In stock
LP
Marja AHTI
“Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth”
Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.
Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lampo in Chicago. Ahti then started working with Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet), Ryan Packard (percussion) and My Hellgren (cello) at the electronic music studios (EMS) in Stockholm. Incorporating recordings from those sessions, Ahti presented a new iteration of the work at the Seventh Edition Festival for Other Music in February 2024 with the trio performing live on stage whilst Ahti helmed the mixing desk, spatialising a specially made tape part through the INA GRM’s Acousmonium speaker orchestra. The piece has since gone through several further iterations before arriving at the version we have here on the LP's B-side where immense bass pressure and high frequency tones buffer restless amplified breath and scrape that folds over itself with extraordinary dynamics and subterranean activity before giving way to gorgeous resonant forms and passages of ritual purpose and sheer, unmistakeable beauty.
The A-side is Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth’s gentle double. Still Life with Poppies, Mirror and Two Clouds offers a companion reconfiguration of Ahti’s resynthesised percussion sustain and the same recordings of Hedtjärn and Hellgren from EMS, but here they’re nestled in a sonic landscape of calm and restraint that gives them a wholly other character. Ahti also draws on older recordings she’d made of Sholto Dobie’s diy pipe organs and uses these to create repeating patterns and flourishes of sliding pitches that emerge unexpected out of cycling passages of Ahti’s clear struck metal, destabilising electronic interventions and minimal piano figures.
Marja Ahti: “I’ve been fascinated with the kind of elemental quality the sounds I'm using have such as airy sounds or earthy, wooden sounds. These qualities can also be found in wind instruments and percussion and the musicians I worked with on Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth are really good at enhancing these qualities in their playing. I wanted to have this connection between found sounds, field recordings, or pre-recorded sounds, objects, and material, and see where these sounds might meet each other, and hopefully blend is a natural way without a divide between instrumental music, or acoustic music, or electronic music. But also, when you bring in people they come with their personalities and their ideas which is also energizing and brings surprising things into the collaboration that I couldn't come up with myself. I was really interested in making this a proper collaboration and not just coming up with the piece and giving it to them. We had the sessions at EMS where we could share ideas and Isak, Ryan and My could bring in their own ideas. Making recordings there gave me time to process these ideas and to also approach them in the same way that I would work with any other sound.”
28,00€
In stock
LP
RELAY FOR DEATH
“Mutual Consuming”
Relay For Death is the noise project of the twin sisters Roxann and Rachal Spikula. Their hermetic works consistently reflect a bleak nihilism, all the while carving an autonomous space for survival as the rest of the existence crumbles. Previous works have been published by Hanson, No Rent, Total Black, and RRRecords.
The twins offered the consideration that "Mutual Consuming comes from a concept in the philosophies that underpin traditional Chinese medicine theory, where the two opposing states (yin and yang) are 2 states on a continuum and their interactions produce an infinite possible number of states of aggregation. Within this interplay, there is a dynamic balance that is maintained by a constant adjustment of their relative levels. So an excess of yin consumes yang and vice versa." We asked if this has anything to do with the concept of the Ouroboros, to which they responded, "we hadn't thought about Ouroboros, but the eternal cycle of things makes sense too. The gorge fest of existence." Does this relate to previous works? The twins concisely respond to that question in a rare interview in Untitled, "No."
Mutual Consuming is a dire piece of isolationist thrum, spectral caterwaul, and heavy gloom through an oblique and abstracted coupling of electronics, noise, and ominous field recordings. As immersive as Thomas Köner’s haunting ambience but fully entrenched in the industrial meditations of MB. Originally published as part of the instantly out of print boxset, On Corrosion - a 10 cassette anthology from 2019 that was housed in a handcrafted wooden box and featuring full albums from Kleistwahr, Neutral, Pinkcourtesyphone, Alice Kemp, She Spread Sorrow, G*Park, Relay For Death, Francisco Meirino, Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, and Himukalt. The collection stood as the 50th release for The Helen Scarsdale Agency.
26,50€
In stock
LP
Ilpo VÄISÄNEN & Dirk DRESSELHAUS
“Brainwave Music No. III”
Brainwave Music No. III was initially recorded live on October 30th 2021 as part of 10 Brain Wave - sound installation - performances by Ilpo Väisänen and Dirk Dresselhaus (die ANGEL) in the Life on a Leaf house, Turku, Finland.
The concept was based on an interactive system including brainwave interfaces that allowed the two performers to process the sounds of several semi-modular synthesizers via CV with their brain activities.
25,00€
Out of stock
LP
Thomas ANKERSMIT
“The Dip”
Students of Decay presents The Dip, a new full-length recording by Berlin-based artist and composer Thomas Ankersmit, marking his debut with the label and sixth album to date. Comprised of two expansive, sidelong pieces composed entirely on the Serge Modular synthesizer, it signals a subtle yet significant shift in Ankersmit’s trajectory, imbuing the hyper-physical, psychoacoustic intensities of his live performances with introspective, atmospheric, and even melodic elements.
Primarily known for a site-responsive approach to sound, often realized in the moment of performance, Ankersmit’s turn toward the studio in the last few years has opened up a new dimension within his practice. It is in this quiet rupture that The Dip emerged, a study in internality and suspended states, rich with cinematic undercurrents and ghostly spatial suggestion. Here, electricity itself feels transfigured – becoming supple, even organic – within an environment shaped entirely by analog signals.
Over the past two decades, Ankersmit has established himself as one of the foremost practitioners of the Serge, the notoriously idiosyncratic and expressive instrument that has remained central to his work. On The Dip, he harnesses its potential not for brute force or disorientation, but for spaciousness, resonance, and lyrical abstraction. Without resorting to additional processing or effects, he draws out tones that feel simultaneously raw and refined, articulated and blurred – intricate structures that seem to breathe and evolve of their own volition.
The result is a kind of auditory hallucination, a “cinema for the ears,” wherein impressions, emotional arcs, and imagined topographies unfold. Each side of The Dip plays like a single gesture unfolding in time – a spatial narrative constructed through vibration, density, and the movement of air.
The Dip follows acclaimed works on PAN, Touch, and Shelter Press, and reaffirms Thomas Ankersmit’s position as one of the most focused and probing voices in contemporary experimental music. Quietly radical and meticulously constructed, it is less a departure than a deepening – a descent into a more private sonic world, where the boundaries between perception, memory, and pure signal dissolve.
25,00€
In stock
LP
Doris DENNISON
“Earth Interval”
Edition of 300. First vinyl release for experimental percussion pioneer and feminist icon. Member of John Cage's legendary first percussion ensemble in the 1930s-40s, close associate of Lou Harrison, and longtime accompanist for Anna Halprin's radical dance company. Composed in the mid-1950s for dancer AA Leath, this remarkable work was recently discovered in archives by Tom Welsh. Comprising three movements (Land Form, Air Tide, and Earth Play), it's scored for recorder, drums, gongs, maracas using revolutionary techniques decades ahead of its time - including lowering and raising gongs into water while beating. Gracefully rendered by Chicago's Third Coast Percussion in its first-ever recording. Pantone color vinyl with commissioned liner notes illuminating this groundbreaking composer's life and legacy.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Jürg FREY
“Extended Circular Music”
Edition of 200. Swiss Wandelweiser master reimagined by virtuoso flutist Manuel Zurria in stunning solo interpretations. Frey's String Quartet No. 3 and four Extended Circular Music pieces (originally for various chamber ensembles) are transformed into ethereal soundscapes through Zurria's conceptual approach inspired by Japanese Kintsugi art. Interweaving minimalism with radical experimentalism, these recordings draw startling scope from minimal material means - breath-length utterances dance among complex harmonic clusters, provoking suspensions of time. Zurria aimed not for literal translation but free interpretation, highlighting critical points to make them shine in their uniqueness. Pantone color vinyl with exploratory liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
25,00€
In stock
CD
Eliane RADIGUE
“Asymptote Versatile (1963-64)”
Éliane Radigue completed her piece Asymptote Versatile in New York in 1964. The piece had never been performed publicly until Rhodri Davies convened an ensemble to perform the work at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in November 2023. The first performance took place just short of sixty years after the piece was conceived, and that is the music that you hear on this CD.
The pioneering French artist referred to her 1960s works as propositions sonores, rather than compositions, and this piece is the only one she kept from the period. The graphic score comprises logarithmic curves devised from the Fibonacci sequence, superimposed over sheets of additional notation, to be performed as sustained tones by up to four groups of acoustic instrumentalists spanning the full range of the audible spectrum. ASYMPTOTE VERSATILE sows the seeds of Radigue’s exploration of long durational forms, bridging a 50-year gap between the school of composers she met in 1960s New York and her 2011- onwards OCCAM OCEAN series, where she composes for individual instrumentalists. This recording includes many of the OCCAM soloists who have worked closely with the composer and are steeped in Radigue’s aesthetics and working methods.
"I was young when I composed the Fibonacci suite. I was in New York at that time… During this period of my life I was very interested in mathematics and for this piece I constructed a logarithmic spiral. It is to do with the infinitesimal; the ever-changing, until its destruction in the dance of constant change. It is this versatility, nevertheless, which maintains the rule; it is about playing with the rule. So we gave this concept of a special equilibrium, which is forever being readjusted.”
Eliane Radigue in conversation with Rhodri Davies on 26 June 2023, Paris
Xavier Charles: clarinet
Angharad Davies: violin
Rhodri Davies: harp
Julia Eckhardt: viola
Bertrand Gauguet: alto saxophone
Susan Geaney: bass flute
Dominic Lash: double bass
Thierry Madiot: bass trombone
Aonghus McEvoy: guitar
Hannah Miller: french horn
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh: viola
Carol Robinson: bass clarinet
Accompanying booklet in French and English.
Introduction by Rhodri Davies and Julia Eckhardt.
17,00€
Out of stock
LP
Okkyung LEE
“Just like any other day: background music for your mundane activities”
Unlike anything we’ve 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 know. 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 나를 (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?
Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) 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 나를 (Na-Reul), each of the pieces presented across the two sides of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) 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.
27,00€
Out of stock
CD
BJ NILSEN
“True than Nature”
True than Nature encourages active listening. There is sound that exists seemingly for its own sake – a continuing drone that slowly evolves, sound of nature – and there are sounds that refer to a momentary action, and sudden intrusions of sound. BJ Nilsen triggers shifts in the perception for the listener that alter how you perceive and experience the world through sound, and how you think about sound.
Listening to True than Nature is full of moments of instability. The shifts between sound spaces refocus your listening, or throw you out of a world you were imagining. You recognize sounds, wind, rain, metal bending, a hammer on stone, the background noise of a city, but often there is an unfamiliarity about these sounds. You think you recognize them, but often you are not sure, because you are not there, and different worlds clash or coexist at the same time.
BJ Nilsen (SE/NL) is a Swedish sound artist and composer based in Amsterdam. His work explores the intersection of field recording, sound, space, and perception. Through subtle electronic manipulations and detailed editing, Nilsen transforms environmental recordings into layered, immersive soundscapes that inhabit the space between reality and imagination.
His upcoming release, True than Nature (2025) on Ideologic Organ, continues a 30-year career spanning original scores and sound design for music, film, visual arts, and performance. His most recent album, Irreal (2021), was released on Editions Mego.
16,50€
In stock
LP
Eiko ISHIBASHI – Jim O’ROURKE
“Pareidolia”
For this collaborative release, Eiko & Jim edited and remixed material captured at shows they played during a lovely two week tour through France, Switzerland, Italy and Ireland in April 2023. Pareidolia shapes an ideal collage from the best resonances and relationships from those nights. A dynamic medley of color and shape to pulse through earbuds, speaker cones and the air around you, appealing to your suggestibility, wherever you find it.
Recorded in Paris and Padova 2023. Mixed at Steamroom 2024.
Without Whom: François Bonnet, Jean-Baptiste Garcia, Jules Negrier, Louis Réal, Emmanuel Richier, Alexandre Bazin, Phillipe Dao, and everyone at Ina-Grm, Nicola Negri, Veniero Rizzardi, Monica Salvadori, Stefano Merighi, Matteo Polato and everyone from Centro D'Arte, Franco Cappuccio, Roger Ziegler, David Connaughton, Paolo-Francesco Visci, and everyone at Drag City.
28,00€
In stock
LP
Oren AMBARCHI – Johan BERTHLING – Andreas WERLIIN
“Ghosted III”
Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin are back, a little looser and wilder than before. Their ability to lock in and focus on the smallest of details is enhanced here by a sense of increased immediacy. Great news for fans of stimulating variations of tone and mood within a potentially infinite universe of rhythm and sound! The more you listen to Ghosted III, the better your hearing becomes. Or maybe it’s just that you hear more every time you play it.
28,00€
In stock
LP
THE SHADOW RING
“Wax-Work Echoes”
Originally conceived as a compilation of outtakes and live recordings from The Shadow Ring’s 1995 stateside tour, Wax-Work Echoes takes its name from the first line of “Put the Music in Its Coffin,” the title track of the group’s breakthrough release. Lambkin abandons the bits-and-bobs approach, advancing the Shadow Ring concept with entirely original material that builds on the unit’s self-mythologizing lyrics, celebrates the clicking of horse hooves, ponders on the sociability of rats and mice, and warns of the dangers of poultry. The first Shadow Ring album to officially include Tim Goss in the main lineup, Wax-Work Echoes reveals the group in its final and lasting form, awash in the outer bounds of atmospheric exploration, with Lambkin’s familiar wry and morbid lyricism and the stripped-down angularity of amateurishly detuned guitars fully intact. While Klaus Canterbury and Tony Clark seem all but forgotten, and the shrugged off S. Fritz is listed on the liner notes as performing only “when required,” Lambkin did solicit contributions from outside the inner circle. A bit of “Mambo Twist,” lifted from a tape of unreleased Vitamin B12 material sent to Lambkin by Alasdair Willis, found its way into “V.E.R.M.I.N.,” while an extended epistle contribution from Richard Youngs (and, technically, Brian Lavelle) would be employed in the second half of “Catching Sight/Of Passing Things.”
Released on CD in 1996 for Bruce Russell’s newly minted Corpus Hermeticum, Wax-Work Echoes was recorded concurrently with intense rehearsal periods, in anticipation of the forthcoming “Rose Watson Tour,” and was supported by a celebratory fanzine media blitz. The album seemingly absorbs the frenetic excess of the band’s transatlantic travels; Wax-Work Echoes channels the trio’s wilder instincts into an unresolved catharsis, not yet free of frustration or restlessness. Out of print for almost three decades and available here for the first time ever on long-playing disc, Wax-Work Echoes is a classic from the outer eddies of The Shadow Ring’s sound, a must-have for any aficionado’s collection: “A window slides, glass slips from frame / And canvas carcass breathes again.”
Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre–Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. Wax-Work Echoes and Hold Onto I.D. are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.
27,00€
In stock
LP
THE SHADOW RING
“Hold Onto I.D.”
Recorded from late 1996 through early 1997, Hold Onto I.D., The Shadow Ring’s fourth album, marks the apogee of the trio’s experimental rock epoch—their last record clinging to their factitious bandness before they let all song and structure go awash in sonic malaise for their final run of releases on Swill Radio. The surrealist dreams of City Lights and Put the Music in Its Coffin give way to pseudo-expressionistic lyrics mired in the banality and bleakness of the everyday, set against the backdrop of the Coombe House (as pictured on the album’s cover). While Hold Onto I.D. is the group’s most overtly autobiographical release to date, Graham Lambkin’s lyrics obfuscate his expressionist tendencies filtering them through the codes and languages of officialdom, linking the “inner self” with documents of the state—identification cards, National Insurance numbers, and British passport numbers.
Having moved out of their parents’ homes and into the top floor of the famed Coombe House, Lambkin and Darren Harris set out to rework material drafted over the previous year, aided by Tim Goss, still safely in residence at the “Valebrook Inn.” While the familiar sounds of Harris’s deadpan recitation and Lambkin’s electric guitar, amateurishly strummed, dominate the album, the emotive interludes of Goss’s keyboards populate the record along with of home-cooked tape experiments and dime-store concrète. Originally released on CD and supported by a US tour with friends Scott Foust and Karla Borecky’s Idea Fire Company, Hold Onto I.D. is perhaps the band’s best-known and most accessible album. (The Shadow Ring’s sole representative on a streaming platform, it was once acknowledged by the Guardian as one of “the 101 strangest records on Spotify.”) Offered here for the first time on vinyl, Hold Onto I.D. is an essential album for both completists and the uninitiated alike.
Throughout their legendary, decade-long run, The Shadow Ring were an enigmatic force on the international musical sub-underground. Before their disbandment in 2002, this shambolic rock outfit, formed by a group of rowdy teenagers in southeast England, left behind a mighty run of eight LPs, a handful of 7"s, and a spate of raucous live shows and cryptic zine appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, all which have bolstered their enduring word-of-mouth mystique. Beginning in 2023 with the first-ever vinyl pressing of the self-released pre–Shadow Ring tape The Cat & Bells Club (1992), Blank Forms Editions has been conducting a systematic retrospective of the storied group. Wax-Work Echoes and Hold Onto I.D. are the latest releases in a multiyear reissue effort that includes several LPs, a comprehensive CD box set, and a nearly five-hundred-page book.
27,00€
In stock
LP
Tim BARNES
“Lost Words”
Percussionist Tim Barnes has had a lengthy career flying as close as possible to the sun, notably performing and recording with Jim O’Rourke, Wilco, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, Silver Jews, Tony Conrad, John Zorn, Faust, Tower Recordings, Alan Licht and many others.
Diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in 2021, Lost Words is the first of two recordings undertaken after Tim’s diagnosis. These new collabs were coordinated and produced by Ken (Bundy) Brown (Tortoise, Gastr del Sol, Pullman) and feature Joshua Abrams, Oren Ambarchi, David Daniell, John Dieterich, Darin Gray, Glenn Kotche, Tara Jane O’Neil, Jim O’Rourke and Ken Vandermark among others. Tim’s stalwart rhythmic zeal is the lynchpin and common ground across these tracks that span a wide swath of styles.
29,50€
In stock
LP
Tim BARNES
“Noumena”
Percussionist Tim Barnes has had a lengthy career flying as close as possible to the sun, notably performing and recording with Jim O’Rourke, Wilco, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, Silver Jews, Tony Conrad, John Zorn, Faust, Tower Recordings, Alan Licht and many others.
Diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s in 2021, Lost Words is the first of two recordings undertaken after Tim’s diagnosis. These new collabs were coordinated and produced by Ken (Bundy) Brown (Tortoise, Gastr del Sol, Pullman) and feature Joshua Abrams, Oren Ambarchi, David Daniell, John Dieterich, Darin Gray, Glenn Kotche, Rob Mazurek, Doug McCombs, Tara Jane O’Neil, Jim O’Rourke, Britt Walford and Mike Watt among others. Tim’s stalwart rhythmic zeal is the lynchpin and common ground across these tracks that span a wide swath of styles.
29,50€
In stock
CD
Asmus TIETCHENS + Achim WOLLSCHEID
“Fundstück September 02”
Asmus Tietchens is a sound artist and composer from Hamburg, Germany. He got interested in Musique Concrete by listening to a German radio programme when he was 10 years old. In 1965, at the age of 18, Asmus started experimenting with tape loops and turned them into musical collages. Soon, the use of synthesizers was added. In 1980 his debut album Nachtstücke was released, produced by Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream. This was soon followed by a series of albums of electronic pop music for the Sky label, home of many Krautrock bands. Tietchens often uses special source materials for his compositions such as water (Seuchengebiete), human voices (Von Mund zu Mund), paper (Papier ist geduldig). He is associated with the Industrial music scene through his collaborations and releases on labels such as United Dairies, Esplendor Geometrico or Dom Records. Tietchens never studied composition, he has no academic background, everything he does is self taught or learnign by doing. Nevertheless, he was professor for sound design in Hamburg in recent years. Achim Wollscheid is a media artist whose work over the past 20 years has been at the forefront of experimental music. He has performed and presented installation projects internationally. His work in sound has led to an interest in the relation between sound, light and architectural space, which he pursues through public, interactive and electronic projects. He is a founding member of Selektion, an organisation for the production and distribution of information systems. Achim also forms the collective S.B.O.T.H.I., derivated from a research from the 40s: Sexual Behaviour Of The Human Infant, later renamed to Swimming Behaviour Of The Human Infant. During a period of seven years Achim Wollscheid developed several concepts for a computer-based interactive installation in the law court of Frankfurt (Germany): resolving interactions: the Frankfurt lawcourt projects. The book documents considerations and the work’s progress which developed between the architectural, social, bureaucratic, technical and artistic systems as well as the results, in 2001. Recently, when Asmus Tietchens needed space in his Hamburg flat, he went through boxes in his cupboard and found a recording credited to himself and Achim Wollscheid. It turned out to be an album originally recorded 20 years ago for the Ritornell label (Mille Plateaux) that was, for reasons unknown now, shelved and forgotten. Over twenty years later, we are now happy to finally share this album with you.
12,50€
In stock
CD
GEINS’T NAÏT
“A Consommer Sans Modération”
Geins't Naït was founded in Nancy, France, in 1986 by Thierry Merigout and Vincent Hachet, both students at the Architecture School of Nancy. A year later Laurent Petitgrand joined the band. Their sound is often described as an equivalent of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten, Coil or Test Dept., but Geins't Naït is not pure classic Industrial. While Geins't Naït offers rough pieces of music as an extension of its punk attitude, Petitgand refines them to create some musicality within the post-industrial collages, adding guitars, piano, and classical instruments. Geins't Naït and Laurent Petitgand sharpen sounds, giving them a kind of balance and density and ensuring that the musical language evokes a deep experience. Their music is raw and fascinating, and largely influenced by Surrealists and Situationists. Their early albums were released by French label Permis De Construire. A Consommer Sans Moderation was originally released on cassette on American label Subterranean Subliminal Subversion Music and was remastered for CD by Martin Bowes of Attrition.
12,50€
In stock
CD
ETANT DONNES
“Les Cents Jours Clairs”
Etant Donnes is a French duo named after Marcel Duchamp's last major work. The group consists of brothers Marc and Eric Hurtado, born in Morocco and working mainly as performance artists and musicians. Their sound can be described as a mix of field recordings, found sounds and sometimes whispered, sometimes violent vocals. They describe their sounds like this: "Through Marc and Eric, it is the volume of each word that becomes an object-sculpture, together with the power of their bodies expressing their voices. Each event is a scream - indeed even the glissando - of the strength of the word that sometimes abruptly becomes a rock, a solid surface, not in the least fluvial, as is the narrative of a tale, novel or poetic epic. With both of them, there is no more trace of ancient prosodies, no more trace of the incomprehensible Sainte-Beuve who could claim: "I have to collect a volume of prose". The word, the voice, the volume take shape with each other, unveiling a theatre that theatre usually ignores, which has given it such things as a Samuel Beckett's Fin de Partie." Over the years Etant Donnes have collaborated with people like Lydia Lunch, Michael Gira, Alan Vega and Genesis P-Orridge. Les Cents Jours Clairs was the group's sixth album and was originally released on Bain Total in 1984.
12,50€
In stock
CD
Sophie AGNEL – Joke LANZ
“Ella”
With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early Nineties to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano. Coming from a Punk music background Joke Lanz started in the mid 80s to play Experimental- and Noise music. Best known for his internationally acclaimed project Sudden Infant, Lanz is presenting his work since 30 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, he is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise. Agnel and Lanz have performed stunning live shows as a duo, now their debut album is coming out on Klanggalerie. Turntables and piano, a unique combination that is a lot of fun!
12,50€
Out of stock
CD
Marja AHTI – Manja RISTIC
“Transference”
In the ever-expanding constellation of transnational electroacoustic collaboration, Marja Ahti and Manja Ristić present Transference, a profound investigation into the movement and transformation of energy between distant practices and places, arriving August 8, 2025 via Erstwhile Records. Transference emerges as what the artists describe as "a dialogue of sonic gestures and traces of visits to places and the spirit that occupies them." This collaboration transcends geographical boundaries to create what they term "a map of subtle and drastic differences, a space where the contours of sound and silence merge, and where listening becomes a collaborative act of discovery and associative intuition."
Marja Ahti, the Finnish-born, Netherlands-based artist whose work has consistently pushed the boundaries of electroacoustic composition and field recording, contributes recordings, electronics, objects, piano, percussion, and bass harmonica to this cross-continental dialogue. Her approach to sound as both material and metaphor has established her as a crucial voice in contemporary experimental music, with previous releases demonstrating an acute sensitivity to the relationship between acoustic space and electronic manipulation.
Manja Ristić, the Serbian sound artist and composer whose practice spans installation, performance, and recorded work, adds her own recordings, electronics, objects, piano, violin, and cello to the collaborative matrix. Her work has long explored the intersection of field recording, electroacoustic processing, and the politics of place, making her an ideal collaborator for this investigation into sonic "transference."
The album's conceptual framework positions itself within what the artists call "the ongoing metamorphosis of the sounding world as we observe it." This philosophical approach suggests that Transference functions not merely as documentation but as active participation in the transformation of sonic materials across time and space. The work "suggests the movement, transformation and metabolization of energy between two practices," creating a feedback loop between distinct artistic approaches and geographical contexts. The production involves Taku Unami's mastering, whose work with artists like Taku Sugimoto and Manfred Werder brings a crucial understanding of silence and space to the project.
Marja Ahti: recordings, electronics, objects, piano, percussion, bass harmonica
Manja Ristić: recordings, electronics, objects, piano, violin, cello
mastered by Taku Unami
14,00€
Out of stock
2 CD
Vanessa ROSSETTO
“Pictures Of The Warm South”
Erstwhile presents Pictures Of The Warm South, Vanessa Rossetto's the seventh Erstwhile release, her second ErstSolo. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, designed by Matthew Revert. Double CD, six-panel digipak. Primarily focused on composing works that draw on a diverse pallet of chamber instrumentation, field recordings, electronics and a wide array of different objects, with a practice that explores each through a combination of extended and traditional techniques, Vanessa Rossetto has been working at the boundaries of the American vanguard for well over a decade, producing beautiful and challenging solo efforts for a diverse number of imprints, including Kye, Another Timbre, No Rent, Erstwhile, and numerous others, as well as collaborations with figures like Michael Pisaro, Sarah Hennies, and Lee Patterson.
22,00€
In stock
CD
Eric LA CASA – Jérôme NOETINGER
“Off Tracks”
Within the expanding territories of electroacoustic investigation and field recording archaeology, Éric La Casa and Jérôme Noetinger present Off Tracks, a profound meditation on absence, decay, and the spectral traces left behind in emptied architectural spaces via Erstwhile Records. This collaboration between two masters of contemporary sound art unfolds as "an exploration of buildings emptied of their activities, a crossing of spaces abandoned by their occupants, a drift through the ghostly trace of a vanished presence," as Noetinger describes it. The work stands as both sonic documentation and philosophical inquiry into the nature of abandonment and the material traces that persist when human presence withdraws.
Éric La Casa, renowned for his meticulous approach to environmental recording and spatial acoustics, joins forces with Jérôme Noetinger, whose work with Metamkine and extensive solo practice has established him as a pivotal figure in the French electroacoustic underground. Together, they navigate the liminal spaces between presence and absence, creating what Noetinger characterizes as "a testimony to the general deterioration underway that also applies to the very medium of recording." Off Tracks emerges from a conceptual framework that positions field recording not merely as documentation but as archaeological practice. The duo's methodology involves careful listening to spaces stripped of their intended functions, revealing the subtle sonic signatures that remain when buildings are abandoned by their occupants. Through precise microphone placement and electroacoustic processing, they uncover what Noetinger calls "the ghostly trace of a vanished presence."
The album's approach to deterioration extends beyond its subject matter to encompass the recording medium itself, creating a meta-commentary on the fragility of both architectural and sonic preservation. This self-reflexive dimension places the work within the broader context of contemporary sound art's engagement with entropy and temporal decay, recalling the investigations of Luc Ferrari and Hildegard Westerkamp while pushing into more abstract territories.
14,00€
In stock
2 CD
Kevin DRUMM
“Sheer Hellish Miasma II”
Kevin Drumm - electronics, tapes, microphone, computer assistance
Greg Kelley - trumpet
26,00€
In stock
CD
Ernst KAREL – Bhob RAINEY
“47 Gates”
Ernst Karel: electronics, recordings
Bhob Rainey: electronics, recordings, piano
on tracks 2 and 4:
Andie Tanning: violin
Carrie Frey: viola
Leila Bordreuil: cello
James Ilgenfritz: bass
Vasko Dukovski: clarinets
mastered by Taku Unami
14,00€
In stock
3 CD
Toshiya TSUNODA – Taku UNAMI
“Wovenland 3”
Wovenland became a band. But we never do live shows. Our band activities are mainly editing in a studio. Our goal is to focus on acoustic experiments. No more and no less. We have been active for a total of about 10 days, including meetings, in 7 years. We are now disbanding.
28,00€
In stock
CD
Choi JOONYONG – Devin DISANTO
“Strange Skills”
The first collaborative work by Seoul-based electronic, sound and noise artist Choi Joonyong and NY-based experimental artist Devin DiSanto. Five tracks.
14,00€
Out of stock
3 CD
Jürg FREY (Reinier van HOUDT)
“Composer, alone”
‘Composer, alone’ is a collection of twelve solo piano pieces by Swiss composer Jürg Frey, performed by Dutch pianist/composer Reinier van Houdt. It is the sequel to the 2022 triple album 'lieues d'ombres' (elsewhere 020-3) and the third collaboration between Frey and van Houdt on elsewhere music. The two have cultivated a close rapport, first documented on 'l'air, l'instant - deux pianos' (elsewhere 014) in 2020.
This three-disc set features a wide range of Frey's solo piano compositions from 1990 to 2024, including his latest piano pieces 'Composer, alone (1)' and 'Composer, alone (2)'. This three-disc album traces Frey's journey over the past 30 years as he explores his voice as a composer through piano works. It reveals how his compositional style has evolved, while also demonstrating that the underlying essence of his compositions remains consistent.
As a pianist who has a deep connection to the music of Frey, van Houdt skillfully reveals the subtleties hidden in Frey's compositions, as he did in 'lieues d'ombres'. Staying true to the composer's vision, van Houdt captures the essence of Frey's diverse piano pieces from the past 34 years while achieving a perfect balance between fragility, warmth, and clarity.
All twelve pieces were recorded by Micha de Kanter at the Muziekcentrum van de Omroep (MCO) in Hilversum over three days in September 2024, in the presence of the composer, and mastered by Taku Unami.
28,00€
Out of stock
CD
Sarah HENNIES (Richard VALITUTTO)
“SOVT”
'SOVT' is an album containing one 55-minute piece, written for piano by Sarah Hennies in 2017. SOVT stands for Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract which refers to vocal exercises that strengthens the voice by helping the vocal cords vibrate more efficiently. One may practice SOVT exercises by singing with a straw in the mouth which regulates air pressure and reduces strain on the vocal folds. Hennies encountered these exercises in a class on so-called “voice feminization” for transgender women which also inspired her other works “Falsetto” and “Contralto."
Almost all the strings of the piano in this piece are muted with Blu-Tack poster putty and this along with the rhythmic language of the piece results in a sound that is a hybrid piano/percussion-like sound. By connecting all the strings with putty, a dramatically rich sympathetic vibration occurs throughout the piano similar to the way in which one feels increased vibration in the mouth and throat by singing through a straw.
SOVT was originally commissioned by R. Andrew Lee and for this recording was performed by richard valitutto, who recorded the work at the Bard College studio in the spring of 2024 with Hennies engineering.
SOVT (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract)
(55:27)
richard valitutto - piano
composed, recorded, and mixed by sarah hennies
recorded march 2024 at bard college, new york
14,00€
In stock
CD
Jürg FREY (Keiko SHICHIJO)
“Les Signes Passagers”
'Les signes passagers' is an album of seven pieces for solo fortepiano written by Jürg Frey in 2021, commissioned by the Amsterdam-based pianist Keiko Shichijo. It was premiered by Shichijo on February 5, 2022 at the Concertgebouw Brugge during the SLOW Festival. In the same year, Shichijo performed the piece again at the November Music 2022 and later recorded it for this album in April 2023 at the Concertgebouw Brugge in the presence of the composer.
“As a listener, I have experienced with music played on early piano instruments for many years. And it has become more and more clear to me how delicate the influence of the sound of the instrument is on the inspiration of the composer.
If the modern piano tries to get a constant brilliance over the whole keyboard, in the fortepiano there are worlds between the middle, the high and the low register. The whole construction of the instrument is so subtle, and every movement, the slightest change in registers and density of chords immediately opens a variety of colors, new perspectives and emotions.” – Jürg Frey
14,00€
In stock
CD
Giovanni Di DOMENICO – Silvia TAROZZI – Emmanuel HOLTERBACH
“L’Occhio Del Vedere”
L'Occhio Del Vedere is a one-hour piece by the trio of Giovanni Di Domenico (piano), Silvia Tarozzi (violin, 1/16th-tone violin), and Emmanuel Holterbach (large frame drum). In July 2022, while Di Domenico was working on an artistic residency at the GMEA in Albi, France, he made a trio recording with Tarozzi and Holterbach, which was later completed by Di Domenico as a one-hour piece.
Within the framework of a "triptych" structure, sparse melodies emerge discreetly and repeatedly from the three instruments, each time with slightly different textures. The delicate sounds created by the three musicians intersect, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes distantly, beautifully delineating a multidimensional expanse of space with a wide dynamic range and a mysterious atmosphere.
“We tried to find the perfect balance of tension and release, of consonance and dissonance - all this forms a very suspended feeling albeit the inside, the core of it, has a warm soul.” — Giovanni Di Domenico
Giovanni Di Domenico: piano
Silvia Tarozzi: violin, 1/16th of a tone tuned violin
Emmanuel Holterbach: large frame drum
14,00€
In stock
LP
AUTOREVERSE (Arnaud Rivière & Nina Garcia)
“Autotunes”
Autoreverse brings together Arnaud Rivière (prepared turntable - we should say damaged or destroyed), a kingpin of the French noise underground as a programmer at Instants Chavirés and Sonic Protest, team player with Otomo Yoshihide, Erik M, and a hundred others, ; and Nina Garcia (guitar & feedback), recently recruited by Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ label after giving the whole of the Paris region a taste for noise guitar solos with her Mariachi project ("Guitar, pedal. That's all’, as his Discogs puts it. What he doesn't say is that it's EVERYTHING - a world, a cosmos in itself) – culminating in a self-titled album and instant classic (Mariachi, No Lagos, 2018), and various collaborations (Maria Bertel, Mamiedaragon).
Their music, already been featured in two live cassettes, stems from assiduous concert practice. Autotunes is something like the duo's core in fission. They throw themselves into improvisation with little patience for detours : the position is clean-cut hardcore – less over-the-top clatter and more about finding the cutting edge, with an insistence on fine-tuning the limits of the instruments, attacking the raw and the gritty with maximum precision: the result is an irradiating flow of rare metals and certified toxins.
In one of the record's many climaxes, bleeps extruded from who knows where battle with the strumming of white-hot guitar strings. But there's a whole host of distinct techniques and sonorities at work here: seamless attacks, amplified scrap metal, just-caught feedbacks, provoked chances, melodies that invite themselves in but don't stay for dinner, rhythmic sketches and glimpsed zones of beauty, built-up and cracked materials, expected and unexpected counterpoints. The intensities vary from start to finish: howling, eruptive bursts of harsh noise microswitchs, shapeless feedback whining and growling, but also more meditative harmonics and resonances.
This is reinforced by the didactic and generous structure of the record, which first methodically exposes the takes played in the studio through ‘horizontal’ sequencing (A1), before repeating the same material ‘vertically’ in a meticulous work of hollowing out and elisions. Autotunes manifests a distinctive ability to maintain an astonishing dynamic in the depths of the post-industrial cavern left by Throbbing Gristle (‘Slug Bait’ period), Maurizio Bianchi and all.
With Autoreverse, it's no longer time to marvel at our various abilities and tactics, but to tighten the mesh. In the way it coolly reviews the possibilities, in its peaceful radicalism, in its attitude of less noise, more impact, this record helps us to conceive what a comrade called once ‘an ethic of our violence’.
(Boomkat)
21,00€
In stock
LP
OPERA MORT
“Le Présent”
Èlg & Jo Tanz’s hard-to-classify project Opéra Mort has been in operation since early moves on Jo Tanz’s tanzprocess label paved the way for a 2010 split release with the legendary Smegma, a cult pair of Reines D’Angleterre sides with august outsider Ghédalia Tazartès, and beguiling works for Luke Younger’s Alter label. On their new album ‘Le Présent’ they typically keep everything ambiguously out-of-reach and etheric in forms comparable to experimental ambient musick, electro-acoustic minimalism, and outsider psych-folk, never fully tilting to any of them, preferring a style of shapeshifting that works beautifully well on the back of calm, shut eyelids.
Through a process of improvisation, active listening, and highly attuned intuition, Opéra Mort proceed to induce hypnotic states of mind that encourage the imagination to wander, following a labyrinthine breadcrumb trail of sonic artefacts and fine timbral detail. Their reticence to supply any explicit cues works to the benefit of suspending the listener’s disbelief, reserving the right to surprise and colour the mind with reeling tapestries of phantasmic, fathomless apparitions.
‘Le Monde’ first splashes on the senses with piquant arps and bass drones coaxed into a lush lather that’s pregnant with theatric dread, threaded with alien whispers on ‘Secrets’, and spangled with spring reverb in the eerily naif creep of ‘L’humanite entiere’. Their organic, fractally shifting collage of tape loops and synths in ‘Oeufs’ feels as though we’re combed backwards below the waves on a dreamlike shoreline, where they metamorphose into discordant, howling rave hoovers and caterwaul with ‘La nouvelle fin du mode’, and the deliquescent lounge music ooze of ‘Damien Schultz’, leaving us with no firm grasp of what the hell we’ve just been listening too, but totally enthralled nonetheless.
(Boomkat)
20,00€