After years of touring and many albums, the free improvising Phicus trio of Ferran Fages on electric guitar, Alex Reviriego on double bass and Vasco Trilla on drums & percussion release their first composition-based work, recording in the natural resonance of the Convent de Sant Agusti in Barcelona following Reviriego's 2-part work leveraging the trio's natural vocabulary.

Straddling quirky folk song and experimental sound collage, the long-running Western Massachusettes duo of fiddler, banjo player & singer Mia Friedman and clarinetist, wind player & sound artist Andy Allen (Guerilla Toss) present an album of observational songs with unusual perspectives and an anything goes approach to the music that surrounds each song; delightful.

Taking the viola da gamba and the daxophone into uncharted (dark) territories, composer Daniel Fishkin (who studied with daxophone inventor Hans Racheil) presents four works leveraging interference & frequency patterns, performed with an exceptional set of specialists on each instrument, and Fishkin's own 20-foot long instrument, The Lady's Harp, creating long, sustained tones.

Bassist & composer Nick Dunston's Berlin band Skultura creates a uniquely experimental and fascinatingly sculpted approach to free jazz through layers of sound and serious playing punctuated by voice and concrete elements, each piece keeping the listener in anticipation of what might happen next, eased into serious jazz grooves, then whisked away in new directions; not to be missed!

Powerfully rich sounds from two NY-based instrumentalists — John McCowen on contrabass clarinet & Carlo Costa on bass drum & percussion — in a three-part work of acoustic improvisations, McCowen sounding deceptively electronic through overtones and masterful harmonic technique, while Costa's bass drum provides deep foundations as he mysteriously layers percussive distractions; phenomenal!

A study of language through the repetition of fragmented sound, demonstrating how repetition brings alienation of meaning, Cole creating a synthetic alphabet within an unsignified musical context of electronic responses, repeated until the listener loses contact or reference to the original word; a challenging series of transformations rewarding to the engaged listener.

On the last day of the 2021 Spontaneous Music Festival at the Dragon Club in Poznań, Poland, the trio of Berlin trombonist Matthias Muller was joined by younger generation Polish guitarist Pawel Doskocz on prepared electric guitar and fellow Berlin drummer and electroacoustic improviser Emilio Gordoa for these two extended sonic adventures recorded in near-darkness.

The 2nd release from the touring duo of Audrey Chen & trombonist Henrik Munkeby, Chen modifying her voice with amplification and performing on analog electronics, while Munkeby amplifies his trombone and also performs on analog electronics, feedback & sound files; often frighteningly intense improvisations that plays to the spectrum of sound in a mix of studio and live recordings.

Recording to 4 track cassette, this unusual and experimental Boston-area trio of active sound artists--Stella Silbert, Arkm Foam and Neil 'Cloaca' Young--improvise over abstract territory using turntables, a no-input mixer, objects, an open reel tape machine, contact mics, and cassette players, emerging with equally tongue-in-cheek and serious aural interactions.

Kingston, NY sound artist and media artist Evan Lindorff-Ellery recorded these two experimental improvisations in the summer of 2021 in a small cabin in West Saugerties, NY using electric guitar, contact mic, amp, recordings and various objects, while also repurposing recordings made while in Maine by running them through his electric guitar.

Red Trio drummer Gabriel Ferrandini joins alto saxophonist Ilia Belorukov for a three-part freely improvised set captured live at Masterskaya Anikushina, in St. Petersberg, Russia, the former workspace of architect Mikhail Anikushin, a large space that creates a unique resonance that the two improvisers take advantage of through insistent yet discerningly constrained dialog.

Composed, constructed and mixed by bassist, improviser and composer David Menestres, this extended electroacoustic work features work from a tremendous set of performers: Jeb Bishop, Olie Brice, Sean Clancy, D. Edward Davis, Laurent Estoppey, Chris Eubank, David Grubbs, Michael Thomas Jackson, David Jordan, David Menestres, & Catherine Sikora.

In the midst of pandemic, NY pianist & keyboardist Gordon Beeferman jumped on an opportunity to record in the studio, assembling saxophonist Michael Foster and drummer/percussionist Michael Evans to record with free improvising vocalist and story-teller Shelley Hirsch, whose nimble narratives guide these eleven interesting vignettes of far-ranging musical and sonic sources.

Unusually orchestrated, spacious and exotic free improvisation from New York-based musicians Lucie Vítková, originally from Czech Republic and performing on accordion, hichiriki (a Japanese double reed flute), synth & harmonica, and Korean-born improviser Leo Chang performing on VOCALNORI (Amplified Gongs via Voice) and Piri (a Korean double reed instrument).

Mapping an improvisational framework onto a myriad of musical forms with contributions from each member, the trio of bassist Henry Fraser (NYC), drummer Jason Nazary (NYC) and flautist Camilo Angeles (PERU/CDMX) have collaborated in a number of configurations over the years, forming this specific and uniquely voiced trio in 2021 to record this mysteriously beautiful album.

Amongst the most unique of early electronic music instruments, the Ondes Martenot is heard in six duo recordings performed at the Barcelona studio of Spanish Ondiste, Tomomi Kubo, in conversation with tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia, both using loop pedals and Nebbia adding her voice at times, creating otherworldly and unconventional interactions of free improv.

An apt title for this collection of improvised works for double bass and feedback mixer between long-time collaborators Kyle Motl and Carlos Domínguez Reinhardt, both members of the band Not the Circus and having previously released the duo album Artabotrys Hexapetalus, this album recorded in 2020 at Rat's Mouth in Florida for five diverse and often abrasive interactions.

The first meeting of the quartet of electronic artist Miguel A. Garcia, accordionist Garazi Navas, double bassist Alex Reviriego and percussionist Vasco Trilla is this live performance at Convent de Sant Agusti, in Barcelona, using the natural resonance of the chapel to influence their introspective interactions of deep bass, evolving tones and mysterious percussive punctuations.

Chilean double bassist, vocalist, improviser & composer Amanda Irarrázabal and Brooklyn double bassist Nat Baldwin in a live performance first-time meeting at the IRL concert space during Irarrázabal's week-long tour through NYC, this concert a profound meeting of deep strings, bowed, plucked and mutated through unique technical approaches to their instruments.

A series of concise noise explorations from Italian-born, Brooklyn-based guitarist Matteo Liberatore, more typically heard in composed and improv/experimental forms including work with Elliott Sharp & Weasel Walter, here in an assertive album of guitar-driven analog synthesis & noise using unusual structures, alien utterances and intense twists and turns.

Multi-instrumentalist & experimental composer Weston Olencki in three historically-driven sound works, recording with saxophonist Anna Webber as they explore the tenor sax in jazz and recording studio technology; the banjo with bluegrass and the mechanized modernism of the Carolinas; and a pump organ with Sacred Harp hymnody and the aging marble industries of Vermont.

A short book of fiction depicting dark scenes from the ambience of extraordinary normalcy, descriptive texts insinuating horror from everyday occurrence, written by double bassist Nat Baldwin and published by Calamari Press in 2017, here in an audio version of excerpts narrated by Baldwin himself, performing on double bass through two panned tracks of unusual improvisations.

The first studio recording for the performing quartet of New York improvisers, Cecilia Lopez (synthesizer), Michael Foster (tenor & soprano saxophones), Sean Ali (double bass) and Eli Wallace (upright piano), taking listeners on an inflating journey from "Stratosphere" to "Exosphere" through unorthodox approaches, from sparse intensity to dense textural interaction.

The third release from the Barcelona-based experimental improvising duo L'Ocell of Chilean acoustic guitarist Fernando Carraso and Spanish double bassist Àlex Reviriego-double bass, here joined by guitarist Ferran Fages (a member of Phicus and Radium with Reviriego), for a set of mysteriously dark improvisations recorded live at Sant Roma de Mianigues church.

Initially based around improvisations on a mbira and a tiny accordion, NY improvisor Ted Reichman expanded the concept through complex systems of electronic treatments, developing layers of feedback, transpositions, distortions, intentional or accidental patterning that were performed in real time, creating an extended, deeply aquatic work split between the sides of a cassette.

Bringing together New York City and Philadelphia improvisers, the trio of T.J. Borden on cello, James McKain on tenor sax and Leo Suarez on drums, freely improvising through a "personally refined approach to pointillistic communication, interplay and the construction/demolition of static foundations" evolved through repeated sessions and live recordings.

Rich sound worlds or mysterious space and controlled chaos in this work commission by the TAK ensemble, the score devised partly in text and partly through instruction, giving directions for interpretation to the performers--Laura Cocks, Madison Greenstone, Marina Kifferstein, Charlotte Mundy, Ellery Trafford & Lopez himself--allowing each to become part composer, part improviser.

Spanish double bassist Alex Reviriego (Memoria Uno) in a solo album recorded by Ferran Fages in 2019, the second chapter of his "German Poets Trilogy" following his 2018 Blaue Tauben album, here inspired by the writings of Romanian-born poet Paul Celan in an intense and moving album of dense foreboding depicted through nine improvisations of heavy bowing, ruminative harmonics and dark friction.

Recorded primarily at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn and leveraging the natural resonance of that performance space, the New York trio of innovative improvisers Henry Frase on double bass, John McCowen on Bb and contrabass clarinets and Sam Weinberg on tenor & soprano saxophones explore the peripheries of their instruments in intense and reflective interplay.