Ola Rzepka during Kraków’s Kakofonie series opened this music to a new sense of dynamics, pulse and collective form. Oruma’s music exists at the intersection of free improvisat…

Confront Recordings announces the release of Dancing with Dragonflies, a compelling new collaboration between double bassist Alan Niblock and percussionist Mark Wastell.

On A Cold Night in Rome, Gregorio Bardini turns a 2007 Cold Spring event into a ritual of noise, flute, voice and historical residue. Ezra Pound’s metallic ghost, bagpipes, violin, distorted guitar and ethnic percussion converge in a live document that feels both industrial and archaic - a harsh, deeply human soundscape outside category.

On Nouvelles Ethnologiques de l’Obscur Museum, NEO Museum forge a fierce, finely cut collision of free jazz, radical rock and European avant-garde composition. Born in mid-80s Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, the trio turns saxophone, guitar and drums into a compact laboratory of fractured forms, bristling improvisation and volatile collective invention.

Inuit singer Tanya Tagaq live at Victoriaville in May 2010 with Jean Martin on drums and computer and Jesse Zubot on violin: throat singing, cries and breath stretched into an hour of raw, physical improvisation.

René Lussier and Martin Tétreault meet Otomo Yoshihide at Victoriaville on 19 May 2008: two electric guitars, three turntables and a spy microphone in the trio's first performance together.

Montreal turntablists Martin Tétreault and Kid Koala, live at Victoriaville on 21 May 2005, vinyl only: old self-help and demonstration records, scratches and loops, from the noise side and the hip-hop side of the instrument.

Eugene Chadbourne and René Lussier, live in Paris and at Victoriaville in May 2002: acoustic and electric guitars, banjo and voice in a twisted hoedown of free improvisation, bluegrass and country blues.

Michel Doneda on soprano saxophone, eRikm on samplers and scratches, Jean-Marc Montera on guitar and electronics, recorded in Metz and Lons-le-Saunier in May 1999. Liner notes by Thurston Moore.

CCMC in its trio line-up of Michael Snow, John Oswald and Paul Dutton: piano and synthesizer, alto saxophone and sound poetry, recorded live in Toronto, Jonquière and Victoriaville in 1996 and 1997.

Miya Masaoka's orchestra, recorded live in San Francisco in 1995 and 1997 with George Lewis, Vijay Iyer, Trevor Dunn and others: strings, Asian winds, shamisen, electronics and turntables under her whole-body conduction.

Eugene Chadbourne and Paul Lovens on tour in May 1996, recorded in New York, in Michigan and in an Italian restaurant in Traverse City: guitar and banjo against drums, cymbals and saw, a suite for the waiters of the world.

Thurston Moore on guitar with drummers Tom Surgal and William Winant, live at Victoriaville on 17 May 1996: a single album-length improvisation of feedback and percussion, named after a Tibetan Buddhist deity.

Elliott Sharp writing for strings: Orchestra Carbon's violins, viola, cellos and double bass with electronic percussion, recorded in New York in 1992. Dense, restless pieces between contemporary chamber music and noise.

Zeena Parkins' 1992 album recorded in New York: electric harp, keyboards and tape with Ikue Mori on drums, Chris Cochrane on guitar, David Shea, and her sisters Margaret and Sara on cello, violin and voice.

Lindsay Cooper's song cycle on texts by Sally Potter, about the divided Europe of the Cold War, live at Victoriaville in October 1989 with Phil Minton, Hugh Hopper, Marilyn Mazur, Alfred Harth and Elvira Plenar.

Fred Frith and René Lussier's duo, recorded at the 1986 Victoriaville festival and finished at Studio Victor: guitars, bass, violin, voices and tape in short, playful pieces. The CD adds four tracks recorded in New York in 1992.

Uncorking the well of wit, whimsy and cool, refined fury that’s fueled his path around this world, Mayo Thompson pours out a new round: a first ever album of solo guitar music, not to mention a first solo album in almost forever, Quiet Days in Cliché. With The Red Krayola, Mayo made three albums of pop music in the late 1960s, taking the idea of rock ‘n roll songs farther into the hoped-for realms of possibility than 98% of their psychedelic brethren before or since. Following the demise of the …

Eat The Rich is an eclectic intersection of two serial collaborators: Giffoni (No Fun Fest / No Fun Productions) continues to explore new dimensions in sound, primarily using modular / synths (with recent full lengths on Ideologic Organ and Room40), paired here with the instinctually abstract percussion of Corsano (known from working with everyone from Bill Orcutt to Richard Bishop to Bjork but with literally 100's of appearances under his belt since the turn of the century). Produced by David S…

Collective improvisations by 77 people of all ages, from seasoned musicians to first-time performers, with the Bon Odori song Eejanaika Ondo. Produced by Otomo Yoshihide.

Guitar solos by Shin'ichi Isohata and six duets with Otomo Yoshihide, electric and acoustic, 24 tracks recorded in Osaka in early 2013. Jigen Production.

Ithaca trio of Sarah Hennies, Willie B. and Keir Neuringer, three percussionists reaching into vibraphone, saxophone and piano. Eight studio improvisations, playful and energetic, held against a meditative core.

Ylang Ylang’s Will to Love suggests both a challenge and a determination simultaneously. What does it actually take to love? Amidst the inherent contradictions of the self and the world around us, how do we come back to the foundation of love? The songs on this album sit in that place of friction: stillness and action, fear and desire, poison and medicine, reluctance and momentum, the pull to protect and the pull to stay open. You can look at the process Catherine Debard undertook in recording W…

"Limpe Fuchs at the piano. Playing for the moon, four drawings on the wall, one on the cover of the LP (RESLP022). A musical improvisation, a voyage, visions, meditation, presence and absence... the subtle art of a silent film pianist. Like Schirren (RESLP003) did, but never recorded. Now, here, Limpe in front of the screen on the wall, the light projected on it through the dark theatre, like the sun on the moon, and the images reflected on our faces, our eyes, her eyes. One of the almost lost a…

Big tip! A pioneering figure in Japanese improvisational music, Toshimaru Nakamura has collaborated and performed with artists including Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Keith Rowe, David Sylvian, and Christian Fennesz. Personally curated by Nakamura himself, this Early Best Album traces the formative years of his singular musical journey. Through the groundbreaking technique he developed known as the No-Input Mixing Board, Toshimaru Nakamura has established a truly unique musical language. For nearl…

*300 copies limited edition* Tara Cunningham’s guitar glitch miniatures draw patterns in negative space on new mini-album Warm Ground. Operating predominantly within improvisational and experimental music, guitarist Tara Cunningham has developed a discrete sonic language that reveals the full textural and timbral range of her instrument. Marking a new chapter for Cunningham that builds on her solo debut, Almost – Not Exactly, released on Non Classical in 2025, Warm Ground unfolds across seven co…