Synth / Electronic / Ambient

"When No Pussyfooting was released in 1973 by two great pioneers like Eno and Fripp, that first whisper of their artistic association surprised many critics and fans. Yet, that kind of minimalist ambient sonority carried out by the two appeared in the ear like something absolutely new and innovative. Although nowadays we might be more accustomed to creative operations of this type, we are still fascinated, while listening, by the still possible achievement of relevant moments of musical epiphany, however...

"22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream" is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir re-instantates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques...

“Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music.
Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi...

“Following nearly 20 years of working together as a trio, and numerous cross-collaborations in different configuration between them, Ideologic Organ presents Placelessness, the debut full-length by Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, comprising two long-form works at juncture of ambient music, minimalism, rigorous experimentalism and improvisation, and machine music.
Having carved distinct pathways across a diverse number of musical idioms for decades, Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi...

"Hazel is the fifth record from Æthenor, the group of eclectic travelers that includes Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo, Ulver, This is Not This Heat, Grumbling Fur, etc.), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), and Steve Noble (Brötzmann Trio, N.E.W.) Together they bring their considerable pedigrees into play with unexpected and original results. Contradicting expectations of a massive blow-out of sound, everyone plays with remarkable, effective restraint. Atmospheric and layered, this...

"Hazel is the fifth record from �thenor, the group of eclectic travelers that includes Stephen O'Malley (SunnO))), KTL), Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo, Ulver, This is Not This Heat, Grumbling Fur, etc.), Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver), and Steve Noble (Br�tzmann Trio, N.E.W.) Together they bring their considerable pedigrees into play with unexpected and original results. Contradicting expectations of a massive blow-out of sound, everyone plays with remarkable, effective restraint. Atmospheric and layered, this...

Edition of 250.

“Aircraft was the name Steve Cohen used for the largely unknown and quite fantastic synthesizer music he was creating in NYC in the '80s. This was in the same period Steve was in the late-period No Wave band, China Shop, along with guitarist Naux (who would go on to play with the Voidoids) and percussionist Richard Edson (whose next band was Sonic Youth).
Steve had been active in the NYC sub-underground since the '70s, even playing at Giorgio Gomelsky's legendary 'Zu Music...

“Limited Edition of 500

The third collaborative work from Italian artists Alio Die and Lorenzo Montanà is an electro-acoustic rumination upon the shimmerings of water. The refined electronics perfectly integrate with the sounds of acoustic origin -- the magic is enthralling. The sonorities of original ethnic instruments such as the psaltery, the rebab (a low stringed instrument similar to the lute, with resonating strings), and the duduk combine with the understated textures of synths, drones...

If you know and appreciate Oren’s ‘Hubris’ for the masterpiece that it is, you will understand the the excitement over this expansion of the idea!

“[This documents] the hypnotic and electrifying live performance of Oren Ambarchi's 2016 LP Hubris by a fifteen-strong band at London's Café Oto.
Over three days in May 2019, Oto toasted Oren Ambarchi at 50/Black Truffle at 10 with Ambarchi and a large group of close friends and collaborators in a series of performances that interspersed existing..

“Evolving the tactics of acclaimed Ambarchi works such as Quixotism, Hubris and Simian Angel, Oren invites an international all-star cast to dialogue with his guitar + triggers inventions. Intricate theme-and-variations build upon the staccato rhythms via expansive improvs from BJ Cole, Sam Dunscomb, Chris Abrahams, Jim O’Rourke and Julia Reidy. Magnetically compulsive!”

“Evolving the tactics of acclaimed Ambarchi works such as Quixotism, Hubris and Simian Angel, Oren invites an international all-star cast to dialogue with his guitar + triggers inventions. Intricate theme-and-variations build upon the staccato rhythms via expansive improvs from BJ Cole, Sam Dunscomb, Chris Abrahams, Jim O’Rourke and Julia Reidy. Magnetically compulsive!”

"Appleton was an assistant professor of music at Dartmouth, and in 1967, became the Director of the Electronic Music Studio there. I first became aware of this artist via the single taken from this album, which contains both of my favorite cuts from it. The album can best be described as experimental electronic prog with strong psychedelic influences, and mostly strange and dischordant passages, featuring an array of wild electronic sound effects. This will appeal even more to fans of avant-garde prog...

“It lets me walk around feeling like I’m in a futuristic dystopia, a Blade Runner sort of vibe, with the occasional “big scene” as the music swells as we stumble onto some previously unrecognized element of the landscape from just the right angle.”-Ron Hogan

“rom France we welcome the latest release from Ascending Divers, solo project of Hugo Champion (of Lisieux fame), exploring massively deep atmospherics and drone Sonorites. Sculpting abstract aural soundscapes with orchestral passages and...

This is the Ash Ra Tempel "reunion" live reunion show from April 2000, announced by the very excited MC at the beginning that they are playing together for the first time in 30 years. I guess Mr MC never heard any of the work Klaus and Manuel did together in the 80s and 90s. This is still really good stuff though!

“Julian Cope (author of "Krautrock-Sampler") had invited Schulze and Göttsching to his "Cornucopia Festival" in London, and the two musicians took the offer as a great opportunity for a..

This is the Ash Ra Tempel "reunion" live reunion show from April 2000, announced by the very excited MC at the beginning that they are playing together for the first time in 30 years. I guess Mr MC never heard any of the work Klaus and Manuel did together in the 80s and 90s. This is still really good stuff though and this is the first time that the video footage has been seen!

“Julian Cope (author of "Krautrock-Sampler") had invited Schulze and Göttsching to his "Cornucopia Festival" in London...

“Initially released in 1982 as part of the Wave Notation series (which includes Hiroshi Yoshimura's Music For Nine Postcards), Still Way is, without a doubt, a seminal Japanese environmental/ambient/minimalism album, often mentioned alongside Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass (1983) and Hiroshi Yoshimura's Green (1986) as one of the genre's most important pieces. "Like the moment of stillness, after the wind passes through the garden, when the rain stops for a brief second..." Notably inspired...

“Rasmus Rasmussen (Aerosol, Causa Sui) and Keith Canisius present another delightful set of Astral TV tracks with Travelling The Circuits.
Since their debut album, Chrystal Shores from 2017, the Copenhagen-based duo have refined and perfected their approach to making semi-improvised synthesizer music. Musically it doesn't get much more pure than this. From their vast assemblage of synthesizers -- that is, vintage, modern, digital, analog, and modular synthesizers -- the two producers are squeezing...

"Félicia Atkinson's Ni envers ni endroit que cette roche brûlante (Pour Georgia O'Keeffe) is approached as a meditation, not as meditative music, but as a reflection on the art of creation: how to inhabit one's creation, how to convey it, domesticate it and live with it. Drawing inspiration from the artist Georgia O' Keeffe, both in her work as a painter and in the houses in which she lived in New Mexico, and even in the landscapes that surround them, Félicia Atkinson has composed a piece that evokes...

"Since 2014, Baal & Mortimer is the project of Alexandra Grübler, created in Düsseldorf, sonically exploring questions of resistance, autonomy, language, and identity. After the release of Earthrise on the label HEAVEN in 2018, her debut album Deixis will be released by Bureau B. She has collaborated with Black Merlin, Musiccargo, and Rupert Clervaux and was most recently a mentee of Laurel Halo for the Berlin Amplify program. Baal & Mortimer regularly presents her material in clubs, art spaces and...

You know Matt Baber as the keyboardist of Sanguine Hum and Antique Seeking Nuns.
Here he shows his talents in a very different style that will appeal to fans of folks like Harold Budd, Steve Reich, Erik Satie, etc. Completely different from what you known him for doing and equally wonderful!
He describes it "as a minimalist modern classical solo piano album but set against backdrops of rhythmic/ambient electronica."...

"A reissue of Bebo Baldan's Vapor Frames 86/91, originally released in 1991. The alchemist Bebo Baldan, accompanied by Steve James on violin and sarod (as well as on instruments of various geographical extractions) mixes, in a personal way, sounds from a bevy of different cultures -- from Mediterranean and Indian, to South American -- with synths, samples, and loops. The result is a boundless music that carries you, riding soft waves and bobbing between Balearic ambient, jazz, and electronic, on islands...

A quite good mediterranean take on the floaty, Berlin school of electronic music. I always wondered what happened to Baffo as he made three rather excellent eletronic albums and then disappeared. Now I know (see below).
Neither of these albums are particularly rare in used form, but this is the first time that they have ever been reissued in CD form!!

"Giuseppe Banfi, aka Baffo Banfi, former keyboardist of Italian Progressive Rockband Un Biglietto per l'Inferno, started a solo career; using...

“Caterina Barbieri is set to release Myuthafoo, the sister album of 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation. Written at the same time, both albums are based on creative sequencing processes that playfully unravel Barbieri's deep-rooted interest in time, space, memory, and emotion. And since she was set to re-release Ecstatic Computation on her light-years imprint,it made sense to accompany that album with this intimately entangled set of unreleased recordings. Barbieri had been touring excessively at the....

“Now available on CD for the first time. Patterns Of Consciousness is the powerful second full-length from analog synth composer Caterina Barbieri. Gorgeous high resolution analog textures and algorithmic melodies unfold under Barbieri's careful control, exploring the basic nature of sound and consciousness. These pieces are minimal in arrangement but maximal in presence asserting Barbieri as a unique voice in contemporary electronic music composition. Patterns Of Consciousness was originated by ideally...

“Marc Barreca and Kerry Leimer have worked on a nearly parallel musical course for more than forty years. Nearly parallel because their musical paths do occasionally cross. First in 1980 with "Four Pages From An Unfinished Novel" on K. Leimer's first solo album Closed System Potentials. Again during the live performance of Music For Land And Water and for the massive loop piece "Heart Of Stillness" from The Neo-Realist (At Risk) by the virtual group Savant.
Beyond basic file sharing, their recordings..

"Marc Barreca's seventh solo album for Palace of Lights extends his work with a broader and deeper palette of synthesized and sampled sound, including sources as diverse as prepared guitars, pianos, Indonesian metallophones and glass harmonica. The music of Aberrant Lens employs long MIDI delays, synced MIDI processing via MAX for Live and extreme warping of disparate looped sound sources driven into entirely new states. The results are new, coherent aural structures: music that questions traditional...

“Marc Barreca's Recordings Of Failing Light explores the subatomic matter of ordinary instrument sounds. Pianos, glass percussion, guitars, and feedback are atomized through sampling and granular processing in search of the audio equivalent of a negative image. In the end, these granular elements became the beds and pads for elaborate extrapolations of deconstructed melodic, rhythmic, patterned, and forward-looking sound-and with the addition of analog sequencer and arpeggiator based textures, some....

“With Shadow Aesthetics, Marc Barreca accomplishes something rare in electronic and ambient musics. The fluid, dynamic changes and movement within pieces; the complexities in time and pitch variation and evolution—typically absent from the mostly homogenous constructs of drone and ambient—all bring previously unavailable depth, shading and emotional charges to a form usually admired for its neutrality.
Shadow Aesthetics results from a virtual arsenal of digital and analog sources operating in a...

"The first collaborative work by Marc Barreca and K. Leimer since Savant. A hybridization of Barreca's "Tremble" and Leimer's "Permissions", Premap's 13 tracks coalesced from a huge number of individual sources, each produced as discrete, stand-alone...

“On Time Out of Time is a suite of works originally commissioned for the 2017 installations 'ER=EPR' and 'Orbihedron' by artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (in collaboration with Jean-Marc Chomaz and LIGO) for the exhibition, 'Limits of Knowing' at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin by curator, Isabel de Sena. These works utilize, among other things, exclusive source recordings from the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) capturing the sounds of the merging of...

“On Time Out of Time is a suite of works originally commissioned for the 2017 installations 'ER=EPR' and 'Orbihedron' by artists Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand (in collaboration with Jean-Marc Chomaz and LIGO) for the exhibition, 'Limits of Knowing' at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin by curator, Isabel de Sena. These works utilize, among other things, exclusive source recordings from the interferometers of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) capturing the sounds of the merging of...

“Time is... Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of seven years from start to finish. The completed work exhibits those strands of time eloquently and exquisitely. Limitation breeds creativity, being an expression of minimalism and focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging a unified flurry...

I know that John spent a lot of time thinking about this album and recording a lot of things that did NOT go on this album and you can hear the result of that ‘quality control’ immediately.

'Between the Axiom and the Sigh' is the first new album from Ephemeral Sun keyboardist John Battema in 8 years. Inspired and influenced by sci-fi soundtracks from the late 70's/80's and the keyboard-heavy electronic/prog/rock of the 80's, it..

This is a electronic / laptop goodie!

“In the early months of 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak ravaged his home country of Italy, prolific composer Bruno Bavota did what we all would eventually do: isolated and waited. What followed was a year of fear, anxiety, and dread. Eventually, fear gave way to fatigue, and the anxiety metamorphosized into nervous energy. The compulsion to create became more powerful than the compression and weight. And so were born Apartment Songs and Apartment Loops...

All three of these electronic albums from 1970-1972, are classics of their very early time in musical synthesis.

“Digitally remastered two CD set containing three classic albums from Beaver & Krause's Warner Brothers period circa 1970-1972. Including the celebrated Moog-friendly collaborators' (Beatles/Byrds/Neil Young/Doors/Phil Spector/Jack Nietzsche/Quincy Jones/Stones/Simon and Garfunkel) quirky mix of early electronics, found sound and musical dalliances from blues to soul, rock to gospel...

"Heavy period-synth float with bare accompaniment, thankfully just-pre DX-7."

"A series of three pieces/suites; "Leapday Night", "A Traveler's Dream Journal", and "Interspecies Smalltalk" involving Rhys Chatham/Ben Neill (on trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takehisa Kosugi (violin), and David Behrman himself on electronics. Behrman creates thickly layered liquid sounds utilizing this complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, and then plays..

“Following the release of lo-fi electronic masterpiece I Don’t Remember Now / I Don’t Want To Talk About It and his brilliant follow-up Plaster Falling, Cincinnati-based artist John Bender began assembling his third and last album, Pop Surgery, in late 1982.
While all of Bender’s work draws from intimate home recordings—featuring the artist alone with various keyboards, analogue sequencers and tape delays—Pop Surgery remains the one that perhaps best distills his arrant deconstruction of the “pop”...

This is a great set of ambient, sculptural music with a fascinating story. In brief, Harry Bertoia was a jeweler, sculptor and furniture designer (among other things) who, starting in the 50s, began to sculpt sculptures which produced sound, made of tall vertical rods.
In the late 70s, there were 11 privately released recordings made and released by Bertoia. Now for the first time in over 40 years, new releases of previously unheard and unreleased works are being released on his reactivated...

This is a great set of ambient, sculptural music with a fascinating story. In brief, Harry Bertoia was a jeweler, sculptor and furniture designer (among other things) who, starting in the 50s, began to sculpt sculptures which produced sound, made of tall vertical rods.
In the late 70s, there were 11 privately released recordings made and released by Bertoia. Now for the first time in over 40 years, new releases of previously unheard and unreleased works are being released on his reactivated...

This is a great set of music with a fascinating story. In brief, Harry Bertoia was a jeweler, sculptor and furniture designer (among other things) who, staring in the 50s, began to sculpt sculptures which produced sound, made of tall vertical rods.

In the late 70s, there were 11 privately released recordings made and released by Bertoia. Now for the first time anywhere, all 11 of them are reissued taken from their original master tapes.

This is a must for fans of experimental sounds....

“When Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label was resurrected, Important Records' intention was to tell the story of Bertoia's groundbreaking Sonambient work as revealed through his extensive collection of notes and recordings.
When the first new LP was released in 2016, Important were only in possession of 1/20th of the archive. Now, in 2019, the label is excited to release the first LP of new material from the full archive and they present it to increase understanding of what Bertoia was doing in his...

“When Harry Bertoia's Sonambient label was resurrected, Important Records' intention was to tell the story of Bertoia's groundbreaking Sonambient work as revealed through his extensive collection of notes and recordings.
When the first new LP was released in 2016, Important were only in possession of 1/20th of the archive. Now, in 2019, the label is excited to release the first LP of new material from the full archive and they present it to increase understanding of what Bertoia was doing in his...

“In 1970, Harry Bertoia had been developing his sonic sculptures for over ten years. He had only been composing/recording for two years and the four long pieces chosen for this CD find him starting to arrive at the sonic forms he had been searching for. Hints Of Things To Come is one of the most unique and melodic pieces discovered so far in the Bertoia tape archive. In this piece, you hear him slowly create and articulate a musical riff. Bertoia builds this phrase patiently until the composition reaches...

"This is a deluxe CD/DVD package containing historic recordings made in Harry Bertoia's Sonambient barn. The DVD, a film titled Sonambients: The Sound Sculpture of Harry Bertoia, by Jeffrey and Miriam Eger, was shot in 1971 and follows Harry Bertoia in performance and interview throughout his Sonambient barn deep in the Pennsylvania woods.
This film offers a rare opportunity to follow the artist in practice, listening carefully as he moves contemplatively through his sculptures and gongs. Interview...

“III: Chroma/Contour is the third album from Billow Observatory, the collaborative project of Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual, Ulrich Schnauss collaborator, and more) and Michigan native Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull). The album's nine tracks eschew the pulse and rhythm that defined the duo's previous effort -- II: Plains/Patterns (2017) -- in favor of sparse melodic possibilities and a more abstract palette of sounds.
Chroma/Contour suggests looking both 20 years forward and twenty years back, while...

“III: Chroma/Contour is the third album from Billow Observatory, the collaborative project of Danish producer Jonas Munk (Manual, Ulrich Schnauss collaborator, and more) and Michigan native Jason Kolb (Auburn Lull). The album's nine tracks eschew the pulse and rhythm that defined the duo's previous effort -- II: Plains/Patterns (2017) -- in favor of sparse melodic possibilities and a more abstract palette of sounds.
Chroma/Contour suggests looking both 20 years forward and twenty years back, while...

“The genesis of ambient duo Billow Observatory came in summer 2004, when Denmark's Jonas Munk (also known for his solo project, Manual), was first introduced to Detroit, Michigan's Jason Kolb's work with Auburn Lull. A split EP between Manual and Auburn Lull was discussed, and although this didn't materialize, the duo began exchanging ideas and audio files, finally meeting in person during 2007 when they played a show together in Michigan. As time passed, their work on a debut album began to coalesce...

"A remastered edition of Biosphere's The Hilvarenbeek Recordings, originally released in 2016."

"'As The Sun Kissed The Horizon' is one of my favorite Biosphere tracks. It's a recording of (what to me sounds like) the empty fields after a bustling summer's day, as the sun slowly sets and people leave for home. It reminds me of my summer's youth, and every time I listen, I picture myself in that exact field, the same field I spent my summers playing football in, hanging with friends and generally...

“The Senja Recordings is a collection of various outdoor recordings and studio improvisations recorded on the island of Senja, Arctic Norway, between 2015 and 2018.
Biosphere is the main recording name of Geir Jenssen, a Norwegian musician who has released a notable catalog of ambient electronic music. He is well known for his works on ambient techno and arctic themed pieces, his use of music loops, and peculiar samples from sci-fi sources.
His 1997 album Substrata voted by the users of the...

"Six years in the making, this is the sixth CD released by ReR from the visual/sonic art group Biota. Unique in their history and method, Biota painstakingly construct complex, organic structures that mix extensive studio processing and musique concréte techniques, with a highly eclectic orchestra of acoustic and electronic resources - from kit drums, through mediaeval winds, strings and barrel organs, to early experimental electronic instruments. Their works are always performance driven and interleaved...