Best of 2025
Traveling Light
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards. Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the majo…
Lost Words
After decades of being the rhythmic architect behind some of underground music's most essential recordings, experimental percussionist Tim Barnes steps forward with Lost Words, a deeply personal collection that celebrates collaboration while exploring new sonic territories. Released on Drag City, this remarkable album brings together an extraordinary cast of musicians who have shared Barnes' musical journey over the years. Lost Words represents both a culmination and a new beginning. The album f…
Noumena
Second volume of unreleased solo material by Tim Barnes, Noumena explores the thresholds of perception with long-form compositions built from minimal gestures, field recordings, and ambient textures. A durational and meditative counterpart to Lost Words.
G.R.
** Tape. Digital download included. ** Hospital Productions has finally reissued the classic G.R. by Deathpile, the true crime album that stands as one of power electronics' most uncompromising and psychologically penetrating works. Originally initiated during the hunt for the Green River Killer and completed after the capture of Gary Ridgway, this album represents a singular achievement in the intersection of criminal psychology and extreme electronic music. This regular edition on black vinyl …
Ghosted III
Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin return with Ghosted III, their most immediate and adventurous collaboration yet. Recorded at Stockholm's Studio Rymden, this third excursion into spontaneous rhythm creation blends ambient neo-jazz, postkraut, and minimal funk with newfound looseness and wild exuberance.
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.
Flowers Are Blooming In Antarctica
Delivering a career-defining statement from the Italian electroacoustic composer and saxophone player, Laura Agnusdei, Maple Death returns with “Flowers are Blooming in Antarctica” - a startling, multifaceted journey through imagistic sonorous worlds resting at the juncture of spiritual jazz, fourth-world minimalism, tropical electronics, tribal futurism, and rigorous electroacoustic experimentalism - rooted in thrilling ecological ideas, that marks the launch of Opale, a new suite of releases c…
Sounds Heard from the Moon Part 2
** Hand numbered edition of 250 ** There is a profound resonance between the practices of Nam June Paik and Park Jiha - separated by generations yet united by a shared impulse to dissolve boundaries between Korean tradition and contemporary expression. Paik, the pioneer of video art, wove shamanic ritual and Buddhist philosophy into the fabric of technological media; Park Jiha channels ancient instrumental voices through the sensibility of experimental minimalism. Both artists inhabit a liminal …
Then Again
November 1978. Henry Cow disbands after a decade of music that redefined the boundaries of experimental rock. November 2022. Four founding members return to the stage. Not to look back - but to improvise the present.
Fred Frith (guitar, violin, electronics), Tim Hodgkinson (keyboards, saxophone, lap steel, electronics), Chris Cutler (drums, percussion), John Greaves (bass, vocals): reunited under the name Henry Now.
No scores. No prepared material. Only the instinct honed over fifty years of son…
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.
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.
Passages... À Travers Le Temps
Octavian Nemescu's music doesn't perform - it initiates. This Metaphon collection reveals Romania's spectral mystic at his most profoundly timeless, where bees' wings and synthesizer drones become pathways to the inaudible."
μP RPF78
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* An anthology of the intensely arresting work of Robert Fesler (1936-2023), revealing many of his compositions (1975 -1987) created with his self-built synthesizers, with as pinnacle the μP RPF78. All music composed and recorded by Robert Fesler at his home on rue Cour Boisacq in Bierges, Belgium.With profound simplicity and devotion, Fesler paints a hermetic inner world with strong emotions of confronting solitude, sensual alienation and trauma…
Les Années 1967-1984
Big tip! *2025 repress. 250 copies limited edition* Metaphon is thrilled to present this collection of 14 phenomenal electronic and electro-acoustic works by French composer Fernand Vandenbogaerde, realized between 1967 and 1984. After his science studies Fernand Vandenbogaerde (1946) studied at the Conservatoire de Roubaix and did various classes and courses with a.o. Jean-Etienne Marie, Olivier Messiaen, Pierre Schaeffer, György Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bruno Maderna. He wrote analyti…
To Blue From Grey in May
Misha Panfilov, the Estonian composer whose name has become synonymous with space-age exotica and cinematic soundscapes, withdraws once more into the solitude of his studio and emerges with To Blue From Grey In May – a profound meditation on sound, time, and seasonal transformation. Recorded amid the ever-changing light and shadows of Tallinn between March and May 2025, this new album stands as a testament to complete immersion in the creative process. Here, Panfilov threads himself into the ver…
Northern Michigan Snowstorms
"Northern Michigan Snowstorms" is an auditory journey that captures the serene beauty and introspective magic of stormy winters nights in the countryside. Each track transports listeneres to cozy cottages nesteld in tall pines. Music that mirrors the serene solitude of a snowy evening, where time slows, allowing the listener to be enveloped in a cocoon of sonic wonder. Ambient layers mimic the gentle wishpering of the wind through snow covered branches. Eight tracks of blurry loops, soft pads, a…
Veruschka
Veruschka, composed by Ennio Morricone and performed by Edda Dell'Orso, is a landmark in Italian soundtrack tradition. The album, first released on CD in 1995 with 14 tracks and later expanded, encapsulates lounge moods, ambient textures, and avant-garde fragments, capturing the ephemeral world of fashion and introspection with atmospheric precision. Double transparent blue vinyl edition of 500.
Un tranquillo posto di campagna
Limited edition numbered to 500 copies. Transparent green vinyl format / 180 grams + CD. One of cinema's greatest composers ventures into his darkest territory. Ennio Morricone's haunting soundtrack to Elio Petri's 1968 psychological thriller A Quiet Place in the Country stands as perhaps his most radical and experimental work - a disturbing sonic journey that abandons melodic comfort for pure psychological terror. The film follows a painter (Franco Nero) in creative crisis who retreats with his…
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.
Fellini Satyricon
Nino Rota's most radical work finally gets deluxe treatment. His groundbreaking Fellini Satyricon score abandons melody for archaic soundscapes - tribal percussion, atonal instruments, dissonant choirs creating an alien musical language. This avant-garde masterpiece evokes ancient worlds through pure sonic imagination. Limited transparent red vinyl edition of 500.