Composition / All styles

Big tip!!! Firework Edition Records is proud to announce the release of a new 7-CD box documenting Lars-Gunnar Bodin's (1935-2021) musical and artistic output during the years 1960-1987. Apart from more than 8 hours of electroacoustic music and text-sound compositions, the box also features extensive documentary visual material, along with essays by Jesper Olsson, Sanne Krogh Groth, Leo Nilsson, Åke Parmerud, Svante Bodin, Charlotta Bodin och Axel Bodin.  It is hard to give a picture of such a m…

In the final decade of his life, Morton Feldman turned his attention to the trio format with an intensity that would yield some of the most profound and uncompromising music of the twentieth century. Between 1978 and 1984, he composed three monumental works for flute, piano and percussion that together constitute an immense meditation on time, memory and the irreducible strangeness of sound itself. This landmark 6CD box set from Another Timbre presents all three pieces — totalling six and a half…

Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein makes her debut on Another Timbre with this portrait album featuring three chamber works composed between 2011 and 2023. Influenced by the New York School, Fluxus, Pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, and the Wandelweiser collective, Epstein has developed a distinctive compositional voice centered on sonic fragility and textural subtlety. The album opens with the title piece shades, a 20-minute string quartet written specifically for Apartment House in 2023. T…

Natural World by Laurence Crane offers an expansive and quietly subversive study in sonic ecology, blending piano, soprano, and field recordings. Written for Juliet Fraser and Mark Knoop, the piece unfolds over three movements, combining encyclopedic texts, birdsong, and elemental musical motives in a measured fifty-five-minute reflection on beauty and environmental fragility.

"The three works on the CD were written between 1988 and 1994.  It is a long time ago and there were many factors that played in to these pieces becoming somewhat hidden for a couple of decades.  In 1994 I had some CDs manufactured that represented some of my work at the time.  Most of the discs were mailed out to various people and institutions internationally with the hope of generating some interest in the music.  And I distributed many others to local musicians.  Thanks to my good friends at…

UK ensemble Apartment House performs two landmark works for the same instrumentation of violin, cello, clarinet and piano: Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941) and Toronto based composer Linda Catlin Smith's Among the Tarnished Stars (1998). Released by Another Timbre in August 2019, this recording takes a fresh modern approach to the Messiaen, drawing out its experimental character, while revealing the sense of drama and intricate gradations of sonority in Smith's rich and mys…

Tip! *300 copies limited release* Henry Birdsey - best known as one half of the microtonal multi-instrumentalist duo known as Tongue Depressor - is a master of dualities. He writes music that is both fundamental and complex, tranquil and fierce, and conceptual yet familiar all at once. His music often reflects the expansive and isolated regions of his home state of Vermont with its vast natural splendor, both lush and harsh, haunting and entrancing. It is also often about nothing more than the p…

**Edition of 300 copies** During the decades following the Second World War, all eyes shifted toward New York, a city which, at that moment, played host to some of brightest creative minds of the century. Innovations were abound. Visual artists, writers, thinkers, musicians, and composers continuously pushed into previously unthinking ground. While the United States had been previously known to give birth to a wild and distinct breed of composer, from Charles Ives to Nancarrow, Harry Partch, Cow…

Klaus Lang's compositional approach has always been deeply rooted in the music of old Renaissance masters. Never shy of the that fact, he constantly explores the connections between old and new (old to new).This unique release presents Klaus' fascination with the music of Johannes Ockeghem and it contains harmonium (Klaus' trademark instrument) transcriptions of his sacred and secular songs.

Other Minds is pleased to present Ratchet Attach It by the Bay Area composer and impresario Charles Amirkhanian. Commissioned by Errollyn Wallen, the UK’s Royal Composer, for the 2021 Spitalfields Festival in London, Ratchet Attach It continues—and crowns—Amirkhanian's career-long fascination with the noisiest of percussion instruments: the ratchet. "The sound up close of a concert orchestral ratchet can be hair-raising," Amirkhanian writes in his composer's notes. "Also, full of bird-chirping-l…

Two works by Netherlands-based Argentine composer Claudio F Baroni where recorded speech is set against acoustic and electronic pitched sounds. The instrumental material emerges entirely from digitally aided speech analysis, which identifies occurrences of Western scale pitches within the natural intonations of speech.From these pitches, Baroni selects and assigns certain tones to instruments and electronics. The scores consist of the written speech text paired with musical notes, precisely alig…

Experience the extraordinary sonic journey of Terry Riley like never before with Live In Paris, 1975, an exclusive release from France Musique FM. Captured in these rare French live recordings, Riley delivers a mesmerizing display of his signature psychedelic organ mastery, following closely on the heels of his 1972 landmark work, Persian Surgery Dervishes. In stunning form, Riley conjures endlessly rippling, dosed organ drones that create a captivating sense of stasis within expansion—a uniquel…

A dismal moment, try not to think about it so many of us, so restless, a dull chapter worth skipping, mind numbing. Constantly talking, when all we really wanted to do was… As usual perhaps, daily impressions of unremitting danger make people seek refuge in futile obsessions with furniture, food and clothing. Endless words, irritating until we stopped saying them, then sorely missed. A conjunction of multiple evils that could have been avoided, had it only been seen as profitable to do so. Naggi…

Buh Records presents Anthology 2: Works for the Experimental Orchestra of Native Instruments, a double album that deepens the exploration of the work of Bolivian composer Cergio Prudencio (La Paz, 1955) and his inseparable bond with the Experimental Orchestra of Native Instruments (OEIN), the project he co-founded in 1980 and of which he is now emeritus director. Like Anthology 1, widely praised by the international music press, this second installment continues to reveal the conceptual, aesthet…

American composer Kory Reeder’s 10th album In Place returns to the Grid Series heard on 2 of the 4 tracks from Reeder’s debut release on Edition Wandelweiser Records Love Songs/Duets. With raw recordings of three works from the mid-phase of this Series of 45 works, In Place is the first release exclusively containing pieces from the Grid Series and features Reeder on piano with long-time collaborators Kathleen Crabtree and Michael Moore on violas. Each track is a space to dwell, on the edge of s…

1995 release (light storage wear) **

*2025 stock. Comes with a Handmade 32-Page Art Booklet* A.G. returns with The Sleeping Painter, a richly textured soundscape. This latest album continues to push the boundaries of ambient and contemporary music, blending ethereal piano motifs with immersive sonic layers to create a deeply contemplative listening experience. The Sleeping Painter invites listeners on an introspective journey, where delicate melodies intertwine with subtle field recordings and intricate synth work. Each track evolv…

A.G unveils Made Of Colors, a vibrant and captivating new album. This collection of tracks invites listeners on a journey through rich sonic landscapes, blending evocative melodies with dynamic production that showcases A.G’s unique artistic vision. Made Of Colors explores themes of emotion, identity, and transformation through a kaleidoscope of sounds—each song painted with intricate textures and thoughtful lyrics. The album highlights A.G’s skillful musicianship and creative depth, offering a …

Contemporary composer and pianist A.G. returns with Six Piano Pieces, a captivating collection of minimalist piano compositions released on the esteemed Anika label. This album invites listeners into a serene and introspective world, where every note is carefully crafted to evoke emotion and thought. Six Piano Pieces showcases A.G.’s masterful ability to blend simplicity with depth, delivering subtle yet profound musical narratives. Each track unfolds gently, drawing the audience into a meditati…

2014 release ** "The structure of this 2-disc set is durationally symmetrical, four pieces lasting (more or less) 8, 60, 60 and 8 minutes. I've no idea how representative this sample is of Schneider's work (I think it's my first experience of it) but there seems to be at least something of a common thread int he way he uses quasi-repetition of forms (not in a minimalist sense) that, over time, result in something larger than the individual elements. "Zeitgehöft" (the title of a collection of poe…

2016 release ** When I was small, my grandparents had an old upright piano in the living room of their terraced house. I never learned how to play the piano ‘properly’, but I remember spending hours sat at that instrument, stomping on the extreme upper and lower notes, always with the sustain pedal held down, marvelling at the sounds it produced. The “solo” disc of Johan Lindvall’s double album “solo/ensemble” reminds me very much of being at that piano, though the composer’s 24 short, sparse pr…

2017 release ** Reading (Story of) O brings together (Story of) O a graphic and semantic reworking of the original story (English and French words coexisting on the page) accompanied by two fictional texts (Story of) A and (Story of) E, and Reading O, a few simple strategies and choices for reading—alone or with others, in private or to an audience, so that you may find your way through it as through you own story. This is the first collective reading in English and French with 9 readers, it la…

2013 release ** From the early 2000s, Stefan Thut began a series of scores named according to the number of performers, somewhat like Cage's later works. Ranging from one performer to seven, including the more indeterminate "some" and "many," each score is very open, completely undefined, with a few written indications (limited mainly to volume restrictions), plus a kind of guiding thread to follow (composed of letters, lines, etc.) during the performance, without any indication of duration, for…

2013 release **"A split disc with five compositions by Stiegler and two by Ablinger, each performed by some combination of violin (Sabine Akiko Ahrendt), cello (Jan-Filip Tupa) and clarinet (Diego Montes). I think I'd only heard Stiegler's work before in conjunction with Hannes Seidl on their early Wandelweiser release, "das wetter in offenbach". Here, he evinces a rather playful approach, especially in the two "Treibut" (flotsam) pieces, 1/2 (2011) and II (2009); playful but with a nicely bitte…

2015 release ** "Two works, Frey's third string quartet (2010-2014) and a piece for string quartet and two percussionists (2004-2006), with Quatuor Bozzini on each, assisted by Lee Ferguson and Christian Smith on the latter. I get the impression that if you half-listened to the string quartet, you might get the impression of stasis and self-similarity though nothing could be further from the truth. In his notes, Frey compares it to "the silence of a square, a room, a wall or a landscape" and tha…

2013 release ** "Lost In Dreams comprises six pieces - Traumverloren I Für Klavier (2010), unfurling for over 30 minutes, its duration suited to Houben's clarifying this soft insistence embedded within mere repetition; and five dedicatory pieces of much shorter duration, bearing the titles in memoriam - Mussorgsky, Enescu, Schumann, Liszt and Messiaen. These brief epitaths privilege the presence of silence as much as any of Houben's works, with a surprisingly spry turn in the Enescu piece, sound…

2015 release **

2015 release ** This really is a special one. Solo voice carries so many connotations, of speech, of song, of chant, of prayer. It’s the most directly human, personal, unmediated instrument of all. It’s the way we speak to each other, comfort each other, entertain ourselves, reassure ourselves, talk to our gods. There are elements of all on this CD; remarkably so, because on first listen at least all seven pieces inhabit similarly restrained, private and reticent soundworlds. There is a general …

2017 release **  "The duo of Beat Keller and Philipp Bowee on electric guitars perform 6 subtle compositions from Turkish-born sound artists and composer Cem Guney's, including 'a bas relief of a talisman' dedicated to Charles Ives and 'soft kill incubator' dedicated to Sylvia Alexandra Schimag."

2015 release ** "Pieces  written for a sextet of flute, clarinet, percussion (quiet, white-noisy/rattley-type things), violin, viola and cello. They each follow a similar pattern, presenting a solitary idea – a chord, an instrumental texture – that alternates with short silences and gradually evolves with each return. The first, two and three, is almost like breathing. The sounds themselves are beautifully and carefully devised, particularly the gently descending peals in mulberry grove, but it …

2016 release ** "In the early days of Wandelweiser records, a disc of music by the forgotten composer Herman Van San extended the label’s scope and helped to cement its aesthetic.  He was composing long before there was a Wandelweiser group or label, but his outsider static and innovative music was a perfect fit.  This disc of music by the all but unknown Mikheil Shugliashvili achieves a similar purpose. Born in 1941, the composer died in 1996, the year of the label’s first release, but his radi…

2016 release ** "This release by Edition Wandelweiser Records collects recent compositions by Katharina Weber, Jack Callahan, Alex Goretzki, and Alfred Zimmerlin, performed by Christian Buck on guitar and Christian Wolfarth on percussion. It opens with Callahan’s ‘New Piece’, beginning with quiet feedback and low rumble before moving on to evenly spaced chords, cymbals, and soft beats. There’s an ambiguity or uncertainty to these sounds, or to my hearing of them, in terms of their harmony and ti…

2013 releae ** "Three works for solo piano in a kind of homage to Cage's "4'33"", insofar as the room in which the recordings took place is accorded coequal prominence, at least as the stated intention of Lee. So one hears various rustles, coughs and whatnot while the beginning of the last track, "Piano Solo No. 5" (2011) sounds as though recorded in close proximity to a number of aging fluorescent bulbs. More to the point, the piano sound is noticeably different in the three spaces. The music i…

2013 release ** "11 Micro-Exercises were invented by Christian Wolff in response to a commission from the Miniaturist Ensemble. For Wandelweiser Editions, other miniaturists perform these eleven pieces (plus two bonus pieces): Beat Keller and Reza Khot. Keller and Khot are two electric guitarists who pierce the ivory (sometimes tear it) and respect the principle of a musical art free from preconceptions. Nine seconds, twenty-two, one minute and thirteen, or eleven minutes and forty-seven… The le…

2014 release ** "Peter Streiff’s music moves in historical webs, encompassing the connected worlds of allusion and individuality in a language that is at once direct and cryptic. This new disc of his piano music, performed by fellow composer Urs Peter Schneider, is a microcosm of Streiff’s creative trajectory. For ease of comprehension, I will use English versions of composition titles in this review. “Of Magic” (1970), the earliest material represented here, has a fair amount in common with the…

2013 release ** "Sometimes, music reaches my desk which I genuinely feel is beyond my ken to write about--I simply don't have the necessary tools. This wonderful disc, in large part, is one such so I'll pretty much stick to just giving my impressions and make no real attempt to put the music into context. I do feel confident in saying that, though I haven't heard everything released from Wandelweiser, the music herein will pretty definitely not coincide with your impression of the label, and I …

2015 release ** "Margriet Hoenderdos, a student of influential Dutch composer Ton de Leeuw, was still honing her own distinctive voice at the time of her premature death in 2010. The precariousness of simply existing is effectively evoked in a 21 minute woodwind quintet in which she responded to a poem by Hans Faverey, written as he endured his own terminal illness. Sombre and harmonically anxious, this music resembles a physical construction that appears sturdy, yet has an unnerving tendency to…

2015 release ** "Eleven songs for voice and lute by the Swiss singer and composer Marianne Schuppe. The instrumentation taps a deep historical channel, back to Dowland and beyond. But Schuppe doesn’t pluck her lute. Instead she uses e-bows to turn a melodic accompanying instrument into an environment, an ancient combination updated to reflect a contemporary preference for objects over stories. The songs are simple melodies, sometimes folklike (ballads and laments more than dances), but with word…

**Comes in glossy gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet ** Features 6 works by the influential Italian avant-gardist of the 20th century, dating from 1961-1990. Pranam I (for voice, 12 instruments and tape, 1972); Anagamin. Celui qui choisit de revenir ou pas (for 12 strings, 1965); Quattro pezzi su una nota sola (for chamber orchestra, 1959); Quartetto n. 4, (1964); Okanagon (Tam Tam and double bass, 1968); Quartetto n. 2 (1961). "For Giacinto Scelsi, music was above all a manifestation of the e…

The first CD release of works by Franco Evangelisti (1926-1980), the founder of Nuova Consonanza (infamous early '60s Italian avant garde ensemble that included Mario Bertoncini, Roland Kayn, Ennio Morricone, Frederic Rzewski and others). This two disc retrospective features studio audio-footage and lab-experiments, featuring performers Aloys Kontarsky, David Tudor, Eberhard Blüm and the LaSalle Quartet. Spanning the last 40 years, virtually all forms of post-1950 invention are represented here …