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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
Justinian Intonations
Floating miasmic vapors. A chorus of mystery monks. Flights of Angels. Clouds and swirls of echoes. Weightless sounds that swirl and eddy and carry you downstream on your timeless journey to sleep, to death, to birth? It started with a clap – actually three – recorded as acoustic test tones inside one of the many ancient cisterns beneath Istanbul (Constantinople back then). Philip Blackburn then analyzed and stretched the reverb of the space as it were by an electron microscope that revealed the…
Monument of Diamonds
Epic 45-minute microtonal composition by Kraig Grady, using a 17-tone scale, the Meta-Slendro tuning, created by Erv Wilson. Composed in 2020. The instruments were specially built or adapted for the unusual tuning system.
"The idea of Monuments came from the sound of the brass, in which I include the saxophone here. Brass seems to be used much less in newer music than strings, winds and percussion which is unfortunate. Since they are used less than strings or winds in new music, they seem to inv…