New Arrivals / Today
First Recordings 1978-85 V1.2
Last copies available. John Duncan was born in Wichita, Kansas and arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, where he became closely associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society, working with Tom Recchion, Fredrik Nilsen, and Joe Potts. His early practice combined radical performance work, live radio experimentation over KPFK's Close Radio with Paul McCarthy, and an obsessive engagement with shortwave radio that would define his sound for decades. He left the United States for Tokyo in 1982…
It's All History Now - Tape Works 1979-85
*2026 stock* Alien Brains was an abstract non-collective initiated in 1979 by Nigel Jacklin. Over the years Nigel co-operated with the likes of Mark Lancaster (Instant Automatons, 391), Allen Adams (Methods Of Execution, The Blanks, The Destructors), Philip and Richard Rupenus (Funeral Danceparty / The New Blockaders), Philip Sanderson (Storm Bugs / Snatch Tapes), Metgumbnerbone, Harold Schellinx (The Young Lions), David Jackman (Organum) and various random acquaintances (with limited musical s…
Recordings 83 - 88
Huge tip! It was a cold winter's night in late 1978 when Chris Connelly, fourteen years old, lay in bed with his radio and heard Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady for the first time. It changed his life permanently. He had already been making sounds at home on a reel-to-reel tape recorder, building loops and feedback, using shortwave radio in the middle of the night, with no instruments and no desire for any. He had also been obsessively scouring record shops guided by a copy of Zig Zag magazin…
Postones
First ever vinyl reissue of "Postones", an astounding body of recordings by Vito Ricci with Rashied Ali and Byard Lancaster, originally issued as a tiny cassette on Ricci's own Creation imprint in 1984. Moving between free jazz fire and percussion-driven theatre scores, this document of downtown New York in the early 1980s pulls the rug from beneath the expected historical narratives. One of the most revelatory releases of 2026.
Albumin
Tip! Jim O'Rourke and Jos Smolders teamed up again after their first collaboration, Additive Inverse from 2021. Over a period of three years, both artists worked in sessions of a day, each in their own studio.The result is sometimes like a warm cloud of sounds, suddenly breaking up into a rhythmic, irregular pattern, after which it dives into introverted mindsets. The music is in constant flux. The project followed the same workflow, but this time Jim took the lead and kicked off with a salvo of…
Paradise Mountain
Brussels-based Maloca presents Paradise Mountain, the new EP from Katatonic Silentio, DJ and production moniker of Italian sound artist Mariachiara Troianiello. Positioned in counterpoint to her darker, more visceral work, the record delicately folds Detroit electro and techno drum structures into a softened New Age glow, generating environments that breathe, shimmer, and slowly coalesce.
Across the EP, tracks unfold gently, rife with wet modular tones, chromatic arpeggiations, and light-touch p…
Kieran DalyLive Unison and Unison Continued
Live Unison and Unison Continued is the latest collaborative effort from American composer-performers Kieran Daly and Sam Weinberg. Unison marks the fourth album released by the duo since 2022 with this release documenting the second live recorded performance.
Right Into The Sun
Stern Records is proud to announce the first-time reissue of tself perpetuating plunderphonic classic, Right Into The Sun by Pol Maló.
Slow, Slow Spectres
Following his sonorous debut on the label with Magnetically Yours in 2024, Andrew Hargreaves returns with a solemn suite of vaporous, ambient and choral ennui, unfolding across two sides.
Press
“It’s hard not to figure Jack Sheen’s compositions primordially; they lurch and rock with an abortive conviction, as if heralding culture’s approach—still half-submerged, slouched and red, ages ago. His work is somehow determinedly before almost everything; it feels like a dialectical twin to Beckett’s afterwards. Press moves with grossly impoverished intent—almost as if composed—while trembling and stumbling on the cusp of accident. This projected bodily timidity corresponds with a situation ri…
Microliths and Momentary Drifts
*250 copies limited edition* Microliths and Momentary Drifts is the first full-length collaboration from the trio of zakè (Zach Frizzell), Ossa (Kaiton Slusher), and ASC (James Clements), where rolling analog synth lines, chest-rattling bass, and otherworldly atmospherics evoke and build on the timeless qualities of peak-era 90s ambient. Each artist has released solo and collaborative works for Zakè Drone Recordings and Past Inside The Present over the last half-decade, but in this combination, …
Cartographies of Flight: Lines Set Afloat Towards Hope
"Dear Listener, this recording starts with a sound that has energized me over many years: the 'Dark Woods' of the clarinet, bassoon, cello and bass; the 'Bright Sparks' of the alto and trumpet; the wood and metal of the percussion bringing it all together. The album also contains many of my multitudes: settings of and improvisations with poetic text (here read by their author, Erica Hunt), the combination and contrasting of compositions with improvisations, and works both open and set; then the …
Issue 136 (Magazine + 7", Orange)
For acclaimed composer Hannah Peel, the momentum just keeps building. A superb new album with virtuoso percussionist Beibei Wang, her continuing ‘night tracks’ show on BBC radio 3, and an ambitious ballet inspired by her Mary Casio alter ego, all point to 2026 being the year she makes another major leap forward.
Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun
*350 copies limited edition* In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. R…
Non C'è Due Senza Quattro
Composed by Maestro Franco Micalizzi for the cult 1984 film Non C’è Due Senza Quattro, starring the iconic duo Bud Spencer & Terence Hill in a rare fourfold role, this soundtrack captures the playful spirit and global flair of the film. Micalizzi delivers a vibrant and rhythm-driven score, infused with warm Latin influences, breezy melodies, and an unmistakable sense of lightness. The result is a richly entertaining listening experience that perfectly mirrors the film’s humor, energy, and escapi…
Drammi E Speranze
Originally released in 1976 on Piero Umiliani’s own Sound Work Shop imprint, Drammi e Speranze -issued under the pseudonym Rovi - stands as a refined example of his late-period library work. Performed by a compact string ensemble and subtly augmented by piano, Hammond organ, Eminent organ, and Rhodes, the album unfolds through a series of classically-informed compositions where melody takes center stage. Each piece is concise, evocative, and purpose-built - reflecting the functional yet highly e…
Behind the Great Curve
*200 copies limited edition* L. Jacobs releases his second album, Behind the Great Curve, on the Belgian label blickwinkel. Featuring contributions from Milan W., Sarah Yu Zeebroek, and Joachim Badenhorst, the follow-up to the surprising debut Enthusiasm was initially composed and recorded in Jacobs’ small attic room and later refined at Milan W.’s Van den Nest Studio, where W. also handled production and mixing. A line or outline which gradually deviates from being straight for some or all of i…
♫ ⎜ II
After its first release in 2023, the tiny big band Parasite Jazz brings its public iterations to fruition with “♫”, a testament to an alternate reality, matured voyaging across France over the span of four seasons. It sees the music flee through exuberant forests and steep troglodytes ; a parallel genre movie with a soundtrack of diluvian rhythms, mocking chants, jazz noir and voodoo accidents. In this shifting, autonomous world, the elastic orchestra—whose members keep on appearing and disappea…
Rejoining
Before history will be made by machines, British musician Thomas Bush sends a new humane record. DIY chamber music, for the Kashual, no Plastik. Ten curious arrangements, looking for new horizons, those hiding behind the previous. They are short, they are epic. A great beautiful mess, in which Thomas Bush occasionally sings and speaks in veiled pitch. On hallucinated rhythms. Along the guitar, that’s everywhere. As chord. As melody. As sound. As a sliding desert stoner. Droning, zoning. Keeping …
Koude
*50 copies limited edition* Listening to Koude's self-titled debut album can feel like floating in still dark water or like crawling slowly through a moonlit forest. It could be any other lonesome surrounding really, a place where it's just you and your body, some senses numbed, other senses heightened. All the while, something undefined seems to be hiding in the dark; something bad or something good.
The subdued music of Koude draws from meandering folk, ambient, slowcore and drone, folding the…
