New Arrivals / Last 4 weeks
Rökkur
*2024 stock* Øra Fonogram announces the worldwide release of Rökkur, the joint album of Norwegian composer and performer Maja S. K. Ratkje and Icelandic ensemble Nordic Affect (Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, Marie Stockmarr Becker, Hanna Loftsdóttir, Guðrún Óskarsdóttir).
What is ‘rökkur’?
‘Rökkur’ is the Icelandic word for twilight — the hour when shadows fall, a time of transition, ambiguity, and magic. When ‘rökkur’ fell in pre-electric times, a space appeared for storytelling, reading, yarn s…
Spirit
Spirit is the debut album of Brede Sørum Quartet, with Sørum himself as the frontman. The young quartet offers acoustic music that blooms with pure youth, but with a maturity and musical excess that will make even the most experienced jazz listeners open their ears. The written music is based on the band's ability to create and maintain energy over time with strong musical passion and an energetic interaction. The music opens up, and in good jazz tradition this allows the musicians to freely unf…
Electric Cave
Electric Cave, the sequel to Emil's debut, Electric Forest (2022). A dystopian world, inspired by science fiction. Rigid electronics combine and collide with spontaneous, human improvisation. This time the soundscape has moved from an open forest to a deep, dark cave.
The Nordheim Tapes
*2024 stock* Arne Nordheim might not be the best known early electronic music composer, but with this fabulously presented double disc of work it should help his music achieve at least a little wider recognition. He might be best known (at least outside his native Norway) for the discs on Rune Grammofon, but here we get some of his earliest tape work from the 1960s, possibly his most interesting period, at least to me. As a die hard Radiophonic Workshop enthusiast this collection seems to come f…
BBC Jazz Club Session April 1965
"The Rendell/Carr Quintet was a groundbreaking jazz ensemble featuring saxophonist Don Rendell and trumpeter Ian Carr, among the most influential musicians in post-war British jazz. BBC Jazz Club Session April 1965 is a snapshot of the group in transition, with pianist Michael Garrick new to the ranks and taking them in a more radical direction." - normanrecords.com
Becoming Motorpsycho
Motorpsycho release the rarities discs from the Salad Days box.
Soothe
One of the rarest Motorpycho’s 90's EPs, freshly repressed. Strictly one-off limited collector's edition of 500 on beautiful marbled vinyl! Don't snooze, due to licensing restrictions this will not be re-pressed. Comes in the original sleeve and inner sleeve.
Mountain EP
*2024 stock* One of the Trondheim band’s 90's EPs, repressed on black/brown vinyl.
Another Ugly Ep
*2024 stock* One of the Trondheim band’s 90's EPs, repressed on green vinyl.
Puzzle Wood
*2024 stock* "A master in electroacoustic music and digital sound manipulation, English composer Natasha Barrett leaves few traces of familiar sounds or instruments in her music, although the audio sources often are acoustic. Here she performs five of her compositions composed between 1994 and 1997. The album's newest composition, 'Animalcules' is from 2010.
The title Puzzle Wood refers to a forest in Gloucestershire, where Barrett grew up, and also gives name to this album's key track, and olde…
Citadel
The original tracks were perfectly remastered for this first time ever vinyl release and the new masters received high praise from the Extreme Music owner Roger Richards. A new sleeve design was created by Oleg Galay, who is famous for his artworks for many Muslimgauze reissues. The album jacket is made from extra heavy cardboard with deluxe spot UV finish and inside print.
Aslope
Tip! To get a good handle on ‘Aslope’ look no further than the intricate ‘Scattered sprinkle, no turn’, a 12+ minute collage of moonlit organ vamps, stifled voices and disembodied, robotic poems. Heaving from smeary abstraction to penetrable drama almost imperceptibly, featherlight rhythms are cut short by uncanny voices: “stop, turning, a page,” like some rogue navigation assistant, slicing into ticking clocks and xerox noise. It’s like listening to a film without access to the visuals - all th…
Temporary Kings
*2024 stock* With Temporary Kings two of the most distinct voices on today’s jazz scene present their debut on record as a duo. Engaging in inspired dialogue Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson here explore aesthetic common ground in the atmosphere of a modernist chamber music-like setting at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano. The saxophonist and the pianist had begun their association in the Billy Hart Quartet, where the two players featured sympathetically on two ECM albums by that band.
The ne…
Ravensburg
*2024 stock* One of the pleasures of Mathias Eick’s Midwest album was hearing his vaulting trumpet supported by violin, an instrumental combination further developed on Ravensburg. The new violinist in Eick’s ensemble is Håkon Aase, one of the up-and-coming players of the Norwegian scene, whom attentive ECM listeners will already know from his work with Thomas Strønen’s group. The core Eick road band is further shored up by the addition of Helge Andreas Norbakken, who interacts excitingly with f…
Far From Over
*2024 stock* Keyboardist-composer Vijay Iyer’s energized sequence of ECM releases has garnered copious international praise. Yet his fifth for the label since 2014 – Far From Over, featuring his dynamically commanding sextet – finds Iyer reaching a new peak, furthering an artistry that led The Guardian to call him “one of the world’s most inventive new-generation jazz pianists” and The New Yorker to describe him as “extravagantly gifted… brilliantly eclectic.
Far From Over features this sextet …
Angular Apron
It's unreleased Oxley & Stabbins & Sirone & Thomas & Schoof!
Solo Piano - Edge Of Chaos
Tip! Just when you think you’ve heard everything you want to hear from a solo piano record, something comes along that challenges your preconceptions all over again. Efstathiou has been developing a unique language with the instrument for some time, building up a reputation for idiosyncratic preparations and extended technique. All that’s illuminated in flickering candlelight on ‘Edge of Chaos’; moody and deliciously ambiguous, it’s based on mathematical systems, specifically the transition stat…
Never Coming Back
Antwerp-based composer and synth virtuoso Miaux presents her new album, 'Never Coming Back’ on Viernulvier Records. The record is rooted in the recent film score she composed for the surreal and haunted cult movie 'Carnival of Souls' (1962). Directed by American filmmaker Herk Harvey, this enigmatic ghost film influenced contemporary directors like David Lynch, George A. Romero, and Lucrecia Martel. Miaux meticulously crafted the score in her home studio, relying solely on her two hands and a si…
What Is What
There is a delicacy and a passionate hardness, stripped bare of cloying sentiment. Its rawness is the exuberance of sound overflowing, basking in its self-created luxury…. It is, every bit of it, composed the same moment you hear it.
Canto
Pedal steel innovator Susan Alcorn combines Chilean folk and nueva canción with free improvisation and contemporary classical on breathtaking new album.