Experimental / Minimal

After the exploration of snowy mountains of Alpestres, released on Hands in the Dark in 2018, French composer Matthias Puech ventures into new territories, sketching a cartography of the invisible where the journey, in chiaroscuro, is announced as a rite of passage. A Geography of Absence, as introspective as unpredictable, immerses the listener into a unique sensory whirlwind where organic matter becomes almost palpable. A researcher in theoretical computer science and an engineer at GRM, Matth…

Easily among our favorite records of the year - issued in a very limited vinyl edition of 300 copies by Cortizona and Stuk - Pak Yan Lau's latest, "Bakunawa", is a truly stunning thing to behold. A continuation of her long-standing "Book of Toy" project, expanded for the first time to incorporate the contributions of a five-piece ensemble, it's a sprawling expanse of deep harmonics and percussive rhythms that channel the magical and poetic into the realms of experimental music, deftly nodding to…

Richard Scott and Axel Dörner’s »Journal of Elasticity« is a two-part site-specific composition recorded at the big water reservoir in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. Playing once with the empty space’s acoustics as a third actor and once in front of and with the audience’s presence, their bohemian drips debut is a riveting study of space and intensity.

On his new EP ‘Music from Organ’, producer and live musician Giulio Aldinucci offers up four tracks of layered and meticulously-crafted ambience. In his own words: “The EP explores the interaction between the pipe organ and the sound environment, in terms of architectural space and soundscape. Every single sound of this work is created from pipe organ recordings using different techniques related to sound reflection, from granular processing to filters that “carve” the sound emulating the phonem…

** Edition of 300 copies. Album includes booklet of 12 pages with photos and liner notes ** Manongo Mujica is a Peruvian percussionist, composer and visual artist. His constant search for sounds, from native to electronic, has even led him to compose music from silence. Norway’s Terje Evensen specialises in improvised modern jazz combined with electronic elements, creating spacious and dramatic soundscapes of profound intensity. Paracas Ritual, the new album by Manongo Mujica and Terje Evensen, …

** Edition of 65 ** Shakali's first album 'Petojen Tavat' was recorded during 2016-2020 in Imatra (Finland) and Brno (Czech Republic). Enigmatic ambient works with a dreamy tribal essence. “These contemplative psychedelic tracks were recorded layer by layer, peacefully over the years, in the nighttime, with a focus on preserving their original energy and character. Set in circular motion with solar-powered synths, prepared flutes, tapes, percussion, electric violin, field recordings and modular …

** Edition of 75 ** Ikuisuus presens "When instrument is in tune, music happens by itself" by Antti Tolvi and "Harpolek" by J. Koho. Antti Tolvi - When instrument is in tune, music happens by itself : "I remembered that ”When instrument is in tune, music happens by itself” was Ellen Fullman´s thought. Then I checked what she actually said was ”When you are really in tune, the music plays itself”. And I also noticed that it wasn’t Ellen´s own thought, she had heard it from her North Indian vocal …

In Japanese folklore, Afuma indicates a time of day marked by spiritual or mysterious encounter. In Latin, one who inhales. Together as Afuma, Stefan Tcherepnin, and Taketo Shimada breathe sepulchral energies into the brooding, cosmic fringes of guitar-based song vernacular. Tcherepnin’s baritone and Shimada’s lap steel guitar intertwine, smearing across world’s-end horizons that propel Tcherepnin’s ragged, foreboding vocal delivery and its lyrical portents of departure, of life’s vessel unmoore…

Another sublime installment from Dean Brown’s Little Skull. This 5 track 10” moves through minimal, naïve, folk/chamber territory on into darker, more twisted waters. Hand-made covers and inserts featuring three different lino-cut images. Each record comes with three inserts on transparent stock and features one of those images on the cover. Therefore there’s three variations of outer sleeve design. No requests!

After NEF's album in 2019, Ici Bientôt is happy to present today the reissue of "Comme Au Moulin" by Nyssa Musique. Paris 1985... ‘Extra-European’ Traditions meet Jazz and Minimal Music. An unusual array of instruments turn music into a dialogue. For a unique record ... vivid, full of texture, somewhere between Midori Takada, Don Cherry and Jon Hassell. Beginning of the eighties, 5 musicians rehearse in a contemporary dance class hall, upstairs from the ‘’New Morning", renowned Music venue in Pa…

** Edition of 300 transparent red vinyl. 2021 Stock ** A piercing hum awakens alien skreeks and insect antennae and fluttering seedpod drifts and curled leaf wails… reedy twirlings dance above organic-machine wheeling thuds… hopping whistles accompany descending klangs, producing a rushing stasis, a clattering bliss, a reverential noise. Vibracathedral Orchestra’s trademark levitation drone returns to earth to offer two sidelong utopias, a revolving array of instruments selected in turn by the m…

** Edition of 300** Oaken Palace Records is excited to present its 20th release, a sonic journey to the roots of drone music, performed by Bombay Lunatic Asylum. The musicians behind this name are no others than Louise Landes Levi and Bart De Paepe, who already played together on Ikiru (OAK-013), our fastest selling release so far. On Mad Song, they are joined by Koen Vandenhoudt, who also recorded the album. De Paepe’s harmonium and Vandenhoudt’s shruti box form the perfect backdrop for Levi’s …

For over four decades, Reiko Omura and Tori Kudo have endlessly woven themselves throughout the avant-garde and underground scene of Japan. While internationally appreciated in countless incarnations and contexts (Maher Shalal Hash Baz, Guys & Dolls), if one were to seek out an early moment in which the two artists created something truly awe inspiring, 1980’s Tenno (天皇) would be it.  As Noise, the duo experimented with the juxtaposition of Kudo’s extended organ based dirges (be they eerie and/o…

Burn the Night / Bruciare la Notte: Original Recordings, 1983–1989 is the first archival collection of music by the Italian minimalist composer Tiziano Popoli. In his music, Popoli framed the Italian avant-garde and New Wave of the 1980s through an architectural aesthetic distinctly detailed by a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, Roland TR-909 drum machine, and early sampling technology.

* Limited edition of 225 cassettes with hand stamped covers * Ka Baird’s Vivification Exercises, a recording for piano, voice, and electronics that references an invigorated consciousness, is primarily based on a presentation at Roulette’s Brooklyn theater in May of 2018. The event added to Baird’s history of performances that embrace the physical and visceral, though the musical, provocative sounds this time exorcised from both her body and the piano’s. Written, performed, produced and mixed by…

Tanz Mein Herz’s latest, Quattro, out via Standard In-Fi, encounters the French collective pushing at the boundaries of folk tinged experimentalism, psych, and drone. Sprawling across two LPs, it’s an absolute burner of throbbing, hypnotic sound and stunning creative interplay, and easily one of the best records we’ve heard in the early months of 2021.

To quote Pitchfork, this is 'one of the most sumptuous, spiritual ambient albums of any era or provenance.

Harry Bertoia's Glowing Sounds LP contains three versions of the same composition, each transferred at different tape speeds in accordance with the artist's instructions. This is the third LP to be released from Bertoia's extensive tape archive and it's the first, of many, to be released using instructions left behind by the artist himself. Bertoia wrote the concept for this Glowing Sounds LP on a note in 1975 and slipped it into the master tape case where it sat unread for 45 years. The idea wa…

** Packaged in a deluxe, heavy duty tip-on gatefold sleeves printed by Stoughton; cut by Golden Mastering and pressed at RTI ** Alina Kalancea's Impedance is an entirely instrumental album spanning four sides, contains powerful rhythmic sequences, heart-beating frequencies and hypnotic loops that are paradoxically encapsulated in carefully crafted compositions which are full of secret passages and hidden doors. Kalancea's work creates ungraspable sonic experiences, which overtakes you, immersing…

Tip. Edition of 500. Pascal Comelade and Richard Pinhas met in Paris in 1974, when Pinhas was beginning to go on stage with his group Heldon. With Heldon and, afterwards, solo, Pinhas became the pioneer and accelerator of electronic music in France, and a fundamental reference throughout the world. Comelade’s electronic period was much shorter, from 1974 to 1981. From 1983 on, he developed his policy of instrumental, strictly acoustic music.In 1975, Pinhas recorded the introduction to Comelade’s…

* Edition of 100 * Of the air was recorded in April of 2015 in Charleston, SC on an 1890 tracker organ. Linkages between stops and the slider chests that open the ranks of pipes to control timbre are mechanical. As a result, pulling out a stop slowly brings in not only a new timbral layer, but does so in way that causes the new sound to slide into the correct pitch. This allows for a microtonal pitch world. During the recording process I was stuck by the way holding down a diatonic cluster while…

* Edition of 100 * For Filaments, I used a 1968 Heath EUW-27 sine generator to create a series of overlapping tones that were recorded to tape. While being played back, I added a lower frequency sine wave run through a ring modulator and slowly rode the pitch shifting dials in real time, improvising alongside the playback. "Filament I" is broken up into three controlled parts, Part I is led by the interaction of the first grouping of tones, Part II is led by subtle shifts in the ring mod, and Pa…

Wow! **4xCD, over 4 hours of music. Co-Released by Hanson Records and Helicopter** Easily one of the most essential releases of this year, Hanson and Helicopter Records stunning 4 CD box set, reissuing Robert Turman’s visionary 1988 release, Chapter Eleven, reveals its creator as one of the most important and neglected artists of that decade, while foreshadowing the work an entire generation of experimental artists that would emerge over the coming years. Truly staggering in scope and creative a…

The only microtonal tuba trio there is, recorded in the Grosser Wasserspeicher, a disused water reservoir in Berlin-Pankow, and mixed with analogue synthesizers. Captured in binaural sound, so the room is as present as the instruments.

*Edition of 200. CD + 8" 36-page photographic booklet.** "This work is loosely inspired by the title of a song by Tim Buckley included in his 1970 album "Starsailor" (a cover version by This Mortal Coil released in the '80s by 4AD was quite formative for me). My passion for the sea, observed, listened and lived mainly - but not only - from the beaches of my land and during winter. A solitary invocation, a project still open, in progress for several years during which the photographs and field re…

*  Edition of 100 * Tsss Tapes presents L'inutile, a new cassette release by Giovanni di Domenico. Recorded at Elektronmusikonstudion EMS, Stockholm and Studio W, Brussels, 2017 - 2019. Mixed and mastered at The Nest Cellar, 2020. This one if for WH - Giovanni di Domenico

* Edition of 100 * Tsss Tapes presents Caraguatá​ / ​Moxotó a new cassette release Marco Scarassatti and Thelmo Cristovam. Composed and recorded in Hobart, Australia, 2020. Released on September 4, 2020. Mastered by Francesco Covarino.

Bocian Records presents Bass to Bass by Nina De Heney & Slawek Janicki. Recorded at Mózg Studio, on November 29th 2019. Sound Recording: Janusz Czado, Maciej Maciejewski. Sound Mixing and mastering: Michał Kupicz. Cover Artwork: Peter Jacquemyn. Design: ZbyZiel. Executive Producer: Mózg Foundation, Bydgoszcz Poland 2020. Co-Producer & Distributor: Bocian Records. Realized thanks to the financial support of the City of Bydgoszcz.

Bocian Records presents Umwelt by Lucio Capece (Gema): on bass clarinet, slide saxophone, cardboard tubes, analog synthesiser and filter, and Ben Vida (Bird Show/ASCAP): on Synthesis, sampling and digital arranging. Recorded in Brussels, Berlin, New York, 2016-2020. Mastering: Joe Talia. Graphic design: Ania Witkowska / Fontanna.

Bocian Records presents Polyptyque by Nimitta. Performed by Massimo Pinca - Double bass, and Christophe Berthet - Soprano saxophone. Recorded in July 2017 at Studio de Agostini, Geneva by Marie Delorme. Mastering: Christian Gugenbuhl. Design: Renaud Goudal. Mixing by Marie Delorme. Cover art: Philippe Reymondin. All Compositions by Massimo Pinca and Christophe Berthet.

Edition of 500. "Here is the first volume of protean solo improvisations recorded by Loren Connors in his artist's garret in New Haven, Connecticut. It was committed to tape on February 20, 1979 and pressed to vinyl soon after. As with the two earlier LPs on Loren's Daggett label, singer/recorder-player Kath Bloom also appears on this record, although only on the second side. Those prior LPs were both issued in 1978, The first was Acoustic Guitar/Gifts a split LP with Loren solo on one side and …

* Edition of 150 * Two long compositions performed by Marcia Bassett and Manuel Mota on Guitar and Margarida Garcia on Bass, capturing a dark, metallic, almost reverberating atmosphere that we imagine in a cistern, a contained and often claustrophobic space. When the sound echoes, we sense the lament of the title in the face of physical constraint - the sound itself does not seem to have the capacity to cross the walls. Music of deep reflection, marking, through the constant sonic search, a worn…

Varsovia’s Recursos Inhumanos (Inhuman Resources), a classic album of Peruvian synth punk, is finally available in vinyl format. Since it’s appearance in 2014, Varsovia surprised many listeners with its combination of punk and synthesizer electronics, in the best tradition of groups such as Kraftwerk, Suicide, Chris & Cosey or Aviador Dro. Using sequencers and drum machines, loud guitars and a voice that oscillates between whispers and shouts, the band builds songs that offer a freewheeling and …

Christian Kobi is one of the leading names on the improv scene in Bern, Switzerland. His work includes collaborations with Phill Niblock, Jürg Frey, Taku Sugimoto, and Keith Rowe. His new album, “Cathedral”, closes a trilogy for saxophone solo that started with “Canto” (2010) and “r a w l i n e s” (2013), and which was recorded in the former Swisscom high-bay warehouse - probably the largest underground space in Bern. That space serves Christian as a place of exploration of sound, silence and ac…

* Edition of 300 * For the past 20 years, German composer Stephan Mathieu has been steadfast in pushing his electro-acoustic alchemy to unique and personal places. His debut LP release on Ritornell in 2000, Wurmloch Variationen, would come to define the sound of ambient music for the two decades that followed. This October, on the 20th anniversary of its release, Wurmloch Variationen will be issued for the first time on vinyl by Dublin-based label Weeding. The album has been astutely remastered …

* Edition of 50 * These ten four minute minimalistic, repetitive, electronic drone pieces invite you to calm down and listen closely. Each of these tracks has a focus on sound and its different qualities such as: pitch, timbre, texture, duration and location. Notes and synthesizer sounds are selected so that their combination creates a harmonious drone with few simultaneous, simple and repetitive elements. Preset synthesizer sounds are sustained to reveal this inner life of each combination. In …

Nomadic Australian cellist and composer Judith Hamann presents two collections of her sonic inquiries into shaking and humming. Her CD, Music for Cello and Humming, features two pieces for cello and humming written specifically for Hamann by composers Sarah Hennies and Anthony Pateras alongside Hamann's own "Humming Suite" and "Study for Cello and Humming." Having arisen intuitively from Hamann's investigations into shaking, just intonation, psychoacoustic phenomena, and the voice in relation to…

Nomadic Australian cellist and composer Judith Hamann presents two collections of her sonic inquiries into shaking and humming. Her LP, Shaking Studies, is a collection of iterative cello performance that foregrounds shaking as a generative subject. In addition to an arsenal of techniques for registrable shaking, Hamann's conception of the term emphasizes micro and macro pulsing, including tremors, vibrato, wolf tones, and complex partial activity. Hamann begins with a sphygmological reading of …

* Edition of 200 * A static, haunting bliss from Michael Morley's Music for The Never Quartet project. The New Zealand-based artist and musician is best known from The Dead C but has also recorded music as Gate, The Fuck Chairs etc, as well as a couple of albums under his own name. "Music for The Never Quartet seeks to employ the resonating qualities of wooden acoustic guitars placed upon items of wooden furniture to reveal connections between time and space by sonically activating the instrumen…

Kredsbevægelsen was an A/V installation based on a video projection of a feedback generated from a video camera filming it’s own projected output and feeding back the light information of the space in between camera and projection, returning output as input and retransmitting, producing a discontinuance of difference between action and effect. Frequencies of coloured light are scaled down to audible spectrum and quantised into harmonics. All audio dynamics, variation in amplitude, phase, frequen…