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Yvan ETIENNE
“Les Météores du Cœur”
Yvan Etienne develops a work that takes the form of sound «things», installations, performances/concerts, video projections, lights and editions. Conceived as spaces, moments to experiment, his works are generally related to contexts, climates induced by the specificities of the sites and/or the supports invested. Work is done with acoustic, electronic and phonographic instruments, it is at the intersection of
composition, performance and installation. Sound, evoking the auditory or imaginary places, his arrangements probe the processes of perception, memory and psyche.
He co-directs the editions «oh cet echo» at Les Presses du Réel, (writings, catalogues and monographs about sound art, music and intermedia fields), and teaches sound practices at «HEAR» (Fr).
(Collaboration w/ La Novià, Paul Panhuysen, Phill Niblock, Robert Poss, Marie Verry, Brice Jeannin, Patrice Grente, Richard Glover, Yann Gourdon...)
13,00€
In stock
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Jean-Luc GUIONNET
“Tournures Cessent / Tournures Cessent Orchestrales”
Tournures Cessent 29:50
Electroacoustic composition by Jean-Luc Guionnet.
Commissioned by INA GRM for PRÉSENCES ÉLECTRONIQUE (2016).
Tournures Cessent Orchestrales 30:51
Composition for orchestra by Jean-Luc Guionnet.
Played by Onceim and Motus.
Commissioned by La Muse en Circuit (CNCM).
Played by ONCEIM & MOTUS (2019-2020).
Recorded on the 5th of october 2021 by Olivier Lamarche
& Jean-Luc Guionnet, in Théâtre de Vanves.
13,00€
In stock
CD
VOMIR
“Energia Exhausta”
Recorded live on an almost dead guitar amp.
Cover by Lise Barkas
Layout by Francisco Meirino
11,00€
In stock
CD
NURSE WITH WOUND – Diarmuid MacDIARMADA
“Lung Oysters”
The legendary Nurse With Wound, helmed by the visionary Steven Stapleton, returns with Living Oysters, a mesmerizing collaboration with Irish experimental musician Diarmuid Mac Diarmada. A heady freerange mix of krautrock, experimental and toe tapping psychedelia, leaning towards a slightly more rock orientated sound that pushes the project into exciting new territories while maintaining its characteristic otherworldly presence. Regular Nurse With Wound members Colin Potter, Andrew Liles and Matt Waldron are all on board with the added voice and talents of Irish artist and poet Tara Baoth Mooney, creating a rich tapestry of sound that breathes with aquatic fluidity and surreal sonic landscapes. The collaboration emerges as a testament to the enduring power of experimental music, where Stapleton's decades-spanning mastery of avant-garde composition meets fresh perspectives and innovative approaches to sound design.
Living Oysters suggests living, breathing entities—sounds that pulse and evolve with mysterious rhythms and deep-ocean consciousness. Drawing from Nurse With Wound's rich history of musique concrète and sound collage techniques, the album incorporates field recordings, manipulated instruments, and electronic processing to create immersive soundscapes that feel both ancient and futuristic. The tracks unfold like subaquatic expeditions, where familiar sounds become strange and alien through careful processing and layering, existing in a liminal space between waking and dreaming, between the organic and the constructed.
15,50€
In stock
CD
MOULDYCLIFF – POTTER – MOULDYCLIFF
“Canopies & Cathedrals”
Canopies: A roof-like covering of trees enclosing a large or wide natural space.
Cathedrals: Large edifice usually of stone, enclosing space reserved for spiritual contemplation.
Vertical structures that strive for light and open spaces, defying gravity, and reason.
A Tarkosvsky-esque transcendence of spirit and nature, time imprinted on an intertwining of sap and stone, branch and pillar, column, and trunk.
This third MPM release is co-written by Phil and Jackson Mouldycliff, with studio treatments (mixing, mastering, and arranging) by Colin Potter. Additional field recordings used in the composition were provided by Dave Carson. It accompanies an installation under the same title, with visual material by Phil, Dave, and Sarah Robinson, to be shown at Wells Cathedral in the summer of 2025.
The extended ambient piece weaves together found sounds from the interiors of ecclesiastical buildings and both temperate and tropical forests. The composition features bells, organ, choirs, wind through vegetation, birds, insects-both real and imagined. These elements are further layered with synthesised and sampled sounds, creating a seamless soundscape that embodies the connection between nature, architecture, and memory.
11,50€
In stock
CD
Rhodri DAVIES & Alfredo Costa MONTEIRO
“Widdershins”
A new CD of a live performance by these two talented improvisers. The interplay between them is, to use a cliche, telepathic. Whilst it's often difficult to figure out who is doing what, the gelling of the sounds is perfect, going from meditative to intense, smooth to harsh (but not abrasive). Improvisation at it's best - highly recommended!
Recorded live on 24th May 2024 in Barcelona
Rhodri Davies : Amplified harp, electronics
Alfredo Costa Monteiro : Amplified objects & electro-acoustic devices
Mixed by Alfredo Costa Monteiro
Mastered by Colin Potter
REVIEW by Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly : The biggest surprise here is not the music but the label. I would expect such fine talents in improvised music to find their home within their musical field, say, a label like Confront. But it's on Colin Potter's ICR label, home for Potter's music, Andrew Liles, Nurse With Wound and others related to these projects. Alfredo Costa Monteiro and Rhodri Davies don't seem to be from this family. They recorded this piece on May 24, 2024, in Barcelona, with Davies on amplified harp, electronics and Monteiro on amplified objects & electro-acoustic devices. These aren't the most conventional instruments, and the results aren't all too traditional; at least, most of the time. The amplification is used to generate drone-like sounds, with pickups being amplified, and mechanised objects and electrical currents are incorporated into the music. Whatever these amplified objects are, we don't know, and I thought that would be a good thing; it leaves a lot to imagine there. I can't even hazard a guess, or perhaps I never tried in the first place. I sat back and enjoyed this work all the same. Based on what I heard, I'd say there might be one or more sound effects at work, but maybe it's all to do with the careful placing of microphones and a clever mix of microphone and line recordings here. At least, again, that's what I imagine here. The music is far from noisy, or all too tranquil for that matter, yet always with some force played. Here too, the buzzing of drones, no matter how quiet they are, is always present, in whatever changing form. And, sometimes, the music has a pleasant, violent feel, such as around the 25-minute mark. Whatever happens, the music never stays in the same place too long, constantly changing and moving, looking for the next sweet spot. This goes on for about 40-some minutes, and then the possibilities are exhausted. The listener (me) wasn't exhausted and wished for some more.
11,50€
In stock
CD
Nicolae BRÎNDUȘ
“Match / Soliloque 1&4 / Antifonia”
This album originally released on Electrecord’s RCM (Romanian Contemporary Music) series in 1986 provides a selection of works which belong to his cycle PHTORA (1968-1972). The cycle comprises five pieces which are five degrees of structuring collective improvisation, leaning towards the spectralist tradition.
It’s probably the most eccentric record in the whole RCM series, offering a mesmerizing collage of organized cacophony, as a massive but subtly layered whirlwind of abstract orchestral improvisations, Romanian picturesque folklore and free jazz with extensive use of tape manipulation and reverberation.
This reissue comes with the beautiful original sleeve artwork by Ana Golici who designed many sleeves for Electrecord.
16,00€
In stock
CD
Rafael TORAL
“Traveling Light”
From out of the dark, the crackle of feed back birdsong signals a return to the land of sound environments exclusive to the music of Rafael Toral. A year and a half after his epochal electric guitar album, Spectral Evolution, Traveling Light finds him sharpening his focus, moving boldly from abstract forms to concrete compositions in the form of a set of jazz standards.
Based on Toral’s discography, this may seem an unlikely endeavor, but happily, Traveling Light transpires to be one of the major accomplishments in his long history, expressing these songs on their own terms through the unique listening lens of his music. It’s nearly a century since the innovation that electrified the guitar, almost a century since the era of songs like “Easy Living” and “Body and Soul.” Since then, guitars and songs have been played hundreds of different ways by thousands of diverse individuals. After a century of progress, they probably should sound like something else again! And they do, as Toral sidesteps the traditional logic of how to play a song, moving outside the framework with which one would expect a standard to be treated.
Three decades ago, in the early years of his practice, Toral used the guitar as a generator, to create discreet texture and droning tones. Later, he abandoned the guitar entirely, focusing on self-made electronics to render his music, and the silence from which it came, with a post-free jazz perspective. For the music of Spectral Evolution and Traveling Light, Toral has combined his methodologies, radically expanding the space within their harmonies with his self-made machines, while engaging directly with his instrument and the chords of the material. The result is a listening experience of these standards, that remains “in the tradition,” even as the elongated harmonies seem to alter time such that, as Toral notes, “the chords become events on their own.” At points, the long tones animate the sacred ennui of liturgic music, the choir or the organ standing in for silent contemplation while rumbling the ground beneath our feet. Another echo of the concentric circling of music in time...
Further time-loops emerge throughout the duration of Traveling Light. The simple, organic quality of these reshaped songs and sounds, arranged by Toral for guitar with sine waves, feedback and bass guitar forms a proxy orchestra of sorts! One of Toral’s self-made devices incorporates a theremin — another near-century old innovation in electronics conceived for use in classical music — to modulate feedback melodies here. Meanwhile, this altered space is visited by canonical jazz sounds on four tracks, as clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro each guest on one song. In this new landscape, history and tradition are exemplified, like a toast to Earth cultures made on the alien terrain of Mars.
In every contour of Traveling Light’s path — arrangement, improvisation and production — the spring of the old pours through the new in an unstoppable flow. This is the sound of life, a nexus point for the music of the last century and the music ever unfurling toward the far horizons of the next century.
16,50€
In stock
CD
Kali MALONE + Drew McDOWALL
“Magnetism”
Kali Malone and Drew McDowall present Magnetism, their first collaborative album born from a decade-long friendship and ignited by a single day of creative synergy. When Malone stepped into McDowall’s Brooklyn home studio, a shared vision immediately took root and set the course for a remarkable collaboration between these two singular artists.
On Magnetism, Malone’s poignant and evocative melodies manifest through McDowall’s signature timbral synthesis, creating a unified voice that soars freely and radiates with vitality. Technically, the duo employs an exquisite blend of Karplus-Strong synthesis, distortion and just intonation. Kali and Drew embrace these tools with refined grace while moving fluidly within their musical framework. Charged by the magnetic pull of repetition, saturation, and resonance, Magnetism pulses as a living music that captivates the senses and lingers long in the mind after the final notes fade.
17,00€
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
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
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€
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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€
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
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
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
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€
Out of stock
CD
Ellen ARKBRO
“Nightclouds”
Ellen Arkbro’s fourth album, Nightclouds, collects five improvisations for solo organ, recorded across Central Europe in 2023–24. Nightclouds is more unabashedly Romantic and introspective than her previous efforts, though it remains firmly rooted in the rigor and precision that have come to define Arkbro’s concept. Extending her previous explorations of spatialized harmony, tactility, and texture, Arkbro draws equally on sacred music, ECM–style jazz, and downtown minimalism, conjuring a cool intimacy and tone. Her decelerationist chordal improvisations envelop the listener in dirge-like washes, while her close miking reveals the rough haptic grain of the reeds, bringing the listener both inside and outside the sound. Evoking Kjell Johnsen and Jan Garbarek’s duets, or La Monte Young and Tony Conrad’s take on Euringer and Harmer’s cowboy song “Oh Bury Me Not,” Nightclouds channels spiritual pathos through a rigorously restrained architecture.
Following up on last year’s Sounds While Waiting (W.25TH, 2024), a selection of stereo mixes documenting Arkbro’s spatial organ installations, Nightclouds (her first for Blank Forms and for co-publisher La Becque Editions) shifts direction, focusing on instant composition and improvisation. Elegant, simple chordal scaffolds support rich, ever-shifting textures; listening closely necessitates surrender to sustained irresolution. Bookending a collection of short pieces are two variations on the titular composition, “Nightclouds,” which capture Arkbro performing simultaneously on the Sauer organ and Utopa Baroque organ at Orgelpark in Amsterdam. The composition is a sly nod to British jazz guitarist Allan Holdsworth: The first take slows down and stretches out a continuously modulated harmonic progression, while the short closing version simply loops three chords. Situated between these tracks are “Still Life” and “Chordalities,” two short works recorded at the Temple de La-Tour-de-Peilz in Vevey, Switzerland, where Arkbro spent a summer stay and additional recording stints at La Becque | Artist Residency. While the former registers only a few subtle changes against a sustained chord, “Chordalities,” played entirely on the organ stops, unspools in a billowing progression, culminating in a modernist angularity absent from the other compositions. The second half of the album is given to “Morningclouds,” a sprawling work recorded in the reconstructed Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) in Berlin. Whereas the shorter works are harmonic studies, “Morningclouds” foregrounds Arkbro’s attention to form and structure, interweaving two returning themes that are reminiscent of her approach in For Organ and Brass (Subtext, 2017). Arkbro’s concise musical vocabulary and formal architecture evoke a sense of emotional ambivalence, simultaneously uplifting and mournful, guiding the listener through a spectrum of feeling with a cool and distant beauty. Nightclouds stands as a profound statement in Arkbro’s evolving body of work, at once introspective and expansive, the album reaffirms her singular ability to transform harmonic simplicity into deeply affecting sonic landscapes, inviting listeners into a space of contemplation and emotional depth.
Ellen Arkbro (b. 1990) is a composer, musician, and sound artist working with precision-tuned intervallic harmony and installation. Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, synthetic sounds, and combinations of the two. Despite her works’ scale and precision, the result is rarely a dry exercise in process; Arkbro draws from a vivid array of musical vocabularies—namely, her studies with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Jung Hee Choi, and Marc Sabat; jazz and blues scales and pop modalities; electroacoustic music and sound synthesis; and her time in Catherine Christer Hennix’s Kamigaku Ensemble. She originally trained as a singer with a focus on jazz, changed paths to study at the Elektronmusikstudion (EMS), and ultimately received a degree in Electroacoustic Music Composition at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. Her work has been supported by residencies at Somerset House in London, Blank Forms in New York, La Becque Résidence d’artistes in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland, and the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York, as well as numerous grants, including the ten-year work grant from the Swedish Arts Council. She has presented her site-specific work at Barbican in London, Kölner Philharmonie, Serralves in Porto, Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, Silent Green in Berlin, Ina GRM in Paris, and Tempelaukkio Kirke in Helsinki. In all aspects of her practice, Arkbro focuses on the qualities of harmonic sound that reveal listening as an active process of creative participation, inviting the listener to gradually transform into the sound itself.
18,00€
Out of stock
CD
Hanne LIPPARD – Ellen ARKBRO – Hampus LINDWALL
“How Do I Know If My Cat Likes Me?”
Hanne Lippard, Ellen Arkbro, and Hampus Lindwall’s How do I know if my cat likes me? is an existential meditation on the empty expanses of our automated everyday—corporatized minimalism tinged with cool formalism, structured by the deft deployment of sonic and lyrical repetition. By untethering sound from meaning through a pleasurably numbing cycle of repetition, the album satirizes the stultifying aesthetics of alienated life—from hold music to online banking—with a prim, deadpan delivery.
Conceived when Lippard and Arkbro were both in residence at La Becque in La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland (and recorded in part on the organs of that same town’s Temple Saint-Théodule), How do I know if my cat likes me? is a long-awaited collaboration from the trio they formed with Lindwall. Throughout, Arkbro and Lindwall’s ascetic organ accompaniment provides a tonal landscape that is both intuitive and enigmatic, while Lippard’s recitation ensnares the listener in a tautological customer-service loop where language shifts from pure function to pure aesthetic. How do I know if my cat likes me? opens with an interpretation of Phil Harmonic’s classic 1978 composition “Timing,” originally written for and performed by “Blue” Gene Tyranny. Harmonic, a Cagian who resisted the authoritarian strictures of notation, wrote a piece that invites the performer to make “subtle and thoughtful changes” based on pre-recorded audio cues—“Change now”—designed to capture his idiosyncratic sense of timing. “The Long Goodbye” imagines an unending dialogue between automated acquaintances who try to politely disengage with the same few parting words, perpetually on the verge of separation. Meanwhile, “Modern Spanking” paronomastically free-associates from sterile conveniences to illicit erotics. Drifting from “online banking” to “breathing down your neck banking” and “sexy, but bankrupt, banking,” it sketches a world of perfunctory pleasures whose sadism is more indebted to Jamie Dimon than Marquis de Sade. The album wraps up with a rendition of “At Last I Am Free,” Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers’ disco breakup anthem, notably reinterpreted by Robert Wyatt as a world-weary yet triumphant protest song. Amid the monotonous absurdities of How do I know if my cat likes me?, “At Last I Am Free” takes on a haunting irony. With its eternally ambiguous refrain—“I can hardly see in front of me”—the song calls into question the very fact of freedom (perhaps as an antidote to Harmonic’s Cagianism). Existential angst dissolves into hypnagogic detachment.
How do I know if my cat likes me? recalls David Rosenboom and Jacqueline Humbert’s Daytime Viewing (1979–80) (Unseen Worlds, 2013), a highly stylized, puckish stream of soap-operatic scenes and sales channel segments, punctuated by Humbert’s listless narration and Rosenboom and Willie Winant’s drum machines, claves, and maracas. The album also nods to Paul DeMarinis’s Songs Without Throats (Black Truffle, 2019), a compilation of tracks from the 1970s in which all the lyrics are recited by Speak & Spell machines. Constantly poking at the porous membrane between sound and meaning, poetry and song, or playful irreverence and existentialism, How do I know if my cat likes me? is a portal into a fantastical, unforgettable, organic-synthetic world.
Hanne Lippard is an artist who has been using language as the raw material for her work for the last decade, processing it in the form of texts, vocal performances, sound installations, printed objects and sculpture.
Ellen Arkbro is a composer, musician, and sound artist working with precision-tuned intervallic harmony and installation. She focuses on the qualities of harmonic sound that reveal listening as an active process of creative participation, inviting the listener to gradually transform into the sound itself.
Hampus Lindwall is an artist, organist, and composer. Since 2005, he has been the Titular Organist in Saint-Esprit, Paris.
18,00€
Out of stock
CD
Hampus LINDWALL
“Brace for Impact”
An album of contemporary composition for the organ, drawing influence from everything from Xenakis to metal to rave.
For Hampus Lindwall, the pipe organ is a playground. The organist and composer makes music that explores its textures and resonances, using it as both a vehicle for powerful chords and delicate rhythmic lattices. On Brace for Impact, he presents five pieces that highlight his experimental approach to the instrument, foregrounding off-kilter rhythms and tumultuous melodies. His music is eerie and light, ancient and futuristic, in equal measure. By experimenting primarily with the textural aspects of the organ, he showcases the instrument’s remarkable flexibility.
"Though the organ’s origins trace back centuries, it’s a main player in the current contemporary classical and experimental music scene. Many leading composers work with organ drones: take the limitless harmonies of Ellen Arkbro, or the haunted whispers of Sarah Davachi’s endless hums, for example. Lindwall carves his own path on the instrument, asking how he can use it to play dance music rooted in the sound and texture of the organ. ‘90s raves, after all, were how he got started in music. With Brace for Impact, he seeks to show how the organ, too, can embrace the freedom and vibration of the dance floor.
Syncopation is the most distinctive aspect of the five pieces on Brace for Impact, often driving its unconventional structures. No two rhythms feel the same, nor do they loop in step; instead, they’re a little off center, and always running at full speed. They buzz beneath his organ’s longer tones, always ready to pounce, or veer, or transform. This is most evident on tracks like ‘AFK’, a chaotic repeating pulse fit for a late-night rave, and ‘Swerve’, which builds from an uncanny beat that feels like electrified water droplets falling just out of pace.
What makes these patterns stand out is Lindwall’s embrace of dissonance. His ever-evolving vibrations often clash; his melodies and harmonies often foreground dissonant intervals. On ‘À Bruit Secret’, for example, Lindwall alternates between bubbling riffs and imposing chords. These collisions drive the music’s feeling of being just a little bit real and unreal at the same time. And then there’s the title track, which is an anomaly from the rest of the record. Here, Stephen O’Malley’s guitar crashes like lightning into Lindwall’s panting runs. They’re two forces, from outside, or above, or below, in a race to the finish line. It’s like a reminder that the present is past and the future is coming whether you want it or not. Why not let the organ, who has seen it all, be the spaceship that takes you there?"
The Quietus
17,00€
In stock
CD
Rafael TORAL
“Sound Mind Sound Body”
Sound Mind Sound Body was inspired in part by the working principles of Fripp & Eno, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first pieces were recorded in 1987; in 1994, a collection was released on Portugal's AnAnAnA, producing an hour’s worth of remarkable sonic equilibrium in this mode. With each subsequent reissue, however, aspects of this sound have been subtly revisited. For the 1998 Moikai CD, "AE 1", one of the earliest pieces conceived, was newly recorded; for the 2018 Drag City LP master, “Textura e Linhas Curvas” was included, "AER 7 E" was re-recorded and the material for "AE 2" was recorded for the first time ever. These performances were executed using the same processes as the original ones. For the current CD, “Loopability II” has been recalled from the AnAnAnA master, “Textura e Linhas Curvas” omitted and yet another brand new version of “AER 7E” inserted in place of the 2018 version. Incredibly, all of these changes augment Sound Mind Sound Body’s expansive intent without altering its essential otherworldly atmosphere.
16,00€
In stock
CD
Rafael TORAL
“Wave Field”
Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.
16,00€
In stock
CD
Stephen O’MALLEY
“But remember what you have had”
With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.
Composed by Stephen O’Malley / Mixed & arranged at GRM studios, Paris, 2022-2024 / Commissioned by INA grm
Electric guitars performed by Stephen O’Malley / Recorded at Applehead Studio, Woodstock by Randall Dunn, September 2022
Winds performed by Hans Teuber (bfl, fl, bcl, cl, tpt) & Stephen Moore (tbn) / Recorded at Studio Litho, Seattle by Floyd Reitsma, September 2022 / Arrangement assistance & conduction by Kali Malone
Premix at La Fugitive, Paris with François-Xavier Gilles & Tristan Mazire, February 2023 / Final stereo mix at GRM studios, Paris with Emmanuel Richier, May & October 2024
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, October 2024 / Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, October 2024
17,00€
In stock
CD
Jim O’ROURKE
“Shutting Down Here”
Shutting Down Here
2019 / 35’13
Recorded at INA GRM and Steamroom
Piano: Eiko Ishibashi // Violin, viola: Atsuko Hatano // Trumpet: Eivind Lonning
Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnittstelle, Berlin, February 2020
Photo by Eiko Ishibashi // Sleeve design by Stephen O’Malley
Special thanks to Francois Bonnet and Jean Schwarz for bookending 30 years
Due to the wide dynamic levels, please adjust your volume accordingly
Shutting Down Here is a special work. Symbolically, it covers a period of thirty years, between two visits by Jim O'Rourke to the GRM, the first, as a young man fascinated by the institution and his repertoire, the second, as an accomplished musician, influential and imbued with an aura of mystery. Shutting Down Here is a piece shaped like an universe, a heterogeneous world in which collides the multiple musical facets of Jim O'Rourke: instrumental writing, field recordings, electronic textures and cybernetic becomings, dynamic spaces, harmonic spaces, silent spans . This variety of approach, strangely, does not in any way weaken the coherence of the whole and this is the talent of Jim O'Rourke, a talent, properly speaking, of composition, where all the sound elements compete and participate to stakes that exceed them and of a common destiny, that is to say of an apparition.
Released in association with Editions Mego.
Coordination GRM: François Bonnet, Jules Négrier
Executive Production: Peter Rehberg
17,00€
Out of stock
CD
ENSEMBLE NIST-NAH
“Spilla”
Black Truffle presents Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah, the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (BT 086CD). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie's long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell's "Uncle," performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell's dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal. Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois' drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together.
14,50€
Out of stock
CD
NURSE WITH WOUND
“Tainted Creampuffs – The Hostess Twinkie Mixes”
This was originally release on Betalactum in 2004 as a limited edition CDR Of 25 copies & as such, was one of the rarerest items in the Nurse discography.
It has been put back together from its original fragmented form & mastered at IC Studio by Colin Potter, who did the mutating of the voice recordings recorded & cut up by Mr. Stapleton a long, long time ago .
Reissued due to popular demand, this is an edition of 300 copies in a digipack with new Santini artwork.
Possibly one of the strangest Nurse releases of all time. And that's saying something.....
15,00€
In stock
CD
Colin POTTER & Jonathan COLECLOUGH
“Carboniferous”
After running IC Studio for over 40 years I’ve accumulated a large store of recordings by both myself and the many people I’ve worked with. I was recently looking for some masters of another band on a hard drive, where I stored tracks that had been transferred from old digital tapes. I noticed the folder ‘Period Remixes’ which I decided to open, as I hadn’t listened to the material for many years. The tracks were remixes of Jonathan Coleclough's 'Period' album, on which I had worked with him when it was released over 20 years ago. These pieces were made before the use of computers became commonplace in studios. They were all mixed live, without editing, using a physical mixing desk and external analogue and digital effects units.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I heard.
And I hope you will be too.
Colin Potter, IC Studio. London 2025
12,00€