Experimental / All styles

‘Almost Something’ is the debut release of the long standing collaboration between artist/dj Laura Not and Andrew Hulme of O Yuki Conjugate. The two pieces cover a musical domesticism, developed around location recordings made in London and Berlin. The duo, known separately for their considered and attentive handling of collaged textures, rhythms and ambiences, offer up a sonic landscape where fugitive moments of creation meet the concrete sounds of everyday life. The unfamiliar is what sticks a…

Another collaboration of Romain Perrot with Bruce Russell related projects. Liner notes are from Bruce Russell, those recordings have never been released before, those are the last ones before drummer Peter Stapleton passed away....

Formed 29 years ago (1996) by Nate Young, Wolf Eyes is currently a duo generally characterized as "noise," though they have called themselves "psycho jazz" (among other things). Extremely prolific, they have literally hundreds of releases and are a towering presence in underground music. Saxophonist Anthony Braxton was an early member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and has won a MacArthur and been named an NEA Jazz Master, though his work is hardly confined t…

"I was almost seventeen when 'Scum' came out, lurching through my headphones sandwiched between John Peel’s warm gravy groans. It flipped me out. My punker brain, pretty much allergic to anything metal, made a series of damp connections that lodged the chaotic buzzing insect rumble in my mind forever. Thirty-odd years later this record still sounds urgent and furiously angry. It sounds more important than ever. I decided I wanted to do ‘something’ with Scum in late 2023. I listened to the record…

*Dubbed on reused ferro tapes* Music for fictive radio stations. Made as a sound installation that was part of a performance talk about fictive world scenarios. Mostly made with circuit bend radios and found music in a stack of unsorted cassettes.

*Dubbed on reused ferro tapes* Guitar music measured mostly by quietude not amplitude. Bold recording techniques - new amp. Everything recorded during a period of two nights.

Grimm monotone ambient for eating pizza /crying /dressing up alone with the curtains closed.

New alias from Alexander Holm. A strangely private sounding document of humming voice, midi harp, feedback and ghostly field recordings. Truly unclassifiable music.

Strange and beautiful debut cassette from another great friend of the label. One hour of slowly dissolving Music box / tape Music. Ghostly melodies weaving in an out of each other until the tape runs out.

Intimate guitar recordings made at C Haxholms home in the countryside. This tape to me feels like a quite unique snapshot into the Artists daily life, But at the same time the music feels very composed and thoughtful. A very sweet and heartwarming tape

First tape from Alvilda Reiter Jakobsen. Side a is a collage of guitar recordings made by Alvilda and a few other musicians. Side b is a live rendition for six guitarists. A very lovely tape which reminds about the joy of playing music together with others and let the music happen without too much interrogation.

The debut album from Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl has evolved over several years from their initial practice of free improvisation on viola and cello into (for the moment), this: a neophonic orchestral expression. At once stimulating and soothing, For Translucence is a living, breathing meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves illuminate each other as they twine and grow.

Michael Grigoni and Pan•American present their first collaboration. The album’s title, New World, Lonely Ride, gestures toward its meditative orientation. The duo offers a series of reflections on the zeitgeist of our present moment, the spirit of our age: the isolation and loneliness that continues to echo in the wake of the pandemic; the fractures that mar our political discourse; the uncertainty that has stamped itself on the future of democracy. The vast geography of America and the absence …

Big Hands is the alias of Andrea Ottomani, an Italian-born, London-based artist, whose productions have maintained an impeccable level of homogeneity over the last decade. His debut album, titled Thauma, was conceived in dreams over two consecutive nights as he traversed the storm-ridden Mediterranean Sea in late June 2024 and was later brought to life with the intent of preserving the sounds and structures as they were originally dreamt. Composed of ten tracks that seamlessly morph into one ano…

*200 copies limited edition* In February 2019, multi-instrumentalists Maurizio Abate and Luca Venitucci crossed musical paths as part of an artist residency at Standards in Milan. Over those few days, their respective instruments engaged in a dialogue, shaping sounds and structures within the space that housed them. While working on the post-production of the recorded material, Abate and Venitucci enlisted the valuable and decisive collaboration of fellow like-minded musicians Roberto Laneri and…

*100 copies limited edition*  Savvas Metaxas played guitar & effectsRecorded between January-February 2024 Mastered by Giuseppe IelasiDesign & Artwork by Yorgos Vourlidas

Brown particles vinyl. Here is an expanded edition of one of Nurse With Wound's most intense and unique albums, so much so that for long-time fans, it was a strange, chaotic lounge oddity upon its release. For the first time, all four audio sides are complete (originally, there were only three sides). To top it off, there is a stunning new cover by the great and talented Babs Santini, who is none other than Steven Stapleton using his artist pseudonym, continuing in the luxurious tradition of the…

During the late 1970s, after No Wave pioneer Lydia Lunch met saxophonist James Chance, she began setting her angry and disjointed poetry to anti-music, founding her ground-breaking band Teenage Jesus and The Jerks with Lunch’s shouted lyrics matched by her non-conventional use of electric guitar. The group’s self-titled debut EP is a fast and furious affair, produced by Robert Quine of the Voidoids/Lou Reed, with future Nick Cave drummer Jim Sclavunos on bass and Bradley Field on minimalist perc…

After the demise of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Lydia Lunch launched her solo career with Queen Of Siam, arguably her greatest LP. In true No Wave style, the album is a mishmash of irritants, but her palette is far broader here, lurching from slow dirges, excessive feminist exhortations, and raucous personal purges to a touch of disco and lounge music exoticism, as conjured by Voidoids/Lou Reed guitarist Robert Quine, Contortions bassist Jack Ruby, and John Cale’s drummer, Douglas Browne. Spiri…

The German band Schatterau returns to Hands in the Dark with their latest release, Übers Jahr ('Throughout the Year'), which follows their acclaimed debut album from 2024. This sophomore effort, as its title implies, delves into the cyclical nature of time and the duality of the transient and the eternal unfolding of events. The album comprises 17 vignettes that reflect on the seasons, capturing their unique light and sounds, the passage of time, and the interplay of movement and stillness, as w…

*100 copies limited edition*  Composed & Recorded by Mark VernonMastered by Yiannis TsirikoglouDesign & Artwork by Yorgos Vourlidas

*60 copies limited edition*  Recorded 25-26 May 2024 in Milan, Italy GD: 4 track RecorderMC: 4 track Recorder

From Lawrence English: "I like to think that sound haunts architecture. It's one of the truly magical interactions afforded by sound's immateriality. It's also something that has captivated us from the earliest times. It's not difficult to imagine the exhilaration of our early ancestors calling to one another in the dark cathedral like caves which held wonder, and security, for them. Today the ways in which sound occupies space, the so-called liquid architecture, holds just as much wonder, albei…

The inspiration for these pieces comes from the Chinese folklore of Guanyin, a deity whose name translates to ‘the one who perceives all the sounds, or cries, of the world’. Also known as Guanshiyin 觀世音, she is the embodiment of infinite compassion. I grew up knowing of Guanyin as a female deity, but recently discovered that she had transformed through the centuries from the male Hindu bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara. I instantly found an affinity for this gender-fluid figure, who was said to have a…

I Know the Number of the Sand and the Measure of the Sea is the first collaboration of Lea Bertucci and Olivia Block. This collaboration was set into slow motion some years ago, in 2017, when Lea and Olivia connected through an interview facilitated by writer Steve Smith. In 2022, the artists finally had a chance to collaborate, performing an improvised set at Pioneer Works in New York City. Since then, the New York based Bertucci and Chicago based Block remotely built out ideas stemming from th…

*100 copies limited edition* Bernd Boehm’s life and work still remains a mystery to most. Having engaged in several disciplines like painting, film and sculpture, towards the end of 1980’s Bernd produced a series of experimental film soundtracks along with a modest amount of new wave tracks which we now present under this edition. Having initially self-released some of these soundtracks, to be latter on published by Matthias Lang on Irre Tapes, “Look under this” reunites now all of his film soun…

*2025 repress* Able Noise are a cross-continent duo based between The Hague (NL) and Athens (GR), built around the experimental baritone guitar and drum playing of George Knegtel and Alex Andropoulos. After a few formative attempts at collaboration, they officially came together as the Able Noise we see now in 2017, uniting over shared thoughts on art and performance encountered while studying at The Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague. Their first recorded work, a seamless 30 minutes of glisteni…

This "cinematic poetry" dual film by Roberto Opalio was shot in January 2005 in a remote location of Italy's Western Alps, using a 8mm cassette handheld cine camera. In April 2005 a first version was premiered at The Sage Gateshead (Newcastle) and at CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow) during My Cat Is An Alien's live performances. The final editing was made in 2008, adding an original soundtrack by My Cat Is An Alien. This version has been published in a DVD+CD set in 2009 by American l…

Crucible by Loren Mazzacane Connors & Suzanne Langille is a profound exploration of the raw emotional landscapes that can be sculpted through minimalistic yet deeply evocative sounds. The album resides at the intersection of experimental blues and avant-garde, creating a sound that is both hauntingly intimate and expansively atmospheric. Each track seems to dwell in a space where the boundaries of music blur into a meditative state, driven by Loren's sparse guitar work and Suzanne's ethereal voc…

*Limited Edition of 100 copies!* Commissioned by 180 Studios as part of the UVA exhibition Synchronicity, Chromatic is a software-driven optical instrument that explores the harmony of form and the interaction of colour and sound. Each line, shape, and colour plays a role in constructing this generative audio-visual installation. A computationally programmed, rule-based system endlessly assembles and re-assembles abstract formations and harmonic sequences, producing geometric compositions that p…

'Echolocation' is the astonishing debut album from Mendoza Hoff Revels, a formidable new unit led by Ava Mendoza & Devin Hoff and featuring James Brandon Lewis & Ches Smith. While Mendoza and Hoff have floated around each other's musical orbits for decades, and have been friends for some time, this is their first work together on record. It is an electric & holy harmonic fusion of highly estimable musical forces; wholly rendered. The original impetus of this group was Mendoza’s, based on the lov…

Solo instrumentalists navigate a free and rambling road through an imaginative, oneiric wilderness. So much expressed without singing/words, a direct power line to the psyche, open for interpretation and brimming with melancholy, joy, and somber reflection. The annals of solo guitar music, much like solo piano, can tap into these almost subliminal lines of communication. The new album/debut LP from Los Angeles by way of Ohio guitarist/flautist/songwriter Barry Archie Johnson sings out as a start…

David Sylvian’s ‘The Good Son vs The Only Daughter - The Blemish Remixes’ will be released on vinyl for the first time in January 2025. Initially released on Sylvian’s samadhisound label in 2005, it was only available on CD and digitally. 'The Good Son Vs The Only Daughter' is the nine-track companion to David's 2003 solo album, Blemish. The record features remixes by Burnt Friedman, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Ryoji Ikeda, Readymade FC, Yoshihiro Hanno, Tatsuhiko Asano, Akira Rabelais, Jan Bang, and E…

1984 7"EP compilation with four post-punk / experimental / art-wave bands - Diaframma, Qfwfq, Degada Saf, Funkwagen.

2025 repress, LP version. "Sometimes it's like an overstuffed musical armchair -- quite comfy, even when lumpy. The contribution of Markus Popp, whose style of digital scratching has made Oval an experimental household name, adds to the density and often provides an echo of Gastr past while the rest of Camoufleur paints the future." Jim O'Rourke's last album with Gastr del Sol is a subdued, meditative affair, bringing together elements of folk, jazz, film music, and the avant-garde. "The Seasons…

This composition is a kind of false diary of the year 2015, or rather a real concentration of that year’s memories with very little rationality in its hierarchies, its ordering, or in the connections it makes. The narrative, if one wants to hear any, comes from the meeting between chronologies, the shape of the snippets, the fortuitous accidents and such, yet all in the absence of any sequential logic. The idea of building a form of sound by gambling with memories had been turning and returning …

'Dog FM is the debut release by the London-based duo of field recordist Oliver Chapman and poet Phoebe Eccles. Combining Chapman’s seemingly banal snapshots of a family car journey with Eccles’ fantastic, reflective spoken verse, Dog FM deftly transports the listener through a series of uncanny and oft-times bizarre audio travelogs where tension and expanse alternate to disorientating effect. By exploring the dynamics of a typical close-quarters family exchange, and with repeated use of ‘canine’…

Anthony Moore 1979 album Flying Doesn't Help is being reissued in paperback! A unique masterpiece, pop and cutting-edge!

New On CTR ! Compiled by Jason Boardman ( Before I Die Records) Celebrated Manchester club-night/record Label Owner , DJ & digger - supreme. An album of early 1980s Post-Punk era musical bedroom & small studio innovations & DIY Inspirations - Featuring rarely / never heard cuts from that period. Including tracks sampled by DJ Shadow & a singular Post-Punk era diss-track :-) From Coventrys 2-Tone associated Skeet to Surface Mutants Cabaret Voltaire facilitated Dub ..A rich previously untapped vei…

*2025 stock* L'Era del Cinghiale Bianco (The White Boar Era) marks the clamorous Pop turning point of Franco Battiato. Created with the fundamental help of violinist Giusto Pio, this work is widely considered a masterpiece, and in 1979 it changed the destiny of Italian music forever.Essentially, it is an album of transition: between past and future, between Prog experimentalism and a new intellectual form of Pop influenced by the New Wave. The title of the album draws inspiration from a Celtic m…