First ever vinyl pressing of Gastr del Sol's amazing debut!  . Although simple systems are easier to relate to each other, complex systems also have relationships, albeit on a deeper level. Finely articulated things don't have to be unique.

Pedro Lima was certainly the most iconic singer from Sao Tomé island. Born in 1944, his career began at teenage, with his faithful band Os Leonenses, who were mostly members of his family and shared most of his musical life; and lasted until his death last year on January 31st 2019. Until the very end, he kept performing big events all around the country, and was among the very few singers and bands from Sao Tomé & Principe that recorded in Luanda Angola for N'Gola and Merengue labels in the 70's, and in Lisbon for the essential IEFE imprint in the 80's.Respected father of 27 children from 4 different wives, people named him "A voz do povo de Sao Tomé", the people's voice of the island, as he always made very clear his political views on internal affairs, and backed since day one the revolutionary party that took power after the independence obtained from Portugal on July 12th 1975. A powerful and free soul, expressing through his beautifully soft and deep voice range, the concerns of the poor, in this often troubled country.His funerals were the biggest ever organized on the island, and were paid for by ex-president Pinto da Costa, gathering thousands to accompany him to his last home.His music is wonderfully rich and delicate, though quite minimalistic in arrangements, revealing the subtle melodies of the islands' harmonic and backing vocals traditions, laid on either incredibly energetic Puxa rhythms, or the sweetness of sensual Rumbas.We already made finally available the amazing "N'ga ba compensadora" song, from his cassette only album recorded in 1986, on our Léve Léve Vol. 1 compilation released on January 31st 2020, as a tribute to the first year after his passing. On Maguidala which was recorded in 1985, during his really best period, you will hear the same team of killer musicians that had been playing together for already 20 years by that time. The magnificent ear of his faithful solo guitarist Leopoldino Silva provides heavenly improvisations, embellishing backing vocals and solid Soukouss inspired phrases of 2nd guitarist Pety-Zorro, while the rest of the team delivers intricate rhythms and delightful choirs. Beautifully balanced between two crazy dancing Puxas, and two delicate Rumbas to sooth your soul, all of nearly 10 minutes each; the Maguidala LP is a true masterpiece, so hard to find and reaching crazy figures nowadays for a decent copy.

Intuitive, authentic, and full of ruthless rhythms, Madalitso will make you clap, dance, smile, and rethink everything you thought you knew about African sound and instrumentation.Musakayike, meaning 'don't doubt us', is the second international release from Madalitso Band under Bongo Joe Records. It's the duo shining and enjoying every minute of their time in the studio performing their upbeat music with joyful vocals, four-string guitar, babatoni and cow-skin kick drum. The experience they've had of performing around festival stages and recording in different studios shows in this new album which remains raw, just like Wasalala, but has something new in it. Songs like 'Chikondi Sichiona Nkhope' - 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' show they're still churning out beautiful and meaningful lyrics, and it's a very happy thing to finally have Jingo Janga on an album, since it has been the regular song played for an encore.

Andrew Chalk Christoph Heemann Vikki Jackman Timo van Luijk

EMBRACE 3Side AMagnetron Iⅈ (Polwechsel with Andrea Neumann)‘The collective improvisations are complex, engaging works that one might struggle to distinguish from the other compositions. With the instruments realigned, we might note another element of Polwechsel’s distinct character: a certain willed anonymity. The regular recourse to non-specific electronics, objects and percussion, as well as processing, emphasizes the collective while diminishing the status of specialized virtuosity, itself a potentially limiting factor to creativity.’– Stuart BroomerAndrea Neumann inside pianoMichel Moser celloWerner Dafeldecker electronicsBurkhard Beins percussion, electronicsMartin Brandlmayr vibraphoneSide BQuarz/Obsidian (Burkhard Beins)‘In Quarz, an acousmatic audio piece became the score itself. This basis track, opening/closing sounds of elevator doors introducing always new room ambiences, was given to each musician (including myself) to play/work along without knowing which kind of approach or material the others would choose, nor what I would edit/mix out of all the individual contributions. Without indicating or defining how each musician should react to the “audio score” this method of working nevertheless enabled me to provoke coordinated events/changes and choices of musical material that refer to the same sonic situations, or elements within them. The original reference piece itself does not appear in the resulting piece.For Obsidian, on the other hand, I first “simulated” all sections with audio software using instrumental samples of each player and/or sound created with an analog synth as “placeholder material”. The screenshots of those multitrack sessions I then transcribed into a graphic score to which I added a time scale and some general indications concerning material, dynamics and/or tempo. The actual musical material still had to be found in repeated work phases, where each player was asked to make individual instrumental suggestions/solutions for each situation given by the score.’– Burkhard BeinsMichael Moser celloWerner Dafeldecker double bass, electronicsBurkhard Beins percussionMartin Brandlmayr percussion

Collaboration has always been at the core of Beins’s artistic practice. Reducing the line-up for the project at Morphine Raum to the duo format had pragmatic as well as creative reasons, allowing Beins more flexibility. ‘On a conceptual level, the idea was that I would play with different instruments or with a different set-up each time in order to present the breadth of my current work’, he explains. This notion also informed the selection of his partners, who each bring very different acoustic or electronic instruments as well as varying conceptual approaches into the fold, much like Beins also followed a different methodology for each session and collaborator.

"If this quartet most resembles a jazz band among these Berlin recordings, it might be in its speculative assembly. [...] It’s akin to a novel, Julio Cortazar’s Hopscotch, designed with multiple reading sequences, or Nanni Balestrini’s Tristano, in which the order of paragraphs is different in every single copy." – Stuart Broomer (liner notes) ---Liz Allbee / trumpetJohn Butcher / tenor and soprano saxophonesIgnaz Schick / turntables, sampler, electronicsMarta Zapparoli / tapes, reel to reel tape machine, antennas --- recorded on 30 November 2019 at ausland, Berlinengineered by Andrew Levineedited and mixed by John Butchermastered by Andreas 'Lupo' Lubichliner notes by Stuart Broomerlp design by Yaqin Siinner sleeve photography by Cristina Marx/Photomusixmanufacturing by Daniel Klotz/Die Lettertypenall music by Allbee/Butcher/Schick/Zapparoli

"Kapital Band 1 – Internationale Solidarität” is the third album of Martin Brandlmayr & Nicholas Bussmann. Since their first album “Kapital Band 1 – 2CD" in 2004 the duo explores the possibilities of improvising music with machines. Investigating parallel existences and mimetic affirmations of machine structures and human patterns. For their third album they revised their experimental settings once again. “Internationale Solidarität” is a search between impulse and logic, algorithms and attitudes, false random and real mistakes. Martin Brandlmayr, drumsNicholas Bussmann, robot-controlled grand piano

OTOROKU is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Johnny - a defining statement by one of the greatest ensembles in the history of jazz. Recorded in mid-1987 by Blue Notes - then reduced to the trio of Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums and Chris McGregor on piano - it encounters the band 25 years after their founding embarking on an inward meditation through collective music making dedicated to Johnny Dyani, their former bandmate and friend.  Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962, and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking - gathering, within a few short years, a devoted following that included Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, John Stevens and numerous others - they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed race band under apartheid, this group of friends and like-minded artists - Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo -  existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. In 1964 they joined an exodus of musicians leaving for Europe and eventually settled in London the following year. Sadly, not long after arriving and facing continued economic peril, the group buckled. Johnny Dyani left to join Don Cherry’s band. Moholo-Moholo and Dyani followed suit and joined Steve Lacy on tour, and the remaining members morphed into a number of ensembles that eventually grew to become Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath.    Following the death of Mongezi Feza in 1975 the remaining members of the group had come back together to record Blue Notes For Mongezi, reigniting a sporadic period of activity over the coming years. Following the untimely passing of Johnny Dyani in late 1986, the last three members of the original line-up - McGregor, Pukwana and Moholo-Moholo - reformed to pay tribute to yet another of their fallen brothers.  Blue Notes for Johnny, the group’s second musical memorial to a band member, incorporates a considerably broader range of touchstone and practices than its predecessor, nodding toward the band’s foundations in be-bop and post-bop without abandoning where they had journeyed along the way. Internalising equal elements of hard-bop, modalism, and free improvisation, it is a startling creative statement, imbued with a tension that renders an equally radical and sophisticated challenge; a furious tide - slow in pace and it slow to reveal itself - masquerading in gentler forms.  A celebration and a memorial. Joyous and tragic. A real time resurrection of personal experience, Blue Notes for Johnny dodges, dances, and transforms across its two sides, refusing to be nailed down. As the trio pushes against each other, bristling tonal and rhythmic collisions leave the impression that something is bound to explode, without ever fully letting go.  Blue Notes for Johnny’s memorialisation is unwittingly doubled by capturing the final time that the Blue Notes would come together in the studio. Both Dudu Pukwana and Chris McGregor would pass away three years later in 1990, leaving Moholo-Moholo - who continues to carve a groundbreaking trajectory across the world of jazz - as the last surviving member. The album remains as a journey between an imaged future and the beginning of it all. Six friends meeting and communing through sound. Six friends who had triumphed against the odds, becoming some of the greatest creative voices of their generation. Six friends who were five, then four, and then three, before they were done. Friends who never failed, in whatever form, to come together and play. It is a story begun 60 years ago that remains just as prescient today. --- DUDU PUKWANA / alto sax CHRIS McGREGOR / piano LOUIS MOHOLO / drums  --- This 2022 re-issue has been made with permission and in association with Ogun records. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. All music by the Blue Notes. All music published by Ogun Publishing Co. Cover design by Ogun.

OTOROKU is proud to present the first vinyl reissue of Blue Notes for Mongezi, one of the most passionate celebrations of a life in music ever laid to tape. Recorded in late 1975 by Blue Notes, then reduced to a quartet - Dudu Pukwana on  alto sax, whistle, percussion, and vocals; Johnny Dyani on bass, bells, and vocals; Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, percussion, and vocals; and Chris McGregor on piano, and percussion - and issued the following year by Ogun, the album is a kairos; the first commercial release by one of free jazz’s seminal ensembles, captured them 13 years after their founding - at the height of their powers - delivering an explosive dirge dedicated to Mongezi Feza, their former bandmate and friend.  Blue Notes were founded in Cape Town in 1962 and stand among the most important ensembles in the history of jazz. Artistically brilliant and groundbreaking - gathering, within a few short years, a devoted following that included Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Abdullah Ibrahim, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew,Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, John Stevens, and numerous others - they were also the first widely visible multiracial band in South Africa. As a mixed race band under South African apartheid; this group of friends and like-minded artists - Chris McGregor, Mongezi Feza, Dudu Pukwana, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo -  existed within a context that viewed their mere existence as a dangerous and subversive act. In 1964, as the pressure mounted, they joined an exodus of musicians leaving for Europe, eventually settling in London during the following year. Sadly, not long after arriving and facing continued economic peril, the group buckled. Johnny Dyani left to join Don Cherry’s band. Moholo-Moholo and Dyani followed suit and joined Steve Lacy on tour, and the remaining members morphed into a number of ensembles that eventually grew to become Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath. In late 1975 however, Mongezi Feza - in the midst of a fruitful period collaborating with Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani, and Okay Temiz - suddenly passed away at the age of thirty from pneumonia. Nine days later, on the 23rd December, following the memorial service to their friend, Pukwana, Dyani, McGregor, and Moholo-Moholo gathered in a rehearsal room in London and set out to play. Fittingly, no discussion took place before or during the session. The music was left to say it all.   The resulting double LP coalesced into four long-form movements that occupy a side each, collectively unleashing an onslaught of free jazz fire, fluidly covering a remarkable range of moods and tactical approaches across it’s length. For anyone encountering the Blue Notes for the first time, the album must have felt like being blindsided by a brick, adding a profound sense of credence to Moholo-Moholo’s belief that free improvisation was intrinsically linked to the Pan-African temperament. In the band’s hands, the idiom sounds like nothing else and exactly as it should.  A frenzied funeral dirge, a cry, and catharsis, the record rises and falls between playful and joyous movements of deconstructed song, rhythmic and vocal tribalism, and churning, instrumental free expression. It indicates not only a possible future for musical expression - as all truly avant-garde music does - but also the very roots of music itself, illuminating, through abstraction, the far-flung, ancient roots currently carried by the New Orleans “first line” march to the grave. It is a decidedly African vision of free jazz, coalescing as a collective expression of celebration and loss on a cold London day. It is a masterpiece unfolding in real time - out on a limb and laden with risk - created by four of the most talented voices the idiom has known.   --- DUDU PUKWANA / alto sax, whistle, percussion, vocals CHRIS McGREGOR / piano, percussion LOUIS MOHOLO / drums, percussion, vocals JOHNNY DYANI / bass, bell, vocals and most of the words --- This 2022 re-issue has been made with permission and in association with Ogun records. Transferred from the original masters and featuring an exact reproduction of the original artwork. Remastered by Giuseppe Ilelasi and packaged in a high gloss sleeve. All music by the Blue Notes. All music published by Ogun Publishing Co. Cover design by Ogun.  Front cover photograph and photograph of Mongezi Feza by Geroge Hallet. Blue Notes photograph by Jurg. Back cover photograph by George Hallet and Peter Sinclair. Xhosa translation by Z. Pallo Jordan. Produced by Keith Beal and Chris McGregor. Ogun Recording would like to thank John Martyn for his assistance in making this album possible. Reissue for OTOROKU produced by Abby Thomas. Transferred from the original masters by Shaun Crook at Lockdown Studios. Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Layout for reissue by Maja Larrson.

Via Blank Forms Comes the long overdue, first ever vinyl reissue of The Shadow Ring's seminal 1996 full-length (originally issued by Bruce Russell’s Corpus Hermeticum on CD) 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.

Via Blank Forms Comes the long overdue, first ever vinyl reissue of The Shadow Ring's seminal 1997 full-length (originally issued by Siltbreeze on CD) 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.

Preorder: Released September 5, 2025 Black vinyl • First pressing of 500 copies • Heavyweight printed inner and outer sleeves • Artwork by eun chun • Mastered by Stephan Mathieu and cut at Schnittstelle Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): 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 (어느날): 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 (어느날) belongs to broadening shift in Lee’s approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album’s nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives? This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind. 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. Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee’s Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee’s striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

“In a concert, I show something with a beginning, a middle and an end. But, there is no end. Of course, there is no end. Because I am the music, and I am still here.” - Sophie Agnel  ‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the last 4 decades of her work.  ‘When I was young I had very good ears, oriole absolute. Then later I began to make strange sounds with my piano, to do different kinds of music. I was more interested in the sounds than the melody, for example. I remember once I sat down in a shop to try to read the scores of Schubert and there was a light [emitting] a very strong bzzzzzzz. And I couldn't listen to my oriole internal - I couldn't read the score. I was entirely subjugated by the sound of the light. And I understood that something had changed. Ten years before I could read and not hear the light. Now I understood that my ears were completely different. I was more open to the sounds of life.”  Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel quickly grew tired of the classical world. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the pianos outside and inside.”If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Having absorbed the language of the European avant-garde, Agnel is known for pulling the piano’s interior outside of itself by tipping her handbag into it. But these ‘strange sounds’ don’t just come from Cage - they also share the poetic force of Cecil Taylor and ‘Learning’ demonstrates that Agnel’s work on the piano's keyboard is just as important as what she’s littered on its strings. The record lets loose her ability to unleash a formidable sound mass and then rope it back to one single, clarifying note. With one hand, Agnel plays 88 tuned drums and on the other an enormous guitar - with the LP rotating through oncoming trains, and blues harmonica and feedback. It’s single minded stuff, borne out of a dedication to a wholly personal language of gesture, accumulation and deft reduction. “Maybe when I’m 80 I will not need anything,” Agnel says in a recent film made at her home. “I will do the same but with one note, and one finger. Maybe it's enough.” — ‘Learning’ arrives in a reverse board sleeve designed by Jereon Wille. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 6th June 2023 and 4th June 2024. Mixed by James Dunn and Benjamin Pagier. Side B edited by Benjamin Pagier. Mastered and cut by Loop-O. Front photograph by Aimé Agnel. Typography and layout by Jeroen Wille.

Between 1978 and 1984, Fluxus artist Willem de Ridder did a weekly radio show called De Radiola Improvisatie Salon. Listeners were invited to send in cassettes recorded at home and would get guaranteed air­time. Willem never listened to any of the tapes in advance. No censorship or personal taste were involved, just total artistic freedom. Long before social media existed, he understood that just providing a platform could ignite boundless creativity. Willem was a visionary, always pushing the boundaries of art and mainstream culture, while his interactive radio shows were breaking down the barriers between listeners and producers. Unknown home tapers and independent artists would share their freshly recorded bedroom experiments with the world and Radiola became a catalyst for the rising Dutch tape scene. When the show gained popularity, broadcasts became open to the public and people would visit the salon to submit their latest cassettes in person. From these live events a network of independent labels emerged, releasing and exchanging cassettes. Punk was fading away but a new alternative to the mainstream was born. Nobody seems to know what happened to the Radiola master cassettes, but somehow a few boxes survived and were archived by Marco van Dalfsen in 2022. We went through hours and hours of material and eventually compiled this album. A few names might sound slightly familiar, but our goal was to unearth the most obscure hidden gems of Dutch home taping culture. The result is an eclectic mix of ambient, industrial, lo-fi weirdness and experimental music and offers a unique glimpse into a very specific, but still relevant piece of the past.

Following a creative burst in 2024 that resulted in several releases on iDEAL, New Forces and No Rent, label favorites Organ of Corti are returning to DMR for their first LP. Slowly moving into new territory, they deliver 6 bare boned surreal soundscapes. Minimal, repetitive tape loops, haunting synths and vaguely familiar vocal samples are carefully mixed for a sonic exercise reminiscent of those classic Nurse with Wound and Organum releases. The Swedish trio of scene veterans Joachim Nordwall, Mattias Gustafsson and Dan Johansson have been exploring the possibilities of sound manipulation for years, together or by themselves under various aliases. Stoically moving forward in pursuit of obscure, atmospheric textures that will get right under your skin. While the world is falling apart, they have been fine-tuning their hallucinatory concrète ambiances. The sort of stuff that fits a bleak, enervated mood by chewing on nerve ends, transporting heads to other places.

Turman first came onto the industrial scene in the late 70’s as the ominous ‘other half’ of legendary noise outfit NON. Shortly after recording the classic 1977 single Mode of Infection, Turman went on to pursue his own unique vision as a solo artist. Fusing every possible influence at his disposal while laying his ideas down on self-released cassettes like Flux (1981), Spirals of Everlasting Change (1987), Way Down (1987) and the massive Chapter Eleven cassette box set (1988). After a hiatus Turman resurfaced in 2005 to team up with seminal noise musician Aaron Dilloway. Since then, he has been gradually adding new titled to his already impressive discography. For this archival release Turman selected 7 tracks that were recorded between 1980 and 1984. A welcome supplement to his library of avantgarde music that was released in the 80s. This album fits in nicely between the early industrial noise, the long-form minimalism of Flux and the rhythmic industrial of Way Down. Focusing on slowly shifting hypnotic loop-based layers of sound, it covers a specific side of Turman. It feels like there’s a direct link to his earliest works but it’s also a precursor to some pieces that were recorded much later. A missing link that finally gives us the opportunity of a complete overview of his early audio work.

LP - Edition of 300 copies, handmade textile artwork w/ printed inner / CD Edition of 150 copies, handmade textile artwork Sylvain Chauveau has been releasing quiet and minimal compositions on various labels for more than two decades. ultra-minimal marks his debut for Sonic Pieces and takes the minimal approach even further, centring on reduction and limitation. The album was recorded live at Café Oto, London in March 2022 - one of Sylvain’s rare solo concerts and the first time he performed publicly with only acoustic instruments; no machines, no recorded sounds have been used, only piano, guitar, harmonium and melodica, played one at the time. While some of the compositions are completely new, others are live versions of previously released pieces which have either been performed close to their original or stripped-down, reduced to a single instrument and partly rearranged. This reveals a predilection for repetitions and variations that Sylvain shares with Jim Jarmusch, and at the same time it is a personal attempt to avoid electronic devices as a tool for live music. The artwork and track titles follow this reductionist idea and an aesthetic of miniaturization that Sylvain has developed for many years. They refer to the minimalist, concrete poetry that he writes regularly. In this context rewriting some of the original titles was a consistent implication to achieve a complete work, an album that perfectly represents Sonic Pieces’ aesthetics, both musically and visually.