Experimental / All styles

50 copies limited edition. Jef Mertens: Guitar & Objects. Jean D.L.: Guitar. Recorded at Taping Policies, Geel / 2022Artwork: Hannelore Van Dijck

50 copies limited edition. Guitar recorded and mixed by Jef Mertens - June 2022. A take on the guitar noise by Bill Nace, recorded with a similar guitar, a squier Jagmaster.Mastered by Jürgen de Blonde.Artwork by Wouter Vanhaelemeesch.

*100 copies limited edition* Belgian musician Mertens came onto the scene as a documentary filmmaker (Sonic Youth, Borbetomagus, Loren Connors, etc) but he has been developing his own unique guitar style over the past few years. This 10” has three wads of it. The first is a wonderful sidelong chunk of motoric chiming string music not all that far from a pop version of Remko Scha. The two shorter tunes on the flip fiddle around with some of the same ideas in different ways, all pretty hep.

*100 copies limited edition* Perpetual pendulum swings, cyclical and reappearing, same-same but expediting, eternal summer, scorched earth. Bruno Duplant - Natural & electronic devicesPrimož Bončina - Electric guitar, field recordings

*300 copies limited edition* The Evelyn Tables, the oldest known anatomical preparations in Europe, dating to 1646, are an early yet humbling insight into the networks within the human body, a network within natural networks that govern the physical constraints of the human material existence. Observing them from the outside, they are uncannily reminiscent of a floral network, yet at the same time strangely familliar. The soundscapes of this work attempt to convey these ideas viscerally, through…

Huge Tip! Quality LP is packaged with an 18x24 inch poster and eurosleeve with lyrics and translations. Diamanda Galás In Concert is not simply a live album. With nothing but a piano and the full expressive range of her extraordinary voice, Diamanda Galás strips away the comforting patina of time, tradition and stylistic convention to expose and express the raw human emotion that is the living heart of a song. It explores an eclectic range of material; rembetika, soul, ranchera, country and free…

For 46 minutes Alex Zhang Hungtai punctures our perception of linearity, working like a conductor, encouraging percussive flurries to trip and fall over each other, sometimes tempered by contact mic feedback to help skewer the chronology. He’s assisted by three additional percussionists - Wet Hair’s Ryan Garbes and Shawn Reed, and Leonard King - while Signal Decay’s Nick Yeck-Stauffer plays trumpet, with each extra voice blurred into the middle distance, curling like pipe smoke into convulsive w…

2CD Edition. Before New Age hit terra firma at the dawn of the 1980s, the classically-trained Bay Area composer Jordan De La Sierra's consciousness soared with cosmic concepts. With cues and lessons from the great minimalists La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath, and help from the venerable public radio program Hearts of Space, De La Sierra embarked on journey in alternate tunings and resounding reverberations, transporting entranced listeners from the Golden Gates to the intergalactic.…

Nichola Scutton'Interzone (Nonclassical, 2023) takes inspiration in the state of in-betweenness: not awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious, and at the border between daytime and nighttime. Two defined elements emerge fromInterzone: a careful use of electronics, and Scrutton's experimental vocal practice. The album was recorded in two steps, first by the artist herself in her studio in Glasgow, using field recordings and archival materials, resulting in the series of four Interzones which con…

*2023 stock* "I started the “Electric Solo” project in 2008 – the same year I recorded my first pesonal album. A lot has happened since then; Concerts, personal albums, collaborative albums. Many tracks from these projects became part of the “Electric Solo” repertory and were performed live in an improvisational manner, reflecting the ambience of each night, the venues and my own mood. I chose to record tracks that were already part of my personal discography, along with some musical themes that…

Avant garde supergroup Better Corners hit sublime stride with atmospheric post-everything second album.

Tip! Genesis P-Orridge and The Hafler Trio: do these 2 legends still need any introduction? Genesis P-Orridge was the founding person of COUM Transmissions in 1969, Throbbing Gristle in 1975, Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and Psychic TV in 1981. Andrew McKenzie started The Hafler Trio (together with Cabaret Voltaire's Chris Watson) in 1982 and since then released all his work under this moniker and collaborated with William S. Burroughs, Autechre, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nurse With Wound and Jónsi fr…

Tip! An outstanding recording, and an unjustly neglected contribution to prepared piano performance by Area member Patrizio Fariselli issued on Cramps in 1977 (in the legendary "DIVerso" series), a record with energy that's somewhere between John Cage and Cecil Taylor! At times, Patrizio Fariselli plays with a great sensitivity to silence – letting it emerge with as much force as his well-placed work on the keys of the piano. But at other times, he comes off with a full, frenzied sound that's re…

Marsha Fisher is a Minneapolis based composer and sound artist. Originally from Nebraska, they participated heavily in the Lincoln DIY scene. They bring the DIY ethos into their experimental music practice by using consumer tape players and cassettes to replicate musique concrète techniques in a context more similar to harsh noise. Fisher also runs the tape labels Gay Hippie Vampire and Activated Skeleton and has recent releases on Orb Tapes, Falt, and Full Spectrum Records.

Regler resume their series of genre dedicated concept albums following 12 releases which focused on metal, harsh noise wall, techno, free jazz, no wave, blues, classical music, minimalism, ambient, and more. The duo of Mattin (Billy Bao, Josetxo Grieta) and Anders Bryngelsson (Brainbombs, No Balls) are joined on this new chapter by the unique Anla Courtis (Reynols). Devoted to noise rock, a genre in which all three artists had significant contributions. This new instalment follows the same guidi…

*80 copies limited edition.* Self Sabotage is a new album by prolific Slovak composer and guitar player Jakub Volovár aka URN. Volovár spent several years in Denmark and Self Sabotage is his fourth (and third for Stoned to Death) and last album composed in the atmosphere of Aarhus, which struck Volovár with its “omnipresent depression”, however due to school duties he stayed few years too long. One could read this album as a parting letter with a place that kept you under a flaccid but permanent…

*50 copies limited edition* "Wayward Acorn" is a new album by Tim Olive and Savvas Metaxas, out now on Coherent States. This collaboration exemplifies co-creation, as each artist reworks the other's source material through their own creative lens. Specifically, parts 1 & 2 feature a broad palette of tools (electric guitar, radio, modular synthesizer, field recordings) employed by Metaxas to craft his trademark sound over the years, with Olive's concrete and collage logic enriching the textures i…

"The only time I met and spoke with Cecil Taylor was in 2003 in the basement of Tonic, the much-beloved and long-gone Lower East Side venue, where he, Sunny Murray, Andrey Henkin and myself were sitting in one of those old wooden wine-cask cabanas they had. Murray’s group was playing there that evening and Cecil had come out to see the band. I remember Cecil whispering a query in my ear: “Mr. Allen, who is your favorite architect?” At that point I was not a follower of architecture but having re…

The latest transmission from Joachim Montessuis curated Erratum imprint sees the return of the inimitable Charlemagne Palestine, casting a spellbinding invocation of organ ritual music.  A self-described “maximalist composer”, Palestine originally developed his organ technique in 1964 with a debut performance as an organist in New York City, after decades of recognition since the 1960s, as a leading Minimalist composer and visual artist. He has long been fascinated by drones, rituals, repetition…

** The two recent Henri Texier reissue LPs in a special discounted bundle **  Henri Texier "Amir" (LP)     For years Amir, Henri Texier’s debut solo LP, stood slightly in the shadow of its follow-up, Varech, but is equal and towers in every possible way. There is no other record like it on earth - stunning from start to its final turn. In our view, it’s one of the greatest artefacts of the 1970s France scene, and that’s no small thing! Deceptively minimal and elegant, Amir is the first time the …

Samuli Tanner is known for his work in Siihhi, World Bank, Tiiu Helinä and Myttys to name a few. Music for 1-Year-Old Samuli Tanner is the first album released under his own name and was previously released in USA by Sun Ark Recordings in CD format. Now the album is finally released on vinyl and digital format by Fonal Records, Ikuisuus and Peace Files. Music For 1-Year Old Samuli Tanner consists of playful improvised sci-fi compositions and “beats” made with self-built samplers, old tape machin…

**500 copies** New album by New Zealand composer and guitarist Roy Montgomery in close collaboration with Emma Johnston. After Nietzsche is in a way the sister-album to last year’s Suffuse, where Montgomery composes songs for guest vocalists. Only this time it’s in close partnership with Emma Johnston. Montgomery's distinctive, interweaving guitar play is set as background for Emma Johnston’s angelic vocals and experimentations.Swimming through the four tracks of the album, it’s surprising to no…

* 2021 Stock. Limited Edition box set. Includes the vinyl LP, the CD format of the album, and the 32-page booklet with Gianni-Emilio Simonetti's "Hyde Park". Remastered, limited and numbered edition * Reissue of a 1978 LP out on Cramps Records. Demetrio Stratos's research into the field of phonetic and experimental poetry led to his freeing his voice every naturalistic restraint, restoring its depth and dimension. The result of this can be heard in the two recordings of his compositions "Metrodo…

* 2021 Stock. Limited Edition box set. Includes the vinyl LP, the CD format of the album, and 5 postcards. Remastered, limited and numbered edition * Mere words can’t describe the impact of an album where the only instrument is the voice of Demetrio Stratos (actually, there are few synthesizer inserts played by Paolo Tofani). Originally released in 1976: a unique work where Demetrio Stratos makes any kind of experiments and sounds with his voice, reaching and going over the limit of human capabi…

*2024 stock. 180 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Noise pollution? Maybe. To me, it’s a location that sounds like any other in its natural state: the city sounds like the city; the forest sounds like the forest. That said, this album is about being grateful for having paths that easily lead me away from the din, out of my own head, and into the forest around Kasuga and Omiwa shrines, down anonymous gravel paths, narrow backstreets, along verdant rice fields and small rivers. This is wher…

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Faux naturel is a soundscape composition that intends to give an aural and musical expression to the idea of non-scission between man and nature, between the so-called artificial sound environments and natural sound environments. It also intends to represent a musical expression guided by the principles of ambiguity and the dilution of the boundaries between the natural and the artificial, between the acoustic and electroacoustic planes. …

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "The Port of Cork moves between sleeping and waking. In the Winter months, the large warehouse is empty. Traces, remnants, and memories of a place that was a busy marketplace just months prior. I move silently in the dark, damp metallic shell of this dormancy, listening to the walls, the contours, the reverberations of the greater environment, the last open café whose music drifts into my field of sensation. The place’s sleep becomes alive…

*2024 stock. 165 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Making a work such as this poses a seemingly simple question: how is it possible to describe a space through the sounds we collect or borrow from it? In the case of the storm water drain known as Bell Stairs, the running water, traffic noise, and other sounds we found within, only convey the smallest amount of what it is like to navigate this long, narrow, concrete tunnel. Despite our reliance upon the language of the hunter, it is highly…

*2024 stock. 165 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* The sound piece Nox (in addition to reflecting the traditional nocturnal effluvia specific to the title) is based on the multiple meanings and interpretations that can be made of the incomplete form of the dactylic hexameter and palindrome In girum imus nocte ecce et consumimur igni. This Latin phrase, pictorial and poetic, most often attributed to Virgil, refers to the moths that circle around the candle before burning themselves, and whi…

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Urgency ! there is an urgency !! obviously there’s an urgency in this piece !!! Nothing sets in. Or at least the few trying seems quickly stripped of, replaced, torn, abolished…urgency as answer to other urgencies. The one of this exactly seven days residency to rub with the Amazon rainforest. What a funny idea will you tell : only coming seven days in this vastness, where we should better have stayed 7 weeks, 7 months, or even 7 years… B…

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Minato" is a soundscape work based on field recordings around Yokohama Port. In 1630’s, Japan started the trade policy called "Sakoku (鎖国)" that cuts off diplomacy except for a few countries. The policy ended in 1853 and Japan opened 5 ports including Yokohama Port in 1859. Yokohama Port is now one of the biggest maritime terminals in Japan, and it has been working for the moving and the logistics between Japan and foreign countries for a…

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "This work deals with an area that I have travelled daily for the last years. A continuum between a train and subway terminals linked and a third train station, located fifteen blocks away with which they connect through a semi-empty landscape of workshops, barracks and the remains of an old station, in the middle of the city. The main train station functions primarily as a commuter rail station with several hallways leading to other train…

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "The recording locations of this work are Nakanoshima Park, Tenjinbashi, Sakuranomiya Park in Osaka, Japan. There are rows of cherry trees, rivers, ponds, lotus flowers on swamps, boat dock, railroads, and small forests. I visit this place often. The expression is rich depending on the season. It was a very hot summer day in August 2020. I brought in a small recording set (digital recorder, tape recorder, etc.) and worked on the go. There …

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* Capture the unshaken density of water. The day. Birdsongs. The night. The clamour of the clouds. Summer. The breath of the trees. In spring. That of the fish, in the fall. Budding trees. Zenith sun. The blooming of flowers on a full moon night. The ripples blown by the wind across the scarlet surface of the pond. The furtive swing of the willow branches under a diurnal rain. Leaping insects in warm light. The hoarse cry of the rooster. In …

*2024 stock. 170 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Raaswater is a seamless album of compositions using sound recordings made whilst participating on the 2018 Sonic Mmabolela residency for sound artists and composers in the Limpopo province of South Africa. With a small group of likeminded people led by Francisco López & Barbara Ellison, I spent countless hours exploring the dynamic environments of the Mmabolela reserve by walking, resting, listening, interacting, experiencing and recordin…

*2024 stock. 160 (hand-numbered) copies limited edition* "Two bodies of water, contained in man-made channels and held back by barriers. Such is our desire and need to control nature, that we have used this resource to aid our industrious endeavours, often at the expense of the local area and environment. Steel, wood and concrete stand tall, holding back huge volumes of water to be channelled to produce electricity, cooling processes or simply be stored for future use. Often these processes cont…

Andy Bolus (UK) is a special case of a multidisciplinary artist, the aural part of which presents an extensive discography and hundreds of live concerts under the Evil Moisture moniker. Superficialy, there is always this specific harsh essence that he creates either as Evil Moisture or Olympic Shit Man (along with Mark Durgan), but deeper inside "Abnormal loves in School Of Meat Cutting", a psychedelic concrete cave noise takes hold. An amazing atmosphere of sound in the vein of a small basement…

Sold out at source. Guitarist and free improviser Tashi Dorji grew up in Bhutan and has developed a playing style unbound by tradition, yet with a direct line to intuitive artistry. His recordings feature improvisations that spasmodically grow along tangential, surprising paths. For this Ultraviolet Light release Dorji improvises on electric guitar. Tracks 1, 2, 3 Recorded Live at the Dreamland, Louisville KY by Connor Bell, May 30th 2014. Track 4 recorded by Patrick Kukucka at The Mission for T…

*70 copies limited edition* 'EBB-TIDE' is the first release in an upcoming series of limited-run cassettes focusing on Ameel Brecht's "sleep" compositions; music inspired by the vulnerability of sleep, by dream levels, Kleitman and the Wander Company, by sleep's alienation and by the time jungles in the dreaming part of us. As a first CS, 'EBB-TIDE' is about the hushed slow-motion waves of falling asleep, about the moment in-between waking and sleeping, when conscious life ebbs off, daytime rush…

Henry Birdsey is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, and audio engineer based in New Haven, CT, working primarily with the pedal steel, lap steel, microtonal organ, violin, and homemade instruments. Educated by microtonal theorist and composer Kyle Gann, among others, Birdsey has emerged as a prominent voice in the avant-garde music scene over the last several years. Touring extensively in the United States and abroad as a solo act and as half of Tongue Depressor with Zach Rowden, Birdsey has dev…