New Arrivals
L'inter Communal
The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an “old hand” of French free jazz, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais) in 1965. But, six years later Tusques had had his fill of free jazz. After having wondered, together with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), if free jazz wa…
Wat Gebeurde Er Met Sergeant Massuro?
“While much of Wanderwelle’s music feels adrift, when they choose to make movements, they’re deliberate and poignant. In fact, they best capture the feeling of cataclysmic weather events with “Drowned Lands”, a track which feels as if it’s trapped underwater, plodding through melodies. Here, they convey a lot with very little, tapping into the feelings hiding within every tiny gesture.” - The Wire
Tonics & Twisted Chasers
Originally released in 1996 as a limited fan-club pressing for Rockathon, Guided By Voices' Tonics And Twisted Chasers has always existed as an anomaly in Robert Pollard's vast discography. In many ways, the album serves as the tail of a creative comet that in just two years included the "classic line-up" trilogy of Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and countless singles that crammed endless hooks in their grooves. In the intervening space, Tonics And Twisted Chasers h…
Thrilling
The world premiere CD edition of Thrilling featuring Ennio Morricone's original (and almost unheard) complete soundtrack music for the 1965 Thriling film in three episodes directed by Ettore Scola, Carlo Lizzani and Gianluigi Polidoro. The score is a great mix of heavy and light, with one of his grooviest mid-60s moments, combining Morricone's floating style featuring bold and jazzy inflections in the instrumentation, a fantastic utilization of flute and saxophone, layered over intricate musical…
Revelation
Having worked silently in her sonic philosophy for almost a decade, vocalist, music producer and Dj Telva has launched her music label byt’, starting with the publication of her debut album. The album, ‘Revelation’, opens with an unusual and experimental offering, which sets the tone for the label's subsequent eclectic and unexpected releases. The compilation of 10 tracks, has been documented for 5 years through an experimental vocal, instrumental sonic journey, that is composed of Telva's life …
I Am A Darkroom OST
Remixed tracks of original soundtrack for experimental film I Am A Darkroom; written and recorded by Lucy Johnson. Produced by DoBeDo productions, Edd Carr's film I Am A Darkroom showcases the work of artists in the Sustainable Darkroom, a grassroots organisation at the forefront of working toward an ecological future for photography. From kitchen tables to at-home darkrooms, and even the dirt outdoors - these artists are challenging toxic legacies to build a new ecology of photography. An ecolo…
Oasis
2024 reissue. Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recogni…
Intershop
2024 reissue. Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recogni…
Marsaskala
*50 copies limited edition* Pieces of debris washed up on a coastline shrouded in mist. Gratification comes from an eternal search for solace. Locked away at the top of a lighthouse somewhere on an unnamed isle, Grady Steele broadcasts to those within the beacon’s reach. A soundsystem built of driftwood and salvaged car stereos is pieced together with precision and laboriously dragged to the top of the obelisk. A timeless fugue state spent playing arpeggios on a Spanish guitar, the PA system ebb…
Code & Melody
*300 copies limited edition, digipak w/ metallic pantone print * Just because Denseland take inspiration from the past, doesn’t mean they're stuck in it. On their first album since 2017, their second for arbitrary, the Berlin-based trio instead ventures slowly but steadily into unknown territory. Hanno Leichtmann and Hannes Strobl’s dub-infused, bass-heavy rhythmic minimalism in combination with lyricist David Moss’s sonorous yet deadpan delivery opens up a space that feels both claustrophobic a…
Waves
*300 copies limited edition* Mondkopf, the brainchild of Paul Regimbeau, returns to Hands in the Dark with ‘Waves’, five years after his label-debut ‘How Deep is our Love?’. The French producer’s 9th album features two time-stretched, profound analog-textured pieces based on the physical and emotional swaying motion suggested by its title and recorded during some concerts played in the summer of 2019. The first track was performed at a secret gig in the Vincennes woods in Paris, accompanying a g…
Bayawan
"Bayawan" is the common name for Muqam music used by the Dolan people. Bayawan, or Dolan Muqam, is a unique form of folk music and one of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China. Generally speaking, Muqam is a form of large-scale suites which include songs, dances, and instrumental sections, in which the development of music often features a significant degree of improvisation. The Muqam of the Uyghurs is characterized by its diversity of musical styles. Apart fro…
Sleepless
This album was recorded at Liu Ying Studio in Shenzhen. An improvised session on acoustic guitar from start to finish, it nonetheless demonstrates a highly original, coherent artistic conception: a distinct “Oriental” aesthetic redefined by Mamer’s own creative vision. In tracks like “Sleepless”, “Man from the East”, and “Backyard”, Mamer ingeniously deconstructs and deploys traditional Han Chinese music scales to serve his own purpose, adding artful ambivalence and rich subtleties to an unmista…
Saxophone Solo For Reel-to-reel Tape Recording
*2024 stock* This series of reel-to-reel tape recordings, to be jointly released by Old Heaven Books and Liu Ying Studio, aims to offer to our listeners the best quality of sound we can achieve so far. Whilst a small part of these releases come from historical archives, the majority are freshly made by musicians we invite to our studio. We record these studio sessions − some of which free-improvised, others more composition-based − on reel-to-reel tapes. With high-quality studio equipment, we ma…
Sherter Solo
*2024 stock* "On the night of December 18, 2021, Mamer and his newly formed psychedelic folk band Mask were about to record a live album at Shenzhen B10 Live, a few audiences were invited. Before the recording, Mamer improvised on sherter for nearly 40 minutes. This album was therefore born. Xêrtêrmin / Sherter Solo may be, or should be the world’s first sherter solo album—although we don’t want to overemphasize it for the sake of sales. Most of the time, this ancient Kazakh instrument is used a…
Why Be Free
*2024 stock* "The antennas that grow in your ears and hide in my head. In 2019, Dan and Li's live performance at the OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival of their album "Mutually Chanting Cipher" was a stroke of genius, and the two of them put together a memorable performance with little advance communication.
In November 2021, Dan traveled to Yunnan to meet Li with Tang. In Dali, they experimented with a wide range of compositions, from acoustic to plugged-in instruments, from Chinese to Wester…
Lo-Fi Machine
*2024 stock* "This is one of the many solo albums that Mamer completed in 2013. At that time Mamer's desire to create erupted like a volcano. I remember that bookstores had just released his solo albums "Stars" and "Cycles", as well as IZ's "Echoes"; many fans were slowly accepting music like IZ's "Shadows", and some people started to talk about the expansion and "revolutionization" of folk instrumentation on "Stars", while Mamer was already immersed in another world.
One day he handed me a bun…
Aiiro no Kisetsu
The treasured Japanese soft rock album produced by Haruomi Hosono is finally reissued in analog LP format! The only album "Aiiro no Kisetsu" (The Season of The Color of Love) (original release date: July 1975) by the group "Kaze Chorus Dan" (Wind Chorus Group) from the Yamaha Popular Song Contest is reissued on analog vinyl. Haruomi Hosono participated fully as producer, lyricist, composer, arranger, and player.The beautiful chorus work of mixed voices, the tight performance by the Tin Pan Alley…
Cosmolinea
*30 copies limited edition. Professionally dubbed cassette* “Cosmolinea” is a journey that begins in the dark. Initially conceived as a physical space in which to find rest, it transforms into a place in which to change, learn, heal. Musically the EP is as intense as its abstract conception, a mixture of ambient soundscapes, shoegaze and glitchy IDM with the add of dubby sequences.
AFM is the project of Alessandro Gramaccioni, producer, sound designer and composer focused on researching and conv…
Tidal Perspectives
Big Tip! Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the depth and effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides.
Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific …