Avant-Garde / Contemporary

Beyond Rare! These historical recordings of a 1967 concert at Hope College in Michigan involving John Cage, Toshi Ichiyanagi and David Tudor, performing compositions by Ichiyanagi and Alvin Lucier, were recently discovered in an archive in Japan. The Lucier piece, "Music for Solo Performer”, was the first musical composition to utilize human brainwaves; this 1967 performance, released here for the first time, is an early realization of the piece, featuring Tudor, Ichiyanagi and Lowell Cross, using alpha waves to activate a wide range of percussion instruments. This proto-industrial version is heavily influenced by the amplified performance techniques pioneered by Cage and Tudor in the 1960s; quite different from the 1982 Lucier/Pauline Oliveros realization on Lovely Music. Ichiyanagi’s 1967 composition “Appearance” combines live electronics with acoustic instruments and adds Cage to the list of performers. This is the same piece which was released in 2006 by Omega Point, but the source tape used here is believed to be the master tape, resulting in a significant improvement in audio quality. These are historically significant and musically fascinating recordings, available on LP and CD. The release includes liner notes by Ibe Osamu of Omega Point, who explains how the tape was discovered, as well as liner notes by sound artist Minoru Sato, a researcher of Lucier's work who was in contact with the composer during his lifetime. Ichiyanagi contributes a note about “Appearance”.

We at EM Records love to transport our listeners to new worlds, other worlds; “Pantilde”, this magical new album from Cornish avant-folk performance artist The Worm (they/them), is indeed an ethereal new world: otherworldly, but somehow rooted; an imaginary oral and musical story of everyday village life in an alternative Celtic landscape. The music here is strange yet familiar, fantastical and enchanting while remaining simultaneously attached to the earth. Amy Lawrence (they/them), aka The Worm, plays cello, harp, recorders and percussion, accompanying and framing her rich voice, which is often overdubbed into lovely homespun vocal ensembles; they tell song-stories of mythical and mystical village life, of nature and the human relationship with the natural world. The Worm can be considered part of a lineage which includes The Incredible String Band, Shovel Dance Collective, Bridget St John, Dorothy Carter, Vashti Bunyan, Jessica Pratt, Cathrine Howe, Mary Lattimore, Tristwch Y Fenywod and of course many others. “Pantilde”, a time-trip to a dreamlike, pastoral world that nevertheless feels distinctly realized, is a remarkable avant-folk fantasia, co-released with Prah Recordings. Available on 12-inch LP & CD, with English and Japanese liner notes and lyrics. The CD format also feature a Yama Warashi remix bonus track.

Jeux d’eau is the result of an exploratory collaboration between the experimental ensemble Copenhagen Clarinet Choir and Danish composer and performer Anders Lauge Meldgaard. At the heart of the project is Meldgaard’s compositions and performance on New Ondomo—a Japanese instrument modeled on the pioneering French electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot, but what makes the music truly shine is the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir’s vibrant energy and adventurous spirit, bringing Meldgaard’s vision off the page and into a living, breathing soundscape through their playful and imaginative ensemble performance.

The initial spark for Jeux d’eau was struck during Meldgaard’s visit to the gardens of Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy—a place animated by fountains that once inspired Franz Liszt and Maurice Ravel to compose piano works of the same title. Echoing these earlier musical impressions, the project channels that lineage into a new sonic journey. Where some composers of the past often sought to define strict structures, Meldgaard’s work on Jeux d’eau instead offers an open framework—one that invites playful interaction and improvisation among the musicians. Recorded at The Village in Copenhagen, the album is a sonic experience where the organic resonance of the clarinet choir intertwines with the unpredictable textures of the New Ondomo and electronic landscape.

The work Jeux d’eau is open yet structured, forward-moving yet richly repetitive, drawing clear inspiration from American minimalists such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but rather than simply echoing the work of these pioneers, the music explores fresh terrain infused with a lyrical touch of late-romantic European sensibility, where flowing melodies and rich harmonies soften the rigor of repetition. At the same time, the music resonates with the clarity and delicacy that could be associated with Japanese composers such as Jo Kondo or Sueko Nagayo. The result is a sound world that is playful yet profound, one that continually shifts between pulsating momentum and delicate stillness. With each piece, the ensemble invites listeners into a captivating journey where tradition meets experiment, and where collective performance transforms composition into something vividly alive.

Conceived as a tribute to water and a reflection on the fragile bond between humans and the natural world, Jeux d’eau is both a sonic meditation and a quiet call to action. Through fluid forms and open notations, the work draws listeners into a space where music mirrors the dynamics of nature—demanding real-time awareness, collective sensitivity, and respect for balance. Like flowing water, the music adapts and transforms, reminding us that our environment, too, is ever-changing and in need of care. In this way, Jeux d’eau does more than celebrate nature’s beauty: it asks us to recognize our responsibility to protect the living systems that sustain us, and to pay caring attention to the world we live in.

One of the first artists iDEAL wanted to work with was Japanese noise legend Masami Akita (b. 1956) aka Merzbow and we consider his 7” for us as the first release on the label. His work is of course very well documented since his start in 1979 and we have been obsessed by his noise since we first came across it in the late 80s through that double LP on RRR. Merzbow is unique and has always kept his own corner in the experimental music world. ”GAREKI NO NIWA” is harsh, psychedelic and rewarding. It’s great listening and to us an essential Merzbow album!

A split CD commemorating the Japan tour by MARK FELL, RIAN TREANOR, and KAKUHAN in September and October 2023 is now available!

Known as a giant of electronic or experimental techno music since the 90's, they have released many works on labels such as Mille Plateaux, Line, Mego, and Raster Noton. In recent years, Mark Fell has been going beyond the boundaries of "techno" to offer a truly "modern" sound.
In 2023, NYEGE NYEGE TAPES will release "Saccades," a collaboration with Ugandan/Acholi fiddle player Ocen James, and RIAN FELL is creating music at the intersection of club culture, experimental art, and computer music, with new deconstructions and linkages. RIAN TREANOR creates music that involves new deconstruction and interlocking from the intersection of club culture, experimental art, and computer music.
KAKUHAN (Koshiro Hino and Hiroki Nakagawa), who started his activities in 2022 after various collaborations, "stirs" as the name implies, the poles/tunes possessed by various types of music such as "electronic music/strings," "contemporary music/club music," "composition/ improvisation," etc. that the unit is equipped with.
This 9-song split CD, which includes completely new compositions by these three artists, is not a mere "split (mish-mash)," but rather an approach that transcends and melds the boundaries of "physical/metaphysical" on the periphery of music after techno music is evident in each of the compositions. The ongoing attitude of the three artists toward music is truly and casually expressed in this work, which should be listened to beyond genres.

At the end of June 2025, the Krakow-based label Instant Classic will release the album "Bura" by Raphael Rogiński and the group Ružičniak Tajni, which includes Serbian artists: Svetlana Spajić, Marina Džukljev and Tijana Golubović. The album also features guest appearances by Piotr Zabrodzki (LXMP, Mitch & Mitch) and Mila Gavrilovič. Ružičniak Tajni is a unique meeting of Polish and Serbian musical traditions, the result of cooperation between artists seeking new forms of expression based on the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. The initiator of the project is Raphael Rogiński - a Polish guitarist, composer and researcher, known for his experimental approach to traditional music and his love of improvisation. In the project, he is accompanied by three outstanding Serbian artists whose work is a conscious combination of local traditions and modern expression: Svetlana Spajić – a renowned ethnomusicologist and singer, specializing in old vocal techniques and archaic song forms. Her interpretations combine authenticity of message with sensitivity to the contemporary context. Marina Džukljev – a pianist moving in the area of ​​improvised and experimental music, known for deconstructing harmonic and rhythmic structures. Tijana Golubović – a violinist and vocalist, drawing from folk performance practice, while simultaneously exploring new sonic narratives. Their collaboration resulted in the album “Bura”, recorded in Serbia in November 2024. The title refers to the characteristic wind from the northern Balkans, symbolizing both the forces of nature and the cultural tensions shaping the identity of the region. The album is a musical encounter of traditional Serbian songs – reconstructed on the basis of oral traditions and archival materials – with modern means of expression. Another key element are Raphael Rogiński’s original compositions, inspired by Sufi poetry, which was translated into Serbian in the 19th century. The sound layer of the project is based on the dynamic interaction of voice, stringed instruments and piano. Spajić brings the depth of archaic vocal techniques, Golubović combines the violin idiom with the vocal one, Džukljev creates complex harmonic structures, and Rogiński transforms the guitar tradition, enriching it with microtonality and modality. The Ružičniak Tajni concert tour will take place in May and June 2025, covering five Serbian cities. The inaugural concert is scheduled for May 16 in Belgrade. The project was created with the support of the Polish Institute in Belgrade. The concert tour is carried out in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the cultural programme accompanying the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2025.

5-CD box set presenting virtually all of Morton Feldman'smusic for solo piano. Performed by Philip Thomas, who also writes a 52-page booklet that is included in the box (and a pdf of the booklet is included with download sales)

Artwork by David Ainley

Morton Feldman's three long pieces for flute, piano and percussion, played by the GBSR Duo (Siwan Rhys & George Barton) with Taylor MacLennan on flutes. Why Patterns? (1979) 30 minutes, Crippled Symmetry (1982) 90 minutes and For Philip Guston (1984) 280 minutes.

"The works contained in this box set occupy a special place within the context of Morton Feldman’s oeuvre, written as they were for Feldman’s ‘house ensemble’ at the University of Buffalo from the late 1970s onwards: Morton Feldman and Soloists. Flutes, piano/celesta and percussion is an idiosyncratic combination of instruments that Feldman came ultimately to favour. Indeed of Why Patterns? he said in 1983 “I never dreamt to write one of my most important pieces with that combination”; but in his last decade Feldman wrote multiple chamber works for identical forces only twice: the two string quartets, and the three trios presented here.

What a contrast – where the string quartet offers an abundance of woody timbres, this ensemble is glacial, dominated by simple, almost sine-tone-like sonorities. Percussion could be anything, but the pure metallic sounds of the vibraphone and glockenspiel dominate, with tubular bells and marimba introduced in Guston but rarely used. The ensemble seems almost an embodiment of Feldman’s spectacular statement from 1984’s The Future of Local Music “I’m not interested in colour”.

Yet in exploring the timbral etiolation this unusual trio affords, Feldman discovers an unexpected world of delicate tinctures where harmony and colour interact and become almost indistinguishable. Notably, immediately after stating “I’m not interested in colour,” Feldman continues by remarking on Schoenberg’s observations about the interaction between pitch and timbre: “he says that timbre is the prince of the domain, that the resulting timbre is to some degree more important than the pitch itself, as we think of pitch. That’s a very important idea.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that this ensemble, with its uniquely refined timbral combination, held the role of crucible for Feldman’s important compositional ideas in the transition into his fully-fledged late period.

For Philip Guston: The close friendship between Morton Feldman and the painter Philip Guston collapsed in 1970, an estrangement that would endure until the painter’s death in 1980. Four years later Feldman would dedicate this contemplative epic to his late friend and to their lost friendship; a work that conjures an emotionally complex world of hazy perceptions and hazier reflections.

As the hushed tones of piano, flutes, celeste and metallic percussion cluster in complex soft-focus rhythms, at some points cohering around snatches of melody, at others scattering to explore seemingly unrelated ideas, Feldman explores the limits of memory and half-recollection – traversing and re-traversing the same terrain, but with deceptively sure tread leading the listener towards a poignant, perhaps devastating, conclusion."

A 72-minute realisation of 'Intermission 6' (1953), one of the most open of Feldman's piano works. The piece was realised in October 2024 by Antti Tolvi.

The score consists of a single page with 15 events (chords or single notes) which can be played in any order, and can be performed by one or two pianists. Feldman writes that “The pianist, or pianists, begins with any sound on the page, will hold until barely audible, then proceed to whichever other sound he may choose. Sounds may be repeated.”

Most performances of 'Intermission 6' are between 4 and 10 minutes, but Antti Tolvi extends the piece to a duration more typical of Feldman's later music.

Feldman’s late-style aesthetics distilled to their purest form in the chamber work Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello. A quiet labyrinth of abstraction, like an aural equivalent of abstract painting.

RYUICHI SAKAMOTO'S ULTRA RARE FIRST ALBUM UNDER HIS NAME - RECORDED WITH RENOWNED PERCUSSIONIST TOSHI TSUCHITORI FOR ALM RECORDS - REISSUED FOR THE FIRST TIME ON VINYL WITH AUDIO REMASTERED BY HEBA KADRY AND LINER NOTES BY ANDY BETA​

​Wewantsounds is delighted to announce the first vinyl reissue of Disappointment–Hateruma, the 1976 ALM Records release by percussionist Toshi Tsuchitori and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The album is notable as Sakamoto’s first recording issued under his own name and represents one of the few occasions he explored fully improvised music during the 1970s. It provides a vital document for understanding Sakamoto’s early development as a composer and performer, capturing a period when he was experimenting with ambient soundscapes and textured improvisation. This edition features original artwork, audio remastered by Heba Kadry and new liner notes by Andy Beta.

Ryuichi Sakamoto is widely recognized as one of the most important artists of his generation. At the time of Disappointment–Hateruma, he was still a student at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and active in Shinjuku’s experimental music circles. He was busy contributing to Transonic Magazine, performing with the multimedia group Gakushudan, and working with musicians pushing the boundaries of jazz, free improvisation, and contemporary composition.

on his side, revered Japanese percussionist Toshi Tsuchitori, who had recently returned from New York, brought influences from Milford Graves’ approach to drumming, including African rhythms, ritualized performance, and a holistic approach that combined music, movement, and philosophy. Sakamoto and Tsuchitori had previously played together in Gakushudan, but neither considered those early encounters definitive. As Andy Beta notes in the liner notes, Sakamoto was “trying to break the traditional form of music, to break open the narrow genres of contemporary music,” and this recording captures one of the rare moments when his exploratory piano work met Tsuchitori’s distinct rhythmic language in a studio setting.

The album, originally released in 1976 on producer Yukio Kojima’s influential ALM Records imprint, is structured across four tracks, with the first, "綾 (Aya)," filling the entirety of Side 1, while Side 2 contains three shorter pieces, each exploring different combinations of instruments and sound sources. The recordings employ a wide array of textures, from prepared piano, bells, marimba, and gongs to EMS synthesizer and voice. Together, the tracks create hypnotic, ethereal soundscapes and rich sonic textures that highlight the interplay between Sakamoto’s experimental piano work and Tsuchitori’s percussive expertise.

Remastered by renowned sound engineer Heba Kadry, this new edition highlights the detail, range, and clarity of the original album, making the ultra-rare Disappointment-Hateruma available worldwide for the first time. It stands as a key early document of Sakamoto’s work and situates the recordings within the broader context of his formative years and Tokyo’s mid-1970s cutting-edge music scene.

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Alvin Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Evan Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination. Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of getting them to put together a trio that would perform several concerts and recording was one of the most exciting moments of my career. Our three languages found a common ground of expression where different musical backgrounds came together and created a unique blend for that period of time. (Andrea Centazzo)
Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert Rome, Italy December 13, 1977
Engineer: Nicola Bernardini
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

 ** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli. "It was a magic evening. Not only did the trio burst with a creative energy that was homogeneous and interactive, but the acoustics, usually inadequate, of the half-empty sports pavilion with a capacity of 10,000 people, gave the music an ethereal transparency and crystalline purity that the recording captured and the CD newly presents in all its singular beauty."(Andrea Centazzo)

Andrea Centazzo percussion, percussion synthesizer
Alvin Curran synthesizer, piano, trumpet
Evan Parker soprano & tenor saxophones

Recorded live in concert at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli
Remastered from the original tapes by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio

** Edition of 250 copies, remastered from the original master tapes ** This album is a historical document in several respects: echo of a creative season in its early, vigorous blossoming, it presents groundbreaking music as it was performed and listened to in a moment that now seems very distant, not just chronologically but also in terms of its cultural context. Furthermore, it serves as a testament to the initial opening of the emerging Italian free music scene to Northern European experiences, which had already been in communication for years.
The collaboration between Evan Parker and Andrea Centazzo had begun a few months before this concert held in Padova on December 12, 1977. In July, Parker came to Italy, specifically to Tuscany, for a series of concerts, including a duo performance with Derek Bailey in Pisa. Then he joined Centazzo, who had organized a seminar with him (likely the first of its kind in Italy) in San Marcello Pistoiese. At that time, Centazzo lived and worked in the countryside between Pistoia and Montecatini. On that occasion, Centazzo recalls recording studio material, which, along with material collected during the concert in San Marcello, became the album Duets 71977 (CD Ictus 178). Shortly after, the duo temporarily expanded into a trio with Alvin Curran, who recorded Real Time (CD Ictus 124). By then, the Centro d'Arte had existed for more than thirty years as an association connected to the University, presenting seasons with a very open and research–oriented profile. These seasons featured classical chamber music alongside occasional but significant episodes of contemporary music, jazz, and even ethnic music.

 However, it was only since 1973 that the Centro d'Arte had started an autonomous jazz series, favoring contemporary and avant–garde artists such as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sam Rivers, Anthony Braxton, and musicians from the emerging European free jazz scene. The concerts were held in a temporary structure, a circus tent located in the area of the old slaughterhouse. The audience was quite large, ranging from 500 to over 1000 people, which may be surprising for an avant–garde jazz series, considering the size of the city, with no more than 250,000 inhabitants. At that time, Italy, and Padova in particular, was going through a particularly turbulent political period. The ideas of radical democracy that circulated among the youth masses often meant that participation in a collective event, such as a concert, was not to be simply passive. In addition, a recent series of incidents and clashes had resulted in a near–total ban on rock concerts across the country; consequently, much of the young audience had turned to whatever appeared contemporary and alternative to the commercial scene, such as the new jazz. Anything that seemed radical was generally well–received, even better if it was entertaining.

But perhaps this wasn't the case. The Centazzo/Parker duo was indeed one of the most experimental episodes presented by the Centro d'Arte in those years. Parker had already developed his characteristic style, and as John Zorn observed in his introduction to Duets 71977, "during this intermediate phase between what was documented in Saxophone Solos (1975) and Monoceros (1978), Parker was still using plastic reeds that defined the sharp articulations of his early sound and was beginning to refine the circular breathing that would become a major focus of exploration in the years to come". Meanwhile, as is apparent in the cover photos, Centazzo was already working with a custom–built expanded drum kit made by the English Premier company, with cymbals and gongs that he had designed and produced in collaboration with UFIP in Pistoia. In addition to percussion, Centazzo used one of the first percussion synthesizers, the Synare, and a range of electronic sound objects, including the 'crackle box,' designed and produced in small quantities by Michel Waisvisz (a specimen that had been given to him by Steve Lacy), and also lo–fi sound toys, such as the 'laughing bag.' To many ears at the time, all of this was more astonishing than appreciated for the quality of a new and unheard–of musical practice. Some of the audience expressed their confusion, but those who made a fuss didn't seem to disapprove as much as they aimed for a 'creative' involvement with the scene, in an effort perhaps to raise the level of their intermittent interest. Under the tent, people drank, some smoked, not everyone was seated, and even a few dogs wandered around. Something of this atmosphere, so far removed from today's norms, can be heard in the residual bustling soundscape of voices in the background of the music. However, it takes an additional effort of imagination to realize the intense tension that immediately arose between the performers and the audience, ultimately determining the high 'temperature' of the improvised event. One could recall that only ten days before, in Milan, John Cage had heroically faced for almost three hours an extremely tumultuous crowd of 2,000 people challenging him to complete his solo performance of Empty Words, often reaching the brink of physical threat. The musical material heard on this album does not correspond to the entire concert but is a selection that emphasizes some particularly intense long sequences. It is worth remembering that about twenty minutes into the actual concert, some voices from the audience began to howl and even mock what they were listening to. Parker expressed his irritation through the music, but also with words in which he ironically described himself as a gladiator in the arena. In this portion of the concert, which is not included in the album, spoiled as it is by annoying distortions, you can hear him addressing the audience: "Bring back bullfighting, Bring back bullfighting... whoa... Bullfighting on ice!" and later shouting, "Bring on the lions!" Thus, the title of the album also seeks to evoke these significant aspects of the way free music was made and listened to in many situations that occurred in those epic 1970s. – Veniero Rizzardi (October 2023)

Technical Note: The recording originates from the Centro d'Arte archive. Although there is no precise information available about the source, it is highly probable that the performance was recorded by capturing a mono signal from the mixing board and routing it to two tracks on a reel–to–reel Revox A77 at 7.5 ips. The recording engineer is unknown. In 2000, Stefano Bassanese converted the tape into a digital file (44100 Hz/16 bit) in his home studio. This forms the basis of the current restoration process, conducted at Outside Inside Studio by Matt Bordin, who is also responsible for editing and mastering.

personnel: Andrea Centazzo percussion and electronics / Evan Parker soprano and tenor saxophones - Recorded live in concert december 12, 1977 at Teatro Tenda, Padova, Italy. produced by Centro d'Arte dell'Università di Padova. All tracks are free improvisations by the duo. Restoration, editing and mastering by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio. Liner notes by Veniero Rizzardi. Photos by Michele Giotto.

The archive is not neutral. In 2019, Andrea Centazzo discovered unlabeled tape reels in his mother's attic in Udine - boxes assumed lost seven years earlier. What emerged from these deteriorating reels, transferred by engineer Sergio Tomasini during COVID lockdowns, was unexpected: unreleased recordings from the original Elektriktus sessions of 1973-76, alongside other archival materials including previously unknown collaborations with Steve Lacy and Evan Parker from the same period.Centazzo's solution was conceptually elegant: add contemporary digital electronics to the original analog Elektriktus recordings, creating temporal palimpsest in which the seventy-something composer engages in dialogue with his younger self. Crucially, his fundamental approach hasn't changed. "Making a 10-minute loop meant playing and overdubbing for 10 minutes!" This rejection of computer automation, this insistence on the hand-played and physically executed, links 2025 to 1975 through continuous methodology.Vol. 2 operates in complex register: contemporary electronics don't "update" the original recordings but exist in conversation with them. By overlaying 2025 digital work onto 1975 analog recordings, Centazzo creates proof that affinities between cosmic drift and percussive grounding were present in the original conception, waiting to be heard.The reborn Ictus label presents both volumes as complementary documents: Vol. 1 preserving the original artifact in its analog integrity, Vol. 2 revealing latent possibilities through temporal superimposition. Together, they map territory that standard histories have overlooked - the Italian synthesis of kosmische consciousness and Mediterranean sensibility.This temporal doubling produces music that is neither nostalgic recreation nor radical revision but something more complex - a conversation between past and present, between the composer who created these sounds in the mid-1970s and the artist who now understands their full implications. The phantom that PDU Records once denied a proper name finally speaks, twice, across fifty years.

The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and the faint percussive reverberation of stalactites and stalagtites. Rocky sediments are played as tubular organs, glockenspiels, xylophones or stone marimbas. Crystalline timbral variations and subtle microtonal passages recall the chimes of Tibetan gongs and bells, of the scales of Java and Bali. Amidst muffled pauses and silences, trills and rings, echoes and tremolos, hisses and pops of vibration, Maioli builds his most imaginative niche of sound, a magnetic and telluric chant that is pure symphony and archetypal synaesthesia. Co-produced with Holidays Records.

John McGuire's Double String Trios presents three major late works for two string trios, composed between 2012 and 2021. His musical roots lie in the electronic studios of postwar Cologne, shaped through studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, and grounded in the traditions of European serialism. Working with synthesizers capable of generating up to 1,800 pulses per second, McGuire developed a beautifully harmonious, crystalline music, shaped by the ear into a world of flowing continuities between one point and the next. Transferred to stringed instruments, that world becomes infinitely more complex-suffused with the richness and impurities of human players and their acoustic technologies. Conceived as two facing string trios in antiphonal dialogue, the music links studio spatial thinking with older split-ensemble traditions, unfolding through Fibonacci proportions, rotating tempi, shifting meters, and continual harmonic transposition.

J.P.A. Falzone and Morgan Evans-Weiler have been working together since 2016 in the famous ensemble "Ordinary Affects" of the Weindelweiser school. A 2-CD set containing the feature films composed individually by each is released from the famous place ! In January 19 at the Wesleyan University Memorial Chapel at the Liberal Arts University in Middletown, Connecticut, by Luke Damrosch, who is known for engineering works around Van der Weiser and co-writing with Alan Sondheim and José James. A recorded work. Both the string drone minimalist Morgan Evans-Weiler side, which accelerates isolation in the void, the melancholy piano and violin, and the JPA Falzone side, where the pointillistic sound of the vibraphone gives off a dull beauty. A very enigmatic chamber music work that makes you feel even the taste of Japanese loneliness while suppressing the number of sounds. It's ridiculously wonderful!

Bach's 3 Sonatas for Solo Violin, arranged by Marc Sabat for two violins using Just Intonation tunings, together with three short introductory pieces by Marc Sabat.

"Ever since I first played solo Bach on my violin, I've been fascinated by how changing colours of differently tuned harmonic intervals shape and transform the music. In my compositions I make music using intervals found amongst the natural harmonic partials, an approach sometimes called just or rational intonation (JI). These are sounds that can be accurately played by ear, by carefully listening to how very small differences of pitch create beating, resonance, fusion, and reinforce combination tones. These subtle psychoacoustic interactions are at the heart of experiencing harmony, which is what my work is about.

As I came to work this way, I was curious if the approach I use in my own compositions could also be applied to Bach in a strict way, by composing the fine shadings of intonation according to JI intervals. Over the past 25 years, I kept coming back to this work, but it was the ongoing collaboration with Sara Cubarsi, beginning with a first meeting in Cat Lamb's studio in Berlin a decade ago, that led me to write and us to record the realisation documented on this disc.

I have added a second violin part to Bach's solo violin sonatas, music that began as sustained harmonic drones on mostly open strings and harmonics, but which gradually evolved into a kind of personal take on harmonic counterpoint, and became a gentle conversation between my own music and Bach's, finding my way by ear. It was very inspiring to collaborate with a composer who invented so many ways of exploring harmony, and to revisit the old question whether music that moves freely through many tonal regions needs a "well tempered tuning", or if it can also work in a microtonal re-interpretation using many different shadings of pitch.

Each of the three Bach "tunings" are preceded by a short prelude from my cycle "Streams barely in winter" (2019). These miniatures focus on particular intonations of the piece to follow." (Marc Sabat, May 2025)

For this vinyl reissue, the album has been remastered from original analogue tapes, and includes a a 25x25cm, 24-page booklet with abundant notes and documents, as well as a CD (inserted in the LP sleeve) entitled "Before and After Bandits", containing previously-unreleased live and demo recordings

In the spring of 1977, two young Belgian musicians who call themselves Aksak Maboul (aka Marc Hollander & Vincent Kenis) set out to record an album, "Onze danses pour combattre la migraine", in which they playfully fused and deconstructed all kinds of genres to create their own musical world. Three years later, Hollander founded the Crammed label. Many ingredients came in and out of the Aksak blender : fake jazz, electronics, imaginary African & Balkan music, minimalism... there were even pre-techno aspects such in as Saure Gurke and its characteristic keyboard stab pattern which will mysteriously find its way into many classic Detroit techno tracks some ten years later. Onze Danses became a cult album, and seems retrospectively to have mapped out the way for the various directions which have been explored by Crammed during the next two decades.

Featuring Xavier Charles, Angharad Davies and more, this long-unheard score by drone master and guru of Tibetan-electronic synthesis Eliane Radigue (1932–) finally resurfaces after six decades. Written in 1963–64 and produced by Rhodri Davies, the work received its long-awaited premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2023. Based on graphic notation derived from the Fibonacci sequence, the score is interpreted by strings, winds, harp, and guitar, summoning Radigue’s signature deep drones without the use of electronics. Layers of sound unfurl with subtle fluctuations and spiral resonances, offering an experience at once hushed and cosmic in scope. A prophetic precursor to her later Occam series, and an elemental masterpiece that awakens a prayer-like focus at the very source of Radigue’s art.

The road is a wrinkled timeline. Uncanny flatness conceals unfolding textures, transparent layers and open tabs. The truck cuts the landscape, tracing the road with a line of mad logic that composites time, space, thought. On “Le Camion de Marguerite Duras,” French duo Jean-Marie Mercimek have returned with a road movie for the blind. Composed and recorded by Marion Molle and Ronan Riou over six years across France and Belgium, this unlikely distillation of microtonal MIDI composition, French B.O., and post-punk chansons brazenly expands the duos’ penchant for lowkey narrative spectacle.

Across “Le Camion,” sounds form a theatrical screen. Our ears are the curtains drawn wide and listening with a look that pans across the shot. No title cards, they cut straight to action. The truck is a camera, zooming and framing the tracks as scenes. Songwriting and sound design blur in a tangle of delicate economy. The balance of mutant music-boxes and dewy miniatures recalls otherworldly hits from Gareth Williams’ Flaming Tunes, Residents, and catchier corners of the Lovely Music catalog. Strange, sure, but this flick is never quite a cartoon. Molle and Riou’s vocals dilate into a cast of very human characters. Voices sing borrowed texts like untrained actors (playing themselves, in fact) stepping into the frame once before disappearing forever. And when they’re gone, you miss them. But here in the truck, it all comes back again under the cyclic spell of repose in perpetual motion. Turn up the radio and appuyez sur le champignon.

Tara Clerkin Trio present their self titled debut LP on Laura Lies In. Similar to that directorial effect of filming at double speed and then slowing down for playback, the record ambles with assurance, expertly paced.

Opening with a jovial cacophony before the beatific ‘in the room’ confidently relieves, washing away any unease with an innately alien familiarity.

Coming to with the padded percussive patterns of 'Helenica', taking a moment to remember where you are in this temporal smudge. The serene contemplation of 'Any of these' signals we're homeward with a dependable afterglow, a friend you don’t need to thank for a good weekend.

A record existing disconnected from the daily getyadowns, a holiday from life, optimism as resistance against mundanity, something extraordinary amongst the ordinary, positively grey.

Recorded and produced by Dominic Mitchison. Mastered by Rupert Clervaux.