Suche:three pieces

Dan Bean is one half of The Transcendence Orchestra, alongside Anthony Child (aka Surgeon). Together they've released three albums on Editions Mego as well as an album on their own Old Technology imprint. Dan has also previously released a solo EP on Eyeless Records.

This debut solo album is deliberately composed and performed using only two instruments: a Roland TB-303 and a bass guitar. The point of this constraint was to try to force the creation of unexpected sounds from two very familiar bass instruments. The eight pieces gathered here succeed in doing so, featuring searing textures, unexpected melodic progressions and trance inducing repetitions. At times tender, these tracks remind us that even the most familiar or even overused instruments and ideas can be subverted and refreshed.

Kai Winding (1922 -1983) was a Danish-born American trombonist and jazz
composer, particularly remembered for his collaborations and solo
exchanges with fellow trombonist JJ Johnson
Fans of their classic album 'The Great Kai & JJ' (Impulse!) will welcome 'Duo Bones'
with Kai trading solos with renowned Italian valve trombonist Dino Piana (1930 -
2023). The programme includes three original compositions by Kai, 'Duo Bones', 'Lady
H', and 'Stop Following Me', and one by Piana aptly titled, Kai & Dino. The rest of the
programme includes Cole Porter's 'Get Out Of Town', Bronislawl Kaper's 'On Green
Dolphin Street', Gorden Jenkin's 'This Is All I Ask', and an original composition by
producer Enrico Pieranunzi titled 'Soul Dance'.
"A series of pieces played very well, characterised by a marked swing and with solos
that transmit to the ear the joy felt by the musicians in performing them. An album of
pure fun, impeccable in execution, full of dizzying and spectacular phrasing,
impressive in the speed with which Winding and Piana intertwine their sounds in
elaborate counterpoints." - Marco Giorgi, from the liner notes
Kai Winding: trombone
Dino Piana: valve trombone
Enrico Pieranunzi: piano
Giovanni Tommaso: bass
Tullio De Piscopo: drums
Recorded by Francesco Melloni, Giovanni Fornari, Emmequattro Studio, Rome, Nov. 17
& 18, 1979.

Shell Company featuring Richie Culver, LINTD, Older Brother. Full artwork sleeves & label design by Ciaran Birch ///

Hazy & dark contemporary pop from Shell Company, drenched in spoken word dreamscapes...

Manchester / Glasgow trio Shell Company debut on Accidental Meetings with a record of dark hued, noise pop adjacent pieces. The trio is spearheaded by poet Rosabella Allen, whose misted balladry pierces through the textured backdrops of Chris and Rob Banks, all three complimenting and melding perfectly.

Following stand out releases for Glasgow imprint Numbers, and Rainy Miller's Fixed Abode, Locket sees the band push the boat out for AM which sees them unite with fellow collaborators Richie Culver & LINTD on the project. A deeply personal record that fuses fractured electronics, post-rock and spoken word, with the end product being a damp, noir masterpiece.

Found Keys is the debut album by American artist Ruth Maine. Although Ruth has been playing and composing music for over two decades, this is the first time she decided to record some of her varied compositions and share them with the public. But in times when it is the norm to clamour for attention, she prefers to go the opposite way. Ruth likes to let her music speak for itself and stay in the shadows.

The 16 short piano pieces heard on this album, each about two to three minutes long, were recorded remotely and purely surrounded by nature. Once a composition was found and Ruth considered it mature, she only recorded it once, embracing the beauty of doing something for the first time with all its little imperfections. Found Keys sounds anything but imperfect though. These compositions feel timeless, intimate and comforting, as if they have been around for a long time, like an old friend. Gently played keys slowly evolve into minimal pieces through repetitive melodies. There’s stillness as much as there’s brightness, sadness as much as joy; welcome to a beautiful journey through Ruth’s world of wonder.

In many ways, Found Keys is a deeply personal record that takes Sonic Pieces back to its roots. And it leaves a feeling of nostalgia while reviving memories of the past.

Found Keys is the debut album by American artist Ruth Maine. Although Ruth has been playing and composing music for over two decades, this is the first time she decided to record some of her varied compositions and share them with the public. But in times when it is the norm to clamour for attention, she prefers to go the opposite way. Ruth likes to let her music speak for itself and stay in the shadows.

The 16 short piano pieces heard on this album, each about two to three minutes long, were recorded remotely and purely surrounded by nature. Once a composition was found and Ruth considered it mature, she only recorded it once, embracing the beauty of doing something for the first time with all its little imperfections. Found Keys sounds anything but imperfect though. These compositions feel timeless, intimate and comforting, as if they have been around for a long time, like an old friend. Gently played keys slowly evolve into minimal pieces through repetitive melodies. There’s stillness as much as there’s brightness, sadness as much as joy; welcome to a beautiful journey through Ruth’s world of wonder.

In many ways, Found Keys is a deeply personal record that takes Sonic Pieces back to its roots. And it leaves a feeling of nostalgia while reviving memories of the past.

Developed over three years across residencies, tours, and periods of deep listening, “Your Whistle Tells of Landscape” finds Australian sound artist Alexandra Spence continuing her investigations into the perceptual entanglements of sound, place, memory, and imagination. Like much of the artist’s work, it unfolds at the liminal edge between the real and the imagined — between what is heard and what is remembered.

Composed from a constellation of materials gathered across sites and seasons — snowscapes recorded in Vancouver, insect choruses from a Sydney backyard, ceramic fragments unearthed while mudlarking with tinysound — it renders an intimate cartography of experience: one shaped equally by ecological resonance and internal drift. Each piece traces a kind of imaginary geography, where sonic ephemera become proxies for topography, weather, or myth.

The album is informed by time spent at EMS (Stockholm) and MESS (Melbourne), where Spence deepened her engagement with microtonality and tuned feedback systems, and by dialogues with sympathetic artists such as Tashi Wada and Patrick Farmer. Sound materials were sourced from Serge Modular systems, a custom lyre built by Tim Wall, amplified objects, handmade electronics, and Spence’s own field recordings captured within rockpools, beneath sand, and among a flock of sheep in the French Pyrenees. On “Magenta,” a collaboration with Delphine Dora, the domestic and mythic intertwine, as layers of voice, environmental recordings, and Halldorophone feedback drift in and out of one another like overlapping weather systems.

Despite its diverse material palette, the album resists spectacle or accumulation. Instead, it moves with a quiet sense of continuity and a rich interiority — less a sequence of compositions than a set of situated attunements. Across its duration, sounds seem to murmur, glint, or hover right at the edge of presence, invoking a listening practice that is as much about orientation as it is about reception. These are pieces not simply about place, but of place — etched with the grains of time, vibration, and breath.

Unlike anything we have heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives. For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee's output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well known. 2020's "Yeo - Neun", a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)" - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then "Na-Reul" in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, "Just Like Any Other Day": Background Music For Your Mundane Activities", encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms. Like its three aforementioned predecessors, "Just Like Any Other Day" belongs to broadening shift in Lee's approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album's nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives? This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of "Just Like Any Other Day" encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind. Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, "Just Like Any Other Day" presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album's subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo - Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by "Teum (The Silvery Slit)", and the emotive foregrounding of "Na-Reul", each of the pieces presented across the two sides of "Just Like Any Other Day" implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album's compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound. Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee's "Just Like Any Other Day: Background Music For Your Mundane Activities" - issued by Shelter Press on vinyl - represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we've heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee's striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

Furthering the passionate exploration of cinema that has guided her two previous LPs - 2017’s ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’ and 2020’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’ - the Milanese guitarist/composer, Alessandra Novaga, returns to Die Schachtel with ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’, two sides off shimmering, tense compositions – culminating as one of her most creatively ambitious and conceptually rich outings to date – freely inspired by the life and work of the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Classically trained at the Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland, over the last decade Alessandra Novaga has emerged as one of the leading figures within northern Italy’s thriving new, experimental, and improvised music scene, rendering striking solo efforts, in addition to collaborations with Loren Connors, Stefano Pilia, Elliott Sharp, Nicola Ratti, Paula Matthusen, Sandro Mussida, Kid Millions, Travis Just, Francesco Gagliardi, and others. Remarkably ambitious and forward thinking, her approach to the guitar embarks upon a relentless deconstruction and rethinking of her instrument’s unique properties through distinct applications of structure, resonance, space, and tone, creating in a deeply personal and emotive music, seeking narrative and meaning within the abstractions of sound.

In 2017, with the LP, ‘Fassbinder Wunderkammer’, issued by Setola Di Maiale, Novaga embarked upon the exploration of her love of film. Having begun with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this was followed in 2020 by Die Schachtel’s release of ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, a deeply intimate mediation on the life and work of Derek Jarman. Rather than focusing on a fixed point of inspiration or a single film to work from, these pieces achieve a form of abstract portraiture, distilling elements drawn from these filmmaker’s life and work into ambient networks of texture and tonality. ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle”’ freely inspired by the Russian director Andrej Tarkovsky and the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, finds Novaga radically expanding her sonic palette within this approach.

The seeds of ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be traced to a conversation that Novaga had with Alan Licht (contained in the highly regarded Common Tones: Selected interviews with artists and musicians 1995–2020, Blank Forms, 2021), relating to the connections between music and cinema, which led her to consider Andrej Tarkovsky’s use of Bach's music within a symbiotic framework: how the music illuminates the imagism of the films, and the film illuminates new dimensions of the music. Slowly developing over the subsequent years, the resulting album comprises six individual works, some of which draw directly upon pieces of Bach’s music that Tarkovsky used in his films – specifically 'Erbarme dich, Mein Gott', 'Das alte Jahr vergangen ist', and 'Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ' - while others draw upon the sensibilities and moods evoked in the imagination by the director’s films.

As a point of departure and illumination into the process and spirit that underscored the creation of the album, Novaga points toward a passage in Tarkovsky’s "Sculpting in Time”:

“Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal: that longing which draws people to art. Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalized action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea.”

‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ can be understood as a realisation of the collectivism of which Tarkovsky speaks, in the service of something far beyond the expression of self. Encountering Novaga moving into fairly uncharted waters, three of the album’s pieces incorporate the human voice we encounter the voices of others: that of the poet Arsenij Tarkovsky, the director’s father; a singer from Bach’s ‘Erbarme dich, Mein Gott’, capturing a broadcast in an underground parking lot, and Novaga’s own, rendering the melody from Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”. Roughly alternating between solo excursions on guitar and bristling electroacoustic pieces, over the course of the album’s two sides Novaga weaves one of her most abstract and ambitious bodies of recordings to date, shifting between the complex tonal mediations generated by the six strings of her instrument, and phycological densities activated by the expanded pallet of sonority made possible by the tactics and approaches of musique concrète.

An immersive, deeply engaging meeting of beauty and melancholy within a labyrinth of voices and ideas, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ transfigures the life and work of Andrej Tarkovski – one of the greatest auteurs in the history of cinema – into a singular, experimental statement of collective truth. Belonging to recent, ambitious stream of contemporary new music releases on Die Schachtel that’s already included Novaga’s ‘I Should Have Been a Gardener’, Stefano Pilia’s ‘Spiralis Aurea’, Jim O'Rourke & Giovanni Di Domenico’ ‘Immanent In Nervous Activity’, Claudio Rocchetti’s ‘Labirinto Verticale’, and Damāvand’s ‘As Long As You Come To My Garden’, among others, ‘The Artistic Image Is Always a Miracle’ is available on as a limited edition of 300 dark turquoise vinyl LPs released on June 21, 2024. The LP, designed by Bruno Stucchi / dinamomilano, comes with an 8-pages insert illuminated by Alessandra’s text as well as the lovely and intense photographs of Matilde Piazzi.

Returning to Die Schachtel with his fourth full-length with the label, the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia, delivers “Lacinia”, a new, immersive cycle of compositions, delving deeper into the realm of metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, weaving astounding arrangements of sonority from a palette of synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion. Resting at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music - overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, - “Lacinia” stands as a high-water mark in Pilia’s already remarkable and forward-looking career.

Since its founding in Milan during the early years of the new millennium, Die Schachtel has occupied a singular place in the landscape of experimental music, issuing a carefully curated body of reissues and archival releases by historically significant figures and projects like Christina Kubisch, Luciano Cilio, Marino Zuccheri, Prima Materia, Claudio Rocchi, Lino Capra Vaccina, Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Roland Kayn, and numerous others, balanced against bristling contemporary counterparts by the likes of Jim O'Rourke, Giovanni Di Domenico, Nicola Ratti, Luigi ArchettI, Valerio Tricoli, etc. Running like a spine through the label’s output is a deep dedication to the work of the Italian guitarist and electroacoustic composer Stefano Pilia. Now Die Schachtel returns with “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth full-length with the label and their first release of 2024. Building on the ground of deeply personal engagement with metaphysical, spiritual, and divine meaning, explored within his previous LP with Die Schachtel, 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, “Lacinia” encounters the composer working in close calibration with various ensembles, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze and Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, weaving synths, strings, brass, organ, various electroacoustic instruments, and percussion into an astounding reconfiguration of immersive, contemporary minimalism that stands among Pilia’s most noteworthy releases to date. Issued by Die Schachtel in two special double vinyl editions and a CD edition, “Lacinia” features artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano, and is an absolute marvel that draws you in and doesn’t let go.

First emerging during the early 2000s, over the past two decades – via solo releases and numerous collations with artists like Oren Ambarchi, Valerio Tricoli, Alessandra Novaga, Z'EV, Andrea Belfi, David Grubbs, and numerous others - the Genoa born, Bologna based, guitarist and electroacoustic composer, Stefano Pilia has presented a singular voice within Italian experimental music, harnessing visceral energy and hands-on immediacy within delicately woven tapestries of sonority, each investigating the sculptural properties of sound and illuminating its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time. “Lacinia”, Pilia’s forth solo venture with Die Schachtel, encounters the composer reentering his longstanding practice of collaboration with various ensemble forms, including the Bologna based Ensemble Concordanze, for the albums central piece, “Lacinia Off Axis”, spinning stunning string confirmations by Pietro David Carami and Elena Maury on violin, Alessandro Savio on viola, and Mattia Cipolli on cello.

A new, important cycle of compositions by Pilia, “Lacinia” (meaning "lace" in Latin) builds upon the exploration of the metaphysical, spiritual, and divine dimensions through numbers, geometry, and the creation of tonal forms explored by 2022’s “Spiralis Aurea”, mirroring archetypal, immutable forms at the juncture of the abstract realm of mathematics and architectural structures in the physical world, expands the poetics and compositional ideas featured in its predecessor. Regraded by Pilia as both a series of individual compositions and a single work, “Lacinia” was conceived to “define a circular path (a sort of "rhizomatic lace") where the beginning and end touch, suggesting the concept of time not only as linear but also cyclical and ritualistic—an eternal return, a process of transformation where matter changes, its state changes, but without altering the invisible internal principle of mutation”, embarking upon a a series of “steps, degrees, and energetic quanta in a progression of archetypal whole numbers and transcendent creation.”

The resulting 16 tracks unfold as a series of complex sonic meditations. While deeply resonant with the minimalism of composers like Arvo Pärt, LaMonte Young, Pauline Oliveros, and Eliane Radigue, Pilia digs deep and moves far beyond the predictable tonal relationships and structures of that idiom, echoing the ancient liturgical and devotional music of composers like Gesualdo da Venosa, Monteverdi, and John Dowland, at a refined intersection of the acoustic and electroacoustic, drone, and chamber music.

Fascinatingly structured as a whole to include a number of motif returns, across which we encounter works like “Lacinia Off Axis” appearing in slightly different rendering, states, or evolutions three times, and compositions like “Eve” appearing twice in subtly different forms and arrangements - first for four oscillators, guitar and voice and then for string orchestra - as well “Maris Stella”, which similarly makes two appearances, first for horn trio, organ and percussion, and then for string orchestra, with “Lacinia” Pilia delves further into the world of chamber music than ever before, creating a deeply inward, mediative body of work the totality of which, guided by its rich string arrangements of arching, sorrowful tone, feels almost like a mass for some unproclaimed loss; simultaneously locked in the nuances of a moment, while managing to suspend time.

Perhaps most remarkable is Pilia's ability to create a remarkable sense of sonic cohesion while using such a varied number of ensembles and instrumentation. From the sprawling string arrangements delivered by Comunale di Bologna String Orchestra, under the direction of Paolo Mancini, and Ensemble Concordanze, and a flute trio (Cadux / Plectere) brilliantly played by Manuel Zurria, to pieces for sax, organ and percussion, violin duo and percussion, organ and percussion, Pilia manages to create a sense of singular, encompassing world that flows forward like a shifting stream.

Overwhelmingly beautiful, delicate, and bold, “Lacinia” is unquestionably a high-water mark in Stefano Pilia’s already remarkable, forward-looking career. Nothing short of a marvel of contemporary Minimalism that, through its shifting arrangements of harmonics, tonality, and texture draws flickering images of ancient forms of music into the present day, “Lacinia” is Issued by Die Schachtel in two special editions on double vinyl and a CD edition, featuring artwork by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano. This is an immersive all-consuming listen that can’t be missed.

NILS FRAHM and F.S.BLUMM have confirmed the release of their fifth collaborative album, Handling. Containing three tracks but 40 minutes long, it finds the duo advancing from 2021’s dub-influenced 2X1=4, deploying its lessons in ambitious new territory that also nods to earlier collections. Recorded at his studio in Berlin’s Funkhaus, the album will be released by LEITER on vinyl and via all digital platforms on September 19, 2025.

Handling’s three exquisitely detailed pieces are each entitled ‘Leuchter,’ German for ‘candlestick,’ encapsulating the LP’s luminescent glow and rising inner energy. Its scrupulous arrangements exploit a magic cabinet of instruments, among them pianos, celestas and cristal baschets, glockenspiels, guitars and multiple forms of percussion. Their painstakingly engineered improvisations were equally meticulously reassembled in a series of intense editing sessions.

That the duo’s collaboration is built on a friendship and mutual admiration dating back to the early 2000s enables an unusual level of trust, despite both operating in their own distinct manner. “It’s not Frank, it’s not Nils,” they reflect. “We’ve become a new persona.” Handling blends Blumm’s organic chaos with Frahm’s structured intuition, offering a distinct and luminous experience that doesn’t just sound different, but feels like its own evolving world.

Black Truffle is thrilled to present the first ever solo Donso n’goni recording from octogenarian Swedish multi-instrumentalist Christer Bothén. Active in the Swedish jazz and improvisation scene since the 1970s, often heard on bass clarinet, Bothén travelled to Mali in 1971, eventually making his way to the Wassoulou region in the country’s south where he encountered the Donso n’goni, the sacred harp of the hunter caste of Wassoulou society. Though playing the instrument has traditionally been restricted to those who belong to the hunters’ brotherhood, Bothén found an enthusiastic teacher in Brouema Dobia, who, after many months of intensive one-on-one lessons, gave Bothén his blessing to play the instrument both traditionally and in his own style. Returning to Sweden, he would go on to pass on what he had learned to Don Cherry and play the Donso n’goni in a wide variety of inventive settings, including the driving Afro-jazz-fusion of his Trancedance (reissued as BT118).

The seven pieces of Christer Bothén Donso n’goni offer up a stunning showcase of Bothén’s work on this remarkable instrument, heard entirely unaccompanied, except for the final piece where he is joined on a second Donso n’goni by his student and collaborator, the virtuoso bassist Kansan/Torbjorn Zetterberg, and Marianne N’Lemvo Linden on the metal Karanjang scraper. Recorded in three sessions in Stockholm between 2019 and 2023 in richly detailed high fidelity, the instrument’s buzzing, sonorous bass strings make an immediate, overwhelming sonic impression. Hyper-focused on hypnotically repeating pentatonic patterns, the seven pieces are at once relentlessly single-minded and endlessly rich in subtle variations. The concentrated listening environment turns small details, such as the deployment of the instrument’s segesege rattle on two of the pieces, into major events. Six of the seven pieces are traditional, with Bothén contributing the remaining ‘La Baraka’, but the line between tradition and the individual talent is imaginary here: as Bothén explained in a recent interview with The Wire’s Clive Bell, ‘I play traditional and untraditional, and I play the music forward and backward’. While the traditional Wassoulou pieces provide the rhythmic and harmonic elements, Bothén’s individuality as a performer is alive in every moment, felt acutely in boundless variations of attack, improvisational flourishes, and unexpected accelerations and decelerations. Captured entirely live and bristling with spontaneity, this music is undeniably the product of almost half a decade of Bothén’s devotion to the Donso n’goni and its traditional music.

Accompanied by detailed new liner notes by Bothén and stunning colour photos from his time in Mali, Christer Bothén Donso n’goni is a stunning document of a remarkable instrument, played with an almost spiritual intensity by one of contemporary music’s great explorers.

Teresa Rotschopf, a musician and composer from Vienna, presents her second solo album, »Currents and Orders« – a radical, delicate, yet grandiose sonic journey between experimental pop, new music, and improvised composition. The album will be presented live on August 27 as part of the »Pop-Kultur« festival (silent green, Berlin) and at the »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Vienna) on 12 September.

»Currents and Orders« was recorded in an unusual location: a stalactite cave in Styria, Austria. Together with a small group of musicians (Maria Gstättner: bassoon, contraforte; Alex Kranabetter: tuba, trumpet, French horn; Patrick Dunst: saxophone, duduk; Florian Klinger: marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, cymbals, gong, stalactite; Patrick Pulsinger: gong, stalactite; Ulrich Schleicher: gong) and in co-production with Patrick Pulsinger, Rotschopf recorded the album in June 2023 – deep underground, far from daylight, but all the closer to archaic sounds and resonances.

The cave becomes not only an acoustic stage, but also a symbolic space of memory, retreat, and transformation. The album comprises four pieces – including two large-scale tracks:
- the opening, mantra-like title track »Currents and Orders« (over 10 minutes)
- the final, free-jazz, expressive »I Open My Gates (for You)« (over 20 minutes)

With a minimalist structure, choral voices, vibraphone, percussion, and wind instruments, fragile yet powerful soundscapes emerge, whose spatial depth is also palpable through the cave reverberation.

Rotschopf first developed the desire to record in a cave in the summer of 2022. What began as a visual and sonic image became a concrete project – supported by the Austrian Cave Association. In June 2023, Rotschopf and her musicians spent three days in a cave in the Styrian forest. Almost a kilometer of cable was laid, and equipment and instruments were carried deep underground. Rotschopf describes the recording situation as a kind of return to herself: »I descended into this cave, as if I could descend into myself, into my own womb ... What we did in the cave could just as easily be called ›recording music,‹ but it could also be called ›remembering‹ – remembering the earth, the cave, and humanity.«

»Currents and Orders« is an album like a ritual: haunting, atmospheric, bold in its form, and deeply rooted in both physical and emotional space. Music that takes its time, uses space, and pushes boundaries.

The pre-release single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (release: July 17, 2025) is accompanied by a striking music video shot by Antoinette Zwirchmayr on 16mm film: Teresa Rotschopf holds a real owl in her hand – an image that is as magical as it is enigmatic.

Label owner Martin Hossbach read a review of Rotschopf's first solo album, »Messiah,« in 2018 and contacted the artist. Joint releases followed, including a drone album on the sub-label Martin Hossbach Score and a Pet Shop Boys cover version on Martin Hossbach Cover.

Teresa Rotschopf, Musikerin und Komponistin aus Wien, präsentiert mit »Currents and Orders« ihr zweites Soloalbum – eine radikale, zarte und zugleich groß angelegte Klangreise zwischen experimentellem Pop, Neuer Musik und improvisierter Komposition. Das Album wird am 27.8. im Rahmen des Festivals »Pop-Kultur« (silent green, Berlin) und am 12.9. im »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Wien) live vorgestellt.

»Currents and Orders« entstand an einem ungewöhnlichen Ort: in einer Tropfsteinhöhle in der Steiermark, Österreich. Gemeinsam mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Musiker:innen (Maria Gstättner: Fagott, Kontraforte; Alex Kranabetter: Tuba, Trompete, Waldhorn; Patrick Dunst: Saxophon, Duduk; Florian Klinger: Marimbaphon, Vibraphon, Glockenspiel, Becken, Gong, Stalakmit; Patrick Pulsinger: Gong, Stalakmit; Ulrich Schleicher: Gong) und in Ko-Produktion mit Patrick Pulsinger nahm Rotschopf das Album im Juni 2023 auf – tief unter der Erde, fern von Tageslicht, dafür umso näher an archaischen Klängen und Resonanzen.

Die Höhle wird nicht nur zur akustischen Bühne, sondern auch zum symbolischen Raum der Erinnerung, des Rückzugs, der Transformation. So umfasst das Album vier Stücke – darunter zwei großformatige Tracks: - das eröffnende mantraartige Titelstück »Currents and Orders« (über 10 Minuten) - das finale, free-jazzig-expressive »I Open My Gates (For You)« (über 20 Minuten)

Mit minimalistischer Struktur, Chorstimmen, Vibraphon, Schlag- und Blasinstrumenten entstehen fragile und zugleich mächtige Klangwelten, deren räumliche Tiefe auch durch den Höhlenhall spürbar wird.

Der Wunsch, in einer Höhle aufzunehmen, kam Rotschopf im Sommer 2022. Was als visuelles und klangliches Bild begann, wurde zu einem konkreten Vorhaben – unterstützt vom Österreichischen Höhlenverein. Im Juni 2023 begab sich Rotschopf mit ihren Musiker:innen drei Tage lang in eine Höhle im steirischen Wald. Fast ein Kilometer Kabel wurde verlegt, Equipment und Instrumente tief unter die Erde getragen. Rotschopf beschreibt die Aufnahmesituation als eine Art Rückkehr in sich selbst: »Ich stieg in diese Höhle hinab, so als ob ich in mich selbst hinabsteigen könnte, in meinen eigenen Schoß [...] Was wir in der Höhle taten, könnte man ›Musik aufnehmen‹ nennen, genauso gut aber auch ›Erinnern‹ – Erinnern von Erde, Höhle und Menschsein.«

Currents and Orders ist ein Album wie ein Ritual: eindringlich, atmosphärisch, mutig in der Form und tief verwurzelt im physischen wie emotionalen Raum. Musik, die sich Zeit nimmt, Raum nutzt und Grenzen sprengt.

Die Vorab-Single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (VÖ: 17.7.205) wird begleitet von einem eindrücklichen Musikvideo, das Antoinette Zwirchmayr auf 16mm-Film drehte: Teresa Rotschopf hält darin eine echte Eule auf ihrer Hand – ein Bild, das genauso magisch wie rätselhaft wirkt.

Labelbetreiber Martin Hossbach las im Jahr 2018 eine Rezension des ersten Rotschopf-Soloalbums »Messiah« und nahm Kontakt zu der Künstlerin auf. Es folgten gemeinsame Veröffentlichungen – etwa ein Drone-Album auf dem Sub-Label Martin Hossbach Score und eine Pet-Shop-Boys-Coverversion auf Martin Hossbach Cover.

Miles Davis' Final Collaboration with Arranger Gil Evans Yields Watershed Innovations: Flamenco-Themed Sketches of Spain Spins Graceful Webs of Sound and Emotion Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP Set Brings Out the Record's Full Spectrum of Color: 65th Anniversary Edition Pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing and Strictly Limited to 5,000 Numbered Copies 1/4" / 15 IPS analogue master to DSD 64 to analogue console to lathe Miles Davis and Gil Evans bridged styles and collaborated on high-concept projects three different times during their celebrated careers. For their final act, they created Sketches of Spain, a peak moment in each luminary's legacy.

The transformative album weds Spanish themes, lush orchestrations, romantic timbres, and Davis' lyrical methods in a tender ceremony that resonates more than six decades after its original release. Part of Mobile Fidelity's Miles Davis restoration series, this 1960 landmark has been afforded the ultimate white-gloves treatment for its 65th anniversary. Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, this UltraDisc One-Step 33RPM 180g LP set dramatically expands the soundstages and eradicates a dryness that many critics found inhibitive to the record's enjoyment. You can now hear the full-range responsiveness of the woodwinds, strings, and percussion, all of which come alive with superior definition and detail.

The beautiful presentation of this UD1S set befits the record's historical importance. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features a special foil-stamped jacket and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the 1960 LP. This reissue is made for discerning listeners who desire to fully immerse themselves with the album. And who wouldn't want to go deep with Sketches of Spain? Whether it is the somber mood piece "Concierto de Aranjuez," renowned for Davis' flugelhorn performance, or the folktale-based "Solea," Sketches of Spain transfixes with playing, ideas, and innovations exclusive to this incomparable effort. It's one reason why Mobile Fidelity's engineers took all available measures to insert listeners into the space originally occupied by Davis, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, percussionist Elvin Jones, and an 18-piece orchestra. The results are as breathtaking as the music.

Multi-note motifs, brief improvisational solos, fanfare sweeps, and contrapuntal exchanges inform flamenco-spiced pieces. Davis' famous Harmon-muted trumpet is complemented by an assortment of bassoons and French horns. Heard together, they create pleasing contrasts and sounds (pp, mf, ppp) that get to what resides at the heart of Sketches of Spain: color. Seldom, if ever, did Davis ever so expressively and liberally paint with color. And in Evans, he has a likewise-minded partner to help draw out tones, shades, layers, and textures. What they achieved continues to draw praise from the global music community in the 21st century. Ranked #358 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, deemed "a work of unparalleled grace and lyricism" by noted scribe J.D. Considine, bestowed a five-star review from DownBeat, and noted by Q to have taken "jazz in a new direction," the Grammy Award-winning effort has never been better.Miles Davis' Final Collaboration with Arranger Gil Evans Yields Watershed Innovations: Flamenco-Themed Sketches of Spain Spins Graceful Webs of Sound and Emotion Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 33RPM LP Set Brings Out the Record's Full Spectrum of Color: 65th Anniversary Edition Pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing and Strictly Limited to 5,000 Numbered Copies 1/4" / 15 IPS analogue master to DSD 64 to analogue console to lathe Miles Davis and Gil Evans bridged styles and collaborated on high-concept projects three different times during their celebrated careers.

For their final act, they created Sketches of Spain, a peak moment in each luminary's legacy. The transformative album weds Spanish themes, lush orchestrations, romantic timbres, and Davis' lyrical methods in a tender ceremony that resonates more than six decades after its original release. Part of Mobile Fidelity's Miles Davis restoration series, this 1960 landmark has been afforded the ultimate white-gloves treatment for its 65th anniversary. Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, this UltraDisc One-Step 33RPM 180g LP set dramatically expands the soundstages and eradicates a dryness that many critics found inhibitive to the record's enjoyment. You can now hear the full-range responsiveness of the woodwinds, strings, and percussion, all of which come alive with superior definition and detail. The beautiful presentation of this UD1S set befits the record's historical importance. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features a special foil-stamped jacket and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the 1960 LP.

This reissue is made for discerning listeners who desire to fully immerse themselves with the album. And who wouldn't want to go deep with Sketches of Spain? Whether it is the somber mood piece "Concierto de Aranjuez," renowned for Davis' flugelhorn performance, or the folktale-based "Solea," Sketches of Spain transfixes with playing, ideas, and innovations exclusive to this incomparable effort. It's one reason why Mobile Fidelity's engineers took all available measures to insert listeners into the space originally occupied by Davis, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Jimmy Cobb, percussionist Elvin Jones, and an 18-piece orchestra. The results are as breathtaking as the music. Multi-note motifs, brief improvisational solos, fanfare sweeps, and contrapuntal exchanges inform flamenco-spiced pieces. Davis' famous Harmon-muted trumpet is complemented by an assortment of bassoons and French horns. Heard together, they create pleasing contrasts and sounds (pp, mf, ppp) that get to what resides at the heart of Sketches of Spain: color. Seldom, if ever, did Davis ever so expressively and liberally paint with color. And in Evans, he has a likewise-minded partner to help draw out tones, shades, layers, and textures. What they achieved continues to draw praise from the global music community in the 21st century. Ranked #358 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, deemed "a work of unparalleled grace and lyricism" by noted scribe J.D. Considine, bestowed a five-star review from DownBeat, and noted by Q to have taken "jazz in a new direction," the Grammy Award-winning effort has never been better.

Alice is a vocal harmony trio made up of three persons, joined by a cheap synth and limited virtuosity. Together, they craft a kind of future folklore that’s part funny, part apocalyptic — half-soft, half-harsh, half-sad, half-simple, half-complex, half-controlled, half-Yvonne Harder, half-Sarah André, half-Lisa Harder.

Since their last album L’Oiseau Magnifique, Alice have spent time on the road — in cars, in trains, out in the open. Accustomed to writing outdoors, they slowly stitched together a collection of new songs. After two years of performing in clubs, bars, stairwells, carpentry workshops, activist agricultural fairs and roadside shoulders, they took their Oiseau Magnifique just about everywhere. It felt like time to sew these new pieces together — a quilt of humour and soft words, something we could really use in these half-sweet, half-fascist times.

Les Châteaux Faibles is the name of one of their latest songs, and naturally, the title of their new album. It captures the group’s ethos perfectly — a search for refuge in fragility, in a weakness that’s better when shared. A collective sensitivity to bring us closer, stronger — united in our Châteaux Faibles.

Strut now present a new single vinyl reissue of Vambe"s privately pressed original album from 1982, Drumgita Solo. A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist, Vambe is a unique figure in British music. The creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced "drum-guitar") or string-drum, Vambe intended to create a kind of music that had never been made in order to pursue access to the fourth dimension. The album plays with time, mixing hypnotic, trance-like drumgita pieces with the same segments played backwards. You can hear echoes of African drumming traditions, minimalist repetition, and tape-manipulated musique concrète - but ultimately, the album defies genre. It is a solitary voyage, spiritual and futuristic.

With ,We Do It Out of Love," acclaimed harmonica player Alex Rossi delivers a heartfelt and masterfully crafted tribute to jazz legend Toots Thielemans - one of the most influential voices ever to grace the chromatic harmonica. This album features a carefully curated selection of pieces that reflect the full emotional and musical range of Thielemans' legacy - lyrical, virtuosic, and deeply moving. Highlights include the evocative ,Waltz for Sonny," the tender ,I Do It for Your Love," and Pat Metheny's rhythmically vibrant ,Better Days Ahead" - all reimagined with fresh arrangements that honor the original spirit. Alex Rossi captures the essence of Toots' sound while adding his own voice, bridging past and present with stylistic sensitivity and precision. He is joined by a stellar lineup of internationally acclaimed harmonica players: Antonio Serrano, Gabriel Grossi, Grégoire Maret, Franco Luciani and Olivier Ker Ourio - each bringing their unique sound and deep respect for Toots' musical heritage. ,We Do It Out of Love" is more than just a tribute - it's a global celebration of the instrument Toots Thielemans elevated to poetic heights. A soulful, resonant homage filled with admiration, artistry, and, above all, love.

Red/Black marbled vinyl. With ,We Do It Out of Love," acclaimed harmonica player Alex Rossi delivers a heartfelt and masterfully crafted tribute to jazz legend Toots Thielemans - one of the most influential voices ever to grace the chromatic harmonica. This album features a carefully curated selection of pieces that reflect the full emotional and musical range of Thielemans' legacy - lyrical, virtuosic, and deeply moving. Highlights include the evocative ,Waltz for Sonny," the tender ,I Do It for Your Love," and Pat Metheny's rhythmically vibrant ,Better Days Ahead" - all reimagined with fresh arrangements that honor the original spirit. Alex Rossi captures the essence of Toots' sound while adding his own voice, bridging past and present with stylistic sensitivity and precision. He is joined by a stellar lineup of internationally acclaimed harmonica players: Antonio Serrano, Gabriel Grossi, Grégoire Maret, Franco Luciani and Olivier Ker Ourio - each bringing their unique sound and deep respect for Toots' musical heritage. ,We Do It Out of Love" is more than just a tribute - it's a global celebration of the instrument Toots Thielemans elevated to poetic heights. A soulful, resonant homage filled with admiration, artistry, and, above all, love.

Ben Nichols is best known as the frontman and songwriter for the long-running Memphis rock band Lucero. Now, at age 50, he is releasing one of his most personal pieces of work, a rare solo album titled In the Heart of the Mountain.
The album features Nichols on acoustic guitar and vocals, as well as the occasional electric guitar solo and percussion. He is accompanied by Morgan Eve Swain (The Huntress and the Holder of Hands, The Devil Makes Three, Brown Bird) on violin and backing vocals, Cory Branan on electric and acoustic guitars, and Todd Beene (Chuck Ragan, Glossary) on pedal steel and electric guitars. It was recorded at Southern Grooves studio in Memphis, Tennessee with Matt Ross-Spang as the recording and mixing engineer.

Says Nichols 'I'd say In the Heart of the Mountain is the closest I've come to making an album completely on my own terms. I had help from a great engineer and great friends who also happened to be amazing studio musicians, but it was self produced. I wrote it without input from anyone else. There were no band members to negotiate parts and approaches with. It wasn't based on a novel or a theme. The only inspiration was that desire to create something that lived in my memories of those rivers, fields, and mountains,
in that mythological Arkansas my family called home, where I grew up. I haven't been able to get back there nearly as often as I would like."

Quebecois Death Metallers Sedimentum formed back in 2018, giving us a magnificent debut album and several equally formidable shorter releases alongside it. Now they return with an even more doomy, eldritch mini-album for your listening displeasures…
Following some otherworldly ambience, those charnel guitars bring in a truly crushing spectacle of doomed extremity. Grotesque vocals and strong drums permeate the thick, tarry stringed arrangements. Their sinister and inhuman music has sunken even further into the pits of putrefying grave matter to conjure spectral apparitions of the dead. Those of you who already know this superb band will definitely recognise their unique sound while appreciating that the more low-register, slower tempo rumble of this cacophonous rot is even more intense than ever. Never afraid to blast out viscerally gripping savagery, the old school way, there is plenty of those more traditional moments tied into the abhorrent affair. However you like it, Sedimentum master Death Metal…
At a mere three songs, one could foolishly assume this record is lacking. But listen for yourself to discover three majestic pieces of masterful musical torment. In little over twenty minutes, Sedimentum grasp your soul with their ghoulish atmospherics and sepulchral hammering force. Exhuming the ancient spirits, this mini-LP is a must-listen for all true die-hards of the Death Metal underground who value both atmosphere and brutality in equal measure. There is no denying this band has a perfect grapple of both as these new constructions of contorting morbidity prove beyond doubt. Enter the ossuaries of Quebec with one of the finest bands of the underground as its lumbering corpse staggers toward you with only malicious intentions…

"The restorations of The Lost Recordings are worthy of those devoted to master paintings." — Le Journal du Dimanche

"We discovered these previously unpublished tapes in the archives of the RBB — the Berlin radio. This discovery is absolutely major because these two incredible musicians had recorded too little together and because this recording offers us the possibility to listen to them in works that were unpublished so far in their discography — notably an extraordinary sonata by Prokofiev! And what can we say about this Bach sonata, with an Andante that brought tears to the eyes of everyone present in the studio at the time." — Frédéric D'ORIA-NICOLAS, Musical treasure seeker

János Starker, cellist, and György Sebok, pianist, were both born in Hungary early in the 20th century. They were welcomed into the formidable Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, and emigrated to the USA, where they both held the title of Distinguished Professor at the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. Both heavy smokers and sometimes reputed — unjustly — to be harsh, austere and insensitive to trends, they were drawn to music in all its varieties and fascinated by its many colours. They had one aim only, one noble objective: to showcase the works all composers, as evidenced by this recording made in the legendary Studio 3 of Berlin Radio on 24 October 1963.

Starker and Sebok were fully imbued with the aesthetics that Prokofiev proclaimed: "I cultivate melody and strive to introduce feeling and emotion into my works. No matter that some call me a cubist, adding that I systematically avoid any emotional or romantic elements in my quest to reach only objectivity."

Next, and at the opposite end of the spectrum, is the Spanish passion of the two pieces by Granados and De Falla, pieces that nevertheless also convey melancholy. Starker and Sebok launch into the works with enthusiasm and intensity.

The last piece, Bach's Sonata in G Major, BWV 1027 for Viola da Gamba and Keyboard, is one of three he composed, probably in Köthen. Because they may have originally been written for other instruments, they can easily be transcribed for the cello and piano. They reveal the rich influences that pervaded the German region during the first half of the 18th century. The two musicians give us a sublime interpretation of the beauty of the counterpoint in this Sonata.

These recordings attest to the importance that the two superb musicians attached to working in the service of the composers. We wonder if, in that enchanted studio in Berlin in 1963, they knew how much further they went to bewitch us and touch us so profoundly.

"Wind, Again" is Sary Moussa’s fourth studio album and second album on Other People. Based between France and Lebanon, Moussa returns with a riveting electro-acoustic album informed by his ever-changing relationships to space, listening, and resonance as well as his growing interest in the study of harmonics in electronic and electro-acoustic music.

Years in the making, “Wind, Again” approaches distinct musical worlds and languages by bringing together improvisations by musicians performing on Western and West Asian instruments such as the Hammond organ, clarinet, saz, and buzuk with electronic arrangements and textures. Rather than force a rapprochement of these musical worlds through the instruments, and keenly aware of the weighty sonic histories they carry, Moussa proposes another way through which they can exist together in contemporary electronic composition.

Composed of six tracks, each of which demonstrate an array of recording and processing techniques, the album generates moments of tension produced by the synthesis of textural, tonal, and harmonic encounters that Moussa calls “shadows”, which outline an impressionistic musical language, existing at the edge of familiarity. Such moments permeate tracks like “Everywhere at once” and “Violence” that open with the Hammond organ and the saz respectively and slowly reveal an expansive field of sounds that showcases each of the musicians’ characteristic performances and Moussa’s densely layered textures. It is a latent yet unrelenting tension through which the composer invokes rather than represents a collective experiential state, especially familiar to those who know his environment. In “Wind, Again” these shadows are articulations of sounds steeped in traditions they are never quite tethered to. Such articulations are implied and alluded to, they play within a musical reference without the latter explicitly existing in the recording, always teetering, never completely here nor there.
Sonically and musically, the album is fueled by the cultural, social, and personal realities that Moussa was brought up and lives in.

Both personal and musical ties with the musicians who feature on the album is central to Moussa’s practice. In the title track “I will never write a song about you”, musician Julia Sabra opens with rolled piano chords, followed by Paed Conca on clarinet and Abed Kobeissy on buzuk, before Moussa’s electronic processing pieces together, lifts, and sustains the melodic direction of the track that emerged from the musicians’ separate improvisations. For Moussa: “The initial connection between the three performances was made on a track that no longer existed, the original recording was both an obstacle and necessary step for the track we hear on the record. It’s as if we were all telling different stories and I pulled on the thread that held them together”. The track, and more generally the record, is tinged with a melancholy of things lost, though it never fully succumbs to it.
“Everything inside a circle”, Moussa’s most personal track and for which he provides the only vocals on the record, harkens back to a childhood memory of listening to music with his mother in a car: “There was a sound I was looking for — a memory of a sound and how I first heard it. This track is a hybrid of that memory and what I wanted to make of it”. The track relies heavily on generativesystems and perhaps embodies most the ambiguous quality of the record’s music in its refusal to be pinned down by one musical tradition or another.
“Wind, Again” is both familiar and alien, cold and warm; it pays homage to the mechanics, materials, and tactility of the instruments and converges acoustic and synthetic spaces. What anchors the sound of the album are the elements of a whole that cannot find its own idiosyncrasy and that is precisely why Moussa’s album is a tour de force.

personal rec.`s next strike with Tito Wun, the uptempo moniker of Cool Bap producer & Groove Attack Record Store Owner Twit One, from Cologne City. A three Track journey with soulful bits and pieces in an uplifting driven manner. Clap your Hands and Boogie!

The Ottawa composer/performer and head of Black Bough Records plays every instrument on his CST debut: an accessibly avant-garde work of dark/ambient modern chamber music. Mark Molnar has been a linchpin of the Ottawa experimental music scene for over two decades, spanning contemporary classical, electroacoustic, industrial/noise, and improv. As a string player in a wide range of projects, an organizer and curator of innumerable shows, and via his own avantgarde label Black Bough Records, Molnar's unflagging contributions to independent music culture in Canada's capital city have been significant. EXO is his Constellation debut: a remarkable and bracing suite of post-classical composition on which Molnar plays every instrument. Meticulously self-recorded, primarily with strings, harp, and piano, EXO balances thematic melodicism, polytonality, and dissonance across three elegiac pieces of exquisitely expressive dynamism. This is exacting modern chamber music that blends formal and harmonic complexity with a solemn emotive sensibility accessible to a broad audience. Listeners that yearn for some edge and disquietude in a landscape of often all-too-approachable post-classical music should find EXO eminently worth their time and attention. While Molnar is a highly trained string player, and studied music under Aubrey Wolfe, microtonality with James Tenney, and composition with R. Murray Schafer, his trajectory has been entirely and intentionally outside the academy, signalling a socio-artistic commitment to DIY culture, forged from an early passion for the sonic worlds of post-hardcore, post-punk, no-wave, free improv, power electronics, and other independent/underground musics. His classically-informed works have been described as "tense currents of musical modernism invigorated with punk's raw vitality." EXO carries an undercurrent influenced by dark industrial and ambient metal in particular, with microphones purposely placed to pick up the low-end frequencies of the piano body, and of a bass drum positioned as a resonant skin in the acoustic space; an electroacoustic strategy organically meshed to the crisply defined and pristinely recorded pointillisms and polychords of strings, harp, and piano, which feed into this noisefloor of crepuscular sub-bass disquietude and decay. It's a production aesthetic that lends EXO a distinct undertow of tension and feeling, a sort of roiling maximalism where the chamber instrumentation traces arcs and waves of form and flow as if drawn from a dark, impervious ocean below. It also reinforces the profound hermeticism of Molnar's process, as a forbiddingly solitary creative act of immersion and navigation. The album artwork, featuring semiabstract stills of the sea by British photographer Ed Allen, further reifies this metaphor. The album's opening piece 'Sub Luna' (and its shortest at 8 minutes) showcases Molnar's adeptness at naturalistic and flowing complexity: tight cascades of climbing and descending chordal clusters hold their polytonal densities for various durations, yielding to more clarified harmonic suspensions and motifs, as melodic themes led primarily by violins in the higher registers provide a fractured lyricism. Molnar says: "the opening and closing figures of this piece act as opposing shorelines; the shorelines provide a reliable expression of range and key signature, and the tides come in and swallow them up, the motion of a body that addresses the relationship between states of lucidity and melodic figures." On 'Terre Sacer' everything happens in soupier waters, as a slow and doleful theme, anchored by grinding bass notes, circles in a gyre of dark resonances, until glistening strings gradually ascend to enrobe a plaintive and gently harrowing single-voiced ostinato over the composition's final third. Molnar's drone, ambient, minimalist, and goth-industrial influences are on display here. Side Two of EXO features the 18-minute multi-movement 'pallida Mors' (pale death): a waterfall of heterophony introduces dense chordal movements where strings are recorded and mixed to evoke pipe organ, in the album's most overtly dissonant and (anti)liturgical sequence. This gives way to ever more open and fragile spaces, before a resurgence of dark clusters and noise treatments introduces a final repeating piano coda, shrouded in devastated bass resonance, settling into what Molnar calls "a meditative hollow." Constellation is honoured to release this work by Mark Molnar, a longtime fellow-traveler whose selfless and boundlessly generous activities as an independent arts enabler sometimes obscure his own accomplished and uncompromising artistry. We trust EXO can help shed some much deserved light on this fine composer. Thanks for listening.

Mia Zapata was the greatest rock singer of her time. She may have likely been the greatest blues singer in punk rock history, the woman who married the 78 and the '78. Tragedy did not make this true. Mia Zapata made this true, and the ferocious, spring-loaded shrapnel frame that was built around her by Andy Kessler (guitar: metronomic and furious), Matt Dresdner (bass: fluid, punching, beat-addicted and melodic), and Steve Moriarty (drums: martial and explosive) - who, with Mia, combined to form The Gits - made it true. The Gits were formed at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio in mid-1986, grabbing and swapping pieces of art, thrash, noise, punk rock, classic rock, and all the sorts of magical silly and bookish jingle bells that an old-school liberal arts education handed you; for the next few years they worked on turning it all into something tough, sensitive, both brutal and kind. Andy, Matt, Mia, and Steve moved to Seattle in middish 1989, landing in a house on Capitol Hill where they (and fellow travelers) wood-shedded and rehearsed for the next few years. The Gits put out three EPs in 1990 and '91 before signing with C/Z Records and releasing their first full-length album, Frenching the Bully. Seattle quickly claimed the quartet as their own and embraced the Gits blend of ferocious fangs and soft heart, the slug/slap of the guitars, and the gorgeous, soft underbelly of the poetic emotions. These qualities not only fit in with the doe-eyed/sharp-clawed grunge ethos but earned the Gits the respect of their peers, including Nirvana, who tapped them to open a major local show in 1990. Then other stuff happened, and their frantic, confessional barbed-heart snowball began rolling up hill very, very fast; the Gits "quickly" (hah! After half a decade learning to implode and explode hearts and stomping their boots on manifold beer-softened, Marlboro-weeded wood stages!) inspired rapture, awe, and the levitation that happened when peak emotion meets peak grindage in front of amps spitting out something that sounded like the mad marriage of Bolan swagger and Dischord tension_ all fronted by a genuinely incomparable woman who held her heart in her mouth and shared it, in all its celebration and fear, without hesitation. The Gits were an angry, inflamed slinky fully in tune with and tuned by the Bessie Patti Smith of her time, truly the only singer who could summon Joplin, Poly Styrene, Sam Cooke, Iggy Pop and Ian MacKaye all in the same goddamn song. In 1993, less than four weeks after accepting an offer from Atlantic Records, Mia died. I leave it at that, because this is not about death; it's about an extraordinary life. I do not say, "You should have been there," I say, "We are lucky so many of us were, and I am so glad we have this extraordinary evidence of the power and gifts of Mia and the Gits that you now can hold in your hands." And I note that Frenching the Bully, this extraordinary testament to the soul, shock, fury and feeling of the Gits, has been long out of print on vinyl and CD, and this new edition - remastered by legendary Seattle engineer Jack Endino - joyfully rectifies that. -Tim Sommer

»Mother Nature« is the debut solo album by Berend Intelmann, a key figure in the German indie music scene since the late 1980s. Having made his name as a member of groups such as Hallelujah Ding Dong Happy Happy, Guther, and Paula, Intelmann most recently focussed on his work as a producer for artists such as Jens Friebe, MissinCat, or Fotos. »Mother Nature« sees the multi-instrumentalist and singer navigate between pop sentiment and his penchant for classical music on these eight pieces, three of which feature additional contributions by Karaoke Kalk label mate Marla Hansen, synth pop iconoclast Der Assistent, and the versatile Mieke Miami, respectively. »Mother Nature« combines a sense of playfulness with cunning compositional rigour to stunning effect.

Intelmann took full creative licence and worked with the instruments that he feels most comfortable using: the drums, synthesizers, and his voice. While inspired by his life-long passion for pop music in all shades, he also took some cues from his more recent passion for classical music. »The synthesizer melodies are arranged like string quartets, while the songs are presented as musical themes strung together so that they form a coherent story,« he explains. The resulting sound isn’t quite as »krauty« as someone called it, instead the artist prefers to call it »slow-kraut—1980s synth sound with 1970s George Duke-style beats,« though of course he never attempted to fit in one specific genre or replicate a certain sound: This is simply the essence of Berend Intelmann as a composer and storyteller.

The lyrical matter of »Mother Nature« is inspired by life and death. This informs an album that masterfully creates contrasts and utilises the friction generated between them to tell its stories. The album opener and second single »All Gone« greets its audience with the couplet »In the long run / We’re all gone,« but sets this to soothing sounds that form a joyful counterpoint to the fatalism of the words. Also the slowly-unfolding first single »Life Of Another One« sets the stage for a reflection on memories that have become so distant that they feel like belonging to another person altogether with sombre, intertwined melodies. However, these darker tones slowly give way to laid-back grooves, Intelmann’s smooth vocalisations and whirling synthesizer sequences.

The collaborations—a vocal duet with Marla Hansen on »A Focused Mind,« Der Assistent’s subtle theremin contributions to »The Less We Cared« and Mieke Miami flute and saxophone playing on »Mother Nature«—further enrich this album that the artist claims has been »co-produced by friends and family.« Indeed, »Mother Nature« might be Intelmann’s solo debut proper, but he remains a teamplayer at heart.

Havukruunu is the spirit of freedom, harbinger of oblivion, and it tells you: FLY, YOU FOOLS! Svart Records is set to release the band’s fourth album TAVASTLAND in February 2025 After three albums, the pieces of the puzzle fit, and Havukruunu, the favorite band of the sensitive and sorrowful returns with a vengeance to blur the line between the real and unreal. The sorrowful guitars of Stefa and Bootleg-Henkka draw threatening dark shadows on the wall, Kostajainen's drumming bombardement pulses like embers of a dying fire in the hearth. All the while, Humö's bass guitar is clanking and wailing like the icy wind rattling windows and banging walls, as Stefa roars and channels messages from the netherworld or preaches wisdom of ancient days, backed by a choir. Lords of Hell smile approving as the flames of hatred and cunning of their beloved sons drowns a dying old world, and heart of the earth trembles the birth of new and weird. Havukruunu is the spirit of freedom, harbinger of oblivion, and it tells you: FLY, YOU FOOLS! Havukruunu’s upcoming album TAVASTLAND tells the story of a small, strange people. ”-TAVASTLAND tells how in 1237 the Tavastians rose in a rebellion against the church of Christ and drove the popes naked into the frost to die. TAVASTLAND reveals our fathers’ centuries old sins and lies of consolation. TAVASTLAND speaks of him, who has become a prisoner of his home, alienated from the land of the forest and is now afraid of the dark with all lights on, surrounded by his smart devices. TAVASTLAND tells about the freedom we lost. TAVASTLAND haunts its listener to the grave, and I will personally open that grave one bleak night, and steal the fading light of your sempiternal soul.”, says Stefa. TAVASTLAND is available on Svart exclusive ice & blood vinyl edition, limited to 666 copies. Also available on limited amber & black smoke vinyl, classic black vinyl, CD, cassette tape, and digital platforms. All vinyl editions of the first pressing include a booklet and poster. New Havukruunu T-shirt also up for pre-order now at Svart’s webstore. Release date February 28th, 2025.

Havukruunu is the spirit of freedom, harbinger of oblivion, and it tells you: FLY, YOU FOOLS! Svart Records is set to release the band’s fourth album TAVASTLAND in February 2025 After three albums, the pieces of the puzzle fit, and Havukruunu, the favorite band of the sensitive and sorrowful returns with a vengeance to blur the line between the real and unreal. The sorrowful guitars of Stefa and Bootleg-Henkka draw threatening dark shadows on the wall, Kostajainen's drumming bombardement pulses like embers of a dying fire in the hearth. All the while, Humö's bass guitar is clanking and wailing like the icy wind rattling windows and banging walls, as Stefa roars and channels messages from the netherworld or preaches wisdom of ancient days, backed by a choir. Lords of Hell smile approving as the flames of hatred and cunning of their beloved sons drowns a dying old world, and heart of the earth trembles the birth of new and weird. Havukruunu is the spirit of freedom, harbinger of oblivion, and it tells you: FLY, YOU FOOLS! Havukruunu’s upcoming album TAVASTLAND tells the story of a small, strange people. ”-TAVASTLAND tells how in 1237 the Tavastians rose in a rebellion against the church of Christ and drove the popes naked into the frost to die. TAVASTLAND reveals our fathers’ centuries old sins and lies of consolation. TAVASTLAND speaks of him, who has become a prisoner of his home, alienated from the land of the forest and is now afraid of the dark with all lights on, surrounded by his smart devices. TAVASTLAND tells about the freedom we lost. TAVASTLAND haunts its listener to the grave, and I will personally open that grave one bleak night, and steal the fading light of your sempiternal soul.”, says Stefa. TAVASTLAND is available on Svart exclusive ice & blood vinyl edition, limited to 666 copies. Also available on limited amber & black smoke vinyl, classic black vinyl, CD, cassette tape, and digital platforms. All vinyl editions of the first pressing include a booklet and poster. New Havukruunu T-shirt also up for pre-order now at Svart’s webstore. Release date February 28th, 2025.

"Maintenant" (meaning: Now) defines it all: A snapshot in time, 13 piano pieces, completely improvised by Rico Friebe in one take! Three years after recording "The Silva Sessions", this new album serves as some kind of sequel to the improvisational and aesthetic characteristics - presenting a vast and meditative soundscape solely on the piano with some subtle electronic manoeuvring within. A truly unique moment that got captured here and a special album, you won't come along too often these days...

Three years after the release of her successful debut album 'Alma', Munichbased singer, pianist, and composer Alma Naidu unveils her long-awaited self-produced new album 'Redefine' She presents 13 original songs that showcase remarkable emotional depth, musical diversity, and intensity. The album features a wide range of arrangements, from classic band settings to string orchestras and intimate voice-and-piano solo pieces. It explores themes such as friendship, love, personal growth, and thought- provoking topics like equality and the redefinition of gender roles. The record is further enriched by collaborations with renowned artists, including Mark Lettieri (Snarky Puppy), Raphaela Gromes, Nils Landgren, Jason "JT" Thomas, Lisa Wulff, and Simon Oslender.

The 1968 debut album from Norwegian guitar legend Terje Rypdal stands as a significant entry in the late 1960s jazz landscape, exemplifying the transition from psychedelic rock to a more intricate, freeform blend of jazz elements. Collaborating with legendary musicians like Jan Garbarek, Rypdal's work on this album showcases his innovative talent.

Recorded during three sessions in Oslo in 1968, Bleak House marks Rypdal’s departure from the psychedelic group The Dream as he ventured into new musical territories. He would go on to become one of the most recognizable instrumentalists in European jazz, with releases on the ECM label filled with his searing, evocative guitar sounds that evoke a future tundra.

Though only 21 at the time, Rypdal was already creating music that was incredibly mature, smooth, and sophisticated. While it undeniably captures the essence of the 60s, it remains enjoyable today. The album, originally released on Polydor, features slight Latin and blues influences, along with big-band arrangements that are both well-crafted and enchantingly loose.

The reissue of Bleak House offers much to unpack. Historically, it represents a bridge in the European transition from jazz-rock to a unique avant-garde/free jazz hybrid. Even at this early point in his career, Rypdal's ability to incorporate post-bop, fusion, and avant-garde elements into a cohesive album was an impressive feat of imagination. Rypdal has always been a bold composer, capable of weaving intoxicatingly discordant melodies, as exemplified in tracks like "Winter Serenade", or evoking an unearthly sadness in his more reflective pieces.
Bleak House is a timeless and important recording, and it is a pleasure to hear it in this 180g virgin vinyl format.
A must-listen for anyone interested in the evolution of modern jazz.

15th Anniversary Edition. Lime Green Vinyl. When Dinosaur Jr. reunited, more than 20 years after their formation and legendary dissolution, the worry was that these guys were just flogging the back catalog, taking the old show on the road as a marketing gimmick. But the 2007 release of Beyond gave a hearty Marshall-driven "F**K YOU!" answer to those inquiring ears. Restoring the sound established by the unassailable hat-trick gambit of their first three albums -- Dinosaur, You're Living All Over Me, and Bug -- Beyond continued the band's march into rock greatness by making old ears smile and new ears bleed afresh. And then came Farm, the 9th full length record by the original line-up: J Mascis, Lou Barlow, and Murph. If Beyond was Dinosaur Jr.'s return to form, Farm is proof that Dinosaur Jr. could (and still do, to this day!) deliver timeless, exhilarating rock music. Farm encompasses Dinosaur Jr.'s signature palette: soaring and distorted guitar, unshakable hooks, honey-rich melodies. At times wholly 70's guitar-epic, at times perfect for sitting by a babbling brook with Joni and Neil, these songs get into your head and stay there, bouncing happily around. The ear-catching "Plans" is nearly seven minutes of classic whipped-topping rock dessert, while "I Don't Wanna Go There" is a meat-and-potatoes main dish, mixing unapologetic lead guitar with straight-ahead delivery a la James Gang or Humble Pie. This expanded deluxe edition of Farm features four songs never pressed to vinyl and never given worldwide release:"Houses", "Whenever You're Ready" (The Zombies Cover), "Creepies" (Instrumental), and "Show". "Whenever You're Ready", a cover of classic pop-rockers The Zombies, is impossibly good for a hidden gem; Murph stomps in with a sledgehammer to the kit, J and Lou layer low-end and fuzz like two halves of one brain, and right when things feel biggest, airy and colossal, there's J with a lightning bolt of a guitar solo. Pure electricity and melody like only he can make. Recorded in J Mascis' Bisquiteen studio in Amherst, Massachusetts, Farm was produced by Mascis himself, and delivers the singular, unique energy of one of America's greatest living rock bands.

A double LP package from Bardo Pond, combining two of their super rare jam volumes on vinyl for the first time. A further edition in this celebrated series, ‘Volume 4’ and ‘Volume 5’ feature more freeform improvisational pieces from the hypnotic Philadelphia outfit.

Capturing the raw essence of the band, whose fearless exploration blurs the lines between structure, chaos, melody and noise. Bardo Pond's music traverses space rock, acid rock, post-rock, shoegaze, noise, Krautrock and psychedelia.

‘Volume 4’ hails from self-released sessions recorded in January 2002, its five tracks include the supremely tripped out heaviness of ‘K2’ and the balance-shifting ‘New Drunks (Revisited)’ with Isobel Sollenberger’s exquisite and, frankly, quite disturbing vocal. They’re shorter interrogations of sound by Bardo terms, almost succinct in their mesmerising riffage and off-kilter arrangements.

By contrast, ‘Volume 5’ consists of two lengthy mantras recorded between 2000 and 2004 and released as the tape spool spiralled out. ‘FUFO’ sounds like Cluster unravelling with Merzbow mixing, a post-industrial slew of hypnotic proportions, while ‘Monarch’ begins as a Current 93-like neo-folk mood piece before evolving into a wailing slice of drone-drenched Americana by way of a Velvets’ jam.

“We were pushing improvisations as far as we could. It was glorious having the studio. The more that our heads were spinning after a session, the better we knew that session would sound when we listened back. We were getting together two nights a week, usually three or four hours working on material and songs and the other half the time letting loose. Volumes 4 and 5 gather together some of these improvisations, and one early song that we felt like doing.” Adds Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond.

TÖRZS, Hungary's premier instrumental post-rock band, return with the understated sonic beauty of `Menedèk', their first new music in six years. Loosely translating as `Refuge', `Menedèk' sees the freshly bolstered trio in their element; finding shelter, comfort and joy in the act of creative collaboration whilst the storm of day to day life weathers ever on. A steadfast and admirable mission statement centred on staying true to themselves in the moment, being open to growth and documenting this process as honestly as possible has led to TÖRZS building a reputation as one of Hungary's most exciting musical collectives. Three stunning albums of organic and perfectly composed contemplation, as well as the band's transcendental live shows alongside acts including contemporaries We Lost The Sea, Oh Hiroshima, Föllakzoid and more have placed TÖRZS at the forefront of a post-rock movement that prizes the shared experience of band and listener above all else. The band's previous full-length release, 2019's `Tükor', was recorded live at Aggteleki Cseppkobarlang, a UNESCO World Heritage protected cave system, 500 metres below the Aggteleki National Park. Embracing the cave's utterly unique natural reverb almost as a fourth member led to `Tükor' receiving critical acclaim, with TÖRZS were subsequently nominated for the HEMI Music Awards 2022 and invited to perform at the likes of Moscow Music Week (2020), The Budapest Showcase Hub (2021) and 2024's Changeover Festival in Belgrade, Serbia. Whilst the intervening years have seen unprecedented change on a global scale, TÖRZS too found themselves in a state of flux. The band returned to the more traditional studio setting in 2023, working alongside long-time producer György Ligeti, in order to faithfully capture the intimate energy of songs meticulously crafted together in their small rehearsal space, a far cry from 2019's subterranean setting. However, having spent countless hours writing, orchestrating and recording the pieces that have become `Menedèk', the band's founding drummer Zsombor Lehoczky stepped away from the band and music as a whole. Where this might have been catastrophic for any other band, remaining members Soma Balázs and Dániel Nyitray soon found a connection with Tamás Szijártó, who approached TÖRZS' music with the same openness to creativity in the moment; not `performing' as such, but simply working together to produce breathtaking, musical escapism away from the daily humdrum. The album's themes of shelter, refuge and support resound clearly on lead single `Otthon'. Meaning `At Home' in Hungarian, `Otthon' serves as a de facto introduction to the record. The song's lilting groove, soaring yet soft guitar palette and the band's signature delicate dynamism all combine to invite the listener to reflect; not steering one way or another yet inviting us to close our eyes and join the flow. Elsewhere, the pounding, chiming `Levegovétel' proves TÖRZS are still staying true to their mission statement of documenting the inevitable process of change. Here the band embrace elements of post-rock's harsher, heavier side with a cacophony of driving half-time drums and distorted, open-chord guitars yet still provide brief havens of space for themselves, the song and the listener alike to breathe before the euphoric swell rises anew. Whilst TÖRZS' previous full-length effort was a spectacular collision of the band's tight-knit existence and the (literal) echo chamber of the world outside, `Menedèk' is introspective, understated and refreshingly brave in its honesty. TÖRZS have opened the doors to their inner sanctum, their rehearsal space, their songwriting process, their friendship; inviting us to live in it with them, to revel in the moment together. FOR FANS OF Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy You, Caspian, MONO, Sigur Rós

TÖRZS, Hungary's premier instrumental post-rock band, return with the understated sonic beauty of `Menedèk', their first new music in six years. Loosely translating as `Refuge', `Menedèk' sees the freshly bolstered trio in their element; finding shelter, comfort and joy in the act of creative collaboration whilst the storm of day to day life weathers ever on. A steadfast and admirable mission statement centred on staying true to themselves in the moment, being open to growth and documenting this process as honestly as possible has led to TÖRZS building a reputation as one of Hungary's most exciting musical collectives. Three stunning albums of organic and perfectly composed contemplation, as well as the band's transcendental live shows alongside acts including contemporaries We Lost The Sea, Oh Hiroshima, Föllakzoid and more have placed TÖRZS at the forefront of a post-rock movement that prizes the shared experience of band and listener above all else. The band's previous full-length release, 2019's `Tükor', was recorded live at Aggteleki Cseppkobarlang, a UNESCO World Heritage protected cave system, 500 metres below the Aggteleki National Park. Embracing the cave's utterly unique natural reverb almost as a fourth member led to `Tükor' receiving critical acclaim, with TÖRZS were subsequently nominated for the HEMI Music Awards 2022 and invited to perform at the likes of Moscow Music Week (2020), The Budapest Showcase Hub (2021) and 2024's Changeover Festival in Belgrade, Serbia. Whilst the intervening years have seen unprecedented change on a global scale, TÖRZS too found themselves in a state of flux. The band returned to the more traditional studio setting in 2023, working alongside long-time producer György Ligeti, in order to faithfully capture the intimate energy of songs meticulously crafted together in their small rehearsal space, a far cry from 2019's subterranean setting. However, having spent countless hours writing, orchestrating and recording the pieces that have become `Menedèk', the band's founding drummer Zsombor Lehoczky stepped away from the band and music as a whole. Where this might have been catastrophic for any other band, remaining members Soma Balázs and Dániel Nyitray soon found a connection with Tamás Szijártó, who approached TÖRZS' music with the same openness to creativity in the moment; not `performing' as such, but simply working together to produce breathtaking, musical escapism away from the daily humdrum. The album's themes of shelter, refuge and support resound clearly on lead single `Otthon'. Meaning `At Home' in Hungarian, `Otthon' serves as a de facto introduction to the record. The song's lilting groove, soaring yet soft guitar palette and the band's signature delicate dynamism all combine to invite the listener to reflect; not steering one way or another yet inviting us to close our eyes and join the flow. Elsewhere, the pounding, chiming `Levegovétel' proves TÖRZS are still staying true to their mission statement of documenting the inevitable process of change. Here the band embrace elements of post-rock's harsher, heavier side with a cacophony of driving half-time drums and distorted, open-chord guitars yet still provide brief havens of space for themselves, the song and the listener alike to breathe before the euphoric swell rises anew. Whilst TÖRZS' previous full-length effort was a spectacular collision of the band's tight-knit existence and the (literal) echo chamber of the world outside, `Menedèk' is introspective, understated and refreshingly brave in its honesty. TÖRZS have opened the doors to their inner sanctum, their rehearsal space, their songwriting process, their friendship; inviting us to live in it with them, to revel in the moment together. FOR FANS OF Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions In The Sky, This Will Destroy You, Caspian, MONO, Sigur Rós

TOTEMIC MODULATIONS, UNEARTHED FROM WIND AND WORDS

“The album Chênes mainly brings together songs. These songs are narratives of scenes that unfold in the forest, or in the city but with animal and plant protagonists. One song also tells the story of a solitary walk in the mountains. They are like zoomed-in snapshots of the world of insects, amphibians, birds, and mammals. They are also celebrations of growing life, and the pleasure and joy it brings.

Composed over the course of about two or three years, it was a deliberate choice to bring them together for this album, even though they were not initially connected to one another. One of them is an exception and is more of a collection of vocalizations and cries without actual words, composed in a language incomprehensible to humans because it is nonverbal.

This collection of imitated chants and sung songs had to be illustrated by the collages of my friend Fen. Even though the stories describe real species and elements, they are indeed imagined tales. Her collages are, too. There’s also the violin that adds a wandering touch to the pieces, and other instruments that shape the environment and setting of these stories. Bells, bird calls, whistles, flutes, jaw harp, harmonica — all imitate more or less imaginary species. Each has its role and its life, down to the horsehair of the bow that rubs the strings of my violin to bring forth the sound.

Chênes is a title that pays homage to trees I love so much, though without preference over others. They have embodied several giants that I’ve often come across, greeted, and embraced” ~ Roxane Métayer

"10th Anniversary Edition Ghostface Killah, legendary Wu-Tang Clan member, invites you to rediscover the cinematic brilliance of 36 Seasons, his tenth studio album and unforgettable concept masterpiece.
Originally released ten years ago, this album tells the compelling story of Tony Starks as he returns to Staten Island after nine years, seeking a peaceful life but nding anything but. 36 Seasons is a testament to Ghostface’s storytelling genius and raw lyrical power.
To honor its 10th anniversary, 36 Seasons is being reissued in a range of special formats packed with exclusive bonuses. Fans can look forward to three vinyl editions, including a Deluxe Double Vinyl featuring all original tracks alongside instrumental versions."

Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music. Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim are each, respectively, among the most noteworthy and groundbreaking figures to have emerged from Australia's thriving experimental music scene. Ambarchi and Avenaim first encountered Abrahams when seeing the Necks - the project that has served as the primary vehicle for his singular approach to the piano since its founding in 1987 - together during the late 1980s, not long after having met in Sydney's underground music community. The pair's collaborations date back more than 35 years, criss-crossing Ambarchi's pioneering solo and ensemble work for guitar and Avenaim's visionary efforts for SARPS (Semi Automated Robotic Percussion System), robotic and kinetic extensions to his drum kit. In 2004, fate brought the three together in a trio performance at the What Is Music? Festival, the annual touring showcase of experimental music founded and run by Ambarchi and Avenaim between 1994-2012. For the nearly two decades since, Abrahams, Ambarchi, and Avenaim have intermittently reformed in exclusively live contexts, in Australia and abroad, cultivating and refining the fertile ground first tilled in that early meeting. Placelessness is the first album to present this remarkable trio's efforts in recorded form. Placelessness is the joining of three highly individualised streams, working in perfect harmony; the point at which friendship, mutual respect, and decades of creative exploration produce a singular spectrum of sound. Featuring Abrahams on piano, Ambarchi on guitar, and Avenaim on drums, the album's two sides draw on each artist's enduring dedication to long-form composition. Its two pieces, Placelessness I and Placelessness II, initially began as a single, 40 minute work, before being divided and reworked into distinct, complimentary gestures for the corresponding sides of the LP. Beginning with restrained clusters of reverberant piano tones, Placelessness I progresses at an almost glacial pace, with Abrahams' interventions increasing met by sparse responses, darting within vast ambiences, on guitar and percussion by Ambarchi and Avenaim. Remarkably conversational within its convergences of tonal, rhythmic, and textural abstraction, over the work's duration a progressive sense of tension unfurls and contracts, refusing release, as each of the ensemble's members contribute to an increasingly tangled sense of density at its resolve.While an entirely autonomous work, Placelessness II rapidly realises a distillation of the energy hinted at across the length of its predecessor. Following a luring passage of harmonious calm, Abrahams' launches into shimmering lines of repeating arpeggios, complimented at each escalation of tempo by Avenaim's machine gun fire percussion work and Ambarchi's masterful delivery of tonality and texture, as the trio collectively generate dense sheets of pointillistic ambience within which individual identity is almost lost, before slowly unspooling into unexpected abstractions and dissonances that deftly intervene with the work's inner logic and calm. What could easily be termed a maximalist take on Minimalism, Placelessness is a masterstroke of contemporary, real time composition, that blurs the boundaries between ambient music, experimentalism, free improvisation, and machine music. Drawing on Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim's decades of respective solo and collaborative practice, and the culmination of nearly twenty years of working together as a trio, it's two durational pieces - Placelessness I and Placelessness II - take form with a startling sense of effortlessness and grace, neither shying away from explicit beauty or rigorously tension within their forms

"Donald Duck, kill Minnie!" These words, ordered with urgency against a circular series of drum strikes and manipulated guitar/electronic textures, come over three fourths of the way through the album known as SYR 5 (aka "Olive's Horn"). While the words and sounds taken on their own may shock, their appearance within this collaborative effort between Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth, Body/Head, solo efforts), Ikue Mori (DNA, solo) and DJ Olive (We, solo) by this point in the album are not surprising. Taken on whole, SYR 5 sees its creators' respective histories forged in the 80s downtown noise scene, No Wave zone and Marclay-inspired club collide head on to create the audio equivalent of a slow-playing J.G. Ballard novel. Starting from the album's initial impressions where shimmering tones are interrupted by the sounds of winding clocks and bird calls before giving way to a cinematic sweeps of percussion, alien samples and blown out wasteland subs, the listener is constantly taken on a guided journey through a waking dream state where anything is possible. It is a world where dub samples, gurling beats and plaintive vocals (as only Gordon can deliver) fit together like the final locking puzzle pieces, the only elements needed to fully grasp a new reality. Re-appearing on vinyl for the first time in 25 years, these sounds have proven to be jaw-droppingly timeless. - Cory Rayborn, 2025

The new live album from Enemy, marking their fourth release, captures a decade of fearless exploration and deep musicalconnection between pianist Kit Downes, bassist Petter Eldh, and drummer James Maddren. Reuniting with Edition Records after three albums that spanned Edition, ECM, and We Jazz, this album was recorded over a two-day residency at Bird’s Eye in Basel.

It’s an ambitious retrospective and forward-looking statement, covering pieces from each record while presenting new material that reflects how Enemy’s sound has evolved—balancing intensity with a striking, refined subtlety. Known for their masterful use of poly rhythms, Enemy’s live performance pushes their collective improvisation to new heights, with the trio freely transitioning between themes and compositions without a set list. Signature tracks like “Faster than Light” showcase an evolving interplay, where intensity meets lightness and bursts of colour emerge from unexpected places.

This album also nods to the spirit of 90s studio jazz, with layered tunes and a playful yet sophisticated approach that challenges the boundaries of thepiano trio.

Kit Downes’ remarkable profile growth has only enriched the trio’s dynamic, bringing an ever-expanding lyricism to Enemy’s sound. Petter Eldh and James Maddren, both with deep ties to Edition through Eldh’s Project Drums and Maddren’s many Edition collaborations, add their own layers of innovation and depth to this release.

Together, they create an electrifying conversation thatis both intricate and instinctive—this is Enemy at their most potent, capturing a decade of artistic synergy and setting the stage for the next chapter.