Experimental / All styles

Cambridge-based experimental group Contemporary Music Unit was formed in the late 1960s by the guitarist, author and visual artist, Ed Lee, with former student Terry Mortimer on guitar and keyboards. Lee recruited bassist Adrian Kendon, who brought drummer Roger Odell, the latter a powerful foil to Lee’s experimental visions. When Kendon left, Lee assumed bass duties and Odell’s wife Lorraine became a primary vocalist (after the departure of early member Sally Knox), along with teaching comerade…

Recorded in its entirety using just a laptop, a pair of headphones and a midi sampler, Indentations is the debut full length album from New York based percussionist and producer Grant Chapman. Indentations draws deeply on Chapman's personal experiences surrounding loss and betrayal. An intimate work reflecting the struggle of dealing with traumatic experiences, the album makes the case for equilibrium following life-altering experiences. ‘’The album is a meditation on the sheer weight a broken r…

*100 copies limited edition* "Magnet Blues" presents Zhu Wenbo and Zhu Songjie’s unique and utterly bizarre take on American blues, as if filtered through layered variations of darkness. Throughout the recording, we hear barely audible vocals, minimalist, smart, and subtle guitar work, and the folkish atmosphere of what sounds like distant train activity and dying radios. Instrumentation is notable here: Songjie uses the peculiar Casio EG-5 electric guitar, with a built-in cassette deck, while a…

Music imitating life imitating music. Improvisation, Emilian sound poetry, fluxus reminiscences, subtractive syntheses and everyday life's forays in the new naive collage from Cascina Mulino Magnani Collective. Cascina Mulino Magnani Collective is a group of musicians, improvisers, organizers, agitators, friends who revolve around the underground scene between Lodi and Piacenza.

*200 copies limited edition* Mabe Fratti is an experimental cello player from Guatemala, currently based in Mexico City. Mabe’s unique and courageous sound has made her one of the most promising new acts in the experimental music scene around the world. We present a new edition, first time on colored vinyl, of her debut album that originally was released by us in 2020, a year after it’s original digital release. A very well received and respected album, Pies Sobre La Tierra, is a unique and bril…

* 2021 Stock * With 18 untitled tracks, there’s no shortage of the mutant voices and clanks from the darkness that I’ve come to expect. However, I was most surprised by the amount of rhythmic material found here, especially on the second half of the disc. “Track 10” could very well be a backing track left over from the Rock and Roll Sessions. Strangely enough, “Track 12” is a techno song with little of the Nurse With Wound signature other than some operatic elements and the oblique, gaping maw o…

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* In this era of uncertainty and shaken normalities, we are forced to confront a different landscape in society - one which has modified our interactions with people and nature. There is a sense that the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times, has shifted further into the dystopian territory. "Faraway Vicinity" is the amalgamation of these landscapes - human and non-human, familiar and unknown - to construct a sonic world that mirrors these strange times. But m…

* 2CD casebound with a 24 page booklet *  The new album from Sarah Davachi on her own Late Music imprint is a collection of nine extended compositions for chamber ensemble and solo pipe organ.  "The expanded instrumentation on this album includes carillon (a keyboard instrument comprised of very large cast-iron bells), choir, string quartet, low woodwinds, and trombone quartet, alongside sine tones and electronic drones.  Among the pipe organs featured on the album is an extremely rare Italian t…

*80 copies limited edition* Natalia Beylis' latest instalment picks up where her last solo release left us: in an audio universe of Beylis' own transient design: a perpetual arrangement of notes, chords, voices, rattles and rhythms that seem to constantly flow though all her work. 'Library of Sticks' brings us in deep to her vast archive of found sounds and field recordings. A moment in sound captured by Beylis' ears and recording device, stored away until it's time becomes apparent and then nes…

"Delmore FX (moniker of poet and artist Elia Buletti) is a purveyor and craftsman of avant-world and post-world sounds. His sophisticated but straightforward electroacoustic language made of experimental novelty and folkloric ancientness has the oblique capacity of making one listen, dance and think astray at once. "Scompaio" (I disappear) is the new full length work by Das Andere Selbst label’s bright spark. Built around the mundane but magic disappearance of shapes, things and beings alike in …

** 250 copies ** Binding a deep social and political conscious with rigorous musical experimentation, the Brussels based, Italian pianist, performer, composer, Giovanni Di Domenico, delivers Downtown Ethnic Music, the 4th instalment of Die Schachtel’s Decay Music series, focused on inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract music.Over the last decade or so, Giovanni Di Domenico has carved a deep path through a diverse number of discrete fields wit…

Tip! Elders is the debut release from Ensemble Nist-Nah, a nine-piece percussion group led by Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie. The diverse group of French musicians that make up Ensemble Nist-Nah – whose collective experience encompasses traditional Gamelan performance, contemporary composition, noise, jazz, and everything in between – perform on drum kits, traditional and junk percussion, and a complete set of Javanese Gamelan instruments. Though building on the f…

Alexandre Bazin is a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales, better known as the GRM, for which he writes documentaries about music for the radio. Due to his background as a classical and jazz pianist, Alexandre Bazin is also passionate about instrumental music by the likes of Steve Reich, Erik Satie, Brian Eno. This album attempts to synthesize these two worlds that are so dear to the composer, either in symbiosis or in opposition to one another with simple and loose melodies as its main …

*150 copies limited edition* In 2010 Giovanni Di Domenico formed a band called “Mo(ve)ments Ensemble” and released a CD on Belgian independent label Spocus. The concept and repertoire of that band reflected Di Domenico’s love for subtle orchestration and chamber music sensibilities, the basic idea behind it being the dissertation of the organic elements that form the instruments involved (in that case the wood of the strings and clarinet) and the re-construction of them by means of musical ideas…

**Edition of 300 copies** In 1958 the painter Isson Tanaka (°22 July 1908 –*11 September 1977) moved to Amami Ōshima, an island in the Ryukyus. There, in self-chosen isolation, he committed himself exclusively to his art until his sudden passing in 1977. In 2018 Seiha Kurosawa, Kanako Azuma and Hideki Umezawa visited Amami Ōshima to create a video installation about Tanaka’s insular life. The work, entitled “Dokkyaku” (tr. The Lone Visitor), shifts between the texture and materiality of Tanaka’s…

**300 copies, green vinyl** (((vlubä))) present A-Mu-Kia: a new cosmic drone ritual (and first on LP). (((vlubä))) is an Argentinian paranormal art project founded by Müriscia Divinorum and Aphra Cadabra. Since their initiation in 2001, their ritual, cosmic, drone and free music has been documented on recordings issued on diverse labels around the world (Chocolate Monk, Ikuissus, Pseudoarcana, Foxglove, Phase!, RootDonLonie, Musik Atlach, Buh… etc) and have appeared on numerous compilations, sp…

Tip! Lucrecia Dalt channels innate sensory echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!, where traditional instrumentation encounters adventurous impulse and sci-fi meditations on atemporality in an exclamation of liminal delight. Dalt’s introspective approach to composition, last surfaced on her entrancing 2020 album No era sólida, refracts across ¡Ay! in a subconscious spectrum of the music genres she absorbed as a child. Treasured sounds and syncopations of bolero, mambo, salsa, and…

Recorded live in 2007 at the WIM free music festival,here we have Spring Heel Jack's penultimate live concert. This beautifully recorded set featuring the great Pat Thomas, Alex Ward and Paul Lytton captures the vivid and multilayered musical imaginations of this quintet brilliantly.An essential record.

Big tip! *199 copies limited edition* Akifumi Nakajima, renowned for his prolific and captivating work under the alias Aube, stands as one of Japan's most intriguing noise artists. His artistic prowess extends beyond the sonic realm, encompassing an impeccable sense of design and a deep appreciation for materials. Nakajima's creative journey began in 1980, but it wasn't until the early '90s, prompted by a request to compose music for an art installation involving water, that he stepped into the …

Tip! *99 copies limited edition* Taking immense pleasure in unveiling the exquisite vinyl reissue of Jun Konagaya's seminal solo album, titled Organ. Originally presented in 2012 on the CD digital medium, this opus marks Konagaya's inaugural solo venture, distinctly departing from his earlier collaborative endeavors under the monikers Grim and White Hospital. A prodigious figure in the Japanese noise and industrial landscape, Grim left an indelible mark in the 1980s with its dark, luminous allur…

Tip! *300 copies limited edition in a deluxe wooden box* Prepare to embark on a sonic odyssey as we unveil the official reissue of Grim's groundbreaking Amaterasu 7". A visionary one-man project, crafted by Jun Konagaya, Grim transcends the conventional boundaries of industrial music, power electronics, and noise. Emerging from the ashes of the legendary White Hospital, Konagaya's artistic trajectory spans nearly three decades, with a unique ability to draw inspiration from a diverse array of in…

Tip! *Limited edition of 199 copies. White vinyl 2023 repress* Grim is the one-man project of Jun Konagaya - formed from the ashes of White Hospital, his legendary early 1980s noise duo with Tomosada Kuwahara - which, accepting a long hiatus in the middle, has bridged the worlds of industrial music, power electronics, and noise for nearly three decades. Belonging roughly to the first wave of Japanese noise, Konagaya is particularly noteworthy among his peers for casting an eye further afield, dr…

Circular Music and Extended Circular Music are two collections of compositions written by Jürg Frey between 2011/2016 and 2014/2015 respectively. The first cycle is composed of seven distinct compositions while the second is divided into nine parts but, in reality, the n. 4 and no. 9 of the second series share the same harmonic progression. What distinguishes them, in addition to the ensemble (no. 4 is for string quartet and piano while no. 9 is for piano.

"A recording of a piano tuning session was the starting point for a series of different pieces, all of which question the experience of measurement. These two pieces, "about a thousand years" and "a falling sound", for piano and cello, are a new stage in this process. If the music results from a work of measurement - that of the piano as a territory and of its different acoustic regions, both the voice of Pandit Prân Nath, which gave rise to the playing and scordatura of the cello, and the bass …

*100 copies limited edition* Jacques Puech is playing since is younger age the cabrette (a french small bagpipes), and the bal music associated to it. He is a core member of the La Nòvia collective who make links between traditional music from Center-France and experimental fields and work as well on collectings on an ethnographic basis in the Auvergne territory. Jacques also collaborates with La Tène, a band founded by Insub's Cyril Bondi and d'incise along hurdy-gurdy player Alexis Degrenier. …

Three pieces based on traditional Japanese scales. Lisa Ullén is a pivotal person on the Swedish improvisational and experimental music scene. Active as a composer and performer since the 1990’s she has produced more than fifteen albums over the last decade with many constellations. In 2018, she was awarded the Jazz composer of the Year prize by the Swedish Radio. Ryan Packard is a percussionist, composer and sound artist based in Stockholm/Chicago. His versatile musical practice can be heard in…

Decomposition Study is a collaborative process. The instrument featured here is an arciorgano, a special microtonal organo di legno with two manually operated bellows and 36-key octaves across two manuals, constructed according to Nicola Vicentino’s designs from 1555. The notes of the music, written according to the rules of canonic contrapunto alla mente, are passed between two organists while four other musicians disrupt and amplify the organ’s airflow, acting similarly to cellular enzymes in …

Cyril Bondi wondered and researched about the process of choice in the making of a bells set for cows herd in the swiss mountains.It revealed to be pretty subjective, mixing parameters of sonic efficiency, financial and social reasons, and sometimes a slight touch of musicality, all of these clotted by the notion of "secret". Later he and d'incise spend a cold winter day into a thousand pieces collection of bells, picking a few sets regarding their own principles and finality.

The Insub Meta orchestra (IMO) is a large ensemble gathered around the experimental and electroacoustic practice.It was founded in 2010 by the Cyril Bondi and d’incise duo. It consists of about fifty permanent members that form the thirty international musicians present at each concert. Born from questionings on improvisation in a large group, the IMO built with time a strong collective and typical background where the individual gesture get lost in the production of global sonic states. Thus su…

*Last copy remaning at source* Fredrik Rasten (born 1988) is a guitarist and composer based in Oslo and Berlin. He is primarily focusing on musical exploration of just intonation and related sound phenomena, and in his work he is reaching for an actively listening state wherein to intuitively explore the complexities of tone and harmony. On the guitar he is applying real time retuning of the instrument, vocal shadings and different preparations to create warm and fluctuating resonances. As a com…

"The word καῦμα (kaûma) gave us the "calm" losing its primary sens of "heat". Here an archaic experimental music, a more or less advanced electronic technology with questionable sustainability, false loops, oscillations and glidings, between immutable harmonic series and dubious Chinese components. If "kaûma" also gives "chômer" ("not to work") (from occitan "caumar", "to rest during the heat"), another warming would call to disturb the calm, the pattern, to come out of our torpor (κῶμα, kôma ("…

Easily among our favorite records of the year - issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies by Cortizona and Stuk - Pak Yan Lau's latest, "Bakunawa", is a truly stunning thing to behold. A continuation of her long-standing "Book of Toy" project, expanded for the first time to incorporate the contributions of a five-piece ensemble, it's a sprawling expanse of deep harmonics and percussive rhythms that channel the magical and poetic into the realms of experimental music, deftly nodding to…

"I see lucid blue flames moving before my eyes. I hear voices melting. Voices somewhere from within.Speaking words I do not know but feel connected to, almost as if I have known the meaning once..Noises that obscures the multiple pictures hidden in these digital compositions. Iku Sakan have created a set of five tracks that takes the listener on a trip deep into the human psyché. Emotional flickering movements that twists and turns. The albums have a darker, much more intense feel than some of I…

A group of people is looking back on a collective experience, unsure if they were part of this situation or merely outside spectators. While they talk them selves through the event, one starts to mutate as different objects in the environment starts to behave in strange ways. Then the space suddenly completely transforms, and they start to realise how everything in this reality has a changeable and rather diffuse nature. Performed by Karis Zidore, Miriam Kongstad, Jakob Littauer, Cæcilie Trier, …

"Last time we heard the powerhouse duo of Chris Shields (Marcel du Swamp, Ro) and Alexander Holm (Sensorisk Verden label boss), they called an audience member during the show on a homemade telephone while shaking dice, giving each other unidentified signs and cues, and presenting their special flavor of musique concrete. Voice, tape, synth (?). Beautiful sound. New record is bonkers" - L. Dusk.

"Have you ever sensed a landscape change in front you? The sand under your feet completely change colour or structure. Certain places we enter calls for a different mode of engagement. In front of me is a piece of paper. On the paper a hand have scrippled nervous lines and strokes. Some of these lines form what could be words, others look like broken tools or thoughts never materialized. When I pick up one of the broken tools, i notice how it turns into a word, letters of unknown origin grows ou…

The first full length solo album by musician and visual artist Felia Gram-Hanssen. Taking on different roles as field recordist, singer, producer and drummer Gram-Hanssen weaves together different parts of her praxis, which results in a diverse sound environment somewhere between drone rock and music concrete. It has been more than six years in the making and now we are so happy to finally release this beautiful work.In the title Gram-Hanssen introduces her own doppeltgänger Felaia, the albums f…

Two visionary maestros, Pierre Bastien and Michel Banabila, unite in their first collaborative album, Baba Soirée. The veterans of electronic music bring their unique expertise to the table, resulting in a captivating fusion of experimental styles. Bastien’s mechanical loops and fantastic instrumental setups merge seamlessly with Banabila's sound design and impeccable skills of sampling collages. It's not a dance party, nor is it an avant-garde intervention. It's a soirée: a cultivated evening o…

Tip! There’s music inside of lace stitching, and electro-acoustic composer, improviser, and harpist Zeena Parkins has spent years finding it. Her lace pieces use images of lace as musical scores for ensembles to play, building webs of sound that emerge from its contours. LACE is a boxset of artifacts including an LP of two of Parkins’ multi-movement works, “LACE I.” and “LACE II.,” presented for the first time on recording. The pieces were performed by percussionist William Winant, electronic mu…

*2023 stock* A cycle of primitive and ethereal.Building monoliths as Altars. A Hearth.The main centre of these pieces are weathered landscapes, crumbling rocks, erosion eating away at stones, chaos of overgrowth, the deep time of constant crumbling and occlusion. Passage of storms, rebuilding of momentum, weathered souls.A cyclical altar, an eroded homecoming.A lyrical desolation. From the artist: "The narrative of the entire record is loosely based on the concept of deep time, a temporal scale …