Best of 2025
A selection from The Brondesbury Tapes
CD Edition, newly remastered by David Singleton for 2025, with greatly improved audio.Rare 1968 Home Recordings by Giles, Giles & Fripp Finally Receive Definitive Vinyl Treatment, Featuring Early Appearances by Ian McDonald and Judy Dyble. The story of King Crimson's genesis has gained a crucial new chapter with the release of The Brondesbury Tapes 2025 Remaster, an extraordinary collection that opens the doors to the intimate creative laboratory where progressive rock's future was quietly takin…
The Cheerful Insanity of...
The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp reveals King Crimson's gentle 1968 genesis - a landmark British psychedelia album featuring the Giles brothers and young Robert Fripp. This breezy, Beatles-esque collection showcases burning Frippian guitar work and the original "I Talk To The Wind." The 2025 Panegyric reissue removes spoken interludes for improved flow. Essential prehistory.
Nightclouds + How Do I Know If My Cat Likes Me
From the always remarkable hands of Blank Forms come two new stunning LPs from the Stockholm based composer Ellen Arkbro: “Nightclouds”, comprising five minimalist improvisations for solo organ, and “How do I know if my cat likes me?”, made within a trio comprising Hanne Lippard and Hampus Lindwall, interweaving wry conceptualism and topical humor with poetics, voice, texture, and tone. Each absolutely brilliant and distinct, they stand as some of the most exciting works we've encountered from A…
Lapsikuninkaan Fanfaari
Juho Toivonen's third album navigates memory's fluid terrain through off-key piano, tape loops, and spectral melodies. Featuring Ramo Sinnemäki's trumpet, this Nordic ambient masterwork recalls Basinski while exploring childhood fragments and imagined futures. Pure Scandinavian melancholy—essential contemporary ambient.
Zerkelus
*150 copies limited edition* Richard Youngs is neither a stranger to Fourth Dimension Records or creating music from a disparate array of sources that then fall somewhere near that space where immersive drones converge with something altogether more frayed, ravaged or disquiet. 'Zerkelus', named after an imaginary Babylonian king, comprises two lengthy side-long parts, with the first being akin to something of an extended orchestral tune-up utilising voice, oboe and indiscernible sources to crea…
Nightclouds
Inspired by minimalistic icon La Monte Young and guitarist Allan Holdsworth, Nightclouds is a powerful collection of jazz pieces for solo pipe organ. Over long improvisation and shorter compositions, Swedish composer and installation artist Ellen Arkbro employs her usually epic chord structures and adds in a more self-reflective tone than previously.
How Do I Know If My Cat Likes Me
Inspired by minimalistic icon La Monte Young and guitarist Allan Holdsworth, Nightclouds is a powerful collection of jazz pieces for solo pipe organ. Over long improvisation and shorter compositions, Swedish composer and installation artist Ellen Arkbro employs her usually epic chord structures and adds in a more self-reflective tone than previously.
Electric Element
Lost for a decade, John Surman and Karin Krog's “Electric Element” emerges from a failed theatre project as a “wonderfully weird vocal and electronic experiments”. On the album the duo abandon traditional jazz for visceral explorations featuring wind synth, processed vocals, and granular synthesis. An “enigmatic time slip” bridging Kosmische, Industrial, and futuristic electronics.
Riddles of the Sphinx
Lost 1977 electronic score by Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge, crafted with enigmatic Denys Irving on modified Moog/ARP synthesizers delivering ten hypnotic sequences of minimalist repetition. Transferred from BFI archives after master tapes vanished, this new 300-copy reissue follows the long out-of-print 2016 edition. Essential Riddles Of The Sphinx finally unearthed.
Decay Music 10: And I Entered Into Sleep
*250 copies limited edition*
La Cantata Rossa per Tall el Zaatar
A devastating cry for Palestine, nearly five decades later, this radical 1977 masterpiece returns to vinyl via Black Sweat Records. Demetrio Stratos, Gaetano Liguori, and Giulio Stocchi created a powerful sonic testament to the 1976 Tall el Zaatar massacre - a devastating blend of free jazz, experimental vocals, and Mediterranean traditions. More than music, it's unflinching historical testimony that remains painfully relevant today.
Aftershock
Bomb! *100 copies limited edition* Aftershock marks the fierce vinyl debut of Finnish trio The Fuckings, a privately issued LP (edition of 100) capturing four slabs of unrelenting, high-intensity free improvisation. Recorded in Helsinki in November 2024 and released in April 2025, the album is a visceral tribute to the legacy of boundary-pushing sonic violence. Composed of Janne Martinkauppi (saxophone), Ilkka Vekka (guitar), and Petri Pirtilä (drums), the group channels a storm of raw interplay…
Troupe Asnimer & J.H. Burch
A trance-inducing journey into Morocco’s Ait Bouguemez valley: multi-instrumentalist J.H. Burch joins the all-female Troupe Asnimer to revive Amazigh oral traditions. Their hypnotic choral songs, enriched with global instrumentation, bridge ancestral ritual and contemporary sound.
Star Rover
Visionary Walter Maioli and electronic innovator John Zandijik’s 1980s late-night sessions fuse ancient flutes and cutting-edge technology, creating a cosmic soundscape that bridges ethnomusicology, psychedelia, and electronic experimentation.
Star Rover - Troupe Asnimer & J.H. Burch
Easing further into 2025, following an amazing year that’s seen the release of killer LPs by Roberto Laneri, Lay Llamas, Zia Mohiuddin Dagar & Zia Fariduddin Dagar, David Edren, Klaus Wiese, and others, the always incredible Black Sweat returns with two absolute stunners: “Star Rover”, a never before issued, double LP archival recording made by Walter Maioli and John Zandijka sometime around 1984, and a stunning self-titled from JH Burch, made in collaboration with Troupe Asnimer, a Moroccan all…
Passages... À Travers Le Temps
Huge tip! *Hardboard linen LP box including a 12X12 8 page booklet with notes (in English) and photos from the artist. 250 copies limited edition* Metaphon label unveils a landmark reissue of Passages / À Travers Le Temps, showcasing Romanian spectral music visionary Octavian Nemescu at his most radically inventive. These two seminal works from 1981-1983 represent the composer's profound engagement with temporal perception and sonic cosmology, now available in their first complete authorized edi…
Ziua Fără Sfârșit
Before spectral music had a name, Romanian polymath Corneliu Cezar was crafting electro-acoustic revelations. Ziua fără sfârșit collects his 1967-75 recordings - radical explorations of natural resonance that predate Western spectralism by a decade.