Triple Music
In the spring of 2020, Muddersten did not go to Japan. Nor did the trio collaborate with alive painting artist Akiko Nakayama as planned before the global lockdown. Instead, a video triptych was made by Akiko and sent to the trio serving as a score for a musical performance. The piece was commissioned by Muddersten and had its first performance at the Periferien Festival in Oslo, in August 2020 in the midst of the Covid pandemic. On this release the trio uses sonic ready-mades as a method for i…
Alloy
In 2015, Lemur started a collaboration with German pianist Reinhold Friedl. Friedl is the leader of the international ensemble Zeitkratzer, working at the intersection of improvisation and composition. In this respect, Friedl's experience and working method have much in common with the ideas and working methods Lemur uses. Not least through an interchange between work with large and small ensembles.In collaboration with Reinhold Friedl, we focus on the use of extended playing techniques, form ex…
Chris Rainier Sings the Music of Harry Partch
Tip! *200 copies limited release* Chris Rainier is a South African musician and performer, raised in Australia but now based in London. He earned his PhD in Music there last year with a thesis on American composer and instrument builder Harry Partch. Accompanying that PhD is an album of renditions of compositions from Harry Partch's (little-known) early "Americana" period, from the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, Partch wrote these compositions for his homemade "Adapted Guitars": acoustic guitars …
Music for Sixth-tone Harmonium
Composers Fredrik Rasten and Ian Mikyska present new compositions for Alois Hába’s unique sixth-tone harmonium, performed by Miroslav Beinhauer, who has single-handedly revived the instrument after decades of slumber. Alois Hába, Czech composer and pioneer of microtonal music, commissioned a number of microtonal instruments in the 1920s and '30s, including the sixth-tone harmonium, two of which were built. Hába himself wrote only one solo piece for this instrument, and also included a part for i…
Trending
*2022 stock.* Sofa Music is proud to welcome a new project on board. It’s Propan, a duo comprising the two Norwegian vocalists; Natali Garner and Ina Sagstuen. On their second album Propan continues its research within the frameworks of the song form and presents a psychedelic, and more delirious landscape than on its first, somewhat more electroacoustic album, Baby. The duo explores the meeting point between improvised music and studio production, and builds the album around Propan's well-estab…
Org
** 300 copies ** First ever reissue of an influential and much sought-after norsk drone masterpiece originally self-released in 1996 in an edition of just 108 copies, tipped by all the people you ought to be taking tips from, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Deeper than deep, it's a durational masterwork that connects ley lines between Ramleh, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Deathprod, When and Antena, taking unexpected turns and sounding better than ever on this new edition, …
Four Works
Four Works is a split full-length album by Linus Hillborg and Theodor Kentros with two pieces by each composer. The music on this record was written and recorded during 2019-2021. Each side of the album begins with a piece for organ and electronics performed by Fredrik Lundqvist. The record opens with Hillborgs Auguries which examines microtonal register shifts and shift changes in register as well as density throughout its 14 minutes. In this piece the electronics act as a shading device outlin…
The Wave Ahead
Gorgeous, pearlescent cosmic ambient flights by London’s Jo Johnson - erstwhile member of ‘90s riot grrrl group Huggy Bear - now in pursuit of astral trajectories since returning to orbit over the past few years. “What is the sound of feeling? In physics, we conceive of sound as waves. Vibrations, undulations, physical manifestations: heard but not seen. Borne by the body, but interpreted in the brain.
Within ourselves, we perceive emotion as waves, too. Rolling in, rolling out: tidal, even. In …
Gyttjans Topografi
Edition of 500 copies w/ printed inner. Swedish drone alchemist Mats Erlandsson is sitting in a fictional room on ‘Gyttjans Topografi’, imagining a virtual chamber orchestra using zithers, tapes, double bass, harmonium, organ, and various synthesisers to draft a treatise on alternative tuning and non-normative harmonic structures. Transcendent material. The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that altern…
Out of the Playground
Sofa Music is proud to add the powerhouse flutist Alessandra Rombolà to its ranks with Out of the Playground, documenting Rombolà’s latest commissions and collaborations for solo flute and electronics with composers Daniela Terranova, Jan Martin Smørdal, Ingar Zach, and Lasse Marhaug. The album’s five contributions, drawing on Rombolà’s polyvalent musical background, are united in their mission to venture “out of the playground” of scenes and genres, as Rombolà puts it. Across these incisive, ex…
Out there in the middle of nowhere
*Limited edition of 500 copies* Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timb…
Threads
The new solo album, threads by the California-based trombone player Mattie Barbier is a multilayered personal investigation. It was recorded in The Tank Center for Sonic Arts in Rangley, Colorado in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
a feeling of place. a calm space to be present in during a space of chaos. of quarantining in a very conservative place as a non-binary person where your welcomeness is tenuous. of uncertainty of where non-binaryness fits as a parent- of still being a dad? or treat…
Comradely Objects
Horse Lords return with Comradely Objects, an alloy of erudite influences and approaches given frenetic gravity in pursuit of a united musical and political vision. The band’s fifth album doesn’t document a new utopia, so much as limn a thrilling portrait of revolution underway.
Comradely Objects adheres to the essential instrumental sound documented on the previous four albums and four mixtapes by the quartet of Andrew Bernstein (saxophone, percussion, electronics), Max Eilbacher (bass, electro…
Swagger
Limited LP edition. In their new composition, Swagger, Oslo-based vocal duo Propan augment their customary sound palate with the aid of an eight-strong ensemble of strings, winds, percussion, voices, and electronics - an ensemble by the name Propanions. Combining pre-scored and improvised content, Swagger moves between the soft sound of tuning forks, odd beats, curious text, playful melodies and textural noise, resulting in an eccentric piece of definite character - an eclectic manifestation of …
Sonic Drift
Sofa Music continues to release Microtub’s unique research into the microtonal tuba. The music on Sonic Drift achieves an even greater depth and leaves the listener sucked in to the trio’s extraordinary complex band sound. Sonic Drift is Microtub’s fifth album since their debut in 2011. Whereas the first four albums were recorded shortly after the music was composed, the music for Sonic Drift evolved considerably through the process of playing live concerts throughout Europe. Initially developed…
Himmels-Tür (4. Stunde Aus Klang) - 24 Türin
*2022 Stock.* Himmels-Tür (Heaven’s Door, 4th Hour from Klang) for a "percussionist and a little girl" (2005) is essentially performed on a hand-made door, with panels constructed from different types of wood in order to obtain a broad range of timbral colors. The piece consists primarily of 15 moods, followed by a final theatrical event involving cymbals and sirens (the little girl element is not aural). This piece could be considered a kind of microtonal, neo-marimba piece performed on found …
for four double basses
*In process of stocking.* Minimalism is the keyword for the release from Bryan Eubanks. He composed work for four double basses, and Jonathan Heilbron, Mike Majkowski, Andrew Lafkas and Koen Nutters are the performers here. The score/concept is explained on the cover here; this is an excerpt: "[..] .....Each bass bows natural harmonics on one of the strings (I, II, III, IV), holding each note for the chosen duration and allowing a pause equal to half of this duration between each note. ..... All…
Interregno + Smetak
Special bundle of the two seminal Walter Smetak albums re-issued by Buh Records, among the most sought-after releases in the canon Latin American experimentalism, channeling mystical religion, Afro-Brazilian ritualistic traditions, microtonality studies, and open, collective improvisational processes,
Deep Listening
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Deep Listening, Important Records offer a definitive cassette edition combining the classic, complete original 1989 release with selected tracks from the Deep Listening Band's 1991 album, The Ready Made Boomerang. Recorded in a cistern, this tape reverberates with brilliant sonic clarity and masterfully improvised performances combining live electronics, vocals, trombone. and accordion. Deep Listening is a classic in the fields of improvisation, minimalism, a…
Archimedes - A Planetarium Opera
From Mantua and Bayreuth to warehouses and wilderness, opera composers have often created dramas for particular kinds of spaces. Now add planetariums to the list. That hemispherical stage of scientific wonderment is the perfect venue for James Dashow’s monumental opera, Archimedes. After witnessing some epic laser and electronic music shows that took place in science museum theaters, Dashow – a distinguished electronic music pioneer – decided this venue would be perfect for bringing the Ancient …