Experimental / Free Improvisation

In 1981, British percussionist Paul Lytton and German guitarist Erhard Hirt met and recorded for a couple of days in Belgium. This explosive, ahead-of-its-time first encounter, which had been planned as a release on the legendary Po Torch label, has remained dormant for over four decades. In that period, Lytton and Hirt teamed up often, joining forces with saxophonist/clarinetist Wolfgang Fuchs and bassist Hans Schneider as the quartet X-Pact, a group that has recently reformed – several years a…

*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Subtitled “some more guitar solos,” Bonobo Beach was German guitarist and instrument inventor Hans Reichel’s fourth and final record of solo guitar works. After this record, Reichel would turn much of his attention to the bowed wooden-tongued instrument he created called the daxophone. Reichel recorded the six tracks at his home in Wuppertal in April, 1981, and in the process made what might be his masterpiece. These are not just some more guitar solos. Concentra…

The untold early history of Amsterdam's seminal collective. Founded in 1967 by three of European free music's leading lights -- pianist Misha Mengelberg, drummer Han Bennink, and saxophonist and clarinetist Willem Breuker -- the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) was simply one of the most important vehicles for experimentation and improvisation in the history of creative music. Culling ideas and materials from jazz, modern and contemporary classical music, Fluxus, traditional music from the Balkans a…

Recorded at the Grote Kerk in Den Bosch as part of John Zorn’s 70th birthday celebration at November Music in Den Bosch, this exciting performance pays tribute to one of Zorn’s seminal influences—the 15th century painter Hieronymus Bosch. Performing on two different organs simultaneously, running from one to the other, this is one of the most bizarre installments in the entire Hermetic Organ series. The CD begins with a rare private performance of Zorn alone in the church exploring and stretchin…

'Making a journey to a Bright Nowhere' - Marking Eddie Prévost's 80th birthday. Volume 3. Cafe OTO, 23rd July 2022

Awesome set with a sense of suspended time that marks out their musical world. Combined with the quality of attention and the virtuosic command that is evident in each stroke, it is almost hallucinatory in effect - Keith Rowe, John Tilbury, Eddie Prévost. Concert in Houston, Texas. 1996. "A stupendous continuation of the 90's AMM sound, ala previous documents such as Newfoundland, Live In Allentown and From A Strange Place. Shifting patterns consistently emerge; via Prévost's bowed percussion; v…

"Since 2014 I’ve had the luck, possibility (and guts?) to dedicate my life to exploring some parts of the world, driven both by curiosity and needs. The chosen way (the only one possible, for me) has been to undertake long tours. Jumping on this adventure, with no idea of what to expect, requires open brain, ears and good adaptability. What I have found since, is an endless count of good and bad experiences (which would not have probably happened as much, if I’d stayed at home). The people and t…

"We use the same method of what we did on Responses (Zappak, 2022): being in a place for a whole afternoon, but not playing together. We took turns on recording solo piece, and each session was a responses to the former one. Even the length was same with the former album (each one 7 minute). Only one difference: on this time we played outside but last time we played in room. There were lots of limitations from the lack of alternation electric power (and also the hot temperature and mosquito). Bu…

*In process of stocking* “Eternal Triangle was a dream come true: bringing together two of my favourite musicians in the whole world with me on the stage of AngelicA. Two musicians capable of encompassing both the most earthly and natural and the most rarefied and cosmic dimensions of sound, spontaneously and often seamlessly. Drawing from inspiration and life experience. We certainly didn’t know this performance was going to be Toshinori Kondo’s last one outside of Japan, and his last concert w…

The debut album from Whitney Johnson & Lia Kohl has evolved over several years from their initial practice of free improvisation on viola and cello into (for the moment), this: a neophonic orchestral expression. At once stimulating and soothing, For Translucence is a living, breathing meditation in which layers of acoustic strings, synthesizers, field recordings, radio and sine waves illuminate each other as they twine and grow.

Frozen Reeds is proud to present the only recorded duo playing of two legendary musical figures. “This is one of those moments that we’re always hoping for, and it's so rare. And it's so hard to talk about, because it's so beautiful. It's like you're seeing some new species of plant that you never knew existed or something.” – Bill Frisell

"Alan Licht returns to VDSQ with Havens, a sprawling double-disc set of exploratory guitar-based compositions forged from the myriad possibilities arising when strings collide with electricity & space. Licht is masterful and relentless in his negotiation of the often-unknowable intersections that exist between juxtaposing strands of sound. His work is marked by contrast & contradiction: maximalism versus minimalism; rockist inclinations versus avant, expanded-field expression; loose improvisatio…

In collaboration between Christian Marclay and the London Sinfonietta, some of the world’s most renowned contemporary musicians have been invited to stage performances, including new compositions and live improvisation sessions inside the White Cube. Each performance over the course of the exhibition will be recorded, pressed and screen-printed live inside the gallery. Side A: Elliott Sharp, 'The Hidden Variable'.Side B: Elliott Sharp and London Sinfonietta, 'Glass Call'

Long awaited re-issue of The Necks 2011 masterpiece. Always different, here the Necks resolutely layer polyrhythmic material to form seething blocks of sound - in two long pieces, one more stripped back to the live trio, the other featuring multiple strata of swirling Hammonds, noise-guitar and electronics. Their 16th release still resonates on its own.  It features two starkly contrasting tracks: the pulsating, raw, 'Rum Jungle' and the slower building, rather hypnotic 'Daylights.' Polyrhythms …

Tom Jacques and Eunsil Noh met recently on Tom’s first trip to South Korea. Their meeting was marked by instant musical chemistry and camaraderie. Their duo project, Oh ! Pebbles, consists of their complimentary singular practices in musical improvisation. Their sound centers on fusing minimalistic noise coming from mundane objects triggered by vibrating mini-motors and the re-actualisation of the storied history of voice art in the Pansori tradition. This combination, often supported by harmoni…

"This collection is a companion piece to my solo album ‘Telyn Rawn’ AMGEN 001 (2020). I have invited some of my favourite musicians to respond to the eighteen improvised pieces on ‘Telyn Rawn’. I asked each contributor to imagine that the musical material improvised in 2020 was an ancient musical form that had fully existed in the medieval period, and, that each of their responses were to have happened centuries after the imagined formation of the ‘Telyn Rawn’ pieces. This album therefore propos…

Bolide is an electro-acoustic improvising unit, formed in Brighton, UK, in 2007. Originally coming together under the name Bolide Awkwardstra, the group's inaugural performance was at the Colour Out of Space festival in 2007, followed by a show in a local park playing a soundtrack to an infants' football match. Ever since, Bolide have oscillated between these giddy poles. Somewhere along the way, it was decided that awkwardness and sketchy puns should no longer be a barrier to progress.

Rain, ghosts, one dog and empty woodland is the first solo album by the musician Gianmaria Aprile, which comes after many productions in the world of a certain frontier rock, close to psychedelia, ambient, noise, jazz and its drifts. The first record where Gianmaria Aprile has no other musicians as travel companions, but only the sound of the two instruments he brought together: the guitar and the guqin. It’s a story of ghosts and long walks in the woods under the rain, in the company of a black…

*100 copies limited edition* This solo could have been titled "16 Caprices for cello.” As in Paganini's Caprices, all the techniques and virtuosity of the classical tradition are used here, expanded and enriched by the sounds and research of the contemporary one. However, the approach to the instrument is physical and bodily characteristic of European free improvisation and jazz. But as in Tristan Honsinger, Leroy Jenkins or in Cage's Freeman Etudes for violin the focus is always The Music, whos…

The ubiquity of Coxhill’s sax lines are here answered, cherished, enhanced by the excellent guitar touch of Enzo Rocco. It’s a sort of subtle anarchic dance, intriguing and true.

Debut solo CD by Wuhan-born, London-based artist, Zheng Hao, who also performs in the duos Oishi (with Ren Shang) and ecm (with Joseph Khan). Four lean and sinewy improvisations; the sound of tightly controlled buzzing and rippling electric currents, pointillistic splintering rhythms and textures, sparse jagged incursions, and wiry static blasts. In the artist's own words, Breaks explores "rhythmic patterns from dusty potentiometers and dirty electronic circuits in modular synthesis improvisatio…

Tip! *250 copies limited edition* The Kriego is the joint project of musicians and sound artists Fernando Feria & Emiliano Cruz. Born from cultivating similar creative interests in sound art, improvisation, and composition, the duo weaves a sound born of noise, ambient, and free improvisation; exploring various formats and using the electric guitar as their main mean of expression. The project emerged in October 2021 in Mexico City with the presentation of their album I at Casa Patricio, later p…

Tip! Orb Tapes presents “All The Duos,” a brand new collection of collaborative pieces featuring Maria Chavez and Sandy Ewen. A colossal effort, this double CD release contains over 90 minutes of music and showcases the improvisational prowess of both artists. Taking their instruments past the point of recognizability, each has a knack for coaxing unpredictable yet beautiful sounds from her equipment – turntables and guitars treated in utterly novel ways. Now based in Brooklyn, Chavez and Ewen h…

Sergey Senchuk aka Tungu was born in Chernihiv, Ukraine in 1999. He started playing in the spontaneous-intuitive band Kollektiv, and in the hard core bands Remorse and Keepleer 18. He begun to record using the nickname Tungu with his first release "Opus Hereticus"in 2013. His idea was to make of Tungu a project that would contain field recordings, cut ups, samples and live instruments. Four albums were recorded since then : "Dense arrays" 2014, "Ilf and Petrov with us" 2016, "Burst of exsessive …

*100 copies limited edition* Electroacoustic improvvisation between: Alto Saxophone, Voice – Jun-Y CiaoElectronics, Voice – Yan JunViolin – Matthias Kaiser  recorded in 2017, Cologne

*180 copies limited edition* sub jam is pround to announce the very first recording work by one of beijing's most active musicians and performers zhao ziyi. ziyi was born in 2007 in beijing. he has a strong desire of swallowing whatever he need and of turning himself a nameless formation of the cheapest noise, embarrassed silence and a mirror of the witnesses' own existence. by playing and recording this piece he stands with all of us, who can't bear the meanlessness of time and words any more. …

Tip! *180 copies limited edition* Sub jam is proud to announce the release of the first full-length album of the one and only Ake. Ake is a typical self empowered avand-garde artist of today's china. she start to play music with her totally unskilled violin and a desire of being exist and a planty of still time, as the only valuable propoty of many people, in around 2016. she is part of the new/no wave of performance art and the newly reflourishing fluxus spirit. this album is mostly a collectio…

Mohammad Syfkhan is a Kurdish/Syrian Singer and Bouzouki player. He began playing music in 1980 while he was in college studying nursing. When he got his degree in 1983, Mohammad moved to the city of Raqqa, Syria where hebegan working as a professional singer and started his own band, The Al-Rabie Band which played concerts, parties, weddings and festivals all over Syria. The Al-Rabie Band were a much sought-after group. Their live sets included Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish and some Western songs as…

Mike Cooper: For the past 40 has been an international musical explorer, performing and recording, solo and in a number of inspired groupings and a variety of genres. Initially a folk-blues guitarist and singer songwriter his work has diversified to include improvised and electronic music, live music for silent films, radio art and sound installations. He is also a music journalist, writing features for magazines, particularly on Pacific music and musicians, a visual artist, film and video maker…

Nate Wooley: trumpet, voice. Steve Swell: trombone, voice. Tatsuya Nakatani: percussion._________ is an apparition. marks the first release for the New York based blue collar featuring Nate Wooley on trumpet, Steve Swell on trombone, and Tatsuya Nakatani on percussion. The group, informed equally by the free jazz tradition of the 60s in America and Europe and the lowercase reductionist innovations now revolutionizing improvised music, has found a way to deal with silence, sound, tension, and rel…

Burkhard Beins: percussion & string instruments. Dirk Marwedel: extended saxophone. Michael Vorfeld: percussion & string instruments.

Hiss is an improvisational quartet made up of one Englishman and three Norwegians with an instrumental line-up that is unremarkable enough, but with a sound that is fairly unique. Keyboardist/electronicist Pat Thomas is a veteran of the British free improv scene while guitarist Ivar Grydeland, bassist Tonny Kluften and percussionist Ingar Zach -- though the latter three are younger -- are mainstays of the Norwegian free jazz and improv cultures. The reasoning behind the Arabic-sounding track tit…

The first album in FRIM Records’ new split-series is combining two thrilling and radically different duos. Percussionist Raymond Strid and guitarist Mattias Windemo represent an older generation with decades of experience. Pianist Karin Ingves and saxophonist Marcus Wärnheim reflect a new wave of Swedish improvisers. The album is the third release from FRIM Records, a label run by the concert organizer FRIM (active since 1976).

Meditative moods from the Chicago duo of bassist Josh Abrams and percussionist Chad Taylor. With Taylor on mbira and Abrams on guimbri, instruments from diverse African states, finding a new pairing that moves past world music and jazz into something new, to do with dance, meditation, listening and convergence. Natural Information Society's Abrams has been using the guimbri, a lute-style bass, for years, but it's rarely sounded better than it does here, alongside Taylor's resonant mbira. Taylor …

*In process of stocking* New release by improvising synth master Jean-Marc Foussat, on this LP the pieces were recorded in Thoronet during the spring of 2022.

A Fou Records production, like a large part of the music of its producer, Jean-Marc Foussat, is a bit of a puzzle.

Tip! "I first played with Magda in 2012 in Zürich. Since then, we've had further concerts together in Germany, Australia and Switzerland. It would be fitting that this, our first release, would be recorded at the Werkstatt für Improvisierte Musik Zürich, the same room where we originally first played together thirteen years ago." - Jason Kahn Jason Kahn // electronicsMagda Mayas // piano, objects

Graveyard Processions is the first joint recording by Kai Fagaschinski and Yan Jun. The Berlin-based clarinettist and the sound artist and vocalist from Beijing blur the lines between improvisation on the one hand and record production as well as composition-after-the-fact on the other. The four pieces on »Graveyard Processions« work primarily with Jun’s voice and Fagaschinski’s playing and also add a plethora of other sounds to dizzying effect. This is the sound of two prolific artists—the form…

"The current release consists of the Schindler-Damon Smith-Sandy Ewen trio and the friends I have brought in: Karina Erhard from Munich, Jaap Blonk from the Netherlands, Sebastiano Tramontana from Sicily. The three concerts are from my presentation format LowToneStudies. I have been organizing my concerts myself for many years, financing them myself, as the music and sound art that I prefer is completely ignored in Munich, the richest city in Germany. Not only in terms of support in many respect…

New collection of Adam Bohman's signature cut-up found text pieces and intricate close-mic'd improvisations with homemade stringed instruments and small objects. Guaranteed to get your mouth watering and head spinning. While the ordinary well-adjusted citizen is liable to whitey within 30 seconds, those of us with stronger constitutions will be unfazed by the regressive babbling state you may find yourself in. Hold fast, you are one joyous step closer to enlightenment. "Adam Bohman has been oper…