Best of 2017

Originally issued by the seminal imprint Saravah in 1972, and among the most uncategorizable and sought after artefacts of the French avant-garde, Barney Wilen’s Moshi is nothing short of a masterpiece - long holding a coveted spot in the hearts of adventurous listeners and record collectors alike. A wild unkept cultural collage. A series of sonic experiments. A spiritual, psychedelic pilgrimage into the unknown - darting from one continent to the next, each of its tangents building toward a mor…

Double-CD set presenting two radio sessions recorded in Cologne in 1984, carefully remastered from the original reel-to-reel tapes, an astonishing example of Terry's tactile and meditative approach - and audio quality is just crystal! Emotive and trance-inducing, it's like finding a new, secret entrance to one of our favourite composers.Considered one of the pioneers (along with colleague La Monte Young) of the minimalist movement, pianist-composer Terry Riley introduced the concept of endless r…

The second volume of Schnitzler's cinema for the mind's eye. Sequencer motifs and alien textures sketch scene after scene of electronic drama: the restless imagination of a true pioneer, drawn from his boundless tape archive.

2019 small repress. **beautiful vinyl edition of the hugely sought-after avantgarde gem** Matsuli Music is proud to be releasing another forgotten gem of the South African jazz diaspora – the 1976 Istanbul session featuring Johnny Dyani and Okay Temiz fusing deep roots and new routes, integrating folklore and rhythm within an experimental, avant-garde vision of love and life.  Remastered by Frank Merrit at the Carvery, Witchdoctor’s Son is presented as a deluxe gatefold sleeve including new line…

Debut release in the new Confront Core Series imprint. Studio recording of the text piece "There is no love" which was premiered at Cafe Oto, London on 31st October 2016 as part of the Confront Recordings Twentieth Anniversary celebrations."On October 2016 Rhodri Davies and Mark Wastell premiered There Is No Love at London’s Cafe Oto, playing along a recording of David Sylvian’s reading of segments of Bernard-Marie Koltès’ In The Solitude Of Cotton Fields. This studio version juxtaposes the same…

A reissue of Robbie Basho's The Grail & The Lotus, originally released in 1966. It's become an oft-quoted statement that John Coltrane was the Father, Pharaoh Sanders was the Son, and Albert Ayler, the Holy Ghost. It could arguably apply to the holy trinity of steel string guitarists as well. Many claim John Fahey to be the Father, Kottke was considered the Son, and Robbie Basho would certainly be considered the Holy Ghost. The Basho/Ayler similarities are many, and both pushed their idioms furt…

Restocked, reduced price. Legendary debut from sound artists Christina Kubisch and Fabrizio Plessi mixing sound and visual elements, a seminal LP record originally published on the hugely influential Multhipla, run by Gianni Sassi (also founder of Cramps Records) in conjunction with Fluxus collector and editor Gino Di Maggio. Two And Two was a live performance for two performers (Kubisch and Plessi), two video cameramen, a wall of monitors and uncommon objects and instruments. Throughout the per…

In stock! Midori Takada's 1990 collaborative album with Masahiko Satoh, Lunar Cruise. LP version. Marks the title's first ever vinyl release; Cut at Emil Berliner Studios; Housed in a 350 gsm sleeve; Includes CD with all ten tracks. We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records present a reissue of Midori Takada and Masahiko Satoh's Lunar Cruise, originally released in 1990. Following the successful reissue of Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass (WRWTFWW 018LP/WRWTFWW 019CD/LP), WRWTFWW …

Quartet Records and Gruppo Sugar present the world-premiere release of Vittorio Gelmetti's experimental score for the cult movie Sotto il segno dello scorpione (also known as Under the Sign of Scorpio).  Directed by Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, the film takes place in a kind of fantastic prehistoric time when volcanos ravage and wipe entire civilizations off the face of the earth. When an island gets buried under lava and ash, a group of survivors manages to get away and reach a nearby islan…

Digitally remastered for the first time at 192 khz and 24 bit. From the original master tapes, 1st time rpressed on LP. Mere words can’t describe the impact of an album where the only instrument is the voice of Demetrio Stratos (actually, there are few synthesizer inserts played by Paolo Tofani). Originally released in 1976: a unique work where Demetrio Stratos makes any kind of experiments and sounds with his voice, reaching and going over the limit of human capabilities. "Demetrio Strato…

Arnold Dreyblatt has been called "the most rock 'n' roll of all the composers to emerge from New York's downtown scene in the 1970s." Arnold Dreyblatt founded the Orchestra Of Excited Strings in 1979, harnessing unusual tuning intervals to an exuberant performance style. Propellers In Love, the Orchestra's second album – originally released in 1986 on the Stasch imprint, in conjunction with the contemporary art space Künstlerhaus Bethanien – develops Dreyblatt's rhythmically exacting exploration…

Since launching six years ago, the ReRVNG series - a curatorial effort by the New York based imprint RVNG, has carved a singular place in the cultural landscape. Dedicated to highlighting remarkable, but overlooked gestures in sonic expression, its effect has been so wide sweeping that the names found within its catalog - Harald Grosskopf, Craig Leon, K. Leimer, Ariel Kalma, Anna Homler, etc, have emerged from the shadows, becoming familiar to most. After a year hiatus, much of which has been sp…

** Small repress available ** It’s an incredible moment in the history of recorded music. At SoundOhm we’re lucky enough to hear it all. Within such a stunning landscape, it’s impossible to pick favourites, but Milan based imprint Black Sweat always comes out at the top. And they return with what may be their most ambitious effort yet, a stunning four LP box set of previously unreleased archival recordings by Ariel Kalma. The life and work of Ariel Kalma is a remarkable journey in sound - an emb…

“Time Out of Mind” represents a most important chapter in the recordings of Ora, during the years 1986-1994 and here almost all entirely unheard before. They represent unreleased studio pieces, field recordings and sketches, significantly made to portable recorder. This working method would become the basis of future and more elaborate studio pieces and in itself clarifies an important formative stage of the work of Ora, of often using outdoor performances and location sound in an entirely spont…

Four Flies Records strikes again, releasing their first archive compilation of Piero Umiliani’s work and the first compilation focussing on the Maestro’s legacy in years.  “Studio Umiliani” is a collection of sunken treasures and hidden beauties yet to be re-released, and of stunning unpublished works surprisingly unknown for quite some time. The project, born from the initial effort of Andrea Fabrizi, who has far and wide been exploring Umiliani's soundtracks before anyone else, led Four Flies …

**Small repress available** Swedish saxophone player/improviser/ composer/music archivist Mats Gustafsson has worked in the outer regions of jazz, avant-garde, experimental rock and free improvisation for more than 35 years. Gustafsson is also a passionate record collector who strongly believes that actively nurturing the urge to seek for rare and obscure vinyl is a gateway to higher musical knowledge – a knowledge that it is a musician’s duty to share. He has coined the term Discaholism – and o…

3CD version. History can be a motherfucker - its authors vindictive and deeply unfair. Though Jazz - long heralded as the great American art form, got its due, buried within its canon are the legacies of systemic neglect. Its narrative is a mere shadow of the truth. Robert Northern is a lost giant - a name that almost no one has heard - a prodigy once recruited by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk, Donald Byrd, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and S…

**last copies** Out of the twilight emerges this debut offering by Ilta Hämärä, the duo of Bart De Paepe (Sylvester Anfang II, Bokrijk, Charles Vögele) and Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, La Poupee Vivante). An imaginary source that combines Bart’s hazy psychedelic antics and Timo’s subtle and abstract sound manipulations in otherworldly spheres of cosmic dimensions, like a spectral veil covering an odoriferous botanical garden. The gates are open to golden clouds… Limited to 300 copies.

Originally released in 1980 (and privately issued only in 1987) Arturo Stalteri’s …E Il Pavone Parlo’ Alla Luna falls among the last artifacts of Italy’s great wave of musical Minimalism. Like the movement to which it belongs, rigorously resistant to categorizations and definition, this overlooked marvel sculpts a startling singularity.  A radical and democratic vision in sound, blending elements of New Age, the avant-garde, and Prog, with Western and Indian Classical musics. Long oversha…

Limited clear vinyl, edition of 100. Giovanni Venosta’s Olympic Signals, is one of the great lost documents of the Italian avant-garde - the first solo outing from one of the movement’s seminal voices, most recognised for his collaborative work with Roberto Musci. In a sea of unjustly neglected works, Venosta’s debut rises from the tide time as a towering gesture of sonic creativity. A shimmering, complex wonder of overwhelming Minimalistic beauty. One of the great records of the 1980’s, that al…

Vang Circular is the first outing from Timo van Luijk (La Scie Dorée / Af Ursin, Elodie) and Mark Harwood (Penultimate Press / Astor). Employing vibes, mellotron, natural reader, an iron ant, synth, metal pipes, slide guitar and a double bass these audacious souls conjure a wonky musical vision that gently peels away the familiar The results are a surprising synthesis of two individual and somewhat oppositional aesthetics. From the farthest reaches of the galaxy to the highest celestial p…

Black Truffle presents a new issue of Annea Lockwood's classic 1970 tape piece "Tiger Balm", unavailable on vinyl for over thirty years, accompanied by two exquisite unreleased works for percussion and voice. "Created while Lockwood was living in the UK, the side-long 'Tiger Balm' is a singular work within the cannon of tape music. Inspired by research into the ritual function of music, the piece explores the possibility of evoking ancient communal memories through sound. Breaking entirely with …

Mike Cooper's output of the past half century has been described as "post-everything". It's a fitting phrase really when you consider he has been at the beating heart of so many critical musical moments; from the development of the blues touring circuit in the UK, through the growth of the folk scene and into the explosion of free improvisation that came to define a generation of UK musicians. Amidst it all, working at stitching these disparate forms into some kind of de-territorialized z…

Reverse board-printed inner and outer sleeve; Edition of 500. Musique Hydromantique is the second solo album by Tomoko Sauvage archiving many years of her performance-based practice on the waterbowls -- the natural synthesizer of her invention, composed with porcelain bowls filled with water and amplified via hydrophones (underwater microphones). While her first album Ombrophilia (2009) was studio-recorded/composed work, Musique Hydromantique is about experimentation and improvisation with the e…

**Audiophile 2LP, edition of 500 copies in a beautiful gatefold sleeve with updated credits and liner notes** Arne Nordheim is among Norway’s most important post-war composers, particularly among those working within the field of avant-garde electronic music. Nordheim studied studied Musique concrète in Paris during the mid 1950’s, expanding his practice in Holland toward electronics and synthesis during the end of that decade. Upon returning home, he embarked on a stunning body of work, …

Gatefold LP version. Includes download coupon. Sommor Records present a reissue of Rupture's Israel Suite / Dominante En Bleu, originally released in 1973. Rupture was born when famous French songwriter Boris Bergman (France Gall, Dalida, etc.) decided to record a conceptual album about the history of Israel. He approached ace drummer and singer Sylvain Krief (Airto Fogo, Michel Fugain, Aznavour, Clark Terry, Bud Powell, etc.) and soon, other musicians joined: Jean-François Jenny-Clark (Don Cher…

*in restock now*Lavish gatefold sleeve with booklet. a double LP of essentially electronic and noise-based pieces paired with astonishing texts spoken by the legendary Anthony Moore. The concept is that objects of value, artifacts or minerals, buried deep in the ground send strange signals through the earth up to the planet's surface. they are detected by the ears and instruments of miners, explorers and archaeologists who are tuned-in to the subterranean frequencies. the album contains a …

Originally developed as a film score, Takt Der Arbeit is inspired by a handful of industrial and instructional films from the early 1960s until the early 1990s that portray different forms of work. Felix Kubin translates these historic documents into a musical poem of conceptual depth. Takt Der Arbeit - "the beat of work" - is not only serving as a title but also as constructive element in this endeavor. Being hunted down by the ever-accelerated pulse of our reality is an omnipresent issue i…

Trax Test’ is the first ever survey of Italy’s pioneering, visionary and influential label and mail art collective Trax, which ran from 1981 - 1987 as a network for the creation of collaborative projects. The collective included a pre-NWW Colin Potter and some of the earliest work from Masami Akita aka Merzbow, but also had deep connections with the art world; a few trax members went on to become famous designers and artists - Ettore Sottsass of hugely influential Memphis Group even guests on vo…

** very last copies** Everything starts when Maurizio Bianchi from Milano, with many years spent as a music journalist, realizes that writing (a very personal style both lucid and delirious) is no longer enough to describe the sounds he has in his mind. In that moment he started to deal with tape recorders, turntables, synthesizers, microphones, self-producing tapes and records under the name M.B., creating his own  circuit of fans and aficionados always ready to plunge themselves into the…

Official re-issue of Danish electronic music from 1974! Vinyl LP comes with booklet and limited to 500 copies - no repress. Frederiksberg Records announces the first re-issue of ‘Stoned’ which is exclusively licensed from Gunner Møller Pedersen in person and has been carefully restored from the original master tapes. It comes with a booklet of liner notes by Thomas Knak. ‘Stoned’ by Gunner Møller Pedersen is a pioneering partly-electronic composition from Denmark. Gunner believes that it’s m…

Restocked, reduced price. Originally released by the legendary Cramps Records - one of the most remarkable assemblies of avant-garde recording in history, Michele Fedrigotti and Danilo Lorenzini’s long overlooked LP -‎ I Fiori Del Sole, is among of the great works of to emerge from Italy’s incredible movement of musical Minimalism. Both Fedrigotti and Lorenzini are renowned classical pianists, with the bulk of their respective careers dedicated to realizing the works of others. During the 1970’s…

Holywax’s treasure trove side imprint returns with this incredible mindbender from the archives, the mighty Masada by maestro Graziano Mandozzi. This musical masterpiece has been written for the soundtrack of the Hans Kresnik Ballet with the same name in 1977. Expect experimental sounds, weird synths jams, twisted electronic jazz and banging psych funk throughout the album, creating a seamlessly segued side of ghostly, decaying acoustic sounds captured within the stone-clad building's numerou…

Restocked, reduced price. We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records present a reissue of the highly sought-after electronic/sci-fi disco/proto-techno/ambient masterpiece Voice Of Taurus by Swiss music pioneer and synth super wizard Bruno Spoerri, available on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 1978. Surrounded with a formidable family of legendary synthesizers, primitive modulators, and audio gear -- transformed and customized à la Spoerri --, armed with an extraordinary t…

Historical Italian Jazz session originally released on legendary vinyl LP from 1973. Outstanding and magnificent Jazz Funk jewel and first album ever by this killer combo led by Dino Piana & Oscar Valdambrini. An original Jazz Library recording used for the soundtrack of Rai TV programme "Serata al Gatto Nero", 1973. Top Italian groovy Jazz and mental album, easily a grail of the genre featuring some terrific breaks, killer Wah Wah guitar and Funky Hammond job, with a solid backing studi…

John Coltrane transformed the inner architecture of jazz throughout the mid-1950s and 1960s and long after his premature death at age 40 in 1967. No other American musician could be said to be at the spiritual center of the '60s musical universe as Trane influenced Albert Ayler, La Monte Young, Jimi Hendrix and everybody in between.Cosmic Music, originally self-released by Alice Coltrane in 1968 and later issued by Impulse!, features two tracks ("Manifestation" and "Rev. King") by John Coltrane'…

Desperate Straights was the first result of the historical meeting between Slapp Happy, the German/English Avant-Pop band and the apparently incompatible Henry Cow. Recorded at Virgin Record's Manor Studios in 1974 and properly re-mastered by Bob Drake, Desperate Straights stands as a real piece of Art from another time. A full set of great songs, including gems like "Bad Alchemy" and "Apes in Capes", arranged and performed by an amazing collective featuring Dagmar Krause's unique voice, Peter B…

The Vinyl Factory are excited to announce the reissue of the ICA's ground-breaking compilation Cybernetic Serendipity Music, originally released in 1968 to coincide with their exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity, which proved to be a landmark in the history of audio/visual art, and the first exhibition of its kind in the UK devoted to the relationship between music and early computers. Both unique and extraordinarily influential, Cybernetic Serendipity Music captured a nascent scene on the cusp of…

Bamboo present the first ever reissue of Paul Bley's Improvisie, originally released in 1971. Recorded Live March 26th, 1971 at Club B14 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Improvisie is a part of the 1971 trilogy of Paul Bley and Annette Peacock's combined experimental recorded work. Together with recent reissues of 1971's The Bley Synthesizer Show and 1972's Dual Unity, Improvisie is taken from a compelling period for two iconic figures of the free jazz movement, and their pioneering use of the first-e…

Wolf Eyes’ Nate Young’s Regression series has provided some of the most compelling dread-electronics spewed out by the North American underground in years, with instalments released on Demdike Stare’s DDS label and Aaron Dilloway's Hanson, as well as NNA Tapes and others. It all began back in 2009 with the first volume issued by Joachim Nordwall’s Ideal label, an incredible set that’s now being released on vinyl for the first time ever, just in time for Wolf Eyes newly minted (Warp sponsored) Lo…