Best of 2025
Improperis - Compositions et enregistrements
6 x Black 140 grs Vinyl each one in spineless sleeve, heavyweight cardboard slipcase/custom numbered at the back, insert-photo individually signed but the artist, marketing sticker. Limited & numbered to 500 copies for the world. Pascal Comelade, the visionary Catalan composer, unveils his latest sonic meditation with Improperis - Compositions et enregistrements, a remarkable work that celebrates four decades of uncompromising instrumental music since his emergence in 1984. This extraordinary co…
Destino Scifosi
Power trio brought together by Yann Gourdon on hurdy gurdy, Jérémie Sauvage on bass and Mathieu Tilly on drums, France take drone and minimalism at their most ecstatic and massive
Is Spring a Sculpture?
"Is Spring a Sculpture?" is a collaboration between David Toop and Rie Nakajima, released as a limited edition CD and book on Lawrence English’s Room40 label. The work consists of a series of sound pieces and text fragments exploring the poetics of objects, ephemeral phenomena, and the ambiguous boundaries between sound, environment, and tactile form. Together, Toop and Nakajima sculpt a listening experience that is elusive and sensorially charged, extending their mutual fascination with the int…
Zulaqrex
*150 copies limited edition* Zulaqrex, named after a mythical being that only exists in Richard Youngs’ head, is the album sequel to the now practically sold out Zerkelus LP and once again features themed artwork and is limited to 150 copies. Like its predecessor, Zulaqrex consists of two side-long tracks both given the same name as the title and once more charting a course into the beyond via a hypnotic approach that even some fantastically stumbling percussion cannot offset. Also employing shi…
Ansamblul Hyperion
It's a miracle that some records ever get made. Right in the middle of Ceausescu's ultra-repressive dictatorship, composer Iancu Dumitrescu managed to arrange for his first LP, a compilation of radical new music by Dumitrescu and three of his Romanian colleagues, all older than him: Ocavian Nemescu, Stefan Niculescu, and Corneliu Cezar. Dumitrescu was -- and remains -- one of the most iconoclastic figures in contemporary music. Often referred to as a spectralist (though he distances himself from…
Forgetting is Violent
Forgetting is Violent, Patrick Shiroishi’s latest solo LP, is his most immediate release yet, expanding the scope not just of his music but of his extramusical considerations. Where his past releases on American Dreams reckoned with racism against Japanese Americans or presented Shiroishi’s saxophone as heard in a parking garage, Forgetting is Violent considers racism as a whole, historical and ongoing, with the urgency it deserves. Here, for the first time, we hear Shiroishi joined by a support…
The People's People Present the Spirit of David
Huge Tip! Frederiksberg Records proudly presents the reissue of The People's People Present The Spirit of David, a remarkable testament to artistic ambition and collective discipline that emerges from the depths of private-press obscurity. This singular album, originally recorded in 1974 and released in 1976, represents one of the most extraordinary achievements in spiritual jazz history - a work so meticulously prepared and passionately executed that it transcends its humble origins to become …
Voiceless Mass
Deluxe 2LP Three-sided with etched artwork on Side 4. Raven Chacon begins by listening. The Diné composer, born in Fort Defiance, Arizona within the Navajo Nation in 1977, describes himself simply as a listener, but the attention he gives to sound encompasses far more than what's immediately audible—it includes what has been deliberately silenced. Yucca Alta Records now presents the first vinyl edition of Voiceless Mass, a three-sided double LP featuring Chacon's 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning titl…
Complete Electronic Works 1955–2012
Complete Electronic Works 1955-2012 Dacapo Records (Book + CD + Complete Digital Discography). In a Gestapo prison cell in 1944, a young Danish resistance fighter saw a star flash through the window and heard music coming from inside herself. The next morning she scratched the melody into the wall with a buckle from her girdle. That woman was Else Marie Pade, and this moment marked the beginning of one of the most remarkable careers in 20th-century electronic music. This special edition book fro…
A Fool's Guide to Reality
Edition of 400. Belgian percussionist and composer Karen Willems presents her debut solo statement with A Fool's Guide to Reality, a work that transforms everyday objects and chance encounters into transcendent musical exploration. Released on Fanny Chiarello & Valentina Magaletti's Permanent Draft label, this album represents Willems' most personal artistic statement - a fearless dive into uncharted sonic territories where convention dissolves into pure experimentation. A serial collaborator wh…
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): the original core reunited under the name Henry Now. The key is in the name - as Clive Bell noted in The Wire, this…
Über Artaud
After forty years, the enigmatic Italian collective Capricorni Pneumatici's lost opus, Über Artaud, finally emerges complete. Originally conceived in 1987 as an electronic sonorization of Antonin Artaud's censored 1947 radio work "Pour En finir avec le Jugement de Dieu", this mysterious project showcases masterful use of FM synthesis via the iconic Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, creating dark ritualistic soundscapes akin to Throbbing Gristle and Nurse With Wound.
Che mi Guardi Attraverso Una Fiamma
Tip! A dream within a dream - Innocent and whimsical song-craft from a vibrant pocket of the contemporary Italian underground via Naples-born Lucia Sole aka La Festa Delle Rane. New split release between ANF and Tokyo friends Conatala.
It’s impossible not to be totally captivated by this. Lucia’s explorative, imperfect song-writing leans into a sense of cranky, domesticated nostalgia and soft melancholy - songs (you can just about call them that) are just about held together by a loose thread …
The Ancients
Bomb! The debut recording by The Ancients, the intergenerational coalition of Isaiah Collier, William Hooker and William Parker formed by Parker to play concerts in conjunction with the Milford Graves' “A Mind-Body Deal” exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and now a working group. Across 2LPs of side-length long-form improvised sets recorded at 2220 Arts & Archives in LA and The Chapel in San Francisco, The Ancients bring the free jazz trio languages first explored by t…
415 Steppsss to DingggDonggg Paradise
Huuuuge Tip! Edition of 200. Where the bells begin, everything else follows. Long before Charlemagne Palestine discovered the thick molasses sonority of the Bösendorfer piano, before the strumming technique that would define his maximalist-minimalist vision, there were bells. Colossal carillon bells in the tower of St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York, where a teenage Palestine hammered hymns into the Manhattan sky before spending hours lost in spectral improvisations that drew Moondog,…
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.
Disillusioned!
Mitar Subotić Suba (Rex Ilusivii) was one of the most prominent ex-Yugoslav producers and sound artists. His work encompassed not only successful production on some of the cult ex-Yugoslav records, but also works in the field of music for theatre, experimental electronic music, and installations. After moving to Brazil in the 1990s, he further explored his interest in local culture and released his essential work "São Paulo Confessions". Almost at the same time, he produced "Tanto Tempo", a semi…
しずくたち / Shizukutachi
Big tip! From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality record…
Låt Oss Vada Genom All Ängslan Tillsammans
Enhet for Fri Musik's “Låt Oss Vada Genom All Ängslan Tillsammans” stands as one of their most evocative works, weaving delicate melodies, tape hiss, spoken word, and dreamlike atmospheres into a truly unique listening experience. This is a perfect opportunity to immerse yourself in their singular universe and own an essential piece of modern experimental music history.
Nuits De La Fondation Maeght
Hugest tip! "Originally released across two edited volumes by Shandar in 1971, the concerts are now being reissued by Strut in a stunning expanded 6 LP vinyl box set for Record Store Day 2025. The set is housed in a hardboard box and features a reprint of the original festival programme, a 12-page over-sized booklet featuring liner notes by Daniel Caux, Jacqueline Caux and Paul Griffiths and stunning restored photos of the festival by Philippe Gras.
Sun Ra’s Nuits de la Fondation Maeght recordin…