Degrees of transparency
This is volume 2 in a collection created in collaboration with Echonance Festival, Amsterdam, coming just one year after volume 1 (Phill Niblock / Looking for Daniel) and just in time for the third edition of the festival in February 2025. Here is and opus centered on the piano by composer and sound artist Gabriel Paiuk. Those thought provoking pieces are rendered with exquisite precision and depth by the extraordinary musicians, pianist Reinier van Houdt, Maurice Quartet, and Paiuk himself.
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…
Raoul De Smet
Big tip! *300 copies limited edition* First LP in the ‘Signature Series’, a small new series in the Metaphon catalog, documenting previously unreleased archive works of less known composers. Metaphon presents their ‘signature’ in the most personal and elementary way.
Raoul De Smet (1936), mainly known for his numerous instrumental and chamber music works, started composing in the early 1960’s. Between 1974 and 1989 he also recorded several electro-acoustic compositions at the IPEM in Ghent, one …
Obras Electroacústicas 1969-1981
Eduardo Polonio (1941–2024) was one of the foundational figures in the emergence and development of electroacoustic music in Spain. The anthology "Eduardo Polonio: Obra electroacústica 1969–1981" revives his legacy with a selection of essential pieces from his early electroacoustic period. The album includes eight compositions created between 1969 and 1981, spanning from Polonio's early experiments at the Alea Electronic Music Laboratory in Madrid to his later work at the Phonos Laboratory in Ba…
Zone Grise
Didier Rotella’s "Zone Grise" unfolds in a space of perpetual transformation, where sound navigates between density and purity, acoustic and electronic, structure and fluidity. Catharsis combines hybrid instruments and spatialized textures to evoke a dramatic journey of evolution and renewal, while Fragrances draws inspiration from perfume composition, blending musical elements into a rich, multi-layered tapestry. Mogari reflects on ritual and humanity through augmented instruments and poetic ge…
Time – Space – Sound – Light
Time of year and day, light; warmth, coolness; wind, rain; breath of air, babbling of the stream; People and other beings going about their lives: a strangely unpredictable mix of expected and unexpected events that contribute to the precise conditions of the moment in which we find ourselves. The here and now conveys a special feeling and a unique sound identity. Mason enables us to connect with times, places, people and situations that go far beyond the here and now. Mason is one of the most i…
Collected Works
Box set on Nonesuch with 27 discs (26 CDs + 1 DVD) in wallets, plus two booklets (132 + 120 pages). Nonesuch Records releases Steve Reich Collected Works, a twenty-seven-disc box set featuring music recorded during composer Steve Reich's forty years on the label, on March 14, 2025, available to pre-order here. The collection represents six decades of Reich’s compositions, ranging from It’s Gonna Rain (1965) to first recordings of his two latest works: Jacob’s Ladder (2023) and Traveler’s Prayer …
Habitat
Big Tip! 2024 stock. 200 copies, white vinyl. There’s something familiar in the sounds that harp player Angélica Salvi creates. In her previous record, “Phantone”, it was easy to get lost in the idea of nostalgia / past that could be listened coming from her harp. For “Habitat”, her second record, the approach is tremendously different. She doesn’t linger in the past, she expects you to fulfill the present side-by-side with her. The idea was to create music that could be played and processed in …
Big Majestic
Ellen Reid — the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and sound artist renowned for her “ineffably moving” (LA Times) works that span opera, sound design, film scoring, avant-pop, and so much more — announces Big Majestic, a stunning new album out August 30 via Amsterdam Records / Eclipse Projects. It’s a transformative and meditative work that finds Reid exercising her towering compositional command and casting her unique voice into fresh shapes as it traverses the worlds of ambient, jazz, post-rock…
Spektralmaskin
"Spektralmaskin, a collaborative album by the Norwegian musicians Jo David Meyer Lysne and Peder Simonsen, owes its name to a sort of prospecting: the process of sliding e-bows—small magnetic motors of adjustable speeds used to sustain sounds, here of Lysne’s own design—along guitar strings to produce harmonics. As these harmonics can occur erratically, the technique rewards the musician patient enough to scoot the e-bow about the string, waiting for the delicate sounds to crest. The duo’s fasci…
Explicit Isolation
Tip! Explicit isolation is the third album by the international collective E/I, led by composer and percussionist Szymon Pimpon Gąsiorek. The group’s seven core members came together while studying at Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory and the Royal Danish Academy of Music. For this latest release, they are joined by Slovenian musicians Samo Kutin (hurdy-gurdy) and Kaja Draksler (organ), alongside Danish tuba player Rasmus Svale. The three compositions distill sound down to its essential e…
Le Jardin Des Plantes
Anton Lukoszevieze, cellist, composer and interdisciplinary artist, founder of Apartment House. Le Jardin des Plantes, in four parts, for cello and electronics. A place in Paris and a novel by Claude Simon. Memory spaces, a source, a scrying of time.
Theatre Of The Mind
*200 copies limited edition* Theatre of the Mind is a work for bass clarinet and electronics by Swiss composer Roland Dahinden. It was commissioned by the Dutch Foundation Mousai, an organisation that uses contemporary music as a platform to explore and work with issues of mental health. It was written for bass clarinettist Gareth Davis. Roland's composition takes elements of his mixed background performing in jazz and improvised combinations with Miles Davis and Anthony Braxton while at the sam…
Politique du silence
"When I discovered the simple and powerful black and white pictures by Valéry Lorenzo, in the 90s, I immediately fell in love with them. We became good friends and since then I ask him to let me use one of his photos for most of my album covers, or to make my portrait for press shots. It has become a real collaboration, music and images, for more than 25 years. It was then logical to ask him again for the cover of this box set, like a gentle reflection on my piano and strings era. It's a true ho…
Compositori Sardi Contemporanei II
"Today’s wine tasting is once again hosted by sommelier Claudio Sanna. He presents more local Sardinian varieties with a round of flights, much like the 2022 release Compositori Sardi Contemporanei. Instead of grape cultivars and vintner, Sanna presents multiple composers and performers for you to sample, not with your tongue but your ears. Just like a wine tasting experience, these tracks are a sample of the rich and fertile Sardinian landscape of creative musicians." – Mark Corroto
Inhabit
"inhabit" the second release by Stefan Prins on Sub Rosa, brings together four recent, large-scale compositions in which traditional instruments-from bass woodwind trio to electric guitar and symphonic orchestra-merge seamlessly with electronics, feedback, and field recordings. 'inhabit' once again serves as a testament to how Prins, whose work is performed worldwide by some of the most celebrated musicians, ensembles, and orchestras, continues to stay attuned to the pulse of contemporary music.…
Outlines of the Night
Elusive and illusory, Age Veeroos’ music captures a unique tension between focus and ambiguity. The album "Outlines of the Night" presents compositions in which, for example, violin and electronics, as in Schattenseele, evoke corresponding sensations of a “shadow soul” through obsessive, circling motifs. In Keha for bass clarinet, physical and biological processes are musically embodied, oscillating between registers. Fantasia “A Threadbare Chant” and Ma olen suur kuu su silmapiiril further demo…
…we return to ground…
Other Minds is pleased to present …we return to ground…, a new recording by Irish composer Karen Power and Quiet Music Ensemble. This double CD features three of Power’s large-scale pieces pairing natural sounds with musical instruments, written for and with Quiet Music Ensemble over an 8-year period. Beginning with instruments of ice in 2015, Power's experience of pairing natural sounds with musical instruments has evolved into a transformative body of work. Her approach to composition, creatin…
Harpsichords
Tip! "Three harpsichords in various states of disrepair were kindly offered to me by Leeds Conservatoire. I accepted, and a memorandum of understanding was swiftly drawn up. The offer was made under the condition that I might make some music from them, given my penchant for infirm instruments, and their conventional worthlessness to anyone wishing to use them for their intended purpose. There seemed to be an auspiciousness surrounding these harpsichords, the stories they might reveal, and more i…
The Nordheim Tapes
*2024 stock* Arne Nordheim might not be the best known early electronic music composer, but with this fabulously presented double disc of work it should help his music achieve at least a little wider recognition. He might be best known (at least outside his native Norway) for the discs on Rune Grammofon, but here we get some of his earliest tape work from the 1960s, possibly his most interesting period, at least to me. As a die hard Radiophonic Workshop enthusiast this collection seems to come f…