Experimental / All styles

Recorded live at Conservatorio Nicolini, Piacenza, Italy, May 22. 2015 during "Musiche Nuove a Piacenza" Festival. Limited edition 980 handmade and individually hand numbered copy in papersleeve, with 21,50 x 21,50 miniposter © 2015

Unusual instrumentation and interaction from the trio of percussionist Mike Goyvaerts (Canaries on the Pole), saxophonist Jeffey Morgan (releases on Headlight, Konnex) and EMS synthesist Willy Van Buggenhout. Buggenhout and Goyvaerts are known for their electroacoustic duo Hotzeniebotsze, while Goyvaerts is also a long-term member of Fred Van Hove's W.I.M. (Workshop of Improvising Music). The trio use great technical skills and a unique approach to playing that mixes conventional and alien sound…

In a rain forest of moments. the eye hears what the ear sees. through each moment of Karin Johansson’s and Finn Loxbo’s music runs the firm conviction that all points and layers of sound – in true democratic spirit, carry the same weight. Or lightness. as precise as scattered bird calls may be crucial to the totality and the outcome of the drama as a whole, as cautiously do they take care of the phrased line by being extremely exact with the gaps and the charged rest, where that very thing appea…

Kelan Phil Cohran's ('Kelan' is an honorific meaning 'holy scripture' bestowed on him by Chinese Muslims during a visit to China) Meditation was recorded at Atiba Johnson's Chicago studio in 1996, but has circulated only privately until now, with its long-awaited official release on Katalyst. And in waiting for it to arrive, we have perhaps been given what we need to appreciate it as it unfolds. The two players on the session are Kelan Phil Cohran (harp, frankiphone, cornet, zither) and Malik Co…

If you weren’t paying attention, you might think this is a collection of solo ruminations by German pianist Georg Graewe. Listen closer, however, and you’ll discern contributions from harpist Sara Kowal and Viennese turntablist dieb13. Across 15 short improvisations – most of them just two or three minutes long – Graewe’s is the dominant voice. Kowal’s rippling harp tends to blend in with Graewe’s right-hand excursions, adding an extra layer of detail, while dieb13 contributes tactile electronic…

A powerful collision of musical personalities -- American saxophonist (and Dutch resident) John Dikeman invited avantgarde trumpeter Jaimie Branch, bassist Luke Stewart (Irreversible Entanglements) and drummer Aleksandar Skorić to form a new band project. This quartet presents its own definition of contemporary improvised jazz; with no distinct leader and with tight and supportive interplay, they demonstrate the independent musical voice of each own. Album cover by Jaimie Branch. Personnel: John…

* Edition of 100 * Disrupted Songs is meeting between two musicians with vast experience and different backgrounds, grounded on mutual listening and sensitive balance. Choosing to work on the energy triggered by a clash of imaginative minds who have made research and free improvisation the central point of their action, the duo does not previously set any rule. Simon Balestrazzi (electronic and electroacoustic musician) and Paolo Sanna (percussionist) create their own music in real time, buildin…

Michael Beharie (New York) and Teddy Rankin-Parker (Chicago) first met more than 10 years ago while attending Oberlin College. Since graduating, Beharie and Rankin-Parker each veered into markedly different avenues. In addition to a consistent output of solo releases on NYC-label Astro Nautico, Beharie also recently joined up with the ever-confounding New York ensemble Zs (Northern Spy, The Social Registry, Troubleman Unlimited), recently performed on albums by Laurel Halo, Greg Fox & Colin Self…

From 1984 to 1988 Anthony Blokdijk frequently visited Threshold House in London and corresponded with John Balance of Coil about playing live, releasing music and personal affairs. This book collects scans of Balance's original letters, including idiosyncratic decorative flourishes and provides insight into his colourful world. Also included two articles on Coil from Blokdijk's Abrahadabra magazine, and an interview with Coil he conducted for the Dutch magazine Opscene. Translations included. Fo…

This is so singular. "Creak-whoosh" is a brilliantly unusual Aussie re-imagining of Estonian choral music sung by the children of Estonian refugees and juxtaposed with off-world synthesizer drones and chunky '80s beatbox rhythms. Released in 1988, it sounds like Arvo Pärt, Ryuichi Sakamoto/YMO and Visible Cloaks playing concurrently = a complete one-off.  We've never heard anything quite like this before. Sydney-based musicians Olev Muska and Mihkel Tartu wanted to find a way to rework Finno-Ugr…

Sorry For Laughing is a project by Gordon H. Whitlow who is also a member of legendary US avantgarde collective Biota, formerly Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avant-garde, songwriting and free jazz. Their releases were published by their own self-produced label Dys between 1981 and 1986. By 1985 the group had split off into separate groups for visual and audio work. From that time, Mnemonists operated only …

* Recorded live and in real-time (without overdubbing) at OAO studio, Brooklyn, New York, March 1982 * Tom Cora made his musical debut as drummer on a local US television program. In the mid 1970s he played guitar for a Washington, D.C. jazz club house band. He took up the cello while an undergraduate at the University of Virginia and studied with cellist Pablo Casals' student Luis Garcia-Renart and later with vibraphonist Karl Berger. During this time he formed his own group, The Moose Skowron …

* Double CD in 6 panel ecopack * Hamid Drake is an American jazz drummer and percussionist. By the close of the 1990s, Hamid Drake was widely regarded as one of the best percussionists in jazz and improvised music. Incorporating Afro-Cuban, Indian, and African percussion instruments and influence, in addition to using the standard trap set, Drake has collaborated extensively with top free jazz improvisers. Amongst many others he has worked with trumpeter Don Cherry, pianist Herbie Hancock, saxop…

Saadet Türköz was born in 1961 in Istanbul into a family of nomads from Kasachstan. In 1981 she came to Switzerland where she was soon in contact with the free jazz and impro scene. From 1991 to 1992 Saadet attended a course in musical improvisation at Werkstatt für Improvisierte Musik (WIM) with Peter K. Frey in Zurich. Ever since, she has been working with jazz musicians from both Switzerland and all over the globe, for example she recorded with Elliott Sharp, Koch-Schütz-Studer, Okay Temiz, E…

Geins't Naït was founded in Nancy, France, in 1986 by Thierry Merigout and Vincent Hachet, both students at the Architecture School of Nancy. A year later Laurent Petitgrand joined the band. Their sound is often described as an equivalent of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil or Test Dept., but Geins't Naït is not pure classic Industrial. While Geins't Naït offers rough pieces of music as an extension of its punk attitude, Petitgand refines them to create some musicality within the post-ind…

Bourbonese Qualk were an experimental music group from England who where active from 1979 until 2003. The group were always obsessively and uncompromisingly focused on controlling their work - they ran their own record label, recording studio, tour organization and music venue (the legendary Ambulance Station) -- they refused to integrate into the commercial music racket turning down publishing deals from major labels -- stubbornly opting for total independence. Bourbonese Qualk were also known …

Concordance is Susan Howe’s and David Grubbs’s fifth album in the fifteen years of their unexpected and richly satisfying collaboration. Here they’ve pared down their materials to voice and piano, aspiring to the hushed intensity of their live performances. What had previously resulted from Grubbs’s recomposition of recorded materials now arrives as unadorned duo performance.

An epic second installment from the trio of Mats Gustafsson, David Grubbs, Rob Mazurek, nearly 90 minutes of intense live performances from January 2020. They converge here on a wide swath of sounds: expansive free improvs, full-tilt electronics, alt-universe chamber music and spontaneous arrangements of three previously released Grubbs’ songs.

Meditative moods from the Chicago duo of bassist Josh Abrams and percussionist Chad Taylor. With Taylor on mbira and Abrams on guimbri, instruments from diverse African states, finding a new pairing that moves past world music and jazz into something new, to do with dance, meditation, listening and convergence. Natural Information Society's Abrams has been using the guimbri, a lute-style bass, for years, but it's rarely sounded better than it does here, alongside Taylor's resonant mbira. Taylor …

Tip! ** 15 copies * Cristiano Carosi Live recordings from July 2021, affresco for magnetic tapes and FM synthesis melting the abstract with the surreal with the chant of the seagulls

Tip! ** 33 copies * Cristiano Carosi on tapes and samples, Devid Ciampalini on FM synthesizer and sequencer; each shape rolls into the next one with no previous plan, like skipping from a radio station to the other during a 40 minutes travel on the highway to planet earth year xxxx. Primo Tempo and Secondo Tempo were recorded live with no overdubs in February 2020, Terzo Tempo was remixed in April 2020

Tip! ** 33 copies * Cymbls's Collection of tracks spanning from 2015 to 2020. Recorded with analogue and FM synthesizers, drum machines, vocal samples, electric guitar, magnetic tapes and no hierarchies, mixing was close to the zero, shaping the sound is the sole purpose here. The result is a wild garden populated by shapes of  surreal colours and species, previously unseen and strangely familiar. All sessions recorded on a 4 tracks tape recorder with no computer reprocessing

* Edition of 80 tapes (white plastic), hand-dubbed, hand-cut inlays, incl. download * Gud Er Kvinde („God Is A Woman“) is the Danish duo of Maria Bertel and Johannes Lund. They sparsely release music under this moniker. They do have a myspace site. They both played in the Danish version of the Jooklo Duo, aptly entitled Jooklo Danish Group. Maria is playing in one of my all-time favourite bands, Selvhenter. Johannes‘ solo performance at the Kraak Fest 2017 would have been the sole reason for me …

Rotorelief 20th anniversary Special Offer. **Jac Berrocal’s first remarkable albums in fully remastered form on 200g vinyl, contained within a beautiful box and individual metallic covers and 24 page, deluxe book** Every serious fan of avant-garde jazz knows that, for a great many years, France was a central axis for the global scene - a safe haven and source of support for countless visionary voices from the United States and other points abroad. Until recently, what has remained relatively und…

* Deluxe Edition limited and numbered to 99 copies in 200g vinyl and metallic sleeve *  First album of Berrocal, recorded in 1973 with excessives reverberations of the crypt of the church Saint-Savinien in Sens, is a real notebook of sound travels, of instruments reported by jac Berrocal and Roger Ferlet during their numerous journeys : Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, various instruments: bells, muezzins, conches, shenaïs, cymbals, gongs … embellished with urban and inc…

* Deluxe Edition limited and numbered to 99 copies in 200g vinyl and metallic sleeve *  1976, Vince Taylor, the Black Archangel of Rock’n’roll, agrees to come and record “Rock’n’Roll Station”, a piece of futuristic clinking of a bicycle wheel. Other sessions contrary to custom, a pigsty with microphones mired in the middle of unruly pigs, towels shaken by Pierre Bastien in the middle of this “bric-a-brac” a noisy piece in homage to Luigi Russolo repertoire reorganized by bonuses and unpublished …

* Deluxe Edition limited and numbered to 99 copies in 200g vinyl and metallic sleeve *  1979, the year of the album Catalogue. Jac Berrocal and his “Marquises of disorder” make the guitars rattle in primrose-sprayed vomit, patchwork of uncontrollable slows, furious accordion (Claude Parle) and martial rocks. Kind of “Micro-cinemas put end-to-end”, a maelstrom of cries and saturation which, paradoxically, an album that is worth the respect of the Punks and the contempt of jazz purists. Berrocal i…

Megan Alice Clune's If You Do is a work of restrained ecstasy. Drawing on her interests in extended minimalist traditions, especially explorations into variable tunings featured in the works orbiting those involved in the Theatre Of Eternal Music, Clune devises a record of constant deepening. Each piece unfolds into the next, and whilst existing individually, they also operate as a collected mass of sound. If You Do is a constant, almost stream of consciousness, flow of voice, drones, keyboards …

Will Long's work as Celer traverses a nebulous and morphing galaxy of sound that centers around textured ambience and extended durational pieces. A long-time resident in Tokyo, his work explores the way in which sound can operate in an evolving atmosphere, coalescing with everything, and everyone, around it. With In Light Of Blues, Long pivots away from long-form works to create a series of vignettes that capture the essence of his aesthetics interests. The record condenses and refines his compo…

Brazilian-American power trio São Paulo Underground (Rob Mazurek, Mauricio Takara, Guilherme Granado) align their chakras with Tenerife electronic pranksters Tupperwear (Mladen Kurajica, Daniel Garcia) for an anything goes EP session of tropical jazz, Chicago post rock, and general head scratching psych chants. Recorded live in 2016 in a disused kerosene tank in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands after a week-long residency. Now recompiled by the Keroxen label and presented here in its ripes…

Black Truffle present the latest offering from underground legend Richard Youngs. Hyperactive since the late 1980s, Youngs is widely celebrated for his remarkably extensive and varied body of recordings. His works range freely over a vast terrain, wandering from tender acoustic balladry to raging psychedelic noise and orchestral D-beat, always imbued with his distinctive, often mournful, melodic sensibility and irrepressible sense of joyous experimentation. Comprised of two side-long pieces, CXX…

This special bundle collects the two recently issued albums by acclaimed experimental  percussionist Will Guthrie, including his latest collaboration with Jean-Luc Guionnet:Will Guthrie "People Pleaser - Pt. II" LPWill Guthrie / Jean-Luc Guionnet "Electric Rag" LPWill Guthrie "People Pleaser - Pt. II" LPA singular exercise in Will Guthrie's discography, “People Pleaser”, a series initiated in 2017, sees the Australian partially put down his drumsticks and wear a producer cap for a result offerin…

Jack Callahan & Asha Sheshadri’s 'Misfired Empathy' was recorded and processed in April and May of 2020 in a number of temporarily shuttered venues and the artists’ apartments. This is their first record as a duo. Asha Sheshadri is a New York based artist. Her multivalent work commingles memory construction, questions of citation and translation, and lost or silenced histories and diasporas. In her essayistic videos, recordings and performances, she layers her own voice with original writing, te…

Jack Callahan & Asha Sheshadri’s 'Misfired Empathy' was recorded and processed in April and May of 2020 in a number of temporarily shuttered venues and the artists’ apartments. This is their first record as a duo. Asha Sheshadri is a New York based artist. Her multivalent work commingles memory construction, questions of citation and translation, and lost or silenced histories and diasporas. In her essayistic videos, recordings and performances, she layers her own voice with original writing, te…

Argentinian maverick improviser Anla Courtis (Reynols) teaming up with Norwegian multidiciplinary vikings Lasse Marhaug and Jon Wesseltoft. All experienced players and collaborators in various constellations, but never before as a trio. When Courtis passed by Oslo in February 2020 and did these recordings, little did they all know that just weeks later the whole world would shut down and there would be a long delay until next time they would meet up under any circumstations. Courtis barely made …

Much needed repress of Merzbow's 1999 masterpiece, "Door Open at 8 am" remastered by Masami Akita, it includes new artwork created by Masami Akita himself. This limited edition on orange vinyl (200 Worldwide) includes two bonus tracks, a poster with new original art, and a download code.

Originally released on Cherry Red in 1981, Threat To Creation spotted the collaboration between two mystical entities: Creation Rebel and New Age Steppers. Forerunners of the British dub scene the two bands shared several members, a who's who of the On U-Sound school and key figures of the Bristol and London scene. Adrian Sherwood is -- obviously -- the man behind the desk a craftsman on its own, a character with no borders and one of the most sought-after producer of the time. The supergroup is…

Clear 180 gram vinyl. Debut solo album for Alternative TV front man and long-time running UK punk scenester, originally released in 1980 on Deptford Fun City Records. Mark Perry was also the man behind the iconic Sniffin' Glue zine, founded in July 1976. The album was produced by Grant Showbiz, principally known for his work with The Fall, The Smiths and Billy Bragg, and it is literally an art-rock nugget. Sort of an autobiographical work, the record is full of twisted hooks, showing the dark si…

Here's a monster of its own. Not to be confused with Trevor Jackson's early 2000 project (even if the British producer has obviously been informed by post-punk, dub, post-industrial and the likes), Playgroup was more than anything a collective, based somewhere around Bristol and London. Drummer Bruce Smith was the key figure behind the project. Neneh Cherry's husband and fabulous motorik force for The Pop Group, The Slits, New Age Steppers, African Head Charge, and -- more recently -- Public Ima…

Forty years ago, on July 8th and 9th in 1981, a group formed by the splintering of some of Bristol's essential post punk bands, entered the hallowed studio at Berry Street in London to record their debut single. What would emerge was not only an exuberant post funk classic on the A-side, but also a wildly influential dub workout on the flipside, whose reverberations can still be heard today. Both songs have proven essential in very different ways. A focal point for the unique punk-funk that was …