Music from United Kingdom

Organum Electronics ‘Darcknes’ is the sibling album of ‘Quietude’ (DS128). It is a similarly dense work, consisting of buzzing washes of electronic sounds, reminiscent of the very first Organum recordings. In common with other recent works, the piece uses a carefully chosen set of sound sources, overlaid and structured to form a tapestry of shifting textures. Recorded in 2021 and edited by Alan Jones at RMS Studios South London, the CD comes in a 4-panel Digisleeve with graphic artwork by Jonath…

Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works based around ideas of audio archaeology and found sounds. The setting this time is the city of Brest in France. It is composed of field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Desmond plus a batch of found open-reel tape recordings dating from the 70s and 80s. The tapes include domestic home recordings but mostly document the recordist, Michel's tastes in music and radio programmes of the time. Daily life bleeds into these…

2023 Repress. Robert Wyatt: gifted songwriter; political activist; drummer in the Canterbury jazz/prog pioneers Soft Machine and contemporaries of the original lineup of Pink Floyd; collaborator with the likes of Brian Eno, David Gilmour, Phil Manzanera, Fred Frith, Paul Weller, Scritti Politti, Elvis Costello and his beloved wife Alfreda Benge, to name but a few. Perhaps his greatest gift though is his voice, a reedy instrument of great warmth and emotion; one need only hear his interpretation …

Tip! Recorded at the concert marking the release of their previous album (Exta, Fataka 7, 2013), Lights is the second meeting of the trio of John Butcher, Thomas Lehn and John Tilbury. Carefully edited (nothing drastic, just some judicious trimming the way a photographer might crop an image, reframing it to make it more concentrated), Lights turns the two set continuum of the concert into four distinct pieces.

Several years ago Gary Mundy of Ramleh/Broken Flag (and far more besides) declared to me that he wished to do one new Kleistwahr album every year until he's no longer able to do them. Fourth Dimension Records has subsequently fulfilled a promise to honour this plan as much as possible and is managing to keep up so far. How Gary manages to keep pulling new ideas out of the proverbial hat at this rate is anybody's guess, but the latest album, 'For the Lives Once Lived', illustrates very clearly th…

The ubiquity of Coxhill’s sax lines are here answered, cherished, enhanced by the excellent guitar touch of Enzo Rocco. It’s a sort of subtle anarchic dance, intriguing and true.

"Flora Yin Wong’s ravishing interiority finds lucid expression on an absorbing second album for Modern Love, manifesting her instrumental storytelling in a syncretic bind of supernatural themes with hyperrealist, concrète sound design. Through ten parts, Flora crystallises the ennui that followed an uncanny, disorienting trip to East and Southeast Asia. “On an unexpected stopover in Hong Kong after five years away, my friends took me to a Bazi reader one night - something I was curious about, bu…

The Fall returned to Rough Trade in 1983 to release a pair of singles ("The Man Whose Head Expanded" and "Kicker Conspiracy") and Perverted By Language, their sixth proper studio album. Perverted By Language hints at the band's shift towards a distinctly pop approach, one that they would perfect via their Beggars Banquet output that immediately followed. Yet again, the force and panic of their initial Rough Trade recordings remains the foundation for much of the album. A transitional recording i…

*2023 repress* There can be little more exciting or rewarding than listening to a band playing live and firing on all cylinders at the absolute peak of its powers, and the live performances presented here by Nucleus are no exception. They capture the group in arguably its finest incarnation right at the start of its long career, exhibiting a staggeringly high level of musical discipline matched by an equally impressive ability to improvise and solo. Nucleus began its long jazz-rock journey in 19…

*2023 stock* "Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of…

2023 Much-needed Repress. Finally reissued, one of the key recordings in the development of free improvisation and originally the first release on Incus, the label founded by Evan Parker, Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley to document the music. Outstanding deluxe vinyl edition of one of the most iconic free improv LP ever made, a landmark album in the British avant garde.Liner notes by Evan Parker (for the 2014 re-issue):‘The Topography of the Lungs’ was the first recording I made as a "leader" - in t…

Tip! LP reissue of Collective Calls, the first duo LP from Evan Parker and percussionist Paul Lytton. Mythically alluded to as ‘An Improvised Urban Psychodrama In Eight Parts”, Collective Calls utilises electronics, pre-records and homemade instruments to wryly in/act self investigation. Having just recorded the cliff jumping Music Improvisation Company with Derek Bailey, Christine Jeffrey, Hugh Davies and Jamie Muir, Parker was at the point where [he] was thinking, ‘what’s the next thing?’ On C…

Tip! First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, we discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed - and so, we present the first vinyl issue of the correct masters, or ‘mastas’ as Adam Skeaping, legendary engineer who is also responsible for Six of One and Compatibles, fondly calls them.  Skeaping, always working with the latest in recording technology for the time, has a knack for gaining access to remarkable spaces. Goo…

Dead stock copy coming  from the artist's archive. Possible wear due to the long storage Studio recordings of this incredible trio of Italians Andrea Centazzo and Giancarlo Schiaffini together with British sax legend Lol Coxhill.

Industrial music pioneers and chaotic art terrorists Throbbing Gristle came together in 1975 in Kington Upon Hull, a formerly industrial city then in the midst of a long spiral of decline. Very Friendly, aka The First Annual Report is the legendary ‘lost’ album the quartet recorded in 1975 as the group morphed out of its COUM Transmission beginnings, the shocking title track an epic confrontational dirge recounting the brutal Moors murders of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley; elsewhere there are minim…

Frozen Reeds is proud to present the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures. “This is one of those moments that we’re always hoping for, and it's so rare. And it's so hard to talk about, because it's so beautiful. It's like you're seeing some new species of plant that you never knew existed or something.” – Bill Frisell

Softcover ediion, 1070 pages (!) Cornelius Cardew was a musician of genius for whom Life and Art were as one. He was a radical, both artistically and politically, becoming a tireless activist and uncompromising Marxist-Leninist. Passion and imagination governed all he did: his boldness and humanity continue to intrigue and inspire. John Tilbury, whose close friendship with Cardew dates from their first concert together, in January 1960, has worked for many years on this biography, and brings his…

*2023 stock* In the history of free improvised music, there has been arguably no greater advocate for the idiom’s power and potential than the English guitarist Derek Bailey. Fiercely principled, between his emergence during the 1960s and his death is 2005, he cut a wide path, positioning this music at the height of creativity, transpiring in real time, and a means through which people from diverse background could come together, express, and commune. For Bailey, “playing is about playing with o…

*2023 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Guitarist John Russell, a leading figure on Britain's improvised music scene, passed away on January 19, 2021. Born in December 1954, Russell started performing improvised music in London in his late teens, and for many years he toured and gave concerts not only in the UK and Europe but throughout the world. Known as a Japanophile, Russell traveled to Japan for the first time in 2001, and subsequently visited the country many times, including as recently …

*2023 stock* "The mid 1970s was an exciting time for free improvisation and a great deal was happening all over the world as like minded musicians were drawn to each other by a magnetic pull that had us crossing oceans and large distances of land to work together. England, America, Italy, Germany, Holland, Canada, Japan, Australia and many other territories all boasted scenes of various sizes, and players were mixing and matching in a wide variety of formations, across several generations. Recor…