Experimental / Free Improvisation

*2023 stock* "Hello, hope you’re doing well. I just started a little project, and I’d like to invite you to participate. Not to worry, it won’t take up too much of your time. I’m asking drummers/percussionists to record a few short fills or phrases. It can be recorded by simple means; a hand-held recorder or even a phone will do just fine. These gathered recordings will be used as the ‘Lego bricks’ to build a series of short rhythmical collages with. It would be fantastic if you’d like to join t…

** Edition of 300 ** "Jeugdbrand is the voice (Dennis Tyfus) and the beat (Jeroen Stevens) of Antwerp. They perform a sparkling drama, a theatrical tragedy, marinated in our classic Antwerp anarchic sense of humor. Recorded at Joris Caluwaerts’ Finster Studios - a landmark in Belgian music. The music of Jeugdbrand reminds me a bit of the music of the late Ghédalia Tazartès - especially when it comes to reinterpreting and combining musical idioms - but trying to put a direct reference on this alb…

Biggest Tip! Quartz-Mirliton Cassettes has been among the most obscure of 1970s experimental music labels. This forthcoming VOD release, presented in two boxes, throws light on this mysterious cassette venture, its context and associated recordings. Closely associated with the London Musicians Collective, Quarz was launched by Paul Burwell and David Toop in 1977. Produced in tiny editions with handmade covers, the cassettes largely documented live sessions and field recordings made by a close ne…

Never-before-released 1981 live recordings by Alterations, the great British free-improv quartet of David Toop, Peter Cusack, Steve Beresford and Terry Day. Hundreds of instruments cover the floor; the music reacts to room, noise and audience alike. Playful and rigorous at once. From Sub Rosa's SubLogos series. LP.

Tip! Inspired by Georg Trakl's "Nocturnal Song" and recorded in separate locations during lockdown 2021. The Japanese free music players Harutaka Mochizuki and Makoto Kawashima excite with their haunting play in the spirit of Kaoru Abe – beautiful and sad and violent at the same time. The French lapsteel guitarist Michel Henritzi mixes the pieces together, they float naturally into a melancholic but vibrant soundpoem, envocating their ghosts, their desires and feeling the mood of Trakls poem, th…

Temporary Super Offer! ”In its sum, Draw From The Source recounts a multidimensional journey whose sources and paths constantly cross. Marco von Orelli and Sheldon Suter reveal a lot about themselves, about their individual idiosyncrasies and about their common feelings in this performance carried by finest lyricism. But behind this journey from the north to the south, from urban stagnation to Mediterranean lightness, there is also a call for us to reflect on the true nature of our existence in …

Amgen presents Rhodri Davies's Trem. Live at All Angels, St Michael and All Angels Church, West London.

Black Truffle’s first ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s seminal 1978 LP, "Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri" - issued in a beautiful edition immaculately reproducing the original - is a truly historic event. Among the composer’s most famous and sought-after releases that has remained out of print for decades, it is a masterstroke of pulsing minimalism, glacial ambience, musique concrète, and forthright experimentalism. Absolutely stunning and still managing to turn experimental music on its head mor…

Tip! Release on Raw Tonk Records. Colin Webster - Baritone SaxophoneDirk Serries - Acoustic GuitarEmilie Škrijelj - AccordionMartina Verhoeven - Double BassTom Malmendier - Percussion Recorded at Oud Klooster, Brecht, Belgium on 5th May 2022. Mixed and mastered by Dirk Serries

Reading Group is thrilled to introduce the debut LP from a new improvising group of three singular artists: Fred Moten (voice), Brandon López (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums). López and Cleaver have been improvising together as a duo for a number of years, over which they’ve developed a secret, unspoken language of organically growing repetitive figures in a wide range of sonic palettes. López and Cleaver have long been recognized as some of the most vital voices in contemporary experim…

Tip! Autonomie Minérale is the apex of a triptych that sprang up in less than three years, with a feeling of urgency. There is nothing fortuitous about this name, “Tachycardie.” Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy, is a musician and a composer (Pneu, I N S T I T U T R I C E, La Colonie de vacances) as well as a plastic artist (InfraOrdinaire), and in this project he continues his very singular exploration of the depths of sonic matter. After Probables (2019) and Sommé-e (2020), his previous intuitions have d…

Tip! *2022 stock. In process of stocking* Their second duo recording, the follow-up to 1999's Apertura. Off-Road finds the two of them forsaking their earlier, glacially meditative m.o. for a shower of digitally recomposed slivers, the metal-on-metal timbre of a saxophone equipped with contact mics, Grubbs's chiming electric guitar, and Gustafsson's pro rhythm analog synthesizer clipped to the bell of his horn.

Soundscapes, drones, disruptive aberrations, textures and perplexingly absorbing interactions between French guitarist, graphic and sound artist Xavier Mussat and saxophonist Quentin Rollet, performing live at Instants Chavires, in Montreuil, France, in 2020, for eight diverse and unusual improvisations.

Is there a music that can be understood in any culture on this planet? Is it possible to co-compose a music from basic elements which are valid in most musical cultures? What are such basic elements? Do fundamental musical particles even exist and what could they be? Driven by such questions, Metaculture created an improvised music that builds upon basic musical elements and on the individual musical histories of the ensemble members. The ensemble spirit is fed by a common interest in all kinds …

"Pulses, subtle interactions within common noise-sound surfaces that glide along in a leisurely, relaxed manner and yet are always in a state of flux. This is how briefly and succinctly the music of the quartet around the pianist and synthesiser player Philip Zoubek, the trumpeter Franz Hautzinger, the electronic musician Ignaz Schick and the drummer and percussionist Tony Buck could be put into words. One could add to this brief description: diverse percussion sounds, bowed sounds, glissandi, s…

Recorded in St. James Norlands church in London in November 1968 and first released in the following year, this work stands as the first solo bass album in the history of Jazz and improvised music. Born in 1934 in San Francisco, Barre Phillips is one the most influential bassists of his generation. In his long career Phillips has played and recorded with almost everyone in the world of Jazz and beyond, a long list of forward thinking music icons including Don Ellis, Bobby Hutcherson, Dave Hollan…

Henry Dagg and Evan Parker improvised together for the first time as part of the Free Range series in Canterbury, Kent, on December 2, 2021. For the performance, Evan played soprano saxophone, and Henry developed a new electronic instrument called the Stage Cage, to both process Evan’s live sound as well as generate its own sounds. The Stage Cage includes four valve test-oscillators, a pair of ring modulators, frequency shifter, chromatic zither, and a variable tape delay system (consisting of t…

Super Tip! The musical world of Sonorhc is oriented to collective improvisation and the research of tones; they create a sound full of invention, rich technically, made by many differents instruments which incorporated judiciously elements from the rock music, free-jazz, acid-psych, concrete, ethnic and experimental making them as one of the most atypical French Underground group, and seems somewhere more closer to the German “krautrock” bands like Between, Agitation Free, Deuter, Limbus 3, Dzya…

From the opening seconds it’s clear that the debut recording of the improvising sextet VÖ is not just another free improv session. The deeply meditative sounds may conjure disparate folk traditions from around the globe, whether Scandinavian fiddle tunes or the way Alex Zethson’s meandering pump organ evokes the exploratory harmonium lines in Pakistani qawwali music, but these associations are mostly coincidental. The ensemble members are devoted to improvised and experimental music mostly as an…

*In process of stocking* Look Like is the first complete solo release from bassist and vocalist Kelsey Mines. A series of improvised solo-duets, Look Like explores how listening to our on-going internal dialogue helps us conjure honest, outward expressions.

Joanna Mattrey & gabby fluke-mogul, two of the most radical & revolutionary New York-based improvisers, join forces in the birth of Oracle. Rejoicing in the strange magic of sound, the duo weaves together new worlds while simultaneously destroying the ones that no longer serve them. Oracle is a declaration, a remedy, and a revelation.

Edition of 50* A classically trained Chinese bamboo flautist, Lao Dan picked up the saxophone again around 2013 as he went wildly astray in the world of avant-garde jazz and free improvisation. While demonstrating an ever-growing ability to deliver explosive force and intensity in his free playing, Lao Dan keeps a brutal honesty in his approach to the instrument. He plays ‘jazz’ as what it is, not what it’s supposed to be. Navigating constantly between the East and the West, Lao Dan embraces a u…

*In process of stocking* “Eternal Triangle was a dream come true: bringing together two of my favourite musicians in the whole world with me on the stage of AngelicA. Two musicians capable of encompassing both the most earthly and natural and the most rarefied and cosmic dimensions of sound, spontaneously and often seamlessly. Drawing from inspiration and life experience. We certainly didn’t know this performance was going to be Toshinori Kondo’s last one outside of Japan, and his last concert w…

Tip! *200 copies limited edition* “If the measure of freedom is measured by the resilience of an elastic band, they get close to the point where the rubber is about to snap, but it is exactly at that spot, where they recognise something and react to that with a refreshing lack of explicitness, that you can feel the result, and unfolded potential, of a shared intimacy.” - Guy Peters

Tip! *Edition of 100.* Fire Point is multicolored and elusive. The sounds contained therein are agitated, fluid and amorphous, as if listening to the sonic realizations of various characteristics of multiple landscapes. Branches intersect, tree foliage collectively billows, and groundwater seeps into the encompassing substrate. The interactions of these three musicians are effortless, and is the result of both remote and physically-collaborative engagements. Starting with percussion tracks laid …

*In process of stocking. Edition of 100.* Malcolm Goldstein has long been an admired figure for Notice Recordings; such albums Soundings and The Seasons: Vermont were foundational for our early forays into contemporary music. It is with great honor, then, that we present a document of a 2003 live improvised duo set with Fred Lonberg-Holm recorded at 3030 in Chicago. With ample room-tone, sounds of people shuffling into place, atmospheric sounds from the occasional interior/exterior crossover, Lo…

Tip! Surveying late 20th century underground music - sounds that largely emerged before the internet delivered the illusion of interconnectedness - the most noteworthy often sprang from second cities, small towns, and backwaters, rather than cultured metropolitan centres like New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Boredom, marginalisation, and relative isolation seem to have been essential, counterintuitive components to the becoming of great art. Nowhere was this more true than in NZ/Aotearoa, the…

Over the years, Otomo’s music has spanned across Free Jazz, Noise, Free Improvisation, Sound Art, popular music, film scores, and compositions for large amateur ensembles. Carrying the lineage of the Japanese Free Jazz movement that developed in the 1960’s, Otomo has exploited the sonic possibilities of both the electric guitar and turntable. He is one of the key figures who defined a now internationally recognized genre of Japanoise. His band Ground Zero, which was active throughout the 1990’s,…

Tip! A series of ghostly ink drawings and scanographs by eRikm, accompanied by a mixed sound piece, with sound texts freely inspired by fragments of stories about the universe of the Yokai, these ghosts and supernatural creatures that inhabit Japanese mythology, between hypnotizing soundscapes and bewitching instrumental devices. "Or bringing out the invisible, summoning ghosts. Having, to my knowledge, never encountered any ghost or other ectoplasm, the idea of representing some of them in grap…

"The great pianist Agusti Fernandez and I have had a strong musical connection and friendship for many years. We first worked together on a recording project led by the drummer Ramon Lopez in Valencia, Spain. After that we corresponded and eventually began our performances together during a residency of mine at The Stone in New York—the first of what is now, many other performances here and in Spain. We share many interests in music" - Joe Morris

Tip! Limited edition of 50. Mexican visual and sound artist Concepción Huerta and Peruvian composer and flutist Camilo Ángeles, started working together on a collaborative duo in early 2018 in Mexico City. The music of this project is crafted by the coalition of these two artists' personalities and sound aesthetic approaches, resulting on constructions of extensive sound spectrums that mutate very slowly evoking imaginary landscapes to contemplate through their spatial and dreamlike sound narrat…

A live performance of saxophonist Bhob Rainey, electronics artist Bonnie Jones and percussionist Chris Cogburn

Recorded live -no overdubs- in Koto Tama Records Studio (Aug. - Oct. 2007). Packaged in a 'matchbook' style cover.

Recorded 20th - 24th of May 2008 at Q02, Brussels. Research center for the definition of happiness (Istanbul branch). Edition of 500 copies. Packaged in a round six-panel textured card cover.

NYC-based electroacoustic improvisation trio Bloodmist presents Arc, their third full length album.

Tip! *2022 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Splitrec presents Parasite solo prepared guitar works by Rhys Mottley.

Tip! *2022 stock* 180º is a new group formed in August 2018 - Nick Ashwood acoustic guitar, Jim Denley bass flute, and Amanda Stewart voice and text. Amanda and Jim first met in the late 1980s, founding Machine for Making Sense in 1989, as well as performing numerous duos over the years — a long and fruitful association. They’ve always been interested in what their music instinct can learn from language and vice versa. Nick is from the southern tip of Tasmania. Jim and Nick have been developing …

Tip! This fourth release by Great Waitress titled back, before was recorded before the pandemic and lockdowns in 2018, and has taken four years to get to production. A live set was beautifully recorded by Peter Farrar at the Annandale Creative Arts Centre in Sydney and mixed and mastered by Joe Talia.  In the elegant liner notes, Chris Abrahams writes of Great Waitress transcending “ ...the individual contributions of Mayas, Altman and Brooks. It's an identity made from a multi-dimensional count…

Tip! *Limited edition of 200 copies* Lava music, maybe. Lava music, always evolving, always surprising, always exciting because we don’t know what the other will bring to the music that we start improvising and exploring together. We’ll see what bubbles will form in this lava music and sometimes an idea comes up, a bubble pops and it becomes a track. Lava, like the wax that was melted to press the record. Lava, like energy flowing, slow. Improvising most of the time, you really connect with the …

*In process of stocking* Klanggalerie are happy to contionue a series of outstanding guitar music that was started by Clean Feed. "In these sick times, there must be a 6th volume of this on-going compilation covering "the parallel realities of contemporary guitarism". Our latest collection runs from A to Z with guitar pieces reflecting the sheer inventiveness and fabulous sonic visions inspired by this instrument of myriad manifestations. The cast of characters ranges from the "legendary" to the…