Composition / Minimalism

"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…

*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…

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…

*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…

*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 …

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 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' 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…

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…

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…

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 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…

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.

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…

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.

*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…

'What Remains’ is the new album from John Haycock featuring Dan Bridgwood-Hill. Originally composed for resonance and performed live at Hope Baptist Church in Hebden Bridge in 2023, the composition uses kora, clarinet, guitar, violin and electronics to produce a heartfelt conjunction of acoustic, processed and environmental elements, deeply rooted in the land and history of the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. The original recording has been ‘Worldized’ in the Todmorden Unitarian Church, a term co…

Bastille Musique presents its fortieth release »György Kurtág: Secreta« featuring Quatuor Béla. The album contains a new studio production of Kurtág’s complete works for string quartet from 1959 to 2011, including the first recording of a previously unpublished composition. The recordings, produced by the SWR, are complemented by a 56-page bilingual booklet (EN, DE) with texts by Tobias Bleek, a conversation with the quartet and the recording producer, several autograph pages and two concertina-…

Giuseppe Chiari's Intervalli, a twelve-part piano work written between 1950 and 1956, before he joined Fluxus, recorded complete for the first time by Reinier van Houdt.

*300 copies limited edition* "Feldman used to say that music is not so much an ‘art-form’ as a ‘memory-form’. Scientific research informs us that personal memories are not stored in one stable unchanging state, but that each time we retrieve a memory, it is slightly modified. We hear the opening four-note gesture of this work, it soon passes, but the resulting resonance from the sustaining pedal remains a little longer, and then only a delicate memory trace is left. This opening gesture is heard…

*300 copies limited edition* "Technique and art both take time, so nothing durable happens by accident. But, is durability enough once appearance and disappearance become important? Can ebb and flow be set in stone? Or cut to vinyl? Or digitised? Perhaps we have only become habituated to the possibility. A pianist depresses a key, strings are hammered. At what point does the sound begin? It is not quite right to say that, in this moment, there was no sound but that now, in this moment, there is.…

Arvo Pärt's 1999 album with several versions of Für Alina for solo piano and Spiegel im Spiegel for violin or cello and piano, two of his tintinnabuli pieces, on vinyl for the first time.

Warm Winters Ltd. welcomes Argentinian, Berlin-based composer Ángeles Rojas with her new piece ‘Open the windows and let the spirits in and out’. Originally commissioned by the Buenos Aires festival Ruido, the work documents Rojas’s closing performance of its 2023 edition. Performed on a Klais Opus 1912 organ with an ensemble of violin, cello, soprano flute, piccolo, baritone saxophone, trombone and bass clarinet distributed throughout the space, the piece unfolds over 30 minutes. Sustained tone…

Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle concludes their trilogy on Important Records with an album that confronts the climate crisis and its devastating impact on coastal ecosystems. From overfishing to warming and acidifying seas, the group documents the decline of fish, seabirds, crustaceans and other marine life. Following 2024's All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea and 2022 Black Clouds Above The Bows, Ghosts Beneath The Brine is another mournful take on the woes of the natural world. There's ris…

Australian composer-performers Judith Hamann and James Rushford have worked together in countless projects for two decades, perhaps most notably in Golden Fur, their trio with Sam Dunscombe. Black Truffle is pleased to announce Midmeste, their first work as a duo. Its title is Middle English for ‘the middlemost point’, alluding to how the piece builds on the points of overlap between the highly personalised musical languages Hamann and Rushford have developed in recent years. Performed on cello …

A work in six parts for contrabassoon + electronics, timpani + syncussion, and activated snare drum. The genesis of The Shunned Path began with a simple question: if one orchestral instrument could be freed from its traditional context and presented through the bespoke electronic array developed for Thomas Stone’s solo performances — projected at full scale through a massive sound system — which would it be? The answer was immediate: timpani. Returning to formative influences such as the Jerusal…

* First-time vinyl reissue, gatefold sleeve * Philip Glass, the great American composer, was already in his mid-30s before his first album appeared, and then only because he produced the double LP himself. Music With Changing Parts was the inaugural release on his own Chatham Square imprint in 1971. At this point, Einstein on the Beach, Glass' first opera, was still five years away. Yet in Changing Parts, one can already hear much of his vocabulary in full bloom: the buoyant arpeggios, the meldi…

Great 1983 LP by Szemző's ensemble with highly-acclaimed (especially by Steve Reich) performances of two American classic minimalist compositions as well as two by Hungarian minimalists, released by Hungaroton.

Excellent second LP by Szemző's ensemble with highly-acclaimed (especially by Steve Reich) performances of one American classic minimalist composition as well as two by Hungarian minimalists, released by Hungaroton in 1986.

'Flute' is an album of six pieces written by Slovak composer Adrián Demoč and performed by Italian flutist and multi-instrumentalist Manuel Zurria. Of the six pieces, "Zamat" is performed in two different versions. This is Demoč's second release on elsewhere music, following the 2024 release 'Piano', as well as Zurria's second appearance as the flutist, following the 2024 release Giuliano d’Angiolini - ')))((('. Demoč's compositions are often intended for open instrumentation or a "monochromatic…

Swiss-based German vocalist/composer Marianne Schuppe and Berlin-based Italian cellist Deborah Walker present two duo works: Aus dem Zeltbuch, co-composed by Schuppe and Walker; and Occam River XXIX, a piece by French composer Éliane Radigue. Aus dem Zeltbuch (2022/23), based on a text-collage by Marianne Schuppe, reveals a surface of a word-sound texture on the edge of acoustic intelligibility. Aus dem Zeltbuch questions our perception of language in a musical context by creating bilingual area…

‘Monochromes II’ is a collection of thirteen solo piano pieces written and performed by Berlin-based composer/pianist Quentin Tolimieri between 2023 and 2025. This is Tolimieri’s second release on elsewhere music, following the 2022 triple album ‘Monochromes’ (elsewhere 022-3). In this new triple album, Tolimieri delves even deeper than in his earlier Monochrome pieces to explore the countless sonic possibilities and resonances that the piano can produce. Aiming to allow the inherently interesti…

Akira Kosemura’s Polaroid Piano is a record that is very close to my heart. In fact, it is Akira’s work that was one of the drivers for Someone Good, one of the Room40 sibling labels, to be founded. Polaroid Piano marks the beginning of what would later become known as felt piano music, an approach to the piano which was picked up by numerous artists across subsequent years. It captures an essential and intimate rendering of the piano at close proximity, but it does more than that, it allows the…

With Figures of Glass (Piano Etudes – Edits), Vanessa Wagner offers a new listening perspective on Philip Glass’s Piano Études, shaping a curated selection of edited versions drawn from her acclaimed recording of the complete cycle. These edits do not alter the substance of the works; rather, they refine their temporal focus, revealing their emotional force with renewed clarity. Conceived in parallel with Figures of Glass, a hybrid project developed with visual arts collective Scale, the release…

1986 double album on Composers' Voice that is a sort of manifesto of the Dutch brand of radical minimalism by its most representative composers, with pieces spanning from 1977 to 1984.

*2026 much needed repress!* Akusmi is the new project moniker of French-born, London based composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Pascal Bideau, who signs to the new Tonal Union imprint for the release of his album ‘Fleeting Future.’ With its hallucinatory, genre-defying blend of minimalism, cosmic jazz and Fourth World influences, and in its quest for optimism in the face of unknown and limitless possibility. ‘Fleeting Future’ stands apart as an inventive and inspirational debut. The crea…

*200 copies limited edition* "Paper Braids came out of a long collaboration between me and the wonderful musicians of the Kali Ensemble. Through a series of workshops, residencies, and performances over the course of four years, we built up a collective practice focused on three topics: listening as the basis of musical interaction, awareness of how sound interacts with the performance space, and using that spatial awareness as a basis for both the duration of individual sounds and the temporal …

Composed especially for the main hall of the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, with its historical organs, Descendants was realized in the just-intonation “Dreyblatt” tuning system, derived from the first eleven harmonic overtones and their extensions based on the fundamental C (A = 415 Hz). The following intervals, identified on the four organs and corresponding to my tuning system, were used in the composition: 1/1, 9/4, 3/2, 7/4, 11/16, 21/16, 25/16, 35/32, 63/32, 77/64, and 81/64. These pitches and th…

The John Cage Trilogy – Inspired by Hidekazu Yoshida’s interpretations of Japanese Haiku poetry, John Cage formed a trilogy of his existing works honoring the essence of the poetry. Atlas Eclipticalis (1961), the first piece in the trilogy, represents nirvana. Variations IV (1963), the second work, represents samsara—the turmoil of everyday life. 0’00” (1962), the third piece, represents individual action. Simple Harmonic Motion Records is proud to be the first to present a realization of Cage's…

Venice, 1984. Teatro Carlo Goldoni. Jan Fabre's legendary play The Power of Theatrical Madness premieres - and with it, a defining document of Pop Minimalism. This primarily European phenomenon - rooted in first-generation British minimalists Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman - took the tunefulness of Reich and Glass and gave it a pop base rather than jazz/African or western classical foundations. Mertens wrote the first full-length study of the genre, American Minimal Music (1983), before becoming…