Edition of 300. Includes 8-page booklet. In 1969, while American minimalism was consolidating into its most recognizable forms, Charlemagne Palestine was conducting solitary experiments with oscillators and sine waves that only now reveal their visionary scope. This was the New York of lofts and abandoned industrial spaces, of artists pushing sound toward its physical limits -- a city where the boundaries between music, performance art, and bodily endurance were dissolving. Battling the Invisible unearths two electronic studies from that crucial year, paired with rare 1972 Bösendorfer sessions -- a document that illuminates the passage from pure electronics to the keyboard as an instrument of prolonged ecstasy. "Low Sounds 3" opens the record with fifteen minutes of low frequencies that seem to emerge from the very foundations of the sonic edifice. There is no development in the traditional sense, but a static presence that gradually colonizes the listening space. Think Eliane Radigue's meditative drone work filtered through a raw, almost brutalist sensibility. "Sine Tone Study" on Side B extends this practice for nearly nineteen minutes -- sine waves overlapping, creating beating patterns, zones of interference explored with the patience of an entomologist. The two 1972 Bösendorfer fragments function as bridges toward the Palestine the world knows better -- the strumming ecstasies, the hypnotic accumulation of overtones, the piano as a vehicle for transcendence. Here the physical approach to the keyboard is already evident -- what he would describe as a "battle." This release is part of Alga Marghen's The Golden Research series -- a concept devised by Palestine himself around the idea of "perfect sound." The series focuses exclusively on completely unreleased archival materials, bringing to light legendary recordings that have never been heard before. The LP includes a 8-page interview conducted by Sumner Crane and Rudolph Grey in January 1979 at Palestine's NYC loft, with Arto Lindsay present, later redacted by Alan Licht. The insert is an anastatic reproduction of the original 12-page typescript. Unfiltered, explosive -- Palestine on violence, on the body as battleground, on his Brooklyn childhood. Essential reading.
In the summer of 1976, a peculiar album appeared in Italian record shops, its cover bearing no artist name, only the cryptic moniker Elektriktus. For the handful of listeners who encountered it before it vanished from circulation, the music posed a question that wouldn't be answered for decades: who had created this strange hybrid of jazz sensibility and kosmische synthesis, this music that seemed to emanate from somewhere between Cologne and Calabria? The answer was hiding in plain sight. Andrea Centazzo, by then a recognized figure in European free improvisation -- a percussionist who had shared stages with Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, and Derek Bailey -- had been leading a double life. Between 1973 and 1976, in the intervals between touring with Giorgio Gaslini's quartet (Gaslini would soon co-compose Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso with Goblin), Centazzo retreated to his farmhouse in Moruzzo and to studios in Pistoia, where he conducted experiments with Minimoog, Davolisint, and the GEM Rodeo 49, an Italian-manufactured synthesizer that had become essential equipment in the country's progressive rock underground. What emerged from these sessions was music that occupied a peculiar position in the taxonomy of 1970s electronic experimentation. PDU Records -- owned by the pop icon Mina and by the mid-seventies functioning as Italy's primary distributor for German avant-garde labels like Ohr, Brain, Kosmische Musik, Pilz, and Kosmische Kuriere -- recognized the value of what Centazzo had created. But there was a commercial calculus at work: the label's executives worried that Centazzo's established identity as a jazz percussionist would confuse the market for cosmic electronics, then in the process of consolidating as a genre distinct from both progressive rock and academic electronic music. The solution was to create Elektriktus -- a pseudonym that functioned as a conceptual portmanteau, fusing "electronic" with "Ictus," the name Centazzo would soon give to his own label and to his series of percussion works. The name suggested both electronic impulse and percussive attack, a synthesis that accurately described the music's character. For where German kosmische musik tended toward the infinite and the abstract, Centazzo's electronic music retained a tactile, almost physical quality.
Much of the Collide's sound is derived from an old Aria Pro II electric guitar from Leif's childhood, scratched up with damaged and unpredictable electrics. The record leans into this sense of things being broken or damaged -- and how sometimes things need to break in order for listeners to make sense of them -- reveling in, rather than resisting, unpredictability. Lush textures traverse the listener. across unexpected terrains.
The collaboration between Anthony Moore and filmmaker David Larcher began in the late '60s, at the start of both their respective careers and lasted many years. Following on from the 2024 release of the soundtrack to Mare's Tail (PD 041LP) (the first collaboration with Larcher) comes the release of the soundtrack to his second film, Monkey's Birthday. This LP is a condensation of the essence of this six-hour film. The sound is partly taken directly from the existing soundtrack and partly from stereo masters that have survived through the decades. Shot and edited between 1973 and 1975 this epic film moves through a variety of landscapes, both physical and abstract. It was filmed in various locations, starting in Germany and moving through Hungary, Romania and most substantially in rural Turkey. In large part this is a road movie that takes the filmed events and locations and uses them as sources for further experimentation. In much the same way, the location recordings made by Anthony Moore are used as raw material for creating much of the soundtrack, working from a battery powered studio in the back of his truck in this east bound convoy. The previously released excerpt, "Plains Of Hungary (ReR Quarterly Vol.2 No.1)" is included on this album in its rightful place among the collages of Islamic chant, field recordings, tape loops, jam sessions etc. Heathcote Williams is also in the mix reading from esoteric texts. Also feature, alongside various voices from the crew and general public, is a repeated theme using the looped cut up voice recordings from the two other members of Slapp Happy (Dagmar Krause and Peter Blegvad), who took to the road for part of this grueling journey. Comes with large four-sided insert. Numbered edition of 500.
A note from Brad Rose: "The Sound Leaves began as an interactive sound performance and installation based around humans' impact on the environment and how that impact is altering the sonic landscape of our world. As ecosystems change due to climate collapse, the sound of those ecosystems changes too. The Sound Leaves used an amplified collection of autumn leaves to encourage participants to listen closely to how their actions alter the sounds of the fallen leaves by walking on and through them for a period of time. By amplifying these sounds, processing and mixing them live, and playing them back via a set of speakers directed at the installation, the performance heightened the sonic changes participants' actions create. From that performance, a sound piece by the same name was composed using the recorded sounds with additional instrumentation. It was installed as a temporary exhibition on site at Philbrook Musuem of Art during the winter of 2023, emanating from a grove of oak and elm trees. A year later, as the climate crisis worsened, those same sounds were reprocessed and reconsidered, creating a more ghost-like approach, 'In Collapse.'"
A note from David Shea: "Meditations is a set of eight works based on the experience of meditation practice. Music made for both meditation and reflecting the realities of a life of daily practice. The breath, the quietness, the listening, the distracted dissonant and consonant thoughts that pass through. The texts throughout the pieces are fragments of the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the shortest and created from a mixture of traditions and sources, produced long after Buddha's death and meant to be chanted or sung as a ritual and personal meditation. The experience of meditation, so often covered in mythology and one dimensionally peaceful symbols, is in fact a complex set of traditions in all cultures and has roots in indigenous cultures world wide and involves the limitations of thought as well as the quietness of the mind as a source of understanding and health. The Buddhist teachings that are in focus in this album are in a sense a sequel to the record Rituals of 2015 in that they are adapted as Meditations that cross and combine traditions with any attempt consciously to synthesize them into a new whole. A conversation between traders, in the form here of musicians , languages, sound sources and the peace and struggle of maintaining a real meditational practice and living in the chaos and violence of society as well as accepting the world as it is, with all of the internal conflicts and release and rise of tension. The musicians on these pieces also are recorded live in a group setting listening to each other with a shared space and character I create and through this listening the connections that form the final piece are made. The Heart Sutra which I read in the last piece of the eight is a translation which has been collaged by many schools and cultures that adapted the teachings to their indigenous religions. The bonus track is a live mix (called a Metta Mix) of a performance and collage of all this material and other new pieces, performed in a virtual avatar world called 'Second Life' for a live audience who listens and attends in their own avatars. All pieces on this set of recordings are a version of this in some ways, with the mix being something both from me and for those that listen. Meditations is both a document of practice, past and present and an experience of listening, both personal and the connective mix of us and all the things that are not us."
A note from Stuart Argabright: "Degraded, faded cities now empty of people. You can hear household appliances in the kitchens still talking, but only to each other. The phrases are distorted, unclear; broken English, Japanese and a few Korean and Chinese automated voices, syllables, shopping lists, play lists for dinner and recipes. Somewhere one of the machines is dialled in on an isolated pre-Buddhist monk chant, distant like from a high cliff meditation cell. The flow of the wide, long Black Mother River Kali Gandaki below them. Here is Obliteration Bliss A world in a flash of light. The world running faster and faster. Another biomorph escapes the facility...she disappears into a backwater jungle town. A witness to smoking remains and death after generation wars, ash snow dusted, scorched lands. Look into a huge room filled with ancient machines and stumble among the fossils by the old silver river. Before the wind reverses and chokes us with sand, grit and who knows what else direct from the Subcontinent. The evening fog closes around impossibly high tower buildings. A pack of racing bikes approaching, lights flaring. Still we linger in-between the shadows and the light. There's another voice calling, but its form is hazed in fading neon. It's raining again."
Pink color vinyl. "The artistry of Midori Hirano lives in the resonance between sonic and visual worlds. Over her distinguished career the Berlin-based, Kyoto born composer, pianist, and synthesist has crafted a distinctive voice straddling the spheres of classical music and harmonies with abstraction and invention. In addition to works under her own name, Hirano has released dynamic experiments under her MimiCof moniker as well as composed for film, television, art exhibitions and architectural expos. Hirano has also been a prolific collaborator, working with CoH, Brueder Selke, Nils Mosh, Teodor Wolgers, Ben Lukas Boysen and Paul Emmerich, SPECIMENS, Mami Sakurai, Atsuko Hatano, and more, contributing to dozens of releases. Hirano is acclaimed for crafting emotive works that stimulate all the senses with impressionism, or painting with sound. OTONOMA is the culmination of her work synthesizing these elements and highlights her acumen as a practiced and intuitive artist. The album infuses Hirano's more classical sense of harmony on the piano with the endless textural possibilities of synthesizers. Like nebulas coalescing into galaxies, the pieces of OTONOMA emanate hues dense with subtle layers of color folded into gradients, arresting and radiant. In Japanese the word 'Oto' means 'sound' and 'Ma' refers to the 'space' or 'interval' between things. So, 'Otonoma' literally means 'the space between sounds.' In classical usage, 'Ma' can also mean 'room' which allows a different reading, 'a room of sounds.' 'Illuminance,' a foundational track on the album, has rich textures and a searching modular synth. 'Ame, Hikari' was initially composed for a photo exhibition of Japanese artist Rinko Kawauchi's work at Fotografiska Berlin and captures the rain (ame) and light (hikari) of Kawauchi's photos. The stately lone piano of 'Rainwalk' offers a minimalist, affecting snapshot of a moment in time while pieces like 'Aurora' take a more wide-eyed, macrocosmic view with fluttering electronics and a surging drone. Throughout OTONOMA, Hirano's compositions seep over their sonic borders and through the complex intersection of rhythm and tone are an affecting listen. The intersection between sound and space embodies the architecture of this beautiful impressionistic album. In the deft hands of its architect, Midori Hirano, the music is remarkable for its reflective and connective beauty, a sensational sensorial experience."
LP version. Opaque vinyl. "Marielle V Jakobsons has cultivated a signature voice molded by minimalist, ambient and spiritual traditions. Her recordings, from her early work with Date Palms, to the ongoing work with Chuck Johnson in Saariselka, and most definitively with The Patterns Lost to Air, show Jakobsons to be an exceptionally skillful sound sculptor, a musician who knows the value of patience and control. An artist able to derive maximum impact from her chosen sound elements, the album's layout is shaped by three primary voices of violin, Fender Rhodes, and Moog Matriarch and was recorded in 2024 in the studio Jakobsons built in Oakland, California, its huge windows overlooking a backyard with olive and palm trees, nesting towhees and hummingbirds. The Patterns lost to Air was also born of personal change for Jakobsons brought on by the health effects of long COVID, as well as an intentional musical shift from drones to working with scores and written music as she leaned in on her classical training, and harmonic writing. It was more than an evolution, it was a need to redefine who and what she was, down to the molecular level, because she could no longer create music in the same way, which became a galvanizing motif for The Patterns Lost to Air. On The Patterns Lost to Air, each piece emerges from a place of necessary restriction, discovering how limitation itself can become a portal to new territories of sound and meaning. The pieces make use of loops and slowly shifting patterns that gracefully decay with time. Through sonic landscapes of Fender Rhodes piano, synthesizers, and strings, the album investigates the space between those patterns like threads of memory, each tone transfiguring and dissolving together. Imagining the forms and shapes that sound takes as its projected into a listening space, and how they are 'lost to air' as they morph and decay. This physicality of sound is a theme in her work in general, and this album is directly a conversation on that aspect."
"The minutest vibrations are as expressive as the most sweeping gesture" --Pitchfork
2026 repress. Transa is the fourth album by Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso, released on 1972 by PolyGram. Like its predecessor, it was recorded while the artist was exiled in London, though he returned to Brazil shortly after completing it. Evocative, eclectic, intimate, and rhythmically complex, Transa contains everything that has made Caetano Veloso the most distinctive and, arguably, most important voice in modern Brazilian music. The record was cut in 1972, shortly after Veloso's return from political exile in England. Though the songs are not overtly political, they seem allegorical, celebratory, and plaintive at once, and point to a tension between the artist's expressive impulse and the strictures of his native country. This tension is further heightened by the presence of lyrics in both English and Portuguese. The beautiful, desperate "You Don't Know Me" may be the world's first bilingual bossa nova/folk-punk anthem of identity. The jazzy "Nine Out of Ten" gives way to the gear-shifting "Triste Bahia," which features webs of accelerating Brazilian percussion. A spare treatment of the classic samba "Mora Na Filosofia," the cosmic ditty "Neolithic Man," and the 12-bar "Nostalgia," (ending with the wise line "That's What Rock 'n Roll Is All About") close out the set. Transa is a jewel in Veloso's discography and a must for anyone interested in Brazilian pop -- or brilliant, original pop in general. 180 gram vinyl.
We Jazz Magazine, Issue 17, Weathering for aja monet. 128 pages, 170 x 240 mm in size and printed on 140g Edixion paper with laminated 300g Invercote covers. All articles presented in English. aja monet by Ayana Contreras, Azymuth by Ben Lee, Henry Threadgill by Bret Sjerven, Sven-Ă…ke Johansson by Magnus Nygren, Anna Webber by Stewart Smith, Rafiq Bhatia by Florent Servia, Talk Show (Steph Richards & Qasim Naqvi) by Andy Cush, Ganavya by Tina Edwards, Cosmic Tones Research Trio by Blake Gillespie, Quincy Jones by Rob Garratt, Devin Daniels by Samuel Lamontagne, album design essay by Alex Coles, Discaholic column by Mats Gustafsson, album reviews, live reviews, photo essay and more.
Color vinyl version. "Charley (a.k.a. Charlie) Patton was the most powerful blues recording artist of all time, considered by many to be the single most important figure in the history of traditional blues. He was a profound shaper and a giant figure in early Mississippi Delta music. The combined power of his vocal and guitar dynamics is unparalleled and he was the Delta's first blues celebrity." This reissue reproduces the front and back cover of Yazoo's original 1970 release. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl.
Eclection's lack of commercial success remains a mystery to this day. This selection of BBC Top Gear recordings demonstrates their song-writing strength and musical prowess. Only three tracks appeared on the band's sole studio LP: the remaining nine songs suggest what a second LP might have sounded like. Highly recommended to fans of Fairport Convention, with whom Eclection share some musical DNA. Comes with full recording credits and extensive sleeve notes. Recording quality very good/excellent throughout.
Alga Marghen presents two previously unpublished seminal works by Bill Fontana, "Suite For Toy Tape Recorder" from 1968, and "Wave Spiral" from the early '70s. These recordings come directly from the archives of Philip Corner who also curated this LP edition and contributed the liner notes. 1968: In the basement Music Room of the New School For Social Research, Philip Corner was teaching "Analysis of New Music," a class he inherited from Malcolm Goldstein and before him Richard Maxfield and of course all the way back to the famous founder John Cage, present in the spirit of living history. The "Suite For Toy Tape Recorder" was a series of little reels of 1 7/8" tapes, unique experiments by means of "working-with" and so "transcend" by "making use-of" those little cheap tape-recorders. A sensitive ear that listened to hum and hiss and all the other characteristic distortions; and recorded these materials via a kind of physical phonogène of musique-concrete perspective, his thumb's friction as the reel was running fast-forward in order to create tape loops in contrapuntual collision. Side B presents "Wave Spiral, for 5 Rin Gongs," a 21-minute blissful piece recorded in the early-'70s and first presented in Australia in 1977. This work shows how Bill Fontana's research evolved toward working with the distinct physical dimension of different frequencies. An exploration of how sound becomes simultaneously its own material and the force acting upon it. The piece unfolds as an investigation of how frequency itself becomes sculptural. Across its 21-minute duration, the rin gongs generate sustained waves that spiral outward and inward simultaneously, their overtones interacting with the listening space that Fontana would describe as a "definition of motion interacting with a particular acoustic environment." The spiral manifests itself here not through cycles within cycles of tape loop manipulations like on Side A, but through the acoustic behavior of metallic resonance in space. This sound is rendered as tangible phenomenon, frequency made visible through its physical impact on the listening environment. These recordings have remained unheard for decades, only existing in Philip Corner's archive. Their publication allows the world to trace the development of an artist discovering that to work with sound was to investigate its physical dimensions, to understand that frequency and space are inseparable, that sound sculpure begins not with installation but with the fundamental recognition that all sounds exist as waves interacting with architecture itself. Edition of 232.
LP version. ATA Records present the new release by Work Money Death, A Portal to Here. This album continues WMD's exploration of spiritual jazz and the sounds and styles that evolved out of the '60s New Thing, particularly the recordings of Alice Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders. The first WMD album released since the tragic death of ATA guitarist Chris Earl Dawkins in early 2025, all four tracks reference the journey that band members and the studio have been on -- in many ways this record is a testament and tribute to Chris, his musicality and creativity. Featuring WMD stalwarts Tony Burkill, Neil Innes, Sam Hobbs, and Sam Bell, the album introduces Sorcerers keyboardist Johnny Richards to the WMD sound. Richards brings a fresh new take to the piano role here, drawing on what is clearly a broad knowledge of jazz history and channeling that through his own unique 21st century musical perspective. The album also features contributions from Alice Roberts on harp, bringing the spirit of Alice Coltrane, Ben Powling on baritone saxophone, Richard Ormrod on woodwind, and Kev Holbrough and Steve Parry on brass. Those Sun Ra-esque horn sections lift the mood whenever they appear. Standout tracks are the second, "Dance of the Spirits," with a strong core of "Baptism and The Blues" and some lovely playing by Richards, and the third track, "Brother Earl," which begins with Tony on flute over rhythms that are directly reminiscent of open-hearted, late-'60s spirituality. A Portal to Here is a stunning addition to the WMD catalogue and a clear statement that the band continues to create and produce, whatever life throws its way.
This album is both a musical and political document that tells the story of one of the most brutal massacres that took place in 1976 in a Palestinian refugee camp during the Lebanese Civil War. Pianist Gaetano Liguori, along with Giulio Stocchi and Demetrio Stratos (the legendary singer of the band Area), composed this album, a gut-wrenching blend of free jazz, poetry, and Mediterranean music. The first edition was released in 1978 and, after almost 50 years, unfortunately, nothing seems to have changed. This is the third edition of the album, and as with the previous releases, all proceeds will go to charity. This time, Black Sweat have chosen to donate the funds to UNRWA.
At the end of the 1980s, Mariolina Zitta approached the world of natural sounds, studying musicology and developing a passion for speleology. Her encounter with Walter Maioli was fundamental, guiding and influencing her definitive research into sound archaeology and the primitive sources of musical acoustic phenomena. In these recordings Mariolina conducts a magical ritual as a cave priestess, celebrating the icons par excellence of the mysteries of the night: bats. The specific frequencies of the calls of these fascinating creatures are recorded with special detectors used by ecologists, and the result is an organic synthesizer. The fusion with the sounds of natural objects (stones, stalactites, logs, bone whistles, Tibetan bells, mouth bows, trumpet shells) and the vocal modulations of harmonic singing allow listeners to travel into a still unexplored sound dimension, through an evocative experience of total sensory listening. It is an arcane landscape filled with pure vibrations, magnetic resonances and aquatic sounds; an ancestral enchantment on the border between consciousness and dreams, a symbolic liturgy of primordial reverberations, echoes and whistles. Edition of 200 copies.
"Gagaku" is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century. These recordings partly reflect repertoires borrowed from Chinese music between the 5th and 9th centuries. The incredible variety of timbres of the instruments greatly amplifies the listener's exotic imagination: the eternal breath of the flutes (ryuteki and hichiriki) creates a sort of suspension of time, together with the hypnotic and hallucinatory atmosphere of the mouth organs (shō). The meditative tone of the string instruments (bika and koto) that punctuate the voids and silences is impressive, as is the enigmatic percussion section, with the tolling of the gong (shōko) and the calibrated beats of the drums (taiko and kakko).
CLOTHILDE
Queen of the French Swinging Mademoiselle 1967 LP
2026 repress; LP version. Comes with a four-page insert. Clothilde, queen of the "Swingin' Mademoiselles." Why Clothilde? Why not that more star-worthy, internationally-acclaimed Françoise Hardy, or the more akin to the sub-genre, France Gall? Because she's the most characteristic, archtypical French mademoiselle, that's why! Christine Pilzer, even Jacqueline Taïeb before her, both may have been rediscovered first in this style unique to French '60s pop, and Stella also may have been the most out and out "anti-ye-ye" with her slightly anti-establishment and derisive lyrics countering the pop system and establishment, but Cleo's all about text, not that much as a whole production. As such, Clothilde takes the crown. Not only has Clothilde the most natural (albeit unknowingly) disposition as a chanteuse, singing such subversive lyrics with as much second degree detachment as possible but also, the music itself is highly original: inventive arrangements including French horn, musical saw, church bells, barrel organ, marimba, brass fiddle, woodwinds, and busy fuzz guitar amidst all that slapstick comedy-like audio bric-à -brac. Almost avant-garde in concept, it was imagined and produced by Clothilde's impresario, manager and indeed creator, legendary Disques Vogue A.D. Germinal Tenas. This could've only come out of France.
Reissue in white color vinyl. First time reissue of this French cold-wave/minimal-synth treasure. Originally released in November, 1981.
"Original was the second release by Cadillac Records in 1973 and came about through the involvement of Mike Westbrook with the label -- Mike Osborne was of course the fiery alto player in Mike's groundbreaking Concert Band and came to Cadillac with a duo recording with legendary pianist Stan Tracey, Cadillac founder John Jack naturally snapped it up! Reissued for the very first time, remastered from the original tapes and available digitally."
LP, one-time edition of 200 copies, pressed to 180g black vinyl and housed in a pro-printed jacket, contained in a silk-screened PVC sleeve. Returning with its final instalments, Die Schachtel's Decay Music series extends its explorations of inspired contemporary experimental efforts of the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract with Sergio Armaroli and David Toop's And I Entered Into Sleep, an astounding electroacoustic gesture of blurred space and time, plumbing complexity of meaning bound to sonority. Creatively groundbreaking and inspired, radically rethinking the terms of what ambient music can be perceived to be, it stands among the most striking efforts to appear within the series to date. Reconfiguring the notion of bridge building on a multitude of terms, it feels fitting that the tenth and final installment of Die Schachtel's Decay Music series, Sergio Armaroli and David Toop's And I Entered Into Sleep, was co-created by an artist whose work featured in the first suite of LPs issued by Brian Eno's Obscure Records in 1975, the groundwork toward which Decay Music's own efforts nod. David Toop has been regarded as a pioneer in British experimental and improvised music: a sonic voyager who has continuously challenged the sources and materiality of sound through rigorously thoughtful performances, a vast catalog of recordings, and a steady flow of highly influential texts. Be it as a member of Alterations, his group breaking group with Peter Cusack, Terry Day, and Steve Beresford that ran between 1977 to 1986, or through is noteworthy work with artists like Rie Nakajima, Thurston Moore, Paul Burwell, and numerous others, collaboration has always played a central role within Toop's singular practice. A composer, percussionist, vibraphonist, and multidisciplinary artist, Armaroli has been issuing radical and forward-thinking musical gestures for decades, working as one of Italy's most noteworthy interpreters of composer's like Giacinto Scelsi, John Cage, Franco Evangelisti, Giancarlo Schiaffini, and Walter Branchi, as both a solo performer and member of the highly regarded Rib Trio, as well as forging a singular practice as a composer. Featuring Armaroli on vibraphone and prepared vibraphone and Toop on electronics, And I Entered Into Sleep is "a sonic journey, a Proustian suggestion à la Recherche, into the unconscious between electronic and acoustic sounds." Feeling almost subaquatic at times, each artist's markedly different sound-sources dance in abstract grace, incorporating subtle nods to minimalism, free jazz, and musique concrète. And I Entered Into Sleep traverses uncharted realms at the borders of literary reference, sound art, ambience and abstraction through delicately musical sounds, revealing new depths at every turn.
2026 restock. Nancy Mounir's debut album, Nozhet El Nofous, is a remarkable communion with ghosts. Moody, hypnotic, and sneakily catchy, the album -- whose title means "Promenade of the Souls" in Arabic -- explores microtonality, non-metered rhythms, and bold vulnerability through a musical dialogue between Mounir's own arrangements and the sounds of archival recordings of once-famed singers from Egypt at the turn of the 20th century. Adding her own ambient arrangements over voices haunted with passion and desire as she creates a sound that is warmly familiar but utterly new. On the album, Mounir slips into the gaps left by the lost frequencies of the aging recordings, finding space for counterpoint and harmony in a traditional sound built on monophony. Elegant melodies unfold in measured gestures as Mounir -- who plays most of the instruments herself -- revels in the plaintive intonations and brash lyrics of the departed singers. With layers enmeshed together, it's at times hard to pin down when the past ends and the present begins, but beneath it all is a liberating attitude of defiance that feels timeless. Nozhet El Nofous is brilliant in the way it explores the techniques and perspectives of a more freewheeling time period in Arabic music, before Arabic maqam (modal systems) and other musical foundations were standardized by the Middle East's cultural power brokers in the early 1930s. As she summons a rich, atmospheric landscape of tone and texture, Mounir engages an older generation of musical rebels in a creative dialogue across time and space - and the results are stunning in their ambition and beauty. Mixed by Adham Zidan. Mastered by Heba Kadry. Remastered for vinyl by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio. Artwork by Egyptian filmmaker and photographer Ahmad Abdalla, with original typography and design by Salma Shamel. Lyrics translation by Katharine Halls. Includes an eight-page booklet with lyrics in English and Arabic. Featuring Naima El Masreya, Saleh Abdel Hay, Abdel Latif El Banna, Mounira El Mahdeya, Hayat Sabry, Fatma Serry, and Zaki Mourad.
2026 limited restock. Reissue, originally released in 1979. Recorded live at WKCR Radio in New York City in 1978 and issued by Ictus the following year, Environment for Sextet encounters John Zorn at the earliest stages of his career, resting within a sextet of a new generation of stunning improvisers emerging at the tail end of the '70s who would go on to define a vast swath of the '80s sound -- Polly Bradfield on violin, Andrea Centazzo on percussion, Eugene Chadbourne on guitar, Tom Corra on cello, and Toshinori Kondo on trumpet -- it roughly builds on the series of collaborations that had featured on Centazzo's 1978 Ictus LP U.S.A. Concerts. Launching from a total wall of sound -- full throttle fire on the boundaries of outright noise -- Environment for Sextet takes the listening on an endlessly surprising journey through its players' inner world, shifting between airy open passages that feature endless combinations of one or more players, to furious moments of sonorous lashings where the group falls in together in brilliant dialogical periods of conversant texture and tonal intervention. An engrossing and relentless listen from the first moment to the last -- featuring two works built from two of Andrea Centazzo's earliest graphic scores -- Environment for Sextet is an absolutely stunning body of improvised work by what were then among the most important rising stars on the free music scene.
2026 restock. This record is divided into two sections. The first part is the title track and takes up most of side one. Ali's Smile was first published in 1971 and was privately released as a one-sided LP, in an edition of 99 copies. It came in a plain sleeve with a hardback copy of the spoken text, and was sold exclusively through Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, UK. Bill Butler, the bookshop owner, was still paying off a viciously punitive fine and associated court costs imposed in 1968 after a guilty verdict in an obscenity trial. Burroughs, a "fellow American", was only too happy to help out by letting him have the rights to the recording. Rumors abound as to how many copies of the LP actually sold and how many were damaged after having been left on a heater, but, whatever the facts, this magnanimous gesture would still have been very handy. This is the first official reissue of this lost audio recording. A tale of revenge, heartless cruelty and amulet power, muddied with frequent recourse to Scientological references. The rest of the LP is taken up with 33 minutes of audio tape supplied by Burroughs in answer to various questions mailed to him by a freelance journalist. It also includes several readings from material he was working on at the time. The recordings date from 1963, which places them as some of, if not the, earliest in-depth recordings of his readings and thoughts. As this material dates from just before the publication of Nova Express, much of it serves as a useful companion and commentary on his Nova mythology. In the end only about ten minutes of this material ever got broadcast, and was used as part of an illustrated talk on the BBC's Third Programme. Sleeve notes on a numbered insert; edition of 1000.
Mimosa Pudica brings together two works by Luciano Maggiore, both conceived as live performances structured around the presence and behavior of an audience. In both cases, rhythmic and formal elements arise from acts of observation and listening: eye contact, involuntary sounds, shifts of attention, hesitation, withdrawal. Mimosa Pudica reconstructs the conditions of these works in the absence of an audience. The record operates as a displacement: a concert without spectators, a live situation deprived of the social geometry that normally sustains it. What remains is not the trace of an event, but the internal workings of the pieces -- listening as response, rhythm as a fragile negotiation, sound as the outcome of relational tension. Recorded during a residency at Nub Project Space, the two works are built through layered actions performed by a single body, yet assembled to suggest the presence of a full room. The result is neither a straightforward studio construction nor a live recording, but a deliberate ambiguity: a record that imitates the dynamics of a concert while suspending its most recognizable cues. In straight lines, an uncertain whistle unfolds against a cluster of sine waves, punctuated by rhythmic elements triggered by imagined exchanges of gaze. Circle on circle on circle on circle, where murmurs and percussive gestures respond to barely perceptible sounds, evokes a spatial situation in which listening replaces any visual reference. In both works, rhythm does not present itself as a fixed structure, but as something contingent, dependent, and reversible. Only 100 copies available for international distribution, with white-on-black printed artwork on the sleeve plus insert with score and liner notes.
"This is music inspired by the water and the wind. By the tattoo of the insects' beating wings and the soughing of the wattle in the sea breeze. By the dull roll of the surf and the rhythm of my breath against the pad of my feet as I walk along the sandy, leaf-littered path through the scrub to the beach. The fingers of the fire-blackened dead banksias clawing the vicious blue. Somewhere, a peal of laughter is torn from its source and flies for a moment on the thermals rising from the baking sand. It is the summer of 2024/25 in Australia as the ideas for this album coalesce from a dozen different threads. I'm camping with my family on Krowathunkooloong land in the south-east corner of the country. The place where I grew up. The same beach where I spent every summer through my childhood. We swim every day in the ocean and in the late afternoons in the calm of the Yeerung River. The water, stained red brown by Melaleuca, turns my hand into a bloody ghost as I watch it sink. This place asks questions of me about belonging, about the relationship of the body to the wind. Of memory, of history, and of forgetting. Sound braces us in the now but simultaneously connects us to the past - a porous membrane between inner and outer worlds. I am walking up the hill behind the Yeerung with my trumpet in my backpack. Stopping to play momentarily. Trying to find a space in which I can resonate the sounds I make with those around me. The river is full from earlier rain and is threatening to break through the thin sandbank that separates its deep red pool from the gunmetal blue ocean. The heat gathers and the pulsing of the crickets intensifies." --Peter Knight
Peter Knight is a composer, trumpeter, and curator whose practice thrives in the spaces between genres, categories, and cultures. His recent solo work extends the possibilities of his instrument with innovative approaches that interweave acoustic preparations, extended techniques with electroacoustic processing via laptop, vintage delays, and tape machines. Peter is interested in the use of repetition, rhythmic overlapping, slow harmonic evolution, and subtle timbral evolutions to shift our perceptions of linear time.
Sonor Music Editions presents the definitive reissue of Piero Piccioni's often unheralded soundtrack to the 1969 bittersweet Italian comedy classic Amore Mio Aiutami (Help Me, My Love), starring two giants of Italian cinema, Monica Vitti and Alberto Sordi. This soundtrack is a prime example of Piccioni's immense talent as a composer of timeless, lushly orchestrated lounge music -- a masterpiece of its era that rightfully deserves its place alongside his most cherished works from the same period, such as Colpo Rovente, Camille 2000, Appassionata, Il Dio Sotto La Pelle, and Travolti Da Un Insolito Destino Nell'Azzurro Mare D'Agosto (Swept Away). In recent years, it has found new life in the age of streaming, being extensively rediscovered and sampled within the hip-hop and lo-fi communities. Maestro Piero Piccioni remains one of the brightest shining stars among Italian composers from the golden age of cinema, soundtracks, and library music. With a prolific career that includes more than 300 film scores, Piccioni began his journey in the world of cinema in Rome during the 1950s. At the time, he was practicing law but soon began composing for film, developing a particularly close working relationship with directors Francesco Rosi and Alberto Sordi. Among his vast body of work -- especially his collaborations with Sordi -- Amore Mio Aiutami stands at the pinnacle of Piccioni's oeuvre, showcasing his style of composition and production. The score moves seamlessly from sophisticated bossa and lounge pieces like "Amanda Strain," "North Pole Penguin," and the versions of "Bossa Per Alberto" -- performed with a smaller jazz combo -- to dreamy vocal pieces by Nora Orlandi and her choir, including "Miss Luna Special," "Luna Amore E No," and "Luna Non Sei Nessuna," featuring British actress and dancer Gloria Paul. The highlight, however, perhaps remains the pastoral main theme, where romantic strings intertwine with Piccioni's unmistakable sound and bittersweet melodies -- forever linked to Italian Commedia all'italiana films, of which Amore Mio Aiutami is a prime example. This revitalized reissue of Piero Piccioni's Amore Mio Aiutami soundtrack has been carefully remastered by Jonathan Dakers, lacquer-cut by Jukka Sarapää at Timmion Cutting, and packaged in a thick cardboard tip-on sleeve with fully restored artwork. It also includes two versions of "Bossa Per Alberto" as bonus tracks.
For over four decades, Masami Akita, the man behind Merzbow, has remained one of the most singular and uncompromising figures in experimental music. Known as a pioneer of Japanese noise and a tireless sonic innovator, Akita has consistently pushed boundaries, exploring sound not as a vehicle for melody or harmony, but as a raw material to be shaped, sculpted, and sometimes obliterated. Originally released on CD in 2003, Animal Magnetism is now receiving a long-overdue vinyl reissue -- a deluxe edition that not only revives the album but enhances it. This new edition has been meticulously remastered by Lasse Marhaug, a respected figure in noise and experimental music who brings new clarity, weight, and depth to the recordings. Spread across two vinyl LPs and housed in a gatefold sleeve, the reissue replicates the original artwork, including Masami Akita's own photographs, while also adding a previously unreleased bonus track, "Quiet Comfort #2." Animal Magnetism occupies a unique position in Merzbow's vast catalogue. It is a work that remains firmly rooted in the artist's signature approach -- dense layers of distortion, feedback, and electronic debris -- but it also stands out for its sense of structure, variation, and surprising accessibility. It's an album that, while intense, is not impenetrable. It invites the listener to explore its textures and uncover subtle melodic patterns and rhythmic shifts beneath the surface noise. What makes Animal Magnetism distinctive is its balance between harsh noise and a more refined, composed sensibility. Where many Merzbow albums plunge into total abstraction, this one maintains a sense of movement and progression. The newly added bonus track, "Quiet Comfort #2," fits seamlessly into the album's sound world. It serves as both a continuation and a reflection, extending the album's themes while offering something fresh. Animal Magnetism is not just for seasoned noise fans, but also for adventurous listeners looking for a unique and challenging experience that rewards attention and repeated listening. Pressed on 100% black virgin vinyl to ensure optimum audio quality, housed in a gatefold sleeve featuring Akita's original photographs, limited to 299 copies. This edition is a must-have for collectors and newcomers alike: an essential document of an artist who continues to redefine the outer edges of sound. Absolutely essential.
After forty years, the enigmatic Italian collective Capricorni Pneumatici's lost opus, Über Artaud, finally emerges complete. Originally conceived in 1987 as an electronic sonorization of Antonin Artaud's censored 1947 radio work "Pour En finir avec le Jugement de Dieu," this mysterious project showcases masterful use of FM synthesis via the iconic Yamaha DX7 synthesizer, creating dark ritualistic soundscapes akin to Throbbing Gristle and Nurse With Wound. In the widening realms of uncovered Italian outsider art and cursed musical enigmas, few discoveries prove as compelling as the resurgence of Über Artaud. After nearly four decades from its original conception, this work returns in a completely remastered LP edition and, for the first time, in its definitive and complete form via Vasopressin. Capricorni Pneumatici emerged from the Italian underground during the late '80s as one of the most mysterious and elusive projects of the era. Little is known about the collective beyond their dedication to researching the esoteric and ritual implications of music and sounds. The name itself, derived from Aleister Crowley's work, hints at the radical and visionary approach that would define their influential existence, evolving from acoustic/concrete music toward the darker territories of electronic manipulation. Composed between November and December 1987, Über Artaud was born from a temporally charged coincidence: exactly forty years after Antonin Artaud's apocalyptic radio work Pour En finir avec le Jugement de Dieu (November 28, 1947) was censored and never aired due to its blasphemous content and violent critique of Western civilization. This piece, featuring Artaud alongside Roger Blin, Maria Casarès, and Paule Thévenin, represents one of the most radical expressions of his "Theater of Cruelty" philosophy. The album demonstrates an extraordinary mastery of FM synthesis, extracting from the Yamaha DX7 a universe of complex timbres and intricate stratifications. Capricorni Pneumatici's electronic manipulations function as both artistic statement and esoteric ritual. The original cassette edition of Über Artaud was produced in an extremely limited edition through underground channels but remained incomplete, lacking the sonorization of Artaud's final "Conclusion" section. After almost forty years, the work finally finds completion with an additional track, recorded in 2024, that blends seamlessly with the original material. This new LP edition was sourced from the original tapes, remastered by Capricorni Penumatici, and optimized for vinyl pressing by Andrea Marutti. Coming as a black vinyl housed in a poly-lined sleeve, released in a limited-edition of 150 copies, Über Artaud transforms Artaud's censored radio work into a revelatory aural experience, connecting the prophetic vision with the dark electronic sensibility of the Italian underground.
In March 1969, the Velvets (with Doug Yule now on bass) embarked on a nationwide tour. One of these dates included a stint at the "End Of Cole Avenue" club in Dallas, one of the Velvets' few live performances where a professional sound engineer was actually on hand to record the sets. Some of the songs recorded over those few nights showed up in 1974 on their 1969: Velvet Underground Live album, but the sound quality was not great due to the use of third or fourth generation tapes. However, the first-generation tapes have since resurfaced, and the difference in sound quality (heard here) is a welcome one.
New York-based artist James K returns with Friend. This album is full of electric pop anthems that blends ear-worming melodies with peak-time breaks, buzzing powerpunk guitars and a classic rave pulse, with K's signature enchanting vocals playfully spitting emotion. It's a hallucinatory pleasure, tearing through your body and mind. "Play" rushes with a rebellion of friends -- an electro fever daydream waking up everywhere you go. Hot off extensive tours worldwide, playing the likes of Pitchfork Festival, Dekmantel, iii Points, and Mutek, following in the footsteps of her last two critically acclaimed singles Friend comes on AD 93. RIYL: Cocteau Twins, Yves Tumor, Prodigy, Oklou, Grimes. Also available on transparent vinyl (WHYT 083TR-LP).
This new album by Eric Random coincides with the start of the last Cabaret Voltaire tour, for which Eric joined as a member. The album marks a contrast to his most recent releases, less dance-oriented and with a darker pop tone and a cinematic, soundtrack-like atmosphere.
Assembled by Pedro Alves Sousa, Má Estrela is a conjuration of ideas and obsessions around dub, leftfield dance phenomena and the hypnotic potential of urban somnambulance. In a levitating state, not exactly detached from the unease of these end times, Sousa surrounds himself by a number of accomplices from past and present endeavors to project a scrying mirror reflection of distinct languages of trance and liberation -- dub's space and infinity, jungle and footwork's broken shards, DJ Screws legacy perpetually reanimated via numerous slowed down anonymous versions on Youtube and the lyricism and fire of jazz. Temporarily a quartet, comprised of Sousa on saxophone and its electronic processing, Bruno Silva and Simão Simões on electronics and Gabriel Ferrandini on acoustic and electronic drums, after the departure of Miguel Abras, Má Estrela had in their 2022 debut album their first document of this ongoing process that's now continued with Tornada. Miguel Abras has since been replaced with Bruna de Moura and Má Estrela came back to being a five piece. Tornada deepens the symbiotic connection between those rhythmic, melodic and textural particles in a mutating flux of continuities and disruptions throughout seven tracks. Featuring the invocations of Elvin Brandhi in "All You Did," Tornada makes its way amidst harmonic specters, rhythmic debris that breathe for life and a certain, implicit idea of ritual that sustains itself liminally between the ethereal dissolution of time and the physical projection of space.
"Stephan Micus is a musical globetrotter and multi-instrumentalist who has been exploring the diversity of sounds on the planet for almost five decades. Since the release of his debut album in the 1970s, he has recorded nearly 30 albums -- always on his own and with an impressive range of wind, string and percussion instruments from all over the world. As a self-taught musician, he has always been passionate about traditional and exotic instruments, which he not only explores in their original playing style, but also places in a completely new context using unconventional techniques. Over the years, Micus has developed an unmistakable musical language that has long since become his trademark. His soundscapes transport listeners to distant places and open up meditative spaces full of beauty and depth. They show that instruments from different cultures can blend together in harmony -- a musical vision that conveys hope and connectedness. With Behind Eleven Deserts, Stephan Micus presents a work of exceptional radiance. Originally composed in 1978, it combines the Balinese bamboo flute suling with the Indian sarangi, whose warm timbre is reminiscent of a cello. The sound spectrum is complemented by the Indian sitar and the Irish frame drum bodhran. The result is a multi-layered and timeless soundscape that transcends cultural boundaries and at the same time leads deep into meditative spheres. Now, Behind Eleven Deserts is being released for the first time in the INTUITION Master Series as a carefully remastered 180-gram vinyl edition by Intuition Music -- a masterpiece that, more than four decades after its creation, has lost none of its intensity and relevance."
|
Queen of the French Swinging Mademoiselle 1967 LP
The Original Quintet (First Recording) LP
Black Christ Of The Andes LP
Environment for Sextet LP
Justice Dub: Rare Dubs from Justice Records 1975-1977 LP
For A Moment The Sky Knew My Name CD
Millions Now Living Will Never Die LP
The Patterns Lost to Air CD
The Patterns Lost to Air LP
The Patterns Lost to Air (Opaque Vinyl) LP
Founder Of The Delta Blues (Color Vinyl) 2LP
Battling the Invisible LP
Wild Style 4K UHD BLU-RAY
La Cantata Rossa Per Tall El Zaatar LP
Concert For Bats, Voices And Natural Sounds LP
Guerre Froide (White Vinyl) 12"
Peter Live Volume Three: 4th & B San Diego 2000 CD
Peter Live Volume Three: 4th & B San Diego 2000 2LP
Peter Live Volume Four: Metro Chicago 1990 CD
Peter Live Volume Four: Metro Chicago 1990 2LP
Decay Music n.9: Liminale LP
Decay Music n.10: And I Entered Into Sleep LP
Albert Ayler Reawakened 2CD
What We Do When in Silence LP
Electronic Mind Waves Volume 2 LP
Fred Frith And The Gravity Band CD
You Smile When It Hurts LP
Emergency At The Old Waldorf 1979 (Translucent Ruby Red Vinyl) LP
Cravinkel & Garden Of Loneliness 2CD
Rumble: Their First European Tour 1978 2CD/DVD
Live At Rockpalast 1975 CD/DVD
Phil Seamen Meets Eddie Gomez LP
Phil Seamen Meets Eddie Gomez CD
Ethiopiques 32: Nalbandian The Ethiopian CD
Erika Szobaja (Transparent Turquoise/Black Vinyl) 2LP
Digitmovies Collection Box: New Horror & Thriller 5CD BOX
Digitmovies Collection Box: Thriller 5CD BOX
Digitmovies Collection Box: Horror 4CD BOX
Malesch (4-Page Digisleeve Version) CD
Parasite (1982) Original Motion Picture Soundtrack LP
Deep In The Earth High In The Sky CD
Live at End Cole Ave 1969 2LP
Dario Agento's Jenifer: Original Soundtrack LP
The Secret Lives Of Bill Bartell DVD
|