★Thanatosis Produktion
The Death Of Kalypso
After eleven albums with a varying ensemble size, Martin Küchen’s Angles returns with The Death of Kalypso, its most ambitious statement to date: a jazz opera for our times. Joining forces with vocalist Elle-Kari and Angles pianist Alexander Zethson, who wrote the string arrangements and band notations, Küchen adds another volume to the band’s sizeable, yet coherent catalog, which merges infectious free jazz grooves with tumultuous emotional cadences that reflect both human and political concern…
The Night is the Night
Nelly Klayman-Cohen is a singer, pianist, composer, and lyricist performing under the moniker Rotem Geffen. The album The Night is the Night consists of eight newly written songs and follows her critically acclaimed debut album, You Guard the Key (Zeon Light 2021). The lyrics, written in German, English, and Hebrew, delve into memory, love, sorrow, and the poetics of the night. The "I" and the "You" merge as relational organisms, their boundaries continuously shifting, blurring, and being redefi…
Plays Carter, Plays Mitchell, Plays Shepp
Founded by saxophonist and composer Johan Jutterström, the Swedish septet STHLM svaga has emerged as one of the most intriguing and distinctive jazz ensembles of the 2000s. Their expertise lies in crafting jazz with remarkably soft dynamics, resulting in a wholly distinctive and captivating ensemble sound. Plays Carter, Plays Mitchell, Plays Shepp is their new release and features specially composed pieces by three iconic figures in jazz history: Ron Carter, Roscoe Mitchell, and Archie Shepp, pe…
Ogura Plays Ogura
Following her critically acclaimed Stockhausen-album, Japanese, Frankfurt-based pianist Miharu Ogura (b. 1996) now displays her skills not only at the piano but also as a composer. This latest musical endeavour unveils five intricately crafted compositions, each a testament to Ogura's musical brilliance, delivered with her usual delicacy, preciseness, and soulfulness. In the international press, Ogura’s remarkable performances have drawn comparisons to David Tudor and Aloys Kontarsky, and this n…
Liturgy of Lacuna
Vathres is a new project led by Stockholm-based keyboardist and composer Alex Zethson. Their debut record consists of three extensive pieces of cinematic, transcendental, and minimalist post-rock music, with elements of experimental jazz and shimmering electronics. It features a 14-piece ensemble and appearances by guitar-wizard Reine Fiske (Dungen), former Pain of Salvation and Meshuggah-bassist Gustaf Hielm and Cult of Luna-drummer Christian Augustin, among others. The music was recorded, mixe…
In this forever unfolding moment
Vilhelm Bromander centers himself in sound, where listening is no less crucial than playing. His relationship to both the notes produced around him and the musicians making them is at the heart of his work. Whether building harmonic structures where he and his colleagues tune in together, constructing a sonic edifice in which sustained tones facilitate deep bonds, or serving as the musical anchor in more rhythmically active settings, playing music with others is about connection, where sound is …
Claim
*100 copies limited edition* A much more ominous creature than they, or you, ever expected, Westholm and Hielm had no option but to let Claim have its way with both of them. Now it’s coming for you.
A Constellation of Anomaly
Following his Acoustic Masks, the new record Constellation of Anomaly is Vasco Trilla's 6th solo album, bringing a new palette of sounds with a vast array of percussion instruments played in numerous creative and unconventional ways. Russian Flat bells bowed and played with vibrating objects, a timpani full of wind-up music boxes and spiced up by a transducer speaker, an old zither hit as a drum with two snare drums as resonators, Iranian round bells mixed with gamelan strips, styrofoam and tria…
String Dialogues
String Dialogues is a collection of six duo recordings initiated by the renowned musician, composer, and improviser Peter Soderberg. Here, he investigates different tuning systems and the idea of hybrid instruments. Within various instrumental settings and informed by his musical co-partners and fellow improvisors Katt Hernandez, Stina Hellberg Agback, Mats Persson, Sten Sandell, My Hellgren and Vilhelm Bromander, he has sculpted an album highlighting complex timbres and intimate interplay.The a…
Detour Tunnels of Light
"In my experience listening to the music of both Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel, I’ve often detected what I perceive to be a (sometimes hidden) strain of romanticism, a deep and dark vaguely lyrical content that one doesn’t routinely identify with free improvisers. With Küchen, this could be heard most prominently in his solo recordings such as ‘The Lie and the Orphanage’ (Mathka, 2010) or ‘Hellstorm’ (Mathka, 2012). I had also heard Agnel give a memorable solo piano recital in Västerås, Sweden …
Songs for the Nervous System
Songs for the Nervous System is the debut full-length album by Swedish producer Autorhythm, envisioned by Joakim Forsgren, a visual artist and former bassist of several punk and rock groups, who hereby shows his remarkable skills at crafting head nodding beats and complex rhythms with his analogue vintage gear. The sleeve – designed by Danial Ali – features a stunning artwork by Christine Ödlund.
Stabbings / Juiced
*2023 stock* "In joy / In grief / I’ve been so fucking lonely / In the bars, on the streets / In detox / At treatment centers / In the hospital / In custody / In psychiatric wards. Also at the royal art academies. But now I am finally free." - Roosen
Synapse / Oxytocin
Synapse is the first single off (and a sort of appendix before the fact to) Autorhythm's project Songs For The Nervous System that culminates in an album later this spring. It has a driving and asymmetric “Can meets John Bender”-like quality paired with a warm soundscape reminiscent of Cluster's Zuckerseit. The ambient B side Oxytocin features a recording of a Soviet era Ocean 209 transistor radio that adds to the ethereal other worldly dimension of this beautifully languid neo-Kosmische gem. Ex…
Marwa
Unique recording by dhrupad singer Marianne Svašek, a former pupil of legendary Hindustani musicians Zia Mohiuddin Dagar, Uday Bhawalkar, and Zia Fariduddin Dagar. The album consist of one track, a lengthy alap sung by Svašek––accompanied only by two tanpuras––in a complex and mysterious raga of twilight and sunset: Raga Marwa. Comes in a digisleeve featuring liner notes by Joep Bor, professor emeritus at Leiden University and author of The Raga Guide.
Monolog
Renowned Swedish musician Tomas Hallonsten’s debut solo recording started out as a Mark Hollis-influenced project featuring Hallonsten’s instrumental compositions sparsly performed with acoustic guitar,piano, bass and drums at its core. Gradually the music morphed and
eventually it turned out as a solo album where the compositions came to life mainly via Hallonsten’s unique treatment of drum machine and synths.
Ogura Plays Stockhausen
This 2 CD album features Japanese pianist Miharu Ogura’s jaw-dropping rendition of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke I–XI, for solopiano, recorded live at Monopiano festival 2021. Includes a 20 page booklet with
an essay by Robin Maconie, former Stockhausen pupil and author of the book “Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen 1950–2007”.
The Sounds of VÖ
From the opening seconds it’s clear that the debut recording of the improvising sextet VÖ is not just another free improv session. The deeply meditative sounds may conjure disparate folk traditions from around the globe, whether Scandinavian fiddle tunes or the way Alex Zethson’s meandering pump organ evokes the exploratory harmonium lines in Pakistani qawwali music, but these associations are mostly coincidental. The ensemble members are devoted to improvised and experimental music mostly as an…
Within Reach Of Eventuality
The debut album from Swedish duo David Bennet & Vilhelm Bromander features their co-created piece Within Reach of Eventuality. Following a semi-open score by Bennet, the duo is treating elements such as complex textures, non-pitched sounds, microtonality, beatings and intense pauses in an improvisatory and careful manner.
From the liner notes, by Peter Margasak: "This isn’t music where we need to know exactly what’s happening or trace how it proceeds. It exists to entrance the listener within th…
Seduced by (a) last year
Seduced by (a) last year is artist, musician, and researcher, Andreas Hiroui Larsson’s first album under his own name and which features his interdisciplinary music. Larsson weaves together materials from his art,music, and philosophy practices by way of an interdisciplinary artisticmethod, in which imagery, live improvisation, recordings, and text investigate the purpose of one another by entering each other’s fields, andperforming each other’s roles. Larsson’s music constitutes a layered hybri…
All The Birds And A Telephone Ringing
The Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos Silva has firmly established herself in the upper echelons of jazz and improvised music, a musician of lyric imagination and technical ferocity with deep historical perspective. Based in Stockholm, Sweden—where she’s currently studying electro-acoustic composition at the Royal College of Music—Silva is an inveterate collaborator, turning to artistic partnerships to constantly explore new sonic terrain. She works with pianist Kaja Draksler in a duo as well a…