★Erstwhile Records

Erstwhile is proud to announce the release of Community, the new solo release by Graham Lambkin, his fifth solo record, following 2011’s Amateur Doubles. “Community is a music steeped in sociological review. It sits as a keen barometer, taking the temperature of the world around it. Community is both willing servant and social mirror - it performs its basic civic duty without fuss, then shatters.” (José Perez)     Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi and designed by Lambkin, Community arrives in a delux…

Erstwhile is proud to announce the first release on the new ErstClass imprint, an epic collection of Michael Pisaro's work for piano from 1994-2016, 11 pieces totalling 223 minutes. The pieces are performed by the brilliant Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt (Current 93, Walter Marchetti, Robert Ashley, etc.) with close oversight by Pisaro as well as his own musical input at times. The gorgeous 8-panel digipak was designed by Yuko Zama (also the lead producer), and the 8 page booklet features liner…

Reed Evan Rosenberg-microphones, pedals, max, voice. Ethan Tripp-microphones, motors, junk. Recorded in 2014 and 2015. Mastered by Joe Panzner. Design by Matthew Revert.

Tim Albro & Tyler Keen, guitars, electronics, objects. recorded Nov 2013 in Jacksonville, FL. mastered by Joe Panzner. design by Matthew Revert.

Christian Wolff, prepared piano, whistles, stones. Michael Pisaro, electric guitar, harmonica, stones. Recorded in 2014. Chistian Wolff (1934), American composer of avant-garde music. Michael Pisaro (1961), guitarist andcomposer, member of Wandelweiser. The album was mastered by Joe Panzner and designed by Yuko Zama

After a solo on Kye, the Australian writer Matthew Revert comes back with the American sound artist Vanessa Rossetto. Together they mostly work with field recordings, editing and mixing them in a narrative form, adding some texts and voices. Whereby two of the cutest cabbages in the cot create a soup unlike any other.

Unusual sound work from the Japanese duo of Takahiro Kawaguchi and Utah Kawasaki (Astro Twin), using self-made instruments and electronics to create unexpected sonic emissions that follow curious paths that are separated by periods of quiet or textural sound. Takahiro Kawaguchi was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1980. He works in Osaka and Tokyo in various electroacoustic genres, using field recordings or creating sound installations, or presenting sound live. The common concept of all his works is: "…

This album is a meditation on the inner mental environments that one encounters and endures during times of work-related travel. The music contained herein should be well suited for headphone distraction in airports, bus stations, train stations, subway terminals, and in the confines of the seats related to these methods of mass transportation.Recorded, edited and mixed by Kevin Drumm and Jason Lescalleet in 2015. " "Busman's Holiday opens with audio taken from an iconic scene in John Boorman's…

With fifteen untitled vignettes and varying source material, Parazoan Mapping often feels like an aural scrapbook. And when looking through any scrapbook, the different photos and pieces of ephemera always point to something bigger: a sort of unraveling of the people contained within. The pictures of your family’s vacation from several years ago may not explicitly show it but you very well understand how then compares to now that feeling of joy when you conquered your first wave after hours…

Field recording artist Jeph Jerman and percussionist and sound designer Tim Barnes are finally out with this fantastic collaborative work - here’s a certain patience that’s required to fully engage with Matterings. It’s a good twenty minutes longer than the other recent Erstwhile releases but it goes beyond album length—when your source material is different aspects of nature, the process of recording, editing, and compiling tracks feels like excavation. It’s with these slowly unfolding tracks t…

An evocation of “Nacht,” Graham Lambkin and Michael Pisaro’s chilling, malefic collaboration directly references Giraud’s collection of poems, Pierrot Lunaire, and Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama of the same name. Despite the continental subject matter, Schwarze Riesenfalter isn’t an academic act of re-rendering a historical text. Their use of verse comes across as the result of warped poetic fascination and fixation, where a text crawls underneath skin, finding ways to subtly influence the mundan…

Devin DiSanto is an New York-based artist and composer currently focusing on labor-oriented approaches to performance. This work revolves primarily around functional uses of common/everyday objects in both solo and group situations, emphasizing the presence and impact of incidental sound. Nick Hoffman is an American composer/improviser born in 1985. He operates Pilgrim Talk.

ErstAEU is a new CD imprint, launched by Erstwhile Records to help document the work of young American experimental musicians working in a post-electroacoustic vein. Kevin Parks originally hails from New York. He is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY and received his M.A. degree from Dartmouth College. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in Composition and Music Technologies at The University of Virginia. After working briefly at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in …

The Abyss is an epic, dynamic statement that shows the wide range of sound these two esteemed artists are capable of creating. The lengthy list of instruments used, plus the year it took to assemble, gives an indication that there is a grander modus operandi at play here than the linear works that Kevin Drumm and Jason Lescalleet are known for. CD-1 is made up of seven pieces that run the gamut, with electronic crackle, digital shards of noise, piano mangle, and even dissonant brass clust…

The label doesn't want to do notes anymore about his new releases. So we have to write some with our very good English. With these two names you can imagine that for sure the music will be closer to silence than to wall of noise. First we must say that no credit is written on the CD, like it was not important to know who is playing what and first what is played. CD1 is an instrumental piece signed by Radu Malfatti. CD2 by Jürg Frey where instruments are mixed with field recordings. It was r…

Two great korean artists working with feedback, turntables, opened hard drives... What they call infernal objects. A stream of noise accidents. A molten, scalding stream of sound. Looking back, I see it's only been about seven years since, via the recordings issued on Manual, I first became aware of the improvising scene in Seoul; seems like longer, maybe I'm forgetting something. But the musicians involved were clearly up to something new and exciting, carving out a distinct area that often inv…

A stunning construction and a fantastic recording, seemingly endless layers of depth and ways to listen. A composition using field recordings by Toshiya Tsunoda and Manfred Werder, recorded in Japan in 2013. A bit past the 40-minute mark, there's a clear fade-out of the activity above and a shift into a different zone--perhaps it's simply going from the Miura Peninsula into Tokyo (the detour?). A strong, somewhat harsh electrical buzz is the main element, sounding like an exposed wire-box on…

Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet stand side by side in the vanguard of contemporary sound exploration. Since the initiation of their collaborative endeavors in 2006, the duo have crafted a nice combination of audio vérité and musique concrète, together building a highly personal body of work. 2008's critically acclaimed The Breadwinner illuminated the artistic potential found in mundane and commonplace circumstances. 2010's Air Supply showcased a darker side, nudging the civilian themes of it…

An extended work from Antoine Beuger and Michael Pisaro, defined by six stanzas written by Beuger, Anna Swir, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugger and Edmond Jabes, a subtle cycle on love and permanency realized in tone and voice." "The work begins in very un-Wandelweiser fashion, with a strong note played on, I think, a harpsichord (prepared spinet?), quite forthrightly. After several identical notes, a recording of an interior space enters and a surprising sequence of chords occurs, four of them, very…

Graham Lambkin first heard Keith Rowe's sixties work in AMM as a teenager growing up in Folkestone, a small town in Kent, England, and for him it was very influential. That same year, Lambkin formed his now legendary band The Shadow Ring and Lambkin says, For Darren (Harris) and I, AMM was one of the groups that gave us licence to just do what we wanted, regardless of whether it fitted with convention or employed 'accepted' techniques, and did so from a very English standpoint which held g…

"Erstaeu 003 is, at once, the most "traditional" of the first three releases and, perhaps because of that, the most difficult to approach, at least for this listener. My previous experience with Graham Stephenson's work (I think this is my first exposure to Aaron Zarzutzki) has often followed the pattern of initial opaqueness followed by gradual transparency, eventually resulting in enjoyment and appreciation. I say "traditional" a bit tongue in cheek, although the set here, trumpet and electron…

2013 release ** "Contrary to the effects of the titular condition, which I'm given to understand afflicts both musicians, and as also implied in the images of distorted and pained hands adorning the cover, there's some seriously steady and decisive music contained herein. It's understandable, for a moment, that the innocent listener might have an idea that this is more Panzner's affair than Stuart's if, like yours truly, one's knowledge of the latter's work is pretty much covered by his adventur…

Something very cool about erstaeu 002's existing in such a different world than its numeric predecessor (and 003 is altogether different as well). After the sublime compressive intensity of "Dystonia Duos", "Sinter" injects vast amounts of oxygen into the room, air swirling and echoing in huge spaces, light shimmering and hazy. In metallurgical terms, sintering is the making of objects from powder and "powdery", especially with a metallic connotation, isn't the worst term you could use for much …

This was the 10 PM set on 9/11/11, and makes for a perfect pair with the Rowe solo - two very different extremes. Where the Rowe set is in your face visceral, Unami and Malfatti created a gentle atmosphere within the pitch-black room (lit solely by Unami's visuals) and an overarching cumulative feeling in the listener. The too-perfect-to-be-scripted intro and outro frame a set that's almost not there, a radical recording even by ultra-minimal standards

This was the much anticipated final set of Keith Rowe's week in NYC, following five duo sets with various collaborators. It took place on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the Manhattan atmosphere was uniquely charged. As he almost always does, Rowe rose to the challenge of the occasion, creating a moving, dense, and virtuosic set in the lineage of his 2004 set with Burkhard Beins in Berlin (ErstLive 001) and his 2008 solo set in Tokyo (ErstLive 007). The recording quality is remarkable, b…

In September 2011, Erstwhile producer Jon Abbey was invited to curate two weeks of shows at John Zorn's legendary Manhattan venue The Stone, which he used as an opportunity to invite many of his favorite musicians from Japan, Europe and the US to perform. A second three night festival at Issue Project Room was later appended onto the end, making the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival a 35 set, 17 night extravaganza in all. Four of those thirty-five sets will now be available in the ErstLive se…

In September 2011, Erstwhile producer Jon Abbey was invited to curate two weeks of shows at John Zorn's legendary Manhattan venue The Stone, which he used as an opportunity to invite many of his favorite musicians from Japan, Europe and the US to perform. A second three night festival at Issue Project Room was later appended onto the end, making the AMPLIFY 2011: stones festival a 35 set, 17 night extravaganza in all. Four of those thirty-five sets will now be available in the ErstLive se…

Stunning double disc collection of mind-erasing loops, avant classical drone and minimal cold wave threat from Jason Lescallett, presented as a back-handed tribute to Big Black’s notorious 1992 album Songs About Fucking: Songs About Nothing is the sound of pure entropy, moving from ear-scalding feedback sculptures through nod-out minimal synth repetition through scrambled choral works and widescreen soundtrack drones. The first disc unfolds in a series of stately movements linked by a form of ob…

Crosshatches was composed, recorded and assembled by Tsunoda and Pisaro over a period of 14 months, as a single 85 minute work in eight sections.

Four extended electroacoustic works from Berlin's inside pianist and mixing board artist Andrea Neumann and Baltimore's Bonnie Jones on electronics, minimal and edgy pieces of unusual and absorbing character."ANDREA NEUMANN (b. 1968, Freiburg) studied piano at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin. Since 1996 she has been primarily active as improviser and composer in the areas of experimental and new music. In the process of exploring the piano for new sound possibilities, she has reduced t…

Olivia Block makes her label debut, paired with Greg Kelley in his first appearance on Erstwhile since "Forlorn Green", although the overall cast of the session seems more firmly located in her neck of the woods, which is to say very thick and richly layered, possessing a massiveness and spatial volume. She plays a bit of piano here and there (once unfurling a couple of strikingly Tilbury-esque arpeggios, elsewhere within the piano's string-bed) but it's her electronics that predominate, …

Erstwhile's debut of percussionist, microphone and electronic artist Will Guthrie in a duo with tape machine Revox and electronic artist Jerome Noetinger ("Hands of Caravaggio") in an interactive "face off" between the two. "november 2011 release ; ... whenever i get bummed out about music in general (usually :: fearing the seemingly consistent march towards rural / “beguiling” simplifications of electronic music, various “returns” to “form”, etc ...) there almost always seems to be an erstwhile…

Using his no-input mixing board Toshimaru Nakamura, perhaps the ultimate Onkyo artist, spent two years creating this work, which is also the second release in the Erstsolo series. Nakamura constructs this 46 minute piece from recordings of his mixer, which generates a combination of hum, glitch, buzz and subliminally disruptive sound. He develops the results into gentle and non-violent textural and impressionistic music that unfolds in a meditative and absorbing manner. That Nakamura c…

First meeting of experimental musicians Keith Rowe & Radu Malfatti in a 3 disc set: one disc of compositions by Jurg Frey and Cornelius Cardew; one disc of their own compositions; and one disc of improvisation. Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti are two of the most influential experimental musicians in recent decades, each with extensive bodies of highly distinctive work and a combined 80+ years at the forefront of their respective areas of exploration. On Φ, their first meeting ever is documented via…

A minimal theater in sound from Taku Unami and Takahiro Kawaguchi and starring Yoko Chosakabe and Kumio Kurachi, recording at the Ueno Okura Theater Older Building. "Teatro Assente is endearing and provoking, but most of all, endlessly pleasing." Tinymixtapes

Michael Pisaro and Taku Sugimoto are not generally closely associated, but have quite a bit in common. Both are composers whose primary instrument is the guitar, both have close ties to the Wandelweiser collective (Pisaro is a longtime member), and both have pursued their unique paths without much concern as to how the rest of the world will perceive them. 2 seconds/b minor/wave marks their first collaboration, but these aesthetic overlaps allow their independently conceived recorded parts to fi…

'Throughout their careers, both Annette krebs and taku unami have explored the areas between composition and improvisation, innovation and repetition, music and ambient sound. On motubachii, their distinctive styles come together to form a whole that is monolithic yet widely varied, simple yet impossible to fully grasp. Annette krebs studied music and concert guitar in Frankfurt-Main, and has lived in Berlin since 1993. She has worked intensively in the crossover area between improvisation and c…

Burkhard Stangl and Kai Fagaschinski both are masters at fluidly combining melodicism and abstraction. Musik-Ein Porträt in Sehnsucht showcases their work as a duo, carefully composed pieces intertwined with judiciously placed field recordings and meticulously sequenced to create a record that is more than the sum of its parts. Stangl and Fagaschinski first met in the summer of 2002, when Christof Kurzmann suggested Kai should join the ensemble performing Stangl's opera Venusmond in Berlin. They…

Since the early nineties, Vienna-based Radu Malfatti has been investigating the edges of ultraminimalism in both his composed and improvised work. On Imaoto, he is joined by empathetic explorer Klaus Filip to create an instant classic. Malfatti and Filip have performed a handful of duo concerts over the years, with the first in 2003. In 2006, they played a remarkable set in Maria Chavez's Houndstooth store in NYC, a very memorable show for the couple of dozen listeners in attendance as well as f…

Keith Rowe's concluding set, with longtime partner Toshimaru Nakamura, at the AMPLIFY 2008: Light festival, recorded on September 21, 2008 by Taku Unami. AMPLIFY 2008: Light was an intense and deeply immersive experience for all who were lucky enough to be present, and quite a bit of that was attributable to Rowe's four sets, which are now available for all to hear.