The Beating of Wings
The 40th anniversary edition of Andrew Poppy’s The Beating of Wings, originally released on ZTT Records. Hailed as “a major landmark in pop-classical genre-blending and post-minimalism” (Robert Davidson, Topology) and “… ahead of his time … he’d fit right in with the Max Richters and Nils Frahms of today” (Steven Wilson; Porcupine Tree, The Album Years podcast). Composed and produced by Andrew Poppy and performed by his bespoke ensembles, The Beating of Wings contains four mesmeric tracks that m…
Continuous Interior
With Continuous Interior, Abby Fisher unveils a solo album that reimagines percussion and electronics. The album includes two immersive works that explore scale, space, and perception. The title track – the evocative Continuous Interior by New York composer Robert Honstein – draws inspiration from the modern experience of limitless, bounded spaces – shopping malls, airport terminals, vast warehouses – and translates that feeling into waves of resonant sound, where vibraphone tones sparkle above …
Scintillae
For fifty years, the piano has been the backbone of Raymond Deane’s creative output. This journey began at age sixteen with the first Orphic Piece, a work that set the stage for a career defined by breaking contemporary taboos. Rejecting both the strict rules of traditional keys and the lawlessness of atonality, Deane creates his own temporary musical structures, constantly building them up and dismantling them again. For him, composition is a process of conflict and negotiation, allowing for th…
Crow on the Dark Side of Gloss
Kraig Grady, an American based in Australia, is a microtonal composer. He explains it thus: “Alternative tunings are a major inspiration for my compositional explorations. The pivotal point for me was meeting with tuning theorist Ervin Wilson and witnessing Harry Partch’s U.S. Highball in 1975. I was convinced that working with different instruments and tunings was going to be a major artistic movement.
I began studying tuning with Wilson which continued for as long as we knew each other. … I’m …
December
"I remember the first time I sat at a piano, my feet dangling over the edge. As I tested the keys, I felt a wonder and joy at the sound coming out of the instrument. I still feel that joy every time I sit at a piano. In the two drone works in this release: "December" and "Thomas," I was intrigued in the contrast of the rhythm of the hammers striking the strings with the rhythm of the swelling overtones. On "Thomas", the trumpet tones blend and contrast, sometimes revealing the piano, and sometim…
Songs of Erosion
*200 copies limited edition* “Songs of Erosion” is a project by Clara Levy & Victor Guaita Igual revisiting the 13th-century Spanish songbook “Cantigas de Santa María” through the lens of erosion.
Rejecting a historicist interpretation, Clara Levy and Victor Guaita Igual develop a set of instructions inspired by geological processes. These serve as a basis for approaching pitch and rhythmic material, shaping it into new compositions. Among the cantigas explored by the duo, this record focuses on…
Julius Eastman, Vol. 5: Gay Guerrilla
This is the fifth chapter, and one of the most assured. Wild Up's long reckoning with the music of Julius Eastman arrives at Gay Guerrilla, the work Eastman composed at the close of the 1970s and regarded as the point where his politics and his sound became indivisible.
Eastman remains one of the singular figures of American experimentalism, an African American and openly gay composer who moved through the orbit of the Buffalo new music scene and the downtown minimalist world before dying destit…
šumum
*200 copies limited edition* Michaela Turcerová’s compositions unfold in slow motion. The saxophonist and composer’s glacial music zeroes in on the granularities of each note as it rings, soaking in every subtle shift in texture and pitch. Šumum exemplifies this patient approach to writing music, branching out from themes of loss and togetherness into an intricate tapestry of introspective sound. These four pieces invite deep collaboration between performers, who together shape the music through…
Transparent Duo
*100 copies limited edition* Transparent duo, for 2 string instruments. On transparent paper. One set of pages indicates bowing. The second indicates the direction and length of mostly inaudible glissando. Players overlay pages and play any number of combinations. Field recordings were taken one morning and evening, in the summer of 2025 around Narrowsburg. "Through my music, I create situations for people to play and be together, to sustain a community, to share sounds and ideas in a welcoming …
Désert Méditerranéen
The pianistic writing of Giorgos Koumendakis represents a rare encounter of delicacy, intellectual concentration, and profound compositional coherence. It belongs to a free post-modernity, rooted in the continuity of certain Eastern European composers who developed an independent and original modernity. The cycle Mediterranean Desert, which forms the central axis of this album, is a work for piano consisting of 22 pieces inspired by Mediterranean flora and fauna. It offers a distinctive sound ma…
Many Many Women
Many Many Women by Petr Kotík is a large-scale composition for voices and instruments from 1975-78 on the text of Gertrude Stein's novella of the same name. It was published in Paris in 1910 as part of the book G.M.P. - Gertrude, Matisse, Picasso. In 1972, the book was published again by Dick Higgins in his publishing venture Something Else Press. Kotík used the complete text, which determined the length of the piece. Inspired by his close collaboration with the composer and singer Julius Eastma…
Spaces
'Spaces' is an ode to the joy of live performance. It expresses Frahm’s love for experimentation and answers the call from his fans for a record that truly reflects what they have witnessed during his concerts. Breaking the convention of a traditional live album, 'Spaces' was recorded over the course of two years in different locations and on various mediums, including old portable reel-to-reel recorders and cassette tape decks. The decision to select takes that have people coughing and cell pho…
Found Songs
In April 2009, Iceland’s neo-classical export Ólafur Arnalds created the 7-song series Found Songs – recording a song a day for 7 days and instantly making each track available via Twitter. With artwork contributions from fans via Flickr, this modern release awakens memories of a tradition that seemed lost in the digital age we live in. Born in 1987, Ólafur hails from the suburban Icelandic town, Mosfellsbær, just a few kilometres outside of Reykjavík. He has immersed himself completely in a wor…
A Song For Lost Blossoms
Darla is pleased to offer A Song For Lost Blossoms, a record of ambient melody and transcendental mood portals from minimalist/modernist master Harold Budd and friend guitarist/composer/producer Clive Wright. A Song For Lost Blossoms nicely builds on both artists’ previous ambient work. A Song For Lost Blossoms was recorded live and in studio at different locations including the artists’ homes, at REDCAT (Roy E. Disney Concert and Theater), Los Angeles, and Clive Wright's Desert Sky Studio, Josh…
Little Windows
Darla is pleased to offer a new album from Harold Budd and Clive Wright. Little Windows completes the trilogy begun with A Song for Lost Blossoms and carried through their previous album Candylion. Part of Little Windows was recorded especially for Echoes, the nightly music soundscape from Public Radio International heard on over 120 public radio stations and online at www.echoes.org. These recordings were first heard on Echoes Radio in Fall 2009. The other part of Little Windows was recorded…
Jane 12-21
Jane 12-21 is the companion to Jane 1-11. Minimal, modern classical piano and avant-garde electronics by the master. "It's simple. I broke out and broke back to my earlier days: A triangle of risk, improvisation and joy -- as I say, very simple. My rules to myself were: No plan, no notes, no ideas, no microphones; except for Jane 1 I stuck to it. My other rule -- the most important one -- was: At least one piece per day, finished, mixed and not to be revisited again. Jane 7, 8, 9 were done in o…
In The Mist
Harold Budd is a one of a kind modern neo-classical artist creating high-callibre and complex music with unique and subtle tension and abstraction, and simultaneous almost-pastoral but as-often otherworldly mood.
Avalon Sutra
At the time of release in 2005 Avalon Sutra was reported to be California-born American minimalist composer and pianist Harold Budd’s last recorded work. Avalon Sutra (released as a 2 disc set) is a suite of short, heartbreaking ambient pieces, featuring Budd’s delicate piano improvisations, lush string arrangements and warm electronic drones. The second disc (As Long As I Can Hold My Breath) features a startling coda by LA based electronic composer Akira Rabelais, sending Budd’s arrangements in…
Bandits of Stature
Darla is pleased to offer a new record of string quartets by Harold Budd. Bandits of Stature is a first as it comprises 14 compact Budd composed string quartets played by the Formalist Quartet.
Volumes Variations
*200 copies limited edition* Following the album Volumes released on the Bern-based label CRTTR in April 2025, Tobias Lanz has continued working with this original composition through two new interpretations. While the earlier recording sought to recreate and expand the pallete of the church organ through digital means, these new works shift attention back toward an acoustic interpretation. Both pieces were recorded in the Stadtkirche Burgdorf, where the large hall functions as an active collabo…