Avant-Garde / Contemporary

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

‘Desire’ is the sophomore full-length album by TLF Trio. On ‘Desire’, the group presents their signature, contemporised chamber music through their main instruments: piano, cello and electric guitar; now enhanced by a pervasive use of sampling and a distinct use of silence as musical material.

The album is an aesthetic voyage in a musical landscape of minimalism, classical music, free improvisation, left-field-electronica, and references to pop and house music. It blends into a sound that is experimental and unpredictable – yet at the same time strangely familiar and self-explanatory.

The album’s ten pieces balance an open-ended improvisational intimacy with a tight compositional intention. Each track's repetitiveness operates as a trickling plateau of layered sentiments of times and spaces through the sampling of different acoustic rooms, the playing in specific styles and the curated selection of sounds and instrumentations; a collage of memories and associations patched together to create new meanings.

"We're very happy to release Johannes Rød’s amazing new book Free Jazz and Improvisation on LP and CD 1965-2024. This is the complete guide to avant-garde/experimental/contemporary. Jazz/spiritual. Jazz/improvisation/modern composition. Electronic/abstract/noise. And a guide to 185 label. A monument of discographic research spanning six decades of freeform music. "

"The origin of techno. The original crystallization of the artists who created the era as big names, immortal monuments beyond the masterpieces." Limited vinyl version reissued in heavy vinyl. The heavy-duty vinyl version in the original jacket supervised by Ryuichi Sakamoto is available in a completely limited edition.

Recorded in a live setting and played with instruments conserved in the collections of the MEG Museum, Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter is Midori Takada’s very own rendition of "Nhemamusasa", a traditional work emblematic of the musical repertoire for mbira of the Shona of Zimbabwe, well known worldwide, thanks notably to its version by Paul F. Berliner included on the famed 1973 album The Soul of Mbira.

The choice of this title by Midori Takada evokes the links between traditional African and contemporary music which are the foundation of this work, and it also translates the resolutely multicultural vision of the artist.

Midori Takada explains: "African music is remarkable for its polyrhythms. Not only are there simultaneously several rhythmic motifs, sometimes as many as ten, but furthermore it may be that the part played by each musician has its own starting point and its own pace, all combining to form a cycle. All the cycles progress at the same time according to a single metrical structure which functions as a reference point, but which is not played by any one person from beginning to end. The structure emerges out of the multi-level parts, all different. With the Shona, the musical system is based on the polymelody: one performs simultaneously several melodic lines which are superimposed, each having its own rhythmic organization. It is truly captivating. In Western classical music, one four-beat rhythm induces some precise temporal framework and regular reference points, which come on the strong beats 1 and 3. But in the logic of the Shona musical system, and in other African music, the melody can begin in the very middle of the cycle and be continued up to some other place in an autonomous manner, as if it had its own personality. It’s very rich."

The album comes with in-depth liner notes that include an interview with Midori Takada, a point of view by Zimbabwean scholar, musician and activist Forward Mazuruse, and background information on the project by Isabel Garcia Gomez and Madeleine Leclair from MEG Museum.

The sleeve features an artwork by celebrated Zimbabwean painter Portia Zvavahera.

Part of the budget for the album was donated to Forward Mazuruse’s Music For Development Foundation whose aim is to identify, nurture, and record young but underprivileged musicians in Zimbabwe.

Works of the great Somei Satoh / Mandala Trilogy + 1 bonus track - Shomyo Buddhist chant vocalization and infinity ambient abyss transform into superb mystic and meditative harmonics.

"Mandala", "Mantra" and "Tantra" were recorded separately in 1982, 1986 and 1990. "Mandala" was included on the album Mandala/ Sumeru that was released on ALM (Kojima Recordings) and it was recorded at the NHK Studio of Electronic Music. "Mantra" was a NHK commissioned work (recorded at the same studio). "Tantra" was recorded at Victoria University of Wellington’s Lilburn Studios for electronic music and recording. Although each composition’s production comes from a different era, they all use Satoh’s own vocals as sound as well as electronics.

Includes bonus track "Mai", a composition commissioned by harpist Ayako Shinozaki recorded at the Kioi Hall in Tokyo on November 11th 2004. The piece was conducted by Tetsuji Honna and performed by the Kioi Sinfonietta Tokyo. Satoh says: "The harp is one of my favorite instruments. Also, by combining my affectionate percussion instrument, the chromatic gong and steel drum, with the harp’s most beautiful tone, I attempted to bring out a mystical sound." Although it is not an electronic music piece, this composition complements the world that Satoh expresses in Mandala Trilogy.

Deep deep deep into the abyss.

Mieko Shiomi is known both for her avant-garde musical activities with the Group Ongaku collective during her student years and for her participation in Fluxus from 1964 onwards. The Fluxus Festival held in Venice in 1990, to which she was invited, became a pivotal event that brought about a major shift in her subsequent work. That same year, she self-released a cassette requiem in memory of Fluxus founder George Maciunas.

This tape work combines original compositions performed on synthesizer harpsichord and organ with recordings of her own voice played backwards. These sound sources were taken to a studio and edited together with environmental sounds recorded at the Venice venue. The piece also incorporates the voices of key Fluxus artists including La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Eric Andersen, Willem de Ridder, and Ken Friedman. Making use of the specific properties of tape, the piece integrates unique ideas and structures and occupies a distinctive place among Shiomi’s oeuvre.

Anything can happen and often does. This is John Cage. A seminal example of indeterminate music from an icon on experimental sounds. This work was originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham, "Field Dances," with stage and costume design in the original version by Robert Rauschenberg (from 1967 the designer was Remy Charlip). Variations IV is the second work in a group of three of which Atlas Eclipticalis is the first (representing 'nirvana', according to Hidekazu Yoshida's interpretations of Japanese Haiku poetry) and 0"00 is the third (representing 'individual action'). It represents 'samsara', the turmoil of everyday life. Cage indicates that sounds may be produced inside and outside the performance space. There are no indications of durations, dynamics, etc.. It could be argued that there is no more controversial figure in music history as avant-garde electronic composer John Cage. Perhaps best known for his composition "4'33,"" which consisted of Cage sitting at a piano for four-plus minutes of total silence, Cage was both loved and loathed in the 60s and 70s as a leading light in avant-garde music and as an entertainingly weird guy who used radios, televisions, live dancers and his own Adam's apple as instruments in his live performances. Cage's music blurred the line between music, performance art and visual art in a way that no other composer has before or since. Cage's performances were often wild one-of-a-kind happenings, and the shows that make up the recording of Variations IV are no different. The fourth in a series of concerts that stretched the boundaries of what music was, IV was designed for a group of performers playing literally anything they could get their hands on. They were also encouraged, if they got bored playing, to do "other activities" in addition to the music. The score consisted of two circles and seven points on a transparent sheet, to be interpreted however the performers saw fit. The end result: a wild album of music-concrete that should sound familiar to fans of the Beatles' "Revolution 9" -- no question Cage's composition influenced Lennon and Ono's experiments. detail Modern Harmonic brings you this gorgeous reissue of Cage's masterpiece, pressed on clear vinyl and wrapped in restored artwork that captures the unique and strange beauty of this headphone classic. Join the avant-garde!

Anything can happen and often does. This is John Cage. A seminal example of indeterminate music from an icon on experimental sounds. This work was originally used as music for the choreographed piece by Merce Cunningham, "Field Dances," with stage and costume design in the original version by Robert Rauschenberg (from 1967 the designer was Remy Charlip). Variations IV is the second work in a group of three of which Atlas Eclipticalis is the first (representing 'nirvana', according to Hidekazu Yoshida's interpretations of Japanese Haiku poetry) and 0"00 is the third (representing 'individual action'). It represents 'samsara', the turmoil of everyday life. Cage indicates that sounds may be produced inside and outside the performance space. There are no indications of durations, dynamics, etc.. It could be argued that there is no more controversial figure in music history as avant-garde electronic composer John Cage. Perhaps best known for his composition "4'33,"" which consisted of Cage sitting at a piano for four-plus minutes of total silence, Cage was both loved and loathed in the 60s and 70s as a leading light in avant-garde music and as an entertainingly weird guy who used radios, televisions, live dancers and his own Adam's apple as instruments in his live performances. Cage's music blurred the line between music, performance art and visual art in a way that no other composer has before or since. Cage's performances were often wild one-of-a-kind happenings, and the shows that make up the recording of Variations IV are no different. The fourth in a series of concerts that stretched the boundaries of what music was, IV was designed for a group of performers playing literally anything they could get their hands on. They were also encouraged, if they got bored playing, to do "other activities" in addition to the music. The score consisted of two circles and seven points on a transparent sheet, to be interpreted however the performers saw fit. The end result: a wild album of music-concrete that should sound familiar to fans of the Beatles' "Revolution 9" -- no question Cage's composition influenced Lennon and Ono's experiments. detail Modern Harmonic brings you this gorgeous reissue of Cage's masterpiece, pressed on clear vinyl and wrapped in restored artwork that captures the unique and strange beauty of this headphone classic. Join the avant-garde!

Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood. "She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest. Booklet notes by Robert Ashley.

On Revolutionary Pekinese Opera, Ground Zero - under the ferociously precise direction of Otomo Yoshihide - detonates a cut‑and‑splice orchestra where free improv, noise, opera and plunderphonics collide with undimmed urgency. With the blessing of Otomo Yoshihide himself, Revolutionary Pekinese Opera returns to vinyl as one of the defining artefacts of 1990s avant‑garde music, sounding less like a period piece than a live explosive smuggled into the present. Originally conceived as a hypercharged reimagining of revolutionary opera through the cracked lens of sampling culture, the album captures Ground Zero at the height of its powers: a band that refused to respect borders between genres, media or histories, instead treating them all as combustible material. Three decades on, these compositions still feel like they might slip the stylus off the groove through sheer centrifugal force. At the core of the record is Otomo’s role as a kind of Deus ex machina from Fukushima, orchestrating a dense, unruly melting pot of musicians, sounds and strategies. Turntables, guitars, horns, rhythm section and electronics are marshalled into a constantly shifting field where nothing is allowed to remain stable for long. Fragments of Peking opera collide with free jazz eruptions; abrupt cuts splice militant fanfares into stretches of near‑silence or sandblasted noise; cartoonish samples and solemn themes rub shoulders, unsettling each other. What could have been a mere collage becomes, in Otomo’s hands, a tightly argued montage, where each juxtaposition pushes the music into a new, volatile state. The album’s power lies in how it weaponises experimentation without losing a sense of structure. Ground Zero operate like a rogue theatre troupe and a demolition crew at once, pulling recognizable motifs out of the wreckage only to shred them again seconds later. Passages of almost symphonic weight flare up out of scratchy loops and feedback, while sudden drop‑outs expose tiny, nervous details - a stray cymbal brush, a voice buried in the mix, a tape wobble - before the full ensemble slams back in. The result is a music of permanent revolution in miniature, forever overthrowing its own premises, yet somehow coherent in its manic logic. What is striking today is how little of Revolutionary Pekinese Opera’s allure has faded. In an era when sampling, hybridity and “experimental” tags have been thoroughly domesticated, this record still feels genuinely disruptive, its raw drive undiluted by time. The vinyl reissue not only restores one of Ground Zero’s keystone statements to its proper physical scale - with all the crackle, impact and dynamic extremes that implies - it also reasserts the album’s place as a key node in the global avant‑garde of the 1990s. Heard now, these pieces continue to strike with the same force they had on first release: unruly, subversive, and rigorously constructed, a reminder of how dangerous a band can sound when the studio, the archive and the stage are treated as one continuous battlefield.

Taco weaponise the very idea of “tako” - octopus, kite, bunion, drunk, bald head - into a mutating post‑punk organism, a rotating guerrilla cell whose songs behave like incidents rather than compositions. “Tako” is one of those Japanese words that refuses to sit still. It can mean octopus, kite, bunion; it’s also slang for bald men, shaved heads, red‑faced drunks staggering home. The term slips between bodies, objects and insults, picking up grime and humour as it goes. In the early 1980s it became something else again: the name of a loose music and performance collective whose shows felt less like concerts than controlled disturbances. Taco emerged at the start of the decade as part of Japan’s post‑punk alternative wave, a shifting network of players orbiting Harumi Yamazaki, ex‑member of Gaseneta and the group’s volatile core. Around her gathered friends, acquaintances and fellow travellers from the Tokyo underground, forming a band that refused fixed membership, fixed genre, fixed anything. From the outset, Taco behaved more like a guerrilla unit than a conventional group. Personnel connected, collected, interrupted, scattered; line‑ups changed from gig to gig, and sometimes from piece to piece. Sound and image were treated as transient weapons to be deployed and discarded. Performances could happen with or without Harumi - reinforcing the sense that Taco was as much an anonymous mercenary outfit as it was a band, a name that could mask any number of combinations and intentions. What remained constant was the drive to send out music and noise that felt like it existed only for that night, that room, that confrontation, and then evaporated. In 1983 Taco released its first album, an anomalous, collaborative document that detonated across Japan’s underground as something both of and against its moment. The record functioned as a kind of local all‑stars compilation: key figures from the scene dropping in to contribute, while Harumi supplied the lyrics that stitched the whole together. Each track sounded like the reverberation of a particular cluster of people and circumstances - a conglomeration of voices, instruments, mistakes and impulses. Yet running through all of them were Harumi’s words, delivered with a force that turned scattered pieces into a single, bristling wave. The album didn’t simply collect songs; it spawned an “incident,” a disturbance that spread by word of mouth, tape dub and rumour. Then, as suddenly, it was pulled back: a separate scandal over some of the lyrics led to the records being recalled, ensuring that only a small number of copies ever made it into private hands. A second release followed in 1984: a 12" EP built around a live recording from the end of 1982. If the debut was a collage of sessions and personalities, this document caught Taco as a unit on stage, and what it revealed was an unexpectedly coherent musical engine beneath the chaos. For a band of indeterminate membership that specialised in one‑off performances, the playing here feels locked in without being smoothed out - grooves, fractures and eruptions held in tense balance. The record captures the power of Taco’s legendary live shows, but it’s Harumi Yamazaki’s presence that sears itself into memory: inflammatory, sensational, masochistic. Her muttered phrases and sudden screams ride over, and often wilfully against, the beat, treating rhythm as something to be taunted rather than obeyed. The effect is of a voice confronting the audience like a groundswell, an undertow that doesn’t care whether or not you keep your footing. One of Taco’s members once described the project as “an alternative counter organization”: a setup in which indeterminate participants fan each other’s heightened desires for personal revenge and retribution. In their words, Taco is “an ecosystem of tangible and intangible mouldy slime which accumulates in order for emotions to be acted out, both indoors in the studio, or outdoors on stage. That’s why the avenger can often end up being the victim.” It’s a metaphor that fits the music: thick, unstable, mutating, made from residues and leftovers as much as from polished ideas. Emotions congeal, are performed, and then rebound on those who unleashed them. The “alternative counter organization” is not a party or a platform; it’s a fragile, dangerous zone where sound becomes a way to test how far you can go before your own force turns back on you. The Alternative Counter Organization brings this history into focus not by tidying it up, but by acknowledging Taco’s refusal to be pinned down. It honours a group whose performances really were “like nothing before or since,” born from a word that already meant too many things and happy to add a few more.

Think about Can as performed by a shaman commune ! Two long LP-side size compositions, focusing on tribal rhythms (without real drummer), heavy-folk and electronic samples and loops. Takahashi Yoshihiro (Brast Burn) was the man behind this cultish project originally released in 1974. Buried deep in time, this obscure artifact is something of a revelation. No group information was ever given, and no production date or location is indicated, however, it would seem that this record and the "Brast Burn" LP (also reissued by Paradigm) are both by the same group of Japanese nutters and that they were both recorded in the mid seventies in Japan. But all you really need to know is that it is stone cold fantastic, a wild and manic trip full to the brim with hypnotic jams constructed from all manner of eclectic instruments.

The tribal blues sound is augmented with fascinating tape experiments, electronics, environmental sounds, moaned (howled) vocals and a host of musical delicacies, as dangerous as they are delicious. The influence of German bands such as Can, Faust and Guru Guru is evident throughout, so too is the influence of the good Captain (Beefheart that is) whose gut wrenching blues dirges find compadres in this unearthed swamp. Deranged psychedelic music for anyone with a passing interest in Kraut rock, the new Japanese psychedelic scene (most of whom owe these pioneers a great debt) or great music from the edge of the solar system. Recommended.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6kWuJcXCYCM?si=qzWOtQkBPaAemmZ5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

On May 27th 1983, drummer Masahiko Togashi and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, two pivotal figures in the Japanese free jazz scene that had been working together since the 1960's, performed and record this unique set at Zojoji Hall in Tokyo. At the time, Japanese jazz musicians were trying to find their own voice, welcoming creative elements coming in from the USA and Europe. The two musicians were at the fore-front of this generation, with Takayanagi developing his own guitar style through influences of mainstream and more extreme jazz, and drummer Togashi had developed a unique approach to drums and percussions, using silence as an integral part of music making, also due to an accident that forced him on a wheelchair after 1970. The record is divided in two tracks ("Inner Pulsation" and "Outer Pulsation"), each one about 22 minutes in length, mirroring the original LP sides. The performance can be regarded as a single piece though, with a clearly symmetrical structure, even if the musicians cover much musical ground over the course of the album. The extreme abstractness of the music guarantees many possibilities, but the main themes here are pure sound and space, investigated through a massive use of silence, ever-changing dynamics and slow structural developments unfolding with a mysterious musical logic. Originally

The first release to document the solo cello work of musician and composer Lucy Railton, the 40-minute composition Blue Veil recorded at Église du Saint-Esprit in Paris invites listeners into the realm of precision-tuned states of resonance: states made manifest through Railton’s careful traversal of her cello's most subtle acoustic characteristics as they harmonically interlock with mind’s embodied modalities of attention and imagination.
Blue Veil arises out of, is sustained in and finally dissolves back into Railton’s momentary presence with her intimate connection to the cello, a way of hearing that allows for a deeper engagement with harmonic resonance, one that opens a space for immediate encounters of mind and sound.
Railton’s exploratory practice of harmonic perception emerges from a focus on the physical qualities of intervallic and chordal sounds, their textural qualities, degrees of friction, and inner pulsations. Composing in the moment guided by resonances within the cello’s body, her own, and their shared vibrational space, Railton moves through Blue Veil by giving sounds what they ask for: sounds of pure texture manifesting as a move through temporal transparency, sounds of rough texture marking regions of dimensionally dense space.
Railton’s creative and highly refined use of just intonation harmony deforms sound's inner movements in ways that suggest a mode of listening that actively supplies imagery of sounds implied or completely absent rather than merely savouring those fully present. This active mode of “listening-with”, playfully and semi-metaphorically referred to by Railton as “sing-along music”, allows listening to reflexively participate in the music’s movement as it gradually passes through richly saturated domains of harmonic imagination. And just as the precision-tuned tones of Blue Veil lose their individuality when fusing multifaceted uniformity, listening’s structures of reference and recognition dissolve into nameless waves of intensity, continuously unfolding themselves upon and merging with the listener.
Blue Veil is the result of a deep exploration of the inner worlds of tuning, an undertaking in turn informed by and emerging out of Railton’s realisations of the music of Catherine Lamb and Ellen Arkbro, her collaborative work with Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley as well as her interpretive practice in performing the work of Maryanne Amacher, Morton Feldman and others. 

Paulownia by Merzbow is a 2025 full-length statement comprising two lengthy compositions that fuse intense electronic manipulation with Merzbow’s enduring fascination for natural phenomena. Across both pieces, the album merges organic inspiration and harsh digital process, producing a hypnotic yet confrontational experience.​ **Edition of 200** With Paulownia, Merzbow (Masami Akita) delivers a formidable new addition to a catalog already legendary in the experimental music world. The 2025 release spans two extended pieces—“Paulownia part1” and “Paulownia part2”—each developing a dense matrix of sound where digital noise entwines with subtle references to organic structures. The album’s name, drawn from the paulownia tree, hints at Merzbow’s long-standing environmental preoccupations; here, they are rendered less as representational themes and more as evocative textures and forms. The compositions surge with layered feedback, haunting drones, and micro-rhythmic fluctuations, evoking an ambiguous, immersive environment that rewards attentive listening.​ What distinguishes Paulownia is its ability to generate tension and release from the interplay between ferocity and fragility. The music neither settles into a predictable assault nor dissipates into formless ambience; instead, it sustains a meticulously sculpted intensity. As always, Merzbow’s commitment to tonality, texture, and structure resists easy classification, maintaining a delicate balance between repetition and change, aggression and atmosphere. For those prepared to let sound define its own territory, Paulownia is a compelling testament to Merzbow’s ongoing innovation, fortifying his place at the core of the noise tradition while persistently opening new vistas for exploration.​

Akashaplexia is the culmination of Merzbow and John Wiese’s decades-long partnership, offering over three hours of new music across four CDs. Recorded together in Tokyo, the album balances Merzbow’s psychedelic intensity and Wiese’s meticulous sonic architecture, presenting a vast and intricately detailed landscape of noise, improvisation, and unpredictable dynamic shifts.​

Akashaplexia stands as the first full-length studio collaboration between Merzbow and John Wiese, captured in December 2024 at Sound Studio Noah, Tokyo. This box set - designed by John Wiese and elegantly housed in a casewrap slipcase - is remarkable in both ambition and presentation, packing more than three hours of newly forged material on four separate discs. The album’s creation is rooted in a history that stretches over 25 years, encompassing live sets and mail collaborations that have shaped a deep mutual vocabulary between the artists.​ From Smegma to Sissy Spacek, Wiese has paired with Merzbow through varied musical guises. Both artists maintain core positions within experimental sound and improvisation. Merzbow continually evolves: from his early days of acoustic tape work and improvisatory noise, through the extremes of the 1990s, into an era marked by digital sound and a blend of crude metal scrapings with heady psychedelia. Wiese, for his part, navigates the terrain between rigorous composition and volatile concrète techniques, mixing electronic surges with refined tape collage, and driving performances that stretch the boundaries of sonic drama.

On Akashaplexia, Merzbow’s layered, dynamic noise architecture collides and interlocks with Wiese’s textural sophistication and firey manipulation. The result is a rich landscape where raw, energetic blasts are counterbalanced by moments of deliberate compositional control and intricate collage. Tracks move fluidly between abrasive crescendo and atmospheric detail, giving listeners a chance to experience both artists’ strengths in full scope. Thresholds of sound are tested and extended, expectations upended, and each piece invites attention to both the smallest detail and the overall immersive force of the album. This set marks a new pinnacle for both Merzbow and John Wiese, and for the wider world of experimental music. Akashaplexia is not only about noise but the construction and transformation of sound itself - where raw intuition and calculated artistry become indistinguishable, and the music, in all its extremity, reveals new terrain.​

First time on CD for this classic Merzbow duo album from 1983...
......Material Action is a favorite among early Merzbow free-music, junk-noise workouts. Psychedelic improvised instrumental energy abounds on this essential early recording that is PURE MERZ.

Masami Akita plays tapes, percussion, electro-acoustic noise, organ
Kiyoshi Mizutani overdubs tapes, synthesizer, violin, machine noise

Masami Akita’s work as Merzbow looms over all avant-garde, noise and heavy music like a dark cloud. Since 1979, the Tokyo-based sound artist’s fusion of industrial fervor and playfully Dadaist chaos across hundreds of releases has done more than pioneer harsh noise music — it has made him nearly synonymous with the genre. However, that famous reputation never quite conveys the actual thrill of sinking into a Merzbow album and absorbing its extreme contours, spiking peaks and layered valleys. It’s a feeling familiar to any fan, in a discography so deep and varied that no one ever explores it the same way. Merzbow’s new album Sedonis is an airy, ominous highlight and an essential release for both longtime listeners and those taking their tentative first steps into Akita’s boiling ocean of sound.

Sedonis caps one of the most exciting recent periods in Merzbow’s career, growing from the same set-up of computer, modular electronics and homemade instruments that produced the startlingly atmospheric Nine Studies of Ephemeral Resonance album series. It sparks to life on “Sedonis A” with propulsive drum machines and Akita’s prickling homemade guitar-string koto, played with a violin bow. The Penderecki-like strings melt into a nearly Hendrix haze at the start of “Sedonis B” building a crushing bridge to the centerpiece “Sedonis C.” The searing track brings to mind releases such as Dust of Dreams’ hazy percussion loops or the pulsing, jazz-influenced Door Open At 8AM, before igniting in a finale that achieves the same rippling funhouse terror as Aaron Dilloway’s Modern Jester. The three-part piece is paired with the 16-minute closer “Monolith 4”, which forms a spacious, burned expanse in contrast.

Akita explains that the title “Sedonis” didn’t have a particular meaning, but the word came to him in the aftermath of recording the album. “In terms of imagery, I was thinking of something similar to Barunga, the balloon monster from Ultra Q,” he explains, describing the classic ‘60s Ultraman kaiju. “A cloud-like form floating in the sky or outer space, with tendrils or tentacles — that kind of presence.” The music impressionistically conveys its inspiration at a kaiju-sized scale, while bringing to mind a modern day contemporary of Barunga— Jordan Peele’s terrifying, yet eerily beautiful creature from Nope. Similarly, Sedonis never stops unfolding into hypnotic new forms, while achieving a spectral, sinister atmosphere that feels utterly unique to Merzbow in 2025.

Romanian composer, conductor, and musicologist Iancu Dumitrescu is often described as one of the leading figures of spectral music, yet he has produced a body of powerful works resonating with explosive sound and friction that places him very much in his own universe. Dumitrescu studied under his compatriot, the conductor Sergiu Celibidache, who rarely left behind concert recordings. From him Dumitrescu absorbed phenomenology and conducting techniques, incorporating them into his own compositional style.

In 1976 he founded the Hyperion Ensemble, leading it in numerous concerts both within Romania and internationally. In 1990 he established the independent label Edition Modern together with Ana-Maria Avram, through which he released more than thirty recordings over many years. In recent years, however, the publication of new recordings had slowed to a trickle.

This work marks a long-awaited new release: a recording of the concert performance of Libelocus, a three-part work performed in London in 2016. It brings together the distinctive style of this singular spectralist—from explosive ensemble passages to electronic music, all contained within the natural flow of a live performance. Moreover, this is the first LP featuring newly recorded material under his own name to be released in thirty-seven years.

Space in the Sun was one of Akio Suzuki’s major sound projects, a unique construction completed in 1988 and located on the merdian line, which took around 18 months to build. Its purpose was to allow Suzuki to spend one day, on the autumnal equinox, purifying his sense of hearing in nature. This release comprises a 44 page book containing plans and materials from the time alongside texts, and two CDs of environmental recordings created on site at Space in the Sun. To date only tiny fragments of the recordings made between those massive clay brick walls have been used in performances and no environmental recordings of the objective of the project, i.e. the space itself, have been released. The first disk consists of the first release of “person-less” field recordings made at the same spot that Akio sat at during the event (recorded in 1993, 60 minutes). The second disk consists of a performance that took place in the space. Space in the Sun’s earthen walls have since been demolished, so these recordings represent a return to life of their soft echo, an experience accessible nowhere else.

From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality recording of water droplets that he created in the studio using his own self-created suikinchiku system. This reissue recreates the original LP, using special paper to create beautiful packaging and duplicating the original, ultra-transparent vinyl. The reissue includes newly penned, detailed liner notes by Tomotaro Kaneko (owner of the Japanese Art Sound Archive).

Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

The LP jacket is made from two layers of chipboard cardboard and washi-like "shindanshi" paper that reproduces the feel of the original. The LP also comes with two postcards and a 20-page A4 booklet (Text in Japanese and English),a download code.

Comprising more than 5,000 works of contemporary art dating from the 1960s to the present, the collection of the MUSEUMMMK für Moderne Kunst is one of the most important of its kind in the world. With canonical works by Carl Andre, Siah Armajani, Lothar Baumgarten, Thomas Bayrle, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Miriam Cahn, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Marlene Dumas, Dan Flavin, Katharina Fritsch, Robert Gober, Donald Judd, Ilya Kabakov, On Kawara, Roy Lichtenstein, Mario Merz, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Nam June Paik, Blinky Palermo, Gerhard Richter, Reiner Ruthenbeck, Rosemarie Trockel, James Turrell, Bill Viola, Jeff Wall, Franz Erhard Walther and Andy Warhol, the holdings constitute an important source for art-historical research.

The first English-language collection of Takuma Nakahira’s influential writings on photography.

At the Limits of the Gaze collects the writings of photographer and critic Takuma Nakahira in English for the first time. A crucial figure within the history of Japanese photography, Nakahira is best known outside of Japan as a founding member of Provoke, the experimental magazine of photographs, essays, and poetry, first published in 1968, and for his important photobook For a Language to Come (1970). Throughout a decades-long career, Nakahira raised incisive questions about visual culture and politics in both his photography and his writing. As part of a dynamic moment of artistic and political experimentation in Tokyo, he wrote on a range of topics hardly limited to photography: art, film, journalism, literature, politics, television, and more. Nakahira’s essays brim with urgency, relentlessly interrogating photography’s relationship to power, the connection between language and images, and the gaze. As editors and translators Daniel Abbe and Franz Prichard write, Nakahira’s essays “both suggest doubt about, and possibilities for, a photographically mediated reckoning with the world.”

by Takuma Nakahira