Our first release in over a year —Wallace, Moffett and Foster’s ‘Disquiet’ —is live, in full on bandcamp today! Four ecstatic acoustic improvisations from @crate_on @moffjazz & @faux.star recorded at @pioneerworks beautifully designed by @extra_nothing

Announcing PI007 - ‘Disquiet’ by Wallace, Moffett and Foster This release from free-improv trio of Eli Wallace, Joe Moffett and Michael Foster (our first in over a year!) is available for pre-order now through bandcamp and will officially release next Friday! A wildly dynamic exploration of both music’s social character and its visceral materiality, the players here beautifully demonstrate improvised music as a basis for living autonomously, but joyously and defiantly together. This trio together explores a studied freedom in what might could be, each approaching their instrument (sax, trumpet, piano) with regard for its complete acoustic character - its build, its every surface, texture, tone and timbre - educated and free. Joe Moffett - trumpet Michael Foster - tenor, soprano, & baritone saxophones Eli Wallace - upright piano & objects Engineered by Ryan Caruso at Pioneer Works on January 18 & 19, 2023 Mixed and mastered by Nathaniel Morgan Lawrence of Arabia Image by Cosmo Vitelli Band Photo by Peter Gannushkin Collage by Matthew Crook Design by Ben Chlapek @extra_nothing

Extended Play II presented by @dismalniche Oct. 17-19 Columbia, MO

We are excited to announce our 6th release ‘five lines indecipherable’ from the free-improv quartet of Cunningham, Shiroishi, Ackerley and Smith . Taking titles from the fragmented poetry of Sappho, ‘five lines indecipherable’ is a vivid live session from the quartet of Alex Cunningham (violin) Patrick Shiroishi (alto sax), Jessica Ackerley (electric guitar) and Damon Smith (double bass) recorded in the wee hours of a winter morning, January, 2023. . In the fragmented poems of Sappho, Eros is abstruse and elusive - the closer we seem to get, the more distant and unknowable the idea becomes. As the poems break off, Eros resists surveillance and direct apprehension - the fragment an invitation and dissolution into wonder. It is in this exciting, nebulous space that the quartet of Alex Cunningham, Patrick Shiroishi, Jessica Ackerley and Damon Smith gambol in undefined possibilities outside of the logic of continuity. In flight from the static pins of intelligibility, the quartet here flutter like wild moths refusing to be tacked to lifeless observational taxonomies. Across four pieces of suspended midnight vividness the music here is both patient and spacious but also shaking like a ‘mountain wind falling on the oak trees’. . Beautifully laid designed and laid out as per always by @extra_nothing

Whew, after a long and frustrating process we will FINALLY begin shipping these early November. . Thanks to all who have pre-ordered and remained patient as we got this right. We’ll be packing you all up with extra goodies!

. ‼️new release‼️ Loren Connors / Scott Tuma LP ‘A West Bound Brook / Gone to Turin’ Preorders available 3/3 @profaneilluminations Shipping July 2023 . Elder statesmen of abstract American guitar music, Loren Connors and Scott Tuma are distant but kindred spirits - two beautiful dreamers who have patiently wrung heart-rendering works of fragile beauty and harrowing despair from their instruments for decades. A shared affinity for America's musical heritage as well as for the works of abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko have been common threads running through the work of both artists. Like Rothko before them who built from classical art forms to create a new language in painting through vast, expressive fields of opaque colors, Connors and Tuma have similarly built from elemental forms - Connors from the blues and Tuma from traditional folk foundations - to respectively improvise and re-create their own distinctly austere palettes of ethereal sound. Analogous to painter’s shrouded dark walls of color that make grave first impressions before giving way to radiant luminosity, the artists here plumb the depths of sepulchral stillness to find them not empty but echoing with spectral memories full of human familiarity and humbled enchantment. As the painter thinned his oils to let the ‘inner voices’ of his work shine through, so too do Connors and Tuma give way to silence and space where their music exists in abstract emotional realms that precede conscious thought. This is a vinyl exclusive release beautifully packaged in a edition of 150 designed by Chicago artist Ben Chlapek with artwork featuring photo's from the artists, their family and friends. . Photo 2 - Aki Onda @akionda_official Photo 3 - Annabelle Tuma @cloudworksinc.official LP layout and design @extra_nothing

Our fourth release ‘Images-After’ from the Onishi-Beis Duo is here! . First performing live as a duo at the 2021 Columbia Experimental Music Festival as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Mizzou New Music Initiative and Dismal Niche, the Onishi-Beis Duo is made up of Japanese-American composer, conductor, and clarinetist Yoshiaki Onishi and Uru-Brazilian composer, pianist, audio designer, arranger and researcher Santiago Beis. Composed of four long-form pieces for bass clarinet, sax, keys and electronics, Images-After features over an hour of masterfully dynamic electro-acoustic improvisations exploring a spatiotemporal awareness of the individual musicians themselves, each other, and the spaces in which each improvisation was performed. . Gorgeous colorful design and layout work as always by @extra_nothing

Dismalniche.com

We’re very excited to announce our fourth release from the label - ‘Images-After’ from the Onishi-Beis Duo. . Made up of Japanese-American composer, conductor, and clarinetist Yoshiaki Onishi and Uru-Brazilian composer, pianist, audio designer, arranger and researcher Santiago Beis, OBD create masterfully dynamic electro-acoustic improvisations for bass clarinet, saxophone, electronics and keys exploring a spatiotemporal awareness of themselves, each other, and the spaces in which each improvisation was performed. . The entire album is currently available for streaming on bandcamp and cassettes will begin shipping the first week of November. . Photos of the Onishi-Beis Duo were taken by Allison Davis. Art Design and Layout by Ben Chlapek @extra_nothing and Matthew Crook @busyboytalkshow

@dismalniche ‘s The 7th annual Columbia Experimental Music Festival hits Columbia, MO this November!

“If ever a major movie studio should reach into the ether of obscurity to pull music for a soundtrack, I would suggest the producers of The Dark Tower give Unknown Pressures a playthrough. With as much cool and bravado as Elba and McConaughey, and a similar pall of existential dread covered up in science fiction wrappings, Unknown Pressures is a lonely walk through a barren wasteland” - Tiny Mix Tapes