Experimental / Free Improvisation

Dirk Serries (worldwide renowned for his ambient alter-ego Vidna Obmana from 1984 till 2007) returns to this expansive sound universe with a new collaborative album that redefines the genre. Together with alto saxophonist Trösta the duo delivers a breathtaking album just in time to comfort, soothe and challenge in these darker times. Island On The Moon is a symphony of harmony, depth and nuance. A solace drenched in melancholy and light, made without the aid of computers but by the hands of two …

On Landlocked, Mo'ong Pribadi and Sholto Dobie build a clattering, breathing machine‑folk from self‑made pipes, horns and percussive junk, where air compressors and human lungs mingle into an uncanny music of phasing clicks, drones and phantom tunes.

On Taillis, Roxane Métayer and Charles Dubois cultivate a sparse, alive thicket of sound where violin, prepared drums and resonant objects trade roles, letting melody, pulse and texture quietly braid into fragile, shifting song‑forms.

One of the most profound solo statements to date from a musical master who has been crossing musical borders for over three decades! Concentrating exclusively on the acoustic guitar, Fred Frith stretches himself and the instrument like never before, performing with the eloquence and grace of a master in peak form. With a prodigious technique and elegant sense of maturity he draws upon a lifetime of study and experience to bring together influences as diverse as classical, blues, folk, gypsy and …

These stunning recordings combine the great strengths of Pauline Oliveros on her Roland V-Accordion, Issui Minegishi; Ichigenkin master and great-great granddaughter of the founder of the Seikyodo Ichigenkin tradition and Miya Masaoka on her 21 string Japanese Koto. Together, these masterful improvisors create a beautiful and fascinating world of instrumental communication. This trio of legendary artists establish a sonic zone so compelling that you'll never want to leave. This double CD preserv…

*2026 stock* Ad old men but not down-trodden paths when the areas are only popular & sought after by the still few. For many, there’s a Milky Way between pop & this music; for fewer, it’s like standing on either side of a hybrid ant. The guitar (the chordophone) & the drums (the membraneophones) are known by most, but the sound here is of the rarer kind, although there is indeed string play & rhythmic things, just not in the usual way, but instead according to other orders & expressions, like an…

Solo Throat is the first solo LP from vocalist, composer and movement artist Elaine Mitchener. Drawing on the work of African-American and African-Caribbean poets Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Aimé Césaire, Una Marson and N. H. Pritchard, these twelve new vocal compositions disrupt semantic sense, play with the margins of lyrical translation, and give rise to new voicings. Elaine Mitchener is a veteran of vocal expression in the global Black Avant Garde, traversing free improvisation, cross-disciplin…

Full recording of one of the most engaging and beguiling Late Junction live sessions we’ve ever heard - the one off first meeting between Korean multi-instrumentalist Park Jiha and writer and performer Roy Claire Potter.  Park Jiha plays the saenghwang, a Korean mouth organ which she blows in long multiphonics to set pace for Potter’s words. Together they unfurl a scene slowly in front of you, rich and focused, shifting your field of vision and drawing you in, elsewhere. It’s impossible not to f…

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other. Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas,…

Joëlle Léandre and Lauren Newton have been performing together for nearly 30 years, having met in the mid-1990s in Paris. Throughout that time, they have always favored exploring the textures of music that are not arranged conventionally but rather are scattered, diffused, and dispersed through layers of sound. The voice’s high notes forge a variety of color fragments, while the low notes of the double bass create substance and depth. These two components remain inseparable as the sound settles …

Bill Nace turns a traditional two‑string instrument into a focused sound laboratory, contrasting a feedback‑touched, spiralling first side with a pared‑back, bodily repetition that slowly blooms into vast harmonic space.

Other Minds is pleased to present Inhale/Exhale, the debut recording from the New Mexican trio of Pulitzer Prize winning composer/guitarist Raven Chacon, percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, and bassist Carlos Santistevan.

On Embrace 1: Jupiter Storm/Partial Intersect, Polwechsel with Magda Mayas and John Butcher fold fixed media, stopwatch scores and free low‑string improvisation into a dense, shifting topology of resonance and friction, pushing their chamber‑reductionist language into newly electronic and spatialised terrain.

On Embrace 2: Chains and Grain, Polwechsel distil their chamber‑improv logic into a score grown from their own playing: a tense, breathing matrix of repeated figures, frayed textures and in‑the‑moment reactions that is rebuilt afresh every time it’s performed.

On Embrace 3: Magnetron/Quarz/Obsidian, Polwechsel with Andrea Neumann turn acousmatic tape, simulated multitracks and graphic notation into an intricate laboratory of cause and effect, where elevator doors, room ghosts and painstakingly negotiated scores yield two of their most conceptually precise and sonically uncanny works.

On Embrace 4: Orakelstücke/Aquin, Polwechsel open their rigorously quiet universe to two singular composers, Peter Ablinger and Klaus Lang, yielding a diptych where struck objects, voices and long, glowing tones summon an almost liturgical sense of mystery from everyday sound.

New Forces is pleased to offer a reissue of Jeph Jerman's "Keep the Drum," originally released on cassette by Apraxia in 1990. Since the 1980's Jeph Jerman has been a key figure in experimental music, from the textural noise of his legendary Hands To project, to more recent studies in field recording and acoustic sound recorded under his own name. On "Keep the Drum" Jerman explores what he calls "concussion music," working with a pile of hubcaps, sheet metal and "other bits of junk" to rethink t…

Mont-real (Split) brings together Sam Shalabi and the duo of Mike Gangloff & Liam Grant for a two-track release on Carbon Records. The split, out October 24, 2025, showcases Shalabi's singular experimental approach alongside Gangloff and Grant’s free-folk, string-driven improvisation, bridging Montreal’s avant scenes with Appalachian-influenced drone and psych.​

*150 copies limited edition* Beautiful edition of glass mastered CDs with hand painted covers by Tim Bradley on full color 400g offset print card stock in thick PVC sleeves that we think really compliments the, at times radical, combination of sounds and textures in the music. The works are "over painted photographs", directly inspired by Gerhard Richter's series of the same title (Übermalte Fotografien). Bradley says: "To paint over a photograph is to admit that truth is always blurred—each ges…

*200 copies limited edition* 'Meditation Music Beyond The Unsleeping Psychopathic Mind' — a raw, deep free-jazz exploration where synth, voice, saxophone, and percussion dissolve into a single, unfiltered sound world. No boundaries, no polish — just presence and freedom for sonic expression. Music spontaneously composed (improvised) by all members of the group. Recorded at Threshold Studios in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Produced by our good friend Devin Brahja Waldman and wrapped in hypnotic cov…

*200 copies limited edition* The album was recorded in a small chapel of a monastery in the city center of Ghent. A chapel, by nature, is a place of contemplation and meditation, which inevitably influenced the music. Movements slow down, attention is sharpened and the overwhelming silence of the space becomes part of the music. Sound and silence are meticulously woven into each other. Even when the music grows at times dense and heavy, there is an ever-present sense of closeness and intimacy. T…

‘Pungnyu’ is originally a tour album created for the first overseas tour of the band Woo-ryeok and the Pung-gak changi. In response to public requests citing that there are no officially available albums other than the music released on Bandcamp, the idea arose to produce a tour tape, which became the starting point for ‘Pungnyu.’ The recording was carried out in one take at 'Under,' a studio and workspace of Choi Tae-hyun, who is a member of the Kwang program and also a musician. Parts of membe…

Joe McPhee's Unquenchable Fire, a work inspired by Rachel Pollack's award-winning novel of the same title, was commissioned by The Deep Listening Institute for the Deep Listening Band and premiered at Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors. The Deep Listening Band explores the sensual combination of musical sound combined with natural sound, as well as the sounds of daily life and one's own thoughts. One never knows what Pauline Oliveros will do next, but whatever it is, she is sure to go beyond boundaries…

Filtro returns with a short ep reflecting its new approach to minimal strucures and small electronics. Sounds for night reflections and dark disquiets. Filtro is an electronic duo composed by Angelo Bignamini and Luca de Biasi. The duo focuses their research on the characteristics and properties of sound, disconnected from its original context and meaning, favoring minimalist and abstract constructions, questioning the modes of reproduction and distribution in space. They have released several m…

*300 copies limited edition* The first resonant space Zosha Warpeha played in was the Emanuel Vigeland Museum in Oslo, Norway. Built as a mausoleum, its walls reach up into a gradual archway, creating an environment where sound expands and reverberates for twelve seconds before decaying into silence. Warpeha was greeted only by dim lights when she entered, and it wasn’t until she had spent several minutes listening that she was able to make out the frescoes that covered every inch of the room: g…

*2026 stock* Recorded at Rimi/Imir Scenekunst, Stavanger. Recorded and Mixed by Gaute Granli. Mastered and cut by Frédéric Alstadt. Cover design and print by Drid Machine. foil by Bokbinderiet Erland. Financial Assistance: Stavanger kommune. THANK you: Rimi/Imir Scenekunst and Kafé Hærverk. Thore Warland uses SLB electronic drums.

"The three musicians seem to exchange and overlap tones, creating the feeling of a single and continuous arc extending, curving in space, a kind of bridge or thoroughfare outward." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Magda Mayas piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Tony Buck drums

The final album of Henry Birdsey’s (Tongue Depressor) textured and immersive country laments project, Old Saw.  This final document highlights the range of the project’s vision, evading easy categorization.. Some of the most direct and emotive music yet from Birdsey.

Mega tip! *300 copies limited edition* ‘This celebration of the group’s 30th anniversary is composed entirely of recent works, but each will move around in time as well as in form, in ways that belong to traditions of both improvised and composed music, but also in ways that belong distinctively to this group. It demonstrates breadth and depth that suggest great temporal reach, embracing musical values that touch the art’s ritual origins and offering a sense of ongoing relevance and renewal. Tru…

Tip! "Lehn and Robair are particularly well-matched. Lehn is a musician who came to electronics from the piano, while Robair’s resources include both electronics and percussion. Each matches readily with acoustics and circuitry and creates a remarkable bridge between the two with Butcher, whose saxophone playing can assume both percussion and oscillator-like characteristics." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Thomas Lehn analogue EMS Synthi AKS Gino Robair …

"Improvised music at this level of concentration may touch the roots of human culture, the transformative power of the cave and the paintings of Lascaux and Altamira." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Burkhard Beins percussion John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Werner Dafeldecker double bass

"If this quartet most resembles a jazz band among these Berlin recordings, it might be in its speculative assembly. [...] It’s akin to a novel, Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, designed with multiple reading sequences, or Nanni Balestrini’s Tristano, in which the order of paragraphs is different in every single copy." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Liz Allbee trumpet John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones Ignaz Schick turntables, sampler, electronics Marta Zapparoli tapes, reel to reel tape machin…

"… a kind of ideal duet, no imitation conversation but two simultaneous composers each repeatedly provoked and silenced, prodded and enchanted by the other…" – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) Sophie Agnel piano John Butcher tenor and soprano saxophones

Aspen Edities is pleased to present Aerial, the third album of the experimental quartet Oker.

1998 release ** The Seasons: Vermont is a soundscape of Vermont as charted through the changes of its yearly soundings. It is a composition in four parts (Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring) for magnetic tape collage with an unspecified live instrumental/vocal ensemble. Though the actual composing of the music was completed between 1980 and 1982, it is the realization of a ten-year composition project. Goldstein listened closely and became attuned to what was the particular sound quality of each sea…

XI Records is very pleased to announce the release of Tom Chiu’s new double-CD The Live One, a diverse and thoroughly engrossing album that showcases the multiple facets of Chiu’s visions. Chiu is a polymath who is as comfortable with lyricism and the beauty of tonality as he is with process-based works and challenging conventions of composition. Chiu specializes in creating spatial experiences and altered states of mind with his music, with a singular, questing path. He is a gifted improviser a…

On Live Non-Plus Ultra, Strain of Laws—the duo of Aaron Hemphill and John Wiese—drag voice and electronics through a pressure system of sub‑bass, hiss and mumbled fragments, documenting their 2025 LA set as a single, slowly suffocating industrial hallucination.

On Third Night Sparks, Akio Jeimus, Risa Takeda and T. Mikawa bottle a one‑off Bar Isshee trio into a crackling nocturne of electronics and synths, where noise iconoclasm and poised, in‑the‑moment listening fuse into a single live current.

This enchanting album weaves together the intricate fingerstyle guitar mastery of Paul LaBrecque with the soulful, ethereal vocals of Valerie Webb, creating a sonic tapestry rooted in folk, acoustic, and world music traditions. Recorded in the lush Vermont woods, the title track "Trees" evokes the whispering rustle of leaves and ancient forest spirits through LaBrecque's cascading arpeggios and Webb's haunting chants. Tracks like "Hollers" channel raw Appalachian calls into rhythmic, percussive …

Trio improvisations for two pianos and double bass