Best of 2023
Stay On It
In 1973, avant-garde ensemble Creative Associates goes on a tour of Europe with Eastman’s brand new piece in their repertoire, and in short: “Stay on It” turns the coordinates of avant-garde music on its head. It is minimal, but unashamedly groovy; it is open to improvisation, grants performers all the freedom they could need, but it isn’t jazz and never slips into the non-committal. It is open to theatrical and performative elements, but also to the poetic and lyrical. It is strict and demands …
Symphony No. 107 - The Bard
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Symphony No. 107 –The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by John Cage and David Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz. Early re…
Occam Hepta I
Edition of 250 copies. Two pieces written by Éliane Radigue at the same period (2014-2018), one instrumental (recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris by Ensemble Dedalus) and the other for analog synthesizer (performed by Ryoko Akama).
In Eliane Radigue's work, we oppose electronic works (composed until the early 2000s) to those written for acoustic instruments. From 2002, the artist began a series of compositions, Occam, orally transmitted living music. In her own words, she fully realized what s…
Graphème Vol.3 (Book)
We are proud to present to you the third edition of Graphème: another series of graphic and experimental music scores by composers from a variety of backgrounds and experience. Each composer offers a rigorous conceptual framework and provides an often sensual dialog between composer, performer, sound and space in spirit of collaborative creativity.
The pieces here represent imaginative and inventive ways to notate a musical vision, making use of innovative approaches – photographic representatio…
Inventions For Radio
A dream come true! *2024 stock* ** 6LP - Strictly Limited Vinyl Box Set with 20 Page Booklet. Original Broadcasts by Barry Bermange, Delia Derbyshire, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Only 500 copies worldwide ** A long standing ‘Holy Grail’ release for fans of Delia Derbyshire & BBC Radiophonic Workshop. The first ever official Release of Inventions For Radi, with a full (lidded) boxset containing 6LPs + 20 Page Booklet. The BBC’s Third Programme aired four radio broadcasts between January 19…
Innocent Canon
** Coloured Vinyl edition ** Original masters licensed by King Records Japan. Includes OBI and insert. 'Innocent Canon' is one of the hopelessly obscure Japanese underground albums that few people know about. It is a kind of unreleased delirious groovadelic soundtrack played by an acid-soaked Japanese big band with powerful drumming, heavy jazz fumes and delirious organ/guitar lines and luminary narration.Inomata was a well-known jazz musician at the time, but like many of his contemporaries, h…
Schafe statt Geigen / “Verena” Vogelzymphon
**Second edition of 250 copies, 20 page photographic book** Henning Christiansen was an incongruous mirror for the paradoxes of 20th century creative practice. He gave his context what it demanded - visionary and singular work, but was so radical that almost no one knew what to do with him, forcing him into the position of an outsider. Of all the composers working within the cradle of Fluxus, his work falls among the closest to its primary intent, destroying hierarchy, orthodoxy, and categorizat…
Di Domenico, Bordin, Marogna
** 200 copies. Includes four pictures by Matta Rosso printed on Favini Crush Mais paper ** Recorded on September 6, 2021 at Outside Inside Studio, Volpago del Montello. Giovanni Di Domenico: electric & acoustic piano, electronics, percussion. Riccardo Marogna: tenor saxophone, clarinet, live electronics, percussion. Matt Bordin: tape loops, synth, electronics, lap steel guitar, soprano sax, percussions. Mixed and mastered by Matt Bordin. Pictures by Marta Rosso.
Bäbi, Nommo, In Concert At Yale University (3LP Bundle)
Just Restocked ** The three groundbreaking Milford Graves LPs in bundle at a special price. Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue ** Babi: By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual …
Future Perfect
First ever release of pioneering radiophonic / experimental / electronic / radiophonics & soundtracks pioneer Elizabeth Parker
Woodwind Multiples
Biggest Tip! Mary Jane Leach is a composer focussed on the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. She has played an instrumental role in NYC’s pioneering Downtown scene alongside Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman, Peter Zummo, Philip Corner and Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as devoting years to the preservation and reappraisal of Julius Eastman’s work since his death in 1990, compiling the ‘Unjust Malaise’ 3CD set in 2005 and editing the 2015 book ‘Gay Guerrilla:…
Ni Envers ni Endroit que Cette Roche Brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) / Recurrence.Expansion
Félicia Atkinson’s Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O’Keeffe) is approached as a meditation, not as meditative music, but as a reflection on the art of creation: how to inhabit one’s creation, how to convey it, domesticate it and live with it. Drawing inspiration from the artist Georgia O’ Keeffe, both in her work as a painter and in the houses in which she lived in New Mexico, and even in the landscapes that surround them, Félicia Atkinson has composed a piece that ev…
Fluxus Anthology 60 Years Anniversary, 1962-2022
** Last copies ** In (heavy and over-sized) wooden box of 80 copies, hand numbered. Ten audiotapes with interviews/statements, tape collages, electronic music, interview, live events with new and some old material. By Charlotte Moorman, David Tudor, Fernad Kriwet, Joe Jones, Robert Filliou, Carolee Schneemann, Allan Kaprow, Richard Maxfield, Emmett Williams, and many more.
What is Fluxus? Fluxus was launched in 1962 as an interdisciplinary, neo-avant-garde artist collective, whose organized act…
Mediterranean Music-Water
**Edition of 350 copies, 16 page book. Previously unreleased! ** Less than a decade ago, the legacy of the Danish multi-disciplinary artist and composer, Henning Christiansen (1932 - 2008), had fallen into obscurity and remained almost entirely out of view. Outside of a small but dedicated following of sound-art fans and scholars, he ranked among the most obscure figures in experimantal music. Thankfully, over the years since, due to the devotion of a small number of labels, his work, in the for…
Out of the Grid – Italian Zine 1978-2006
Huge Tip! Large format, 400 pages Out of the Grid presents a critical selection of 100 Italian zines from 1978 to 2006 that display a broad spectrum of social, political, aesthetic, and technological changes in the use of language and communication strategies across the territory of self publishing.
Widely mapping Italian society, particularly youth culture—over an extended period that can be symbolically defined as the "post-movement" and "pre-internet3.0"—, this outpouring of creativity gave v…
Quartz Mirliton Cassettes
Biggest Tip! Quartz-Mirliton Cassettes has been among the most obscure of 1970s experimental music labels. This forthcoming VOD release, presented in two boxes, throws light on this mysterious cassette venture, its context and associated recordings. Closely associated with the London Musicians Collective, Quarzwas launched by Paul Burwell and David Toop in 1977. Produced in tiny editions with handmade covers, the cassettes largely documented live sessions and field recordings made by a close net…
ae³o & h³ae
* * Much-needed 2023 Reissue * * Drone: as with anything else that rarely changes, it's necessary to latch onto subtleties. What minimal suggestion put forth by a drone is so easily applied to pretty much any impression you might have that, predictably, describing one often leads to vague subjectivities bordering on bad poetry. And as much as I'd love to go around proclaiming my love for "deeply resonant, holy abysses" (not), I wish there were an easier way to communicate the real power of the t…
Puna
Huge Tip! Oiro Pena is a Finnish jazz collective helmed by prolific composer Antti Vauhkonen. Their last album, Puna, recorded in bedrooms, studios and other salubrious locations around Helsinki during 2022, is a mix of lo-fi spiritual jazz, experimental, and avant-garde music forms. It includes four vocal tracks recorded with Merikukka Kiviharju, which feature both original lyrics and those sourced from traditional Finnish folk songs. Vauhkonen first attracted attention as saxophonist in the gr…
Frans Zwartjes (2LP)
This special discounted bundle includes the latest Purge releases, the Mykolaiv Singers's LP, previously unreleased in any form - spare a few tapes distributed in the Mykolaiv region - these are old, old songs (of winter, weddings, war, sex, bread) predominantly sung by groups of women, and all from the villages of Mykolaiv, Ukrain. And the Frans Zwartjes's largely synthesiser-based improvisations for films either unmade or unfinished, played and recorded by Zwartjes between the late 1960s, thro…
Trad, Gras Och Stener: A Collective History (Book)
Huge Tip! 400 pages, 387 Images. The story of the legendary Swedish psych rock band Träd, Gräs och Stenar is also a defining story of alternative culture. Across multiple incarnations, the musicians of this iconic group (whose name translates to “Trees, Grass and Stones”) have drawn on their roots in jazz and the avant-garde, the iconoclastic art and theater of the 1960s, and the back-to-the-land “green wave” movement to blaze a pioneering trail across fifty years of endlessly improvisational, r…