Cerca:solo sounds

First solo EP from the german producer Oliver Berger aka Zarcon with 4 killer cuts truthfull to the early electro / proto-techno sounds

Recordings from the Åland Islands, the duo debut by synthesist Jeremiah Chiu and violist Marta Sofia Honer, is a truly unique series of pieces that marry acoustic and electronic sounds with field recordings, all captured on a trip to the titular Baltic archipelago.
By the time Åland Islands was released in 2022, Honer had already been working with Makaya McCraven and Daniel Villarreal, but this project brought her to the front as a lead artist. And Åland Islands was the label's first collaboration of any kind with Chiu, who has since released the solo outing In Electric Time and the genre-breaking debut of his co-led supergroup SML, in addition to a trio album with Honer and the late Ariel Kalma (2024's The Closest Thing to Silence).

Recordings from the Åland Islands is far more than its context within the world of IARC, however, and it’s certainly more than its context as a travel document. Here Chiu and Honer have created a new world out of an old one with work that sees them in dialogue with their own source material. Like early masterpieces by Franco Battiato or Alvin Lucier, Åland Islands repeatedly presents the listener with a palpable sense of place, only to pluck them up and drop them into an entirely new one.
“...so tranquil and beautiful...” – Jayson Greene, Pitchfork

Ston Elaióna is John Also Bennett’s first album for Shelter Press since his 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe. The American born, Athens, Greece, based flautist, synthesist, and composer weaves a strikingly singular electroacoustic excursion for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the golden haze of the early morning hours - bending time at the otherworldly juncture of consciousness and place. Translating from Greek as “in the olive grove”, Ston Elaióna is permeated with the ambiences of the ancient and present world, guided into form by a playfully rigorous approach to sound.
Initially emerging during the mid 2000s as part of Columbus, Ohio’s noise scene, before relocating to NYC around 2010, Bennett’s diverse activities picked up an increasing sense of pace over the following decade - performing and recording as a solo artist (JAB), with the trio Forma and with CV &JAB, his prolific duo with his partner Christina Vantzou, as well as playing in Jon Gibson’s ensemble among many other multifaceted collaborations. However, since 2020 the flautist and electroacoustic composer has existed in a semi nomadic state: drifting between Brooklyn, Brussels, extensive tours, and Greece, where he finally came to rest in Athens last year.

Drawing upon a carefully honed attentiveness to the environments and experiences of everyday life, Ston Elaióna is a suite of nine pieces (with an additional track exclusive to physical formats), many of them composed and played live as the early morning sun touched the Parthenon, in full view from Bennett’s studio window in Athens. Bennett’s refinement and restraint, honed over his years adrift, led him to adopt a limited palette focused on his primary instrument, the bass flute, and a Yamaha DX7ii synthesizer tuned to just intonation scales. Alongside a handful of other keyboards, digital oscillators triggered by his flute, and occasional field recordings, this simple palette is reflected by the deeply emotive sense of minimalism that permeates the album’s two sides. Following two solo albums defined by outward facing temperaments - 2022’s Out there in the middle of nowhere (Poole Music), which used a lap steel guitar and generative oscillators to evoke the surreal landscapes of the South Dakota badlands, and the largely synthetic atmospheres of the 2024 anthology Music For Save Rooms 1 & 2 (Editions Basilic) - the shift in Bennett’s worldly circumstances offered an intuitive return to the calm, inward states of creative exploration that have historically defined JAB’s sound. In parallel, context provided clear sources of inspiration for many of the album’s themes, as well as sources for some of its sounds. The aura of Greece, from the ancient to the present, from its stones and olive groves to its traffic, figures heavily across Ston Elaióna’s two sides. John Also Bennett’s Ston Elaióna forms an elegantly rigorous world of electroacoustic sonority, bridging the expanse of time with the immediacies of environment and happening in the here and now: a profound sonic mediation on the countless dimensions unlocked by life in Greece.

Joel Shearer’s Listening Immerses Itself in Ambient Guitar, Restraint, and the Beauty of Repetition

With guitarist and ambient composer Joel Shearer’s new album, Listening, he took the path of repetition, subtle movement, and pure sound rather than conventional songwriting. What began as a disciplined experiment — limiting himself to just electric guitar — soon expanded. At various points, he introduced piano, cello, and trumpet, allowing the record to evolve organically. "I didn’t know I was making another record,” Shearer says. “I was experimenting, wanting to do something beyond just the electric guitar. So, I started these other tracks, and that’s how Listening came about.”

Unlike albums built around hooks or dramatic shifts, Listening unfolds gradually, moving with patience and restraint. There are no choruses, no obvious climaxes — just sound evolving over time. “Instead of a traditional song structure with a verse, chorus, or B section, it’s one continuous movement that grows and dissolves,” Shearer explains. “It’s not about anticipating the next moment—it’s about sitting inside the sound, getting comfortable with patience.” A Topanga-based session musician, composer, and producer, Shearer’s previous solo albums, Morning Loops and Hours, explored the manipulation of only the electric guitar, using texture and repetition to push beyond conventions. Listening continues that journey, offering music that resists distraction and rewards deep attention.

Shearer recorded Listening without a click track, working in long, freeform takes. His shimmering, clean guitar tones—often unrecognizable, processed through looping pedals and effects—became a foundation, with layers of sound building around it. “I love making the guitar sound like anything but a guitar,” he says. “I might play for just a minute, but once the sound enters the effects chain, it takes on a life of its own. The music keeps evolving, stretching time in ways I couldn’t predict.”

The opening piece, “Big Sur,” is an 11-minute meditation that drifts in slow, hypnotic waves, its layered guitar textures sparkling like light over water. The piece moves without urgency, subtly transforming as it pulls the listener deeper into its atmosphere. “Threshold” features a delicate piano melody that gradually unfurls, allowing its essence to fully settle before the next emerges. Subtle layers of ambient guitar weave around the piano, stretching and dissolving into the background, creating a sense of stillness and slow expansion.

At nearly 15-minutes, “The Clear Light of the Void” is a slow-burning study in sustain and resonance. Layers of guitar stretch and dissolve into an open, drifting soundscape, each note lingering and shifting like a breath held in suspension. Subtle tonal variations emerge over time, creating a sense of vastness—an expanse where sound is less about movement and more about presence.

“The world is noisy—so much information, so much distraction,” Shearer says. “I wanted to create something that allows people to just be present with the sound, without expectation.” It’s an album that demands nothing from the listener but offers space — to focus, to drift, to listen without waiting for what comes next.

AF1268 is thrilled to welcome Nikol, the rising soundscaper from Manchester, for its third release. After making his mark on various outings for MASS, his own label, and O.C.D., this installment sees him deliver his first solo EP in full force. Across four meticulously crafted tracks, he chisels his own path through modern minimal and electro, honing his eerie yet hallucinatory sonic signature.

This EP unfolds like a spectral journey where Halloween meets tech-house—haunted by ghostly high-pitched whistlings, piercing acid stabs, and hypnotic rolling basslines. It conjures the image of a sweat-drenched, crumbling club cave under a rainy full moon, where bodies sway in slow motion, lost between dreamlike introspection and raw, unhinged grooves.

'In collaboration with the children of Nico Kasanda, better known as Docteur Nico, Planet Ilunga proudly presents an anthology dedicated to African Fiesta Sukisa, available as a 3LP set and a digital release with bonus songs. This release is the result of many years of preparations and was realized in close partnership with Liliane Kasanda, Nico’s eldest daughter. Marking forty years since his passing, we felt that the year 2025 was the right time to honor Docteur Nico’s legacy with this original collection.
'Almost all of the African Fiesta Sukisa songs were released on Nico’s Sukisa label which translates in Lingala for “the final accomplishment”. The music on Sukisa, crafted by Nico and legendary vocalists such as Chantal, Sangana, Apôtre, Mizele, Lessa Lassan and Josky, embodies the essence of that powerful phrase with genius, class and depth. The label ran between 1966 and 1975 and released approximately 280 songs. Ngoma also issued the group between 1967 and 1971 and, in addition, reissued material from the Sukisa label. Many of these songs have become part of the collective memory of Congolese society and are still heard, discussed, and analyzed daily across digital platforms worldwide, as well as on numerous Congolese radio and TV stations.
'The album we put together features some of Nico’s signature songs alongside never before reissued tracks from the Sukisa catalog. It furthermore contains a large booklet with song commentary, testimonial interviews from well-known musicians, journalists, fans and Nico’s entourage, besides never before published photography about his personal and musical life.
'Alastair Johnston, author of the book ‘A Discography of Docteur Nico’ and longstanding Planet Ilunga collaborator, designed a stylish booklet and cover using all our collected material. Audifax Bemba, longtime admirer, compiler and connoisseur of Nico’s music, and the author of most of the song commentary in our accompanying booklet, offers his portrait of Docteur Nico:
“After displaying technical virtuosity with African Jazz, expert and accomplished guitar with African Fiesta, which musicologist Sylvain Bemba described as a dream guitar, Nico Kasanda was consecrated ‘dieu de la guitare’ by the public in the late sixties. With his band African Fiesta Sukisa, Docteur Nico displays his wide palette of unusual sounds. While exploring the Hawaiian guitar with its clear, airy, plangent, psychedelic effluvia, he continues to replicate the piano comping technique, and adds two missing strings to his bow: a simulation of the sanza (likembé or thumb piano), whose sounds he reproduces right down to the noisemakers of the tiny tin rings, on the one hand, and the sounds of the Luba balafon on the other. The right note, in the right place, at the right time, is the triptych on which Nico Kasanda’s playing is based, a note dressed in the perfect sound. A guitar of pure emotion. With African Fiesta Sukisa, his playing takes a ‘Chopin-esque’ turn, sending out more notes in a sublime adagio. The true artist is the one who simplifies everything. Docteur Nico is a genius of our time, whose style makes him the supreme exponent of the most important guitar school in Congolese music. He is recognized by his peers as the greatest African solo guitarist of all time. Sculpting sound in a tireless quest for beauty, Nico Kasanda has sublimated the guitar throughout his career.”






























[xd] Kamulangu [Outro] (Dr. Kasanda – Sukisa 135) Folklore Baluba

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.



When Niko Moon broke out with his triple-platinum hit “GOOD TIME,” the Texas-born, Georgia-raised singer/songwriter lit up the country scene with his larger-than-life energy and message of radical positivity. Since then, he’s earned a passionate following, major TV performances, and praise from outlets like Holler and American Songwriter. With AMERICAN PALM Deluxe, arriving right before his headline AMERICAN PALM Tour, Niko expands his latest LP with
two new tracks, “BREATHE” and “BARE FEET IN THE SAND,” furthering his mission of creating music that feels like a“mental vacation” filled with sun-soaked serenity and coastal escape.

“Breathe is all about finding that place where you can take a deep breath and let your worries drift away,” says Niko. “I find peace by the water, and I wanted the song to be a mantra of positive self talk and a celebration of the coast.”

Niko partly grew up in Georgia, spending summers on Florida beaches, an influence that shapes the concept-driven AMERICAN PALM. Written during his THESE ARE THE NIGHTS tour with producer Danny Majic and songwriter David J, the record blends coastal sounds—ukuleles, nylon-string guitars, ocean waves—with organic beats and a touch of ‘90s hip-hop, nodding to his Atlanta roots. The result is a seaside getaway in album form, equal parts carefree, romantic,and life-affirming.

Tracks like “I LOVE THIS BEACH” and “YOU, ME & A BEACH” capture that spirit. The latter, a love song linking his wife and the beach as his grounding forces, helped cement the record as his first concept album. “SANDBAR” delivers a euphoric summer vibe, while “SANDCASTLES” reflects on life’s impermanence. “KING OF THE ISLAND” is a family
milestone—co-written and sung with his father, Cris Cowan.

Niko’s journey began early, inspired by his dad, a truck driver and drummer who introduced him to John Prine and Emmylou Harris. Niko picked up drums at eight, guitar at fifteen, and started playing in bars while working construction. A chance encounter with Zac Brown led to songwriting cuts like “Homegrown,” before Niko launched his solo career with “GOOD TIME,” a No. 1 hit on both Billboard Country Airplay and Hot Country Songs charts. From the start, he committed to making only positive music: “In a way a song is like a mantra, and I want mine to carry optimism and encouragement.”

Since his debut, Niko has sold out the Ryman, played major festivals like Stagecoach, and performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Beyond music, he and his wife Anna founded the Happy Cowboy Foundation to support mental health and addiction recovery, and launched Happy Himalayan water and the American Palm clothing line, both of which benefit the foundation.

Mj Lenderman is the project of Asheville native, Jake Lenderman, whose 'Boat Songs' was released to wide acclaim on Dear Life Records in 2022. Now Dear Life is proud to offer a vinyl reissue of MJ's 2021 label debut, 'Ghost of Your Guitar Solo,' a collection of nine songs recorded and performed entirely by
Lenderman, and one live band track. The record was written and recorded quickly, songs often being fully constructed and recorded within frenzied single day sessions. Songs were born out of freewheeling jam sessions with his roommates, with Lenderman often freestyling lyrics that would later become the
foundations of the finished songs. Lenderman would write 20 disconnected lines a day, scrapping most of them but preserving a few to be used later. This process aided in what became an extremely prolific writing period for the artist in the spring of 2020. The record sounds like country music being played by a noisy punk band, unkempt and imperfect like the characters in his songs. Here, Lenderman broadened his lyrical scope beyond solemn introspection, adding humor to scenes larger than his own life. He points to authors Harry Crews and Larry Brown as inspirations, both of whom were southern, self-taught writers who balanced empathy, humor, and darkness. This leads to the erosion of the line that separates humor and sadness. The resulting songs are about over-
indulgence and drug/alcohol abuse, full of self-loathing and pity while celebrating the absurdity of it all.

“Twenty-five years into their existence, The Album Leaf are an old comfy sweater. It might not be the most fashionable thing in your collection but it always feels good when you put it on. Jimmy LaValle’s synth textures are warm, nostalgic and steeped in Boards of Canada / Ulrich Schnauss-style soundscapes that are relaxing, otherworldly and melodic” – Brooklyn Vegan

The Album Leaf shares his new ambient LP, Rotations. The record is a mediative experiment into atmospheric sound. Creator Jimmy LaValle explains, “This collection of music is a true reflection of my creative process—rooted in sound exploration, experimentation, and spontaneous response. Each track captures a moment of creative discovery, free from the pressure of achieving a polished result. Throughout my career, I’ve often placed significant weight on what an album should be. With this release, I’ve let go of those expectations to share a body of work that feels genuine and authentic.

The Album Leaf began as the solo project of Jimmy LaValle, who came up in the San Diego music scene playing in hardcore bands and the instrumental rock band Tristeza. He had inked a deal to release his next solo album through the indie label Tigerstyle Records, so he put the modest advance towards a self-recording starter setup, building out the sound with occasional studio access. The music that emerged — vivid, rhythmic, soaring instrumentals guided by lines of Guitar and Rhodes — not only set the path for The Album Leaf over the next two decades of acclaimed releases (for Sub Pop, City Slang, and others), it became a touchstone for the next generation's wave of melodic and meditative electro-organic music.

Evolving from a solo-project of Christian Wilson Larsen to a dynasty including members of Serena Maneesh, Le Corbeau, Mindy Misty, Burning Motherfuckers, Next Life, Far From Tellus and Deathcrush, - Izakaya Heartbeat is seemingly a constellation in flux - complimentary to their psychedelic soundscape. "A pounding, drone infested body of work, "enter-rainbow lake" touches similar places that vintage black angels or even some of the more smacked out sonic youth soundscapes. Enveloping and immersive from the outset, the fusion of psychedelic dynamics with hardhitting musicianship is lethal." - Rough Trade (UK)

Evolving from a solo-project of Christian Wilson Larsen to a dynasty including members of Serena Maneesh, Le Corbeau, Mindy Misty, Burning Motherfuckers, Next Life, Far From Tellus and Deathcrush, - Izakaya Heartbeat is seemingly a constellation in flux - complimentary to their psychedelic soundscape. Three available albums in our catalog and more on the horizon. "They do a sort of driving early/mid 90s alt rock thing, mentioning Sonic Youth, MBV, Trumans Water, Unwound, Can, Mudhoney and 100 other bands you know as influences. Their guitar sound is definitely Thurston/Lee, but unlike SY, they have members who can headbang their impressively long locks when locating a locked noise-rock groove." - Stereogum

A collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965...

Morteza Mahjubi (1900-1965) was a Iranian pianist & composer who developed a unique tuning system for the piano which enabled the instrument to be played in all the different modes and dastgahs of traditional Persian art music. Known as Piano-ye Sonnati, this technique allowed Mahjubi to express the unique ornamental and monophonic nature of Persian classical music on this western instrument - mimicking the tar, setar & santur and extracting sounds from the piano which are still unprecedented to this day.

An active performer and composer from a young age, Mahjubi made his most notable mark as key contributor and soloist for the Golha (Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry) radio programmes. These seminal broadcasts platformed an encyclopaedic wealth of traditional Persian classical music and poetry on Iranian national radio between 1956 until the revolution in 1979.

Presented here is a collection of Morteza Mahjoubi's stunningly virtuosic improvised pieces broadcast on Golha between the programme's inception until Mahjoubi's death in 1965 - mostly solo, though at times peppered with tombak, violin & some segments of poetry.

The vast collection of Golha radio programmes was put together thanks to the incredible work of Jane Lewisohn & the Golha Project as part of the British Library's Endangered Archives programme, comprising 1,578 radio programs consisting of approximately 847 hours of broadcasts.

Following three acclaimed albums, a string of sought-after 45s, and collaborations with vocalists including Yurika and Sophia Solompon, championed by esteemed tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson, Cerys Matthews, and Jeremy Sole, "Nadir" finds Sababa 5 at their enigmatic and irresistible. Sababa 5"s latest album, "Nadir", delves into a darker, more sophisticated, and cinematic fusion of psychedelic soul and Middle Eastern rock. The title, Nadir, is an astronomical term referring to the point on the celestial sphere directly beneath an observer, diametrically opposite the zenith. Metaphorically, it signifies the lowest point or a moment of adversity. This duality resonates with the band"s exploration of contrasting musical themes-melding the cosmic and the terrestrial, the ethereal and the grounded. The name encapsulates the album"s essence, reflecting a journey through deep, introspective soundscapes that are both otherworldly and rooted in raw, earthly grooves.

First Word Records are proud to bring you 'Penny Ballads', a 5-track EP from Royce Wood Junior.

Royce Wood Junior is a Grammy & Mercury Award-nominated musician, songwriter and record producer from London, currently based in Brighton. As a multi-instrumentalist, he's collaborated with a litany of brilliant artists over the years, such as Jamie Woon, Nao, Disclosure, Jessie Ware, Olivia Dean, Joy Crookes, Jamie Lidell and Jordan Rakei, additionally to touring with the likes of the legendary Thomas Dolby. He's released two acclaimed solo albums to date ('The Ashen Tang' in 2015, and 'No Two Blue Ticks' in 2021).

'Penny Ballads' demonstrates RWJ's varied talents, with a collection of alternative soul compositions, each one as unique as the next. It includes the first two singles, the Poplife-Prince era flavoured 'Go Get Your Money', and the double-time future funk adrenaline shot, 'Clean Up', along with three previously-unreleased tracks. 'Beretta' is low-slung soul funk, beginning with quirky squelchy synths, before the soulful lead vocal of feature artist Lucey Way breezes in to melt everyone's hearts. 'Things' sweeps in next, an infectiously soulful midtempo heavy soul bop, with an instant earwork of a hook, like a modern-day Steely Dan / Doobie Brothers, complete with a head-nodding string section to end the track. The collection concludes on a more melancholy downtempo tip with 'Rolling'; an almost-folktronic anthem, with a key refrain that wouldn't be out of place on a 70's Stevie piece.

RWJ (aka Jim Wood) says of this project… "Back in the 17 and 1800's Troubadours and minstrels would go from Tavern to Tavern selling Penny Ballads, single sheets of music and lyrics written quickly and frivolously to make a quick buck.. It strikes me that we're in a similar phase in the way we value music in 2025. An old Penny Ballad was cheap and dog-eared, ink-smudged, sung aloud by firelight, Now songs live in the digital ether, dissolved in the air, a ghostly breath paid in micro cents. The new era of Penny Balladry is here, and weird.

This EP is a snapshot of my writing over a two year period. Focussed on minimal recording styles, one mic on the drums, generally first or second takes on parts and vocals, I wanted the music to feel like small moments with lyrics that talk about the weird nuances of being alive as a latter stage human on the cusp of the Ai revolution. Culturally so evolved, but physiologically still just a bunch of mammals walking about with primitive fears and needs. Just trying to reconcile it all moment to moment…"

Previous support for Royce's music has included Radio 1's Future Sounds, BBC 6 Music's New Music Fix, Annie Mac, Clara Amfo, Jo Whiley (BBC Radio 2), Mary Anne Hobbs, Jamz Supernova, Tom Robinson, Huw Stephens (BBC 6 Music), Zane Lowe and MistaJam. There have been sessions previously for the likes of Red Bull and press from Huck, Line of Best Fit, Clash, Aesthetica & DIY magazine.

Entirely self-written and self-produced, this EP gives a solid taste of RWJ's talents. A deeply funky diverse set of music from an immensely talented individual.

'Penny Ballads' is due to be released on vinyl & digital, 24th October 2025.

The vinyl version also includes an exclusive additional mix of the first single 'Go Get Your Money'.

“In a concert, I show something with a beginning, a middle and an end. But, there is no end. Of course, there is no end. Because I am the music, and I am still here.” - Sophie Agnel

‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the last 4 decades of her work.

‘When I was young I had very good ears, oriole absolute. Then later I began to make strange sounds with my piano, to do different kinds of music. I was more interested in the sounds than the melody, for example. I remember once I sat down in a shop to try to read the scores of Schubert and there was a light emitting a very strong bzzzzzzz. And I couldn't listen to my oriole internal - I couldn't read the score. I was entirely subjugated by the sound of the light. And I understood that something had changed. Ten years before I could read and not hear the light. Now I understood that my ears were completely different. I was more open to the sounds of life.”

Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel quickly grew tired of the classical world. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the pianos outside and inside.”If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Having absorbed the language of the European avant-garde, Agnel is known for pulling the piano’s interior outside of itself by tipping her handbag into it. But these ‘strange sounds’ don’t just come from Cage - they also share the poetic force of Cecil Taylor and ‘Learning’ demonstrates that Agnel’s work on the piano's keyboard is just as important as what she’s littered on its strings. The record lets loose her ability to unleash a formidable sound mass and then rope it back to one single, clarifying note. With one hand, Agnel plays 88 tuned drums and on the other an enormous guitar - with the LP rotating through oncoming trains, and blues harmonica and feedback. It’s single minded stuff, borne out of a dedication to a wholly personal language of gesture, accumulation and deft reduction. “Maybe when I’m 80 I will not need anything,” Agnel says in a recent film made at her home. “I will do the same but with one note, and one finger. Maybe it's enough.”

‘Learning’ arrives in a reverse board sleeve designed by Jereon Wille. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 6th June 2023 and 4th June 2024. Mixed by James Dunn and Benjamin Pagier. Side B edited by Benjamin Pagier. Mastered and cut by Loop-O. Front photograph by Aimé Agnel. Typography and layout by Jeroen Wille.

Karen Willems is a Belgian drummer/percussionist active in various fields. Started as a drummer in rock and pop bands. With a number of musicians she built up a tradition within improvised music and sound art. Since 2020, with ‘TERRE SOL’ Willems is searching for personal modifications within her play of instruments and objects, with the focus on solo work and compositions.

"When I make music, there’s no plan. I draw my inspiration from everyday life. Small encounters, people, and the greatest source, of course, is nature. There we find all the beauty, all the sounds we need. With my solo work I try to stay far away from my familiar drum set. Only then I can create a special universe. Eccentricity and playfulness go hand in hand with exercises in tension and release, and calls for connection in antisocial times. It's difficult in this world obsessed with productivity and results, and you really have to be crazy to release music these days. So ‘A Fool’s Guide to Reality’ is a fitting title." Karen Willems

All music performed by Karen Willems using citer, casio, fieldrecordings, tambourin, mikado, xylophon, pots, bells, kindergarten instruments, snare, noisebox, crispy shakers, synths, effects...

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.

On “Cold Sweat,” James Brown famously called to “give the drummer some.” In 1974, Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal called to Give the Vibes Some, with superb results. Pianist and composer Jef Gilson’s PALM label gave Jamal the platform he needed to deliver a thorough exploration of contemporary vibraphone. After launching PALM in 1973, Gilson quickly demonstrated that he would only produce records not found anywhere else. Give the Vibes Some, PALM number 10, was another confirmation of this guiding principle.



Raised and based in Philadelphia, Khan Jamal took up the vibes in 1968, after two years in the army during which he was stationed in France and Germany. Decisively drawn to the instrument by the work of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Milt Jackson, Jamal studied under Philadelphia vibraphone legend Bill Lewis and soon made his debuts in the local underground.



Early in 1972, Jamal made his first recording, with the Sounds of Liberation. The band attempted an original fusion of conga-heavy grooves with avant-garde jazz soloing. Saxophonist Byard Lancaster, an important figure in Jamal’s development, contributed much of the solo work. Later in 1972, Jamal made his leader debut with Drum Dance to the Motherland, a reverb-drenched, never-to-be-replicated experiment with live sound processing. Both albums appeared on the tiny musician-run Dogtown label.



“We couldn’t get no play from nowhere. No gigs or recording sessions or anything. So I took off for Paris,” Jamal recalled in a Cadence interview with Ken Weiss. “Within a few weeks, I had a few articles and I did a record date. It didn’t make me feel good about America.” That was in 1974, while Byard Lancaster was recording the music gathered on Souffle Continu’s recent The Complete PALM Recordings, 1973-1974.



Jamal’s record date delivered Give the Vibes Some. At its core, it was an exploratory solo vibraphone album, even if two tracks added (through technological resourcefulness?) a très célèbre French drummer very much into Elvin Jones appearing under pseudonym for contractual reasons. Another track, for which Jamal switched to the vibes’s wooden ancestor, the marimba, added young Texan trumpeter Clint Jackson III. The most notable article published on Jamal during this stay in France was a Jazz Magazine interview. Jamal’s last word there were “The Creator has a master plan/drum dance to the motherland.” “Give the vibes some” could be added to this programmatic statement.

For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognizable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.

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"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London’s Café Oto.

Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is Free Improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental “noise” guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene.

For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance.

The aesthetics of socialist consideration in Evan Parker’s playing, in his community of expanded and personal technique, for a younger player such as Bill Nace, strikes an exemplary model. This notion of respect would be entirely the reason Nace, when offered a residency at the most critical “new music” room in England, would request to play in duo with Parker.

Bill Nace came to prominence mostly during the apex of experimental music activity in and around Western Massachusetts in the early days of the aughts, with a focus on visual art and free improvisation guitar action. He could be found in the daytime hours, his head hanging down over a notepad, penning fine-tuned illustrations and abstract line drawings, while in the evenings he’d be attending any number of basement noise gigs, many of which he’d be participating in. His guitar style came across as being informed as much as by the physicality of his writing utensils in friction to the page as it was to his hearing and redefining of radical recordings ranging anywhere from the Black Unity Group to Black Flag.

Utilizing various metal files and other small cylindrical objects Bill would allow his guitar and amplifier to be in tandem with the improvisatory movements of his body as the instrument balanced, intentionally and, at times, precariously, upon his lap. The performances came across thrilling and daring and they would be mostly in the context of venues nothing more than a low-ceilinged damp and dank New England basement, a clutch of people hanging onto rusty pipes or sitting up on dilapidated washer/dryer machines, the shards of Bill’s “file guitar” sounds ringing out like the most alive music on Earth.

By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill’s approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill’s full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism.

This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music."

Thurston Moore, London, 2025