New Arrivals

CD reissue of Eiji Nakayama’s incredible 1978 album, a crate diggers dream find for many years, this is deep spiritual jazz, post-modal impressionism and grooves at the top

Dive into the brilliance of 1970s Japanese jazz with this exceptional bass-led trio session. While piano trios had their spotlight, the bassists led equally enchanting ensembles. Eiji Nakyama's bass takes center stage, weaving lyrical lines complemented by energetic guitar and drums. The album seamlessly blends straight jazz and modal explorations, showcasing creativity without gimmicks. A testament to Japanese jazz greatness, this session stands out for its dynamic and innovative approach.

The long awaited second album by Colored Music, the avant-rock unit of Atsuo Fujimoto and Kazuko Hashimoto, is now available on vinyl. In 1983, two years after the release of their first album "Colored Music" in 1981, which has been reevaluated worldwide, they released their second album "Individual Beauty", which was planned to be released as a cassette book but ended up being put aside. In 1983, two years after the release of "Colored Music," the album was released as a cassette book. This is …

*30 copies limited edition* Patrick R. Pärk’s Black Tempel Pyrämid has been insanely prolific since its inception at the back end of 2020, releasing eight albums over a variety of labels in that time. The CD collection includes pro-printed cover art with insert and download code for all discs. Features an eclectic mix of American primitive, Krautrock, drone, and folk-country most of which is dedicated or inspired by Southern Colorado geography and history.

Tip! Recorded at the concert marking the release of their previous album (Exta, Fataka 7, 2013), Lights is the second meeting of the trio of John Butcher, Thomas Lehn and John Tilbury. Carefully edited (nothing drastic, just some judicious trimming the way a photographer might crop an image, reframing it to make it more concentrated), Lights turns the two set continuum of the concert into four distinct pieces.

Martina Berther and Philipp Schlotter are prolific in their respective ways, having been active in pop and jazz music, respectively, as well as playing in bands and exploring the outer fringes of sound art or composing music for film. Their first joint album »Matt« was recorded over the course of four days in a church in the Swiss village after which the album was named. Berther and Schlotter worked with the buildingʼs organ as well as synthesizers and electric bass to follow an experimental app…

*100 copies limited edition* He originates from a parallel universe and is in possession of alien technology that he uses to create self-discovery music for your listening pleasure. After his ultra-low-fi Mini CD single Plays (Gotta Let It Out, 2023), Tomo comes back with not one but two stunning EPs released on a single 180g vinyl in a beautiful gatefold cover. Six 80s Yamaha synths and drum machines, the beloved midi-ribbon, and two Fostex 4-track tape recorders become a space-time ship here, …

This is a 2022 trio recording where the unique Kresten Osgood meets the two living legends: Bob Moses and Tisziji Muñoz.

Yellow vinyl edition. Piotr Kurek’s new album “Smartwoods” is a sprawling root system of tiny melodic phrases that loop and curl around subtly evolving instrumental thickets. The Warsaw-based producer and composer takes his cues from early music, baroque music and experimental jazz, entangling his influences with filigree traces of contemporary computer music and fueling it with sonic vapors from the near future. Made up of seven distinct segments, the album blurs its acoustic and electronic ele…

Numbered second edition of 45 copies on 'smoke vinyl' with silkscreened sleeve, insert and download code. Already more than ten years Frederik Croene & Timo van Luijk collaborate on live shows and LP publications in which they search for common grounds. They try to link the intuitive music van Luijk has been developing over the years with Croene’s deeply classical education. "On the frigid moonless night of December 6th, 1978, a 26 year-old night watchman named Pier Zanfretta was on a routine pa…

Efficient Space publication Enthusiasms revives with Issue #03. 92 pages covering Ao-tearoa DIY folk proliferator Maxine Funke, the vocal magick of Cucina Povera, Australian devotional jazz mystery Singing Dust, Osaka portal EM Records, unsung dub specialist Sheriff Lindo and the living practice of e fishpool. View post-punk trailblazers through the lens of Rotterdam polaroid photographer Peter Graute, while Swiss artist Elise Gagnebin-de Bons exhibits her series of collages purposed for Ghost R…

In 2020, Pali Meursault and Thomas Tilly collaborated to create Radio Glaces, a fourteen-part sound collection featuring recordings of glaciers in the Alps and testimonies from people who have a close relationship with this environment: glaciologists, geomorphologists, hut wardens, mountaineers and high-mountain guides. As a continuation of this first project, Melt* was a series of improvised performances by the duo of sound artists, playing back the sounds and vibrations of the glaciers as they…

We are nine voices, sighted and blind, who have been singing and exploring together for 11 years. Our practice consists of listening to and imitating sound ecosystems. We become the sounds of biotopes, machines, endangered species, humans and non-humans. Our songs blend ancestral and experimental vocal practices. We are the stumbling blocks of a memory populated by tunes, buried melodies that emerge and carry us away for hybridizations, mutations.

*200 copies limited edition* October felt like the appropriate time for Yara Asmar to unveil her intimate new album "synth waltzes & accordion laments" - a captivating new collection of home recordings. Acclaimed Lebanese artist Yara Asmar is set to mesmerize listeners once again with her new album, synth waltzes & accordion laments. This eagerly anticipated album, a collection of intimate recordings, provides another glimpse into Yara's world. The album showcases her ability to channel raw emot…

Tip! "'Spira' is the title of the debut album by Daniela Pes, born in Gallura in 1992, a singer-songwriter, musician and composer of electronic music with a jazz background behind her, a factor that has allowed her to grow artistically in absolute freedom. An emancipation that, in the seven tracks that make up this excellent debut work, is revealed behind every little detail and oversees all the ideas that come together along the atypical path. Beginning with the use of the voice, which always d…

*2023 stock* "To watch two butterflies in flight is to see a complex intertwining of zigs and zags, dips and weaves, as each—seemingly erratically--rides the turbulence its wings create to carry it along. Together they trace an unchoreographed but nevertheless coherent set of variations on the line as they move with, against and through each other’s paths.  The intricate pattern of two butterflies’ interwoven flight paths stands as a fitting analogue for the nuanced complexity of Busy Butterflie…

*2023 stock* Pivotal work in Mimmo’s discography this “Prossime Trascendenze” explores the intriguing relationships between composed and improvised forms, “tight corners” and collective interplay. A seamless orchestration toward a higher level of articulation that leads the listener through a textural pulsing structure where enlightened details deliver a splendid intelligibility.

"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. …

"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…

[…] 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…

"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…

*2023 stock* "Gianni Mimmo who runs Amirani Records from Italy and has performed in the KFJC Pit, here is joined by Pierfrancesco Mucari in a series of unaccompanied saxophone duets. These inventive and engaging duets bring to mind some of the duet work of Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake, if only somewhat less raucous. I also hear a soupcon of Anthony Braxton.  These duets seem to be neither fully written out but nor entirely improvised. They play sopranos and an alto, the musical range of which…

"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…

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…

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…

*2023 stock* "Stefan Römer performs quotations from cultural or musical theoreticians commenting on performances by two iconic musicians, Syd Barrett and Conrad Schnitzler. The quote functions as an instruction for the sound performance. Stefan Römer explicitly attempts to reach a similar psychedelic state of mind to that of the referenced artists, using an LSD substitute. The performative staging of textual citation, instrumentation comparable to the historical events, musical performance, and …

*2023 stock. 100 copies limited edition* This album takes reference to the German underground film "Decoder" (1984) and its sound track with the main actors Christiane F and FM Einheit (Einstürzende Neubauten), also William S. Burroughs, Dave Ball, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge etc. There are many reasons why it is helpful to look back to this manifest of medial resistance, today we are recoding.

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 (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…

Swedish singer and composer Elin Piel returns to Mystery Circles after making a debut appearance on the Las Vegas-based ambient label back in 2020. Piel's sound deals in microscopic layers of textural detail slowly shifting around delicately embellished melodies - 'Tunnlar' is a perfect opening statement in this sense as glassy synth phrases pass through prismatic DSP and faint flickering interference skips around in the background.

Following her previous solo works Solas (2016), Fairge (2017) and Trian (2019) Saor [pronounced Sieur: meaning "free" in Scottish Gaelic] is the first release in a triptych of albums, inspired by escapes to the peaks of Claire M Singer's homeland of Scotland. Saor perfectly encapsulates Claire's experimental approach to the pipe organ, exploring rich harmonic textures and complex overtones creating ever-shifting melodic and rhythmic patterns, which conjure visions of the Scottish dramatic landsc…

A wild, loud, raw New Jersey hard psych beast that’s been a favorite target of record collectors, dealers, bootleggers, and swamp dwellers for the past two decades, originally released on the Zonk! label.

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…

*200 copies limited edition* Abstracke presents Cristov's debut LP. The Hamburg-based artist and designer Christoph Lohse delivers an amazing record inspired by technology and dystopia. German futuristic electronics, mechanical synths, primal rhythms... a cold, sometimes industrial sound, balanced with the jazzy acoustic drums and percussions performed by Manuel Chittka. Influenced by Ike Yard, Craig Leon, Monoton, and the German kraut maestros renewed by people like Kreidler, Die Wilde Jagd, To…

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 …

Bazip Zeehok Superstar? That might be taking it slightly too far, perhaps, but a fact is that all three artists on this album have had over 40 years of musical experience each, gained in a massive range of projects. And when we say massive, then we mean: a lot. G.W. Sok (The Ex, Zoikle, Oiseaux-Tempête, L&S, Coddiwomple, King Champion Sounds, Svätsox, Cannibales & Vahinés, Action Beat), Lukas Simonis (Dull Schicksal, Zoikle, Stepmother, Trespassers W, Coolhaven, Mothers of Exit), and Gert-Jan Pr…

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…

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!

Italian sound artist Ezio Piermattei returns with a new tape. Atopic sound reality made of voice, tapes, unrecognizable guitars, post horn, organ. Stratifications through subtractions, autobiographism wrapped in abstraction, musique concrète and idiosyncrasies transcoloring in tones of contemporary darkness.

Fragile yet intense compositions for acoustic instruments and field recordings. Recorded on tape and carefully dubbed from the original cassette master.