Unaccompanied Acoustic Guitar Vol. 2
Here is the second volume of protean solo improvisations recorded by Loren Connors in his artist's garret in New Haven, Connecticut. Like the first volume, it was committed to tape and pressed to vinyl in 1979. Never having seen a copy of this record, and having pressed it before we discovered a master cassette exists, this is as good a transfer as can be had for the nonce. Loren's chair creaks like rusty crow and the amount of random tapping and thumping during the original session just about d…
en
Tip! Sofa is thrilled to present the beautiful music of the Dutch snare drum player Etienne Nillesen with his new album “en.” With a snare drum only, Etienne explores simplicity of setup, movements, and material, developing music that is full of complexity and depth.
Etienne’s technique is highly original, involving the use of a thin drum stick against the surface of a granular drum skin, which produces sustained pitches and harmonic layers. The product of his own groundbreaking research into th…
The Days
We are living through the same time. The worst day ever for someone might be a happy day for someone else. "The Days" are solo saxophone pieces of drama from someone's life.
Promise of Faithfulness
Promise of Faithfulness was created during a winter in Brussels, between the search for new sounds and the interest of what we might call spirits in music. This debut solo album is a tribute to the last words of Albert Camus's speech for the Nobel Prize : "It remains for me to thank you from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to him/herself in silence every day."
The Psychic/Body Sound System
Tip! Dan Blacksberg’s Psychic/Body Sound System takes a gutsy leap into a set of otherworldly sub-bass drones, fiery free jazz declamations, and melancholic sonic stories. This fully improvised album, recorded live with no effects or overdubs shows Blacksberg wielding his trombone like a seer across varied sonic environments, real and imagined. Woven together by poetic fictionalizations by Alex Smith and stunning artwork by James Dillenbeck, Psychic/Body Sound System is a trombone-driven reverie…
The Dreaming Bridge
*2024 repress* "... The Ohio-based guitarist's artistic leaps in recent years are rivaled only by those of Daniel Bachman, another once-precocious player formerly in the John Fahey / Jack Rose mold who has over the years transcended the idiom to create his own singular, deeply personal music. Rolin's latest LP, the double album The Dreaming Bridge, makes similar strides. For many practitioners of this style, the first and perhaps most challenging feat is to escape the gargantuan shadow of Fahey.…
Air Drain
*Limited to 100 copies* "On the solo bagpipe release "Air Drain" Henry Birdsey (Half of Tongue Depressor) creates deep, haunting pieces that entrance the listener. Simple forms that evolve with breath and time."
Kvarpan
Isak Hedtjärn plays the clarinet — a straight, metal variant of the more common wooden B flat Clarinet. Kvarpan is Isak’s first ‘solo’ record, but you also hear him in ‘quartet’ with himself, too on this diverse suite of improvisations recorded ‘on location’ on a single day at Patons Malmgård — his usual practice spot just by where the ferries head over to Finland. We recorded until the throb of the boats and waiting cars took over.
A polymath of undeniable musicality, Isak is a constant, alw…
Here Are 5 Reasons To Meditate
*119 copies limited edition* Bury the bag full of nostalgic complaints on "how things used to be better" at Schoonselhof, and get blown away by the fresh Air Force that is Adia Vanheerentals! We are damn proud to present Adia’s first solo release! Seemingly from out of nowhere, Vanheerentals has been blowing minds in many different shapes the past years: as band leader in Bodem, in various free improv set ups, as a guest with The Groovecats, in a trio with Elisabeth Klinck and Maya Dhondt and as…
The Solar Model of Ibn Al-Shatir
Pat Thomas returns to Otoroku for his fourth collection of solo piano improvisations, this time recorded in a studio setting at London’s Fish Factory.
Ubagabi (Chicken & Fire)
Ubagabi is a baroque solo violin album recorded in 2019 reinterpreting the myth of Ubagabi, a chicken turning into a fire ball. This album is now finally released on a silk-screened CD, fully equipped with a flammable booklet, an insert, and all fits in a hand stamped rotisserie bag. Mastering by Guillaume Lespinasse.
Essential Tremors
Mohammad Syfkhan is a Kurdish/Syrian Singer and Bouzouki player. He began playing music in 1980 while he was in college studying nursing. When he got his degree in 1983, Mohammad moved to the city of Raqqa, Syria where hebegan working as a professional singer and started his own band, The Al-Rabie Band which played concerts, parties, weddings and festivals all over Syria. The Al-Rabie Band were a much sought-after group. Their live sets included Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and some Western songs as…
Convolutions
In 2022 Lori Goldston went on a small 4 date tour of Ireland playing in Cork, Limerick, Leitirm and Drogheda. Willie Stewart of Nyahh Records drove her on the tour and recorded each performance. With Lori’s permission, Willie edited and mixed each performance and put them together to make this album. The end result is a collection of improvisations and spontaneous moments. Every performance is drastically different to one another in mood, energy and technique. In these recordings you can hear ho…
Vacances
*250 copies limited edition* Minami Saeki is an actor who also has experience as a film director. Energetically engaged in musical activities as well, she is known for her work as a voice performer on the experimental/improvised music scene inside and outside Japan, mainly through collaborations with composer/guitarist Taku Sugimoto.This album introduces Minami Saeki the composer to the world. Just one of her compositions, "vacances" (2018), is recorded in this 2-CD set. Comprised only of a set …
What Is What
There is a delicacy and a passionate hardness, stripped bare of cloying sentiment. Its rawness is the exuberance of sound overflowing, basking in its self-created luxury…. It is, every bit of it, composed the same moment you hear it.
Silver Dawn
Silver Dawn is an ethereal collection of improvised vignettes performed on solo Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed relative of the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. Resonant strings and wordless vocals are gently guided by the cyclical momentum of dance and the instrument’s lingering overtones, magnifying moments of transience in suspensions of time.
Rotarota
The first solo release of baritone saxophonist Sofia Salvo, “Rotarota” consists of a series of improvised pieces. They evoke emotional memories aspiring to set them free and mutate them into blaring music.
Monophonic
Monophonic is the name of the new album by Maria Bertel. As the title hints the album is a study of music played with 'one voice'. The amplification of the trombone mimics the effect of a magnifying glass, that let otherwise inaudible sounds be heard and brought forward. The compositions are long swathes of sound slowly developing, heavily inspired by drone and noise.
In Search Of A Real World
"Tenor saxophonist Ada Rave, born and raised in Argentina, decided to move to Amsterdam, the Netherlands in 2013. She had heard ‘the call’, followed her musical intuition and became part of the colorful community of Dutch creative improvised music. Educated in the jazz tradition she started to look for a more personal language. A deep search. Not an easy path to go. The destination is always changing. Each step made will call for a next step. A slow process of collecting material, sounds, techni…
End To End
*2024 stock* Barre Phillips was the first musician to record an album of solo double bass, back in 1968, and he has always been an absolute master of the solo idiom. In March 2017, Barre recorded what he says will be his last solo album, the final chapter of his “Journal Violone”: it is a beautiful and moving musical statement. All the qualities we associate with Barre’s playing are here in abundance – questing adventurousness, melodic invention, textural richness, developmental logic, and dee…