Electronic / Experimental
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Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and Sam Karugu emerge from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene as former members of the bands Lust of a Dying Breed and Seeds of Datura. Together in 2019 they formed Duma (Darkness in Kikuyu) with Sam abandoning bass for production and guitars and Lord Spike Heart providing extreme vocals to the project.
Recorded at Nyege Nyege Studios in Kampala over three months in mid 2019 their self-titled debut album fuses the frenetic euphoria, unrelenting physicality and rebellious attitude of hardcore punk and trash metal with bone-crunching breakcore and raw, nihilist industrial noise through a claustrophobic vortex of visceral screams.
The savant mix of brutally adrenalized drums, caustic industrial trap, shredding grindcore inspired guitars and abrupt speed changes create a darkly atmospheric menace and is lethal on tracks like the opener "Angels and Abysses" , "Omni" or "Uganda with Sam".
The gruelling slow techno dirges and monolithic vocals on "Pembe 666" or "Sin Nature" add a pinch of dramatic inevitability bringing a new sense of theatricality and terrifying fate awaiting into the record's progression.
A sinister sonic aggression of feral intensity with disregard for styles, Duma promises to impact the burgeoning African metal scene moving it into totally new, boundary-challenging experimental territories.
If you head north on 1-85 from Hillsborough, NC, and take the exit for 58 East, in fifteen minutes you'll reach Diamond Grove, a small unincorporated area in Brunswick County, Virginia on the Meherrin River. To most eyes, there's not much there—you'll have to drive to Lawrenceville for groceries or to South Hill for hardware. But hidden in this patch of Virginia piedmont are the remnants of a dairy farm established in the 1740s, its main house an old two up, two down beauty still outfitted with rope beds and all. Go there today and you'll hear distant sounds of someone working soybeans and cotton in the leased-out outbuildings, farm-use tires grinding gravel roads, frogs peeping, and chickadees singing out: chick-a-dee, chick-a-dee. But if you happened to pass through in September of 2023, you might've heard fiddle tunes ricocheting off the pines, BBS rattling-to-rest inside empties, and the sounds of Weirs recording their second LP and Dear Life Records debut: Diamond Grove. Weirs is an experimental collective grown out of central North Carolina's music scene—one that is equal parts oldtime and DIY noise. Non-hierarchical in form, past Weirs performances have included anywhere from two to twelve people. In September 2023, nine traveled up US-58 to pack into the living and dining rooms of the dairy farm main house, still in the family of band member and organizer Oliver Child-Lanning, whose relatives have been there for centuries. This Weirs lineup—neither definitive nor precious—includes Child-Lanning; Justin Morris and Libby Rodenbough (his collaborators in Sluice); Evan Morgan, Courtney Werner, and Mike DeVito of Magic Tuber Stringband; and stalwarts Andy McLeod, Alli Rogers, and Oriana Messer who played deep into those late-summer evenings. What resulted are the nine tracks of Diamond Grove, recorded with an ad hoc signal chain assembled from a greater-communitys worth of borrowed gear. The Weirs project began as tape experiments on traditional tunes Child-Lanning made under the name Pluviöse in winter 2019. This evolved into the first Weirs record, Prepare to Meet God, which was self-released in July 2020 and was a collaboration between Child-Lanning and Morris during COVID. The strange conditions of that debut—a communal tradition of live songs recorded apart in isolation—are undone by Diamond Grove, a record rooted in the unrepeatable convergence of people, place, and time. On the new record, Weirs continue their search for how best to forward, uphold, and unshackle so-called "traditional" music. They are songcatchers, gathering tunes on the verge of obscure death. Their wild, centuries-spanning repertoire plays like an avant-call-the-tune session—a kind of Real Book for a scene fluent in porch jams, Big Blood, Amps for Christ, and Jean Ritchie. Weirs catch songs whose interpretive canon still feels ajar—open enough to stand next to but never above those who've sung them before. These aren't attempts at definitive versions. The recordings on Diamond Grove feel like visitations rather than revisions. And the question Weirs asks on this record is not how to simply continue the tradition of their forebears, but how traditional music could sound today. For Weirs, the history of this tradition could be taken less from the folk revival than from musique concréte; less from pristine old master recordings than something like The Shadow Ring if theyd come from the evangelical South. One listen to "(A Still, Small Voice)" and you'll hear the power of the hymn give way to its equal: the floorboards, fire crackle, dinners made and eaten. This tension between preservation and degradation is the inner light of Diamond Grove. Take "Doxology l": the melody of "Old Hundred", a hymn from the Sacred Harp tradition, is converted to MIDI, played through iPhone speakers, and re-recorded in the September air. To some revivalists, this hymn sung with all the glory of fake auto-tuned voices might sound sacreligious. But ears attuned, say, to the hyperpop production of the last few decades will immediately understand the tense beauty of hearing digitallyartifacted shape-note singing. This same tension animates "l Want to Die Easy." Weirs' version draws from A Golden Ring of Gospel's recording, monumentalized in the Folkways collection Sharon Mountain Harmony. The melodies, words, structure are largely unchanged. But the "'pure" clarity of voice in the early recording is gone. In its place, we hear the distancing sound of the dairy farm silo where Weirs recorded their version, its natural two-second reverb replacing pristine proximity. In this way, the sound of the recording site itself becomes equal to the traditional performance. The beating heart of Diamond Grove is Weirs's take on "Lord Bateman," a tune Jean Ritchie called a "big ballad:" played when the chores were done and the night's dancing had stopped. It is an 18th-century song—as old as the Diamond Grove farm—about a captured adventurer, described by Nic Jones as embodying the spirit of an Errol Flynn film. Like many great and often a cappella renditions, this "'Lord Bateman" is voice-forward, foregrounding the gather-round-children importance of yarn spinning. What's new here is the immense drone that transubstantiates the narrative into a ceaseless body of elemental forces. It's an eye-blurring murmur of collective strings that adds to the canon of Ritchie and June Tabor as much as to Pelt's Ayahuasca or Henry Flynt's Hillbilly Tape Music. While Diamond Grove isn't explicitly about the old dairy farm where it was recorded, it can't help but resemble it. Old English ballads like "'Lord Bateman" and "'Lord Randall" spill into fields once 'granted' by the British Crown. Tragic songs like "'Edward" stagger across Tuscarora trails and postbellum cotton rows. Hymns like "'Everlasting l" and "Everlasting Il" catch a moonlight that's been falling through double-hung windows since Lord Bacon's Rebellion. And the nocturnals still trill and plows still till a music uncomposed, waiting for any and all ears to chance upon it. Diamond Grove, in these ways, is history. It is a place. It is time. It is songcatching, liveness, tape manipulation. Like the low-head dam that the word weir implies, it is a defense against the current. It is a defense of regional lexicons against mass-produced vernaculars; a defense against the belief that we can simply return to a simpler time; a defense against the idea that folk music must remain "pure"; a defense against the claim that a dream of the future latent in lost histories is irretrievably lost. Against all that, Diamond Grove defends traditional music by making it sound like the complexity of today—because it knows that such music, and all the histories caught up in it, has a role to play in the days to come.
Gen’s fabled copy-of-1 acetate, made in 1968 with schoolmates, is reissued for wider consumption, offering an unmissable glimpse at the early stirrings of a notorious “wrecker of civilisation” and one of the most significant artists of their time .
Before PTV, before Throbbing Gristle, and leading up to action with COUM Transmissions, one Neil Megson made their first foray into recorded music with some pals in their parents attic in Solihull, West Midlands. Spurred by readings of occult literature, Fluxus and John Cage, and footage of psychedelic “happenings” by Bohemian beatniks in London, Megson and pals experimented with janky equipment to make a cute lo-fi racket of giggles, chants, brays, bittersweet witter and poetry, as recited in the instantly familiar nasal tang of ‘Rather Hard to Libel’. It’s effectively the sound of grammar school boys having a laugh in the late ‘60s, but also serves as the seed for a remarkable, notorious, and enduring oeuvre that catalysed countless others to write, make art and music in their wake.
“POLITE WARNING by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, 2008: Previously thought to be missing, these never before available songs were created on extremely primitive equipment in the attic of 6 Links Drive, Solihull, Warwickshire, England by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and friends using Thee Early Worm as their collective group name. Only one copy had originally been pressed on an acetate. This disc and its corresponding analog reel-to-reel master tape were discovered in the Porridge With Everything Archives by Ryan Martin during a recent re-organization. This album is mastered directly from the original reel to reel tape and is made available to devotees of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s life-long musical body of work as a missing link, and curiosity, that reveals significant structural themes and sonic textures that, with hindsight, can be seen to have remained central to her creative processes ever since. Please be aware that this is inevitably a low-fi recording intended for collectors and researchers.”
HUMAN ERROR CLUB is keyboardists Diego Gaeta and Jesse Justice and drummer Mekala Session. Gaeta is a jazz-trained pianist with a restless harmonic imagination. Justice honed his chops making beats before trading his MPC for a Fender Rhodes, always maintaining a producer’s ear for texture and detail. Session, raised in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park, studied under the legendary drummer Billy Higgins, and also leads the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. All hailing from different corners of LA, these longtime musician friends came together in 2019 as a solution to a recurring dilemma: good bassists are hard to find. What was originally meant to be a one-off for the underground series BackbeatLA turned into a regular thing, and soon the trio was in the studio recording what would become their debut album. HUMAN ERROR CLUB AT KENNY’S HOUSE, the group’s first release on Backwoodz Studioz, is their first album since 2022. The project emerged from three recording sessions that took place at LA producer Kenny Segal’s home studio between 2021 and 2024. Segal, an underground hip-hop mainstay, opened not just his space but his full arsenal of gear and toys. The sessions were pure improvisation, the trio’s defining compositional approach. Out of this comes a project grounded in exploration and bound by trust, mutual respect, and a shared musical vocabulary. A collection of sound experiments bridging and pushing their varied creative lineages forward. Beyond just playing host, Kenny Segal engineered and produced, cutting roughly ten hours of raw material into this album. He’s also the link to a constellation of features from the Backwoodz universe: ELUCID, Moor Mother, Pink Siifu, Quelle Chris, billy woods, Cavalier, and k-the-i??? These collaborations extend HUMAN ERROR CLUB’s musical family, each folding into the group’s soundscapes. This wild, synthy ride captures a band in motion: improvisation as method, not a format—built on generative tension and honest craft.
Ghanaian hiplife phenom Yaw Atta-Owusu presents charming results of his first studio session since 1994’s sleeper hit ‘Obaa Sima’, which found an overdue, cult audience via the blogosphere as one of Awesome Tapes From Africa’s earliest and greatest drops in 2015. If you weren’t snagged on the ohrwurming keys, vox, and groove of the title tune to Ata Kak’s ‘Obaa Sima’ in 2015, you probably weren’t going to the right clubs and checking the right sites. 10 years later it still kills and is set to be joined by this fresh haul from the Bishop Beatz recording studio in Kumasi, Ghana, where Ata Kak laid down ‘Batakari’, his 1st recordings in three decades, recapturing the moxie of his original sound on six cuts that betray time and space travelled within more ambitious arrangements of signature fast chat factored by layered harmonies and rhythmic variegation. “Honed in studios around Kumasi over the last several years, the songs feature the rapper-singer’s acrobatic rap, signature scatting, dramatic drums and even traditional Akan harp. The compositions are more ambitious than his earlier work, with more complex arrangements and layered harmonies. Ata Kak’s new songs are also the natural expression of a restless artist—he is a prolific poet and author of a half-dozen books, as well as an active gardener and busy painter. Born in Ghana in 1960, Ata Kak wasn’t always involved in music. But his travels and openness to the world lead him into the music industry. While living in Germany, he was invited to play drums in a reggae band and subsequently played in highlife bands in Ontario after moving to the Toronto area. He recorded “Obaa Sima” there at his home studio and released it in Ghana in 1994. He didn’t participate in music much in the intervening years until “Obaa Sima” was reissued in 2015. He started performing his song live with the help of a brilliant cast of London-based musicians and has toured three continents and played to thousands of fans in venues of all kinds.”
This is NEW MANUKE's first album. Shake your hips, shake the world, keep on movin', Maximum volume!
Bag of Max Bag of Cass is a joint work from Zach Hill and Lucas Abela. Hill, while primarily known as a founding member of Death Grips, is a titan in music—a visionary drummer, master of velocity and compositional design. Abela’s practice stands alone in the world of free improvisation, forging entire universes literally from shards of amplified glass. These aren’t songs so much as vast, textured fields. Here, noise becomes a sonic environment of focus and intensity. For all its volatility, the music holds an unlikely stillness. Hill’s rhythms refract against Abela’s sustained, splintered overtones, forming a labyrinthine architecture ever ready to ensnare you.
With his 2006 masterpiece debut album Burial and his 2007 second album Untrue, which earned him the highest praise as “the most important electronic music work of the century,” Burial has established two monumental achievements. Despite his identity and background remaining unknown, he has captivated many music fans and influenced numerous artists. He has also generated significant buzz through split works with Thom Yorke and Four Tet, as well as collaborations with Massive Attack, continuing to captivate people across eras and genres as one of the most important musicians of our time. Now, he releases his latest single!
For Chantal Michelle, composing music is a form of choreography. Within surreal sonic environments, distinct sounds form relationships—moving together, then drifting apart—in a process of continuous reemergence across the auditory field. This ever-shifting constellation gestures toward the fragility and mutability of perception, a recurring focus in Michelle’s work. Trained as a dancer from an early age, Michelle brings a heightened spatial sensitivity to her practice: an intuitive understanding of how forms coexist and move through three dimensions, and an appreciation for the beauty found in unlikely juxtapositions of materials and ideas. Since establishing her solo career in 2021, she has gained international recognition for her patient, meticulous recordings, often developed in tandem with installations, multi-channel compositions, and sound sculptures. Within these subtly disorienting sonic architectures, new relationships can emerge, new boundaries can be drawn, and listeners are invited into an experience of time that resists linearity.
All Things Might Spill, Michelle’s first album for Shelter Press, is an examination of sustained tension and the mystifying experience of time dilation in the moments just before a rupture or collapse. The music inhabits a space of instability, and even as it uses continuous tones and defined melodic phrases, there’s an air of irresolution—like a moment of unease suspended indefinitely. Much of the album was recorded during the winter months of 2024 in Berlin, with many early-morning hours spent immersed in a space of subtle disquiet. Light is said to spill into darkness, and this transitional time, heavy with expectation, can be heard in the music.
On “Presence of Border,” vaporous voices twist and entwine as they float above ambiguous harmonies that seem to extend into an infinite distance. Two short pieces, “Magnetic Field I” and “Magnetic Field II,” contain processed recordings of a tromba marina played by Argentinian sound artist Alma Laprida. The juxtaposition of scratchy tones and wispy harmonics creates tambura-like drones that draw the listener towards an elusive center. Later in the album, “Drying of Frozen Soils” features modal clarinet lines by Severin Black that are initially almost imperceptible within the foggy, synthesized backdrop before emerging into a ghostly counterpoint. A similar relational structure of obscurity and clarity defines the title track, where wordless vocals pierce a noisy field recording captured on a ferry crossing the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan.
This is music with a spacious terrain and a dense atmosphere. Change is slow, but dramatic, each shift meticulously charted to evoke feelings of wonder and anticipation while retaining a sublime sensitivity to how individual sounds relate to the motion of their surroundings. Michelle masterfully abandons narrative, composing in three dimensions. We are left with the ambiguity of the word “might”—the lingering possibility of the energetic rush of the breach, the spill, now at the horizon, now imminent, somehow both at once.
Michelle's practice has been shaped by rigorous study and recognized by a wide array of arts organizations worldwide. She received her MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts in 2024, and has since been awarded the 2026 Villa Aurora Artist Grant, the 2025 Arbeitsstipendium Ernste Musik und Klangkunst from the Berlin Senate Department for Culture, and was selected for the 2026 GMEA residency in Albi, France. Her work has also been supported by the US-based Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Sonic Art Research Unit in the UK and has been presented at the Royal Academy of Arts in the UK, Fridman Gallery in New York City, and MUTEK Mexico.
s i n c e h i s f i r s t e p t i p s o n l u c i a n o s l a b e l c a d e n z a i n 2 0 0 7 p r o d u c e r a n d d j p e t r e i n s p i r e s c u e m e r g e d i n t o o n e o f t h e k e y f i g u r e s o f t h e r o m a n i a n e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c s c e n e . s o f a r h e r e l e a s e d m u s i c o n l a b e l s s u c h a s v i n y l c l u b , l i c k m y d e c k o r a m p h i a . t o g e t h e r w i t h h i s b u d d i e s r h a d o o a n d r a r e s h h e a l s o l a u n c h e d i n 2 0 0 7 3t h e l a b e l [ a : r p i a : r ] - † a p l a t f o r m w h e r e h e , h i s t w o f r i e n d s a n d m a n y p r o d u c e r s f r o m r o m a n i a a n d a b r o a d r e l e a s e d d e t a i l e d g r o o v i n g h o u s e a n d t e c h n o , t h a t s t a n d s o u t w i t h d e l i c a t e s t r u c t u r e s a n d o n e - o f - a - k i n d g r o o v e s . b o t h o f h i s m o r e d a n c e f l o o r o r i e n t e d s o l o a l b u m s " i n t r - o s e a r a o r g a n i c a . . ." a n d " g ra d i n a o n i r i ca" f o r [ a : r p i a : r ] a r e e n l a r g e d w i t h m e l o d i e s , s o u n d s a n d h a r m o n i e s t h a t g o b e y o n d t h e u s u a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f a d a n c e a l b u m . f u r t h e r m o r e h i s l o v e f o r c l a s s i c m u s i c i a n s l i k e m i l y a l e x e j e w i t s c h b a l a k i r e v , a l e x a n d e r p o r f i r y e v i c h b o r o d i n o r o r n i c o l a i a n d r e j e w i t s c h r i m s k y - k o r s a k o w c a n b e f e l t i n t h e a l b u m " pa d u r e a d e a u r ( o p u s 2 i n r e m a j o r )" a n d t w o m o r e e p s t h a t h e r e l e a s e d u n d e r t h e a l i a s e n s e m b l e o n t h e r o m a n i a n l a b e l y o j i k c o n c o n i n o r d e r t o u n i t e c l a s s i c a l s p h e r e s w i t h a n a l o g u e e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c p r o d u c t i o n . i n f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 3 h e a l s o r e l e a s e d h i s h i g h l y a c c l a i m e d f a b r i c m i x c d t h a t o n l y f e a t u r e s d a n c e f l o o r l e a n i n g m u s i c p r o d u c e d b y h i m s e l f . w i t h "t a l k i n g w a t e r s" h e p u b l i s h e d i n l a t e 2 0 1 4 h i s f i r s t 1 2 i n c h o n m u l e m u s i q t h a t i s n o w f o l l o w e d b y t h e f u l l - l e n g t h a l b u m " v i n p l o i l e" w h i c h h e p r o d u c e d w i t h o u t t h e i n t e n t i o n t o e n t e r t a i n w i t h e a s y t o h o o k u p r h y t h m s , m e l o d i e s a n d h a r m o n i e s . e v e n t o u g h h e e s t a b l i s h e d h i m s e l f a s a i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y p l a y i n g h o u s e d j t h a t r e g u l a r l y p e r f o r m s a t a l l m a j o r c l u b s , f e s t i v a l s a n d o t h e r p a r t y d e s t i n a t i o n s a r o u n d t h e g l o b e : a s a m u s i c i a n p e t r e i n s p i r e s c u a l w a y s t r i e s t o e n t e r n e w t e r r i t o r i e s t o e x p l o r e w i t h a h e a r t f e l t h u m a n t o u c h t h e i n f i n i t e s p a c e o f s o u n d . f o r h i s l a t e s t a l b u m t h e m a n t h a t o r i g i n a l l y c o m e s f r o m t h e e a s t e r n r o m a n i a n t o w n b ra i l a s t e p p e d a w a y f r o m h i s f o r m e r e x p e r i m e n t s o f m e l t i n g c l a s s i c a l s p h e r e s w i t h e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c . i n s t e a d t h e 3 6 - y e a r s o l d m a n f r o m b u c h a r e s t o n l y u s e d s o m e p i a n o , s t r i n g a n d w i n d i n s t r u m e n t e l e m e n t s a n d a n a l o g u e e l e c t r o n i c s t o a r r a n g e a g r a c e f u l l y d e e p o c e a n o f s o u n d . a l l s l o w g r o o v i n g t r a c k s s p r e a d t h e a t m o s p h e r e o f l i v e i m p r o v i s e d s e s s i o n s t h a t a r e e d i t e d , t w e a k e d a n d m i x e d t o p e r f e c t i o n . i n - t h e - m o m e n t m o o d s o f s t r a n g e a n d u n u s u a l a n a l o g u e s y n t h s o u n d s g r o o v e i n a f l u i d q u a l i t y w i t h s u b l i m i n a l b a s s s h a p e s , l a t i n a t e p e r c u s s i o n s , j a z z r h y t h m s a n d a c o u s t i c m e l o d i e s . t o g e t h e r t h e y c r e a t e a g a s e o u s k i n e t i c a t m o s p h e r e f u l l o f t a n g i b l e r h y t h m p a t t e r n s , d e l i c a t e c h o r d s a n d g h o s t l y m o d u l a r s y n t h p a d s a l l m i x e d s u b t l e t o c r e a t e s p a c e f o r t h e t o n e s b e t w e e n t h e t o n e s . y o u c a n c a l l i t a h y p n o t i c a f t e r h o u r a l b u m f o r a f t e r h o u r s t h a t a r e d e d i c a t e d t o a d e e p l i s t e n i n g e x p e r i e n c e . y o u c a n t a g h i s a r r a n g e m e n t s a s b r i l l i a n t l y t e x t u r e d a n d m u s i c a l l y s u p e r - c h a r g e d a m b i e n t , w h i c h g o e s b e y o n d t h e u s u a l d e f i n i t i o n o f t h e g e n r e . a l l n i n e s u s p e n s e f u l c o m p o s i t i o n s s e d u c e w i t h a d e e p m e l o d i c s e n s i b i l i t y , h a r m o n i c a d v e n t u r e s a n d a n o v e r a l l r h y t h m i c a m b i a n c e o f f r e s h n e s s a n d l a i d b a c k e n t h u s i a s m . t o g e t h e r t h e y r e p r e s e n t a c h a l l e n g i n g a u d i t o r y e x p e r i e n c e t h a t w i l l r e s o n a t e i n y o u r m i n d l o n g a f t e r t h e m u s i c h a s f i n i s h e d.
Recorded in concert at the University of Sheffield in March 2025, Reality Is Not A Theory is the first collaboration between Mark Fell and Pat Thomas. Major figures in British experimental music since the 1990s, Fell and Thomas have developed their rigorous practices from radically different backgrounds and perspectives: where Fell’s singular take on synthetic abstraction emerged from Sheffield’s electronic underground, Thomas is a virtuoso improvising pianist steeped in jazz and modernist art music who has simultaneously worked with sampler-based electronics for decades. As the record’s wonderfully academic subtitle explains, we are presented here with two sides of ‘algorithmic and improvised music for computer and piano’, exemplifying both players’ insatiable search for new (and sometimes uncomfortable) playing situations.
The performance begins with Fell’s electronics close to the timbres of acoustic percussion, attacks that suggest wood, metal or glass threaded along a rapid pulse while Thomas focuses on the lowest registers of the piano, deadening the strings. As Fell’s electronics start to ring out and occupy more harmonic space, Thomas turns to wide, repeated clusters, which slowly expand into patterns of chords. Like in his recent solo recordings and his trio work with Joel Grip and Anton Gerbal, Thomas’ playing combines extreme dissonance with a deep lyrical sense. Fell’s work gradually shifts its focus toward drum sounds, drawing on the microtemporal processes that have characterized his practice in recent decades. Heard together with Thomas’ probing piano, the computer sounds call up unexpected associations with the klangfarben antics of improv drummers like Paul Lovens or Tony Oxley. Throughout its second half, the music grows increasingly frenetic, as Thomas sounds out rapid, irregularly repeated figures and beautifully sour chords in the upper register, while Fell’s percussion develops into angular pan-pipe-like feedback and waves of glissandi.
With great confidence and patience, Fell and Thomas often let their individual contributions remain rhythmically distinct and unsynchronised, allowing unexpected correspondence and coincidence to guide the music’s development. Recorded in a hall named after Sheffield steel manufacturer and Master Cutler Mark Firth, the location might suggest a model for understanding how Fell and Thomas interact here: two workers in the same workshop, each immersed in their own part of the production process. Arriving in a striking sleeve designed by Mark Fell, with liner notes by Francis Plagne, Reality Is Not A Theory is an invigorating document of the meeting of two mavericks of contemporary music.
The inimitable Richard Youngs returns to Black Truffle with this third full-length for the label, Hidden. Like CXXI and Modern Sorrow, Hidden unfolds across two side-long pieces at once eminently listenable and possessed of the ‘bloody-minded’ dedication to ‘having an idea and sticking with it’ that Youngs himself has identified as one of the key qualities of his work.
At the core of both pieces are rapid, randomised arpeggios generated with a Moog Grandmother, hypnotic patterns that wouldn’t be out of place on a Berlin School classic. Alongside these arpeggios, across the seventeen minutes of the first side-long piece Youngs builds an airy structure of shakers, synthetic handclaps and a brief, repeated sample, impossible to identify but sounding like a glitched foghorn. Over the top we hear his unmistakable voice, repeating single syllables—Ha, Ho—with a slow delay, something like a lonely one-man-band take on Anthony Moore’s Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom or a more musical elaboration of the hypnotically overlapping delayed phonemes of Anton Bruhin’s Rotomotor. Like much of Youngs' work, the arrangement of sounds is sparse, each layer punctuated by spaces that allow others to shine through, in a way that seems to have more to do with dub or early hip-hop than high-brow models of musical reductionism.
On the flipside, the arpeggios return, now accompanied by ringing, filtered guitar chords and long flute tones. The use of a similar ground layer across the two pieces with strikingly different overdubs calls up Youngs' first solo record, the classic Advent, reminding us of how consistent ‘theme and variations’ is as an approach in his enormous body of work. Joined by handclaps and a chiming sound, the piece almost feels like it is about to achieve dance-floor lift-off at times, only for the percussion to disappear and leave the listener once again floating among the guitar and flute, now joined by occasional cut-off vocal snippets, like a radio turned quickly on and off. The suspension of these disparate elements over the steady foundation of the Moog arpeggios might remind some listeners of the free-form studio explorations of Moebius & Plank and Holger Czukay or even give a nod to Youngs’ formative encounter with Cabaret Voltaire.
Like some of Youngs’ much-loved work with Simon Wickham-Smith, Hidden approaches relatively familiar sounds and instruments from skewed angles, delighting in loose structures of interaction that border on gleeful incoherence while remaining outwardly beautiful. Coming up to almost four decades of persistent activity, like little else in contemporary music Youngs’ work beams with the simple joys of exploration and experiment.
Black Truffle is pleased to announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Alvin Curran’s classic Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri, originally issued in 1978 on Ananda, the cooperative label run by Curran, Roberto Laneri, and Giacinto Scelsi. Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri (Light Flowers Dark Flowers) – its title inspired by an intersection in Milan – is the second in the series of four solo recordings Alvin Curran issued in the 1970s and early 1980s, preceded by Songs and Views from the Magnetic Garden (1975), followed by The Works (1980) and Canti Illuminati (1982).
Each of these solo works combines field recordings with performances on synthesiser, various acoustic instruments, and voice, arranged in languorously paced, dreamy sequences. Far from the bracing pointillism of much musique concrete, the elements encountered on the meandering course followed by Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri – whether a frenetic piano improvisation, dense layers of Serge synthesiser and ocarina, or a monologue from Frederic Rzewski’s five-year old son, Alexis – often occupy the foreground of our attention for minutes at a time. As Curran explains, his approach is like that of a filmmaker in the editing process, working with “whole blocks of recorded time”. The purring of a cat, toy piano, a child counting, plaintive synthesiser tones, the cacophony of exotic birds at the London Zoo – each disappears into the next, until, on the LP’s second side, a solo piano performance takes centre stage, moving unexpectedly from percussive minimalist permutations to a halting rendition of Georgia on My Mind. A subtle yet stunning work that more than forty years on still seems charged with possibility, Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri arrives in a loving reproduction of the original sleeve, featuring Edith Schloss’ beautiful cover painting, remastered audio and with new liner notes by Alvin Curran and Francis Plagne.
As trans-Atlantic alchemists pulling from a shared dialectic that somehow encompassed both postmodern deconstructionist tendencies and a delightfully subversive sense of poptimism, it’s easy to see how David Cunningham and Peter Gordon immediately hit it off upon initially meeting each other back in the late-1970s at the height of their youthful transgressions. Having initially worked together on the second Flying Lizards’ LP fourth wall, with its ingenious fusion of dismantled rhythms and rearranged melodies juxtaposed against the slyly sultry singing of Snatch’s Patti Palladin— with Gordon adding a few sprinkles of mischievous sax in the mix— it’s no wonder the collaboration would lead to further musical adventures.
Which leads us directly to the genesis of The Yellow Box. Embarking on a collaborative exercise in the structural repurposing of music as untethered puzzle pieces in need of rearrangement with no predetermined outcomes, the duo gave birth to a project that would see them move through both time and recording studios across Europe, taking nearly two years from 1981-1983 to complete. Enlisting the great Anton Fier on drums from The Feelies/Lounge Lizards nexus and John Greaves on bass from Henry Cow/Soft Heap lore to round out their dueling creative counterparts, the album would be something of a lost treasure until its eventual release on Cunningham’s Piano imprint in 1996.
Cinematic in scope, and filled with drifting drones, beautiful counter-melodies, eery minimalism, Kraftwerkian synthesizers, looped voices, skronky interludes, and other shifting undercurrents of sound, it was an album that utilized both a diverse array of expressive languages, as well as early sampling techniques and prepared instruments, well before most people were thinking in such expansive, integrated terms at the dawn of the 80’s. But such is life at the vanguard of new music. And one of the reasons that it likely sat on the shelf for so long before finally being released well over a decade later. Like a sparser, less groove-oriented version of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, or a more radical take on the experimental work of Can’s Holger Czukay, The Yellow Box stands at the crossroads of time and technology, fusing multiple strands of musical thought and compositional techniques into a disjointed whole that somehow still comes off as a conceptually complete record.
Now, here it is again, over 40 years later, with perhaps even more historical resonance than it had before, remade and remodeled just waiting to be rediscovered again.
Shadowing the swarming, boiling liminality of 'Croon Harvest' and 'Sub', 'The Vestige' unbalances Italian electroacoustic veteran Guisseppe Ielasi's subtle guitarwork with Manchester-based composer Jack Sheen's phantasmic post-'Automatic Writing' room tones and temporal irregularities.
Good one, this. It doesn't work on paper; the two artists' methodologies diverge significantly, with the Italian guitarist working in a more isolated fashion, while Sheen is best known for his ensemble work. But they're both drawn to sounds and forms that drift just out of focus - "mysterious, liminal musical material" in Sheen's own words - and that's the starting point for 'The Vestige'. They began by shuttling recorded material back and forth, Sheen using acoustic stems from his recent projects and Ielasi dubbing sketches with his guitar, and then polished up the ideas at Ielesi's studio in Monza, just outside of Milan. And there's an intentionality to this material that followers of either artists will recognize. Engineering the material so it's almost unrecognizable, the duo create a sequence of thirteen untitled tracks that represent the purity and allure of sound itself. Attempting to imagine this sonic liminality - a sound that's between realms, not quite music, not quite noise, not quite acoustic, not quite electronic - they blur the spectrum, creating a depth of field that's constantly captivating.
And although the album won't surprise anyone who spent time poring over 'Croon Harvest', the inclusion of Ielesi's delicate instrumentation widens the material and crumples some of its textures. On 'V7', we can hear those same Sheen-patented steam hisses and boiling whistles, but 'V9' sounds like that baton's been passed to Ielesi when his string-powered microsounds get treated with the same lopsided EQ processes. Both artists manage to mold their sources into impressions, where the texture of the sounds is more important than the aesthetic character. Just clap yr ears around the gamelan-like mid-range guitar twangs on 'V11', or the decaying brass that animates 'V12'. If you're fascinated by sound's plasticity, this one's for you.
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.
The third release in the early Dumb Type music series, following Every Dog Has His Day and Plan For Sleep.
This cassette release features live performance recordings from Suspense and Romance, Dumb Type’s first large-scale exhibition, held in 1987 at Tsukashin Hall in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture.
This work marks the first time composer Toru Yamanaka created and produced all the music for a Dumb Type project. It documents a unique musical collaboration with saxophonist Harry Kitte.
Developed under the theme of “Suspence and Romance”, Yamanaka's compositions weave together the cinematic lyricism of jazz with abstract textures of post-minimalist sound. Layered with Kitte's evocative multi-tracked saxophone phrases, as well as sequencers, samplers, and PCM recordings, the soundscape formed during this period would go on to define the sonic identity of Dumb Type through later works such as S/N.
Also included is a 50+ page booklet featuring rare photos, drawings, and a roundtable discussion among members.
Released as a cassette book in a box set format, this edition was produced under the direction of the Early Dumb Type Archive Project, led by original members of the collective. It serves as a valuable archival document offering a multifaceted perspective on Dumb Type’s formative years.
DUMB TYPE is a multimedia performance art group based in Kyoto that was formed in 1984 and continues to be active at the forefront of the art scene. We are excited to announce the simultaneous release of two cassette book works produced by musician Toru Yamanaka and the late Teiji Furuhashi, a central figure of the group, for works from the early DUMB TYPE Theatre era: "Every Dog Has His Day (recorded in 1985)" and "Plan For Sleep (recorded in 1986)," now available for the first time on vinyl.
Since the founding of DUMB TYPE, Yamanaka has primarily been responsible for music production, while the late Furuhashi played a crucial role in translating Yamanaka’s compositions into stage direction. Their collaboration began with previous groups ORG and R-STILL, and was influenced by the NEW WAVE and progressive rock trends they were pursuing at the time, as well as by artists like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, who fused minimal music and avant-garde performance. Moreover, their bold incorporation of cutting-edge sampling and house music during that era laid the foundation for DUMB TYPE's sound, marking an important intersection in the history of minimalism, ambient music and performance art in Japan.
In the performance of this work, "Plan for Sleep" (1986), created simultaneously with “Every Dog Has His Day” (1985), Yamanaka took on the role of sound operation. The performance begins with a minimal piece where the tones of the electronic organ and striking phrases from the piano and saxophone race forward in syncopation. Following this, various sound fragments drift over a deafening industrial beat reminiscent of machine noises. There are also pieces that transform the typing sounds of a typewriter into rhythm, showcasing a range of experiments inspired by the then-novel sampling technology, beautifully intertwining with the physicality of the performance.
Additionally, influenced significantly by film music, Yamanaka incorporates a rich tapestry of colors through melancholic melodies that evoke various scenes, from secular jazz to other influences. This work constructs a uniquely original and sophisticated worldview that stands out even when surveying the canon of avant-garde performance art from around the globe in the postmodern era.