Portals/Rope
Jana Irmert Portals: Produced entirely from sounds recorded in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and Colombia, Portals evokes the hidden world of sounds that lie beyond our perception. Whether concealed in ultra-sonic frequency registers or in the depths of the aquatic medium, these sounds bear witness to an unsuspected and teeming animal activity. Insects, frogs, bats and freshwater dolphins move about, hiding from our eyes and ears. Revealing this palette of sounds, in particular through transpo…
Juvenile Rock
First-ever vinyl edition of Dendö Marionette's Juvenile Rock, a 2LP collection of unreleased recordings, alternate versions, studio experiments and live captures previously circulated only on a tiny CD-R run and a cassette via Brooklyn's Bitter Lake Recordings. The definitive companion to the band's self-titled studio overview, opening a window onto one of Osaka's most singular synth-wave units at its creative peak.
Dendö Marionette
Definitive 2LP overview of Dendö Marionette, gathering the band's complete studio legacy: the cult 1981 7-inch flexi, a previously unreleased EP recorded in 1982, and an array of demos that captures the group as they evolved towards their fullest sonic identity. Essential for anyone tracking the Osaka synth-wave scene at its peak.
Paradise Mambo
First vinyl reissue of Akebonojirushi's Paradise Mambo, originally on the influential DIW label in 1987. A six-piece formed in Hakata before relocating to Tokyo in 1984, the band fused new wave, jazz-funk and unconventional pop into a record that is unmistakably of its moment yet remarkably forward-looking, sitting somewhere between the city pop sophistication of late-80s Tokyo and the unrulier corners of the same scene.
Trap
First international vinyl reissue of Chiko Hige's Trap, his second solo album, originally on Japan Records in 1985. A tense, hypnotic record of hyper-kinetic grooves, clipping guitars and twisting saxophone lines: one of the cleanest distillations of the Japanese No-Wave idiom at its peak, and a record that still sounds startlingly contemporary four decades on.
Harafuri
First-ever official reissue of Machizo Machida and Kitazawagumi's Harafuri, originally on Tokuma's WAX imprint in 1992. Eleven years after the foundational INU classic Meshi Kuuna!, Machida (now better known as the novelist and Musashino University professor Kō Machida) channels literary ambition into a tight, modernised post-punk setting. With newly retranslated English lyrics included.
Dance Till You Die
Reissue of Daisuck & Prostitute's Dance Till You Die, expanded from a 1980 7-inch into a full-length the following year. Equal parts ritualistic groove and No-Wave abrasion: one of the most uncompromising statements of early-80s Japan, and an obvious cousin of the New York DNA / Contortions axis. With insert and lyrics.
Quelques idées d'un vert incolore dorment furieusement
For more than fifteen years, Toc – the Lille-based trio of Jérémie Ternoy (Fender Rhodes, Piano Bass), Ivann Cruz (guitar) and Peter Orins (drums) – has been pursuing a singular sonic quest where the energies of experimental rock, the unpredictability of improvised music, and a constant drive toward excess converge. On stage as on record, Toc invents a telluric and ever-shifting music, built from flows, ruptures, and accumulations, where hypnosis and chaos feed off one another.
For this new albu…
Learning
‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the la…
Traveling Light
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards. Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the majo…
Àlbum
Urpa i musell feel very fortunate to announce the reissue of Àlbum by Joan Saura (1954-2012), originally released on compact disc by Nova Era – Música Secreta in 1998.
Kōri no ryokō / Jäämatkailu
Water can retain or wash away memory; flowing or freezing. It gives life and shapes earth, while frozen imprints of an ancient past are waiting to melt – back into sound or fluid motion, or simply to dissipate and disappear. For their split release, Yoichi Kamimura and Olli Aarni offer two distinct reinterpretations of a performance recorded live at the Temppeliaukio Kirkko – a church in Helsinki built directly into solid rock and bathed in natural light – meditating on glacial landscapes and wa…
Two Lonely Space Pilots
There's a moment, early in Two Lonely Space Pilots, when time seems to stop. Not pause - stop. The saxophone sustains a note that hovers somewhere between breath and pure tone, while scattered percussion marks territory in the emptiness like footprints on an unexplored planet. This isn't background music. This is Hekura - a Barcelona-based duo who've spent years learning how to make silence speak and stillness move. Ernest Pipó and Edu Pons met during their jazz studies at Taller de Músics in Ba…
One Another
“The body’s relation to the social is inseparable from, and of the same relation to the world, not a relation of objectification but a carnal intertwining prior to any reflective judgement.” -Rosalyn Diprose
Conversation No. 1 / Collecting Rocks From The Places We've Been
Conversation No. 1/ Collecting Rocks from the Places We’ve Been is a solo for bass clarinet which can be performed as a duo, trio, or maybe someday with many, many bass clarinets, or in collaboration with other artists. Katie Porter is interested in creating systems of music that she can exist in together, for herself and others, music that collapses and expands on itself, where we are free to choose the phrases, iterations, and lean into the occurrences of overlapping tones, vibrations, multi-…
Putting A Hand On The World
"In late 2022 I became a father and lost my own father in quick succession. This music represents a conversation between my selves who met at that nexus of birth and death, sharing what they felt about the past, the present, and the future. The pieces are very intentionally set in different seasons and sonic environments so as to welcome the listener to this metaphysical meeting point for musical ideas and emotions."
Replace The Population
"I had the privilege of meeting Wadada Leo Smith after a show, ‘Everyone thinks the trumpet is made out of brass — it’s really made out of air.' This recording is my exploration of that concept."
Open Space
I recorded Open Space with in a single continuous take: my cello, an amp, and a distortion pedal. I was watching a film that was a static shot across a very large canyon, the light slowly shifting. I hope it offers the listener room to breathe and dream.
See You When I Get There
See You When I Get There is Amy Cimini’s first solo viola album. While playing in noise bands and experimental projects for over 25 years, she has developed a sonic palette for the amplified viola that combines overtone-rich distortion with percussive techniques nestled in reverb and delay effects meant to fill large acoustical spaces. Overall, this record embraces noise abstraction as much as a tuneful directness, that evokes Cimini’s fellow experimental string players, historical protest musi…
Against Proper Objects
On their debut release, Foster shifts fluidly between tongue slaps, overblown tones, and powerful tenor saxophone screams, while Crawford alternates between non-idiomatic splatter, frenzied banjo maneuvers, and dense, elusive bursts of tangled noise. Meanwhile, Sullivan crafts a metallic clatter that establishes its own expansive sonic territory.