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Dr. John Chowning (b. 1934) is a pioneering computer musician, composer and professor who, in 1967, discovered the FM synthesis algorithm. This breakthrough in electronic music allowed for simple, yet rich timbres described as sounding "real." With this discovery, Chowning composed singular, dramatic electronic music and changed the timbre of music forever.

Chowning utilized the potential of computers to synthesize sounds according to programmed instructions. The composer's use of his own FM algorithms, digital synthesis with computers and the new compositional concepts offered by a programmable musical structure combine to create some of the most original and unique electronic music ever created.

The compositions on this LP were realized between 1966 and 1981 and the music on this LP, with the exception of Stria, was originally released on CD in Germany (Wergo, 1988). The version of Stria included here contains a section not included on the Wergo CD. Thus, this version of Stria is complete. This is the first time these purely digital recordings have been released on an analog medium. The original dynamics of these groundbreaking compositions have been preserved on this LP. As a result, listeners are advised to increase volume with caution.

In 1975, John Chowning founded the CCRMA - Center For Computer Research In Music and Acoustics at Stanford University. Through Stanford, Chowning licensed his groundbreaking algorithms to Yamaha resulting in numerous new instruments including the iconic DX series of keyboards. In 1972, his composition Tureens which is included on this LP, was the first to create the illusion of continuous 360-degree space using four speakers.

Technical Notes:

All pieces on this LP are originally quadrophonic. The illusion of moving sound sources is thus projected from the surrounding environment given by four loud-speakers on the stereo-basis.

STRIA was composed using Chowning’s own program to compile the musical structure into note-lists and MUSIC 10 (by D. Poole/Tovar) to generate the sounds in software-synthesis. The original quadrophonic version utilized 12 bits, two different sampling rates being used to accommodate the enormous amount of data on the magnetic disc-packs available at that time. The original sound-data was processed by sampling-rate conversion and digital mixes to achieve the stereo version presented on this LP.

SABELITH and TURENAS were synthesized originally using Smiths’ SCORE and MUSIC 10. However, their format was changed from direct sound-samples to a command stream for a special purpose computer, the System Concepts Digital Synthesizer, designed by Peter Samson, one of the first large-scale digital synthesizers for real-time sound processing - one was designed for CCRMA in the late seventies. For this recording the sounds were recorded directly from the synthesizer computing the samples in real-time.

PHONÈ was realized with the System Concepts Digital Synthesizer using again Chowning’s own program to create the note list.

The master tape of this LP was made directly from the computer system at CCRMA which generated and stored the sound data in digital format. No analog recording was involved at any stage of the production and editing process.

Natalie Jane Hills dritte LP für Dear Life Records zeigt einen ganz neuen Ansatz mit ausgelassenen Arrangements der ganzen Band, während sie gleichzeitig ihr ehrliches, folkiges Songwriting beibehält.

Natalie Jane Hills dritte LP für Dear Life Records zeigt einen ganz neuen Ansatz mit ausgelassenen Arrangements der ganzen Band, während sie gleichzeitig ihr ehrliches, folkiges Songwriting beibehält.

Elliott Smith's 'Division Day' is not only one of the late artist's most beloved fan favorite songs, it's also one of Smith's first departures away from the soft-spoken melancholy of his first two albums and into the more sophisticated pop that led to his breakout success. B-side 'No Name #6' is a classic in its own right, encapsulating the humble brilliance of one of our generation's greatest singer-songwriters.

'Pretty (Ugly Before)' b/w 'A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free' holds the distinction of being the last recording by Elliott Smith to be released while he was still alive. Originally released as a single in August 2003, the songs were a part of the recording sessions that would ultimately yield the acclaimed posthumous album From A Basement On The Hill. The two songs serve as a powerful reminder of why Smith became the voice for a dejected generation.

With Late Bloomer, Belgian-Cameroonian rapper, composer and multi-instrumentalist Kunde delivers a work that is both deeply personal and socially charged. The album forms a diptych with his previous release, Dandelion(2024). In Late Bloomer, Kunde pays tribute to his mother, who largely raised him and his sister on her own, using pivotal personal moments as a mirror through which he reveals the world from his perspective.

Composed and arranged entirely by Kunde and brought to life by his live band, Late Bloomer unfolds as a rich, layered universe where jazz, R&B, hip-hop, samba and touches of psychedelic rock intersect. Whereas his first album emerged mostly from the home studio, the new work is driven by live energy, collective interplay and a broader sonic scope. The album is further enriched by guest contributions from Helena Casella, Fred Gata, Okon and Tennishu (US), frontman of the Anderson .Paak-supported jazz-fusion band Butcher Brown.

Late Bloomer cements Kunde's reputation as a storyteller, composer and musical director. The album is both intimate and expansive, rooted in personal history while offering incisive reflections on the human condition. Like his inspirations, ranging from Coltrane and J Dilla to D'Angelo, Don Blackman and Arthur Verocai Kunde crafts a distinctive sound that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant.

Here we have two luminaries of contemporary music, vocalist Audrey Chen and iconoclast guitar player Tashi Dorji, who both have proven themselves as key representatives of idiosyncratic music for the past 20 plus years.

Audrey, born into a family of material scientists, doctors and engineers, channeled those family genes through un-processed hyperextended voice, consequently transmutating her family's DNA into her very own sonic language of equal precision, discipline and creative power as her kins' professions.

Tashi, on the other hand, carries the mountains in his spirit: born in Bhutan, Southeast Asia, now residing in Ashville, North Carolina, close to the Appalachians. That earthly power is unmistakably present in his energetic guitar playing, which also incorporates folkloric elements of both his native country, and his homeland since 2000.

Those two strong musical personalities met on stage in the late summer of 2023 at Morphine Raum, Berlin. The fact that it took place in one of the birthplaces of techno music, seems to have pushed their performance towards an industrial, repetitive aesthetic of, at times, almost dancelike quality. However, as the track titles suggest, that classic forward pulsating rhythm, associated with electronic dance music, is bent at their heart's content, as are its appertaining clean melodies gnashed to smithereens.

Extra Stars is Gregory Uhlmann"s solo debut on International Anthem. It"s a deep and gorgeous expansion of the LA-based multi-instrumentalist producer / composer"s rhythmic ambient side, as nascently explored in his much-lauded duo with Meg Duffy, his trio work with Josh Johnson and Sam Wilkes, and in the gentler of SML (the improvising trance-jazz unit of which he is a member).

Extra Stars is Gregory Uhlmann"s solo debut on International Anthem. It"s a deep and gorgeous expansion of the LA-based multi-instrumentalist producer / composer"s rhythmic ambient side, as nascently explored in his much-lauded duo with Meg Duffy, his trio work with Josh Johnson and Sam Wilkes, and in the gentler of SML (the improvising trance-jazz unit of which he is a member).

In collaboration with EIoper Music, Impressed is proud to press the 10-Year Anniversary Edition of Szymon's debut album, Tigersapp, on limited edition vinyl.

Szymon was a multi-instrumentalist from Newcastle, Australia, with a deep love for jazz and production, building rich sonic worlds in his bedroom studio. Tigersapp stands as his creative legacy—a beautifully curated and emotionally layered collection that blends influences from folk, ambient, electronic, and indie pop.

These songs were mostly recorded in 2008–2009 in his home studio. After his death, his family and supporters enlisted producers like Rusty Santos (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear) and Ian Pritchett (Angus & Julia Stone) to complete the mixes.

Tigersapp has earned both public and critical recognition in Australia and beyond. It debuted at #21 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and earned a nomination for the 2015 ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album.

Mai Mai Mai’s artistic path has never rested on laurels, it’s been a constant evolution, a profound and poetic research, a dark and dusty journey through awareness and collaborations where the heart of the process has always been about building connections and understanding people and their rituals. Mai Mai Mai’s new album ‘Karakoz’ was mostly recorded in Palestine (Ramallah and Bethlehem) in 2024 during an ongoing genocide and follows his acclaimed Southern Gothic double-album ‘Rimorso’. The album opens a new chapter for the Roma based artist, a deeply personal record where his traditional industrial miasma flows into a weeping vortex of spiritual hymns, Mediterranean hauntology and Middle Eastern chants of sorrow, carrying the despair of a battered population and matching the fighting hope with echoes of ambient bliss. Recorded during his artistic residency in collaboration with Radio Alhara and Wonder Cabinet, the album is the result of an immersive six-week residency between January and May 2024, in Bethlehem and Ramallah, where Mai Mai Mai delved deep into the traditional music of Palestine, meeting and collaborating with local musicians, exploring archives, and recording the resonances of the land. This deep engagement allowed him to unearth the intricate layers of Palestinian sonic heritage, weaving them into his own sonic language.

Taupe’s latest album release, waxing | waning delivers jazz experimentalism, ‘skronk’, avant-rock, and electronics, by the Glasgow-based trio, due out via Minority Records. Across its seven tracks, waxing | waning captures Taupe’s approach – bold and boundary pushing – shaped by a fresh shift in the band’s dynamic and compositional approach.

Taupe’s waxing | waning, co-composed and realised by its players in a studio that was once an undertaker’s premises in Glasgow, is an absolutely affirmative album, an act of cultural defiance in desperate times.

Comprising Mike Parr-Burman (guitar, bass guitar, electronics), Jamie Stockbridge (alto and baritone saxophones) and Alex Palmer (drum kit, percussion), Taupe work up a storm of skronk, free jazz and harmolodic frenzy whose closest relations include Zu, Melt Banana and John Zorn. However, waxing | waning is from its opening, stuttering blasts, an exercise in seeking out and claiming new territory, finding unique and novel permutations in which jazz, rock, electronics interbreed at breakneck pace. Here is a group determined to say and do things they don’t get to say and do elsewhere in their musical lives.

‘Lemonade Tycoon’ hits the ground skronking. It’s cubistic jazz, cumulative in its impact, avoiding the white lines of the conventional freeway, bridling, bustling, coming at you from all angles – a three way conversation of astonishing rapidity, fast track, telepathic communication – everyone from James Chance to Albert Ayler coming at you at once, before morphing in to a spidery scrawl of electronics and furious percussion. ‘Anti-Bird-Spike BirdNest’s‘ title somehow sums up the sort of mental images evoked by the music – its sheer creative disobedience, as if being chased in vain, like a delivery rider evading capture by ICE agents -– shapeshifting, assuming different shades, sprouting metal quills and, in its midsection, seeming almost to swallow itself alive, before regurgitating itself in a sublime mess.

‘Interlude (Stride)’ is not exactly ambient, more a horizontal enmeshment of percussion, drones, reverberant noise, electronics, a sonic mulch. ‘allcapsallbold' reminds of early Aksak Maboul, in its playfulness, a haywire series of short phrases, subject to mechanical interference, a complex weave of irregular rhythms, increasingly eloquent sax phraseology and caustic guitars, which land heavier and heavier. ‘Pet Boss' is the new jazz equivalent of a highly evolved, mature conversation among brilliant equals, sharp, empathetic, complementary, rising to a collective, joyful noise. On the title track, electronics descend like a shower of bright particles, intensifying in their luminosity, whitening the skies, as sax and drums kick up a tempestuous, spontaneously sculpted noise that summons the ghosts of the great free jazz players, before a dark calm descends slowly. Finally, ‘Turn Push Kick’, a burgeoning chatterstorm of electronics, before the group kicks in, at angles to one another, led by abrasive guitars, reminiscent of Sunn O))) in their ritualistic concussion, riffing, digging deep amid squealing sax and piledriving percussion.

The new record follows Priddy"s sophomore LP "The Pendulum Swing" which firmly established her as one of the most exciting artists on the contemporary British music scene. Produced by Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi, Bat for Lashes), "These Frightening Machines" was written over the course of a year as Priddy made the transition from her 20s to her 30s. The most sonically varied of her career, the songs span a full spectrum of emotions from anger and despair to hope, longing and lust, from reclaiming the voices of women silenced by history, to expressing solidarity and love, to confronting illness, disconnection, the vulnerability and importance of relationships, and the general ache of growing older and not always wiser. They explore what it means to keep going when things fall apart, to hold onto connections in a world that sometimes divides, and to figure out where we fit into the machines and systems we find ourselves a part of.

The new record follows Priddy"s sophomore LP "The Pendulum Swing" which firmly established her as one of the most exciting artists on the contemporary British music scene. Produced by Rob Ellis (PJ Harvey, Anna Calvi, Bat for Lashes), "These Frightening Machines" was written over the course of a year as Priddy made the transition from her 20s to her 30s. The most sonically varied of her career, the songs span a full spectrum of emotions from anger and despair to hope, longing and lust, from reclaiming the voices of women silenced by history, to expressing solidarity and love, to confronting illness, disconnection, the vulnerability and importance of relationships, and the general ache of growing older and not always wiser. They explore what it means to keep going when things fall apart, to hold onto connections in a world that sometimes divides, and to figure out where we fit into the machines and systems we find ourselves a part of.

Thelonious Monk, considered one of the greatest Jazz pianists of all time, recorded Underground in '67-'68. It's the last recording with the Thelonious Monk Quartet (Larry Gales on bass, Charlie Rouse on tenor sax, and Ben Riley on drums) and one of the last album he made for Columbia.

What makes Underground special is that unlike his other Columbia recordings, four out of the seven songs were newly composed and recorded. The album cover depicts Monk as a member of the French Resistance and is meant as an homage to Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter. She was a member of the aristocratic Rothschild family and became a patron of leading jazz musicians, hosting jam sessions, driving them to gigs and sometimes even help out with paying the rent. In 1969 the cover won a Grammy for Best Recording Package.
Underground is available as a limited edition of 2000 individually numbered copies on orange vinyl and comes in a deluxe, heavy duty sleeve.

Zum 25-jährigen Jubiläum der Veröffentlichung von MONOs Debütalbum "Under The Pipal Tree" bringt die Band eine einzigartige limitierte Auflage auf farbigem Vinyl in der Farbe "Iridescent Forest Night" heraus, um diesen besonderen Anlass zu feiern. "Under The Pipal Tree" ist das Debütalbum der mittlerweile legendären japanischen Experimental-Rockbands MONO. Veröffentlicht im Jahr 2001 auf dem Avantgarde-Label Tzadik von John Zorn, präsentierte "Under The Pipal Tree" ein junges japanisches Quartett, dessen vielfältige Einflüsse - vor allem Sonic Youth, Mogwai, The Velvet Underground und Neil Youngs Crazy Horse - sich in einem wilden und ambitionierten Werk zeigten. Obwohl MONO später vor allem für ihre geschickte Verbindung von Metal und klassischen Genres bekannt wurden, zeigt ,Under The Pipal Tree" die psychedelischen Wurzeln der Band. Lange Passagen mit hypnotischen, melodischen Klängen gehen über in rasante Gitarren-Freakouts, die in eindringlicher Stille versinken. Das Album ist nicht nur wegen seiner ernsthaften Suche bemerkenswert, sondern auch wegen seiner überraschenden Umsetzung. 25 Jahre und ein Dutzend Alben später gilt ,Under The Pipal Tree" als eines der besten Debütalben einer wegweisenden Underground-Band.

S urrounded by the DIY-scene around their own self-founded recording label new basement, plainhead tries to introduce an ethos uncommon to the local music landscape in their hometown Munich (DE) and interacts between the boundaries of experimental rock and pop.

You Are More Than A Thousand Words‘ is a romantic gesture dedicated to the stars and the people we hold close to our hearts, a subtle mix of chamber pop, experimental acoustic indie and 00s indietronics.
(FFO: Phil Elverum, The Notwist, The American Analog Set)

Das bisschen Totschlag’s new LP 0dB Headroom drifts through a cathartic kind of vulnerability—telling stories of losing, larking, and feeling everything all at once. Its soundscape echoes the act of remembering: manipulated samples and floating guitars bent through distorted electronics embody memory not as a fixed archive, but as something alive: tender, fractured, shifting. Moments come back in flashes—sometimes radiant, sometimes aching, always familiar, yet blurred and distorted. A beautiful mess that you can’t ever fully capture.
(FFO: Alex G, Wednesday, Maria Somerville)

The Delines were finishing the "Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom" sessions when Willy brought in a tune called "Walking With His Sleeves Down". Vocalist Amy Boone learned it on piano and the Band recorded it live. The take was stunning but the song didn"t quite fit the record so they set it aside along with "The Reckless Life", "Dilaudid Diane" (featured in their recent encores) and "Jumping off in Madras". The song worked sonically but again didn"t feel quite right lyrically and when they finished the record Willy couldn"t stop writing songs for it. The US opioid epidemic with thousands of young people rattled with addiction and living in tents and on the streets and in old cars and RVs, influenced "Luck and Doom" but even more so with The Set Up. Their stalwart producer, John Morgan Askew, was at the helm again and he"s the king of building atmospheric worlds. You can really feel it on this one. By the time we finished they realized "The Set Up" was the wayward, misguided, and lonely sister to "Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom". More ragged and undone but all CinemaScope Delines.

Diagonale des Yeux is the new band formed by two of France’s admired and adventurous artists. Laurène Exposito, we know as EYE, our longest regular contributor to the label — and friend Théo Delaunay, member and producer of Parasite Jazz, panoptique, De Klok & Violent Quand On Aime.

In Knekelhuis we have a particular fondness for artistic outputs that resist easy categorisation, and Diagonale des Yeux inhabits precisely that kind of territory.

Every aspect of the project is DIY/homemade. Their world drifts along the fringes of cabaret, strange 1980s French underground pop music to contemporary lo-fi scene — evoking the spirit of Nini Raviolette and The Residents — while delivering beautifully written songs that lodge themselves in your head almost immediately like a Cindy Lee ballad.

The tracks on Madeleine squeak and creak, wobbling on fragile hinges before suddenly opening onto moments of pure beauty.

Drums and guitars follow up synths and electronic percussions captured on tape between living rooms, studios and a concert space.

The band has a kink for choirs and playfully uses diverse languages. Their lyrics emerge through a homemade, patented four-hands cadavre exquis (Exquisite Corpse) process, where chance and dialogue shape meaning as much as intention.

Diagonale des Yeux is a singular project — equally strange and irresistibly pop-leaning. Music like weeds pushing through pavement cracks and, against all odds, turning into flowers.

Luciano Cilio was born in Naples, Italy, in 1950. He studied music and architecture and, in the late '60s, collaborated with local artist Alan Sorrenti, American expat Shawn Phillips and various avant-garde theater groups. A virtuoso guitarist and self-taught composer, Cilio released only one LP before his untimely death at the age of 33.

Dialoghi Del Presente (1977) is a work like no other, one that sounds both ancient and ahead of its time. Produced by Renato Marengo, it features a series of muted tableaux for strings, woodwinds, guitar, chorus, piano and percussion. Cilio carves out a space where subtle, repetitive phrases yield – almost imperceptibly – to breathtaking silence.

As Jim O'Rourke writes, "These recordings sound as if they were to please no one but himself; they feel self-contained, introspective, and determined ... You can feel in the music a sort of necessity that can be rarely found, like in This Heat's debut or Nick Drake's Pink Moon."

While each subsequent "quadro" grows slightly more abstract, Cilio draws the listener into an expansive, pastoral soundscape. The closing piece, "Interludio," begins with a plaintive guitar, which is joined by haunting strings and woodwinds before concluding, poignantly, as the album began, with Cilio and his guitar, alone once more.

Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design. Recommended for fans of Johann Johannsson, Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, Arvo Part and Popol Vuh.

Released in February 2002 on PlayStation 2, Xenosaga Episode I marked the beginning of an unforgettable video game saga created by Tetsuya Takahashi, accompanied by a majestic soundtrack composed by Yasunori Mitsuda.

The latter is still considered an essential milestone in video game music. We wanted to pay tribute to these cult classics with Across the Kosmos ~ Xenosaga Piano Collection and Jazz in Kosmos, two albums of officially licensed arrangements featuring the best tracks from the game.



This album was created in collaboration with some of the most talented figures in Japanese video game music. It includes 17 piano tracks arranged by Mariam Abounnasr, Akio Noguchi, Hiroyuki Nakayama, and Benyamin Nuss, carefully recorded on a Steinway D Grand Piano.

Jay-Jay Johanson returns with his new EP Where's the Cat?, a 7-track project featuring unreleased and reworked material from his latest album Backstage. Highlights include an unexpected collaboration with New York rapper LoftBlue, an extended version of Trompe L'oil featuring actor Harry Goaz (Twin Peaks), a refined remix by Alex Gopher, and two dub versions. The EP closes with Voice Memo No. 234, an intimate recording that offers a glimpse into the Swedish artist's creative process.

Bryce Dessners Original-Soundtrack auf einem dunklen, dämmerungsblauen Vinyl gepresst.

Mit der Harcourt Edition würdigen Wagram und das legendäre Studio Harcourt Paris den belgischen Chanson-Poeten Jacques Brel. Die exklusive Reihe ist den größten Stimmen Frankreichs vorbehalten und präsentiert ikonische Schwarzweiß-Porträts aus dem berühmten Studio Harcourt, das seit 1934 für seine unverwechselbare Bildsprache steht. Diese Kompilation vereint Brels bedeutendste Werke - darunter Ne Me Quitte Pas, La Valse à Mille Temps und Les Bourgeois. Zeitlose Klassiker, die das französische Chanson geprägt haben und bis heute nichts von ihrer emotionalen Kraft verloren haben.

One of the UK’s most singular voices, Murkage Dave has spent the last decade crafting a body of work that refuses to fit neatly into any genre box. His music, loosely pop but informed by indie, outsider art, and an instinct for storytelling, is built on honesty, empathy, and fearless social commentary. Across his career, he has earned a cult following and praise from Pharrel Williams, Iggy Pop, BBC Radio 6 Music, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Clash, Complex, Highsnobiety, and Vogue. His debut album Murkage Dave Changed My Life (2018) amassed over 12 million Spotify streams, while follow-up The City Needs A Hero (2022) reached #10 on the UK iTunes Chart and #15 on the UK Independent Chart.

On his new album, the Ivorian balafon virtuoso Aly Keïta explores new horizons for his instrument in improvised music. Together with his Berlin-based trio, he conquers the peaks of balafon possibilities one by one, wandering between groovy African rhythms, spectacular polyphony and elements of jazz, and combining them into a fusion that is both futuristic and deeply in roots. In Balafon Evolution, Keïta establishes a new level of balafon artistry, creating universal, contemporary soundscapes that transcend cultural boundaries. The Aly Keïta Trio embodies the pulsating spirit of the Berlin jazz scene. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, the three musicians found a common language on stage as they explored the metropole, one of the most active, buzzing jazz hubs of Europe. Aly Keïta and the Dutch drummer Marcel van Cleef, began playing together in 2008, forming the core of the trio"s future "groove machine". As a part of the "Aly Keïta and Magic Balafon" formation, they shared a prize of the Global music contest "Creole" in 2009. Recognised as one of the most intriguing and innovative bass players among the new generation, the Italian bass player Roberto Badoglio, joined trio in 2014, becoming a true "fusion reactor" of the band.