Inspired by John ColtraneÕs A Love Supreme, the second album from the Berlin-based quartet Das B — Mazen Kerbaj (trumpet), Mike Majkowski (bass), Magda Mayas (piano), and Tony Buck (percussion) — subverts the tribute format with a radical re-imagining built on free improvisation, textural exploration, and structural homage, resulting in a deeply immersive and conceptually rich work.
"American composer Kory Reeder's 10th album In Place returns to the Grid Series heard on 2 of the 4 tracks from Reeder's debut release on Edition Wandelweiser Records Love Songs/Duets. With raw recordings of three works from the ...
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Exploring the dissolution of musical form through extended techniques and microtonal interplay, and guided by the Greek concept of anasýnthesi (ἀνασύνθεσις) — meaning "recomposition" or "reconstruction" — the Cologne-based trio of Constantin Herzog (double bass), Matthias Muche (trombone), and Etienne Nillesen (snare drum) presents an immersive piece shaped by emergent sonic phenomena and a constantly shifting balance of resonance, friction, and form.
Expanding to a sextet, Swedish guitarist Finn Loxbo's Kommun deepens its exploration of cyclical time and collective improvisation, weaving acoustic steel-string guitar, piano, strings, and percussion into evolving, harmonically rich phrases that merge individual lines into fluid, slow-burning forms — meditative, intricate, and poised between structure and dissolution.
The first duo album from Stockholm's long-standing duo of Johan Jutterström and Alex Zethson, reimagining songs from jazz standards to Leonard Cohen and the Pet Shop Boys as deconstructed etudes and expressive palimpsests, where meaning emerges through reinterpretation, erasure, and the intimate process of performance and transformation.
Swedish composer Erik Klinga crafts radiant electroacoustic works from Buchla synth, pipe organ, drum machine, and field recordings, weaving melodic ambient vignettes that shimmer with warmth and light, moving through celestial textures, gliding rhythms, and bird-like flourishes in a richly detailed debut recorded at StockholmÕs Royal College of Music, the first of a planned trilogy on Thanatosis.
Pianist Alexander Zethson (Vathres, Fire! Orchestra, Angles) and cellist Nikos Veliotis (MMMD, In Trance 95) present two expansive, darkly immersive improvisations that drift through glacial landscapes of resonant, slowly shifting textures and austere tonal drones, sculpting elemental sound environments of profound stillness and contemplation through deep-listening and hypnotic intensity.
A stunning second album from Swedish bassist and composer Vilhelm Bromander's Unfolding Orchestra, expanding on his acclaimed debut with richly textured, spiritually resonant compositions inspired by political urgency and environmental reflection, featuring a 13-piece ensemble delivering lush orchestrations, patient development, and profound, hopeful expression.
A deeply intuitive trio session from Swedish bass clarinetist Christer Bothen with bassist Kansan Zetterberg (aka Torbjourn Zetterberg) and vibraphonist/drummer Kjell Nordeson, balancing lyrically meditative spaciousness with surging energy through dreamlike, open-ended improvisations that reflect Bothen's lifelong pursuit of spiritual expression in sound.
The sixth album from the microtonal tuba trio of Robin Hayward, Peder Simonsen, and Martin Taxt, exploring the acoustic phenomena of half-valve combinations in two richly harmonic compositions developed during an artist residency in Andersabo, Sweden and recorded in Oslo, creating uniquely resonant and surprisingly consonant spectra shaped by each instrument's signature tuning.
The seventh solo percussion album from Barcelona-based Vasco Trilla, here investigating the symbolic and historical use of bells in different regions and cultures around the world through ten unconventional observations of vibration, resonance, and rich tones performed on timpani, flat tuned bells, transducer speakers, snare drum and assorted percussions.
Three expansive works from composer and keyboardist/pianist Alex Zethson, developing concepts from themes and motifs developed over more than a decade, recorded over two years with exceptional care as he and his collaborators create subtle and beautifully evocative sonic environments that seamlessly incorporate acoustic, electronic, drone and feedback elements.
Singer, songwriter and pianist Nelly Klayman-Cohen, aka Rotem Geffen, explores the fringes of dreamy pop music with lyrics in German, English and Hebrew that explore themes of memory, love, grief, loss, and the night as a vibrating room, with collaborators including Alexander Zethson on keyboards, Isak Hedtjar on clarinets and winds, Vilhelm Bromander on double bass, &c.
The 12th album from Martin Küchen's Angles ensemble is expanded and developed with notations and string arrangements from Alexander Zethson, and the voice of Elle-Kari Sander, in an engrossing album of powerfully compelling jazz rhythms & soloing, orchestral swells and emphatic songs pivoting around the mythology of the nymph Calypso, woven into contemporary concepts; sensational!
The Swedish free jazz septet STHLM svaga work at the liminal edges of delicate improvisation and song, for this album commissioning works from Archie Shepp, Ron Carter and Roscoe Mitchell, Carter traveling to Stockholm to provide guidance on his composition "Desert Lament"; the band also performs Coltrane's "Jupiter" and Per Henrik Wallin's piece "Winter Rhapsody".
Following her 2022 album Ogura Plays Stockhausen, Japanese born, Frankfurt-based pianist Miharu Ogura turns her attention to her own compositions, presenting five uniquely creative works unfolding in pacing that surprises the listener, balancing silence and clusters of layered patterns that move at differing speeds and rhythms, from simple clarity to labyrinthine entanglement.
An investigation into the depths of the body's neurological frontier from Swedish electronic artist Joakim Forsgren, presenting a series of intuitive compositions drawing from the latest medical research on how light and sound at specific frequencies has a potential to affect bodily functions, using analog synthesizers to create retro-rhythmic environments of flowing sound.
The album art represents the intensity of this Swedish duo's Industrial music, from keyboardist Carl Westholm (Carptree, Avatarium, Krux, Candlemass) and bass player Gustaf Hielm (Pain of Salvation, Meshuggah, Mats/Morgan, Tiamat, &c), using electronics, field recordings, pulsing rhythms and synthetics to develop a complex and dark world of menacing force.
Drawing on ideas from the 60s and 70--Ornette Coleman, John and Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Charlie Haden--bassist Vilhelm Bromander assembles an accomplished ensemble of Stockholm improvisers to perform three works of warmth and spiritual power, incorporating jazz, world and contemporary music in a stunning and rich album that exudes a wealth of experience and musical clarity.
Continuing his imaginative approach to percussion, Barcelona improviser Vasco Trilla's sixth solo album sees him expanding his rhythmic and tonal range through a fascinating collection of instruments, including bowed Russian flat bells, electrified music boxes, a zither processed through snare drums as resonators, Iranian round bells mixed with gamelan strips, &c.
A collection of six duo recordings from musician, composer, and improviser Peter Soderberg, investigating different tuning systems and the idea of hybrid instruments, recording with Katt Hernandez (violin), Stina Hellberg Agback (harp), Mats Persson (clavichord), Sten Sandell (piano), My Hellgren (cello) and Vilhelm Bromander (contrabass).
Delicately caustic interactions of reeds, piano and percussion using the natural resonance of the Borlunda Church in Eslöv, Sweden, from the freely improvising duo of Martin Küchen and Sophie Agnel, Küchen adding electronics and Agnel performing inside and out of the piano while supplementing her palette with objects, both using space and patience as their allies.
The first single from Swedish electronic composer Joakim Forsgren's Autorhythm's project Songs For The Nervous System, two soundscapes in the ambient realm, Forsgren using vintage synths and no computers to create these tracks, described as "pop music for a dysfunctional but beautiful parallel world".
Ljug Aldrig, aka Roosen, a visual artist, guitarist and vocalist from Stockholm, is heard in a 2-song 7" + download release performing with Dennis Egberth on drums, Alexander Zethson on keys, Anton Toorell on bass, guitars and Isak Hedtjarn on saxophone.
A beautiful and contemplative performance of "Raga Marwa", a a hexatonic Indian raga and the eponymous raga of the "Marva thaat", peformed by Dutch-Czech master vocalist Marianne Svašek, and recorded in Stockholm, with Svašek and Swedish bass player Vilhelm Bromander both performing on the tanpura, a long-necked plucked string instrument used to create a sonic canvas behind the raga.
A double CD of Japanese pianist Miharu Ogura's performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's Klavierstücke I-XI for solopiano, recorded at the MONOPIANO festival in 2021, bringing to a pinnacle her fascination with Stockhausen's unique approach to this set of compositions, captured in her second live performance after a concert in Tokyo in the same year.
A rare mix of collective and chamber approaches to free improvisation from the Swedish sextet VÖ of Eva Lindal on violin, Anna Hogberg on alto saxophone, Johan Berthling on double bass, Leo Svensson Sander on cello, Alexander Zethson on piano & pump organ and Giannis Arapis on acoustic guitar, performing deeply introspective conversations that explore modernity and tradition.
Aside from her exceptional trumpet work in free improvisation settings, Portuguese trumpeter Susana Santos, currently based in Stockholm, is also an electro-acoustic composer, these six compelling compositions merging field recordings--particularly birds, waters and yes, a phone--along with her trumpet playing and Irish flute, the album title a reference to John Cage's book Silence.
Stepping away from his improvisational work with groups including Exploding Customer and Fire! Orchestra, Swedish trumpeter and keyboardist Tomas Hallonsten releases a solo album of analog synthesis, early electronics and drum machines, lyrically inclinded compositions with diverse influences including George Harrison, Sun Ra and Kraftwerk, plus a cover of Joe Henderson's "Earth".
The Residy, or remains of a unique variation on JS Bach's Goldberg Variation no. 21, performed live by pianist Alex Zethson who maintains the structure, rhythmic movement and note order of Bach's composition, while dispersing the notes and intervals into two synths and an E-bowed grand piano to evoke these meditative and expansive interpretations.
The 6 piece Tya Ensemble of string, piano, percussion and vibraphone performs Swedish composer Magnus Granberg's beautifully delicate and dusky work, conceived from historic and recent song structures and written so that individual parts also may be performed as solo pieces, as heard in an extended ensemble version and four solo and one duo configuration.
The first recording of an ongoing collaboration between violinist Maya Bennardo, bass clarinetist Erik Blennow Calälv, and kacapi (similar to a Japanese koto) musician Kristofer Svensson, presenting two restrained and lovely compositions bringing together contemporary classical, free improvisation and Sundanese music in a unique chamber format.
Seeking to combine the interdisciplinary practices of Swedish percussionist, artist and philosopher Larsson Andreas Hiroui and his ensemble of Johanna Arve and Johan Jutterstrom into a single method, this extended work compiles their collective history into digital archives that are presented in a layered set of spoken observations and instrumental improvisations.
Performed with Stockholm musicians including pianist Alexander Zethson, wind player Martin Küchen and trombonist Mats Äleklint, organist Linnéa Talp explores the areas of sound that emulate breathing, push/pull or back & forth motion, in eight beautifully paced recordings led by the organ's rich and microtonal vibrations & timbre and imbued by the contributor's subtle additions.
David Bennet & Vilhelm Bromander is a Stockholm-based duo exploring microtonal soundscapes and timbral relations, focused on subtle relations between sounds using texture, intonation and timbre, beating, common partials and difference tones, creating sonic landscapes often based on triggering psychoacoustic phenomena, here following a semi-open score in a four part work.
