Experimental / Free Improvisation

Joseph Holbrooke was a legendary all-star ensemble from the mid Sixties dedicated to free improvisation. Comprising three of the most acclaimed virtuosos from the first generation of British improvisers—Bailey, Bryars, and Oxley—little has been released, but they briefly reformed in 1998 and the studio recordings from that period were made available in 2006 on Tzadik as The Moat Recordings. Last Live 2001 is exactly that—their last live concert ever! Recorded in Antwerp in January of 2001, the e…

Here is 'rely', a new album by Eric Wong & yan jun. They use voice, breath, sine tones and noise. For those of you who have attended one of their performances, or heard 'dichotomic language' the sounds may appear familiar, but to me the space and interplay between them on 'rely' feels very different. In March and April of this year I saw yan jun perform three times, for the first time, and it has changed how I hear the record. I was initially struck by how close everything sounded, and now I hav…

'Engine Songs' is the latest album of improvisations by the duo of Tara Cunningham & Caius Williams, after the release of 'Demo's' in 2022. The album is rich with the harmonics and fluttering oscillations of detuned strings, layered over sprawling textural effects that poke out at moments and shift focus in an instant. They're able to move between tones and dynamics in a way I'd quite happily listen to endlessly - It's exciting to listen to. The album was recorded and mixed by Caius Williams and…

Tip! These Rites are designed (realised and situated) – through/in – the saxophone, as: (conic) vessel,text,structure,lens,‘kitchen’,nexus,body/organ(s),rhythm,ecology/knot,speculative (entrepreneurial) invention,(and shadow).

*100 copies limited edition* “'Wonderful Brutalism' is an epic, and at times intense slice of improvisation - drums and taishogoto build into an unrelenting stampede with moments of gentle cinematic soundscape. Improvisation at its most dynamic and inspiring.” - Michael Sill Belgium musicians Jef Mertens and Dirk Wachtelaer have both been active in the field of experimental music since the 1990s—Dirk as a drummer and Jef as a documentary filmmaker. It wasn’t until 2023 that they met for the firs…

Insect Life debuts on 577 Records with a Cosmic, Creative, Art-Driven Opus — Out November 7th. Avant-garde experimental ensemble Insect Life is set to release their self-titled debut album, Insect Life. The album delivers a sound that is raw, wild, and authentic, blending improvisation, orchestral textures, and dynamic interplay into an immersive, art-driven experience. There’s something hypnotic about the whole listening experience, drawing the listener into its cosmic, abstract world.  Born fr…

Tepih unites Samo Kutin, Gaudenz Badrutt, Tomaž Grom, and Jonas Kocher — four musicians bound by years of collaboration within the Šalter Ensemble, a fertile meeting ground for Swiss and Slovene experimental music. Their debut album Šablona presents a music of layered coexistence: sonic found objects, fractured melodies, irregular pulses, and shimmering electronic textures inter twine. Rather than striving for unison, these contrasting elements evolve in parallel, responding to one another in a …

Jonas Kocher returns to solo work with Archipelago, his third solo album, following Solo (2011) and Materials (2009). Across seven improvised pieces, Kocher explores the tension between control and unpredictability, between the organic and the mechanical. The result is a captivating music where precision meet raw physicality, and where each moment unfolds with striking immediacy. Rich in contrasts and textures, Archipelago navigates through resonant chords, fragmented melodies, sharp attacks, ha…

2008 release ** Limited to 100 copies in oversize card sleeve. Reissue of a cassette originally released in 1995 by b/b tapes.

*300 coipies limited edition* This very special and wonderful solo performance by Oxford based Pat Thomas was recorded in Dublin during the first ever Reception Weekend event at the Complex. The piano Pat was playing had been very unique as it had copper plating on the interior giving the piano and strange and magical resonance. Nyahh Records is very grateful and excited to be able to share this performance with the world and to have Pat Thomas added to our list of artists. Pat Thomas  (b1960) s…

Sonde is a group of Montreal electroacoustic composers and performers. Their compositions were generally conceived for live performance on original sound sculptures. Through meditative improvisation, the group’s aim was to produce new music with sounds revealed by electroacoustic amplification and transformation. Very active from 1976 to 1986, the members of the group included Andrew Culver, Charles de Mestral, Pierre Dostie, Chris Howard, Robin Minard, Michael O’Neill and Linda Pavelka. Since t…

2005 release **

2016 release **

2017 release ** Void Transactions is the most recent album of Alterations, released in 2017. Recorded at Cafe Oto during the live performance at Alterations Festival 2016. Peter Cusack: acoustic guitar, field recordings. Steve Beresford: piano, electronics, objects; Terry Day: drums, percussion, objects, balloons; David Toop: electric guitars, bass, flutes, objects.

Composer, harpist, improviser, and educator Zeena Parkins has been a mainstay of the Downtown scene since 1984, performing with Fred Frith, John Zorn, Bjork, Ikue Mori, Yoko Ono, Pauline Oliveros, and countless others. Her newest project, years in the making, pays tribute to the fearless American visual artist Jay DeFeo. Zeena captures DeFeo’s bold experimentalism and love of beauty with a lush, exotic extended work for harp and percussion. Performing with her on a unique instrument built by leg…

*2025 stock* This CD is the re-edition of an LP made by Music Gallery Editions in 1978. It is (still) dedicated to the composer Mario Bertoncini who was the band main inspiration at the start for Sonde, a Quebec band active from 1976 to 1986. For most of the tracks in this recording the band was Andrew Culver, Keith Daniel, Charles de Mestral, Pierre Dostie, Chris Howard and Linda Pavelka. The notes on the back of the original cover mentioned: 'Live concert improvisations. Some of the pieces are…

A singular record, measured with a mastery of self and patience that’s utterly arresting in its stoic elegance and sound sensitivity. Keiji Haino plays Gamelan...

Friends and colleagues for over 25 years, John Zorn and Dave Lombardo are two of the most uncompromising and powerful musical visionaries in modern music and “Memories, Dreams, and Reflections” presents these two extreme virtuosos in an exciting session of pure improvisation. Drum shaman Dave Lombardo and renegade sax alchemist Zorn are at their freewheeling best here and their connection has never been tighter. Intense, telepathic, filled with love, surprise, respect, and an insatiable curiosit…

“The body’s relation to the social is inseparable from, and of the same relation to the world, not a relation of objectification but a carnal intertwining prior to any reflective judgement.” -Rosalyn Diprose

Conversation No. 1/ Collecting Rocks from the Places We’ve Been is a solo for bass clarinet which can be performed as a duo, trio, or maybe someday with many, many bass clarinets, or in collaboration with other artists.  Katie Porter is interested in creating systems of music that she can exist in together, for herself and others, music that collapses and expands on itself, where we are free to choose the phrases, iterations, and lean into the occurrences of overlapping tones, vibrations, multi-…

"In late 2022 I became a father and lost my own father in quick succession. This music represents a conversation between my selves who met at that nexus of birth and death, sharing what they felt about the past, the present, and the future. The pieces are very intentionally set in different seasons and sonic environments so as to welcome the listener to this metaphysical meeting point for musical ideas and emotions."

"I had the privilege of meeting Wadada Leo Smith after a show, ‘Everyone thinks the trumpet is made out of brass — it’s really made out of air.' This recording is my exploration of that concept."

I recorded Open Space with in a single continuous take: my cello, an amp, and a distortion pedal. I was watching a film that was a static shot across a very large canyon, the light slowly shifting. I hope it offers the listener room to breathe and dream.

See You When I Get There is Amy Cimini’s first solo viola album. While playing in noise bands and experimental projects for over 25 years, she has developed a sonic palette for the amplified viola that combines overtone-rich distortion with percussive techniques nestled in reverb and delay effects meant to fill large acoustical spaces.  Overall, this record embraces noise abstraction as much as a tuneful directness, that evokes Cimini’s fellow experimental string players, historical protest musi…

On their debut release, Foster shifts fluidly between tongue slaps, overblown tones, and powerful tenor saxophone screams, while Crawford alternates between non-idiomatic splatter, frenzied banjo maneuvers, and dense, elusive bursts of tangled noise. Meanwhile, Sullivan crafts a metallic clatter that establishes its own expansive sonic territory.

*97 copies limited edition* Free immersion is a practice that consists of freediving as low as possible and then climbing back up by gripping the rope that serves as a guide. No help, no artifice, everything happens with the strength of the arms. The fall into the depths is dizzying and the feeling of freedom, total. 4+1 pieces of double bass played with a bow, without artifice, recorded almost in one go. This record is deliberately abrasive without being aggressive, and reserves surprises of so…

Over the past decade, saxophonist Makoto Kawashima has consistently established himself as one of the most compelling improvisers in contemporary music. His unique approach to solo performance aligns him with the tradition of groundbreaking Japanese saxophonists like Kaoru Abe, Tamio Shiraishi, and Masayushi Urabe. Operating at the fringes of improvised music, Kawashima's artistry unveils a delicate essence, placing equal focus on silence and minute detail alongside intense expressions of tone a…

Lao Dan's innovative approach to music seamlessly intertwines elements of rock, free jazz, and noise with textures of Chinese folk music, creating a unique tapestry characterized by improvisational and aesthetic tension. His fearless transgression of genres, infusing Chinese folk-tinged free jazz with the raw energy of punk, results in a compelling and dynamic listening experience.

Paula Sanchez is a musician working with sound in the intersection of experimental music, improvisation and performance art. Putting the body and materials to the limit, in the destruction, composition/decomposition of a mutable sound space. In the pure presence, of an embodied sound that invents relations as it makes its way into nothingness. This album is the result of performative experimentations with cello and cellophane, and erotic encounters of transparent asphyxiation.

Vagabondage comes from my idle wandering through the city and my inner relationship with it - where the unexpected takes me – I take it - desire driven. Assuming the discourse between the ruins of my memory and my present idleness, I seek to let the events influence my choices in a way they unfold from this relation between my personal history and reflected in my music through my interaction with the city. This album was recorded in three different places of Lisbon: SMUP, Desterro and Casa do Co…

Vents is seemingly a musical wind trio - humans playing with flutes, airdrums, bubbles… Although, in each set-up, material has its own vitality.

2000 release ** Limited edition of 500 hand numbered copies. Packaged in mini-LP sleeve. "In all six tracks of this CD, Murayama uses a cymbal, a snare drum and small objects (as well as his voice on track 6). Four of the pieces (2-5), recorded in Tokyo, were composed by Murayama based on collaborations with Soundworm (Shoji). Several clusters of two or three mikes were deployed in different areas of the studio, with one of the mikes of one cluster placed outdoors. (In addition, there were two c…

2004 release ** Matchless Recordings presents a live concert by Christian Wolff and Robin Schulkowsky recorded at Poggiolo fram, Pozzuolo, Umbria, Italy on April 22-24 2003. The album includes fifteen tracks performed by Christian Wolff - composition, melodica, Robin Schulkowsky - percussion. "Rooms talk to me. I send out a sound, the space answers. The first message I picked up from the old barn in Umbria was 'yes'.Christian Wolff and I had been thinking, speaking about, even planning a CD with…

"Three names, three cultures, three continents, three different concepts of time and timing -- this is the essence of this trio. This is what we have to bring together." -- Peter Brötzmann, Wuppertal, April 1st, 2019With these words, Peter Brötzmann, one of the great figures in the development of a unique European approach to free improvisation since the '60s, announced his return to the AngelicA festival in 2019. A trio featuring Hamid Drake -- one of the best living drummers and guembri player…

Anthony Braxton, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and a true giant of creative music, in 50 years of career had never played in a duo with a harp; and that's exactly what happened at the AngelicA Festival in 2018. Expressing himself through a wide range of mediums, from solos to large orchestras to multimedia projects, and drawing inspiration from a wide range of influences, from John Coltrane to Karlheinz Stockhausen, Anthony Braxton has created a unique music system which celebrates the concep…

"How and why do we continue to make art in this bizarre time? Let me try here to offer a small break from insanity. I do believe that for listeners in our small pond, focused attention on sonic expression might help the individual keep a connection with their humanity and reinforce positive human endeavors—love, empathy, and truth-seeking. These seemingly obvious pursuits now need support as they are so unbelievably at risk. I offer this music as an aural refuge for mind and body. Such small bre…

Echo of Being / Grace in Rot is a powerful sonic meditation on grief by the duo Neti-Neti, composed of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and percussionist Matt Evans. The project originated from improvisation sessions born out of personal loss, evolving from an intimate exchange into a practice that bridges the personal and the political.

Black Editions present a reissue of Kazuo Imai's far and wee, originally released in 2004. Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970s, his 2004 P.S.F. album far and wee was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations -- Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrumen…

Mesh-Key is thrilled to announce a deluxe, expanded reissue of Moon Beams by Tokyo visionaries, Tsuki No Wa.

The first collaborative work by Choi Joonyong and Devin DiSanto. 6-Panel Digipak with one disc.