Room40 is an Australian label and curatorial platform founded in Brisbane in 2000 by the composer and artist Lawrence English. It began by sharing unreleased work by his peers and by linking Australian experimental sound with scenes abroad, and by the mid-2010s its catalogue had passed 175 editions spanning electroacoustic music, improvisation, drone and mixed media.
Releases range from Chris Abrahams’s Thrown in 2005 to a deliberately limited Grouper seven-inch, Hold / Sick, in 2010, alongside records by Scott Morrison, Marina Rosenfeld, Norman Westberg, Ross Manning and English himself. The organisation also presents Open Frame, a festival of sound and media whose 2015 edition was staged at Carriageworks in Sydney. Room40’s identity rests on curation rather than a single style, with sustained tones and close listening often serving as common ground between field recording, composition and noise.