Avant-Garde / Contemporary

Electronic Music from 1972-2022 seeks to frame fifty years of Carl Stone's compositional activity, starting with Stone's earliest professionally presented compositions from 1972 ("Three Confusongs" and "Ryound Thygyzunz", featuring the voice and poetry of Stefan Weiser – later known as Z'EV) up to the present. This collection is not meant as a definitive history but rather as a supplement to be used alongside the previous two archival releases. It is simultaneously an archival release marking Carl Stone’s evergreen 70th birthday and a document of archival art. In the spirit of disorienting repetition and layering, call it an archive of archiving. Stone’s practice emerged from the repetitive archival process of his graduate job at CalArts preserving vinyl recordings by dubbing them to tape. With perhaps 10,000 albums ranging from Renaissance and electronic works to music from across the globe, he had to re-record multiple discs concurrently, creating chance collisions and coincidences. In the decades since, he’s explored various ways to compose this process, creating temporal envelopes in which found sounds – existing tracks or field recordings – can take form. Whilst the technologies he’s used have changed and samples have varied beyond categorization, what’s remained consistent is his concern for organizing temporal experience using fragments of pre-existing sounding events. Stone's impish collage-like constructions of times cut from time suggest that archival records are neither wholly in documents preserved from change nor in living memories and use, but in their interaction.

Rediscovered and compiled for release shortly before her death in November 2023, Further Selections from the Electric Harpsichord presents a never-before-heard recording of composer and artist Catherine Christer Hennix’s early magnum opus. Originally debuted in 1976 at the festival Brouwer’s Lattice at Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, The Electric Harpsichord has steadily mystified fans and students of Western minimalist music for its implacable, transformative qualities, and the long-held, relative obscurity of its creator. Like the work of Hennix’s close friend La Monte Young, the piece is set in just intonation and focuses on the transcendental potentials of precise tuning, inspired by their studies with Pandit Pran Nath. Composed of bursts of oscillating, synthetic tones using a carefully retuned synthesizer and a tape-based system for feedback delay, the sounds swirl, twinkle, and appear to bend time, space, and perception. Additional, sustained chords on the sheng, most likely played by her Deontic Miracle bandmate Hans Isgren, are present at the opening of the piece and reemerge towards the end of the recording.The release of Further Selections constitutes the most comprehensive original recording of this foundational work to date. Originally billed as The Well-Tuned Organ during its debut in Sweden, The Electric Harpsichord has developed a legendary reputation, predicated on a twenty-six minute fragment salvaged and circulated by Hennix’s friend Henry Flynt. Promoting its importance on multiple occasions, Flynt aired the work on WBAI radio, organized a pair of tape concerts at New York alternative arts spaces in 1970s, and later penned a 1998 essay which served as the liner notes to its eventual CD release in 2010. For him, this work not only represented a sterling milestone in minimal sonic aesthetics, but also spawned a new genre that he dubbed “hallucinogenic/ecstatic sound environments (HESE),” which in turn inspired his own drone-like compositions. Gradually, interest in the recording led to a spate of archival projects, public performances, and new compositions by Hennix in the 2010s, in turn drawing into focus her multifarious practice, which includes serious contributions towards mathematics, poetry, sculpture, Noh drama, philosophy, and light art. Since 2018, Blank Forms has spearheaded a comprehensive publication effort in support of her work, including the writing collection Poësy Matters and Other Matters (2018); archival recordings like Selected Early Keyboard Works (2018) and The Deontic Miracle’s Selections from 100 Models of Hegikan Roku (2019); and recent compositions such as Blues Alif Lam Mim (2021) and Solo for Tamburium (2023).

Masahiro Sugaya began his career in the 1980s, working alongside the environmental music scene of that era while also making a significant impact in stage music through his involvement with Pappa TARAHUMARA.

Over the past 20 years, Sugaya has shifted from traditional composition using instrumental music to creating works for 8-channel multi-speaker systems, incorporating environmental sounds and field recordings. His latest album continues this evolution, featuring collages of environmental sounds within individual tracks. The album is structured to balance past and new works, creating a collage-like representation of Sugaya’s diverse creative output.

"しるしまみれ / Overflowing Signs" offers an experience that navigates freely between Sugaya’s environmental music approach and his practices in field recording and musique concrète, presenting a sequence of sounds that defies easy categorization or symbolism. Additionally, this album marks Sugaya’s first stereo full album release in nearly 20 years.

Le Jardin des Plantes, in four parts, for cello and electronics. A place in Paris and a novel by Claude Simon. Memory spaces, a source, a scrying of time. – Anton Lukoszevieze

Gigi Masin, a composer from Venice, Italy, who made a name for himself in the world through a major compilation work by . The limited edition work released with a photobook in 2016 will be reissued with additional unreleased songs! The long-awaited expanded reprint of the finest property created by <13>, a sub-label of the Italian experimental sanctuary , has been released. The best title, released as a homage to his hometown of Venice, and recommended as one of the most beautiful and impressive works by the legendary Italian minimalist. This is the first time for cassette / LP.

Souffle Continu records is thrilled to present Byard Lancaster – The Complete Palm Recordings 1973-1974, the definitive 7 LP’s deluxe package of Philadelphia born jazz wizard Byard Lancaster including his 4 legendary albums released on Jef Gilson’s Palm Records in the 1970s, Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib, along with the first ever standalone edition of Love Always, a fifteen minute modal jazz beauty plus a 20 page booklet with rare photos and in-depth article about Byard Lancaster’s Parisian years by Pierre Crépon. At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. “Us”, the first of the four records was recorded on November 24th, 1973 with Sylvin Marc on electric bass (a Fender… Lancaster?) and the evergreen Steve McCall on drums. On the album, the trio works from the John Coltrane model; free jazz shook up by the timely contributions of the bassist, followed by a mesmerizing atmospheric music. Then, Lancaster delivers a sinuous solo path, which is a reminder of his unique tone. On the album’s companion single, the trio launches into great black music of a different genre which would lead the clairvoyant François Tusques to claim that Byard Lancaster is an “authentic representative of soul/free jazz”, to sum up this is Great Black Music! A few months after recording “Us”, Lancaster recorded “Mother Africa” along with Clint Jackson III, a trumpeter, partner of Khan Jamal or Noah Howard on other recordings. On march 8th, 1974, Lancaster and Jackson headed up a group composed of Jean-François Catoire (electric and double bass), Keno Speller (percussion) and Jonathan Dickinson (drums). Together, they create an immediate impression. From the first seconds of “We The Blessed”, they develop a free jazz which rapidly abandons any virulence under the effect of blues and soul based interventions. When Gilson’s composition “Mother Africa” begins, listeners are transported into the studio, listening to the musicians setting up: chatting and joking… Then comes the melody: a dozen or so notes of a repeated theme which is accelerated and deformed according to their whims… The jazz played by the association Byard Lancaster / Clint Jackson III is rare: creative AND recreational. “We the blessed”, is apt listening to this again today! The recording of “Exactement” required two sessions in the studio: February 1st and May 18th 1974 – in between the two dates, Lancaster recorded, alongside Clint Jackson, the excellent Mother Africa. Two names appear on the cover of “Exactement”: Lancaster (Byard) and Speller (Keno). Byard Lancaster wanted to be precise, moving regularly from one instrument to another: first on piano, which was the first instrument he learned. On “Sweet Evil Miss Kisianga”, his inspiration is first and foremost Coltrane (even if leaning more towards Alice than John), this announces the storm to follow. It is Lancaster’s horn-playing which really stands out: on alto (the sound of which is transformed by an octavoice on one track, "Dr. Oliver W. Lancaster") or soprano saxophones, as well as on flute or bass clarinet, the musician walks a tightrope making the most of all the risks he takes. Using the full register of his instruments, he has fun with the possibilities. Then, Lancaster invokes or evokes Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and even Prokofiev, before going into a danse alongside Keno Speller on percussion. Above all, he has a unique sound. Byard Lancaster, on whatever instrument he plays and by continually seeking, always ends up hitting the right note… ends up by playing exactement the note he had to play. “Funny Funky Rib Crib” is an unforgettable recording (made up of several sessions dating from the middle of 1974) of creative jazz overwhelmed by funk and soul. If Lancaster had already made successful albums in the same genre – notably New Horizons, under the name Sounds Of Liberation which he co-led with Khan Jamal –, this one is an homage to James Brown and Sammy Davis enjoying the company of a host of guests including François Tusques (electric piano), Clint Jackson III (trumpet), François Nyombo (guitar), Joseph Traindl (trombone)… Funny Funky Rib Crib’s cover is a three-quarter profile portrait of the saxophonist (who can also be heard on flute, piano and even vocals), however, on the record, it is the whole group, inspired and frenetic, that tests the melodies of “Just Test”, “Dogtown” or “Rib Crib” – the two versions of which display leader Lancaster’s art of nuance. On both sides of the album, the group also moves into a calmer groove, infused by blues and soul, “Work And Pray” and “Loving Kindness” are meditative tracks where listeners can lay back and relax before asking for more: Funny Funky Rib Crib!!! The magnificent “Love Always” was originally released on the fourth (and last) volume of the Jef Gilson Anthology series released in 1975. Recorded on 8th March 1974, it is a beautiful 15-minute-long modal jazz piece. Four notes from the bass (the relentless Jean-François Catoire, who makes up the rhythm section alongside drummer Jonathan Dickinson and percussionist Keno Speller), and the group is up and running! On piano, Gilson shows the subtle tact of a sideman, leaving the lions’ share of the place to the horns. This allows us to hear the trumpet of Clint Jackson III and the alto (which sometimes sounds almost flute-like) of Byard Lancaster each staking their claim in a long hallucinatory march which moves from moments of direct exaltation to profoundly sensitive collective playing. And if further proof was required of the confidence that Byard Lancaster and Jef Gilson inspire, “Love Always” provides it on this one sided release exclusive to the box set.

The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990 compiles an unheard, previously unreleased body of recordings by Sussan Deyhim and Richard Horowitz, dissidents from diametric backgrounds who met during the heady days of Downtown New York in the 1980s. This collection reveals the creative and life partners’ radical shared vision of avant-garde pop in all of its boundary pushing freedom, combining Deyhim’s singular approach to vocalization, Horowitz’s invention of new musical languages, and touchstones of traditional music from around the world, creating a new music that ultimately retains a voice entirely its own. Mixed and mastered from the original multitrack reels, and pressed on audiophile quality vinyl, this album also includes a 12 page booklet containing liner notes, photographs, and unseen ephemera.

In the spring of 1999, Charles Curtis, Alan Licht, and Dean Roberts brought an unconventional mix of drone, improvisation, and experimental rock on an eleven-stop tour of Europe. The concept was straightforward, yet novel: each night, they would improvise a single piece while sustained sine waves played for the duration of the concert. May 99, culled from three shorter pieces recorded for a radio program at Amsterdam’s VPRO near the end of the tour, represents an early high watermark in the collision of minimal and rock sensibilities that started to become prevalent in the late 90s and is an ear-opening listen even for those familiar with the musicians’ other projects. May 99 combines resonant sine waves in the style of eminent downtown New York composer La Monte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music with scratchings, scrapings, and warblings produced by Licht and Roberts’s guitars, Curtis’s cello, and a variety of electronics. Just as sine waves hold together these sundry improvisations, a shared tendency toward the minimalistic—Licht’s performances with the Blue Humans, collaborations with Loren Connors, and solo guitar records; Roberts in the band Thela and his solo project White Winged Moth; and Curtis performing with Young and his own Trio—brought together three musicians with very different backgrounds, creating fertile ground on which they generated the album’s unclassifiable sounds.

Available from Blank Forms for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus. Blank Forms’s high-quality reissue of the sought-after, long out of print LP, is produced by musician-artist Aki Onda and mastered from the original tapes recorded on April 2, 1979, at Tokyo’s Aeolian Hall. Described by Suzuki as the “culmination” of their sound, New Sense of Hearing features the two musicians improvising together in that empty Tokyo theater, Kosugi on vocals, violin, and radio transmitter and Suzuki on the Analapos, his namesake glass harmonica, spring cong, and kikkokikiriki, all apparatuses of his own invention. Suzuki and Kosugi first met at the city’s Minami Gallery in 1976 on the occasion of “Sound Objects and Sound Tools,” an exhibition of Suzuki’s homemade instruments. Two years later, at the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Suzuki invited Kosugi to join him for a suite of performances as part of the exhibition “MA: Espace – Temps au Japon,” organized by architect Arata Isozaki and composer-writer Tōru Takemitsu. Suzuki and Kosugi performed together at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, nearly fifty times, honing their approach to mutual improvisation, before traveling with the exhibition to Stockholm and New York—critic Tom Johnson wrote in the Village Voice that he had “seldom seen two performers so completely tuned in on the same types of sounds, the same performance attitude, the same philosophy, the same sense of what music ought to be.” For New Sense of Hearing, the duo reunited in Japan and produced an extraordinary dispatch from their collaboration of arioso violin, echoing vocals and bangs, and metallic twangs. As Johnson observed in 1979, Kosugi and Suzuki are “in a very subtle artistic world where there can be no direct relationships. . . . Only coincidence.”

Sounds created for no reason. Sounds that come and go, and disappear into the air like a scent, as soon as they materialize. Atonal phrases that hold the meaning of words that existed before the advent of language. The wonders of a vortex pulsing with life. Just as a new discovery is actually a new way of looking to see what has always been there, OOIOO, seemingly from the core of their being, created a world of sound made up of parts well known that is strikingly precise and intensely original. After a six year hiatus, OOIOO has created a new album that goes back to the roots of being a four-piece band. The music shows the full spectrum of the unique sound they have crafted throughout the years, which can only be described as “OOIOO”.

It might come as a surprise that nijimusi was recorded mainly using a conventional rock ensemble of two guitars, bass, and drums. OOIOO viewed their instruments simply as “objects that make sounds”, and took a primitive and basic approach to creating the music. The drum tones fluctuate powerfully through the air, while sounding as if they are being observed under a microscope. Bass notes and electronic bursts are so dense that they sound like they’ve been vacuum-sealed. The arrangement of the tones seem to be almost ancient, transcending the notion of a musical ensemble, suggesting the connectivity and oneness that is inherent in all living creatures.

Founded in 1995 by legendary percussionist/guitarist/vocalist YoshimiO, OOIOO’s members came together as musicians who move freely between the audible and inaudible, rhythm and non-rhythm, noise and silence. The music they create is a collection of moments and essences of their favorite sounds, captured as they were created before returning into the ether. In 2016, drummer MISHINA joined the band, allowing more freedom in their rhythmic approach and overall sound. Just as each cell in the body consists of a microcosm of its own, the vibrations of each of the members resonate together to create a new life form, a process reflected in nijimusi.

nijimusi can be considered music, but is also a work of art that stimulates the sense of touch and smell, while being atmospheric and ethereal at the same time. If music is an art form based on the sense of hearing and the concept of time, this album may be deviating from the conventional definition of music. The work is a reflection of the sounds resonating from OOIOO while as they were completely present in the moment. The sounds are like the cries emanating from a creature called OOIOO, proof that it is a living, breathing being. Experience the sounds of OOIOO that can only be heard in the here and now. 

Kristin Hayter sheds her Lingua Ignota guise for the debut release under her Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter project. ‘SAVED!’ is inspired by American religious music of the god-fearing past, Southern gospel, and various strains of pre-rock folk and country. It picks up where ‘Sinner Get Ready’ left off, applying degraded audio and stripping the instrumentation down to the barebones minimal of twangy guitars, piano, and her haunting vocals. Imagine a countryfied, infernal spin on the murder balladry of Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, and Nico, and you’d get this magnificent album.

''The bass-clarinetist Ville Lahteenmäki's raucous, ruggedly braying style makes him a notable addition to the Dolphy-Murray-Mahall lineage that produces maximum excitement with every outpouring of notes. His accompanists, drummer Nicolas Leirtre and bassist Trym Saugstad Karlsen, are like himself, students at the renowned Trondheim Conservatory, an institution whose impact on European jazz has been significant in modern times.'' - Kevin Le Gendre / Jazzwise

The original release of Nurse with Wound's gargantuan "Thunder Perfect Mind" in 1992 coincided with that of Current 93's homonymous genre-defining album. Legend has it that the gnostic name initially appeared to Steven Stapleton in a dream as the title of Tibet's then still nameless upcoming album. Both records feature contributions from David Tibet, Colin Potter, Rose McDowall, John Balance of Coil, Alan Trench of Orchis and Joolie Wood amongst others. The title and the partial overlap of the personnel on both albums isn't quite where the similarities end, both albums have since become undisputed milestones in their respective artists' oeuvre. At the core of the definitive 2023 Infinite Fog re-release fully overseen by Steven Stapleton are the two original tracks "Cold" - a classic unsettling rhythmic Nurse collage-fest, significantly closer to jittery psychelia than the oft-cited "industrial feel" and the epic "Colder Still", easily one of the most mind-bending breathtaking NWW compositions up to this point and well beyond. The track soothes ghostly atmosphere and reveals new surprises with every listen, not least of which is a direct link to its sister release from c93 as well as the first appearance of the signature rhythm loop that would mutate and re-emerge on several later tracks. The album also is the first full-length collaboration with genius sound wizard Colin Potter who has since become a ubiquitous sidekick both on Nurse albums as well as in live performances. As a follow-up to what is widely acknowledged as one of the best-loved exercises in drone of the 20th century "Soliloquy for Lilith", TPM is a much more varied but at least equally rewarding experience. Infinite Fog are beyond pleased to be able to offer a significantly enhanced, remastered and extended 3 LP version for old and new fans alike.

Previously unreleased live recording from the Ranta archives. The creative duo of Michael Ranta and Takehisa Kosugi performed many times in the 1970’s and 1980’s. On this outstanding performance, recorded at the Japanese Culture Institute in Cologne in 1987, the application of an advanced multi delay system, independently utilized by both players, plays a central role. The smartly treated cyclic tapestry of the delay system (modulated, transformed, harmonized) injects additional dimensions to the highly coordinated improvisation with voice, percussion, violin and electronics, creating interactive ‘composition-like’ textures being ‘Multiple Musics’.

Rolf Gehlhaar (1943-2019) was an instrumental and electronic music composer, and a pioneer in computer controlled interactive music. He grew up in the US where he studied philosophy and composition at Yale University. In 1967 he moved back to Germany to become Stockhausen’s personal assistant and member of his performing ensemble. In 1969 Gehlhaar co-founded, along with Johannes Fritsch (Metaphon 012) and David Johnson, the Feedback Studios in Cologne, a new-music performance center and publishing house. He later moved to England, where he became in 1979 a founding member of the Electro-Acoustic Music Association and later on senior lecturer in design and digital media. Gehlhaar's compositions include symphonies, instrumental works, experimental and electronic music, interactive computer controlled music and everything in between. The three previously unreleased tracks on this LP only show a glimpse of the versatility of his adventurous and innovative musical ideas. The LP comes with a foldout insert including photos and extensive program notes.

Since more than 40 years, Anne Gillis has discreetly unfolded her proper singular universe without any compromise. She playfully moves with determined restrictions, excavating contrasting forces; sensual and visceral, mechanical and organical, black and white, … She extends this personal expression in her visuals using self-portrait photos, handwritten text and her theatrical performances are equally aligned. Her music can be considered as musique concrète using the tape machine as compositional tool, manipulating her recorded sources, mainly consisting of extended voice and different (instrumental) sounds with addition of electronics and treatments. In both her photography and her music, Anne Gillis works fully analog.

Even though only being fully terminated 50 years after its conception, ‘Azabu’ can be regarded as the starting point of Michael Ranta’s creative self-discovery. The recordings that form the base of ‘Azabu’ were mostly made in the Tokyo district with the same name (Azabu-Juban). Next to abstracted field recordings ‘Azabu’ is also pervaded by a rich variety of percussion, string and wind instruments, all played by Ranta himself. Subsequently Ranta edited, layered and processed the recordings at the NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo. Both pieces display a vast array of acoustic, electronic and concrete sound events meticulously sequenced to a complex fusion symbolizing the entire spectrum of earthly and heavenly sounds. Dynamic extremes evoke a restless flight through space, or through the depths of human subconsciousness, between dream and reality. Ultimately the music disappears, like a dot in the sky gradually fading into nothingness – an “ascension” that closes the loop in a ritual of life that can begin anew again at any time.

Toshi Ichiyanagi, Michael Ranta and Takehisa Kosugi originally got together in the summer of 1975 for an open-air concert in Sapporo. The concert felt like a great success but was unfortunately not recorded. As the desire arose to record together, they managed to arrange a studio session in the NHK Studio in Tokyo, with presence of sound engineers. What was supposed to be a soundcheck for this session became the session itself: a haunting 50-minute séance of intense avantgarde improvisation using a large instrumentation and live processing (tape echo, ring modulation, phasing). A trident travelogue of the momentum masterfully controlled by the ensemble spirit, transcending the boundaries of psychedelic underground. Official reissue of this underground classic from 1975, originally released in a tiny edition on the small Japanese Iskra label. As the original master tapes of these recordings seem to be lost, the master had to be taken from an unplayed original LP copy. It was carefully restored and mastered by Jos Smolders with amazing result.

Original dead stock. "MU V / MU VI" released in 1984 by Michael Ranta (1942-), an American percussionist known for his collaboration with Toshi Ichiyanagi and Takehisa Kosugi on "Improvisation Sep. 1975"! This is a great album recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's Studio in 1984, featuring Mike Lewis and Conny Plank performing the masterpiece "Mu" No. 5 and No. 6.