New Arrivals
Raise the Dead
Raise the Dead is a collaborative album from Connecticut drone duo Tongue Depressor and Maine-born, Philadelphia-based songwriter Jakob Battick.
Z Druhé Strany
*100 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* This new collaboration of Jakub Šimanský and Jiří Štěpán is sort of happy coincidence. They are both active musicians, both coming from different background and performing in within slightly different scenes. Jakub Šuminaský has been cultivating his guitar playing based on the echoes of american primitive guitar style. Bass player Jiří Štěpán is active in his group Národní Divadlo, which steer towards free improvised and dissonant music.
They both met at …
Outline of Nature
“Outline of Nature” is the debut album by Twilight Sequence (aka Matthew J Saunders) following the release of a 12” EP and 7” single on Castles in Space, and an EP on his own Bandcamp page. “Outline of Nature” started as an experiment in building a modular synthesizer system and ended up as a voltage controlled outpouring of love for the natural world. Sylvan-born and pastoral-powered, sap-blooded and lightning-charged, this album grew out of the damp florescent corners of the woods, each note a…
Sucesiones
Sucesiones is a compilation of studies written for 53 equal divisions of the octave (53 EDO). This tuning temperament was selected after analyzing the work of Mexican researcher and visionary Augusto Novaro, one of the microtonal and just intonation pioneer theorists. Novaro claims that 53 EDO is one of rich musical qualities, which has good approximations to the harmonic series. The use of simple textures such as sine waves was a conscious decision, this in order to maintain the focus on the re…
Hopes & Theory
Hopes and Theory is a collection of songs inspired by wild plants and intentional gardens. At its core this music is rooted in synthesis, autonomy, and purely tuned harmony. At its heart there is chaos, color, and evolution. Hopes and Theory was recorded on the island of North Haven, Maine and reflects the anarchy of serenity in a seemingly peaceful place. William Trevaskis is a composer and sound artist living and working in the Fox Islands of Maine who uses xenharmony to explore themes of cha…
Weather Music
Weather Music features music controlled by the weather and performed on instruments built by Quintron & NYZ.
Wagland's 1921
"Succinct sounds, stately atmospherics, affected instrumentation & synthetic chamber music. Eclectic ambient music of the highest order..." - Slow Music Movement
"Beautifully nostalgic, brooding pearls of puckered melody and cinematic synth gaze from the lesser spotted Lambda Sond, gracing Important with a real lowkey gem tipped to followers of Alessandro Cortini, Kali Malone or Pauline Oliveros" - Boomkat
Waglands 1921 exists in a vacuum somewhere between Pauline Oliveros, spiritual jazz, analo…
Proof Of Identity
More than a decade ago, I made a piece of beat-based electronic music and titled it "Middle Eastern IDM" for a course assignment. After listening to it in class, my professor asked what was Middle Eastern about it. It was only a year after I had left Iran to study in the US, and I didn't know that I could say "I am. I made the piece". So I went back and superimposed a sample of Egyptian protest chants on top of the piece, to make it "sufficiently Middle Eastern". What prejudiced conservatism and…
As Long as the Sun, As Long as the Moon
"For the ear hears sounds from various combinations in accordance with the character of the melody and the instrument.” ─ Abraham Abulafia
Eight collective improvisations based on small musical ideas extracted from modern classical guitar works that make a beautiful suite of music; evocative, spiritual, hypnotic... The pieces found here are the consequence of a de-composing/re-composing process where each musician previously immerses into the music, transforming and combining the notes and rhyth…
Diskretion. Funktionsmusik Für Verrichtungsboxen
*300 copies limited edition* Hematic Sunsets are gone - here come the Statische Musen. A new outlet by Asmus Tietchens for musical endeavors that are more formlular or genre based The four long-form tracks of Diskretion explore "ambient" in the broadest sense of the term. Dense layers, slow dynamic progression, moody atmospheres. Asmus Tietchens was born in Hamburg in 1947. Since 1975 he has been working as an independent musician; in 1980 he released his first solo record Nachtstücke. After p…
Milojkovic Trio
“The first musical encounter between the members of the Milojkovic Trio occurred on a summer day in 2015. A gas leak in Jesper’s home forced us outside, where we had to wait for a plumber to fix the problem. At a given moment, Jesper’s upstairs neighbour, Jasmina, came outside carrying her accordion. I’m not sure anymore whether she actually played it herself that day, but I do remember the plumber playing the accordion quite well, after he had taken care of the gas leak.
Six years later, in 202…
Befreit die Maschinen
The promise has for a very long time been that machines will free us from idle labor. They are to take the drudgery away from us so that we can turn our attention to the beautiful, pleasant and sublime things. And music machines have long carried with them the promise that they would enable everyone to make music. Any music that can be conceived and dreamed should be able to be sounded. But neither are people working less today, nor has the fascination with true virtuosity disappeared. On the co…
In the End We Begin
Already in its title, Plume Girl’s debut thoroughly lets things go and takes them in – all at once. “In the End We Begin” is the first solo full-length from Sowmya Somanath, a Hindustani classical singer/composer and half of alt-pop duo Felt Out. Plume Girl’s music takes inspiration from the semi-regular musical form of the rāga (translated as ‘tinting’), invoking mood and atmosphere, each rāga thought to have its own distinct nature and personality, brought to life through improvisation. String…
Chimæras
Named after the mythological hybrid of the chimaera, Forces’ first collection for mappa was put together in a similar fashion. The sounds all stem from a fruitful residency at Stockholm’s EMS Elektronmusikstudion in May & June 2022, leading to a bounty of source material with which to build. The sounds and concept are equally chimeric, stringing together disparate and unintuitive jams, the music mimicking the multi-limbed, sewn together beasts of both creative open source coding and destructive …
Cave Acoustic
In 2018, New York based composer and improviser Lucie Vítková made recordings in caves in the Czech Republic and an abandoned Gothic church in Slovakia. Their album Cave Acoustics combines a beguiling exploration of the physicality and acoustics of these unique locations with profoundly personal themes of family legacy and roots. Lucie performed with their sisters in Výpustek Cave – an underground system of tunnels and former Soviet-era bunker. The choreography-based piece creates crescendos of …
sifting through heaven
Accepting the darkness can be a liberating experience. Realising, and struggling with just who we are and what world we live in requires it. By further complicating the fractured sense of beauty found on his droning 2022 release, ‘I dreamt we found a way’, Bristol-based composer, Rob Winstone creates a language that encapsulates the lifelong reach for our own personal heavens, along with the darkness and fear on which those foundations are built. Winstone’s instrumental palette continues to reac…
a path with a name
Atte Elias Kantonen is a composer and sound designer based in Helsinki, Finland. “a path with a name” follows well-received releases on Mappa and Active Listeners Club, and finds Kantonen expanding the scope of his dynamic and idiosyncratic practice. Here, he places his listeners within an auditive diorama, affording them myriad views of the microscopic landscapes contained there within. An oneiric narrative is established from the opening track, in which a heavily treated voice proposes a dialo…
Next Door
Adroit jazz guitar, prog rock fantasia, and Japanese environmental music all rest comfortably behind Leo Takami's Next Door. The follow up to the acclaimed Felis Catus & Silence, Next Door finds Takami ruminating on passages — of time, seasons, consciousness. Through music, Leo contemplates daily events and finds beauty in ordinary moments. He also seems to be questioning the value of being stuck in the world, allowing his mind to wander towards something beyond it. His music is earnest, deeply …
All Of You
All of You is a live album by American jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal featuring performances recorded at Jamal's own club in Chicago in 1961 and released originally on the Argo label. Jamal's group had a personal sound of its own, often playing quietly and leaving space but never losing the passion. These versions of "Time on My Hands," "Star Eyes" and "All of You" in particular are well worth hearing. On the cover, photographed by Don Bronstein, one of the first staff photographers for Playboy magazi…