Fireproof Sweat
Having written and sung in five languages on 2020’s “Uva Ursi”, Urs Graf Consort return to Italian for “Fireproof Sweat”, a record of irresistible charm, innovation and existential lyricism. “Ten years ago, a fire took the lives of four of our friends on rue Myrha in Paris, just a few months after Urs Graf Consort was founded. One of them — Nicolas Millet, a magnificent bookseller and Félix Fénéon specialist — was meant to be our bassist. The title Fireproof Sweat, and the album as a whole, ques…
Prynhawn Da!
Artist, composer and researcher Max Syedtollan arrives on bison with 34 minutes of merrie-making madness, written for a parade-performance by basketmaker Lewis Prosser and informed by the tradition of masked mummer’s theatre. Written to be blasted off the back of a lorry, ‘Prynhawn Da!’ accompanied a troupe of huge wicker figures - Parsnabler o Grog, Vogum Gertlin, The Woman with The Big Head and Goyle Cornett - as they paraded down the streets of Newtown, Swansea, Cardiff and Caernarfon as part…
Touch
With Touch, the Tortoise bandmembers — Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker — harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity. While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT, Touch is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise's un…
Feather and Pine
We are very proud to announce the second album by Michael Krassner for Dark Companion. This innovative, as ever, breathtaking music was originally intended as the soundtrack to a docufilm by Michael James Beck and Star Rosencrans of the same name: the film denounces the severe deforestation of North America’s majestic forests and all the associated problems. The music strikes arcane chords, buried in our collective memory. Ancient tales are told without words, preserving a profound sacredness th…
Schneider Serries #2
"Following their first collaborative LP, which I reviewed in Vital Weekly 1451, there’s a new album by Dirk Serries (guitar) and drummer Jörg A. Schneider. For me, that was an introduction to this musician (Dirk, I have known since 40 years!), who plays with Gaffa, Glimmen, Jealousy Mountain Duo, Les Hommes Qui Wear Espandrillos, Nicoffeine, Roji, SWWS, Tarngo, Teen Prime, The Nude Spur and has several collaborative projects, mostly with guitar slingers, such as Thisquietarmy, N, Mikel Vega, Aid…
A Few Meaningful Things
And now, something completely different. Marco Avitabile is an Italian guitarist and sound artist who shapes raw improvisation into fragile textures. Once rooted in post-hardcore and metal, his playing has since become stripped-down,ambient, guided more by instinct than technique. 'A Few Meaningful Things' — his second solo work and first for Colectivo Casa Amarela — lets strings collide with live processing, a luminous meditation on simplicity, touching many styles while belonging to none.
This…
Heavenly Arms with Otomo Yoshihide
Heavenly Arms – featuring Otomo Yoshihide – is a bold new sonic journey that bridges experimental sound, improvisation, and emotional resonance. The record, released in collaboration with the visionary Japanese composer and guitarist Otomo Yoshihide, showcases a meeting of worlds where free improvisation collides with delicate melodic structures.
Across its tracks, Heavenly Arms captures the raw immediacy of live interaction while preserving an intimate, cinematic atmosphere. The album moves f…
Juvenile Rock
First-ever vinyl edition of Dendö Marionette's Juvenile Rock, a 2LP collection of unreleased recordings, alternate versions, studio experiments and live captures previously circulated only on a tiny CD-R run and a cassette via Brooklyn's Bitter Lake Recordings. The definitive companion to the band's self-titled studio overview, opening a window onto one of Osaka's most singular synth-wave units at its creative peak.
Dendö Marionette
Definitive 2LP overview of Dendö Marionette, gathering the band's complete studio legacy: the cult 1981 7-inch flexi, a previously unreleased EP recorded in 1982, and an array of demos that captures the group as they evolved towards their fullest sonic identity. Essential for anyone tracking the Osaka synth-wave scene at its peak.
Paradise Mambo
First vinyl reissue of Akebonojirushi's Paradise Mambo, originally on the influential DIW label in 1987. A six-piece formed in Hakata before relocating to Tokyo in 1984, the band fused new wave, jazz-funk and unconventional pop into a record that is unmistakably of its moment yet remarkably forward-looking, sitting somewhere between the city pop sophistication of late-80s Tokyo and the unrulier corners of the same scene.
Trap
First international vinyl reissue of Chiko Hige's Trap, his second solo album, originally on Japan Records in 1985. A tense, hypnotic record of hyper-kinetic grooves, clipping guitars and twisting saxophone lines: one of the cleanest distillations of the Japanese No-Wave idiom at its peak, and a record that still sounds startlingly contemporary four decades on.
Harafuri
First-ever official reissue of Machizo Machida and Kitazawagumi's Harafuri, originally on Tokuma's WAX imprint in 1992. Eleven years after the foundational INU classic Meshi Kuuna!, Machida (now better known as the novelist and Musashino University professor Kō Machida) channels literary ambition into a tight, modernised post-punk setting. With newly retranslated English lyrics included.
Dance Till You Die
Reissue of Daisuck & Prostitute's Dance Till You Die, expanded from a 1980 7-inch into a full-length the following year. Equal parts ritualistic groove and No-Wave abrasion: one of the most uncompromising statements of early-80s Japan, and an obvious cousin of the New York DNA / Contortions axis. With insert and lyrics.
Quelques idées d'un vert incolore dorment furieusement
For more than fifteen years, Toc – the Lille-based trio of Jérémie Ternoy (Fender Rhodes, Piano Bass), Ivann Cruz (guitar) and Peter Orins (drums) – has been pursuing a singular sonic quest where the energies of experimental rock, the unpredictability of improvised music, and a constant drive toward excess converge. On stage as on record, Toc invents a telluric and ever-shifting music, built from flows, ruptures, and accumulations, where hypnosis and chaos feed off one another.
For this new albu…
Traveling Light
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards. Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the majo…
Tristesse Apotropaïque
*17 copies limited edition* Tristesse Apotropaïque is the mesmerizing new sonic statement from the trio Apparet! (Jeanne Gorisse / Julien Goussina / Marina Levallois), released via the adventurous nanopublisher MMLI. Recorded live in Lorfou just before the winter solstice, this unique project brings together Gorisse’s double bass, Goussina’s piano, and Levallois’ imaginative synthesizer and effects setup, born from a spontaneous, joyful musical encounter that channels playful experimentation and…
Malmö 2025
*100 copies limited edition* Documenting a scene? Or creating one? Here is an attempt to present a audio snapshot of whats stirring in the experimental Malmö underground in 2025. Four lengthy tracks from some of the most interesting artists residing in the city.
On side A of this compilation Slug Mass brings us a weeping free jazz ballad that serves as an excellent example of their ongoing mission to reclaim the original definition of the term "post rock", in other words "using rock instrumentat…
The Lo Yo Yo
London’s The Lo Yo Yo was conceptualized by John “Alig” Pearce in 1984 after his primary group, the deservedly legendary Family Fodder, went dormant. Soon enough a few others were enlisted to round out the quartet, including Mick Hobbs of The Work and Officer! fame, alongside friends Joey Stack and Carrie Brooks. The Lo Yo Yo took elements from their other groups and, in the tradition of somewhat like-minded acts like The Raincoats, Naffi and Amos & Sara, added a strong dub/reggae element.
Short…
GOD O: Music For A Gallery Opening
The Residents are an American art collective best known for their over 60 studio albums that were recorded over a period of over forty years. They also created some outstanding multimedia works, mainly three CD ROM projects and more than ten DVDs. Charles Bock was a pseudonym that Hardy Fox, co-founder and primary composer for the group, used from 2012 to 2017. About a dozen albums were released using that name until Fox started using his real name for his solo recordings. "GOD O" was the openin…
Fruits of Patience
Born from a shared love of Aerial M, Lung Fish and other contemplative, cyclical and slow moving rock music from the Chicago and Louisville scenes, Fire Nearby are a guitar duo exploring long-form automatic song writing for the autumn season. Although McLean and Birchall have tussled together in a variety of free-improv groups over the last decade, their friendship has always been rooted in similar formative years spent gigging in, obsessing over and learning to play guitar to the same post-ever…