Experimental / All styles

All mixed 2003-04. All performances NYC venues 2001-02.

Legendary composers Zbigniew Karkowski and Tetsuo Furudate complete their second installment of World As Will. This powerful collaboration results in a furiously intense music with Wagner-esque orchestrations and instrumentation with vigorous electronic manipulations, voice and mastery. A truly epic piece of work.

These five duos mark Terry Day's return to small group improvising after an over-long absence caused by ill health. He is mainly playing his homemade bamboo pipes, but also uses his voice (reciting two poems and otherwise) as well as an echo toy and a cold water bottle. His partners are Charlotte Hug (viola & voice), Rhodri Davies (harp), Phil Minton (voice), Hannah Marshall (cello) and John Russell (guitar). The duo with Hug comes from the 2006 Freedom Of The City festival.

First CD from the quartet featuring Tetuzi Akiyama, Yoshihide Otomo and Toshimaru Nakamura under the guidance of Taku Sugimoto. Two long and extremely minimal acoustic/electric guitar tracks.

Recorded in concert at Gallery Den, Tokyo on April 5, 2000. Thanks to Masae Tanabe, Gallery Den.

Taku Sugimoto has been one of the most important musicians on the improv-front for some years now with releases on Erstwhile, Grob, A Bruit Secret, Improvised Music From Japan and many other labels. Redefining guitar music with his ultra minimal way of playing, the most extreme endpoint for this was the Taku Sugimoto Guitar Quartet album released earlier on Bottrop-Boy. On Chamber Music he puts the guitar aside and composes 3 pieces for violin, cello and piano. He recreates the same sustained so…

A previously unreleased solo violin performance by the founder of the Taj Mahal Travellers and legendary Fluxus conceptualist. Active since the 1960s, Takeisha Kosugi has more recently served as the music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Troupe. He is currently involved with the composing and performance of impromptu music and electronic multimedia music. To be brief, Kosugi is one of the most important and influential Japanese experimental avant-gardists, alongside the likes of Yasunao T…

Exciting new studio album featuring Annie Stubbs (LUSTMORD, SPK) on vocals + percussion and Swiss Aktionist Joke Lanz (SCHIMPFLUCH-GRUPPE) on noise toys, with conversions of Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag and Roxy Music's In Every Dream Home A Heartache.

Three grand pianists on three grand pianos. The presence of three good pianos at Gateway Studio allows one to hear three of the best improvising pianists working together. Most of the music is three-way improvisation, but there are also three short duos, and three pieces with restricting rules. 66 minutes.

The second in the series of Harbinger Sound's efforts to present the Smegma back catalog. This album originally came out in the UK only back in 1987 and is backed by the studio side from the 1988 cassette release, Morass. Twenty-one tracks in total. Dedicated to Tom (Pig Champion) Roberts. Limited to #1000 copies. CD features an eight-page booklet with photos and a pre-1988 Smegma discography

Recorded at Rare Book Room , Brooklyn , May 2005 except "Les île" recorded at Daz Basment, June 2005. The original cover was refused by the factory (which, apart for few copies, destroyed the cds) and became page 2 of the new version digipak booklet (see images).

80's original second issue by the Suono label, the second album, "Lord Cromwell Plays The Suite for Seven Vices" is their masterpiece: it uses more contemporary compositions with a radical avantgarde approach: all in all, it is done in an interesting, skilled and extraordinary way.

This is a true orchestra, and conducted by a duo: the omnipresent zbigniew karkowski and dutch electronics master edwin van der heide. the material used in this mort aux vaches release was recorded during 3 live performances (tokyo, japan, berlin, germany, and london- as part of john peel's meltdown 98 festival). the following artists took part in this project (in each performance the orchestra set-up was slightly different) masami akita - merzbow (tokyo,berlin,london), reiko a- merzbow (tokyo,b…

Sanhedolin are a ludicrously amped-up and heavy new power trio, featuring Keiji Haino, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Mitsuru Nasuno (Ruins). Haino brings aggressive anguish and all-consuming black fire, Yoshida and Nasuno supply a sack-full of convulsive time-shifting and complex kinetic acceleration. Haino and Yoshida have been working together on and off for the past three or four years in a number of duo and trio contexts, including a tour of China and Taiwan. They have built up the kind of ins…

Georgia natives San Agustin (David Daniell, guitar; Andrew Burnes, guitar; Bryan Fielden, drums) have performed with a multitude of notables from the improvised community, including Ken Vandermark, Thurston Moore, Loren MazzaCane and others, but this boxed set is the first truly representative document of their live presence. Haunting moments of introspection are enveloped in clouds of bluesy guitar notes, then swept away by great electric gales; drones rumble and shimmer in the aftermath. The E…

A dead voice gathers on this Musical Saw and Hawaiian Guitar Soli Recorded in Early 1920s. Innovator of the octo-chorda (an open-alternate-tuned eight-string steel guitar), banjo, singing saw, inflated rubber balloon, and various other 'household instruments', Floridian samuel Pasco moore (1887-1959) was a darling both in NYC and on the vaudeville circuit during his 1920s heyday. While novelty acts suffered the pitfalls of most soft-soapers, moore's sound is of startling, heavenly haunted southe…

Sakada (Mattin, computer feedback; Rosy Parlane, computer and radio; Eddie Prévost, percussion) recorded live at the Audit Club, London, Worm, Rotterdam, and the Baggage Reclaim, London, between January and March 2002.

Recorded at GOK Sound, Tokyo, July 1998. Mixed at GOK Sound, Tokyo, March 1999. Mastered at Transonic Studio, Tokyo, March 1999.

This is a CD of field recordings by the Japanese artist Toshiya Tsunoda. Microphones were placed inside small objects (e.g. bottles and drain hoses) located outdoors - either in an urban or rural sound environment. The work of Toshiya Tsunoda is concerned with the relation between sound space and cognition space, and often investigates stationary waves formed by fixed conditions in closed systems. He has previously released CDs on the WrK (Japan) and Selektion (Germany) labels. He also works wit…

This is New Zealand-based (and former Thela member) Rosy Parlane's second full-length release on touch. With Jessamine, Rosy develops these themes, and continues to incorporate new musical elements from unconventional as well as orchestral instrumentation. To him, everything is an instrument: from household objects to nature sounds. But it is the human element which gives his work such a distinctive sound. Ranging from ambient to noise, he gives full rein to textures of living; to start, languid…

Previously only available on a very rare 1979 Japanese LP, these two jazz sessions feature Rudd as a fine composer/arranger and organiser of unlikely-looking line-ups, as well as an exceptional trombonist. The CD opens with Rudd, ENRICO RAVA (trumpet), STEVE LACY (soprano sax), WILBUR LITTLE (bass) and PAUL MOTIAN (drums) all showing themselves to be in good form. Then SHEILA JORDAN (voice) joins them for some timely environmental protest. The other session (from the previous day) has KENNY DAVE…

Australian Ross Bolleter's new disc features five compositions. Four of them are solo works: "Unfinished Business" for ruined piano; "Under Rookwood" for double bass; "Labyrinth Tango" for accordion; and "Piano Dreaming" for ruined pianola. "That Time (Simulplay II)" is for a duo of prepared piano and double bass. Of course, with Ross, this thumbnail description tells not much of the story. So we'll let Ross say a few words. Step on down. "During the drought that never ended at Nallan Sheep Stat…

Pieces for ruined pianos and pianos on the edge of ruin. For several years now, Ross Bolleter has been scouring around Western Australia and beyond looking for ruined pianos. He has found the right music for each instrument, and performed and recorded it. This collection contains some recent choice items recorded around Perth and Alice Springs. The main work, inspired by an Aborigine painting, is the 28-minute 'Secret Sandhills,' a generally slow-moving work spliced together from performances on…

Morphei is a soundtrack to a dream. A nighty-night record designed to make you WAKE UP and listen! Inspired by that in between state of wake and dreaming, when you’re not quite sure whether you’re asleep or not, this record presents a stream of realities seamlessly floating into each other, layers of events of acoustic and digital nature mingle; hear the Light-switch singing a duet with the Feedback-mixer, traces of Scandinavian wildlife intertwine with a tropical forest of digital insects, or h…

This second CD is looser and veers more towards Free Improvisation than the first SHAKEN. Once again, trumpeter Ramanan (who doubles on wooden flutes) is with MARCIO MATTOS (cello & electronics), SIMON H FELL (double bass) and MARK SANDERS (percussion). One of the eight tracks is a bass solo, and another a string duet. 62 minutes.

A new work from Roger Doyle ( for electronics & transformed voices). Produced and composed by Roger Doyle. "I began Passades in early 2002 working with the creative possibilities of music software which captures sounds like a freeze-time video, making sound movement stop, or go forwards or backwards slowly. For raw material I used extracts (four seconds at a time) from previous compositions of mine which were fed into the software which would freeze them, and by mouse manipulation I would slowly…

LAST COPIES, NOW DELETED - special priced first solo release by the Berlin-based tuba player. 'Though not specifically about the tuba, the three pieces presented here reflect particular ways of regarding the instrument. Whereas in the first two pieces, Dial and Coil, it is viewed as a labyrinth of tubing within which air may be trapped and redirected, in the final piece, Valve Division, it is seen as a collection of individual tube lengths, tuned to one another by positioning the valve slides in…

Getting a grip on the chaos that surrounds us: for American artist and trumpet/cornet player Rob Mazurek the time has come to make a statement. Every right-minded lover of modern music knows his jazz and post-rock explorations with bands such as Chicago underground duo Isotope 217 and Tortoise. Nevertheless, inside this vintage improviser there also lurks a passionate multimedia artist who likes to speak his mind, especially in a time when his home country is starting to reveal the darkest and m…

Following the reissue of the Beyond the Black Crack LP, Paradigm delivers a second installment of outsider art from this American experimental showman. Collecting the offcuts of his numerous deranged sessions, this Kansas City tape collage artist turned electronic composer has an entirely unique vision, which is presented here as an overview of 25 years of work. A wide range of musical background informs the varied works on this collection, from Sun Ra-inspired space jazz to multi-channel electr…

Peter Rehberg (aka Pita) and Ramon Bauer completed their trilogy for the label Touch with the 2001 CD Passt. This album, short at 33 minutes, maintains an uncomfortable relationship with glitch electronica. Rehberg & Bauer's first CDs pioneered the genre, which quickly went through an ossification process. Closing their series, the artists try to distance themselves from the glitch culture, bringing a humorous and critical touch to the music. But meta-music this is not; we remain in glitch terri…

Rechenzentrum's John Peel sessions- cd release was generally received as a very fine recording. The delicate interaction between sharp rhythmical elements and noises or fieldrecordings, makes their sound mysterious but still transparent. It consists of several layers, interacting on different levels of musicality, shifting between traditional obviousness and hard to define abstractness in sound. They succeed very well in bridging between the more accessable underground music and noise, to use a …

Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje, voice. Jaap Blonk, voice. 18 duo improvisations. Recorded in Amsterdam, 2001 and Oslo, 2002.

Recorded and mastered at Amann studios Vienna September 2003 Packaged in a generic clamshell keep case.

QuintetAvant is comprised of members Lionel Marchetti, Jérome Noetinger, Jean Pallandre, Marc Pichelin and Laurent Sassi, five leading lights of the French improvised, electronic, electroacoustic scene. This recording sees them combine electronic tape, analogue synths and a united love for strange sonorities. Like its predecessor, the vinyl-only release Floppy Nails on Mego, this is an exciting display of concrete improvisation. Taken from a live session at the Musique Action Festival, and maste…

Superb acoustic string quartet improvisations recorded in the studio and in concert by TONY WREN (double bass), PHIL DURRANT (violin), CHARLOTTE HUG (viola) & MARK WASTELL. Also contains three short bass solos. 78 minutes.

The predominantly Viennese quartet Polwechsel have exhaustively explored the grey areas between composition and improvisation, electronic and acoustic, jazz and classical for much of the past decade. Austrian Christian Fennesz, while initially a guitarist, is primarily known for his abrasive yet melodic laptop explorations on labels such as Mego and Touch. Wrapped Islands documents the much-anticipated first meeting of these two driving forces of contemporary music. Bassist Werner Dafeldecker an…