Pyroclastic Records (2025)

08/08/2025

New album on the way from visionary vibraphonist, marimbist and composer Patricia Brennan 🤍

Out October 24, 2025, ‘Of The Near And Far’ marks another audacious evolution for Brennan, whose music combines bold innovation with singular ventures into her own wide-ranging inspirations. Where the 2024 release ‘Breaking Stretch’ incorporated elements of folkloric traditions from her native Mexico along with Afro-Caribbean, funk and salsa sounds, the new album has its roots in Brennan’s classical percussion studies at Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music and her contemporaneous passion for the adventurous alt-rock of the ‘90s, bands like Radiohead and Soundgarden.

The ten-piece ensemble featured marries the worlds of jazz and new music in varied combinations. Brennan is joined by pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, guitarist Miles Okazaki, bassist Kim Cass and drummer John Hollenbeck, complemented by violinists Modney and Pala Garcia, violist Kyle Armbrust and cellist Michael Nicolas as well as the electronic musician Arktureye, all conducted by Eli Greenhoe.

First single ‘Antlia’ is out on streaming platforms today. Listen at the link in bio
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01/08/2025

New single out from Ned Rothenberg, this time for solo alto saxophone - “Urgency” 🖤

Hailed as “America’s most intimate composer and improviser” (All Music Guide), multi-instrumentalist Ned Rothenberg has evolved a singular and deeply personal language on an array of woodwinds – primarily alto saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, and shakuhachi flute – over the course of four and a half decades of investigatory musicianship. On ‘Looms & Legends’, his first solo recording since 2012’s clarinet-focused World of Odd Harmonics (Tzadik), Rothenberg once again reveals himself to be a captivating storyteller and an unparalleled sonic architect.

Preorder link for the full album ‘Looms and Legends’ in bio 🧡
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04/07/2025

Craig Taborn, Nels Cline & Marcus Gilmore coalesce as Trio of Bloom.

The trio’s self-titled debut, out September 26, 2025, defies description with far-ranging sound worlds and genre-defying exploration.

The seed of an idea from which Trio of Bloom sprouted was simply three names, and the limitless potential they suggested: keyboardist Craig Taborn, guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Marcus Gilmore. Three wholly singular artists, but with intrepid spirits in common; musical omnivores, with indelible voices that reject categorization, sharing an indefatigable compulsion to venture into previously undiscovered sonic territory. On their debut release, Taborn, Cline and Gilmore converge for their first-ever meeting – blossoming, like the flowers that grace the album’s artwork, into a living thing of radiant beauty, startling vibrancy and sultry intensity.

20/06/2025

Multi-instrumentalist .rothenberg weaves compelling, intimate stories on his first solo album in 13 years. Out September 5, 2025, Looms & Legends features the acclaimed woodwinds master on alto saxophone, clarinets and shakuhachi flute.

Looms & Legends hints in its title at the fundamental elements that make Rothenberg’s unaccompanied excursions so compelling: its deft, multi-hued weaving and the spellbinding eloquence of its unfolding narratives. “I think of those elements as the X and Y axes of my approach,” Rothenberg explains. “In my improvisations, there are the more melodic pieces that have a definite sense of starting at a certain place and taking you along a storyline. Then there are the ‘loom’ pieces which present the listener a rich and atypical aural environment in which to weave their own subjective narrative.”

Listen to the first single ‘Dance Above’ at the link in bio.

11/04/2025

Happy Release Day to ‘Purposing The Air’ 🤍

14/03/2025

Happy release day to Bone Bells 🧡

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28/02/2025

New single out from Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson’s upcoming ‘Bone Bells’.
Listen to “Esmeralda” at link in bio.

Over the course of a collaboration that has become vital in less than a decade’s time, and have merged those two remarkably singular voices into a single, dauntless vision. With Bone Bells, their third album as a duo and second release for Pyroclastic Records, the pair affirms their place as one of the most thrilling and venturesome piano/guitar tandems in that pairing’s relatively small pantheon.

31/01/2025

Pianist and guitarist further evolve their exhilarating, audacious partnership on their third duo collaboration ‘Bone Bells’ - available for preorder now.

Listen to the first single “Bone Bells” at link in bio.

Individually, both pianist Sylvie Courvoisier and guitarist Mary Halvorson are revered among the most distinctive and innovative voices in modern creative music. Adeptly shifting between the realms of contemporary chamber music and avant-garde jazz, Courvoisier has been hailed as “a pianist of equal parts audacity and poise” by The New York Times. With her transformative approach to jazz guitar, Halvorson has been called “the most future-seeking guitarist working right now” by NPR.

Over the course of a collaboration that has become vital in less than a decade’s time, Courvoisier and Halvorson have merged those two remarkably singular voices into a single, dauntless vision. With Bone Bells, their third album as a duo and second release for Pyroclastic Records, the pair affirms their place as one of the most thrilling and venturesome piano/guitar tandems in that pairing’s relatively small pantheon.

10/01/2025

‘Koan 13’ – the first single from saxophonist and composer Ingrid Laubrock’s double album ‘Purposing The Air’ – is out today via Pyroclastic Records. The single features vocalist Fay Victor and cellist Mariel Roberts (Link in bio).

The recording, out April 11, 2025, sets to music 60 brief yet evocative koans for the pairings of Victor/Roberts, Sara Serpa/Matt Mitchell, Theo Bleckmann/Ben Monder, and Rachel Calloway/Ari Streisfeld (Duo Cortona) . Laubrock’s miniature pieces combine with the words of poet Erica Hunt’s piece “Mood Librarian – a poem in koan.”

The title ‘Purposing The Air’ is paraphrased from the lyric of the penultimate piece (performed here by Duo Cortona): “birds purpose the air / as you purpose / pen and paper.” Contained within those few words is a suggestion of the art of composition, where marks on paper are translated into vibrations in air, rife with meaning and feeling; at the same time, as Laubrock explains, it hints at the wide-ranging interconnectedness of the project. “I envisage this whole piece of music almost as a space with the poems floating through it,” she describes. “There’s just enough space in between each song that it allows a moment to settle before the next one pops up.”

18/10/2024

Happy Release Day to Brandon Seabrook - Object of Unknown Function 🧡

20/09/2024

Pyroclastic is pleased to announce the release of ‘Object of Unknown Function’ by guitarist, banjoist and composer Brandon Seabrook. Due out October 18, 2024, the recording layers vintage banjos, electric and 12-string guitars and cassette recordings into an uncategorizable hybrid.

The first single ‘Object of Unknown Function’ is out today (link in bio).

“The body / instrument relationship is vitally important to my music,” Seabrook says. “I don’t just sit down and concentrate on executing these parts. A lot of my playing has to do with full engagement of the instrument body and my body. I wanted to try to put that into the recording.”

Object of Unknown Function arrives ten years after Seabrook’s last solo venture, the blistering Sylphid Vitalizers, which Noisey hailed as a “dissonant guitar army...(with) mind-blowing prog-rock complexities – all at mind-numbing breakneck speed.” The new album encapsulates a decade of evolution, taking Seabrook’s practice into diverse new directions. While it is undoubtedly a solo album, the pieces are hardly limited to a single player on a single instrument, at times layering a half-dozen or more banjos or guitars with ambient and percussion sounds from cassette tapes.

23/08/2024

Coming up on Thursday 8/29, join us for a free Bandcamp Listening Party where we’ll listen to Patricia Brennan’s new album ‘Breaking Stretch’ and chat with her about it. These are always lots of fun, see you there! 🧡

August 29 @ 6pm EST on Bandcamp - link in bio

Pyroclastic Records