Bleed
Back in full force, Northern Spy returns with what might just be the best record we’ve heard all year: The Necks’ “Bleed”. A creatively visionary and astounding immersion into the band’s singular realm of sonority, unfolding at a glacial pace over the 42-minute composition’s duration, these two vinyl sides comprise some of the most tense and ambitious moments we’ve ever heard from one of the most important bands working today.
Trystero
This debut full-length album of Stockholm-based composer and electroacoustic experimentalist Theodor Kentros, could easily be interpreted as 'just' an assemblage of pieces written between 2021-2024. Named after the paranoid hallucination (or, if said hallucination is real, the underground secret mail system) figuring in the 1966 Thomas Pynchon novel ‘The Crying of Lot 49’, it should rather be perceived as a very distinct, coherent stream running through his output during these years.
The six tra…
One for One
*200 copies limited edition* Renowned French alto sax and organ player Jean-Luc Guionnet is also an outstanding composer. "One for One" is a work that Guionnet composed in 2015. Santiago-based guitarist Cristián Alvear (born in 1979) is active on the contemporary classical and experimental music scenes inside and outside Chile. Juan Sebastián Lach (born in 1970) is a composer and keyboard player from Mexico. In 2013 Lach released the album "ISLAS," a collection of his chamber music compositions,…
Jonas Kocher plays Christian Kesten & Stefan Thut
2024 stock. Christian Kesten - Untitled (solo for accordion). (Written for Jonas Kocher and premiered in Paris in April 2014). "The accordion contains some remarkable mechanical characteristics. In the highest register of the right hand, the last few buttons don’t play the expected tones. The pitches are simply too high. The necessary reeds would be too small and fragile to produce them. These buttons transpose the tones an octave down. The buttons in the neighbouring octave do play the expected…
Time Between
Tip! *200 copies limited edition* Sax player Katsura Yamauchi (born in 1954) is based in Oita, Japan. He began performing in earnest in the early 2000s, and since then has toured in Japan, Europe, North America, Southeast Asia and Taiwan and continued to expand his distinctive musical activities. Jason Kahn (percussion, voice, electronics, guitar) was born in New York in 1960 and lives in Zurich. He has performed throughout the world and been a prominent figure on the improvised/experimental mus…
Sunkissed
“The score aims to evoke the experience of proximity to the sun—a dual force that can be soothing one moment and hazardous the next. Sunkiss embodies this duality, where the sun's radiant energy sustains life's flourishing while also capable of devastating destruction. To be kissed by the sun signifies both blessing and curse, illuminating the fragile balance between vitality and peril that defines life on Earth.”
Sunkissed is a live recording of a four-hour performance directed by Mylan Hoezen …
Lacuna and parlor
‘Lacuna and Parlor’ is anchored in the left-field chamber music and incidental recordings that have long accented more eaze’s roving sound. Composed with one ear pressed to the rich textures of instrumental recording environments, this is a resonant and tactile collection tinged in rephrased space and skewed time. Taking the rudiments of tonal music theory as her conceptual base, more eaze formed the compositions around her own manipulations of these core principles. Simple chord progressions st…
Comes From Far Away From Here
*100 copies limited edition* Resourcefulness is sometimes presented as a humble quality born of necessity. But it’s a foundational tenet of the exceptionally unconstrained members of improvising trio Tamarisk, consisting of Christina Carter, David Menestres, and Andrew Weathers. Their latest is a continuation of the interplay they’ve developed for a few years now on a handful of releases and while touring. Like the most bizarre sort of jazz combo, Tamarisk grazes the orbits of outré free improv,…
Colonial Motels
*100 copies limited edition* Erica Dawn Lyle has been described by Pitchfork as a “punk hero,” which, though true, feels like an insufficiently specific term to describe her multifaceted presence and work. Colonial Motels is in fact rawly personal, a ladder out of an abyss of mourning as well as a determination to persevere and connect. Playing less but achieving more, this album captures the engaging intensity and directness that defines Lyle’s art, performance, and activism. Part I builds on p…
Synthetic Weather Reporter
*40 copies limited edition* Wang Changcun (ayrtbh) is an experimental musician, artist, and software writer living in Shanghai. He is one of the earliest explorers of experimental electronic music and computer programmed composition in China. In recent years, he has focused on web art and computer music, creating computer software installations. He has released more than 30 albums and EPs on various labels such as Sub Rosa (Belgium) , Diffuse Reality (Spain) and Tokinogake (Japan).
'Synthetic We…
Topology of a Quantum City
"A couple of years back, during a period of frequent relocation, and with no permanent studio set up, I came across the original DAT parts of a project I completed in 1992 just before I moved from Australia to The UK. The sessions for New Maps Of Hell evolved out of a rhythm track I’d built in my studio. I was (and still am) fascinated the twin, revolutionary, 70’s phenomena of electric jazz (Miles, Hancock, Williams, Priester) and Krautrock (Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream). I was trying as a solo …
Havens
"Alan Licht returns to VDSQ with Havens, a sprawling double-disc set of exploratory guitar-based compositions forged from the myriad possibilities arising when strings collide with electricity & space. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisatio…
The Devil and the River, Vol. 1
In his most recent solo release, "The Devil And The River: Volume One", recorded live in his rural New Mexico studio, William Fowler Collins tremolo brushes his electric guitar using a calligraphy brush, playing a single chord with no overdubs to produce two compelling side-long pieces of music. Ever present are the minimalist widescreen reflections of the high desert environment in which he lives, with the two sides giving the impressions of a sun rising and then a sun setting over the vast and…
Four Organs/Phase Patterns
** 2024 Repress ** Steve Reich remains one of the most important figures in 20th century music. Though he studied at the prestigious arts institutions Julliard and Mills College, by the mid-1960s Reich set about dismantling the very orthodoxy that he had been trained in. Forming a new musical language based on repetitive processes, Reich became established as part of the so-called "Big Four" of New York minimalists (along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass). Reich's influence can …
The Blue Hour
Totally beautiful and rare piano performance from Loren Connors, joined on guitar by long time collaborator Alan Licht.
The Movers Brought Rainbows
Long-running Jersey outfit Human Adult Band come to us after dropping a sickening array of no-fi noise rock and damaged art punk tapes and records upon the public. And yet, The Movers Brought Rainbows is probably their most abstract and alien work to date. While the guitar/bass/drums/voice formation is still the genesis of these recordings, at its core feedback and reverb are the star players here. Source sessions recorded at various locations are unapologetically run through the ringer, subject…
This Summer...
*200 copies limited edition* Tokyo-born recorder player/improviser Eiko Yamada has lived in Germany since 1984 and currently resides in Heidelberg. Yamada performs in formations ranging from solo to large ensemble, as well as with a variety of artists including dancers and poets. She returns to Japan once or twice a year and appears in a small number of concerts in Tokyo.During her stay in Japan in summer 2023, Yamada performed with pianist Fumi Endo at Ftarri on August 13. In addition to their …
Weathering
Ryan Seward is a musician, composer, and artist living in Colorado Springs, Colorado. His work is situated within and across a number of forms, including composition, improvisation, installation, performance, phonography, photography, sculpture, and videography. Ryan’s work has most recently been performed by TAK ensemble, Filament, and Sam Wells, and his recordings have been released by Editions Glomar, emic rite, Marginal Frequency, and Sawyer Editions. Ryan holds the MA in Music from Wesleyan…
Lost Horse Wash Drone
Other Minds is pleased to present Lost Horse Wash Drone, a new recording by composer and guitarist Giacomo Fiore. The CD features Fiore’s playing on a variety of justly-tuned guitars alongside field recordings from Joshua Tree National Park. The concept for this album grew out of Giacomo Fiore’s week-long residency at the Lou Harrison House in Joshua Tree, California in March 2023. Immersed in the surroundings of the desert, Fiore delved into an exploration of Lou Harrison's musical legacy, draw…
Alien Intelligence
Through the medium of a distinctly synthesised, sustained ambience, seasoned artist and composer Jasmine Guffond arrives on OOH to explore the tension between technology and human creativity in an increasingly ambiguous playing field. »Alien Intelligence« came into being during Guffond's residency at fabled Parisian institution GRM in 2021. While learning how to generate sound and make music with the in-house Serge modular synthesiser, the Australian artist noticed the typical role of human inpu…