Experimental / Free Improvisation

On Geometric Reason, Sissy Spacek reroute their long‑running extremism into a jagged strain of musique concrète, splicing voice, electronics and acoustic shards into a volatile collage charged by fire‑displacement, Japanese connections and their enduring taste for rupture.

On Revolutionary Pekinese Opera, Ground Zero - under the ferociously precise direction of Otomo Yoshihide - detonates a cut‑and‑splice orchestra where free improv, noise, opera and plunderphonics collide with undimmed urgency.

Newly remastered version of Oren Ambarchi’s long out-of-print classic Hubris originally released on Editions Mego in 2016. Expertly remastered by audio wizard Joe Talia who worked with the original mixes, highlighting the myriad details of the audio with forensic precision, previously unheard up until now.From the 2016 press release:Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Ambarchi’s Sagittarian Domain (2012) and Quixotism (2014). Where those records looked to Kra…

In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cube. Each performance over the course of the exhibition will be recorded, pressed and screen-printed live inside the gallery. This performance is from Roger Turner.Roger Turner has been working as an improvising drummer and percussionist since the…

This tape is the culmination of a series of collaborative performances between Kevin Coleman and J.W. Bird that took place in the latter half of 2024. It is meant to encapsulate the spirit and energy of those performances; spontaneous and communicative. Musical conversations between banjo and fiddle that left no language off the table. A great combination of elements from avant-garde classical, to American Traditional/Primitive, and free improv, exploring improvisational spaces of widely varied …

Setpieces captures Cath Roberts & Olie Brice at a new peak of focus and invention, distilling their long-running musical rapport into a set of raw, finely tuned improvisations. Roberts’ baritone lines carve out bold shapes and sudden whispers while Brice’s bass grounds and disrupts in equal measure, creating a vivid, unpredictable dialogue. A striking next chapter for two of the UK’s most distinctive improvisers.

“Selections from the Gutter” brings NYC saxophonist Michael Foster with the longstanding rhythm section of Swiss bassist Christian Weber (of Sudden Infant), and German drummer Michael Griener, a longtime fixture of the Berlin scene. The trio brings shocking, visceral energy to a distinct structural awareness; drawing suspense from form in each of the David Goodis-inspired titles. This is improvised music digging deep into a shared sense of history, form, and drama.

Recorded in a neighbourhood church in the city of Ghent, Belgium. Penumbra is a fully improvised album. It was born from a personal urgency of searching for ways to keep creating sound in moments of uncertainty. It grew from a desire to move beyond the limit of a single instrument, to experiment with different materials, objects, and instruments. Merging, melting, creating, sounds, poems, and acoustics that inspire me. Penumbra is a state of uncertainty and urgency, moving with freedom and doubt…

Tip! “Two Duos” is pressed from cellist Okkyung Lee’s most recent OTO Residency; the first side a duo with Jérôme Noetinger on Revox B77 and the second with Nadia Ratsimandresy on Ondes Martenot. Cut together, the two meetings seem to raise three cellos in the search for expressive voice: the cello, it’s magnetic reproduction, and the dual controls of the machine invented to expand on its musical qualities. On the A side Noetinger’s opening tape hiss establishes a current; an electrical partner …

The first collaboration between Atsuhiro Ito (optron) and Masataka Fujikake (drums) is a quartet featuring Yasuhiro Usui (guitar) and Hideki Tachibana (alto saxophone). 55-minute sound scroll edited and reconstructed from a live recording at Shibuya Park Avenue Classics.

This is the second album by the trio "Honnomajika Naharu", consisting of Lapis (guitar & vocals), Hiroshi Higo (bass & vocals), and Masataka Fujikake (drums). This is their first release in about a year since their last album (Honnomajika - Naharu X Keiji Haino: FDR-1052), and is a live album with Otomo Yoshihide (guitar & vocals) as a guest. It is another miraculous work, completely different in type from the previous album, as if the multiple layers of expression have been crystallized into on…

Over the last couple of decades Magda Mayas has developed a rigorous and distinctive prepared piano practice, working inside the piano with great musicality. The music on Chant captures a dramatic expansion of the pianist’s vision. Reflecting her devotion to social and musical communities through recent stretches of political upheaval and the disruption of the pandemic, she’s found solace in harmony and repetition, and after a period of exploring such sounds with clavinet and Fender-Rhodes, she …

Diffraction is the amplified reflection, across a wider sonic territory, of what takes place within the making of DDK’s music. A composition written for the GGRIL, in which the three musician-composers weave their texture by juxtaposition, by overlay, in parallel, always within the musical material itself. But Diffraction truly comes to life only through close collaboration with the GGRIL performers, where each person’s character becomes raw material. A compositional process intimately tied to t…

2026 Repress. Captured live on a single night — 26 June 1963 — at the Ginparis café in Ginza and held back from release until 1972, when Takeshi "Tee" Fujii founded Three Blind Mice and chose it as the label's ninth title, Ginparis Session is the foundational document of Japanese free jazz. The recording captures the 新世紀音楽研究所 (Shinseiki Ongaku Kenkyūjo, "New Century Music Research Institute"), the study collective convened by Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi and Masahiko Togashi as a workshop committe…

Earthball are an avant/noise/rock wrecking ball of a band from Nanaimo, Canada. Rooted in total improvisation, free expression, and a deeply psychedelic sensibility, EarthBall operate on pure instinct. They hurtle onwards in a combustion of spontaneous composition, shooting from the hip, as they fall out of the sky ablaze. The group encompass Isabel Ford (vocals, bass), John Brennan (drums, percussion), Jeremy Van Wyke (vocals, guitar, trumpet), Kellan Maclaughlin (guitar, talkbox), and Liam Mur…

Formed in 2022, Fjall features a cornucopia of instrumental sounds, both acoustic and electronic, which the group uses to create soundscapes rooted in folk and ceremonial music, together with field recording material drawn from the sounds of the natural world - all mixed together on a canvas of open ended improvisation. This release documents in full two performances by the group, both in front of large and attentive audiences.

For over half a century, Sven Åke Johansson and Rüdiger Carl have explored the boundaries of music together. Villa Hügel captures a rare moment: a concert with no audience, recorded in 2020 in the library of Villa Hügel during the 2 x Kippenberger exhibition. The few present could only experience it  in-house via TV transmission. Carl on accordion, Johansson on percussion, cardboard, and crackle box—an interplay of structure and openness, sound and silence. This release follows Johansson’s exhib…

An album of improvised music was recorded in Belgrade, in the courtyard of one of the musicians’ homes. There were no prior agreements, prepared compositions, or preplanned ideas. The album came into being in real time, right there on the spot. Ulya Volkova (pleurereme) - cellist/multi-instrumentalist, composer/sound designer, producer and music enthusiast with over a two decade of experience in cultural community. After studying for 15 years at the Gnessin School (Academy) of Music she began wr…

Holidays Records is on fire! Hot on the heels of their recent incredible vinyl releases of the Italian sound artist and musician Ezio Piermattei’s “Gran trotto” and the duo Acchiappashpirt’s “Ninulla”, they return with one of their most important and captivating releases to date: Hartmut Geerken’s “Requiem for the Snake of Maidan”, a mind-blowing body of archival recordings from the 1970s, made on a stony ridge in the Hindukush mountains of Afghanistan, encountering the artist locked in a sprawl…

** Edition of 150 copies ** Pak Yan Lau: dismantled toy pianos, wind up toys, popping candy, bow, toy spring reverb, Buddha Machine, Tamayura bell, Japanese iron wind chimes, electronics, voice. Recorded and mixed at Outlau’d Studio, Brussels, in August 2020. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cover illustration by Eleusi.

**Deluxe gatefold sleeve with varnish effect including a 8 pages photo booklet** In the early 2000s, Tokyo's SuperDeluxe was a meeting point for many experimental musicians, both international and Japanese. This duo sprung from a live collaboration at the venue in 2006, where Machida was experimenting with processed steel pan and Lyall was largely performing using a tabletop guitar setup with a range of electronics. Many subsequent encounters were heavily experimental, ranging from densely layer…

4CDs box set with 120 page book. A monumental box set marking the 80th birthday of one of the most singular voices in improvised music. The Heraclitean Two-Step, etc. collects four CDs of solo soprano and tenor saxophone recordings spanning three decades - from a 1994 session at the Unitarian Chapel in Warwick to performances captured between 2018 and 2024 at Arco Barco in Ramsgate by Filipe Gomes. This is Parker at his most focused and uncompromising, working that extraordinary circular breathi…

*100 copies limited edition.* "The resulting music is an unearthly ever-shifting roar, sometimes identifiable as the product of guitar and saxophone but just as often not. Obrazeena’s guitar frequently starts out as an almost country-tinged drone, not unlike Earth’s “Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method” before turning into a downtuned wall of thick, syrupy distortion you can almost touch. Ponomarev’s sax screeches and bellows, and his electronics create a dense pulse, with needle-sharp sine …

Anton Ponomarev: saxophone, electronicsRyoko Ono: saxophone, mixing, mastering This record was originally released by Fort Evil Fruit (Ireland), July 15, 2022.

*50 copies limited edition* Listening to Koude's self-titled debut album can feel like floating in still dark water or like crawling slowly through a moonlit forest. It could be any other lonesome surrounding really, a place where it's just you and your body, some senses numbed, other senses heightened. All the while, something undefined seems to be hiding in the dark; something bad or something good. The subdued music of Koude draws from meandering folk, ambient, slowcore and drone, folding the…

This series of reel-to-reel tape recordings, to be jointly released by Old Heaven Books and Liu Ying Studio, aims to offer to our listeners the best quality of sound we can achieve so far. Whilst a small part of these releases come from historical archives, the majority are freshly made by musicians we invite to our studio. We record these studio sessions − some of which free-improvised, others more composition-based − on reel-to-reel tapes. With high-quality studio equipment, we make a small nu…

'Weather Eye' marks the first recorded collaboration between Italian guitarist Francesca Naibo and American cellist Theresa Wong. This collection of improvisations reveals a dialogue of care as the duo uncovers delicate and unexpected sonorities of the electric guitar, cello and two voices. Francesca Naibo is an Italian guitarist who moves fluently across all the different conjugations of the guitar, from the classic, the electric, to the fretless and the pedal steel. Involved in the research fo…

*200 copies limited edition* Eight pieces of free vocal improvisation by the duo of Jason Kahn and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, who have been working together since 2015. "I Smile When the Sound Is Singing Through the Space" is their second release and was recorded during Jason Kahn's one-month artist residency in September 2023 at Ting Shuo Hear Say in Tainan, Taiwan.

A Few We Remember is the new album by Jonah Parzen-Johnson and Lau Nau. The recording debut for the new duo of Finnish composer Lau Nau, aka Laura Naukkarinen, and American baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson, it cycles between moments of knotty ambience, whispered melody, and innocent tinkering, as the duo improvises over 8 narrative scores composed by Parzen-Johnson. Jonah Parzen-Johnson says: “For me, telling a story is about more than sharing a set of facts. A well told story is the pr…

Legendary saxophonist Don Dietrich and his powerhouse cellist daughter Camille Dietrich collide in Live Bahdu, a fierce musical union that music critic Byron Coley hails as “sheer wailing sonic pleasure.” Don, an untamed force who has spent over forty years shaping the explosive core of Borbetomagus, unleashes a volatile, lung-shaking roar, an unyielding take no prisoners wall of sound. Camille answers with her own ferocity, channeling raw, electric intensity through the disciplined edge of her …

The (improvised) music is inspired (and structured) by the iconic book of Georges Perec from 1974 titled Espèces d’espaces. We designed a musical story following the chronology and the emotional evolution of the book. Music, too, generally needs a ‘void’ to move. It demands openness and, as such, is an invitation.

The music of this trio is an ongoing conversation between three women about life as it unfolds between artistic practice and daily routines. Compassioned conversations about being someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s partner, someone’s friend seamlessly float into the musical sphere, where words and emotions are transformed into pitches, harmonies, rhythms and artistic gestures. Three strong artists from the creative music scene of northern Europe has formed a trio that feeds from the…

A shimmering meeting of three fearless voices, this new recording invites cellist Isidora Edwards, violinist Biliana Voutchkova and Hardanger-d’amore virtuoso Zosha Warpeha into a luminous space of spontaneous creation. Intuitive improvisation and rare timbres intertwine to explore liminal sound-worlds where silence breathes and time suspends. The result: an immersive sonic journey that defies genre, yet feels deeply human and unbound.

Tip! *245 copies limited edition* Overjoyed to announce the release of this monumental record featuring two very different sides of the free-improv coin, pressed on heavyweight 180 gram mixed color vinyl. This intergenerational, wide-minded split LP blurs the hedges of national borders and the traditions of composition, marking a niche interzone inhabited solely by the uncles of punk and their experimental stepchildren.  Canadian noise pioneers, Nihilist Spasm Band, deliver a ripping side-long o…

2000 release ** Limited edition of 500 hand numbered copies. Packaged in mini-LP sleeve. "In all six tracks of this CD, Murayama uses a cymbal, a snare drum and small objects (as well as his voice on track 6). Four of the pieces (2-5), recorded in Tokyo, were composed by Murayama based on collaborations with Soundworm (Shoji). Several clusters of two or three mikes were deployed in different areas of the studio, with one of the mikes of one cluster placed outdoors. (In addition, there were two c…

Paris-based musician Seijiro Murayama (percussion, voice) and French alto sax and organ player Jean-Luc Guionnet have performed together on a regular basis for many years and released numerous recording of their collaborations. Their duo CDs "Mishima, Day & Night" (2015) and "Idiophonic" (2018) were released on the Ftarri label, and the CD "Blue Mistake, Red Mistake" (with Yan Jun, Guionnet, Matija Schellander and Murayama) came out on on Ftarri’s sister label Meenna in 2020. "Balcony Inside"’s …

"If you think that the constellation of Nicholas Bussmann, Sven-Åke Johansson and Yan Jun is a sort of dream lineup, you are not far off the mark. The joint improvisations that you hear on tea time capture a sound that once came to Bussmann in a dream and that he made a reality with the help of his fellow musicians. The trio recorded the five pieces across two days at Johansson’s SÅJ studio with engineer Andrew Levine, working with Bussmann’s curious piano robot while Johansson was on percussion…

Tip! The klingt.collective is a viennese music group founded in 2022. it’s nine members are an essential part of Vienna’s experimental music scene and have been collaborating in various groups for many years. Previous collaborating projects include: the klingt.orgestra, Radian, sonic luz, TWIXT, The Vegetable Orchestra... The internet platform klingt.org has been a home for the musicians and many of those projects since the early 2000s – thus the name of the ensemble. The nine musicians have bee…

'rustlings' is an album of two pieces written by Stockholm-based violinist and composer Maya Bennardo. One of the pieces, 'dormant gardens i' (2022), was written for and performed by andPlay, a duo of Bennardo on violin and Hannah Levinson on viola. The other, 'summer rustlings' (2024), is a solo violin piece performed by Bennardo. Both pieces were inspired by Bennardo's move to Sweden from New York City, where she developed a new relationship with nature through walking. Her solo and compositio…

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…