Composition / Contemporary

A beautifully recorded and produced cycle of pieces that combine complexity and precision with rich and unfamiliar timbres. The ensemble pieces amplify and enrich a core piano with various combinations of harmonium, double bass, violin, percussion, Hungarian zither, citara bassa, bowed cymbals, alto clarinet, melodica, sampler and field recordings, all sparsely but powerfully deployed. This is a deep and powerful music with both crystalline clarity and cinematic low frequency power. And no fat o…

Former Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith pays homage to three giants of contemporary classical music: John Cage, Morton Feldman and Earle Brown. In his own inimitable fashion, Frith has tried to incorporate the chosen composer's own working methods into each of the three pieces that make up The Previous Evening. As he explains in the enclosed booklet regarding his John Cage homage: 'Fragments of text heard in Part 1 were taken at random from Cage's book Silence. Tape editing, the structure of the e…

Hania Rani announces "On Giacometti" a tender meditation on the life and art of Alberto Giacometti and family. "On Giacometti" is a collection of beautiful recordings inspired by the renowned artist and family and features some of Rani's most profoundly delicate compositions to date. Invited by film director Susanna Fanzun, to score her forthcoming documentary on the legendary artist Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the Swiss mountains to compose in blissful isolation. As Rani expl…

*300 copies limited edition* Timeless minimalist approach to composition braced by repetition and playfulness. Alberto Lizarralde’s music reflects calm, focus and intimacy. Ethereal and atmospheric, his pieces operate within the digital as well as the analogue realm in equal measures. Sampling, Midi sequencing and field recordings are the instrumentation used in these 15 songs recorded on a four track reel to reel tape. Highest possible recommendation for fans of Suso Saiz, Jon Hassell, Eno or H…

impakt Records presents the new record by Huhn | Schönegg | Mahnig "Was ficht dich an?" with Leonhard Huhn (alto saxophone), Stefan Schönegg (double bass) and Dominik Mahnig (drums).

Fo[u]r Alto is the quadrupling of the alto saxophone as a unified body of sound. Since the ensemble was founded in 2008, the four Berlin saxophonists Frank Gratkowski, Christian Weidner, Leonhard Huhn (until 2018 Benjamin Weidekamp) and Florian Bergmann have found an unmistakable sound language characterised by artistic uncompromisingness and continuous musical research. In autumn 2012, they released their first CD "4 compositions by Frank Gratkowski" on the English label Leo Records. Now follow…

Osaka-born and New York-based pianist Erika Dohi is a multi-faceted artist with an eclectic musical background. From highly polished traditional classical to bold improvisation, she is a dynamic performer whose timeless style and unidiomatic technique sets her apart in contemporary NYC avant-garde circles. Dohi’s vast repertory is impressive, but what makes her truly such a barrier-defying artist is what lies ahead. I, Castorpollux, Dohi’s debut solo album, is a profound personal excavation set …

Bram De Looze is a Belgian pianist and composer whose distinct musical vision has found its way through both solo projects and collaborations. His unique technical skill and musical maturity have earned him considerable critical acclaim back home as his work spotlights his far-ranging interests – from traditional classical piano music, to solo improvisations that have often been compared to Keith Jarrett and Jason Moran.

Seventh in the MFR Contemporary Series. Ezequiel Menalled composes a new soundtrack for Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), performed by Ensemble Modelo62 and recorded at their Hague studio on 13 March 2020. Six acts span the film's structure, internalising the frantic editing in shifting layers, pulled focus and forced perspective. Realised in the spirit of Eisenstein's wish that a new score be written every twenty years, the music becomes a speculative meta-version of the film.

l'infini des possibles is a set of twelve studies for solo piano, written by French composer Bruno Duplant in 2019. The score consists of lowercase letters (a, b, c, d, e, f, g) and spaces in between, which leaves the pianist an openness for interpretation and artistic determinations. The Belgian pianist/conductor Guy Vandromme intensely studied these 12 pieces via in-depth discussions with Duplant over two years, and realized them for this recording of a double CD in the spring of 2021, on a St…

"All is alive in Liza Lim's music, permeated by unstressed urgency. It's hard to think of anything less Kafkaesque than her Annunciation Triptych, in which she shatters the Romantic trope to pieces, rebuilds it in other ways, and uses the orchestra as a historical and cultural prism wherein the women - Sappho, Mary, and Fatimah - are portrayed as sources of transhistorical light in every movement. Each 'prism-orchestra' is, moreover, an assemblage itself, filtering its figure's radiance in unpre…

"The radically mind-expanding challenges of Catherine Lamb’s string quartets have given me great joy and satisfaction. Imagining and creating the sonic relations yields an integration of number and sound, offering a pathway toward ultimate oneness. Opening ears and mind to infinitely rich patterns, these resonances penetrate deeply to the core. The recording is not an endpoint, but part of a broadening process, a continuous evolution of abstract relationships becoming concrete, erasing artificia…

Proudly co-produced with Teriyaki records, this volume is simply Unique!

With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One…

Marcos Díaz has been part of Buenos Aires underground for many years, being in projects like Bosques and making solo music under the pseudonym Entidad Animada (animated entity). Under this project, Marcos has explored sounds that involve a mix of feedback/distortion through synthesizers, guitars and drum machines that hint at the influence of Stereolab, Spacemen 3, and mid-nineties shoegaze. However, there are also ambient soundscapes with a slight rubbed of the ritualistic psychedelia of the Po…

L’Occhio Del Vedere is a one-hour piece by the trio of Giovanni Di Domenico (piano), Silvia Tarozzi (violin, 1/16th of a tone tuned violin), and Emmanuel Holterbach (large frame drum). In July 2022, while Di Domenico was working on an artistic residency at GMEA in Albi, France, he and Tarozzi and Holterbach made a trio recording, which was later completed by Di Domenico as a one-hour piece. Within a ‘triptych’ structure framework, sparse melodies discreetly and repeatedly emerge from the three i…

Matthias Kranebitter has written the odd piece without electronics in the past. However, the use of electronics in his music usually is a given. At the same time, the way in which electronics are employed in his work is anything but a matter of course. They are not simply an instrument amongst others, they don't serve as an atmospheric background, a synthesized ear-tickler, or formal glue which is meant to cover up fractures within the musical material. Rather, they themselves embody such fractu…

"In the past, I was interested in themes of sound, such as, 'new sound', 'expressive sound' and 'metaphoric sound'. In fact, I still enjoy these expressions. However, my obsession with expressing sound itself has decreased, and I instead want to express my feelings, my thoughts and my life, with sound. With this change, I have enjoyed taking a closer look at my temperament, personality, and life, and have tried to display the results through sound. To better articulate myself, I have avoided any…

If you enter into the music of Martin Smolka, prepare yourself to come face-to-face with profound and enigmatic conflicts. The music of Martin Smolka resonates straight into the core of a suffocated planet, suffering through unending catastrophes in the political-social spheres. The Aleph Guitar Quartet and soprano Daisy Press present a selection from Smolka's oeuvre that spans almost 25 years.

If you enter into the music of Martin Smolka, prepare yourself to come face-to-face with profound and enigmatic conflicts. The music of Martin Smolka resonates straight into the core of a suffocated planet, suffering through unending catastrophes in the political-social spheres. The Aleph Guitar Quartet and soprano Daisy Press present a selection from Smolka's oeuvre that spans almost 25 years.

"Commenting on the folly of war, eight independent voices and texts compete for attention, reflecting the tumult of emotions...The impeccable recording quality allows us to appreciate the fine..." — Gramophone Magazine

Karlheinz Stockhausen's early percussion works on two CDs: Zyklus, Kontakte for piano and percussion with tape, Mikrophonie for tam-tam, Refrain and Schlagtrio, with new transfers from the analog tapes.

Edition RZ presents Inventionen by composers Bogusław Schaeffer, Ricardo Mandolini and Sukhi Kang. "Berlin 80 II" composed 1980 for piano, synthesizer and 4-track tape."Fabulas II" composed 1980."Inventio", subtitled Musicae clavichordii et sonorum artificiosorum, composed 1984 for piano and tape.  Comes with insert. Runouts are stamped except for 'Lt - B - II' which is etched.

A rare original issue of Accordéon De Concert by Jean Luc Manca.

Long out of print, Diamanda Galás' incendiary 1984-released second album is available once more, remastered by Brooklyn's Heba Kadry

** In process of Stocking ** De-formation: Piano Variations, a work for solo piano. Composed and performed by Diamanda Galas in September 2019, the 21:19 minute piece is based on the expressionist poem Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital). Written by German poet Georg Heym in 1912, Das Fieberspital's depiction of warehoused patients of yellow fever presaged the treatment and hiding of infected and damaged soldiers later in WWI. De-formation depicts a march and delivery of maimed and infected so…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "As a chamber music ensemble the saxophone quartet has a surprisingly long pedigree. The first work for it was written in 1857, less than twenty years after Adolphe Sax invented it, a Saxophone Quartette Club was founded in New York in 1879, and by 1896 a California Saxophone Quartet was on tour. While the modern saxophone quartet is now most likely to be associated with the jazz tradition, the standard ensemble of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "No matter how weird, how outrageous, how experimental or how avant garde musicians and composers try to be, it’s a pretty good chance dear Great-Grandfather John Cage did it first. And it’s a pretty good guess that even the most willing listeners and seasoned DJ’s may get pushed to the edge listening to some of his compositions. This makes me smile. I’ve been pushed and came back and forced myself to go farther and farther. Growth is hard. Endurance and stam…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "Gottschalk’s works and if you are looking for new-to-you works, this album would be a welcome one to the audio library. The title work of the album starts an eerie flicker of sound from hollow trills that swell to the orchestra’s entrance with a similar character and trills echoed. As the first movement continues, Parisi’s aptitude for both conventional and contemporary techniques are apparent with technical passages sounding effortless as he spans the range…

*2022 Stock.* Freude (Joy, 2nd Hour from Klang) for 2 harps (2005) consists of 24 moments, each linked with a liturgical verse sung by one or both harpists during performance. This piece is one of Stockhausen's most lyrical pieces in the  traditional sense, although it is still based on a chromatic tonality.- Stockhausenspace.blogspot.com

Building on the back of their stunning release of Ensemble 0’s rendering of "Femenine" issued earlier this year, Sub Rosa returns with "Two Extended Pieces for Four Pianos", featuring brand new recording of two seminal works composed by Julius Eastman between 1970 and 1980 - "Evil N*gger" (1979) and "Crazy N*gger" (1980) - realised by Nicolas Horvath, Melaine Dalibert, Stephane Ginsburgh, and Wilhem Latchoumia.

Gondwana Records announces 'Goodbyes' the debut album from Estonian pianist and composer, Hanakiv, a deeply beautiful, meditative piano album featuring special guest Alabaster dePlume.

**500 copies transparent blue 180gr. vinyl** The new Eyvind Kang album was recorded in Italy with a 25 piece mixed orchestra of traditional strings and winds, with the addition of Moog synthesizer, accordion, percussion, field recordings and voice. It features vocals by Alan Bishop, co-founder of Sun City Girls. Eyvind Kang conductor, chironomy, violaAlan Bishop voice, field recordingsMarco Dalpane accordion, moog synthesizerMG_INC Orchestra:Ferenc Vojnic Hajduk 1st violin; Eliana de Candia 1st …

Highly imaginative stories, images that become stories, and mosaics with teeth are the focus of Raymond et Des Palmes, Francesco Cavaliere and Leonardo Pivi’s contribution to the collective exhibition Raymond curated by Luca Trevisani, and in collaboration with Olaf Nicolai, as a collateral event to the Palermitan edition of Manifesta 12 in 2018. The exhibition, an homage to Raymond Roussel, takes place at the Grand Hotel et des Palmes - where Roussel was found dead in 1933 - and finds the inspi…

Amgen presents Jean-Luc Guionnet's Dyslexic Harp (Deciphered In The Dark). Concert for pedal harp solo. Recorded, edited, mixed and mastered by Jean-Luc Guionnet. Recorded 17th and 18th of January 2010 at q-02, Brussels

* Digipack CD* The lightning rod for Alabaster DePlume’s luminous follow up to the widely-acclaimed 2020 release To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1 was personal. “Someone was going through a thing,” says the Mancunian poet-performer. “I said, ‘go forward in the courage of your love’. And then I thought 'yeah, that's what I need to hear as well’.” Gold is a sonorous double album that celebrates the communal act of making music and the relationships that can be explored when you purposefully avoid …

'Night Blossoms' is French composer/pianist Melaine Dalibert’s sixth solo album, consisting of new compositions from 2019-2021. Of the six pieces on this album, 'A Rebours', 'Windmill', 'Eolian Scape', and 'Sisters' were written around the same time as most of the pieces for his 2020 album 'Infinite Ascent'. While 'Infinite Ascent' featured his intuitive compositions in a pop style, 'Night Blossoms' features works further developed with his algorithmic approach, which has been his long-term purs…

Five Xenakis works for ensemble recorded in New York in 1996 with the composer's participation: Akrata, Echange, Xas, Okho and the first recording of A la Mémoire de Witold Lutoslawski, by the ST-X Ensemble.

The first complete recording of Giacinto Scelsi's music for double bass, played by Robert Black with guests on cello, harp, tam-tam and second bass, including Ko-Tha in Fernando Grillo's transcription.

Modernity in Russian music emerged despite its struggles with the Soviet regime in the early 20th century, with the mystical vision of Scriabin’s musical legacy providing a foundation on which to build. In these acclaimed albums we discover Medtner’s life affirming Sonatas, and hear Lourié’s journey from Impressionism to pioneering Cubist conceptions. Mosolov’s works are bold and complex, while Roslavets new tonal system brings ‘fi re and ice’, and Stanchinsky’s sophisticated virtuosity anticipa…