Experimental / Free Improvisation

The untold early history of Amsterdam's seminal collective. Founded in 1967 by three of European free music's leading lights -- pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, and saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) was simply one of the most important vehicles for experimentation and improvisation in the history of creative music. Culling ideas and materials from jazz, modern and contemporary classical music, Fluxus, traditional music from the Balkans a…

**Rare 1989 LP by the cult German experimental improvisation group.** A flaming acoustic session of screechy improvised music with 3 prepared string-instruments and 3 brass-instruments: Carmen Nagel-Berninger, viola; Inge Salcher, viola; Peter Fjodoroff - cello; George Augusta, bassetto; Wilhelm Riemenschneider, flugelhorn; Michael Kopfermann, tenor horn.

* 2021 Stock * Introducing the debut collaborative release from sometime Nurse With Wound/Current 93 member, Andrew Liles and Jean Hervé Peron of Faust. Neither of these artists needs any introduction and all expectations are overtaken with this incredible album. Here is something that sounds like both a Krautrock album and also like nothing else you can imagine. Its twists and turns keep surprising and thrilling you several listens on from the first. The words "classic" and "masterpiece" would …

* In process of stocking * Improvisation rattles some listeners. Maybe they’re even suspicious of it. John Coltrane’s saxophonic flights of fancy, Jimi Hendrix’s feedback drenched guitar solos, Ravi Shankar’s sitar extrapolations—all these sounds seem like so much noodling or jamming, indulgent self-expression. “Just”improvising, as is sometimes said. For these music fans, it seems natural that music is meant to be composed. In the first book of its kind, John Corbett’s "A Listener’s Guide to Fr…

* 2020 Stock. Digipack CD * Helicopter presents Live At Super Deluxe by Hair Stylistics, Pain Jerk, and John Wiese. Recorded live 27 September 2018 at Super Deluxe, Tokyo, Japan.

* 2020 Stock. 6-Panel Digipack CD * Helicopter presents Live At Akihabara Club Goodman / Tokyo by Toshiji Mikawa, John Wiese, and Seiichi Yamamoto. Recorded 24 September 2018 at Akihabara Club Goodman, Tokyo, Japan.

Much needed repress. **Never-before released document of Don Cherry blowing cool fire in Rome, 1976. First official release. Mastered from the original master tapes. CD version** An amazing document of the life experiment that was the Organic Music Society. This super quality audio, recorded by RAI (the italian public broadcasting company) in 1976 for television, documents a quartet concert focused on vocals compositions and improvisations. Here, Don Cherry and his family-community’s musical bel…

Low-frequency, high-impact events such as earthquakes and tsunamis are not preventable, three bodies in a room sonically engaging are even less so. Beresford’s architectural narrative drives Magaletti and Martino’s rhythmic interventions into compelling short stories about dancing, dressing in rags, dreaming, swallowing, flight, famine, transformation, and dystopias/utopias. Frequency Disasters are pianist, improviser and composer Steve Beresford, percussionist Valentina Magaletti and bass playe…

NoBusiness presents Live at Willisau 1993, a new set of recordings by  Juozas Milašius / Tomas Kutavičius / Dalius Naujokaitis and Lithuanian Young Composers Orchestra recorded live 26th August, 1993 at Willisau Festival, Switzerland. Mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Juozas Milašius - guitarTomas Kutavičius - pianoDalius Naujokaitis - drums Lithuanian Young Composers Orchestra:Vytas Labutis - saxophones, cymbal, clapping, tramplingVilija Naujokaitienė - vocal,…

* Edition of 250 * The arrival of Amirtha Kidambi and Lea Bertucci’s End of Softness finds us in a vastly different world, a mere six months after the release of their debut Phase Eclipse (2019). Working remotely in isolation, Bertucci and Kidambi engaged in a process of creative editing, lifting fragments from the Phase Eclipse sessions and a live performance, to re-contextualize the music amidst a pandemic. The crisis lends a new expression of agony to the torrential caterwauls of Kidambi’s vo…

* Edition of 175 * Recorded on May 30th, 2018 at Tempo Reale Festival in Florence, Italy. Mixed & Mastered by Ryan Power. Performed by Otomo Yoshihide - guitar and turntables and Chris Pitsiokos - alto saxophone and electronics. Layout & Cover Art by Jaime Zurverza.

* In process of stocking. Includes 1 LP , 48 pages book (LP size) & 1 piece of 500 pieces puzzle of Edward Jarvis painting ''The Hypnagogic Puzzle'' * Underflow Records presents Worn.Kissed. by Mats Gustafsson. The box-set is inspired by paintings of Edward Jarvis exhibited at the Underflow Record Store & Art Gallery in January-March 2020. Recorded by Alex Bolpasis and mixed by Gustav Penka at Suono studio. Mastering and mastercut by Andreas Lubich at Loop-O, Berlin.Mats Gustafsson is a Saxplaye…

* In process of stocking * Underflow Record presents a live performance by The Underflow. The album includes four tracks performed by David Grubbs - guitar, Mats Gustafsson -  flute, fluteophone, baritone saxophone, live electronics, Rob Mazurek - piccolo trumpet, wooden flute, electronics, percussion, voice. Recorded at the Underflow Record Store and Art Gallery, Athens, Greece, on May 31, 2019. Mixed and mastered by Alex Inglizian, ESS Chicago, summer 2019.

* Edition of 500. In process of stocking * Underflow Record presents Another by Magam. The album includes Moody Alien's book "The Flame Within" and the digital album with bonus unreleased track. Magam is a shape-shifting, ever-evolving project, initiated in 2013 and directed by Moody Alien, that operates with the participation of musicians & other artists from around the globe, always embracing improvisation, experimentation & the unpredictable. The album includes seven tracks performed by Călin…

Christian Kobi is one of the leading names on the improv scene in Bern, Switzerland. His work includes collaborations with Phill Niblock, Jürg Frey, Taku Sugimoto, and Keith Rowe. His new album, “Cathedral”, closes a trilogy for saxophone solo that started with “Canto” (2010) and “r a w l i n e s” (2013), and which was recorded in the former Swisscom high-bay warehouse - probably the largest underground space in Bern. That space serves Christian as a place of exploration of sound, silence and ac…

When Acid Mothers Temple and Richard Pinhas visited Lima for the first time, in November 2017, to participate in the experimental music festival "Integraciones", Luis Alvarado, the director of Buh Records and curator of the festival, summoned the Japanese and the French musicians to Manongo Mujica's studio and invited Juan Luis Pereira (El Polen) to join them for a recording session. The result was this album which finally comes to light, and where a variety of instruments and sensibilities are …

Rain, ghosts, one dog and empty woodland is the first solo album by the musician Gianmaria Aprile, which comes after many productions in the world of a certain frontier rock, close to psychedelia, ambient, noise, jazz and its drifts. The first record where Gianmaria Aprile has no other musicians as travel companions, but only the sound of the two instruments he brought together: the guitar and the guqin. It’s a story of ghosts and long walks in the woods under the rain, in the company of a black…

* Edition of 300. Double lp in a gatefold sleeve is set to be released in a limited edition of 300 copies * Asked if they would be interested to perform at the Summer Bummer Festival in 2019 with reed player Peter Brötzmann, both bass player Farida Amadou and drummer Steve Noble replied with a quick and definite ‘yes’. The plans to join forces with this iconic player existed already and the Summer Bummer Festival would be ideal to meet on stage for the first time. To show the extreme musical div…

* Edition of 75. Cardboard slipcase, with insert card. * Recorded in Dunedin and Turku, 2019 Mastered by Forbes Williams. Sleeve art & design by Tim Cornelius. Atlantean hieroglyphs by Jani Hirvonen.

* Edition of 70 * Recorded January 2020 in Drogenbos, Belgium. Players: Tony Marie, Ernesto Gonzalez, Jonas Vanhullebusch, Seif Gaber, Tomas Dittborn.

In a rain forest of moments. the eye hears what the ear sees. through each moment of Karin Johansson’s and Finn Loxbo’s music runs the firm conviction that all points and layers of sound – in true democratic spirit, carry the same weight. Or lightness. as precise as scattered bird calls may be crucial to the totality and the outcome of the drama as a whole, as cautiously do they take care of the phrased line by being extremely exact with the gaps and the charged rest, where that very thing appea…

Dating back to the 13th century in Wales, the Telyn Rawn is a nearly forgotten horsehair harp; UK improvising harpist Rhodri Davies researched the instrument and its unique sound, commissioning the construction of a harp on which he performs 18 improvisations of impressive technique and sonority, launching his new Amgen Records label with this album named for the instrument. "A Telyn Rawn is a harp strung with horse hair and predates the appearance of the triple, lever and pedal harps. The earli…

Artifex is an improvisation sound duo formed by Luca Albrecht Praussello on vocals and Julyo Fortunato Masagaky on electric double bass and effects. Artifex as a project was born in December 2016 with the participation in the centenary of the Dadaist movement. This anachronistic duo represents a Totally out of time, fascinating, dreamy ratio between Osaka and Genoa. Ouverture Fantastique is an unreal aural journey. A 5 acts ritual progressively bringing the listener away from the weight of ratio…

Further on from a few phone conversations last week (graciously enabled in the first instance by the ever-generous Alan Skidmore) and the swift dispatch from Germany of the demo disc, I'm very excited to announce that Tony Oxley, one of the great forefathers of European improvised music, will be releasing a disc on Confront Recordings. I've played the demo about fifteen times in the last three days and it's absolutely incredible. Tony is 81 years old and as evidenced here, is still making except…

Edition of 500, no repress, no digital** Smalltown Superjazzz was a free-jazz subsidiary label to Smalltown Supersound from 2005-2012. The label has been dormant in the years 2012 to 2019, but is now reborn as the AFJ-Serie. The AFJ-Series represents a new start - built on the foundation and heritage of the Superjazzz label. AFJ-Series is short for Actions for free jazz. This was the slogan for Smalltown Superjazzz and was borrowed at the time from Don Cherry & Krystzof Penderecki’s The New Eter…

* Edition of 500 * French psych-experimental-rock genius Richard Pinhas in collaboration with Sax Ruins drummer, Tatsuya Yoshida, and saxophonist, Ryoko Ono. Recorded live at Tusk Festival, at Gateshead Old Town Hall, on October 10, 2015. Richard Pinhas, the founder of '70s legends Heldon, is one of France's best known experimental musicians and is a key figure in development of rock music fusing with electronic music. Yoshida Tatsuya is one of the most innovative musicians of the Japanese exper…

After a long hiatus the noisy and most telepathic Montreal impro trio Jane & The Magik Bananas, led by Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Karkhana, Dwarfs Of East Agouza) returned with a shifted focus exploring rhythm in a global sense. Live compositional practice, with rhythm and polyrhythm as the structuring principle, lead the group to different kinds of Western/non-Western tuning and micro tonality. In a certain way they play in the Western tradition of Ornette Coleman's Prime Time Band, Harry Partc…

* Limited Edition of 300 * This album refers to the octogon and the figure eight as general topics and directions to the artwork and the musical release in itself: the music originally improvised by the trio has been selected, sometimes cut and reshaped, into 9 tracks and 72 minutes of music, the eight first tracks being 64 minutes of music containing free improvisations and post-produced asymetric pattern loops. This puzzle has inspired the artwork that refers to the octogon as geometric form a…

QorusQoros is "outernational" free jazz madness from Lisbon trio Alförjs. It could as well be an ethnographic soundtrack from another planet as the trio of Mestre André (saxophone, electronics), Bernardo Álvares (contrabass), and Raphael Soares (drums) delve deep into the outer realms of what jazz/electronic music can sound like. Urban shamanism, magical practices, and ancient/future world views collide in unsuspecting ways on this out-there tape. A unique sound from a unique trio, Alförjs have …

**2 x CD box** Fred Frith's large, flexible ensemble project using marked photographs and rules as scores and featuring as permanent members Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins. Recordings are taken from five concerts, including the first in 1992 at AngelicA festival, and features 44 musicians, including: Jean Derome, Lesli Dalaba, Paulo Angelli, Co Streif, Rene Lussier, Jean Marc Montera, Guy Klucsevek, Myra Melford, Han Bennink, Chris Cutler, Daan Vandewelle, Massimo Simonini, and Hans Koch. Includes …

* Edition of 300. Lacquer cut at SST. Featuring cover artwork by Natália Trejbalová. * Riccardo La Foresta is a percussionist, composer and improviser based in Modena (Italy) whose interests range from improvisation and composition, sound performance and sound art. His research led him to use the drum as a wind instrument, drastically moving away from traditional drumming. Recorded by Lorenzo Abattoir’s microphone in a former industrial hangar now base to the OvestLab cultural center in Modena (…

* Edition of 100. Green Radioactive cassette * Tsss Tapes presents Stien a new Philip Sulidae cassette release. Each track explores the organic dimension of the body of a different fruit: Apricot, Damson, Peach, Plum, Nectarine, Loquat... using improvised open forms with a minimalist extension. Composed and recorded in Hobart, Australia, 2020. Released on September 4, 2020. Mastered by Francesco Covarino.

Oscar Jan Hoogland is the sound of Amsterdam in person. He plays in the Muziekgebouw (Amsterdams main hall for modern composed music) as well as in the Bimhuis (Holland’s main jazz venue) that is literally attached to it, as in its parking garage. He is an instant composer, pianist and inventor of his own instrument by putting a clavichord, a keyboard instrument from the 17th century, on 220 Volt electricity. As the last student of the late pianist, composer and improvisor Misha Mengelberg he te…

Black Editions present a reissue of Toho Sara's self-titled album, originally released in 1995. A mystifying work of Japanese avant-garde shamanism, Toho Sara's 1995 debut introduced a radical new sound from Asahito Nanjo (High Rise), Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple), and Hisashi Yasuda - playing an array of ancient instruments including tabla, piri, harmonium, biwa, shakujo, and hansho the group evokes an otherworldly ritual music, meditative and haunting. Originally released on CD by P.S.…

Black Editions present a reissue of Kazuo Imai's far and wee, originally released in 2004. Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970s, his 2004 P.S.F. album far and wee was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations -- Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrumen…

**12" pink-hued clear RTI vinyl pressing** Customer’s Copy is the debut LP of contorted cosmic jazz and eccentric minimal electronics by Exotic Sin. The duo of Naima Karlsson and Kenichi Iwasa first came together for a performance celebrating the art and music of Karlsson’s grandparents, Moki and Don Cherry, before continuing as an independent unit that still incorporates some of the Cherrys’ instruments as well as their synergetic integration of music with artistic practice. Preferring the star…

"Three names, three cultures, three continents, three different concepts of time and timing -- this is the essence of this trio. This is what we have to bring together." -- Peter Brötzmann, Wuppertal, April 1st, 2019With these words, Peter Brötzmann, one of the great figures in the development of a unique European approach to free improvisation since the '60s, announced his return to the AngelicA festival in 2019. A trio featuring Hamid Drake -- one of the best living drummers and guembri player…

Internationally renowned musician and composer Roscoe Mitchell since Sound, his debut on Delmark in 1966, has defined a unique language based on a creative approach toward jazz and its relationship with contemporary music. Splatter, drawn from two concerts at the AngelicA Festival in Bologna in 2017, presents the most recent developments of this research. Here are two pieces from his cycle "Conversations for large orchestra". A project based on the transcription and orchestration of some pure co…

Anthony Braxton, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and a true giant of creative music, in 50 years of career had never played in a duo with a harp; and that's exactly what happened at the AngelicA Festival in 2018. Expressing himself through a wide range of mediums, from solos to large orchestras to multimedia projects, and drawing inspiration from a wide range of influences, from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Anthony Braxton has created a unique music system which celebrates the concep…

The first full-length vinyl outing from this British free music collective, featuring Neil Campbell (A-Band, Total, Sunroof!, numerous solo releases), Julian Bradley (Negative Kite), Bridget Hayden, Michael Flowers, and Adam Davenport. “…two sides of gloriously ethereal ambient-drone epiphanies that reveal an ensemble remarkably adept at building melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic intensity without ever prompting the listener to think that they are repeating themselves.” – Kevin Lian-Anderson, One …