Best of 2023
Faces
Big Tip! New Torso! Gloriously mature and engrossing movements for cello, flute and tape self-released from the Japanese duo on their Ozato label. It’s hard to write anything about Torso’s music without giving the impression that this is polite, nicely buttoned-up contemporary classical dishwater. It isn’t. The same constituents are there - bowed cello, shimmering flute, woody upright bass and expensive-sounding reed instruments. Yet the arrangements take cues from addictive indie-pop struct…
Vocazione
A beatiful reissue of Enzo Carella's first album released in Italy in 1977, whose original edition usually sells for crazy prices on the second-hand market. This undervalued piece of work was perhaps too avantgarde during the time of release to get the full attention it deserves.Carella was an Italian singer-songwriter who is best remembered for his 1979 major hit Barbara, which is the opening track on Barbara e altri Carella, his second album. All songs on this release are written by Enzo Carel…
Tryghed
Tip! Tryghed is the debut album from Franciska, the alias of the now Copenhagen-based artist Jonas Torstensson. As one of the key figures in the young, vivid scene around the Forlaget Kornmod imprint, Jonas has released a good deal of music under different names during the last few years, often in very limited cassette editions with barely no distribution. In many ways, Franciska pretty much captures the very essence of the sound world their label now is associated with: melancholic and rather l…
Dusk Fire
Limited 2022 repress. Due to overwhelming demand for Jazzman Records' five-LP boxset, here are the first ever official individual reissues of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by the legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell-Ian Carr Quintet. The five albums; 1965's Shades Of Blues (JMAN 107X-LP), 1966's Dusk Fire, 1968's Phase III (JMAN 109X-LP), 1969's Change Is (JMAN 111X-LP), and 1969's Live (JMAN 110X-LP), have reached almost mythical status in the collector's world. Regard…
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…
Zouroku No Kibyou
Not for the faint of heart! Predating both Sonic Youth and Swans’ debut albums by a year, Zourokuno Kibyou, initially released in 1982, quickly vaulted Kansai noise rockers Hijokaidan to indie music fame. Compiling their early, borderline grotesque, extreme live performances, Zourokuno Kibyou is as much a historical document as it is one of the heaviest noise albums to ever come out of Japan. With cover art by legendary horror manga artist Hideshi Hino and a booklet containing photos from the wi…
Duo in Concert
Frozen Reeds is proud to present the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures.
“This is one of those moments that we’re always hoping for, and it's so rare. And it's so hard to talk about, because it's so beautiful. It's like you're seeing some new species of plant that you never knew existed or something.” – Bill Frisell
Lucia Rango canta Piero Ciampi
State-of-the-art CD edition. The discovery of a previously unreleased recording of “Non chiedermi più” – the only duet ever recorded by Piero Ciampi – through the work of Journalist Lucilla Chiodi, has given way to the reissue of this expanded and fully remastered version of the album “Lucia Rango Show”. Recorded by the singer in 1967 with the full involvement and supervision of Ciampi himself in the recording studio, the album was arranged and conducted by Maestro Elvio Monti, and also features…
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…
The Devil's Interval (Alienation)
A visionary artefact from the mind of Steven Stapleton under the guise of Nurse With Wound, drawing some of the best of the project's recent output back into the light, Vasopressin delivers the first ever vinyl edition of "The Devil's Interval (Alienation)", comprising two stunning works of minimal, atmospheric experimentalism, that stand among the most striking and immersive to ever have been created by the project. A stunning and radical rethinking of the terms of ambient music, responding to …
Swing Bridge; Sizzles
First recordings of two Alvin Lucier works centred on the pipe organ: Swing Bridge (2015) for organ, ensemble and pipe wavers, played by the Australian Art Orchestra with Austin Buckett, and Sizzles (1997) for organ and drums.
A Message From A Tribe Boxset
Super Tip! *Cover design B* Tribe’s inaugural release in 1972 would see three editions released in as many years. 1972’s first edition featured a photo of the ocean on the front, the following year’s second edition had a drawing of the Earth, while 1974’s third edition had a colorful illustration of Tribe founders Wendell Harrison and Phil Ranelin’s faces. Each version is unique.
A Message From The Tribe 1st version (LP + 7")
The inaugural release from Tribe is getting its first ever analog reis…
Outspan No 1 + 2
Tip! The two recent Outspan 1 & 2 in a (slightly discounted) bundle. Joining their longstanding dedication to the back catalog of the legendary German imprint, FMP, Cien Fuegos returns with the first ever reissues of two towering artefacts of European free jazz / improvisation from the 1970s, the quartet of Peter Brötzmann, Han Bennink, Albert Mangelsdorff, and Fred Van Hove’s Outspan No 1, and the trio of Peter Brötzmann, Han Bennink, and Fred Van Hove’s Outspan No 2. Both recorded live in 1974…
A Day Of The Sun
** Black Vinyl edition ** A spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz.
They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but without …
Orange Fish Tears
LP version. Eight-page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180-gram LP. In 1972, trumpeter Baikida Carroll and some of his colleagues from the Black Artists Group (more precisely saxophonist/flutist Oliver Lake, trombonist Joseph Bowie, drummer Charles "Bobo" Shaw and trumpeter Floyd LeFlore) took the advice of their friends in the Art Ensemble Of Chicago and left their native Missouri to come and discover the bright lights of Paris for themselves. The following year they would…
Traveller Song / Thanksong
Black Truffle is pleased to announce its first release from celebrated London-based Canadian composer Cassandra Miller. Though her body of mature work stretches back almost twenty years, many listeners were introduced to Miller through the success of her astonishing 2015 Duet for Cello and Orchestra, which sets an imperturbable two-note cello part against a series of increasingly dense orchestrations of an Italian folk melody; in 2019, it was selected by The Guardian as one of the ‘best classica…
Éliane Radigue: Occam Delta XV
Much-needed repress. "I was very honoured to receive this request from Quatuor Bozzini, whose immense talent I already knew. The first meeting was very warm, friendly and familiar, like a reunion of old friends after a long separation." —Éliane Radigue Thus began the collaboration between Quatuor Bozzini and Éliane Radigue. In the hospitable atmosphere of her apartment, the composer conveyed the intricacies of her sound to QB. Her entire career, Radigue has been dedicated to building a body of w…
Sound Anthology (LP)
From the celebrated imprint, Recorthings & Zona Archives, comes “Sound Anthology”, the first ever full length dedicated to the output of Maurizio Nannucci. Gathering sixteen pieces created between 1966 and 2013, the collection is an absolute revelation, blurring the boundaries between musique concrète and noise and unveiling one of Italy’s great journeymen of experimental sound practice lingering in our midst.
Ruinous Spirituality (Book)
Back in mid-2021, the publisher, João Simões, delivered the marvelous “Three Essays on Spirituality and Art” by Henry Flynt, offering swirling insights into one of experimental music’s most philosophically visionary minds. The first publication of writings by Flynt to have appeared in years, it left us wanting for more. Now, thankfully, just a short way down the road, João Simões has attended to that need, bringing out a stunning second volume, “Ruinous Spirituality”, that Flynt describes as a s…
Cloud Cock OO Grand
**Limited Edition of 299 copies.** Merzbow came roaring onto the Tokyo scene in 1979. To this day, the project remains one of the most prolific and aggressively forward-thinking acts in experimental music. Initially a duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani, before settling as the moniker of Akita alone, the project took its name from German artist Kurt Schwitters' pre-war architectural assemblage, The Cathedral of Erotic Misery or Merzbau, and quickly set out to challenge entrenched notions of…