An Episode Of Improvisational Smoke Recorded Upon The Cold Stone Of Sacred Ground
2025 stock 1992 release. Frank-O-Fest is a loose grouping of Milwaukee old-timers led & directed by John Frankovic, who recorded this in one cloudy session in a church in 1992. Utilizing percussion, sitar, bouzouki, trombone, pipe organ, jews harp, didgeridoo, bass, cello, bamboo & clay flutes & more, this is a long, form-defying floatation exercise in space-out improvisation.
Culmus
Culmus (Latin for "stalk") marks the latest chapter in an ongoing collaboration that began in September 2023 and continues to evolve. As co-inhabitants of a shared ecological and mental space, Franki Wals and Chang Deng-yao navigate a sonic continuum that bridges the human and the non-human, creating a piece where electroacoustic improvisation productively meets the indeterminate resonances of wind-activated plant matter. These materials intertwine and form a subtly layered aural tapestry, where…
Steady State
In a sonic dialogue that balances delicacy and depth, Clinton Green and Barnaby Oliver explore the shifting textures of acoustics and resonance. Employing bowed aluminum bowls, strings, and a grand piano, their work unfolds in patient layers that probe the very essence of sound and its environment, evoking an atmosphere of quiet tension and subtle transformation.
Melophobia
Melophobia spins tension out of spontaneous contact - Dave Tucker (guitar) and Pierpaolo Martino (double bass and electronics) improvise with sharp attention to rhythm, fracture, and digital manipulation, conjuring environments that threaten – and then dissolve – melodic order.
Semiotic Drift
Semiotic Drift is a living conversation - Maggie Nicols uses voice as a map to possibility, Matilda Rolfsson provides creaking, insistent percussion, and Mark Wastell frames everything in the deep resonance of amplified tam-tam. The work rides the edge between storytelling and pure abstraction.
Juno
Juno invites deep contemplation through slow-moving layers of sound - Barry Chabala’s guitar, David Forlano’s electronics, and Drew Gowran’s percussion work in unhurried mutual orbit, exploring patience, resonance, and negative space rather than technical bravura.
Ensemble A
Ensemble A is a turbulent meeting of three fiercely individual improvisers - Ignaz Schick harnesses live electronics and turntables, Anaïs Tuerlinckx dismembers and reinvents the piano, and Joachim Zoepf twists reeds into guttural shapes. The result is a volatile sound collage, sometimes blunt-force, sometimes eerily restrained.
Oneiric
Oneiric evokes drifting memories and waking dreams - an album created by Jane in Ether where recorders, piano, and violin/voice entwine in gauzy, tactile improvisations. Their music moves in soft spirals, trading clarity for a haze of overlapping tones and near-silence, aching toward something just out of reach.
Death in the Urban Jungle
Death in the Urban Jungle by Lance Austin Olsen is an expansive electroacoustic tapestry, weaving copper plate, shruti box, tape fragments, and wordless voice into a narrative of decay and emergence. Resonances and silences shape a listening experience as tactile as it is elusive.
Liminal Spaces
Liminal Spaces, by Ed Jones and Emil Karlsen, sketches a quiet but complex dialogue between saxophone and percussion. Their communication is fluid, as fleeting motifs and rhythmic fragments surface and dissolve, inviting the listener into the shifting boundaries of spontaneous improvisation.
Moon
Moon sees Simon Rose and Nicola Hein map a shifting terrain between breath and electricity. Baritone saxophone and microtonal guitar unfurl in subtle layers, crafting a microcosm where fragility and abrasion lie side by side, always moving, always searching.
The Duke of Wellington
The Duke of Wellington is a vivid portrait of Derek Bailey and John Stevens in spontaneous conversation, recorded live at a London pub in 1989. The set captures their dynamic synergy; jagged guitar and agile percussion interlock and diverge in an unrepeatable display of free improvisational skill.
Within (2) / Appearance (2)
Within (2) / Appearance (2) by Michael Pisaro-Liu presents a contemplative exploration of duration and silence, foregrounding gradual transformation. These extended works for guitar and double bass, created with Michael Francis Duch, reward patient listening and engage with resonance and subtlety over spectacle.
Porch Music
Porch Music documents No Hope Orchestra, an ambitious large ensemble led by Paul McCarthy and featuring core members of the Los Angeles Free Music Society. Recorded live at The Box gallery concert in Los Angeles, the project harnesses a vivid assembly of improvisers—Mitchell Brown, Elaine Carey, Dennis Duck, Ace Farren Ford, Juan Gomez, Mike Gonzalez, Joseph Hammer, Keith Lubow, Nathaniel Mellors, Joe Potts, Rick Potts, Trevor Rounseville, Alex Stevens, Molly Tierney, and John Wiese. This releas…
Mont-real Split
Mont-real (Split) brings together Sam Shalabi and the duo of Mike Gangloff & Liam Grant for a two-track release on Carbon Records. The split, out October 24, 2025, showcases Shalabi's singular experimental approach alongside Gangloff and Grant’s free-folk, string-driven improvisation, bridging Montreal’s avant scenes with Appalachian-influenced drone and psych.
Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?
Refracting beatifically through realities and mirages flickering along his aural parade route, Animal Collective’s Geologist rides the high country on a hurdy gurdy of many colours. Via the mystery science of musical engagement, we take his sonic kaleidoscope of encounters into our own experience as we listen. That’s the beauty of Can I Get a Pack of Camel Lights?, the debut solo transmission of the heart and soul and life and times of Geologist.
Suns of the Heart
Suns of the Heart, the sixth solo album from Colin Fisher, unfurls a suite of intricate, emotionally charged improvisations that blend treated guitar, elemental electronics, and gestural samples. Across six movements, Fisher crafts an enveloping soundworld where each texture pulses with meditative warmth and restless sonic curiosity.
Folklore & Concepts
Folklore & Concepts, the latest release by Smegma—now five decades into their outsider avant-garde career—extends the band’s legacy of ritualistic collage, spontaneous improvisation, and anti-academic noise. Infused with tape, synths, prepared piano, horns, and voice, the album melds shamanistic energy with surreal group interplay, creating an unpredictable and stubbornly original sonic tapestry.
October Flowers for Joe McPhee
October Flowers for Joe McPhee is a luminous solo work by Ken Vandermark, recorded in tribute to his longtime friend and mentor. Released by Corbett vs. Dempsey in March 2025, the album unfolds as a suite for reeds—melding lyricism, memory, and improvisation into a deeply human meditation on influence and kinship. Each piece, named after flowers, resonates as both homage and renewal.
Khao Sok Extension
In 2016, Berlin-based artist Andrew Pekler travelled to Thailand and visited Khao Sok National Park where he gathered field recordings and recorded video footage of the park's flora and fauna. Some of excerpts of this material was used in the compositions and live presentation of Pekler's album “Tristes Tropiques”, released on the Faitiche label in 2016. Two years later, Pekler further processed, edited and mixed the materials to create the one-hour long audio-visual piece “Khao Sok Extension”.A…