Music

A tribute to Cecil Taylor's Akisakila, re-imagined & arranged by Pat Thomas piano & XT: Paul Abbott (drums, synthetic sounds) and Seymour Wright (actual & potential saxophone).

Flanger Magazine's second album integrates strings, wind instruments, percussion, and synthesizers, and subtly blends folk, Americana, chamber music, electronica, and jazz in a suite of pastoral, ethereal, and kaleidoscopic pieces.

"Out of Our Hands" brings together Alvin Lucier and Jordan Dykstra who, through the hands of Ordinary Affects, have created debut recordings of two new compositions.

The deluxe reissue of Fennesz's first LP of 1997 (also including the 1995 first EP), remastered by Stephan Mathieu.

A remix collaboration by Mads Emil Nielsen and Chromacolor, a project from the German sound artist and producer Hanno Leichtmann.

A "story-poem", forming one of the parts of a project by Jean-Guy Coulange that also includes two radio plays and an exhibition.

Pauline Oliveros and György Ligeti revisited by Ensemble 0.

Released in Sub Rosas Early Electronic series, Reinhold Weber's Complete Electronic & Phonetic Works 1968-1974.

The retrospective of the website and the magazine Le son du grisli (2004-2021): 16 portraits and 38 interviews of musicians, 842 record and concert reviews.

A sound collage composed from 400 hours of recordings the artists made during the 2-year renovation of their house in the Prenzlauer Berg district of Berlin. The work has been previously presented as an installation of which photos are included on 3 inserts.

Bundle (special offer for the purchase of seven issues of OpticalSound).

Interviews with Michael Gira (Swans), Ghislain Mollet-Viéville, Jérôme Lefdup, Éric Mangion, Pierre Leguillon, Norscq & Guillaume Ollendorff; Roxane Bovet, Mathieu Copeland and Laurent Schmid on John Armleder; Stéphane Margolis; Marie Losier's ten favorite records; Abbas Kiarostami by Alain Bergala...

A composition in two continuous parts of 30' and 19' which melts two antagonistic and complementary dimensions: a data-text read by the French artist ORLAN and a virtual orchestra, composed of four singers (Loré Lixenberg, Joan La Barbara, Wills Morgan and Jacques Lizène) and 124 different instruments.

The new solo work of the French musician Pascal Battus: four pieces composed exclusively with cymbals, producing different types of resonances and as many sound expanses.

Iannis Xenakis by Kasper T. Toeplitz; interviews with Delphine Dora, Paul Lovens, J.A. Seazer, Frédéric Blondy; Fred Van Hove by Gérard Rouy; carte blanche to Julie Hascoët; reading notes and about sixty albums reviews; contemporary Arabic poetry: Mina Nagy...

An impressive title on Don Cherry's far and wide discography. On this date he went literally East, playing Tibetan and Asian instruments. The album was originally released in 1974 on the Scandinavian label Sonet and highlights a session of the previous year with famous Swedish jazz improvisers Bengt Berger and Christer Bothen.

Originally released in 2005 on Mike Cooper's Hipshot Cd-r label, and reissued here for the first time on vinyl, Spirit Songs deserves to be regarded as a true rediscovered gem, remixed and remastered by Cooper himself.

The first album of Viennese bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer and Düsseldorf-based musician and producer Stefan Schneider (Mapstation), partly recorded at the site of Kraftwerk's old Kling Klang studio, synthesizes aspects of industrial and avant-garde music with jazz.

The first ever reissue of the piece recorded by Asger Jorn & Jean Dubuffet in 1960-61 in Paris.

A radio-commissioned album by the Canadian sound artist, based on sound fragments recorded around the world: a subtle and poetic assemblage of concrete sounds and atmospheres that evolve at the boundaries of perception (with Oren Ambarchi and Seiji Morimoto on drums and electronics).

The first album in a new collaboration between Tokyo artist Teruyuki Kurihara and London drone pop band The Leaf Library.  

The first album by Frank Bretschneider and Jan Jelinek's joint project, produced from improvised sessions on modular systems between 2016 and 2020.

The reissue of the compositions for tape and voice of Ursula Bogner (1946-1994), scientist, phamarcian, artist, "outsider" experimental musician fascinated by Wilhelm Reich's work, whose archives were mysteriously discovered Jan Jelinek, compiled by Andrew Pekler.

The new full-length record from the duo of Glasgow-based artists Feronia Wennborg and Simon Weins, examining microsound by way of extended amplification technique, bone conduction, domestic recordings, and digital feedback.

Oceans Of Milk And Treacle is a soundtrack for an otherwise silent film. The title of the album, and of course the film, is borrowed from Mike Cooper's late friend Fred Hardy's book The Religious Culture of India – Power, Love and Wisdom, considered to be one of the most important books on the subject.

An evocative musical tribute to Greek architect and painter Dimitris Pikionis, based on field recordings and small "poor" objects such as tin whistles, music boxes and toy harmonicas: a meditative, whirring, vibrating and suspended sound piece, both "environmental" and particularly musical.

Array expresses the experience of a remote Antarctic research station through the convergence of sound, site and performance. The result is an immersive and affective experience of the spaces, protocols and conditions comprising the bracing polar environment.

10th anniversary reissue of this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album, a hypnotic post-/krautrock pulsation recorded in a single inspired studio session, originally released in 2012 on Editions Mego.

10th anniversary reissue of this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album, a hypnotic post-/krautrock pulsation recorded in a single inspired studio session, originally released in 2012 on Editions Mego.

An impressionistic and dreamlike sound portrait of the island of Borneo.

The last album, posthumous, of Ghédalia Tazartès, entirely conceived by himself: a melting pot of unreleased tracks which cover a large part of his career.

The last album, posthumous, of Ghédalia Tazartès, entirely conceived by himself: a melting pot of unreleased tracks which cover a large part of his career.

A pair of contemporary music giants re-release a long-lost 2003 live recording, previously available only as a CD-R.

Soundscapes, drones, disruptive aberrations, textures and perplexingly absorbing interactions between French guitarist, graphic and sound artist Xavier Mussat and saxophonist Quentin Rollet, performing live at Instants Chavires, in Montreuil, France, in 2020, for eight diverse and unusual improvisations.

Reissue of a milestone of ambient music, produced and released by Brian Eno in 1978, featuring Marion Brown, Gavin Bryars, and Michael Nyman.

Giovanni Di Domenico adds another superb piece to his prolific discography with the first of his works to ever feature voice and language as foregrounding elements.

An up-close portrayal of late-'90s London's many music scenes, from the pages of Sleazenation and beyond.

Dreamtime X is a diary kept between March 2020 and March 2021, capturing the conditions of lockdown as experienced by the author. Articulated in the form of 100 short poetic entries, the publication veers across a set of ambivalent perspectives.

A gallery of portraits of people listening to a work by Frédéric Acquaviva in progress, laid out like a flip book.

Ai Hasegawa, Robertina Šebjanič, The Centre for Genomic Gastronomy, Kasia Molga, The Radiant Future of Solarpunk, Listening as Activism, Werkleitz Festival 2021, Climate Care...

Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length.

Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Midori Hirano and Tokyo based string experimentalist Atsuko Hatano have teamed up for their first collaborative full-length.