New Arrivals
Transient
"Second album for Clairvoyance, a trio that sublimates improvisation through a blessed chemistry, delivering a perfectly balanced music where elements coming from different derivations and attitudes find grace and essentiality, freshness and solidity. Narrative spots and timbral consciousness inform this classy band and make this record unmissable!!
Clairvoyance's fundamental orientation--an orientation that, collectively and individually, represents a compositional stance toward improvisation. …
Wells
"Amirani Records, the label founded and run by Milanese soprano saxophonist Gianni Mimmo, ends its eighteen-year run with three final releases. The last of the three, a recording of the Sestetto Internazionale, was reviewed here earlier; preceding it a duet for Mimmo and Finnish soprano and sopranino saxophonist Harri Sjöström, and a solo recording by Milanese cellist Walter Prati.
Mimmo and Sjöström are frequent collaborators, whether in the Sestetto Internazionale or as duet partners, and on W…
Due Mutabili
[…] There is something slightly daunting about the notion of an improvising sextet. Do the casual math of instrumental permutations from six soloists to one sextet, adding in duos, trios, quartets and quintets, and you have something like 55 possible combinations. Literally anything might surface, but among the least likely is the superb music achieved here by Sestetto Internazionale, music that dances between the ideal poles of inevitability and unpredictability, inviting a sense of wonder. Lis…
HerbstReise
"I look at this HerbstReise of ours as a sequence short but complete gaze of sound, often evocative in a narrative way, aimed at fulfilling an articulate as well as legible pattern. Though a single breath crosses them, fascinating opportunities are not alien to the syntax, the outline, and the expression of these improvisations. A clear ellipsis the dialogue proceeds delicately and consistently into, even when it thickens.
The inner timing, the layer of colour that shines through have a reflecti…
Sferics
"2022 was a shit show. I moved three times. I lived in San Francisco for a sudden moment in time. About eight months to be exact. But I jumped through a wormhole . An atmospheric anomaly that rippled across and through my familial center, taking us into a chaos of cardboard boxes, temporary living spaces, a collapse in our art practices, only to be pulled through the other end of the time warp, re-emerging back where we convened in 2019 in Tucson, Arizona--but now it is 2023 and life has changed…
Hits For The Bin
Nice Music is thrilled to announce the long awaited new full length release from Melbourne/Naarm-based producer Andrew Cowie as Match Fixer. Tantalising with a string of self-released tracks over the last 3 years and following the cloistered urgency of instant NM classic 'Attempts' (2017), 'Hits For The Bin' populates the glowing expanse of his sound world with restrained beat structures, cloaked in Cowie’s signature lush drift and squelched melodic riffing. A foaming wave of relief when compare…
I-I
We are thrilled to introduce the world to the innovative sounds of the Japanese improvisational music trio ‘I-I’. Composed of three exceptionally talented musicians, Kazuhisa Uchihashi (guitar, daxophone, pedals), Mitsuhisa Sakaguchi (synthesizers, pedals) and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto (percussion). This dynamic ensemble has embarked on a remarkable musical journey with their homonymous debut album. "There's no inspiration from others. We just played." With this raw and unfiltered approach to music, ‘I…
INRI (Industria Nacional del Ruido Infinito)
Inspired by the scenic beauty of his studio's surroundings at Lake Pátzcuaro in Michoacan, MX, Dellarge delves deep into the depths of his artistic consciousness to craft a spiritual album that encapsulates the essence of the place. "INRI" stands for Industria Nacional del Ruido Infinito (National Industry of Infinite Noise) and serves as a vessel for Dellarge's innermost self-expression and reflections on the potential of humanity. Drawing inspiration from various sources, Dellarge found creati…
My Strong Will
My Strong Will is a new album of "Ethiopian Classical Music" by Girma Yifrashewa. Recorded with Bulgarian musicians and the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Sofia, Bulgaria, the album is a return to where Yifrashewa completed his own conservatory training in the late 1980s and early 1990s, across both sides of the fall of Communism. Guided by Yifrashewa's piano, these chamber works bring the music of Ethiopia into a Western Classical format, uncovering meditative and emotional new vistas for both…
I Predatori Di Atlantide
I Predatori Di Atlantide (AKA Atlantis Inferno) is a post-atomic movie directed by Ruggero Deodato in 1983. It narrates the adventures of Mike Ross (Christopher Connelly), Washington (Malik Farrakhan) and of a group of characters bound to the events revolving around the sinking of a Soviet submarine, close to Florida shores. A series of twists will bring the group on an island, just submerged from the abyss which is the mythical Atlantis. The score, unreleased if we pay exception to a 7” vinyl o…
Trap
Michal Vaľko, aka Line Gate makes a return to mappa with his third cassette for the label. Once again the material is deeply minimalist, but shows marked evolutions in the Slovak, Prague-based artist’s unique trajectory. This time comprising two relatively short pieces (compared to the 40- and 60-minute works previously published on mappa), 'Trap' is perhaps Line Gate’s darkest yet. Whereas previously his works focused on psychoacoustic phenomena, or highlighted the sacredness and timelessness o…
Lados B
On October 15th and 16th, 2020, drummer Daniel Villarreal was joined by guitarist Jeff Parker and bassist Anna Butterss for two afternoons of recording in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles. For all three musicians, it was the first ensemble recording session they’d done in-person since the pandemic locked the world down just seven months prior. Some choice moments from these sessions made it onto Villarreal’s critically-acclaimed 2022 album Panamá 77, but most of the music remained …
The World Was Turning Before
*200 copies limited edition* Bill Seaman, Tim Diagram and Stephen Spera talked about making music together during the composing of the Architectures of Light album which Tim released on his Handstitched imprint. Over the course of a few months this evolved into the new LAAPS album — "The World Was Turning Before" which focuses on a balance of sound making and collecting processes explored individually as well as between the three. The network of images of sonic imagination started forming into m…
Mardle: Daily Rhythms of a Pond
Tip! Musician and field recordist Action Pyramid finds magic in the everyday on Mardle, a compelling and confounding suite of hydrophone compositions revealing the sonic 24-hour cycle of the UK’s freshwater ponds. Rooted in Jack Greenhalgh’s sonic research on pond biodiversity, Mardle brings to the surface the delicate sounds of aquatic insect stridulations, plant respiration and photosynthesis - an ecology of otherworldly rhythms and alien hyper-sounds that feel more like early synth experiment…
Murder In Blue
Not that droney as often but circular, grainy, dreamy melodious doodles from Scotland's finest Fraser Burnett…. Might ring in your head just like a summer hit!
Hidden Beauty
*100 copies limited edition* Sign Libra’s third album Hidden Beauty is an intimate voyage through feminine nature, guided by the arts of subtext, musical collage, and mysterious allusions. Enigmatic and mischievous, Sign Libra’s signature blend of evocative composition with lyricless, ethereal vocalizing is offered here with a new feeling of presence and closeness. Hidden Beauty is a chance not only to be heard but seen and felt: to release the invisible and bring fragility to the surface.
Exhale- Volume 2
Tip! *200 copies limited edition*Erwan Keravec - bagpipes,Mats Gustafsson - piano mate and slide saxophoneRecorded September 13 and 14, 2017 by Martin Siewert, ViennaMastered by Martin Siewert, ViennaCover design/illustration: Lasse MarhaugPhotos by Mike KeysendalThanks to: "Stark Reality"Hans Falb and HeidiTitles inspired from Ted Huges "Crow" (Faber & Faber 1970)
Frenton Cantolay
Mondoriviera is the moniker of Ravenna-based musician and visual artist Lorenzo Camera. Producing music at the crossroad between late-night z-series horror movie soundtracks, 2d modular synthesis digital soundscapes and new-school plunderphonics, after his debut “Il Tempio degli Uomini Granchio” on New Weird Italian label Riforma, and the folk-vaporwave soundtrack for videogame Nott Longa on Artetetra, Mondoriviera is back with 10 new tracks jumping from the golden era of glossy horror VHS to ne…
looongplay
looongplay was born in 2022 during a Shape+ and Nextones artistic residency in Valdossola, Italy, centered around Babau's nomination as Shape+ artists 2022/23. Initially conceived as a tutorial and tongue-in-cheek artistic text conceived by Babau, looongplay was built with a playful approach to music theory exploring the research on audio, listening and improvisation of scholars and musicians such as Pauline Oliveros, Micah Silver, Jace Clayton and Jem Finer. These speculations were combined wit…
Closures
*100 copies limited edition* The opposite of closure is opening. The album Closures fractionally links back to Konspekt by mapping the condition of perception and feeling after the closure (of a certain) phase of life. Even though we’re talking about a concrete phase – the most painful loss so far – the pieces don’t revolve around it at all. What is taking place in the pieces is everything after June 2023.
– “a lively joy (from life)”– “perceiving the environment”– “the world is a beautiful plac…