Reissues
Musick For Screen
The evocative title hints at Merzbow's engagement with visual media- Masami Akita has consistently maintained interests in film, photography, and visual art alongside his sonic practice. Musick For Screen suggests soundtracks for films that may never have existed - or perhaps for films of the mind. The archaic spelling "Musick" connects this work to pre-modern musical traditions, when sound, magic, and spiritual practice remained intertwined.
Expanded Musik 2
Expanded Musik (2) reflects the duo's growing ambition to push beyond conventional noise parameters into territories where sound becomes sculptural, architectural, almost tactile. The title references Gene Youngblood's concept of "Expanded Cinema"—the idea that film could transcend traditional constraints to become a total sensory experience. By extension, Akita's "Expanded Musik" suggests sound freed from musical conventions, operating on purely phenomenological terms.
Yantra Material Action
Yantra Material Action stands among the most significant documents of early Merzbow. Recorded during 1981—a watershed year that also produced Collection 010—this album captures the project at a moment of intense creative ferment. The "Yantra" concept, drawn from Hindu and Buddhist traditions, refers to geometric diagrams used as meditation aids. By invoking this concept, Akita signals his early interest in spiritual and philosophical frameworks as organizing principles for sonic chaos.
This reco…
Collection: 010
The "Collection" series holds legendary status in Merzbow historiography—a cornerstone of the project's early catalog that established methodologies Akita would refine for decades. Between 1981 and 1982, he released ten volumes on his own Lowest Music & Arts label, each created by mixing multiple tapes into dense sonic collages. Collection 010 represents the culmination of this early methodology.
Originally recorded on October 26, 1981—the same fertile year that produced Yantra Material Action—t…
Telecom Live
Another excavation from Merzbow's formative period, Telecom Live preserves the raw energy and experimental spirit that characterized the duo's earliest explorations. The "Telecom" title suggests communication systems—appropriate for recordings that document Akita and Mizutani developing their own sonic language, transmitting signals across the boundaries of conventional music.
The recordings crackle with the excitement of artists discovering a new sonic language in real-time. Unlike later Merzbo…
Cretin Merz
Cretin Merz emerges from the earliest Merzbow sessions, when the project existed as an improvisational duo exploring the boundaries between music, noise, and performance art. The provocative title—merging "cretin" with "Merz" (the Dadaist concept developed by Kurt Schwitters)—announces the irreverent spirit that has characterized Akita's work from its inception.
These recordings, previously recycled as raw material for other releases, appear here in their original unedited form for the first tim…
Por#1&2 Vol. 2
The second chapter documents Merzbow's genesis—the formative years when Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani were developing the sonic language that would reshape global underground music.
Por#1&2 Vol. 1
The first chapter documents Merzbow's genesis—the formative years when Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani were developing the sonic language that would reshape global underground music.
Muzan No Bi (Beauty Without Mercy)
40th Anniversary Release!! Recorded in 1985 and released by Polydor in 1986, Kazuki Tomokawa's seminal 1980s album “Beauty Without Mercy”. To mark its 40th anniversary, this long-awaited reissue arrives on vinyl! This defining album of the 80s features tracks including “He Was There” about his friend Takohachirō, “Beauty in Tragedy” about his brother's death, “God Was Crying in the Well”, and his signature song “Waltz”. Nakahara Chūya penned the lyrics for “A Fairy Tale” and “Boy”. Numerous dist…
Eternal Music Society
*300 copies limited edition* Eternal Music Society is a Swedish supergroup emerging from the fertile experimental scene of Göteborg and Malmö, centered around the visionary Discreet label. The band unites members from some of the most distinctive underground projects of the past decade, Enhet För Fri Musik (Discreet), Skeppet, Frihet, Neutral, Leda (Knotwilg), and Kröppskanedom (Morc) to name a few. Each known for pushing the boundaries of free music, drone, and avant-rock.
Together, they form a…
Tonight At Noon
"Tonight At Noon" compiles tracks from two earlier recordings sessions: one session from 1957 with Jimmy Knepper on the trombone, the drummer Dannie Richmond, Saxophone player Shafi Hadi and the pianist Wade Legge, which were released on the album "The Clown" (Atlantic 1260). The second session took place in 1961 with Booker Ervin and Roland Kirk on the saxophone, Knepper, the bassist Doug Watkins, Mingus at the piano and Richmond on the drums, and was released on "Oh Yeah" (Atlantic SD 1377).
T…
Time Images
Katharina Schmidt is a percussionist, composer, researcher and radio host. A frequent collaborator, her artistic portfolio includes film music, sound art installations, and radio pieces as well as multichannel compositions. After years of playing drums and piano in various bands, her solo work is influenced by indie, experimental, and improvised music.
The pieces experiment with emergent harmonies, rhythms created by interferences between sine waves, and textures abstracted from field recordings…
Brand X Box Set
Rarities and archival treasures spanning the entire Brand X trajectory - from their earliest unreleased sessions to the final contractual obligation album - plus one of the most unjustly obscure progressive rock albums of the late 70s. A goldmine for admirers of Percy Jones, John Goodsall, and the whole Canterbury-adjacent fusion scene.
Brand X needs no introduction to fusion aficionados. Formed in 1974 by Collins, fretless bass virtuoso Percy Jones, keyboardist Robin Lumley and guitarist John G…
Complete Studio Albums Box Set
Proto-punk MADNESS from Ladbroke Grove! The complete studio works of the most dangerous band in late-60s Britain - three albums of teeth-grinding, psychedelic rock that make the MC5 sound like a boy band. Mick Farren and his merry gang of social deviants laid the blueprint for EVERYTHING that followed: punk, Hawkwind, Motörhead, the whole bloody lot. This is where it started.
The Social Deviants emerged from London's underground in 1967, fueled by the agit-prop satire of the Fugs, the sonic ter…
Complete Studio Albums Box Set
The complete studio works of one of the most uncompromising groups in the history of European avant-rock. Born from the ashes of Henry Cow in 1978, Art Bears distilled the political fury and musical adventurism of their parent band into three albums of dark, brilliant songs that remain as bracing and relevant today as when they were recorded.
The story begins with a schism. During sessions for what was intended as a Henry Cow album, disagreements arose over content - Fred Frith and Chris Cutler …
Complete Studio Albums Box Set
One of the most singular and influential groups to emerge from the European avant-garde, finally given the definitive treatment. This box gathers the complete studio works of Slapp Happy - the German/British/American trio whose blend of naïve pop, chanson, bossa nova and experimental textures created a template for intelligent art-pop that resonates to this day.
Formed almost as a joke in Hamburg 1972, when British experimental composer Anthony Moore - frustrated by Polydor's rejection of his av…
First Utterance
There are albums that defy categorization, records that exist in a space entirely their own. Comus' 1971 debut is one such work - an album that, over fifty years later, still sounds like nothing else ever recorded. Formed in Beckenham in the late 1960s, Comus emerged from the same South London arts scene that nurtured a young David Bowie - indeed, they performed at his legendary Beckenham Free Festival in August 1969. But while their contemporaries in the British folk revival looked back to trad…
Complete Studio Albums Box Set
The complete and essential discography of one of the most uncompromising and intellectually rigorous bands to emerge from the Canterbury scene - finally available again in pristine Japanese mini-LP sleeve editions with remasters on high-quality SHM-CD!
Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson formed Henry Cow while students at Cambridge University in 1968, and what followed was a decade of radical, politically charged, absolutely brilliant music that drew equally from free improvisation, contemporary class…
Layering Buddha
For AI-41 Astral Industries presents a vinyl reissue of Robert Henke’s multifaceted concept album ‘Layering Buddha’. An erudite masterclass on sampling and composition, ‘Layering Buddha’ encapsulates the material process of metamorphosis and a well of nascent, ever-present potentialities. This new edition comes remastered by Henke himself.
Originally released in 2006, ‘Layering Buddha’ began with a curious encounter with the ‘Buddha Machine’ - a pocket-sized, battery powered playback device tha…
Tour de France
**2025 Stock. 180g One Translucent Red and one Blue Vinyls, Includes picture inner sleeves and a full-size (12") 20-page booklet with lyrics/text. ** Released in 2003 as Tour de France Soundtracks and later remastered simply as Tour de France, this eleventh studio album by Kraftwerk takes their long-standing fascination with movement and technology and applies it to one of their great offstage obsessions: road cycling. Conceived to mark the centenary of the Tour de France, it arrived seventeen y…