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.

An eccentric and captivating sonic collage from Jean-Jacques Birgé and the ensemble Un Drame Musical Instantané — with Francis Gorge and Bernard Vitet collaborating alongside extraordinary guests including Brigitte Fontaine, Joëlle Léandre, Luc Ferrari, Henri Texier, Carlos Zingaro, and René Lussier — in an inventive fusion of electronic improvisation, free jazz, and experimental sound art.

For the first time on record, Yoko Ono's seminal 1964 conceptual text Grapefruit is sonically realized in a full album, as Stockholm's Great Learning Orchestra interprets 20 of Ono's event scores through ensemble performances, environmental recordings, and experimental sound actions, bringing her visionary work into vivid and imaginative musical form.

A posthumous realization of Phill Niblock's 2022 composition, this dense, resonant work of drone and sonic intensity, written for Italian vocalist Anna Clementi and shaped and developed with guitarist and bassist Thomas Stern of Einstürzende Neubauten and Crime & the City Solution, is presented in two monumental, haunting longform versions.

Celebrating the profound compositional legacy of Julius Hemphill through inventive string adaptations of his saxophone quartet and sextet works, violinists Curtis Stewart and Sam Bardfeld, violist Stephanie Griffin, and cellist Tomeka Reid channel Abdul Wadud's expressive spirit, transforming Hemphill's blues-inflected jazz into vividly textured chamber improvisations with lyrical intensity.

Drawing inspiration from Fernando Pessoa's "The Book of Disquiet," composer Luke Martin leads the ensemble Ordinary Affects — Morgan Evans-Weiler & Francesca Caruso (violin), Jordan Dykstra (viola), Laura Cetilia (cello), J.P.A. Falzone (vibes) and Luke Damrosch (farfisa organ) — through two introspective, quietly evolving compositions of minimalistic beauty creating thoughtful sonic dialogues.

Exploring the depths and boundaries of the psyche through seven compelling electroacoustic compositions, Greek composer Thanos Chrysakis delivers a deeply psychedelic, mysterious, and immersive sonic journey, masterfully blending electronic textures and acousmatic elements that resonate within the listener's consciousness, psyche, and imagination — a vivid reflection on complex inner landscapes.

Canada's premiere music magazine dedicated to experimental music, improvisation, and sound art, featuring interviews with Maylee Todd, Joshua Van Tassel, Kaïa Kater, and Alexis Baro, alongside coverage of Chuck Copenace, Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, and The Burning Hell, with an accompanying CD of tracks from the issue's featured musicians, offering great inside into the contemporary creative music scene.

Interpreting Cornelius Cardew's elaborate 193-page Treatise and Earle Brown's minimalist Cheap Imitation, Fred Loisel (gong, electronics), Philippe Lenglet (prepared guitar), and Christian Vasseur (prepared ten-string Weissenborn) assign specific musical parameters to each graphic symbol, creating open compositions that balance individual expression with collective coherence.

Blending acoustic and electronic elements with an expansive lineup of musicians, the final album from Un Drame Musical Instantané, recorded across multiple French studios, brings together Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet, Steve Arguelles, Benoît Delbecq, Yves Robert, DJ Nem, and guest vocalists like Archie Shepp and Otomo Yoshihide in a genre-defying mix of jazz, contemporary, improvised, and experimental approaches.

Consisting of 28 short works, Hélène Sage collaborates with composer and performer Benoît Lavoisier, computer artist Marc Demereau, percussionist Pascal Portejoie, sampler Alex Piques, and vocalist and writer Nathalie Desmarest to craft an avant album blending Dadaist humor with experimental soundscapes, intertwining musical and literary elements to create a distinctive auditory experience.

Collaborating with the ensemble Ordinary Affects, Serbian-born composer and pianist Stepančić records two introspective and spacious works that explore sonic stillness, harmonic resonance, and gradual transformation, blending Wandelweiser aesthetics with personal influences from Orthodox choral traditions, New York experimentalism, and theatrical composition.

Reinterpreting the intricate polyphony of Renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert through the lens of contemporary music, composer James Weeks and the ensemble Apartment House replace choral voices with a varied instrumental ensemble to reveal the interwoven textures of these works, interspersed with new compositions that reflect on history, interpretation, and the evolving role of early music in a modern context.

Embracing acoustic and electronic improvisation, this London-recorded session features Jason Alder's contrabass clarinet & sopranino sax, Charlotte Keeffe's trumpet & flugelhorn, James O'Sullivan's exploratory electric guitar and Thanos Chrysakis' laptop and synthesizers, collectively shaping a shifting, atmospheric soundscape of drone, spectral timbres, and dynamic textures.

A delicate and introspective collaboration for violin, prepared piano, celesta, and electronics, Morgan Evans-Weiler and J.P.A. Falzone explore melodic cells and harmonic resonances through an open-ended, improvisatory approach, creating a drifting, structureless environment where sounds intertwine, constellate, and dissolve, capturing fleeting moments of sonic possibility.

John Krausbauer and Kaori Suzuki create an immersive sonic and visual experience that merges high-frequency drones, shimmering glissandi, and multi-tracked custom synthesizers with real-time processing, inducing a state of deep listening and sensory saturation through harmonic resonance, auditory distortion, and psychotropic strobing color fields.

Reissuing their 1995 release on BVHAAST, the Pellegrini Quartet presents a striking juxtaposition of Beethoven's late string quartet, Op. 132, and Luigi Nono's Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima, revealing a profound dialogue between structural innovation and expressive depth, where Beethoven's introspective lyricism meets Nono's fragmented, textural modernism, spanning 155 years of musical evolution.

Exploring time, memory, and perception, composer Bryn Harrison crafts an intricate sonic landscape for two pianos and electronics, performed with great precision by Mark Knoop and Roderick Chadwick, where dense, swirling repetitions give way to moments of eerie stillness, gradually descending into a murky, destabilizing space while immersing the listener in a hypnotic and disorienting temporal experience.

Swiss composer Jürg Frey joins with the Prague Quiet Music Collective for three recent works exploring delicate tonal shifts, structural lists, and slow, evolving forms, balancing between consonance and dissonance, the ensemble — featuring clarinets, strings, guitars, double bass, and percussion — interprets Frey's subtly shifting frameworks with a deep sensitivity.

Recorded in 1980 under Ceausescu's dictatorship, this groundbreaking document of Romanian avant-garde music features Iancu Dumitrescu conducting his Ansamblul Hyperion ensemble in radical works by Dumitrescu, Octavian Nemescu, Stefan Niculescu, and Corneliu Cezar, blending acousmatic philosophies, Balkan resonances, and electronic experimentation in an unprecedented exploration of sound and structure.

A distinctive collaboration uniting writer Michel Houellebecq and composer Jean-Jacques Birgé, with Bernard Vitet providing orchestral compositions, recorded primarily in 1996 at Studio GRRR, this album merges Houellebecq's poetic prose, spoken in French, with Birgé's electronic textures, offering an immersive exploration of narrative and sound.

Under his Arcane Device moniker, David Lee Myers revisits an unrealized collaboration with Tod Dockstader, deconstructing well-known classical works — primarily those of Bach — through sampling, stretching, looping, and computer-based processing, transforming familiar motifs into playful, shimmering, and immersive soundscapes inspired by Lucas Foss's Baroque Variations.

An intimate exploration of John Zorn's Bagatelles, featuring the seemingly telepathic cello duo of Erik Friedlander and Michael Nicolas in deeply expressive and intricately woven performances that reveal the emotional depth, sensitivity, and Zorn's adventurous compositional spirit, bridging composed forms with spontaneous improvisation for a nuanced and exciting chamber setting.

The JACK Quartet presents definitive interpretations of John Zorn's eight string quartets, composed between 1988-2017, in a two-disc album presenting Zorn's evolution through avant-garde techniques and deep musical traditions, with virtuosic performances of intricate works like "Cat O'Nine Tails", "Memento Mori", or "Necronomicon"; includes a 36-page booklet of notes, scores, and insights.

A retrospective spanning ten decades (1958-2018) celebrating Jean-Jacques Birgé's multifaceted career through compositions reflecting each era, blending archival recordings with new works through a remarkable ensemble of longtime collaborators, from brass and strings to electronics and voice; a sonic journey bridging past, present, and imagined futures with impressive orchestration and narrative.

Celebrating her 65th birthday with her first compositions for strings, pianist-composer Satoko Fujii writes for the specific musicians of GEN, a sextet of violin, viola, bass, piano, electronics, and drums, in a suite inspired by Nagano's mountain views, leveraging microtonal string techniques for an expressive and texturally rich sonic landscape.

Blending the autonomous compositions of Nabaz'mob, his opera for 100 smart rabbits, with the vibrant naturalism of "Dawn at Shimiyacu", a field recording from Peru's Amazon rainforest, Jean-Jacques Birgé along with Antoine Schmitt juxtaposes minimalist robotic orchestrations with raw environmental soundscapes, creating a genre-defying exploration within his signature sonic universe.

Blending humor, drama, and inventive soundscapes, Un Drame Musical Instantané's n°1 showcases the trio of Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet, and Francis Gorgé alongside an eclectic ensemble, weaving synthesizers, samplers, sprechgesang, and orchestral elements into compelling, genre-defying compositions, which Jazz Magazine describes as mind-blowing with Zappa-esque creativity.

An adventurous and magical dive into the depths of sound by Un Drame Musical Instantané, blending the theatrical and the instrumental through the trio of Jean-Jacques Birgé, Bernard Vitet, and Francis Gorgé alongside an ensemble of performers, presenting a five-movement suite inspired by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, ballet scenes, and cinematic miniatures.

Blending contemporary, orchestral, and electronic music with global cultural influences, Dominik Dolega presents 11 untitled "Memories" recorded as duets, featuring unconventional instruments like lithophones, stones, aluphone and the bassdesmophon, inviting listeners on a sonic journey that evokes personal emotions and memories through a rich global perspective.

The companion album to Sharp's Mandocello, a tour-de-force exposition of the mandocello, acoustic and electronic, an instrument evolving out of the 18th century mandalone into a louder instrument intended to take the bass role in mandolin ensembles, here with tributes to Srinivas, Yank Rachell, Alvin Lucier, Frank Wakefeld, Tiny Moore, Ira Louvin, and Benoit Mandelbrot.

Setting three poems from prize-winning poet and visual artist Gregory Warren Wilson to music composed by pianist Paul Honey, each song based on the experiences and thoughts of people experiencing ice and snow, performed by the Delta Saxophone quartet of Christian Forshaw (soprano sax), Kathryn McGuiness (alto sax), Tim Holme (tenor sax) and Chris Caldwell (baritone sax).

Inspired by fireflies, birds, and the flow of the Hudson River while living in Germantown, NY, Elliott Sharp developed these compositions using traditional, graphic, & conceptual scores, presented here in a collage of sessions featuring Sharp on reeds & strings with Anthony Coleman, Nate Wooley, Shayna Dulberger, Hao Jiang, Terry L. Greene, Don McKenzie, Terry L. Green II, Sara Salomon, and Judith Insell.

Assembling a world-class ensemble of 24 string players drawing from the Quartets JACK, Sirius, Flux, and Bergamot, here performing as SysOrk, Elliott Sharp's large-scale algorithmic composition provides simple instructions to the participants, creating a seething sonic tapestry of shifting, swirling tones and acoustic drones, exceptionally immersive and detailed.

A double CD presenting five intricately composed works that blend systematic processes with an intuitive musicality: Apartment House performs three string-based studio pieces on the first disc, including the meticulously harmonic "Aurora" for solo cello, while the second disc features live recordings by Oerknal and Ensemble Ipse, showcasing spatial and textural explorations.

The 6th album on Another Timbre from Canadian composer Linda Catlin Smith, a leading voice in contemporary chamber music, presents eight exquisite works performed by Apartment House, including the 1st recordings of three string quartets, alongside a violin duo, a clarinet quartet, an early string trio, a cello and piano duo, and a bass clarinet solo; evocative and deeply expressive artistry.

Highly-regarded Slovakian composer Adrian Demoč, known for his delicate and introspective approach to contemporary music, presents three chamber works: "Zamat," a 10-minute quartet for clarinet, bass clarinet, and cello exploring Korean unisons; "Gebrechlichkeit," a 25-minute string quartet; and "...o proton jasu...," a 30-minute piece commissioned by Another Timbre, for two clarinets, viola, and cello.

Moons' debut album features long-time collaborators Judith Berkson, Laura Cetilia, Katie Porter, and Christine Tavolacci, each contributing a composition blending accordion, voice, cello, clarinets, and flutes, with works exploring memory through tunings, divine visions, impermanent graphic scores, and micro-intervals to create dynamic, shifting sonorities and felt-time improvisation.

A new solo project from French composer and improviser Falter Bramnk, exploring glass and crystal as exclusive sound sources, following his "Glassical Music" series; originally conceived for six Muzzix collective musicians, Bramnk reworked and expanded the compositions featuring glass struck, rubbed, blown, and shaken, on select tracks with contributions from Sam Bodart on Crystal Baschet.

Renowned for his work with Another Timbre and Confront, British bass clarinetist Chris Cundy presents his third solo album, blending contemporary classical elements, improvised sketches, and rhythmic motifs in fourteen captivating vignettes inspired by wildflowers, their fragile habitats, and peripheral landscapes, showcasing a masterful and virtuosic approach.

Showcasing Buffalo-based percussionist Bob Fullex and Jason Bauers' innovative mastery as Crossfire Duo in an album that features Jacob Gotlib's "Portrait Sequence", performed without striking objects, Matt Sargent's "Small Stones" played entirely on metallophones, Richard Richard Festinger's high-speed "Crossfire", and Christian Wolff's "Flutist (and) Percussionist" as an intricate rhythmic dialogue.

The second volume in pianist and composer Claudio Sanna exploration of composers, improviser and experimenters from Sardinia, in a wonderfully diverse set of works and performances from Sanna himself, Anna Zeriotto (double bass), Federico Nicoletta (piano), Leoardo Zunica (piano), Sandro Mungianu (live electronics), and Paolo Pastorino (live electronics).

Opening with an adaptation of Cornelius Cardew's "Red Flag", the Buffalo-based new music ensemble Wooden Cities Brendan Fitzgerald introduces the first of a trilogy of albums, a set of narrative works that confront topics of work, labor, commodity, and justice through a blend of composition and improvisation, including works by Cardew, Julius Eastman, and Frederic Rzewski.

The second volume of John Zorn's vocal compositions, performed by virtuoso Barbara Hannigan alongside returning pianist Stephen Gosling, expands with orchestration for string quartet, a dynamic work for voice, cello, vibes, electronics, and drums, a lively piece for voice, piano, and rhythm, and Zorn's unique interpretation of the classic 'Pandora's Box.

A posthumous realization of Phill Niblock's 2022 composition, this dense, resonant work of drone and sonic intensity, written for Italian vocalist Anna Clementi and shaped and developed with guitarist and bassist Thomas Stern of Einstürzende Neubauten and Crime & the City Solution, is presented in two monumental, haunting longform versions.

The Fall 2024 issue of Canada's premiere music magazine: On The Cover Brendan Grey and the Evolving Ethos of Super Duty Tough Work; avant-garde sound murals of Filipino composer José Maceda; Montreal-based composer and improviser Allison Burik; Kurt Gottschalk interviews Rita Ueda; Windsor-based post-classical guitarist Bilal Nasser; plus reviews and a CD of artists covered in this issue.

In their second release, the Hunter Underwater quartet of four cellists — Guilherme Rodrigues (Portugal), Gábor Hartyáni (Budapest), Guido Kohn (Buenos Aires), and Hui-Chun Lin (Taiwan) — record at Berlin's Zentrifuge, creating sound sculptures and landscapes with layered harmonics and dynamic interplay through composition and improvisation.

Performing at the 17th century Palazzo Pisano during the 2023 Venice Biennale, John Zorn improvises on two small antique organ at Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, taking full advantage of the rich reeds, flutes, and horns of these two outstanding instruments as he moved between the two organs, bringing out unusual tonalities and intersections between both instruments.

A tour-de-force exposition of the mandocello, acoustic and electronic, an instrument evolving out of the 18th century mandalone into a louder instrument intended to take the bass role in mandolin ensembles, which Sharp demonstrates through strings that ring with powerful resonance as he performs original compositions with references to Derek Bailey, Kinshi Tsuruta, and Harry Partch.

Surrounding the realization of Karlheinz Stockhausen's ground-breaking work of electronic music and acoustic improvisation, Kontakte, performed by Judith Wegmann (piano) Jens Ruland (percussion) & Robert Torche (electronics), are Antoine Chessex's exploratory score Geschichte der Gewalt, applying improvisation to frequency and form, and the improvised prelude from all three: Spiegelungen.

An engaging album of solo percussion that start like a vortex of clocks ticking, and then draws the listener into an amazing journey of unique percussive expression, timbre, rhythm and subtle transitions, the second album in Swiss percussionist Christian Wolfarth's 39 series, presenting Parts IV - VI of his works exploring the relationships between 3, 9 & 39.

This album of resonant electronics with spacious pacing is beautifully rendered by Mexican electronic artist and composer Juan Sebastian Lach, who performs on computer, and Chilean electric guitarist Cristian Alvear, presenting a 2015 composition by French composer, saxophonist, and organist Jean-Luc Guionnet titled "One for One for any pitched instrument and electronics."

Composer Magnus Granberg originally composed "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" for the Boston-based ensemble Ordinary Affects, previously released in 2020 on the Meena label, now in a version reworked for sho, koto, prepared piano and electronics by Ko Ishikawa, Miki Maruta and Toshimaru Nakamura, recording in the studio before their performance at the 2019 Ftarri Festival.

Two virtuosic contemporary performers--pianist Stephen Gosling and vocalist Barbara Hannigan--heard in live performances of three challenging works by John Zorn: Jumalattaret, a song cycle in praise of line Finnish Goddesses out of Sami Shamanism, and Split the Lark, Zorn's tribute to the magical American poet Emily Dickinson, plus Zorn's early work Nazdar, Poupon, Nazdar.

A triple CD and 24-page booklet of recordings from Italian flutist and composer Manuel Zurria performing works by luminary composers including Alvin Lucier, James Tenney, Tashi Wada, Jürg Frey, Laurence Crane, &c., with an homage to Italian conceptual artist Alighiero Boetti, each CD punctuated with Preludes and Postludes performed with guest saxophonist Gianni Gebbia.

Featuring some of composer John Zorn's most lyrical work, the duo of guitarists Gyan Riley and Julian Lage continue their collaboration in the series that started in 2015 with The Bagatelles and continues through Midsummer Moons (2017), Book Beri'ah (2019), and Quatrain (2023), as they render Zorn's beautiful merging of eclectic forms inspired by William Shakespeare.

Two different version of Magnus Granberg's 2021 composition "Holde Traume, kehret wieder!" (Sweet dreams, come back!), first as a quartet performed by the Nattens Inbrott Quartet for which the piece was originally written, and then a second version performed with Granberg's group Skogen as a septet, adding additional parts to the original composition.

Inspired by the geometric and illusory work of artist Bridget Riley, Catherine Lamb's "Curva Triangulus" borrows from Renaissance music that she "warps" by interjecting geometric musical figures, performed by the Proton Ensemble of Bern using traditional, new and historic instruments, all underpinned by the 16th century microtonal Vicentino arciorgano organ.

Contemporary percussionist Ian Antonio (Wet Ink, Talujon Percussion Ensemble, Zs, Yarn/Wire) performs seven works for percussion by composer Jürg Frey written between 1994 and 2022, joined by members of the Talujon for one piece, though mostly a solo and very personal album for the percussionist, who has been influenced by Frey's approach to stillness and harmony.

In configurations of solo to an 11-piece ensemble, Aural Terrain assembles great players including Tim Hodgkinson, Jason Alder, Yoni Silver, Chris Cundy, &c to perform works by composers John Cage, Gerard Grisley, Giacinto Scelsi, Thanos Chrysakis, Jule Kjaer and Tim Hodgkinson; seven acoustic compositions written between 1978 and 2022 that prominently feature horns as trumpets, clarinets and saxophones.

Four fascinating works of string intersection from New York composer and violist Jessica Pavone, recording in the studio with the trio of violinists Aimre Niemann (Du.0 (do-point-oh)) and Abby Swidler (Xanthoria Quartet), Pavone's compositions creating wonderful psychoacoustic intertwining of texture and tone that slowly and beautifully blossom.

Three previously unreleased works by composer Phil Niblock--Index" (1969); "Tenor" (1972); "Boston III" (1972)--plus an earlier version, "Boston I", all rich works of microtones, overtones, and drones that point to the direction of his subsequent work; "Boston III" was recorded with Rhys Chatham (flute, voice), Martin Bough (tenor saxophone), and Gregory Reeve (viola, voice).

Two studies in the elongation of piano decay complemented by the harmonics and texture of the shō (a Japanese free reed instrument) using stillness and repetition in a two part extended work by NY-based Swiss comoposer Samuel Reinhard, performed by Copenhagen pianist Paul Jacob Fossum and Japanese Gagaku musician Haruna Higashida; an album of beautifully meditative pools of sound.

Three meditative pieces by Eastern European composer Adrian Demoč, recorded at Czech Radio Ostrava and performed by Miroslav Beinhauer: 'Ma fin est mon commencement' and 'Gebrechlichkeit' which both provide flexibility to the performer; 'A Luca Marenzio ll', a reinterpretation of a previous trio work pivoting around the cello, uniquely interpreted here by Beinhauer.

Summer 2024 issue of Canada's new music magazine, with composer & sound designer Stefana Fratila on the cover; plus articles on Evan Parker & Matthew Wright; Big Ears review; Filipino-Canadian composer Juro Kim Feliz; Brunswick composer & sound artist Charles Harding; the Canadian Afro-Cuban duo behind the ensemble Okan; plus album reviews, essays and a CD of tracks from artists in the magazine.

Four fascinating works of string intersection from New York composer and violist Jessica Pavone, recording in the studio with the trio of violinists Aimre Niemann (Du.0 (do-point-oh)) and Abby Swidler (Xanthoria Quartet), Pavone's compositions creating wonderful psychoacoustic intertwining of texture and tone that slowly and beautifully blossom.

Inspired by August Strindberg's short story about a fortepiano being dropped into deep waters off an archipelago island, Stora grusharpan, and using composer Rosanna Gunnarson's underwater recordings including a piano being lowered into water, Swedish pianist Karin Johansson performs Gunnarson's graphic score and compositions on a prepared grand piano.

The 2nd release from Magda Mayas' Filamental octet of Mayas, Zeena Parkins, Michel Thieke, Christine Abdelnour, Angharad Davies, Rhodri Davies, Aimée Theriot and Anthea Caddy, is a fascinating studio composition developed from individual recordings provided by each musician, assembled into two detailed and cohesive works of impressive contours and almost ceremonial beauty.

Exploring tuning systems and the extremes of harmonicity and dissonance through compositions that employ prime numbers of players in solo, trio, quintet, septet, and undectet (11) configurations, violinist Modney takes listeners into transcendent and turbulent spaces spanning improvisation and composition, detailed in a 24-page booklet with collages from Ellsworth Kelly.

A wild "Afro-Surrealist Anti-Opera" from composer & bassist Nick Dunston, performed with an ensemble of string players (including JACK Quartet) and vocalists, in a gripping hybrid of acoustic and electronic music, using the studio for post-processing to create Dunston's self-described "warped narrative", an understatement for this incredibly passionate, surreal and absolutely impressive work.

Canadian clarinetist Liam Hockley, a dedicated advocate for new and experimental music, performs compositions on a relatively obscure member of the clarinet family, the basset horn, alone and in layers of up to seven horns, in pieces from Romanian spectral composers Ana Maria Avram, Iancu Dumitrescu, and Horatiu Radulescu, along with a contemporary work by Thanos Chrysakis.

Reflecting on the slow decay of Roman and Egyptian murals, New York City-based, Puerto Rican-born composer, guitarist, visual artist and No Base Trio member, Gabriel Vicéns, presents a collection of chamber works including two piano trios, a wind quintet performed by Nu Quintet, cello & violin and violin & piano duos, a solo piano work, and a sextet conducted by David Bloom.

The French duo Griffure of cellist & vocalist Leonore Grollemund and violinist & vocalist Amaryllis Billet are transformed into a string quintet enhanced by electroacoustic instrumentation, with violinist Chloe Julian, violist Alix Gauthier and double bassist Lea Yeche, all three providing vocals, in 15 evocative works that shift between composition, improv and text.

Thirteen realizations of sound artist Rubén Turba and violist Minami Saeki's concept for two musicians or more, where each performer chooses five sounds as a "gift" to one of the others, played up to three times during the realization before moving to the next sound; these recordings were made independently in Tokyo & Madrid and then combined without editing.

A multinational quartet based in Germany led by Egyptian artist Rasha Ragab who chose and recites the texts — poems from Persian mystic al-Hallaj (858-922 AD) — in this extended piece of sound-oriented instrumental compostions from Lucio Capece, who also performs on bass clarinet, in a quartet with Werner Dafeldecker on double bass and Christoph Niolaus on stone harp.

The current Polwechsel quartet of Werner Dafeldecker, Michael Moser, Martin Brandlmayr and Burkhard Beins — merging improvisation and contemporary forms for outstandingly paced and conceptualized performance — are joined by luminaries John Butcher, Klaus Lang, Magda Mayas, Andrea Neumann and Peter Ablinger, released in a deluxe 4-LP box set with a 32-page booklet.

Influenced by New York School composers, Fluxus, Oliveros Sonic Meditations, and Wandelweiser, Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein's fascinating scores take unique and experimental approaches to composition, heard here in three chamber works, two recorded by London's Apartment House, and a live recording from a 2019 concert in Berlin, "sounds for Berlin".

Seven works from Italian composer Marco Baldini, a follow-up to his well-received 2023 album Vesperi, this album introducing a variety of recent chamber works for strings from trios to quintets, performed by members of London's Apartment House ensemble, with the pieces "Selva", "Plutone" and "Otto" written specifically for Apartment House.

Translating to "rain pattering", German-born international sound artist Florian Wittenburg uses a MetaSynth and the Kyma visual programming language for sound design to emulate the sounds of rain pattering from aperiodic to periodic in two parts, along with heating noises in two parts, and a clock ticking; compellingly structured accompaniment to your personal ambiance.

Since 2021 Swiss composer Felix Profos and drummer Peter Conradin Zumthor have performed as the duo Grund, Profos performing on harmonium and on the 1973 Italian organ Bontempi Pop3, Zumthor on bass drum, gong, bells & snare, their extended work on this self-titled album a tranquil and meditative work of slow transitions with moments of terse activity, receding with grace and serenity.

An exquisite recording of composer Anthony Donofrio 1972 work for solo vibraphone captured at the University of Nebraska where Donofrio teaches and directs their new music ensemble, this extended work for solo vibraphone performed by Donofrio himself, living up to its title in a delicate advancement from clear playing to unusual vibraphone timbres and technique.

One of two albums capturing a May 15th, 2023 concert in Tokyo by composer Takahiro Kuroda at the Ftarri performance space, titled "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x", this album presenting two Houben works for solo horn performed by virtuoso horn player Kei Kondo, and one solo piano piece performed by Kuroda on upright piano.

The second of two albums capturing a May 15th, 2023 concert in Tokyo by composer & pianist Takahiro Kuroda at the Ftarri performance space, titled "Square of Thoughts Vol. 2: Eva-Maria Houben and Horn + x", this album presenting a 2018 Houben composition for horn and piano titled "Echo Fantasy II", performed by virtuoso horn player Kei Kondo and Takahiro Kuroda on upright piano.

A portrait of UK interdisciplinary composer Paul Newland's music through five pieces dating from 2009 to 2023 performed by members of London's Apartment House ensemble, including a string quartet, two different trio combinations, a short work for solo piano, and a score for open instrumentation, realised in this recording by a septet.

Two "songs" from a series of works by Netherlands composer and pianist Danya Pilchen, exploring the possibilities of making and experiencing time through attentive listening, these works focused on creating a dialogue between two measures of time, performed with Anne La Berge on flute, Germaine Sijstermans on clarinet, Seamus Cater on harmonica and Koen Nutters on double bass.