Best of 2025
Irma
In 1977, for Brian Eno’s Obscure Records, I made a version of Irma. These notes arise from that experience and explore how the piece can be performed. Irma is an unusual score—printed on a single 50cm x 50cm sheet. Its notation consists of verbal fragments from Tom Phillips' A Humument, referencing “libretto,” “decor and mise-en-scène,” or “sounds.” These categories are arranged separately, with stave notation at the bottom. At first glance, it appears indeterminate—requiring preparation before …
Ensemble Pieces
A split album by Christopher Hobbs, John Adams, and Gavin Bryars, released in 1975 as the second title on Brian Eno's imprint Obscure. The album includes two pieces by Hobbs and one each by Adams and Bryars. Side A opens with the experimental compositions of Hobbs, followed by Adams’ spoken-word and orchestral work, while Side B concludes with Bryars’ dissonant, frontier-classical ambient piece, featuring contributions from Brian Eno and Derek Bailey. "Aran" and "McCrimmon Will Never Return" (19…
And I Heard a Voice
Estonian vocal ensemble Vox Clamantis and their leader Jaan-Eik Tulve have established themselves among the leading interpreters of Arvo Pärt’s music over a quarter-century of close collaboration with the composer – a relationship that builds on the almost half a century long artistic partnership between Pärt and producer Manfred Eicher. Of the ensemble’s ECM New Series recording The Deer’s Cry, the BBC Music Magazine wrote that “the level of artistry necessary to achieve the kind of living, bre…
Arctic Summer
"The richness of these recordings cannot be overstated." — A Closer Listen
Zur Mitte / Hindurch / Hinauf
**Edition of 200 with artwork by Lutz Beckmann and liner notes by Ralf Hoyer.** Released on occasion of his 75th birthday, Edition Telemark presents the first LP since 1986 by German composer and sound artist Ralf Hoyer. Hoyer's versatile new music oeuvre includes works for chamber ensembles, choir, orchestra, chamber opera, as well as electronic, electro-acoustic and multi-media pieces. Hoyer grew up in East Berlin where he worked as a sound engineer for the GDR record company VEB Deutsche Scha…
Love
Last copies, sold out at source * Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert. * Founded in 1969 by the pianist Ole Mathiessen, the bassist Henrik Hove, the saxophonist Jesper Nehammer, and drummer Jon Finsen, Tordenskjolds Soldater was one of the great - albeit short-lived - projects in Copenhagen’s thriving scene of free improvisation and jazz of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Across the proceeding decade or so, Denmark had provided…
Give the Vibes Some
Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal's 1974 Palm masterpiece receives its first proper reissue. Recorded during Parisian exile, this exploratory album showcases revolutionary vibraphone techniques across four essential tracks - a crucial document of jazz's global underground network.
Learning
‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the la…
Magnetism
Super Tip! Kali Malone and Drew McDowall have orbited each other's work for over a decade, their individual explorations of sustained tones and harmonic space suggesting an inevitable collaboration. When they finally entered McDowall's Brooklyn studio together, what emerged on Magnetism transcends mere musical compatibility. Malone has spent recent years extending the legacy of Éliane Radigue, redefining what electronic minimalism can accomplish through pipe organ and synthesizer. Her compositio…
Fire of God's Love
Sister Irene O'Connor’s Fire of God's Love, reissued by Freedom To Spend, is a visionary 1976 private-press recording from Australia, blending devotional song with experimental electronics and echo-drenched vocals. The album’s raw spirituality, home studio inventiveness, and tape manipulations grant it a unique place in outsider pop, now made newly available to contemporary listeners in beautifully restored form.
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.
Conduite Forcée
** Edition of 300. One time pressing. No digital. ** In 1934, Swiss engineers completed the Chandoline Hydroelectric Plant, channeling Alpine water through 16 kilometers of concrete pipe. By 2023, the turbines had stopped. The plant was empty, silent - a cathedral to obsolete energy with perfect acoustics and nothing left to say. Christian Marclay saw an instrument. For the inaugural Biennale Son in 2023, the artist who made his name destroying vinyl in 1980s New York turned the entire hydroelec…
Schwingungen
2025 Repress. Ash Ra Tempel's masterpiece, an immortal record of stunning beauty. As for the info we refer to Julian Cope´s review in his “Krautrocksampler” Book, Publisher "'Beware of Schwingungen!' That should be the large sticker on the front of all copies of this record. For it is dangerous to be casually introduced to something that is life-changing, as I found out to my cost when first listening to this record. It all starts fairly simply and without any cause for alarm – 'Look at Your Sun…
Bruits De L'Ombre
200 numbered copies, with handmade and buffered cover. Contains a A4 insert. Experimental trio Los Pélieu Lovers announce the release of Bruits de l'Ombre, a groundbreaking album that pays tribute to French beat poet Claude Pélieu through innovative sound collage and cut-up techniques. The project emerged from Tom Val, Maximilien Douche, and Magali Genuite reading Pélieu's poetry aloud while music played in the room, inspiring them to create something beyond traditional music and poetry readings…
White Phosphorus (Chris Connelly plays Throbbing Gristle)
Huge Tip! Industrial music legend Chris Connelly returns to his first love with White Phosphorus (Chris Connelly plays Throbbing Gristle), a suitably uncompromising homage to the "random, tense, scary & compulsively fascinating" phase of industrial music's catalysers and ur-agitators. Having carved a twisted career with behemoths Ministry and Revolting Cocks over the past 40 years, starting life with the formidable Fini Tribe and collaborating with disparate characters such as Killing Joke, Caba…
New Music
200 copies, black vinyl. A meeting of two uncompromising sound artists, Carlos Giffoni and Joachim Nordwall, New Music fuses pulsating electronic rhythms, immersive drones, and abstract textures into a vivid, physical listening experience. Emerging from the outer edges of techno, noise, and electro-acoustic composition, both artists channel their distinct sonic vocabularies into a shared space of tension and transformation. Giffoni's deep synth drones collide with Nordwall's ritualistic sense of…
When I sing, I slip into the microphone. Into that void, I bring comrade "prayers", then, turning to face the outside, together we explode
Like on the early solo Haino album that shares the group’s name (released on P.S.F. in 1993), the instrumentation swims in reverb (the use of which Akiyama recalls as ‘a kind of point of the band’), often obscuring the instrumental sources. On the short opening piece, a distant reed instrument arcs long buzzing melodies over a bed of cymbals and gongs, like a psychedelic take on Tibetan music. The epic second part, occupying almost 50 minutes, begins as a splayed, near-formless cloud of electric…
Mégapneumes
Gil J. Wolman's revolutionary Mégapneumes reveals the radical origins of sound poetry. This essential collection documents the Lettrist pioneer's organic infra-language from 1960s recordings, including material found on his tape recorder after death - anticipating Chopin and Gysin by a decade
Phardah - Humans and Beings
**2nd pressing, screen printed cover, risoprinted obi, letterpressed insert edition of 200** Free Jazz band with a psychedelic touch, Phardah, is set to release their debut album Humans and Beings on the 2nd of May, 2025. The band features veterans of the Finnish experimental music and Free Jazz scene: saxophonist Sami Pekkola, double bassist Eero Tikkanen, and electric guitarist Topias Tiheäsalo, along with the younger generation drummer Veeti Hietala. The album was recorded and mixed by Teemu…