Repercussions
On Repercussions, Kakuhan and Adam Golebiewski tangle sampler, cello and hyper-physical percussion into a 10-part suite of splintered rhythm and scraped resonance, a hallucinatory electroacoustic organism that keeps mutating between dance impulse, free improv and liquefied drone.
From Books and Dreams
On From Books and Dreams, Message twist hard-rocking kraut-prog into a delirious, book‑strange suite of nightmares and visions, where riffs, sax and Mellotron bleed into long-form songs that feel equal parts acid hangover, cosmic sermon and waking dream.
Midnight
Clarity, more often than not, is a lie, a red herring. Truer, it seems, are blurred images and misty conceptions. Music history as a whole is undecipherable. Zooming in may bring some sense of understanding but many lineages lie far beneath the surface, made of obscure stories and oblique connections, like the ones that tie Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, Robert Ashley & Jacqueline Humbert - a scrawny branch in the genealogical tree on which now sits Thelma Cappello. Its motto reads: “voice is a…
PRN2_M15t
NYZ (David Burraston) presents this collection of generative music pieces carefully extracted from a PreenFM2 gifted to him by Aphex Twin. PRN2_M15t is being released at the same time as an LP titledStria from Dr. John Chowning who invented the original FM synthesis algorithms which were sold to Yamaha and used in the creation of the DX series of keyboards. An interview with Chowning, conducted by David Burraston, will be published at the same time.
David Burraston is an award winning artist/sci…
Through Global Frequency
At the beginning of this journey, I had no clear idea of what I was getting into. What started as a simple poem, with embedded audio links referencing a selection of recordings I had made over the past few years and published on Metalabel and my website, eventually evolved into a video project designed as a proposal for an installation. Ultimately, it culminated in this music album.
I am incredibly grateful for the amazing voice recordings that friends and family from all over the world sent me,…
Play Me
Kim Gordon's third album, 'Play Me,' is distilled and immediate, expanding Gordon’s sonic palette to include more melodic beats and the motorik drive of krautrock. “We wanted the songs to be short,” Gordon says. “We wanted to do it really fast. It’s more focused, and maybe more confident."
The follow-up to 2024’s Justin Raisen-produced, two-time Grammy-nominated 'The Collective' processes, in her inimitable way, the collateral damage of the billionaire class: the demolition of democracy, technoc…
Pra'
Tommaso and Jean have been a duo for several years, touring extensively throughout Italy, France, and Quebec. Their second release was recorded in a new and inspiring environment: a cabin nestled in the hills surrounding the Genova Prà neighborhood. Perched atop the hill, the cabin offers breathtaking views of the seaside and the bustling commercial port of Genoa. This space, typically used as a storage room, captured the sounds and noises generated during a two-day residency hosted by Davide Ce…
Orassion
“Orassion,” halfway between improvisation and composition, is born from the timbral and contemplative union of percussion and positive organ. Recorded in September 2023, the album is the result of a shared prayer created from silence and sounds deeply amplified by the precious acoustics of the Church of St. Martin in Bondo, a small village in Switzerland. The white walls of the church, the precious embroidery of the paintings, the immaculate colors, and the golden atmosphere surrounding the soun…
Grani d'Impacts
"Silence. Presence. Breath. It was 1999 when I first met Michel Doneda, with Tetsu Saitoh, leading a free improvisation workshop in Genoa, my hometown. Looking back, it's remarkable how much that workshop influenced my life and led to many subsequent encounters with Michel, thanks to Cepi and Barre Phillips. When Michele Anelli asked me if I was interested in releasing this album, there was no doubt that the answer would have been positive. I find Michel's breath and gasps still uncompromised an…
Tone Keepers
How good does it feel to pull back from time to time? To really shed excess, more-ness, and follow a single path with intention? The exploration of one thing can illuminate corners of the world overlooked by minds pushed in increasingly omnidirectional cycles of want. Tone Keepers is a collection of four compositions by flutist, composer, and sound artist Rachel Beetz that follow a straight line into unexpected territory. Each piece revolves around a simple but inventive technique for generating…
Squash
Limited to 200 hand-numbered copies. Packaged in a squashed can with 2 sets of nuts and bolts holding the package together. Inside the package is a paper strip insert. The essence of Aube's artistic philosophy has never been more distilled, more physically incarnate, than in Squash, the 1995 cassette that transmutes the humble sound of compressed metal into a meditation on materiality, reduction, and sonic design.
Originally released in a limited run of 100 copies on Chocolate Monk UK via Aube'…
Ciels
It is our honor to present the seventh album by French composer Jean-Baptiste Favory, whose work we first encountered while reissuing a record with the Mexican art collective, Los Lichis. J-B made an annual trip to Mexico to participate in Los Lichis’s musical and visual anarchy (Dog 2LP FTR229, Savage Lichis Religion : El Ultimo Grito LP FTR354), and was considered a full member of this estimable outfit.
We soon discovered he was also the France’s long-running experimental radio show Epsilonia…
Flutterings
Jeffrey Alexander is one of those guys whose brain and hands are constantly in motion whether working with bands, doing solo stuff, installations, paintings, label shit…whatever. Anyway, he’s always a pleasure to work with, and we have done so on many occasions. That said, I sorta feel as though this new CD might be closer to taking a walk through Jeffrey’s head than anything else I’ve heard.
Flutterings was done using guitars, keys, percussion, electronics and gimcracks of all descriptions. The…
Twenty20
It has been a couple of years (that felt like a lifetime) since we released lloyd Thayer’s last album, Duets, which he recorded with the drummer Jerome Deupree. The intervening time has been weird as hell, but Thayer (master of every string that’s ever been strung) has made the decision to create a fantastic, sprawling solo suite for himself. And now it is time to share the beauty with you.
Unlike the music on Duets, the piece here was played entirely on double-necked Weissenborn guitar, althou…
Good Night
On January 11, 2010, I received a message from a woman who introduced herself as a friend of my good buddy Aki Onda. She was going to be part of a music night at a space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, called Death by Audio. She asked if I’d be willing to do a solo set there as well. That’s how I came to be leaning against a doorframe, after having played my own set, listening to Margarida Garcia on her electric double bass. Her music was original, soulful, thoughtful, and laden with mystery. Upon …
That's Understanding
Having listened to this disk 20 or so times over the past week, I have been struck time and again by the gently naif quality of Dan Beckman-Moon's songwriting. I keep thinking of Neil Young's earliest solo tunes, particularly 'Sugar Mountain,' as a sort of spiritual touchstone, although truthfully the music doesn't really sound anything like that. Still, the emotional core of the material has a similar sweetness and simplicity, while managing to steer clear of mawkishness with a nimble delicacy …
Forest Lifes: "New" Dream World
The mixtape has long been a central facet of Seth Price’s practice, from his compilations of New Jack Swing, industrial, and early video game music contextualized with essays as part of his Title Variable project to his soundtracks for fashion shows. Assembled in the spirit of the eclectic mixes he regularly posts on his SoundCloud page, Casual Holiday is a genre-trotting bricolage of music by Amancio D’Silva, Roy Montgomery, Nancy Dupree with a group of Rochester, NY youngsters, and more. Price…
Inoue
Patrick Shiroishi returns to his brutal prog roots for an album of 60 saxophone exercises, equally punishing and rewarding. Executed during the plague years and delivered in two halves, one featuring pieces composed strictly with programmed drum accompaniment, the second with additional metal/wood sound sources, Inoue truly stands out in an extensive and captivating discography.
Leviathan Whispers
On Leviathan Whispers, Tim Hill shapes saxophones, tape loops and treated field sound into slow-burning rites of longing and delirium, a spectral song-cycle where folk memory, Blakean vision and drone minimalism coil around each other in restless, darkly luminous orbit.
Collapsing Tape: Experiments in Rupture and Repair
"Collapsing Drums tells the stories that matter in a post-pandemic world" - The Wire Collapsing Tape is a sprawling 23 track compilation which celebrates 5 years of the Collapsing Drums label via a diverse pool of artists working across experimental music. It’s really hard to condense the amount of sounds going on in the 90 minutes — but here’s a brief attempt: there’s abstract vocal play (Elaine Mitchener), warm squishy electronics (Luke Sanger), frenetic turntablism (Mariam Rezaei and Dali de …