New Arrivals / Last 4 weeks
Tell Me Not Here
Vanishing Twin’s expansive and magical psychedelic epic with lyrics adapted from A.E. Housman’s 1922 poem, ‘Tell Me Not Here, It Needs Not Saying’ was initially commissioned by The Quietus for Sound + Vision subscribers before being released as part of state51's ongoing Singularity series. Here it's presented in transparent vinyl, over two sides. Vanishing Twin fly deeper into their sonic universe, blending elements from an improvisational session, raw recordings of the natural world, and early …
Jazz Mood
*2024 repress* A multi-instrumentalist who reconfigured jazz many times during his long career, Yusef Lateef came to prominence in the late 1950s, after having toured with Dizzy Gillespie. Jazz Mood dates from 1957, when his Quintet had some of Detroit's finest, including Alice Coltrane's brother Ernest Farrow on bass and future Jazz Messengers Curtis Fuller on trombone. The use of an argol on 'Metaphor' and a rabat and finger cymbals on 'Morning' point to Lateef's Islamic grounding and his beli…
Yama no Kawa
Mshukai is an improvisation group that revolves around Imao Takuma, known as a contemporary artist and percussionist Pedal. The group performs in unconventional spaces such as baseball fields or inside closets, responding playfully to the environment. This tape documents their performance in the headwaters of a river in Koga, Shiga Prefecture, where they brought equipment and played around a campfire. Additionally, recordings capture their studio session in Kanazawa, where they listened to the a…
Ever-Present / つねなるもの
This work captures the sounds that were born while Masami Tada carried various small electronic equipment and hiked Mount Kobo in Kanagawa Prefecture, and the improvisation he performed at its summit.
Unshaping
Artist Rie Nakajima is known for arranging small devices in an installation-like manner, presenting the movement of each device as a “performance.” This “performance” may be an attempt to highlight the interaction between humans and devices, as well as the states of response between devices and the space they inhabit, by minimizing human intervention. This piece is a recording of Nakajima’s performance in the courtyard of a castle, where she was invited to perform at a festival in France in 2016…
Tower Of Silence
Traveling extensively across Asia and Africa between 1974-1985 to study music, Roberto made many field recordings and collected many instruments on his travels which he would then combine with synthesizers and electronics back in Italy
Unspeakable Visions
Michel Banabila returns with a second LP release on Knekelhuis. The renowned Dutch producer is up there among the stars when it comes to ambient music and the so-called ‘fourth world’ legacy. On this eleven-track album, we witness soul-wrenching, kraut-tinted, and early-yet-modernist electronics. Coming from his heart, these imaginative recordings center around otherworldly voices – fictional characters chanting in a made-up language, imbued with a captivating spirit, transcending linguistic bar…
Translucents
Tip! Glass mastered CD, printed inner and outer sleeves with gloss varnish + 16-page suite of photographs and an essay by the composer. Inquiring after the ephemeral experiences of sound phenomena, Shelter Press presents Translucents, its first collaboration with American artist and composer Byron Westbrook. Comprising a single, 41 minute work divided into a series of interconnected vignettes that explore sonority’s relationship to time and memory, Translucents represents arguably the most defin…
Town Hall 1972
Tip! *2024 stock* If Anthony Braxton were to be judged on the basis of his oeuvre alone, he would stand completely apart from any modern composer, bar none. He has an enormous body of work, written for every conceivable permutation and combination of ensemble, from two to over a hundred and also for practically all the modern instruments known to musicians. As a reeds and winds player, he has a staggering technique, but not only this: he dives deep into the soul to extract the most subtle emotio…
Solo
*2024 stock* Cecil Taylor's masterwork is captured on this Japanese CD (reissue of the eponymous album released on LP in 1973) that dates back to his zenith of performance, when he was pushing the envelope of improvisational music to unprecedented heights of intensity and precision. While Taylor's work in the 1960s was impressive, his performance in the 1970s, and this particular track in particular, is absolutely breathtaking. With a style that may appear chaotic upon initial listen, Cecil's f…
Payan
*2024 stock* Lovely 1972 solo work by one of the most influential European avant-garde pianists of the last half-century; a player whose improvisational flexibility puts him in the same league as Cecil Taylor, but whose ability to concentrate at moments and knowledge of jazz history make him much more remarkable! One of Alexander Von Schlippenbach's finest albums; it's beautiful all the way through, with an unfaltering inventiveness that occasionally leads to Monkish moments or Herbie Nichols wh…
Unlicensed: Bootlegging as Creative Practice (Book)
Over the last few decades the term ‘bootlegging’—a practice once relegated to smugglers and copyright infringers—has become understood as a creative act. Debates about homage, appropriation, and theft that are common in the art world, are now being held in the spheres of corporate branding, social media, and the creative industry as a whole. Today, bootlegging has become fetishized as an aesthetic in and of itself, influencing everything from underground record labels to DIY T-shirts, publishing…
Long Play (Book)
The photographic volume 'Long Play' by Arme Reimer, which has long been out of print at the publisher, is an insightful photo book about the era of the long-playing record. Over the past ten years, photographer Arne Reimer has visited old record stores and also record collectors in Europe and the USA. His contemporary portraits as well as his interior shots are carefully dedicated to the past. 'The vinyl record was once the dominant medium,' writes Ulf Erdmann Ziegler in his essay on this subjec…
Maggot Brain #16 (Mar/Apr/May 2024)
On the cover: This is a really packed, special issue of Maggot Brain, with the feature cover story a comprehensive interview by celebrated writer Sasha Frere-Jones with essayist Lucy Sante (who's written for every issue of MB since the start), on the occasion of her awesome memoir about transitioning, I Heard Her Call My Name. Inside: Phill Niblock: A tribute to the genius musician, filmmaker, label head, and generous promoter of ecstatic sound, by Steve Silverstein. Tresa Leigh: An in-depth fea…
Good Night Good Morning (Book)
A comprehensive retrospective of work from one of the foremost performance artists to emerge from the 1970s. Since her earliest performances in the late 1960s, Joan Jonas has concerned herself with animation and moving images, asking what it means to move images, or to be moved by them. The artist constantly returns to her ever-expanding archive of images, sounds, gestures, ideas and places, reworking materials into new forms across the decades. Published in conjunction with the artist’s most co…
Auto Erotica (Book)
The first book of its kind – a car book like no other – offering a deeply nostalgic look at beautiful vintage cars through the superb literature, leaflets and pamphlets that sold them to us. Auto Erotica covers the gamut of motoring in Britain during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. These rare ephemeral booklets are full of unusual graphic ideas and concepts. Their fabulous photography, dazzling colour charts, daring typography, strange fold outs and inspiring styles symbolise the automobile aspirati…
In Europe
2024 reissue This is Texas-born tenor sax giant Billy Harper captured on tour in Europe in 1979. Mr Harper's gorgeous tone drives a highly energetic quintet featuring a young Fred Hersch on piano, Everett Hollins on trumpet, Louie "Mbiki" Spears on bass and Horace Arnold on drums. Billy Harper's seminal masterpiece, which gained more widespread recognition in the 70s, is a scorching and powerful record that exudes righteousness from start to finish. At this stage of his career, Billy has develop…
Black Saint
Billy Harper is one of the great tenor saxophonists in the post-Coltrane mold. Originally from Houston, TX and with a degree from the venerable University of North Texas College of Music, Harper emerged on the New York City jazz scene in the late 1960s performing with Art Blakey, Max Roach, Lee Morgan and others. Known for his soulful and propulsive tone, Harper was already a highly regarded and prolific session man before the release of his debut album as a leader on the cult favorite Strata-Ea…
Som Desorganizado 2021
Limited edition of 100 copies Som Desorganizado is an anual meeting on sound that takes place at Sonoscopia, in Porto, Portugal. In each edition there are several talks, concerts, sound installations and an artist doing real time illustrations of of conceptual contents of this event. Each edition is also celebrated with a special physical release, that tries to resume many of the issues debated in the meetings. For 2021, 100 classical records were silk printed in order to create loops, rhythms a…
Panarea
2024 stock, rare private press LP. Plaintive and imbued with the Mediterranean-inspired air, wide-ranging, and undeniably erratic. Ramuntcho Matta could employ African tribal rhythms, discordant progressive jazz, pretty folky melodies, throat-stretching vocals, spoken poetry, channeling the sounds of improv jazz and numerous traditions across the globe, its experimental approaches stitch an emotive world that brims with tension and life