Composition / All styles

In April 2009, Iceland’s neo-classical export Ólafur Arnalds created the 7-song series Found Songs – recording a song a day for 7 days and instantly making each track available via Twitter. With artwork contributions from fans via Flickr, this modern release awakens memories of a tradition that seemed lost in the digital age we live in. Born in 1987, Ólafur hails from the suburban Icelandic town, Mosfellsbær, just a few kilometres outside of Reykjavík. He has immersed himself completely in a wor…

Darla Records is honored to offer Another Flower, a new record by two singularly and sonically recognizable masters of lush beauty and minimalism respectively, Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd. Another Flower was recorded at Robin's home studio in France in 2013 and was held unreleased, until now.Another flower follows Robin and Harold's previous work together Bordeaux (2011), matched set After the Night Falls and Before the Day Breaks (2007) and Mysterious Skin (2004) and of course The Moon and th…

Darla is pleased to offer A Song For Lost Blossoms, a record of ambient melody and transcendental mood portals from minimalist/modernist master Harold Budd and friend guitarist/composer/producer Clive Wright. A Song For Lost Blossoms nicely builds on both artists’ previous ambient work. A Song For Lost Blossoms was recorded live and in studio at different locations including the artists’ homes, at REDCAT (Roy E. Disney Concert and Theater), Los Angeles, and Clive Wright's Desert Sky Studio, Josh…

Darla is pleased to offer a new album from Harold Budd and Clive Wright. Little Windows completes the trilogy begun with A Song for Lost Blossoms and carried through their previous album Candylion.  Part of Little Windows was recorded especially for Echoes, the nightly music soundscape from Public Radio International heard on over 120 public radio stations and online at www.echoes.org.  These recordings were first heard on Echoes Radio in Fall 2009.  The other part of Little Windows was recorded…

Jane 12-21 is the companion to Jane 1-11. Minimal, modern classical piano and avant-garde electronics by the master.  "It's simple. I broke out and broke back to my earlier days: A triangle of risk, improvisation and joy -- as I say, very simple. My rules to myself were: No plan, no notes, no ideas, no microphones; except for Jane 1 I stuck to it. My other rule -- the most important one -- was: At least one piece per day, finished, mixed and not to be revisited again. Jane 7, 8, 9 were done in o…

Harold Budd is a one of a kind modern neo-classical artist creating high-callibre and complex music with unique and subtle tension and abstraction, and simultaneous almost-pastoral but as-often otherworldly mood.

At the time of release in 2005 Avalon Sutra was reported to be California-born American minimalist composer and pianist Harold Budd’s last recorded work. Avalon Sutra (released as a 2 disc set) is a suite of short, heartbreaking ambient pieces, featuring Budd’s delicate piano improvisations, lush string arrangements and warm electronic drones. The second disc (As Long As I Can Hold My Breath) features a startling coda by LA based electronic composer Akira Rabelais, sending Budd’s arrangements in…

Darla is pleased to offer a new record of string quartets by Harold Budd. Bandits of Stature is a first as it comprises 14 compact Budd composed string quartets played by the Formalist Quartet.

*200 copies limited edition* Following the album Volumes released on the Bern-based label CRTTR in April 2025, Tobias Lanz has continued working with this original composition through two new interpretations. While the earlier recording sought to recreate and expand the pallete of the church organ through digital means, these new works shift attention back toward an acoustic interpretation. Both pieces were recorded in the Stadtkirche Burgdorf, where the large hall functions as an active collabo…

'What Remains’ is the new album from John Haycock featuring Dan Bridgwood-Hill. Originally composed for resonance and performed live at Hope Baptist Church in Hebden Bridge in 2023, the composition uses kora, clarinet, guitar, violin and electronics to produce a heartfelt conjunction of acoustic, processed and environmental elements, deeply rooted in the land and history of the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. The original recording has been ‘Worldized’ in the Todmorden Unitarian Church, a term co…

Bastille Musique presents its fortieth release »György Kurtág: Secreta« featuring Quatuor Béla. The album contains a new studio production of Kurtág’s complete works for string quartet from 1959 to 2011, including the first recording of a previously unpublished composition. The recordings, produced by the SWR, are complemented by a 56-page bilingual booklet (EN, DE) with texts by Tobias Bleek, a conversation with the quartet and the recording producer, several autograph pages and two concertina-…

The latest album from Michael Cashmore (formerly of Current 93, plus known for his work as Nature and Organisation and collaborations with artists such as Marc Almond, Nick Cave, Bill Fay, Rose McDowell and Antony and the Johnsons, amongst others) veers from the paths his previous releases have been on into an area altogether more grandiose or stately. While all of his recordings under his own name have alluded to orchestral or soundtrack work to varying degrees, he has long committed himself to…

Giuseppe Chiari's Intervalli, a twelve-part piano work written between 1950 and 1956, before he joined Fluxus, recorded complete for the first time by Reinier van Houdt.

*300 copies limited edition* "Feldman used to say that music is not so much an ‘art-form’ as a ‘memory-form’. Scientific research informs us that personal memories are not stored in one stable unchanging state, but that each time we retrieve a memory, it is slightly modified. We hear the opening four-note gesture of this work, it soon passes, but the resulting resonance from the sustaining pedal remains a little longer, and then only a delicate memory trace is left. This opening gesture is heard…

*300 copies limited edition* "Technique and art both take time, so nothing durable happens by accident. But, is durability enough once appearance and disappearance become important? Can ebb and flow be set in stone? Or cut to vinyl? Or digitised? Perhaps we have only become habituated to the possibility. A pianist depresses a key, strings are hammered. At what point does the sound begin? It is not quite right to say that, in this moment, there was no sound but that now, in this moment, there is.…

Arvo Pärt's 1999 album with several versions of Für Alina for solo piano and Spiegel im Spiegel for violin or cello and piano, two of his tintinnabuli pieces, on vinyl for the first time.

"Musica Mosaica undertakes an experimental exploration of sounds, viewed not merely as simple acoustic phenomena, but as truly living realities. From this perspective, experimentation is by no means a convenient metaphor used to illustrate an intuitive or informal approach. On the contrary, it is meant literally — deliberate, almost scientific: each musical piece becomes a small laboratory where sounds are observed as animated entities, with their own morphology, with impulses that bring them cl…

Warm Winters Ltd. welcomes Argentinian, Berlin-based composer Ángeles Rojas with her new piece ‘Open the windows and let the spirits in and out’. Originally commissioned by the Buenos Aires festival Ruido, the work documents Rojas’s closing performance of its 2023 edition. Performed on a Klais Opus 1912 organ with an ensemble of violin, cello, soprano flute, piccolo, baritone saxophone, trombone and bass clarinet distributed throughout the space, the piece unfolds over 30 minutes. Sustained tone…

Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle concludes their trilogy on Important Records with an album that confronts the climate crisis and its devastating impact on coastal ecosystems. From overfishing to warming and acidifying seas, the group documents the decline of fish, seabirds, crustaceans and other marine life. Following 2024's All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea and 2022 Black Clouds Above The Bows, Ghosts Beneath The Brine is another mournful take on the woes of the natural world. There's ris…

Australian composer-performers Judith Hamann and James Rushford have worked together in countless projects for two decades, perhaps most notably in Golden Fur, their trio with Sam Dunscombe. Black Truffle is pleased to announce Midmeste, their first work as a duo. Its title is Middle English for ‘the middlemost point’, alluding to how the piece builds on the points of overlap between the highly personalised musical languages Hamann and Rushford have developed in recent years. Performed on cello …

Matthew Wright’s album Cracked Glaze is performed by virtuoso vocalist Sofia Jernberg, Ensemble Klang (Michiel van Dijk, Erik-Jan de With, Anton van Houten, Pete Harden, Saskia Lankhoorn and Joey Marijs) and Wright’s improv/electronic group Spheric Totemic (Mandhira de Saram, Neil Charles, Alexander Hawkins, Stephen Davis and Matthew Wright). The 46-minute piece was performed live, and is built around a ‘spine’ of one long, descending scale which takes nineteen minutes to unfurl, and which then …

A work in six parts for contrabassoon + electronics, timpani + syncussion, and activated snare drum. The genesis of The Shunned Path began with a simple question: if one orchestral instrument could be freed from its traditional context and presented through the bespoke electronic array developed for Thomas Stone’s solo performances — projected at full scale through a massive sound system — which would it be? The answer was immediate: timpani. Returning to formative influences such as the Jerusal…

Squarepusher, presents Kammerkonzert, a riot of onyx-hard, hyperfast riffs, fiendish orchestral themes and handbrake turns through varieties of progressive, ambient, electronic and experimental music.

Recuperation and reinventing from Elements 2021/22 took quite a long time. Sustainability in writing long pieces became fully questionable. In the meantime, finding joy in creating small forms; powerful and groovy pieces became an obsession which created two fundamentally different cycle of pieces -"Into The Groove" and "Into The Grind". This release represents dualistic concept: could be seen as double EP over two side of vinyl  and it also has double cover as well as two editions: normal black…

1980 re-issue as a single LP on Harmonia Mundi's distinctively packaged "Musique d'abord" series of the seminal first album of music by Cage with his landmark 1946-48 compositions performed by Maro Ajemian, originally released in 1951 as a double LP set on Dial. French text.

Original 1976 LP on Denon with Cage's landmark 1946-48 compositions for prepared piano superbly performed by Yuji Takahashi in 1975. With insert.

1997 CD re-issue on Fylkingen of Yuji Takahashi's landmark performance of Cage's prepared piano masterwork recorded in 1965 and originally released on the same label as two separate LP's in 1966.

“It’s hard not to figure Jack Sheen’s compositions primordially; they lurch and rock with an abortive conviction, as if heralding culture’s approach—still half-submerged, slouched and red, ages ago. His work is somehow determinedly before almost everything; it feels like a dialectical twin to Beckett’s afterwards. Press moves with grossly impoverished intent—almost as if composed—while trembling and stumbling on the cusp of accident. This projected bodily timidity corresponds with a situation ri…

17th album on Cramps' superlative "Nova musicha" experimental music series released in 1977, with piano pieces performed by the composer himself recorded live in 1976.

1977 LP on ALM with three piano pieces spanning from 1938 to 1969, plus a toccata by Johann Sebastian Bach, superbly performed by Yuji Takahashi.

1978 double LP set on the obscure Italian label I Dischi Dell'Ippopotamo with a landmark performance of Cage's composition by pianist extraordinnaire Bruno Canino, never re-issued on either CD or LP.

Very Pieces for (prepared) piano, percussion and voice in various combinations from the 1940's and 50's, performed by Joshua Pierce and the Paul Price Percussion Ensemble, released by Tomato in 1978.compositions from the 1940's for (prepared) piano, piano and violin, percussion, performed by pianist Reinbert de Leeuw and released by Philips in 1980, never re-issued on either LP or CD.

1981 LP on CP² Recordings with two compositions respectively from 1978 and 1969 performed on the violin Paul Zukofsky.

1983 LP on CP² Recordings with the demanding late 1970's studies for solo violin performed by by their dedicatee Paul Zukofsky.

1984 LP on CP² Recordings with the 1951 composition for Merce Cunningham performed by Toronto's New Music Concerts conducted by Paul Zukofsky.

Very early compositions from the 1940's for (prepared) piano, piano and violin, percussion, performed by pianist Reinbert de Leeuw and released by Philips in 1980, never re-issued on either LP or CD.

Live 1983 recordings from the Cornish Institute in Seattle of John Cage's Atlas Eclipticalis performed simultaneously with Winter Music, conducted by the composer. Originally released by Mode Records in 1986 as a 4LP box.

1987 LP on Hungaroton matching a 1981 compositions for five orchestras performed by Savaria Symphony Orchestra led by Peter Eötvös with a set of indeterminate solo piano pices from the 1950's performed by several Hungarian composers including László Sáry and Zoltán Jeney.

The important 1951 Concerto with Cage's first foray in chance operations conducted by Lukas Foss with pianist Yuji Takahashi, backed by the conductor's charming baroque piece for orchestra, released by Nonesuch in 1968.

Cage's beautiful and unusual 1950 string quartet in a monumental compilation released as a 3LP box set by Vox in 1973 with a who's who of the American avant-garde, including Crumb's and Kirchner's outstanding quartets with electric amplification and electronics, with impeccable performances by the Concord String Quartet. With insert.