New Arrivals
Obsidian
The first release of 2024 is in! After their well-received debut duo album Puncture Cycle (released five years ago on A New Wave Of Jazz - this album you find here), British key improviser Benedict Taylor (viola) and Dirk Serries (archtop guitar) are back with a new duo album. An album they recorded at the fantastic Oude Klooster chapel in Brecht (Belgium) on August 11th, 2023. Full-on interaction, fast-paced dialogue while still listening and corresponding in depth with the sublime acoustics …
Terremoto
Tip! To abandon animals for music – and avant-garde jazz at that –, could seeming shocking to some people. However, it is exactly what Manuel Villarroel did, as he was a vet for three years before leaving his native Chili for Europe and a career in music. And though the animals may have suffered, the world of music can be grateful. Born in 1944, Manuel Villarroel lent an ear to the best pianists from North America: Oscar Peterson and Erroll Garner then Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylo…
Quetzalcoatl
Tip! Before coming to Europe, in 1970, pianist Manuel Villarroel was a vet in his native Chili. A few years later, as leader of the Machi Oul Big Band, he returned to the animal kingdom. A very specific kind of animal, for sure, the Quetzalcoatl, also known as the Feathered Serpent. What is behind this title (also the name of one of the three original compositions on this album released on the Palm label in 1976), is first and foremost a sort of homecoming…
After discovering the jazz of Herbie H…
Amor
*300 copies limited edition* "When asked about the title of her new record, “Amor”, Limpe bluntly responded, “because it’s everything”. Being a Beatles fan from the very beginning, she’s well aware that “all you need is love”, but there’s more to her sentiment than a corny pun. On the one hand, she’s more than half a decade into her musical career, and describes the relationship towards her instruments in terms of an ongoing and deepening love affair. “Be it my piano, my viola or my percussion i…
A Touch Of Despair
*200 copies limited edition* The project "The Tapes" by Giancarlo Drago developed over a span of 10 years, between 1982 and 1992, before being revived in 2016 in Genoa, Italy. In 1982, Drago was 16 years old and recorded his first tape using toy instruments and creating loops with cassettes, influenced by industrial and new wave music. During that time, a friend gave him a self-built analogue echo unit that produced an incredible background noise, which would become a hallmark of many compositio…
Collected Works 2018-22
'Collected Works 2018-22' coalesces three deeply personal works that were created by Elms for three of the UK's most innovative ensembles and supporters of contemporary music. The three works explore misremembrance and the degradation of memory over time (Consolations in Travel), cyclical patterns of thought and resultant behaviour (The Age of Spiritual Machines), and the perception of reality orchestrated through expectation and misconstrued senses (100 Demons).
Intimations
Intimations marks the first official release of Group Material, the sound work of Eric Sanchez and Avalon Kalin. Released as a limited edition cassette on Slug Spitter and LP on Gilgongo Records. Blending guitar, piano, synthesizer and field recordings, Group Material craft an ambient sound that simultaneously captures both intentional and incidental settings, an ambient informed musique concrete. On Intimations, Eric Sanchez and Avalon Kalin offer a series of 4 pieces which would feel as at hom…
Strega Beata
'Strega Beata’ is the 3rd full-length album from Sam An’s dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project under the semi-notorious moniker Lana Del Rabies. After a brief hiatus, this record is her first full-length release since the gothic, industrial noise of 2018's Shadow World, ‘Strega Beata’, which loosely translates to "Blessed Witch," is an apocalyptic myth told through dense, textural compositions pulling from the vast corners of dark genre music. The title's meaning is appropriate for the e…
Nonage
“Growing up has always been a solitary journey, marked by forward-looking anticipation, anxiety, unripe potential, aspirations, and closures.”
Chris Rainier Sings the Music of Harry Partch
Tip! *200 copies limited release* Chris Rainier is a South African musician and performer, raised in Australia but now based in London. He earned his PhD in Music there last year with a thesis on American composer and instrument builder Harry Partch. Accompanying that PhD is an album of renditions of compositions from Harry Partch's (little-known) early "Americana" period, from the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, Partch wrote these compositions for his homemade "Adapted Guitars": acoustic guitars …
Colliding Bubbles
Colliding Bubbles (surface tension and release) is a composition for string quartet and harmonica quartet, meaning that Quatuor Bozzini is playing string instruments while playing harmonicas. "The title refers to different kinds of bubbly matter which are set to collide within the composition, leading to different ruptures and possible release of surface tension. The collision of bubbles unfolds partly in relation to sound, where small fluctuations appear in the encounters between harmonicas and…
Dialogues and Shadows
Among its many qualities, music relies on a special force: transcendence. When we listen, we are placed in a different reality, where sound is a vehicle for a much higher meaning. Naturally, not all music is capable of such a thing. But a few musicians clearly stand above as special – as soon as we hear them, we know that their music flows, floats and transcends. Dialogues and Shadows, the second recording by the duo of Gonçalo Almeida and Pierre Bastien emanates a distinct and intriguing sound …
Ultra-Minimal
*300 copies limited release, handmade textile sleeve w/ printed inner* Sylvain Chauveau has been releasing quiet and minimal compositions on various labels for more than two decades. ultra-minimal marks his debut for Sonic Pieces and takes the minimal approach even further, centring on reduction and limitation.
The album was recorded live at Café Oto, London in March 2022 - one of Sylvain’s rare solo concerts and the first time he performed publicly with only acoustic instruments; no machines, n…
Respite
Written and recorded by Sonja Tofik in Stockholm and Paris 2023 Visual by Viktor Fordell
. Mastered by Giuseppe Tillieci at EnissLab, Rome. With 'Respire', Stockholm's Sonja Tofik presents a collection of works that cluster around themes of disunion and contemplation. In two halves, tiers of synthetic materials are layered into sullen reveries with organic components and concrète treatments, and as the obscurity of their genesis reaches a crescendo, these delicate and foreboding compositions fin…
Ohne Titel
*300 copies limited edition* Helmut Neidhardt, Chris Sigdell and Sascha Stadlmeier first met in 2020. They decided to record together and booked a studio in Dortmund. The recording session was spontaneous and somewhat chaotic. Thus it turned out, that only Helmut’s tracks were really usable. Using some sections as a basis, Chris completely re-recorded his guitar, added a little bit of vocal here and there, and then sent a rough mix to Sascha, who in turn added violin and musique concrete. The fi…
Horizontal Shift
Horizontal shift, features the international trio, from Germany and U.S., of Birgit Ulher, Carol Genetti, and Eric Leonardson. The CD consists of a live performance recorded in 2018 at Elastic Arts in Chicago. Having known each other since the late 1990s, it wasn’t until early 2018 that Ulher, Leonardson and Genetti were able to perform as a trio at Elastic Arts in Chicago. All three are seasoned performers in their own right — each bringing their distinct palettes in combination to create an im…
Flourescent Standard
*100 copies limited edition* On ‘Fluorescent Standard,’ guitarist Anthony Vine and clarinetist Gareth Davis present two luminous and serene worlds of harmonic sound. The duo entwine sustained tones, glowing with the resonant hues of their instruments, into enveloping and expansive atmospheres. Clarinet sonorities, swelling guitar chords, and tumbling elegiac piano fragments drift quietly through time in elusive cycles that subtly change and expand with each return. Every vibration is interconnec…
The Joy Of Flying
For the first time ever, the complete soundtrack music for the classic cult films "The Joy Of Flying". Selections were released on a compilation LP in 1977 on a Hong Kong import LP which went platinum, and is still highly sought after today by collectors and fans of Gerhard Heinz' music alike.
Schall Und Klang
Schall und Klang is the result of Christina Kubisch's extensive fieldwork on the trail of Hermann Scherchen (1891-1966), conductor and key figure in 20th century new music. After moving to the village of Gravesano (Ticino/Northern Italy) in 1954, Scherchen established an electroacoustic experimental studio on his premises and created a meeting place for scientists, composers, musicians and sound engineers from all over the world. Among his guests were Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, Edgar Varèse an…
Lautlos (Book)
Hardcover, 126 pages. English/German. This publication is an encounter between the works of two artists from different generations, who never met personally although both spent time in Berlin. Rolf Julius, who was born in 1939 in Wilhelmshaven and died in 2011 in Berlin, worked in the tradition of a "music for eyes and ears." Nina Canell, born in 1979 in Växjö, Sweden, belongs to a younger generation of artists whose three-dimensional work has an emphatically non-monumental quality. With an acut…