Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's. He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, The Human Arts Ensemble, as well as various Emerging Force Ensembles. Zimbabwe Nkenya (1953-2022), a creative artist and innovative musician, was brought up on army bases in the USA and Spain. He spent 30 years traveling and performing in New York, New Mexico, Arizona and St Louis. playing with a who's who of jazz. In New Mexico he became an integral part of the scene, producing and hosting the KUNM'S radio show "THE HOUSE THAT JAZZ BUILT" . Luckily Malik self released "Time & Condition" in 1982, capturing his work together with Qaiyim Shabazz. It's not just a crate diggers Holy Grail, but an important artistic and historic document of the St Louis scene. Time & Condition stands alone as a (very) individual, spiritual jazz classic. Maurice Malik King - Alto saxophone, voice, & small instruments Qaiyim Shabazz - Congas Drums Zimbabwe Nkenya - Bass Violin

Artistry was Sirone's first album as a leader, recorded in 1978, just after the split of the Revolutionary Ensemble. Artistry has an Atypical combination of instruments, bass, cello , flute and percussion and delivers aplenty. Listen and you will know. Sirone ( Norris Jones) had an enormously prolific career as a bassist, both as a member of the Revolutionary Ensemble and playing with many of the best musicians of the 20th century - from Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Gato Barbieri, Noah Howard, William Parker, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Sonny Sharrock,Marion Brown ... and the list goes on.

Senyawa are a contemporary duo originating from Jogjakarta, Indonesia. Rully Shabara (extreme vocals) coupled with Wukir Suryadi's deft instrumentals (and homemade instruments) produce one of the most profound examples of experimental via traditional music happening anywhere today. By weaving Indonesian folkloric moods with various shades of modern genre hybrids, Senyawa has been navigating unexplored musical terrain for more than a decade. Sujudtheir premier release on the Sublime Frequencies label, is the latest chapter of this very special and singular sound of the past, present, and future. The basic theme of the record can be summed up with one extremely powerful Bahasa Indonesian word, "tanah", which translates to "soil-ground-land-earth". Shabara's vocals are an expressive force, conjuring spirits from the soil with a deep humility and respect for the land and their existence in the universe. Suryadi has built a new guitar for these tracks and pushes the Senyawa sound into new territory, utilizing delay, loops, and other effects creating grounded backdrops of folk metal, punk attitudinal, and droning earthscapes - providing Shabara the perfect context to explore his whispering poetry and jagged, sharp-as-a-kris animistic powers. There is simply no other sound like it and Sublime Frequencies is thrilled to present this new direction in their discography.

Les Disques Bongo Joe are pleased to announce the fourth album of La Tène ! Collaborating for the third time with the band, we're proud to release Ecorcha/Taillee, a two track project in between drone, folk, experimental and occitan music. La Tène’s long, hypnotic, wordless pieces are built from traditional folk instrumentation, wild percussion and blurred, subtle electronic embellishments, and feel as ancient and earthy as those millennia-old artefacts – with all the metal, wood, dedication and craftsmanship they entailed. As on their previous release Abandonnée / Maleja, a double set running to over 80 minutes, Cyril Bondi, Alexis Degrenier and Laurent Peter expand to seven members in total. Cohorts Jacques Puech (cabrette – a small bagpipe associated with the Auvergne region of France), Louis Jacques (cabrette and a larger, 23” bagpipe), Guilhem Lacroux (12-string guitar) and Jérémie Sauvage (bass) each return to add colour, layers and intrigue. Ecorcha/Taillée was recorded in a barn converted into a ballroom and cultural centre which exists to promote the folk music of region Auvergne. Both L’Ecorcha (eighteen and a half minutes long) and La Taillée (just under a quarter of an hour, brevity by this group’s standards) were recorded live and what you hear is a single take, with no editing after the fact. L’Ecorcha goes into space with simple, minimal tools. Beginning with a single, doomy chord circling in perpetuity and a metallic shaker by way of rhythm, a drone of unspecified provenance is joined a little under halfway through by Alexis’ hurdy-gurdy, adding bucolic buoyancy while Laurent uses the wooden surface of his harmonium as an extra percussive source. La Taillée is spikier, danceable even thanks thanks to Cyril’s insistent drumming and the harmonium and hurdy-gurdy moving in a glorious lockstep. If you were to think of the relationship between Lou Reed’s guitar and John Cale’s violin while taking in La Taillée, you wouldn’t be OTT by any means. nspirations, soundalikes and kindred spirits are elusive and fleeting in the case of La Tène. There are a couple specific to Ecorcha/Taillée, both brought to the table by Alexis : a Christian song titled La Passion, collected in 1883 by French folklorist Félix Arnaudin, and a reggaeton hit single from 2022, Saoko by Spanish star Rosalía. La Taillée adapts its crunchy central riff in La Tène’s own image. It’s that link between the past and the future that also rings out in the music of La Tène.  Alexis Degrenier : Amplified Hurdy-Gurdy - Vielle À Roue Amplifiée Cyril Bondi : Percussions - Percussions D’Incise : Indian Harmonium, Electronic, Percussions - Harmonium Indien, Electronique, Percussions Jacques Puech : Cabrette - Cabrette Louis Jacques : Cabrette, 23'' Bagpipe - Cabrette, Cornemuse 23'' Guilhem Lacroux: 12 Strings Guitar - Guitare 12 Cordes Jérémie Sauvage: Electric Bass - Basse Electrique

Infant Tree, August 2025   yan jun, a musician and poet based in beijing.he works on experimental music and improvised music. he uses noise, field recording, body and concept as materials.sometimes he goes to audience’s home for playing a plastic bag.“i wish i was a piece of field recording.”yanjun.org     Eric Wong is a Berlin-based musician and sound artist whose work involves auditory perception and the exploration of human relationships with sonic environments. He often incorporates spatialized sound and reduced expressions in his work, focusing on fewer gestures instead of constructing linear or non-linear sonic narratives. Wong has performed at venues and festivals including Volksbühne (Berlin), Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), Twenty Alpha (Hong Kong), KM28 (Berlin), Ftarri (Tokyo), 411 Kent Avenue (Brooklyn), ausland (Berlin), Record Shop (Brooklyn), Q-O2 (Brussels), PAS (Berlin), Richten 25 (Berlin), Les 26 Chaises (Paris), OTOOTO (Tokyo), Ting Shuo Hear Say (Tainan), Cute Lab (Brooklyn), Moozak (Vienna), Hošek Contemporary (Berlin), Labor Sonor (Berlin), Les 26 Chaises (Paris), Freespace Noise Fest (Hong Kong), Cynetart (Dresden), Internationales Klangkunstfest (Berlin), Blaues Rauschen (Herne), Soundance Festival (Berlin), Festival Experimentelle Musik (Munich), and Sound Forms (Hong Kong). He has released music on labels Edition Wandelweiser, Creative Sources, Inexhaustible Editions, Full Body Massage Records, Lona Records, Sello Postal, Vintage Vinyl HK, Party Perfect!, Aloe Records, and Ftarri.https://www.eric-wong.net/

Infant Tree, August 2025Caius Williams is a musician from London who plays the double bass, guitar, and bass guitar. He works in collaboration with others, alongside an ongoing solo project, and often works with improvisation. Some projects include ‘Crosspiece’ (with Theodora Laird), a duo with guitarist Tara Cunningham, alongside recent performances or collaborations with Lifetones (Charles Bullen of This Heat), Steve Noble, feeo, Daniel O’Sullivan, Mark Sanders, Sachiko M, Tom Challenger, Maggie Nicols, Mark Wastell, amongst others. Caius has been running the GRAIN series at Avalon Cafe in Bermondsey for the last 3 years, which is focussed on programming new and adventurous music and nurturing a growing community with cross-scene and cross-generational collaboration. https://caiuswilliams.bandcamp.com/musichttps://www.instagram.com/caiuswilliams_https://www.youtube.com/@GrainResidency   Tara Cunningham is a guitarist and composer whose work focusses on both improvisation, and pushing the textural boundaries of her instrument. Ongoing projects include; duo with bassist Caius Williams and acid-jazz group Red Snapper. She has also recently recorded part of Jack Cooper’s Modern Nature for their fourth studio album, as well as currently working with drummer Seb Rochford on his latest project for 6 guitars.

Bogancloch is the new film by Ben Rivers. This soundtrack release is an expanded and adapted version of the film’s score produced for cassette, featuring Jake Williams and Alasdair Roberts with sound design and mix by Chu-Li Shewring. It will be available first at the BFI in London on 2 May 2025.Bogancloch is where Jake Williams lives, nestled in a vast highland forest of Scotland. The film portrays his life throughout the seasons, with other people occasionally crossing into his otherwise solitary life. At the heart a song, an argument between life and death, each stating their case to rule over the world. The film is without exposition, it aims at something less recognisable, a different existence of reality observed in discrete moments. A sequel to Two Years at Sea (2011), charting a subtly changing life in a radically changing world.numbered + handmade in an edition of 75 copies with on-body screen print and eco-x slip; each copy contains two-panel foldout with photographs by BEN RIVERS

Xu Shaoyang makes music about the fragmented beauty of everyday life. Over the years, he has sustained a fresh spirit of amateurism by travelling and performing in many different parts of the world, occasionally as a member of the avant-pop group Maher Shalal Hash Baz. His songs are made of simple tunes, sometimes silly sometimes smart, sometimes delivered with a “backing band” of improvising musicians who he met and collected along the way. Sometimes the karaoke worked out musically, sometimes not.In spring 2019, Xu Shaoyang took a trip to East Asia. He performed two gigs in Beijing and Taipei with two small ensembles of local musicians, both taking place in a pedestrian underpass. For this journey, Xu Shaoyang prepared a songbook of 30 tunes he conjured while putting his newborn child to sleep. “When you are putting a baby to sleep, you find yourself having no time to sleep, and that’s when the familiar tunes deep in your heart flow out naturally”, as he explained to the crowd in Taipei.In both gigs, Xu Shaoyang sang these 30 songs with his microphone attached to a FM transmitter. Very different dynamics played out in the North and the South. In Beijing, Zhu Wenbo and Liu Lu smuggled their own composition game into the group jam: the two prepared 30 slips of paper with simple musical themes and instructions, randomly picking one each before a song was played, while a third musician, Ake, joined them with freeform improvisation. The Taipei backing band, consisting of Jyun-Ao Caesar and La-La Reich, improvised along simple principles provided by Xu, to explore the themes of expectations and failures.This cassette provides a documentation of a rare musical journey connecting the two Chinese capitals. Performed live, Xu Shaoyang’s lullabies turned into childish plays of bouncy melodic chaos, unrefined, unsettled, and cheerfully unconcerned. These recordings smell of the sincere joy of collective music making, the joy of connection and communication as well as miscommunication.

In mid-December 2021, Mamer flew from Ürümqi to Shenzhen to play a few booked gigs. Afterwards, he decided to stay on for a marathon music residency at the Old Heaven bookstore. From Dec 13 to 27, Mamer performed 14 concerts in 15 days, unreservedly presenting his vast creative world to a small but dedicated audience, who followed him throughout this journey. These performances were announced on each day with a theme decided often last minute, free admission offered. They were intended to be intimate and spontaneous, or in Mamer’s own word, “rehearsals”. Most of these “rehearsals” were sonically challenging, to say the very least. Years had passed since Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records released the album Eagle, which Mamer is still best known for in the Western world. Yet, among the listeners who followed him through the most recent decade, even the most nostalgic ones had come to the realisation that Mamer had left his “world music” identity long behind. The performances at Old Heaven showcased Mamer’s dialogues with a wild range of eccentric musical traditions, including industrial rock, heavy psychedelia, sample-based electronics, drone, and harsh noise. The Kazakh folk tradition, which predominantly defined the early works of Mamer and his band Iz, was most of the time barely discernible. On the fifth night, however, the audience found Mamer sitting alone with a nylon string guitar, delivering what would become one of his quietest public performances of the past decade. The night started gently with a reinterpretation of “Love”, a 90s ballad by Kazakhstani rock group Roksonaki, and it went on placidly, releasing into the air melodies from both folk songs and pieces originally composed for traditional Kazakh instruments. The setlist spans across centuries. Among others, it includes a dombra kui written by Ashim Dungshiuly, early 20th century master from Ili, and an ancient piece for sıbızğı (a sideblown flute) believed to be composed by Korkut Ata, the great hero in Turkic mythology. For Mamer, this is a songbook of memories. These tunes were once heard repeatedly on the radio during his youthful days in Xinjiang, and they all came back to him on this quiet winter night. The nylon guitar calmly inhaled in his hands, breathing out cold, whirling melodic currents, trailing around and round through personal and collective histories. In Kazakh language, “awlaⱪ” is a root word that denotes the state of being “off”, signifying an existence from afar and away. The word “awlaⱪta”, which Mamer uses to title one of his original compositions performed that night, literally means “outside” or “elsewhere”. In a more subtle sense, “awlaⱪta” implies a condition of sustained liminality, a voluntary exile of being a stranger in a strange land. This condition is one that has to do with the will to departure, the longing for a different place, and an utter resistance to the ease of belonging. For Mamer, it serves duly as an artist statement, but that night, the solitary drifter re-encountered home. Still Mamer refused to go gentle into the good night. After the last song, he grabbed an unused guitar pickup from the ground, and pressed it to his throat. With intense pitch shifting on the effect pedals, he summoned a long, ghostly howl, piercing through the tranquillity in the atmosphere. Amid resounding echoes, Mamer walked off the stage, on towards the next night.

Noising Sheng documents Zhang Meng’s attempt to reinvent the Chinese sheng into a noise instrument. Since ancient time, the sheng has been associated with the virtue of “he” central to Confucian ethics, denoting peace, harmony, and conciliation. In the family of Chinese wind instruments, the sheng is a rare member who is able to fix to a certain tune unaffected by playing, and to play multiple notes at the same time. In an ensemble setting, it often functions on the one hand as a standard-pitch instrument for tuning, and on the other hand as a basic accompaniment instrument holding the collective sound together. The sheng was never a solo instrument in its traditional role. It is supposed to sound steady, modest, and eminently decorous. Zhang Meng inherits a devotion to the instrument from his father, a professional sheng artist. For over two decades, Zhang Meng has performed his sheng in Chinese folk orchestras, contemporary classical ensembles, and rock bands, his regular collaborators ranging from avant-garde composer/conductor Tan Dun to beloved folk rock group Wu Tiao Ren. Yet, as his relationship with the sheng deepens, he feels increasingly uneasy with the stereotypical roles assigned to the instrument. On February 3, 2024, Zhang Meng performed a solo concert at Trigger, a new underground space co-managed by Shanghai noise artist Torturing Nurse. For the concert, Zhang Meng wrote the following: “Nowadays, this implication of ‘harmony’ of the sheng inevitably strikes me as ironic… as a sound-producing medium, the sheng can sound dirty and raw, it should be able to 'curse'. Although there are quite a few modernist pieces for the sheng that explore its unconventional aspects, they are mostly written by composers who aren’t skilled at playing it. Sentiment aside, I think they lack a genuine understanding of the sheng as an instrument. This is why I try to approach the sheng with an experimentalist spirit, to ‘noise’ the sheng as much as possible. I choose not to use any effects pedals so that all moods are expressed only through the sheng’s original tone, and they are not all supposed to be ‘noisy’... At the concert, I played a track of the typically lyrical sound of the sheng on a pre-recorded cassette, and I played my sheng alongside. If you insist on asking why, take it as a struggle between the real and the hypocritical.” Noising Sheng documents the whole concert throughout. The performance was half-improvised upon a written script, showcasing Zhang Meng’s virtuoso performing techniques and sharp theatrical sensibilities as a composer. Yet it is carefully staged in a way that the protagonist is not the performer, but the instrument itself. In a crescively charged space of revolving tensions, the sheng mutters, splutters, and bawls, setting free its eerie expressive potential from under a long historical shadow. Noising Sheng is a self-conducted piece of post-irony delivered with gentle earnestness. In a time when “noise” is becoming more and more performative, still it gives it a try to take noise seriously.

Simultaneously casual and sincere, Deng Boyu’s latest output on cassette, Tractor Academy, is both a tongue-in-cheek teaser and a wildly romantic postscript to his upcoming solo LP. The eight songs here unveil the instinctual id beneath the electronic alter ego of Deng Boyu, known primarily as the ever-present drummer in China’s young and vibrant scene of free jazz and improvisation. This is one of a kind Northern Chinese IDM lit up by a whimsical touch of nostalgia. The sound textures – created by a toolkit comprised of a vibrator, a gong, and various metal objects – are distinctively dumb and dusty; the compositions are freewheeling in form, but heavily loaded with noise and personal history. It is a misfunctioning time capsule, what you'll get travelling back to a Disco dancehall of early ‘90s Inner Mongolia – where Deng Boyu first felt the thrill of the groove in his troubled adolescence – and doing a lavish Autechre dakou DJ set in it. So please sit back and relax, now that IDM has long lost its association with human intelligence, let’s hear Deng Boyu tell that old joke again. *You will find the first half of “Transmission Pt. 2” (Track 1) in Deng Boyu’s upcoming LP, Chimney Complex, to be released by Chinese label Badhead later this year. --- Dusty Ballz is a London-based label that releases Chinese underground music on cassette tapes. The term originates in an old Soviet joke, which somehow still speaks to the situation today. --- All music by Deng Boyu Woodcut by Tiemei Calligraphy by Zhao Sancai

– limited edition of 100 copies – grey graphite cassette shell with UV printed title – double-sided full-colour 4-panel j-card – housed in a transparent norelco case On their debut album (ii), London & Vienna-based duo Bara & Isa present their singular version of devotional music. Described by the duo as a "sort of document of personal development, and also the struggles of everyday motions", this is music which embraces contradictions. Themes of reflection, acceptance and care sit side by side with notions of spiralling and falling, as Bara & Isa explore the nuances and complexities of quotidian life. Working with a rich sound palette of organ pipes, electric organ, voice notes, field recordings, vocals, harp, chimes, tuning forks, singing bowls, bells and flute, the duo slow-cooked and composed these beautiful songs between 2021 and 2024, mostly by exchanging digital files (initially during the pandemic and now between cities). And that's exactly what this music sounds like: a digital call with a loved one, glitching, slowed down, disembodied, yet heartwarming and comforting. Mesmerizing, inviting and bewildering all at once.

Extremely limited edition cassette with UV printed tapes and a hand painted element on the clear cases. Edition of only 100 tapes! Bob Bellerue - zither, harmonica, whistling, gourds, electronics, feedback Katie Porter- bass clarinet No Edits or Overdubs Eternities is an intuitive collaboration between bass clarinetist Katie Porter and sound artist Bob Bellerue. Their work is inspired by deep presence, resonant feedback, melodic drone, and overtone magic, in the fluid realm between intention and indeterminacy. They use harmonic tones from wind instruments played within feedback systems to create multidimensional spectral drones. This release is live recordings from 2023 and 2024 full of lush clarinet timbre and organic modulations and deformations stretching across two tracks of this remarkably consistent "noise" duo. Physical edition is a lovely small run of 100 UV printed cassettes in a clear hand printed case.

A very limited and small run of cassettes of this wonderful concert featuring original spatialization cues by Tim Bradlely on the cassettes and insert, plus some additions to the cases themselves that are unique for each cassette.Additional letters and notes from Brown, Reynolds, and Bradley provide context for the music on this lost gem. Special numbered edition of 100 tapes. The difficult to classify musical practice of Don Brown & Dan Reynolds is presented here in this unauthorized 2008 live recording of an 8 piece ensemble realizing 4 different compositions at a Grange Hall in Gresham, Oregon. An outstanding group of musicians/others, who were very active in the Portland region during the time and receptive to the ideas of Brown and Reynolds, assembled to record these 4 works which were composed decades apart. An essential piece of the Brown/Reynolds/Old/Holy music puzzle that Sacred Realism is thrilled to bring to a larger audience, the music on this recording has many references and no peers. personnel: kn harlock mark kaylor jean-paul jenkins taylor aslong aglipay thor vergotis caryl kientz andrew lafkas joe foster

'Soothers' collects two long-form pieces from Russell Walker, walking the line between melancholy and disquiet firmly rooted in the doldrums of British suburbia.'It'll Be Fine, Rob', a debut collaboration between Russell and Malvern Brume, presents the story of a hire-a-van journey from mundane hell rich with bitterness, cynicism and delusions of grandeur. A darkly humorous tale which drifts from bowels of unnerving drones that ebb to keys of tender melancholy at the deft hands of Malvern Brume's instrumentation. The piece, a clear foreshadow of a man's evening destined to collapse into pitiful stupor throwing chips at pigeons with fervent spite and sorrow, is a natural pairing between two stalwarts of contemporary British experimental music.The B-side presents a 2018 live performance mixed live by John Hannon, offering another excursion through bleak landscapes with peculiar stillness. Nightmarish qualities decorate the playful half-hour performance; audible croaks and screeches collide with nursery rhymes wittered by Russell's young son whilst caustic keyboard burns forward. An utterly distinct, one-of-a-kind performance exploring corners where, typical of Russell's touch, darkness sits confidently alongside glimmers of humour and solace.

Sparse downer stuff from the great People Skills aka Jesse  from Eyes of the amaryllis

The duo of Samantha Flowers and Tyler Hicks have been perfecting their dulcet tones for over ten years now. Combining, as if in a cauldron, blender, or analogous mixing device equal parts Detroit basement blues, Wackie's style studio murk magic and an old hard drive packed to the brim with Mutant Sounds downloads, they have managed something truly rare in this most dismal of decades: sonics recognizably their own. These Kosmischen Kuriere also excel at another uncommon trait given time/place, restraint, the release in question being their first transmission since the 2021's excellent Obe Ready on Easy Listening. Zep Tepi finds our heroes in fine, dare I even say refined form, graduating from the same Berlin School that counts J.D. Emmanuel, Didier Bocquet, Osidarta &c.; among its esteemed alumni. This is no mere retro voyage to yoga studios or Emeralds gigs of yore though, there is something deeply unwell, the surface sheen cracking up somewhere along the tape's third track, as swirling dread electronics bore a hole straight to Hades. What begins as celestial junket veers towards a grotesque hall of mirrors, your regret-laden past and bleak future joining forces in mocking salute (this could simply be projection though, astral or otherwise). Backmasked synth patches, muted analog gurgle and the buzzing from a disconnected rotary dial serve as lubricant to pry open the listener's third eye, and the contents therein will please anyone who's wantlist has ever featured its share of guys who look like (and very well may have been) pre dot-com crash computer programmers and/or gatefold sleeve art depicting chess boards floating in deep space. By the final crystalline (both in terms of shimmering acoustic character and resemblance to SAB's 1978 album on Vanity, obviously) pulses of the seventh untitled mini-epic the event horizon has been breached, full ego death attained. Grade A head music from stem to stern. -- Thomas D'Angelo, Feb. '25 Regional Bears, March 2025

Looking for something out on the Chilterns, Philadelphian Christian Mirande persuaded Loiners Kieron Piercy and Anna Peaker to join him on the search. Guided by a hallucination of a Victorian cave full of grape lights, three friends venture into the heart of Tory weekend wreckage and found Pimms fueled madness and bunting choking out the working class. It produced 8 tracks of concrete, processed field recordings and acoustic flourish tracked in a cottage; glued with vari-mu compression and deep friendship.Go Birds!Regional Bears, March 2025 released March 11, 2025