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Search Result for Genre EXPERIMENTAL
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CD
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CVSD 118CD
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$13.50
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RELEASE DATE: 4/25/2025
Corbett vs. Dempsey presents Jaap Blonk's Ursonate, featuring the complete text-sound work by artist Kurt Schwitters. Blonk first recorded the canonical Dada poetry piece in 1986, released as an LP on BVHAAST, Willem Breuker's label. He has returned to the work multiple times over the ensuing decades, and this incredible new recording shows his deepening understanding of the pioneering work. Blonk writes in the liner notes: "Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) wrote his Ursonate or Sonate in Urlauten ('Primordial Sonata' or 'Sonata in Primordial Sounds') over ten years, from 1922 to 1932. During that period Schwitters tried out many preliminary parts in public poetry readings. It became a 30-page work in invented words, which he later considered one of his two masterpieces (the other being the Merzbau in his house in Hannover, destroyed in 1944). The Ursonate has a structure similar to that of a classical sonata or symphony. It consists of four movements: 'Erster Teil' ('first part'), 'Largo,' 'Scherzo,' and 'Presto.' After a short introduction, the first movement opens with an exposition of its four main themes (subjects), each of which is subsequently 'developed' (development in the sense it is used in classical sonata form), leading to a coda. It is note- worthy that the theme exposition returns as a reprise before each new development but the last one. Both the Largo and the Scherzo have a centered (A-B-A) construction in which the middle part contrasts with the two identical outer parts. The Presto has a strict rhythm broken only by a few interjections from the first movement and the Scherzo. Like the first movement, it follows the sonata form: exposition (repeated immediately in this case), development, and recapitulation. Next is the Kadenz, leaving the reciter free to choose between the written version and his own. However, in his written instructions for future performers of the piece, Schwitters says that he wrote his cadenza only for those among them who 'had no imagination.' In my performances of the Ursonate, I always create an improvised cadenza on the basis of the sonata's thematic material. Only on the recordings I have issued, for reasons of completeness, a recording of the written cadenza is included as a separate track." --Jaap Blonk, December 2024
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Cassette
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DC 860CS
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$12.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/25/2025
Cassette version. "Years past the space time of Automaginary, Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society have reported back at last from beyond. If the new title doesn't clue you, Totality brings good news. Since their first collaboration, the path ways that lead from Natural Information Society's ecstatic all-world jazz to Bitchin Bajas' microtonal soundscapes have grown ever finer in their articulation. Across the spectrum, the septet balance a deeply searching mood with wonderfully in-pocket production feel. This makes for collective aural transport of the highest order to all those listening in. In the time since their 2015 first convergence, the Natural Information Society have released four albums (one in collaboration with Evan Parker, one with Ari Brown) and Bitchin Bajas five (one a soundtrack, one with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, one featuring the songs of Sun Ra). Given the multivarious paths both groups have traveled, it makes sense that their second convergence seems to emanate from centuries, eons beyond or below -- some undefinable elsewhere -- from their first. Totality is that. These days, Natural Information Society is populated differently. From the sextet NIS that co-created Automaginary, Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado and Mikel Patrick Avery remain. In the stead of the departed former players is Jason Stein on bass clarinet. This might account for some mere impression of aspects of time, space and evolution to be found here -- but then again, Bitchin Bajas flow on in their long-standing trio configuration (Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan, Rob Frye), so the 'people in the room' theory of how Totality ever got this way will only take us so far. Recorded in a single day with Greg Norman at Chicago's Electrical Audio, then slowly considered into the finished record we hear here, Totality is a sweet-tempered second child. It experiences time in ways the first kid didn't. If you're in it for slow-shifting trance formations, it's gonna be cool. There's lots here for you, lots of simmering time and synth atmospheres dappled with radiant woodwinds -- but there's some head-snapping hypno-rhythms that stand apart from the groove energies of the first one. It's just natural facts: two different days in time separated by years, with the experience of several live encounters between the two groups in between. Beyond that, only the music can say anything else. That said, here are a few thoughts from this listener's log... The low-key revolutionary thump of 'Nothing Does Not Show' and 'Clock no Clock' notwithstanding, Totality charts impressive new launch angles from NIS & BB's improvisatory heart, with their careful listening and response time continually redefining the space in a relaxed manner that rewards deep zoners. Additionally, their blended corps assimilate marvelously on Abrams' composition, 'Always 9 Seconds Away.' Here, and with the aforementioned groovers, the collective resonates beyond familiar kraut/spiritual/minimal power lines, bringing new time conceptions to bear in the always-expansive space of this album event. It's about time we got back to the singularly-divined space of Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas with Totality. That's the best way to way to define this new music -- it's about time."
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BT 128LP
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$31.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/25/2025
Legendary New Zealand-born experimental composer and sound art pioneer Annea Lockwood returns to Black Truffle with On Fractured Ground/Skin Resonance, her third release for the label. Having recently celebrated her 85th birthday, Lockwood shows no sign of slowing down in her exploration of new sound sources and collaborations with an ever-growing intergenerational pool of performers -- here with Vanessa Tomlinson. Her creative vibrancy is alive as ever on the two recent works presented here, which demonstrate both her engagement with the social dimensions of sound and the deeply reflective, meditative aspect of her art. "On Fractured Ground" derives from material recorded with Pedro Rebelo and Georgios Varoutsos for the soundtrack of Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon's opera-film, History of the Present (2023). Working together in Belfast, Lockwood, Rebelo and Varoutsos made extensive recordings of the city's "peace lines," the dozens of walls erected since the beginning of the Troubles in the late 1960s to separate Catholic and Protestant areas of the city. Continuing to work in her studio with the material collected for the soundtrack after its completion, Lockwood composed the work presented here, occupying a space somewhere between her own extended-technique percussion music and the Cagean tradition of hyper-amplified small sounds. "Skin Resonance" is a collaboration with Australian composer and percussionist Vanessa Tomlinson. Developed through conversations in which the two discussed the idea of "sonic attraction," the piece focuses on Tomlinson's relationship to the bass drum, reflecting on the complex web of connections embodied in this seemingly simply instrument, which is at once "animal, wood, and metal." Approaching the instrument in a suitably elemental fashion, Tomlinson's performance strips away conventional technique to explore the resonance and timbral properties of skin, drum, and metal hardware, producing overlapping waves of texture that at times seem closer to wind swishing through leaves or the ocean than anything usually associated with a drum. Emphasising the symbiotic relationship between performer and instrument, Tomlinson's voice is heard at times, exploring the field of associations and connections the bass drum suggests to her. Accompanied by insightful liner notes on both pieces and photographs documenting the recording of "On Fractured Ground" and a performance of "Skin Resonance," this LP is a moving testament to the engagement, generosity, and openness that sustain Annea Lockwood's work, still finding new directions after more than fifty years of activity.
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LP
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DC 860LP
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$30.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/25/2025
"Years past the space time of Automaginary, Bitchin Bajas and Natural Information Society have reported back at last from beyond. If the new title doesn't clue you, Totality brings good news. Since their first collaboration, the path ways that lead from Natural Information Society's ecstatic all-world jazz to Bitchin Bajas' microtonal soundscapes have grown ever finer in their articulation. Across the spectrum, the septet balance a deeply searching mood with wonderfully in-pocket production feel. This makes for collective aural transport of the highest order to all those listening in. In the time since their 2015 first convergence, the Natural Information Society have released four albums (one in collaboration with Evan Parker, one with Ari Brown) and Bitchin Bajas five (one a soundtrack, one with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, one featuring the songs of Sun Ra). Given the multivarious paths both groups have traveled, it makes sense that their second convergence seems to emanate from centuries, eons beyond or below -- some undefinable elsewhere -- from their first. Totality is that. These days, Natural Information Society is populated differently. From the sextet NIS that co-created Automaginary, Joshua Abrams, Lisa Alvarado and Mikel Patrick Avery remain. In the stead of the departed former players is Jason Stein on bass clarinet. This might account for some mere impression of aspects of time, space and evolution to be found here -- but then again, Bitchin Bajas flow on in their long-standing trio configuration (Cooper Crain, Dan Quinlivan, Rob Frye), so the 'people in the room' theory of how Totality ever got this way will only take us so far. Recorded in a single day with Greg Norman at Chicago's Electrical Audio, then slowly considered into the finished record we hear here, Totality is a sweet-tempered second child. It experiences time in ways the first kid didn't. If you're in it for slow-shifting trance formations, it's gonna be cool. There's lots here for you, lots of simmering time and synth atmospheres dappled with radiant woodwinds -- but there's some head-snapping hypno-rhythms that stand apart from the groove energies of the first one. It's just natural facts: two different days in time separated by years, with the experience of several live encounters between the two groups in between. Beyond that, only the music can say anything else. That said, here are a few thoughts from this listener's log... The low-key revolutionary thump of 'Nothing Does Not Show' and 'Clock no Clock' notwithstanding, Totality charts impressive new launch angles from NIS & BB's improvisatory heart, with their careful listening and response time continually redefining the space in a relaxed manner that rewards deep zoners. Additionally, their blended corps assimilate marvelously on Abrams' composition, 'Always 9 Seconds Away.' Here, and with the aforementioned groovers, the collective resonates beyond familiar kraut/spiritual/minimal power lines, bringing new time conceptions to bear in the always-expansive space of this album event. It's about time we got back to the singularly-divined space of Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas with Totality. That's the best way to way to define this new music -- it's about time."
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CD
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RM 4248CD
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$17.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025
From Theresa Wong: "The inspiration for these pieces comes from the Chinese folklore of Guanyin, a deity whose name translates to 'the one who perceives all the sounds, or cries, of the world.' Also known as Guanshiyin 觀世音, she is the embodiment of infinite compassion. I grew up knowing of Guanyin as a female deity, but recently discovered that she had transformed through the centuries from the male Hindu bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara. I instantly found an affinity for this gender-fluid figure, who was said to have attained enlightenment through meditation on sound. These pieces offer an imaginary story of a humble seafarer (Guanyin is a popular matron saint of fisherfolk), who returns from the tumult of the sea one evening at dusk. They journey into a seaside cave in a cliff nearby to find solace in prayer to Guanyin. Deep within the chambers of this glistening cave, an encounter with the mystical deity brings comfort and healing while the churning of life outside persists. Perhaps it was out of a premonition that I created these pieces, which became one of the few things I could listen to during an intensely challenging year of my life. All the music is played on solo and multi-tracked acoustic cello. Many pieces are created around the repetition of simple phrases, like a sonic mantra repeated to focus and ease the mind. The cello is tuned down to a fundamental of A=216 Hertz, and the harmonies are composed in just intonation, a tuning system based on the natural overtones of resonating frequencies. In tracks 5 and 7, the lower strings are detuned extremely to a precise tension, creating a drone that contains both noise and specific overtones. In this manner of playing, I often have the feeling of 'splitting the sound open' into a composite of rhythm, harmony, melody and noise through playing beating frequencies, fingered overtones, implicit melodies emerging out of undulating harmonics, and the pure growl of the slackened string. I hope the listener will find rest and repose -- in this music, amidst the ever-compounding churning of our present world. My deepest thanks to Lawrence English, Janet Oh, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, and the Emily Harvey Foundation for supporting this work."
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LP
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RM 4245LP
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$24.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025
From Lawrence English: "I like to think that sound haunts architecture. It's one of the truly magical interactions afforded by sound's immateriality. It's also something that has captivated us from the earliest times. It's not difficult to imagine the exhilaration of our early ancestors calling to one another in the dark cathedral like caves which held wonder, and security, for them. Today the ways in which sound occupies space, the so-called liquid architecture, holds just as much wonder, albeit one that is often dominated by functionality and form. Beyond those constraints however, how sound operates in the material world is something that exists at the fundament of our understanding of music, and moreover within the broad church we know as the canon of sound arts. Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is a record born out of these relations. In a direct sense, the record is the product of an invitation by curator Jonathan Wilson to create a sound environment, reflecting on the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery Of NSW. The building's name, which translates from the Gadigal language to 'seeing water', was opened in 2022 and this piece was offered as an atmospheric tint to visitors walking through the building throughout the year following its opening. It's also a record born out of a recognition for the porousness sound affords, especially as a device for collaborative endeavor. This composition is one born out of generosity and acoustic solidarity. Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is comprised not just of my sounds, but also that of an incredible array of artists who have also operated in the orbit of the Art Gallery Of NSW. The players include Amby Downs, Chris Abrahams, Chuck Johnson, Claire Rousay, Dean Hurley, Jim O'Rourke, JW Paton, Madeleine Cocolas, Norman Westberg, Stephen Vitiello, and Vanessa Tomlinson. The piece was constructed around two long form sound prompts that each musician responded and con-tributed to. These materials there when digested into the final piece you hear. The work could not exist without the substantial offerings these artists made, and I am immensely grateful to each of them."
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LP
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JUBG 004LP
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$29.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/11/2025
For over half a century, Sven Åke Johansson and Rüdiger Carl have explored the boundaries of music together. Villa Hügel captures a rare moment: a concert with no audience, recorded in 2020 in the library of Villa Hügel during the 2 x Kippenberger exhibition. The few present could only experience it in-house via TV transmission. Carl on accordion, Johansson on percussion, cardboard, and crackle box -- an interplay of structure and openness, sound and silence. This release follows Johansson's exhibition Osram at JUBG in 2025. A document of two musicians, bound by time and sound, in a moment like no other.
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CD
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RM 4238CD
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I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea is the first collaboration of Lea Bertucci and Olivia Block. This collaboration was set into slow motion some years ago, in 2017, when Lea and Olivia connected through an interview facilitated by writer Steve Smith. In 2022, the artists finally had a chance to collaborate, performing an improvised set at Pioneer Works in New York City. Since then, the New York based Bertucci and Chicago based Block remotely built out ideas stemming from their live performance, passing sounds back and forth, until I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea was forged into existence. The title is a famous utterance of the Oracle of Delphi, a cult of female priestesses who would inhale the poisonous vapors of nearby volcanic vents to induce mystical visions for their seekers, often changing the course of civilization. Getting high from the earth. That is what this album hopes to achieve for our listeners. This collaboration sees Block playing synthesizer and tape, and Bertucci using her own voice processed through reel-to-reel tape, as well as microcassette collage of field recordings. Recorded and mixed by Olivia Block and Lea Bertucci. Mastered by Lawrence English at Negative Space Special.
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LP
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DAK 022LP
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$35.50
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RELEASE DATE: 4/4/2025
"From their early '90s inception to the latter years of the 21st century's first decade, No Neck Blues Band appeared (to distant observers, anyway), to be something of the Platonic ideal for the 'improvisational collective,' in turn confounding ideas of authorship, recognition, and fame. A fragile symbiosis at best, the scrim of anonymity began to fray sometime around the turn of the century, and a group that looked like it might, for a second, become the ur-rock, drug-soaked United-States-of-American AMM, instead unraveled. As individual members began to emerge from behind the veil, the conceptual, compositional, and improvisational personalities behind the group's untouchable alchemy took form. Two of the group's lifers stood out -- Dave Shuford, undeniably the group's guitar powerhouse (who also revealed himself to be an ace songwriter with Rhyton, D. Charles Speer, et al), and Pat Murano, who founded his label Daksina to explore obsessions with deep electronics, metal's outer reaches, and late-night murmurings of all sorts. In addition to whatever else they were, Murano and Shuford confirmed their status as high-order improvisers, albeit with an expansive grip wielding far more power than the polite conversationalism permeating most 'non-idiomatic' improv genres. On their second duo LP Sing and Play for the Guru, Shuford and Murano dig deep into the crevices of nocturnal electric moan, the first side a meditation on the abyss that sits easily on the shelf next to Murano's blackest Decimus musings. Building at a horrifically slow pace towards a sunless molten boil of vocals and electronics, the side is a perfect soundtrack to our ongoing entropic apocalypse, a 'dark ambient' opus that manages to make Abruptum sound like Kiss. While it's a stretch to call side B 'brighter,' it moves from its opening guttural cyborg eviscerations into tranced-out elaborations on non-Western modalities (something both of these punters excel at) with synapse-cleansing grace. As a whole, the LP ups the ante yet again for Daksina, whose every release effortlessly resets the pinnacle for non-rock psychedelic entanglement. Regardless of your take on the future, it seems foolish to muse on society's collapse with anything other than this record on the deck, your ass in an armchair, and your libations of choice flowing into your gullet." --Tom Carter
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LP
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DAK 023LP
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$35.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 4/4/2025
"C & PM -- two adepts of improvisation again alight their paths with esoteric flame. The emotional tenor of their masterful double LP release Four Infernal Rivers (MIE 027LP) is maintained: frightful urgency blends with a kind of poised resolve, the auditory version of a thousand-yard stare from an aloof predator. The guitar based sonics in evidence here on Songs of Éliphas Lévi Zahed congeal into a monolithic viscous clarity. 'The Will' is marked by vibrant strings slowly coaxed into vocalese. A few minutes in, a trap door delay takes the listener instantly to the tripping basement, forced to navigate a respirant rug in near total darkness. Tunnel vision tiny dot of light then dilated to max. Blinding flashes of a green horizon. Fuzz plumes are heard staggering into the distance, slowly passing over the hill of setting sun. 'Astral Light' piles on the pastoral waves as it glides along the edges of a shimmering ray. These tracks have been dedicated to the legendary ceremonial magician, Éliphas Lévi, the one who illustrated the Goat of Mendes for all to see plainly. This man of constant sorrow cut his teeth in socialist circles in Paris but later focused on more obscure routes of societal impact. In one of his books, he arranged 22 chapters to match the major arcana of the tarot. Lévi brought cartomancy into the realm of Kabbalah and the larger magical tradition. In his system, the will becomes interlaced with astral light - allowing for influence from far remote locales. Another version of what was known in neo-platonic circles as the pneuma, the field of transmission for extenuated mind force. Near the end of his life, Lévi hid away a catalog of ethereal songs written in the major and minor keys of Solomon. 'The Imagination' is where magic stakes its claim. Within the mind's eye, where images can hold fast and bind the viewer. Splatter tones draw out a tumbling duel, infernal internals. Molten pickup sound but enhanced, like drinking direct from the tap of voltage control. Faith based magic -- even faith based on lies, can be efficacious." --Dave Shuford
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LP
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METAPHON 021LP
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$31.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 3/21/2025
First LP in the Signature Series, a small new series in the Metaphon catalog, documenting previously unreleased archive works of less known composers. Metaphon presents their "signature" in the most personal and elementary way. Raoul De Smet (1936), mainly known for his numerous instrumental and chamber music works, started composing in the early 1960s. Between 1974 and 1989 he also recorded several electro-acoustic compositions at the IPEM in Ghent, one of the more approachable crossroads for experimental music creation at the time. His work carries different moods and contrasts, a sort of expressive eclecticism where straight forward evolution often prevails over far-fetched intemperance. However, his work is far from obvious. The four distinctive tracks on this album portray a fresh and unpretentious enthusiasm of a composer discovering new electronic tools. Four previously unreleased electro-acoustic compositions recorded at the IPEM.
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2CD
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KR 100CD
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For the first time a full album with recordings based on Yoko Ono's 1964 collection of texts, event scores and drawings Grapefruit, a foundational cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art, and enveloping the orbits of Fluxus and experimental music. Performed by The Great Learning Orchestra which has during the 25 years of its existence worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, J.G. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt, and more. Originally self-published in 1964 in a limited edition of 500 copies under Yoko Ono's own imprint, Wunternaum Press, and later reprinted in expanded editions, the collection of over 230 texts, event scores and drawings that comprise Grapefruit has long been considered a foundational text in what became known as Conceptual Art, and envelops the orbit of Fluxus and experimental music. Though comparisons to John Cage may seem obvious, Ono's first attempts at textual composition actually pre-date her first encounter with the American composer by around a decade and have evolved free from Cage's influence. Another factor that sets these scores apart from associated forms of verbal notation from the same period is Ono's ambivalence towards the necessity, or even possibility, of their physical realization -- instead the idea being that the realization should take place in the mind of the reader. Hardly any performances have been recorded and released on disc -- so, 60 years after Grapefruit first appeared, Selected Recordings From Grapefruit is the very first full album of pieces selected from the many sections of the book. The sonic realizations presented here are of a number of different kinds, encompassing studio-based ensemble performances, but also location, environmental and field recordings (and at times combinations of these), as the scores themselves dictate, and for the most part recorded live and acoustically, such that the performances, actions, situations and environments that you hear are real. The accompanying 20-page booklet with rare performance photos and some original typewritten scores from Ono's personal archive also includes the text instructions for each piece - thus allowing the listener to make a connection between the imaginative engagement and creative activity executed by the performing members of The Great Learning Orchestra and the resulting recording. With 20 tracks and approximately 85 minutes duration, Selected Recordings From Grapefruit finally brings to ear some of the most important and influential 20th century avantgarde art.
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2LP
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KR 100LP
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Double LP version. For the first time a full album with recordings based on Yoko Ono's 1964 collection of texts, event scores and drawings Grapefruit, a foundational cornerstone of what became known as conceptual art, and enveloping the orbits of Fluxus and experimental music. Performed by The Great Learning Orchestra which has during the 25 years of its existence worked with Gavin Bryars, Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros, J.G. Thirlwell, Arnold Dreyblatt, and more. Originally self-published in 1964 in a limited edition of 500 copies under Yoko Ono's own imprint, Wunternaum Press, and later reprinted in expanded editions, the collection of over 230 texts, event scores and drawings that comprise Grapefruit has long been considered a foundational text in what became known as Conceptual Art, and envelops the orbit of Fluxus and experimental music. Though comparisons to John Cage may seem obvious, Ono's first attempts at textual composition actually pre-date her first encounter with the American composer by around a decade and have evolved free from Cage's influence. Another factor that sets these scores apart from associated forms of verbal notation from the same period is Ono's ambivalence towards the necessity, or even possibility, of their physical realization -- instead the idea being that the realization should take place in the mind of the reader. Hardly any performances have been recorded and released on disc -- so, 60 years after Grapefruit first appeared, Selected Recordings From Grapefruit is the very first full album of pieces selected from the many sections of the book. The sonic realizations presented here are of a number of different kinds, encompassing studio-based ensemble performances, but also location, environmental and field recordings (and at times combinations of these), as the scores themselves dictate, and for the most part recorded live and acoustically, such that the performances, actions, situations and environments that you hear are real. The accompanying 20-page booklet with rare performance photos and some original typewritten scores from Ono's personal archive also includes the text instructions for each piece - thus allowing the listener to make a connection between the imaginative engagement and creative activity executed by the performing members of The Great Learning Orchestra and the resulting recording. With 20 tracks and approximately 85 minutes duration, Selected Recordings From Grapefruit finally brings to ear some of the most important and influential 20th century avantgarde art.
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DC 626LP
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2025 repress. "Natural Information Society, like their partners in time Bitchin Bajas, live their days in flow motion. Rhythms come and go, instruments sound as a means to a greater end. Music is the way of their life. Their debut convergence, Automaginary, feels as natural as it does inevitable. Both groups were first heard in 2010, both emerging from solo endeavors that accessed a vastness, more room than a single player might ultimately fill -- a place then for fellow travelers! Joshua Abrams, a questing bassist and improviser by trade, with an extensive discography of solo recordings and collaborations with a wide variety of artists, formed Natural Information Society as a conduit for the live presentation of his guimbri music. Abrams had delved into the sound of the threestringed Gnawan lute on his own, intrigued by the instrument's ability to provide melodic and rhythmic direction with a minimal, hypnotic palette. Known for the drone also are Bitchin Bajas. Cooper Crain of CAVE started the Bajas to explore his fascination with vintage electronics and recording techniques. With Dan Quinlivan on keyboards as well, Bitchin Bajas' discography has explored a range of dynamic approaches, producing various proportions of atmosphere and soundtrack that move from becalmed stasis to synthetic beat-building with a prescient liquidity. Both Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas are in pursuit of the unconscious in their musical expression, and through their independent methods, both have ridden the wind to unseen places, using the playing as the carpet that will take them there. A multitude of influences swarm amoebically in their sounds, from the mud of ancient Afro-groove to 20th-century classical austerity, from the clatter of freedom jazz to the 4/4 of kraut and disco and fusion beyond -- and then beyond the music and into the air. Wrapped up in a screen-printed jacket from visual artist Lisa Alvarado, whose aesthetic sense is a touchstone for the vision of Natural Information Society, Automaginary is psychedelic and ambient and jazz -- yet none of it either, the whole being more than the sum of former parts. This is music of unique variance, a remarkably perfect congregation of the two tribes that are Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas."
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AKU 1052LP
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The "extracøntinent" that Damien Mingus invites listeners to visit on this new album from his My Jazzy Child project is by no means an imagined or imaginary space. It's the palpable space forged by the musician's 25 years of activity, where popular and traditional music, free music and learned traditions collide. And don't confuse the ∅ (empty set) with the Ø (island in Finnish) used in the title of this album and some of the tracks -- it's insularity that's being asserted here. An island-continent made up of sonic archipelagos where electronic collages and improvisations are rooted in pop exoterism. Where Innéisme (AKU 1028LP, 2021), his previous album, questioned the construction of language, Extracøntinent this time summons esoteric discourse to better circumscribe it. The second part of a trilogy in the making.
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EMEGO 316LP
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Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker have both a long history with Mego/Editions Mego. The individual exploration of sonic phenomena by these two practitioners has resulted in both being highly regarded for their uncompromising approach to sound as matter. Russell Haswell and Florian Hecker came together as a collaborative duo with the now-legendary record Blackest Ever Black, somewhat inexplicably, on the classical imprint of Warner Brothers. In 2025, Hecker and Haswell return with a new album featuring the two-channel edit produced initially for their UPIC Diffusion Session #23, performed as a live diffusion across eight-channels at the X100 Festival, Berlin, 2023, celebrating the 100th anniversary of Xenakis' birth. This record furthers the duo's exploration of Xenakis's UPIC system as the sole instrument. The UPIC is a computer music system that generates sound from visual input. The original intention of the system developed by Xenakis was to make a utopian tool for producing new sounds accessible to all, independent of formal training. One can locate footage of Xenakis and a group of children making drawings for the system in the '70s. The duo set off experimenting with a diverse array of hand-drawn images to feed the UPIC system including news photographs of disasters and atrocities, "food porn" through to depictions of the natural world and microscopic images of molecular structures (including "the blackest ever black"). The resulting eccentric audio from these images is claimed by the artists to heighten synesthesia and is as mysterious as it is baffling. Throughout UPIC Diffusion Session #23 frequency clusters move and morph in the most unusual manner, shifting and stretching into shapes that hint at some kind of magical process. What starts out deceptively simple soon unravels into a large array of sonic mayhem. Symbolic jet planes are shredded by a swarm of insects, a metal bowl howls into the void, a tiny tin toy crawls into a thicket with the resolute aura of a black hole. A burning geyser of laser forms liquid shrapnel. This is sound as an alchemical process, a constant chimerical flow into the netherworld and is the net result of the decades long radical investigations by the two artists involved. UPIC Diffusion Session #23 is a direct, rich and rewarding listen for those willing to invest time into the outer limits.
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LP
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WHYT 087LP
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Wojciech Rusin presents Honey for the Ants via AD 93. Honey for the Ants completes an "alchemical trilogy," after The Funnel and Syphon. These albums are informed by mystical and gnostic texts, celebrating the weird, unhinged and occasionally beautiful. In this album the tonalities have shifted from mediaeval and renaissance to modernist dissonances. New singers and instrumentalists contribute to an emotional and textural richness achieved in a collaborative process. Distant musical periods, real and fictitious, are nonchalantly interwoven to create a delirious mongrel that salutes the imagination. Wojciech Rusin is a Polish-born audio-visual artist based in London. He draws inspiration from alchemical and gnostic texts, early renaissance choral music and Eastern European mythologies. He released Syphon LP on AD 93 in 2022 and The Funnel LP on Akashic Records in April 2019. He designs and makes 3D-printed reed instruments, reworking ancient designs with contemporary 3D modelling technologies. In 2020 he released Meat for the Guard Dogs on Cafe OTO's Takuroku digital imprint, and the Rufus Orbis cassette for Boomkat Editions/Documenting Sound series. His music has been featured on BBC Four and he has worked for The National Theatre and The Southbank Centre.
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CD
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SR 566CD
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The recordings on A Modern View on Early Music show a bold mix: breathtaking a cappella interpretations of the Octonaires de la Vanité du Monde by Paschal de L'Estocart (1582) and pieces from the Geneva Psalter (1562) meet the reworkings of Sylvain Chauveau. The voices of chant 1450, trained in early music, sing these pieces with lyrics about transience full of emotion and elegance. Sylvain Chauveau processed individual pieces electronically, whereby transience remains sonically present in his always surprising versions. The reworkings do not take early music as a fixed, quasi-museum repertoire, but as a starting point for something new -- everything is in flux, is reinterpreted, changes. A wonderful stream of fantastic music emerges, with ancient and contemporary music coming closer together than one might initially expect. Le Beau du monde -- A Modern View on Early Music, is the second collaboration by chant 1450 and Sylvain Chauveau after Echoes of Harmony - Early Music Reworked (SR 447CD, 2017), both released by Sub Rosa.
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CORTIZONA 029LP
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$30.50
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 2/14/2025
Dienne creates hazy pieces of music full of the melancholy of remembrance and loss combining analog instruments with reverb-drenched vocals and shimmers of processed electronic sources. Her new album Conducturis emerges as a sensory exploration of the human spirit and the boundless horizons of artificial intelligence. "Abundant in beauty and rich in disturbances" serves as the guiding principle for Belgian composer, Dienne, as she builds songs and soundscapes that portray the images and stories that play behind her eyes. Combining analog instruments like the oboe, the piano, and the flute with reverb-drenched vocals and shimmers of processed electronic sources, she creates hazy pieces of music full of the melancholy of remembrance and loss. Her debut album Addio (OP 067LP, 2022) was released on Nicolás Jaar's Other People imprint. Addio is a 32-minute study on loss and mourning. Following the death of her grandmother due to Covid-19, and unable to say a proper goodbye due to travel restrictions, Dienne set out to give her "Addio" through musical form. The result is a deeply intimate work that channels classical instrumentation through foggy electronic experimentation. Her second album, Conducturis, accompanies an immersive film installation delving into speculative fiction, conceptualized by Mira Sanders and Cédric Noël. Conducturis is an immersive film installation project that delves into the realms of speculative fiction, employing the cinematic language of the road movie to envision the ramifications of constructing an artificial brain within the Swiss landscape. Following their encounters with key figures in the Human Brain Project during an art research expedition in Geneva from 2019 to 2020, conceptualized by Cédric Noël and Mira Sanders, they stumbled upon a remarkable discovery: a hidden fiber-optic cable linking Geneva to Lugano. Anchored at both ends by the Human Brain Project in Geneva and the CSCS (Centre Suisse de Calcul Scientifique) in Lugano, this conduit facilitated the transmission of intricate brain simulations from the imposing computational hub in Lugano to Geneva via a "superconductor" cable. Guided by the principle of being "abundant in beauty and rich in disturbances", Dienne embarks on a sonic exploration of the Swiss landscape, translating its ethereal beauty and technological wonders into evocative musical compositions. Printed inner sleeve; includes 8p art booklet.
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2LP
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HOL 138LP
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"Towards the end of the 1970s, a film about me and my work was made in Kabul for the South German TV program. The director was Arpad Bondy. In order to find a venue for my music that is typical for Afghanistan, it was agreed that my 'percussion environment,' a tubular cube of 2x2x2 meters including the associated instruments, would be transported on a barren, stony ridge in the Hindukush mountains. The people called the place 'Maidan,' which means nothing but 'place.' While a couple of men dragged the frame pipes and the instruments up the hill, I decided to carry my large Wuhan gong (100 cm diameter) up the mountain, in a kind of ritual. Michael Ranta sent me this gong from Wuhan/China to Kabul. With slow and careful steps, carrying the heavy gong like an umbrella on my head, I walked over the difficult rocky terrain without a path up. Suddenly a snake about two meters long came out of the rocks towards me and hissed aggressively at me... As I later discovered, it was a very venomous snake... I had to bring myself to kill the beautiful animal... I decided to name my solo performance Requiem For The Snake Of Maidan... While I was playing I only had one musician with me: the wind. I hung my metallophones on the linkage so that the wind could touch them and create sounds. The recording captured a few parts where I didn't have to lift a finger and the wind did everything that was necessary. The room was a wide landscape without any echo. If an echo can be heard in the recording, it is the reverberation from the big gong. Only a few noises came, apart from the wind, from outside... The big gong and the boo chals (Tibetan cymbals) produced a whole series of overtones. The string instruments, the metallo- and lithophones dominate the recording. In addition to the acoustic environment of my instruments, in some parts of my improvisation I used a battery-powered tape recorder (Uher 4400 report stereo IC) with a pre-recorded feeding tape that I had pre-recorded before alone or together with Michael Ranta in Kabul. The stones of the lithophone were collected by Ranta and myself in the valley of Goldara around an old collapsed Buddhist stupa. Almost each of the hundred stone plate we had lifted was ringing." --Hartmut Geerken
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LP
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HOL 145LP
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Edition of 100 copies. Acchiappashpirt is the sound and video, poetry/poetronic collaboration between the Albanian poet and vocalist Jonida Prifti and the Italian sound artist Stefano Di Trapani. Ninulla was conceived as a suite of lullabies that were written and sung for, with, and by their son Arion. An album divided between conscious and unconscious recordings, where dream and wake merge. Despite the obvious gentle and holistic conception of Ninulla, the album is a deeply experimental excursion into sound practice, entirely rethinking the notion of what a lullaby might be. Drenched in a deep sense of atmosphere and reverberance, with drifting, often processed vocals floating and weaving their way through simple and seductive melodies, haunting environmental images and textures, and flirtations with playful left-field pop, the album has the unavoidable effect of catapulting you into the joyous, elemental nature of music making at its purest form, while also throwing a wrench in the cogs every step of the way. Composed and recorded by Jonida Prifti and Stefano Di Trapani. Produced by Antonio Giannatonio and Acchiappashpirt. Edited by Antonio Giannatonio. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Cover artwork by Re Delle Aringhe. Includes the poem "Ai miei figli e ai miei nipoti" by Dania De Vincenzi.
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LP
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DSDM 008LP
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LP, one-time edition of 250 copies, pressed to 180g black vinyl and housed in a pro-printed jacket contained in a silk-screened PVC sleeve. I Hate All The Words by Luca Scarabelli and Michele Lombardelli's Untitled Noise, the eighth instalment in Die Schachtel's celebrated Decay Music series, is a concept album composed of three tracks designed to explore the remote and hidden depths of psyche: "Misery," the awareness; "The Time," the suspension of disbelief; and "Heaven," the existential atonement through detachment. The sounds and the voice proceed alternately, overlapping, where each, in its progression, asserts itself autonomously -- entities unto themselves, presences in dialogue at the edge of possibility. At times primitive and obsessive, they emerge as reminiscences of the unconscious and emotions, which coincide with unconscious, altered, and unexpected lowness. Sound and voice in unison are a burst of a great energy. Noise-glitch sound patterns, distortions, and objects set into vibration in the "soundscape" are mainly performed by Michele Lombardelli. The lyrics, interpreted by Erica Bazzeghini, were written by Luca Scarabelli, drawing inspiration from a personal experience as well as his art. In Luca's reflection, I Hate All The Words is a path to test the truth, the mystery and the meaning of words. "Self-reflection has been an intimate journey, often conducted in the seclusion, away from the chaos of external reality. In the lyrics it is mirrored in three distinct stages: self-awareness marked by 'Misery,' the suspension of disbelief symbolized by the passage of 'Time,' a moment of misgiving, and finally, recovery through detachment, in the track 'Heaven.' In my thoughts, I see the works of poets like T.S. Eliot, Georg Trakl, and Sylvia Plath, who explored personal pain and transformation." In I Hate All The Words all the "colors" have become dull. Fragments of thoughts and a sonic exploration change the perception of the present reality, evoking the ghosts of the past, in a shattered time, with the weight of whispered words.
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FANTOM 005LP
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Dischi Fantom's Sussurra Luce series, blurring the boundaries between text, music and voice, returns with its fifth instalment, an expanded version of Hanne Lippard's Talk Shop. Sculpting a fascinating bridge between radically experimental sound practice, conceptual art, and sound poetry, across its two sides the Berlin based multidisciplinary artist taps an almost dada sensibility, delivering a suite of poems and texts where singular words and sentences are looped and repeated creating a sensory experience of the efficiency and stress found in private as well as public life. An extension of the Milan based cultural platform Fantom's broad and diverse activities (exhibitions, installations, performances, etc.) across numerous artistic disciplines, the Sussurra Luce series, curated by Francesco Cavaliere and Massimo Torrigiani, delves into the "science of imagination," working with contemporary authors to explore and blur the boundaries between text, music and voice. Released in a limited edition of 200 copies and coming with an LP-sized booklet, it combines orality and textuality with the idea of loop and repetition to explore the notion of time, and it's a stunning gesture of performative poetics that plums a startling range of subjects through its sonorous forms. Working across the fields of text, vocal performance, sound installation, printed objects and sculpture, for more than a decade Hanne Lippard has deployed language as the raw material for her work. Talk Shop began as a live performance. Combining orality and textuality with the idea of loop and repetition to explore the notion of time, its relationship with the world of work today, and its personification through the experience of the human body, the conceptual underpinnings of the piece depart from the notion that the human voice has become commodified by the ubiquitous nature of contemporary productivity, and intertwined with the mechanics of capital. Addressing vocal anonymity as a spearhead of the digital economy, Lippard's Talk Shop taps this dada sensibility through its unexpected layers of meanings drawn from a maximalized approach to the potential of the human voice, creating an engrossing and challenging listen from the first sounding to the last, that continues to reveal itself and unfold with every return.
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LP
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ZEIT 018LP
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Furthering the passionate exploration of cinema that has guided her two previous LPs -- 2017's Fassbinder Wunderkammer and 2020's I Should Have Been a Gardener -- the Milanese guitarist/composer, Alessandra Novaga, returns to Die Schachtel with The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle, two sides of shimmering, tense compositions freely inspired by the life and work of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Classically trained at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy's thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument's unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound. The seeds of The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle can be traced to a conversation that Novaga had with Alan Licht relating to the connections between music and cinema, which led her to consider Andrej Tarkovsky's use of Bach's music within a symbiotic framework: how the music illuminates the imagism of the films, and the film illuminates new dimensions of the music. Slowly developing over the subsequent years, the resulting album comprises six individual works, some of which draw directly upon pieces of Bach's music that Tarkovsky used in his films -- specifically "Erbarme dich, Mein Gott," "Das alte Jahr vergangen ist," and "Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ" -- while others draw upon the sensibilities and moods evoked in the imagination by the director's films. Encountering Novaga moving into fairly uncharted waters, three of the album's pieces incorporate the human voice, including that of the poet Arsenij Tarkovsky, the director's father. Roughly alternating between solo excursions on guitar and bristling electroacoustic pieces, over the course of the album's two sides Novaga weaves one of her most abstract and ambitious bodies of recordings to date, shifting between the complex tonal mediations generated by the six strings of her instrument, and phycological densities activated by the expanded pallet of sonority made possible by the tactics and approaches of musique concrète. The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle is available on as a limited edition of 300 dark turquoise vinyl LPs. The LP, designed by Bruno Stucchi/dinamomilano, comes with an eight-page insert illuminated by Alessandra's text as well as the lovely and intense photographs of Matilde Piazzi.
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3CD
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PRO 416CD
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"Steve Roach's 1984 Structures from Silence is an ambient classic often spoken of in the same breath as Eno's Music For Airports. Projekt celebrates Structures' 40th anniversary with a beautiful remastered edition. The breathing, suspended embrace of atmospheres and serene melodies instantly struck a chord with listeners in 1984; the album continues to reiterate its timeless resonations with new listeners today. On this landmark recording of gentle proportions, the three long-form tracks were the birth of something new: an original and pure balance between diaphanous and understated, deep and reflective. The tracks evoke a sense of silence within the music as well as the space between the chords. Pitchfork: 'Top-40 Best Ambient Albums of All Time. Contemplative bliss, full of purring drones and high notes that shimmer and fade. Like a desert mirage, these structures hover forever at the horizon, an oasis from the din surrounding it.' Structures From Silence remains an iconic American release in the ambient and electronic genres. A well-respected soundtrack for contemplation, relaxation, meditation, and creativity, it's emotional, powerful, and enriching. It is a living example of music's true healing quality. Yoga Journal Magazine: 'Top ten all time releases for Yoga.' Rediscover this timeless classic. The new mastering reveals the stillness within, setting the tone for the next 40 years of silence."
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