Best of 2023
May 99
Tip! Black vinyl, with silkscreen and insert. In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam’s VPRO near the end of the tour, …
Stikling
Small repress available, don't miss it **200 copies** "This record began in summer 2020, when I was staying at Andersabo, Sweden, where I run an artists' residency. I had access to a nearby church, and would set drones going on the organ while playing clarinet and piano. I started working with the combination of these long, sustained tones, combined with acoustic instruments, where the sound's duration was only as long as a breath or the pluck of a string. A lot of the last Blue Lake LP was made…
♥ / Lamb
Soccer Committee has always been an consistent exercise in restraint, and offering space. And on ‘♥ /Lamb’, this approach has been taken to perfection. The arrangements are still minimal, with plenty of time for the tones and melodies to resonate with maximum impact. Mariska Baars still carefully selects each note, and lets the sound evolve with precise care. Her songs are definitely rooted in the folktradition, but at the same time very ‘ambient’, in the true sense of the word. And still: there…
U.S.A. Concerts / The Bay / The Ictus Archives Vol. 1 / The Ictus Archives Vol. 2
**Back in stock, very last copies** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes.** Issued in limited editions of 250 copies, they stand among the most important and sinfully overlooked documents of the movement of global improvisation that unfurled during the 1970s, and can’t be missed.This bundle (with additional and exclusive dedicated tote bag) includes the following four LPs:- Andrea Centazzo "U.S.A. Concerts" (1978)- Andrea Centazzo, Rova Saxophone Quartet "The Bay" (19…
Lettera Cosmica
Huge Tip! Since the 1970s Mario De Leo works as a musician and visual artist. His mechanical paintings are hybrid works that reveal the cosmic spiritualism hidden in the meanders of electronics. With Riccardo Sinigaglia (Futuro Antico, Correnti Magnetiche, Doubling Riders) De Leo consolidates an artistic and human partnership with Lettera Cosmica, a work unpublished to date, produced and recorded in 1981. In a wacky electronic vision of the succession of time, the tracks trace the four seasons i…
Jazz Al Folkstudio
Back in 2021, we bore witness to the reissue, by Dialogo, of the Rome based ensemble Spirale’s lone 1974 self-titled LP, a towering obscurity of 1970s Italian jazz. Made of up Gaetano Delfini (wind instruments, vocals, percussion), Giancarlo Maurino (saxophone, flute, percussion), Corrado Nofri (piano, marimba, mbira, siren, Jew’s harp), Giuseppe Caporello (contrabass, guitar, percussion) and Giampaolo Ascolese (drums), the band ranks among the most sinfully neglected outfits of its moment, 1970…
I Tarantolati
Digipack CD. The second LP in Black Sweat’s latest batch, ‘I Tarantolati’ the first outing of Antonio Infantino with his band, Il Gruppo Di Tricarico, while very different in its musical approach, belongs to the same wild ferment around Folk Studio in Rome, and was issued by the Folkstudio label the year prior in 1975.
Antonio Infantino was poet and singer, who operated in circles connected to Beat literature and Italian performance and gestural music circles, alongside figures like Sylvano Buss…
Out of the Playground
Sofa Music is proud to add the powerhouse flutist Alessandra Rombolà to its ranks with Out of the Playground, documenting Rombolà’s latest commissions and collaborations for solo flute and electronics with composers Daniela Terranova, Jan Martin Smørdal, Ingar Zach, and Lasse Marhaug. The album’s five contributions, drawing on Rombolà’s polyvalent musical background, are united in their mission to venture “out of the playground” of scenes and genres, as Rombolà puts it. Across these incisive, ex…
Zoomachia Disc 1
*Edition of 200* First emerging during the mid 2000s in the field of experimental electronics, the Italian born, Berlin based artist, Francesco Cavaliere captivated us back in 2021 with ‘Viridescens’, his brilliant duo with Tomoko Sauvage issued by Marionette. With a handful of noteworthy releases having appeared since, he now returns with ‘Zoomachia Disc 1’, a remarkable fable bridging the territories of spoken word and electronic and electroacoustic composition.
For the better part of the last…
Il Calore Animale
*Edition of 200* Ginevra Bompiani is most likely unknown for fans of experiential music. In Italian literature and thinking, however, she is highly regarded writer, editor, translator, essayist, and academic, whose fiction, particularly, is informed by linguistics, feminism, and literary theory, and verges on the surreal and the fantastic, making her interdisciplinary effort, ‘Il Calore Animale’, collaborating with two of the most singular voices in contemporary experimental music - Caterina Ba…
Sacratávica
Recently created Guatemalan label Identidata is extremely proud to present "Sacratávica", the very first collected survey of Joaquín Orellana’s avant-garde / modern classical compositions. With a career spanning over 50 years of activity across contemporary art, performance, theater and sound art, Orellana is a highly singular figure in Guatemalan culture.
Colpo Rovente
Outstanding!!! Piero Piccioni ‘Colpo Rovente’ is one of the rarest soundtrack albums in the Italian film music history. This soundtrack stands out from the traditional period into the psychedelic era. Soft-spoken and suave cool jazz, along with hallucinogenic go-go sounds appears throughout the film and soundtrack. Dynamic big band tunes are stunningly matched with impossibly beautiful jazz funk scores infused with a touch of bossa nova. If your tastes lie somewhere in the intersection between e…
Nana Vasconcelos Nelson Angelo - Novelli
Cult album of Brazilian music finally reissued. Official reissue of this real tour de force of Brazilian creativity, where the mighty Naná Vasconcelos is joined by his friends Nelson Angelo and Novelli (both members of the legendary Clube da Esquina) to create one of the greatest Brazilian albums ever recorded outside of Brazil. The three musicians grasp here for the kind of musical freedom that could then only be achieved outside of their country. A boundary-pushing experimentation that makes y…
Danger In Paradise
Killer! 2023 repress. General Strike's legendary album from 1984, for the first time available on vinyl and as a download. Fully remastered by David Cunningham. These 1979-84 recordings were recorded for the most part in the quiet village of Brixton, South London – three tracks at This Heat’s Cold Storage, the rest in Cunningham’s own studio just along the street - and originally released on cassette by Touch in 1984 with the exception of "Parts Of My Body," released on a single by Canal Records…
April Fool: Coming Muhammad Ali
Huge Tip! First LP reissue in 50 years! A cutting-edge collage of the Muhammad Ali vs. Mac Foster documentary held at the Budokan in April 1972, with performances by the Yosuke Yamashita Trio (w/ Takeo Moriyama and Seiichi Nakamura). An incredible album, and an incredible cultural moment as well – as Japanese avant piano legend Yosuke Yamashita pays tribute to the great Muhammad Ali – on the occasion of his visit to Japan for the World Heavyweight match in 1972! Half the record features instrume…
Wandering Fire
The tape recorded in a studio by Yuji Takahashi (synthesizer, sampler) and Masahiko Togashi (percussion) on November 23, 1988 was found for the first time in 34 years, and is now available for download. This album is the culmination of the Takahashi-Togashi duo that began in the spring of 1988 at the Shinjuku Pit Inn, and is an improvisational performance in which Togashi responds to Takahashi's lead. Each member's different musicality is inspired by the other's, and the music is built up in dia…
Only Just Once, Space in the Sun
Space in the Sun was one of Akio Suzuki’s major sound projects, a unique construction completed in 1988 and located on the meridian line, which took around 18 months to build. Its purpose was to allow Suzuki to spend one day, on the autumnal equinox, purifying his sense of hearing in nature. This release comprises a 44 page book containing plans and materials from the time alongside texts, and two CDs of environmental recordings created on site at Space in the Sun. To date only tiny fragments of…
Sirene
* Deluxe edition of 200 copies, comes with an insert * This is a project by Bruno Dorella (Ovo, Ronin, Sigillum S) and Stefano Ghittoni (The Dining Rooms, Le Petit). Inspired by the mythological character, both male and female, fortune-teller and fugitive, that has lived multiple lives, Tiresia is also the name of one of the main character in the movie “I Cannibali” (1970) by director Liliana Cavani.Played by Pierre Clementi, he is a sort of mystic that speaks an obscure language trying to rise …
Archivi 1999/2021
* Deluxe edition of 200 copies, comes with an insert * Music from Pierre Chindemi archives. Ivrea born and based, founder and member of Drink To Me band. Under several aliases (One Eye, Vülvá, Low Waves, Sui, Hawaii8, Bitch Volley) he produced more than one undred tracks between 1999 and 2021. Some were released on Stuprobrucio Records, others on hawaii8.blogspot.com or Archive.org. Many of them remained unreleased.Cassettes, multitrack tapes, lost hard disks. It was time to open this archive.
…
Nuova Sauna Possibile 2
The visionary Italian imprint, Ivreatronic, returns with yet another quest into the shadowy reaches of the contemporary Italian underground with a brand new batch of three LPs, Tiresia’s “Sirene”, Hawaii8 & Friends’s “Archivi 1999/2021”, and Alien Alien / Prokofiev / Foresta’s “Visioni Fuggitive”. Issued on vinyl in individual editions or as a special bundle of four LPs, whether regarded singularly or collectively, they represent a fascinating immersion into electronic process that spans a remar…