Phase to Phase
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* Katie and Lucio met over the internet almost every Tuesday for one year, composing two pieces, rehearsing, talking about their lives, and recording. The desire to play together began after exchanging work and perceiving a deeply common approach to bass clarinet playing, to sound, and to music. The two pieces offered here are based in a very distinctive but still strictly coherent approach in relation to the work they intend to do.
Phase to Phase 1 is a ce…
Metaphor of Metamorphosis
*2023 stock. 200 copies limited edition* This is one in a trilogy of live recordings made at Ftarri, Tokyo, documenting some of guitarist/improviser Tetuzi Akiyama's outstanding performances of 2021. The CD releases feature covers drawn by artist Shigeo Mizuta. The two tracks on this CD, each around 25 minutes in length, were recorded at Akiyama's duo concert with electronics player Leo Okagawa at Ftarri on June 21, 2021. Okagawa is known for releases on overseas labels of many collage works usi…
Gauche
*2023 stock* Alto sax/clarinet player Akira Sakata is a legend of Japan’s free jazz scene. Ken Ikeda is a musician who resided for many years in New York and London, and has been based in Tokyo since his return to Japan from the UK in 2020. In 2021, Ikeda released "Signal and Signaless," a duo CD with Rie Nakajima, on the Ftarri label. This album, "Gauche," is Sakata’s first release from Ftarri. On May 21, 2022, Akira Sakata and Ken Ikeda gave a duo concert at Ftarri, Tokyo. This CD consists of …
Allelopathy
*2023 stock* Ayami Suzuki, a musician based in the Tokyo area, performs a unique kind of ambient drone using electronics and voice. Since 2020 she has been performing at Ftarri in Tokyo, both as a soloist and with other musicians. Acclaimed guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama is active on the international improvised music scene. In 2021 Akiyama gave many outstanding performances at Ftarri; recordings of a number of these concerts were subsequently released as CDs. "Allelopathy" is one of these recordings.…
Modular Organ System
Begun in 2017 and developed and refined over the six years since, the Berlin based artists, Phillip Sollmann and Konrad Sprenger, deliver their first LP, via Choose Records, documenting their remarkable Modular Organ System. Comprising a single, long form composition divided into two parts, “Modular Organ System” is a sublime and masterful work of drone, imbued with immediacy and emotion, that culminates as one of our favourite experimental organ records to appear in recent years.
Alone On Penguin Island
Originally released on Dome (Wire's Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's seminal label), this is an often overlooked milestone in freefrom and artistic post-punk. A siginficant piece of the UK musical puzzle when a lot of artists were shrugging off the previous decade and embracing the DIY attitude of the 1980s.
Águas
On 31st January 2022, Hydra Ensemble performed at De Pletterij in Haarlem (NL). It was a good one. Luckily our bass player Gonçalo decided to release the (newly mixed and mastered) recording on his label Cylinder Recordings. I'd say this is my favorite Hydra recording thusfar...
Down On Darkened Meetings
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Down On Darkened Meetings, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Ielasi. Recorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less …
self-talk
Latest release by Italian London based musician Luciano Maggiore on his own edizioni luma.
Ne Lépj a Virágra
A year and a half has passed since Slovak-Hungarian artist Adela Mede self-released her debut album 'Szabadság'. Its liner notes described it as "a navigation", a search through "the personal, familial, cultural, folkloric and geographic of her past and present." Her second album, 'Ne Lépj a Virágra' no longer searches; here, she puts down roots and delves deeper into the earthy reality of her home, Central Europe. Mede sings in three languages with newfound conviction and grace – this is an alb…
Moonlight Shadoh
After her stunning and well acclaimed debut album ‘For Trainspotters Only’ Ann Eysermans now releases ‘Moonlight Shadoh’, a tribute to her dog Shadoh. A record on which she explores the bond between herself and her faithful canine friend, Shadoh, through an extraordinary musical odyssey. Ann Eysermans masterfully weaves together a tapestry of field recordings, candy-like harmonies and Shadoh's distinctive houndly expressions.
Creating otherworldly compositions that transcends genres which includ…
Liturgy of Lacuna
Vathres is a new project led by Stockholm-based keyboardist and composer Alex Zethson. Their debut record consists of three extensive pieces of cinematic, transcendental, and minimalist post-rock music, with elements of experimental jazz and shimmering electronics. It features a 14-piece ensemble and appearances by guitar-wizard Reine Fiske (Dungen), former Pain of Salvation and Meshuggah-bassist Gustaf Hielm and Cult of Luna-drummer Christian Augustin, among others. The music was recorded, mixe…
In this forever unfolding moment
Vilhelm Bromander centers himself in sound, where listening is no less crucial than playing. His relationship to both the notes produced around him and the musicians making them is at the heart of his work. Whether building harmonic structures where he and his colleagues tune in together, constructing a sonic edifice in which sustained tones facilitate deep bonds, or serving as the musical anchor in more rhythmically active settings, playing music with others is about connection, where sound is …
It Deel II
*300 copies limited release* For It Deel II the Kleefstra Bros have collaborated with the Norwegian duo Espen Reinersen and Einvind Lønning (who also collaborate as duo Streifenjunko). Ten years ago the Kleefstra Bros saw Streifenjunko perform at Worm, Rotterdam, and this always stuck in memory. This is why now for It Deel II they got together. The music by Reinersen and Lønning, with the use of wind instruments and electronics, is experimental, but open. It finds a way between improv, jazz and …
Snowblower
New Forces is proud to present "Snowblower," the debut album from Green Tea, a new project from Nick Forté (Rorschach, Raspberry Bulbs, Half Mortal). Drawing inspiration from the writing of Sheridan Le Fanu and the belief that green tea could make one hallucinate, Forté describes Green Tea as a psychedelic harsh noise project that merges noise techniques with ambient and new age music. Incredibly refined for a debut, "Snowblower" is 8 tracks of crushing ambient noise. There are moments on Snowbl…
Touch Works, For Hurdy Gurdy And Voice
*2023 stock* "Phill is a sixty-something New York-based minimalist composer and multi-media musician and director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation born in the flames of 1968's barricade-hopping. He says: 'What I am doing with my music is to produce something without rhythm or melody, by using many microtones that cause movements very, very slowly.' The stills in the booklet are from slides taken in China, while Niblock was making films which are painstaking studies of manual labor, givin…
Touch Food
*2023 stock* "In the mid 1960s, I was riding a two stroke, Yamaha motorcycle up a long mountain slope in the Carolinas, stuck behind a diesel engine truck. Both of our throttles were very open, overcoming the force of gravity. Soon, the revolutions of our respective engines came to a nearly harmonic coincidence, but not quite."The strong physical presence of the beats resulting from the two engines running at slightly different frequencies put me in such a trance that I nearly rode off the side …
Bathroom Electronics
2023 marks the 35th year of Idea Fire Company’s ongoing commitment to the radical avant-garde. To mark the occasion, Horn of Plenty is proud to present the band’s latest campaign statement Bathroom Electronics. IFCO’s core members are Scott Foust and Karla Borecky who operate from rural Massachusetts. Early despatches came via Scott’s Swill Radio imprint alongside titles by The Shadow Ring, RLW, and Asmus Tietchens. The last decade or so has seen them work with other notable labels including Kye…
Red Hair Girl At Lighthouse Beach
*111 copies limited edition* Making music is trying to start over again every time. It’s a matter of questioning and approaching. It’s never settling for the sound that fills the world around. It’s looking for a door in the sky. And maybe find it, open it, go beyond it. Rod Modell and Gigi Masin, this time together, are offering each other vibrations and insights. The former lives between two lakes, the latter between the Venetian lagoon and the sea. Everyone on their own shore, building electro…
Odd Songs & Blue Mystery
Mark Cunningham, the legendary trumpet player and experimental musician, is back with a CD release that showcases his solo work from the past decade. Odd Songs is a collection of tracks recorded between 2012 and 2019, featuring collaborations with Arnau Sala, Adrian de Alfonso and Joxean Rivas and first released on cassette in 2019. These songs explore different genres and styles, from ambient to noise, from no wave to free jazz, always with Mark’s distinctive touch and sound. Blue Mystery is a …