Suche:sacred alien

In a partnership between Lost Realm Records and Classic Metal Records, we bring you the vinyl edition of Sacred Alien's first studio album "The World Doesn't Care About You" In 2020 we already had the opportunity to work with these NWOBHM legends, with the vinyl release of "Legends" (compilation of studio and unreleased songs recorded between 1980 and 1983), which was a success given the tremendous acceptance by fans and followers of this British band.

An edition that was sold out in less than 2 months! "The Universe Doesn't Care About You" is the logical continuation of the band's legacy. With a total of 9 songs, Sacred Alien once again offers us a sonic journey between parallel universes, extraterrestrial forces and the meaning of life.

When Chuck D proclaimed "Bass, how low can you go?" on Public Enemy's anthemic 'Bring the Noise,' maybe he was pre-empting or inciting the 10,000 fathoms-deep, spine-bending basslines and sub-quake tremors of 'Implosion.'

Implosion is a crushing split album, appropriately released on The Bug's own PRESSURE label. Mapping out a new form of spectral dub, the sound is deliberately immersive, introverted, and yes, definitely implosive. In pursuit of heavy lids, blurred vision, and merciless bass bin punishment, it’s one part meditation, two parts low-end theory, and essentially a confession of devoted sound system addiction.

As expected from a tag team featuring British soundlab explorer and 'London Zoo' composer Kevin Martin, aka The Bug, and Michael Fiedler, aka Jah Schulz—a long-time graduate of Germany's new school of sound system reggae culture—the duo approaches their target differently yet share the goal of keeping their sound "raw" (Fiedler) and "brutally minimal" (Martin). This proves that opposites can attract, even if their tools are different and their methods sometimes diverge.

From such a disparate combo, hailing from different geographical and aesthetic backgrounds, contrasts are certainly on display, even within each artist's own contributions. From the melancholia and transcendence of 'Alien Virus (West Indian Centre, Leeds),' to the duality of ascension and descension on 'Hope,' or the Sunn 0))) in dub, visceral drone of 'Dread (The End, London),' to the tripped-out repetitions of 'Midnight,' which reinvents Chain Reaction for post-millennials, the result is both sacred and narcotic. Each track illuminates the emotional impact and atmospheric pressure being explored across this deceptively sparse album—a mastery of tone and texture.

This collection might be as reduced, minimal, and deep as The Bug has ever gone, perhaps echoing the solemnity of his recent Kevin Richard Martin Black release and invoking the futurist steppas self-pioneered on his previous Pressure album. Alternatively, Fiedler‘s Ghost Dubs project ventures into his most heavyweight direction yet, which is no mean feat considering his previous, the critically acclaimed album Damaged, was a monstrously massive triumph of analogue weight and enviable sound design.

Implosion is ice-cool, a stark contrast to the warmth and sociability of traditional Jamaican roots and the current trends in digi-dub. Instead, the mood is soaked in tension and intense dread, finding an unexpected melting point where classic dub's stark rhythm attack, isolationist ambience's eerie drift, dub techno's floatation strategies, and even the relentless riffs of doom metal collide. As the bass-obsessed pair drop what is arguably the heaviest ambient dub album to emerge from any electronic sector—a moody counterpoint to The Orb's fluffy clouds, etc, Martin has cited The Roots Radics, Black Jade, and On U Sound's Pounding System as heavily influencing his approach to the album, while Fiedler has expressed his admiration for Adrian Sherwood's productions and Rhythm & Sound's enchanting soundscape. Yet, the super heavyweight pulsations, emotive resonances, and bone-rattling vibrations detonated here effortlessly go far beyond these influences.

Shadowy and elusive, there’s a mysteriousness at this record's core. A haunting moodiness oscillating between nostalgia and future shock. Despite the deadly fixation with SLOW and HEAVY, the album maintains a totally hypnotic swing throughout. Implosion and its lead single 'Imploded Versions' are testaments to being enveloped in bass, seduced by bass, submerged in bass, and utterly crushed by bass, as The Bug and Ghost Dubs seek to craft a new form of dub for zonal headz and Babylon seekers.

Mastered by Stefan Betke (a.k.a. POLE) at Scape Mastering studio, this record is heavy as f-ck without resorting to continuous distortion. It’s low-end worship taken to an absolute extreme, yet remains highly listenable and definitely danceable, albeit at the slowest of paces. Sacred and narcotic, this is low-end worship amplified to the max. Dive in if you dare.

On September 26th, 2025, two decades and seven albums into his career, American musician, composer, and academic John Maus will release his most transcendent work yet: Later Than You Think. Arriving via his new label YOUNG, the album explores themes of grief, justice, rebirth, transformation, and spiritual warfare - coalescing into a work of confession and confrontation: an aural metaphysics where affect, intellect, and spirit converge in search of the beautiful, the truth and the real. Written, produced, and recorded in the Ozarks of Southwest Missouri, Later Than You Think spans 16 tracks and contains multitudes - the lush and the bare, the sacred and the profane, minimalist discipline and maximalist indulgence, counterpoint and simple pop harmony. At its core, the album reaffirms John Maus’ commitment to radical sincerity and emotional truth in an age of alienation. Powered by confrontation, faith and transformation - driven by the urgent belief that meaning still matters, and time is of the essence. Holding a degree in experimental music from CalArts and a PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii, Maus has been dubbed a “philosopher pop star” and “analog futurist” for the way he merges academic rigor with lo-fi synth-pop aesthetics. His influence spans genres and generations—from UK grime icon Skepta, who sampled his track “I’m Only Human,” and Gen-Z rapper nettspend, to filmmaker Josh Safdie, actor Natasha Lyonne, and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. His track “Cop Killer” features in the 2025 film Friendship, underscoring his continued relevance across high and low culture. With five previous albums under his belt - Songs (2006), Love Is Real (2007), We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (2011), Screen Memories (2017) and Addendum (2018) - Maus has carved out a singular path where irony, grief, joy, and absurdity can coexist and gained a cult following along the way. On Late r Than You Think Maus doesn’t just return—he confronts, confesses, and transforms. The result is not only a career-defining work, but a rare artistic offering: one that dares to believe in meaning, beauty, and the possibility of transcendence

Iter, Calgolla's latest concept album, is an intense and layered sonic journey into the contradictions of the contemporary human condition.
With a musical language that combines alt-rock, post-rock, post-punk, spoken word and forays into performance art, the group constructs a complex work that defies any simple definition.
The record deals with themes such as migration, inner transformation, social alienation, ecological collapse and a sense of loss, layering lyrics and sounds into a coherent but fragmented narrative, like the time it tells.
The lyrics are taken and adapted from Viaticus, a graphic poem written by the singer together with visual artist Giacomo Della Maria, reshaped to adhere to tense, dense and visionary soundscapes.
The nine tracks of Iter thus form a journey that crosses different languages, styles and moods, like stages of an initiatory path that reflects the precariousness of modern life.
An album that refuses to offer answers, but invites immersion, surrender and transformation through listening. It is a meditative, multi-layered exploration of transformation, perception and resilience in the fragmented reality of modern life. With nine tracks and several languages, Iter (‘journey’ in Latin) traverses internal and geopolitical, sacred and profane landscapes, layering spoken words and sound collages into a deeply expressive experience. The guitars weave textures that are now ethereal and now abrasive, while the rhythm section builds a pulsating framework that supports and amplifies the evocative atmosphere of each piece. Iter does not merely recount the decay of our time, but attempts to bring it to life, immersing the listener in an emotional flow that blurs the boundaries between dream and nightmare, between meditation and chaos. An album that refuses to offer answers, but invites immersion, abandon and transformation through listening.

Just when you thought Kevin Richard Martin's music couldn’t go any slower, lower or deeper, Sub Zero emerges. A slow-motion excavation of drug-tech, dub, dreamy noise and frozen ambience, the album gradually mutates into hypnotic pulsations and melodic melancholia. It is arguably Martin’s most striking release to date under his given name.


Originally released digitally on Bandcamp only in the depths of winter 2022, amid the final year of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine, this desolate epic went on to become KRM's best-selling digital album on the platform. With persistent demand for a vinyl pressing and a full DSP release from fans, Martin thought the time was right for Sub Zero to finally surface in its full glory: remastered and paired with fresh new artwork.


Unnervingly, the album is as beautiful as it is solemn, as glacial as it is relentless, and as subtle as it is terrifying. A trip into a sonic abyss, with a tour of a philosophical void, it’s to my ears, KRM’s most seductive work yet, and also his most emotionally resonant. Martin expertly balances tear-jerking motifs with heavier than hell rhythmic weight. With its melodic fog, eternal drones and eerie atmospherics, the peripheral throb of distant kick drums, the heartbeat punctuation of cavernous subs and the snowstorm blizzard of fuzz absolutely envelopes the mind, whilst crushing the soul.


In terms of lineage, Sub Zero might recall a more paranoid Porter Ricks, a dystopian GAS, or a brutally dubbed-out Pan Sonic. Most fitting, however, is its kinship with the deepest dub terrain Martin previously explored on In Blue, The Bug’s acclaimed 2020 collaboration with Dis Fig for Hyperdub, where he obsessively probed subaqueous pulses and low-end modulations.


Sub Zero is possibly the most minimal, desolate, and deviant dub record yet released on Martin’s PRESSURE label. It marks the point at which dub disappears into its own effects trails. Dub music capturing frozen moments in time. Dub as an addictive painkiller, that sounds both sacred and ocean deep.

Halo Studios und Laced Records haben sich zusammengetan, um die ikonische Musik der ursprünglichen Halo-Trilogie zum ersten Mal auf Vinyl zu veröffentlichen.

Diese Box enthält 83 Titel aus den ersten drei Halo-Alben, die speziell für Vinyl neu gemastert und auf acht heavyweight LPs gepresst wurden. Jeder Soundtrack befindet sich in einer breitrandige Außenhülle und einer bedruckten Innenhülle. Diese wiederum befinden sich in einer stabilen Sammlerbox aus Karton mit silbernem Laminatüberzug und geprägtem Halo-Logo.

Das Original-Cover-Artwork stammt von Art Director und Concept Artist Isaac Hannaford (alias Rhizus / Space Ship Guru), dem ehemaligen Lead Concept Artist und Mitwirkenden an Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST und Halo Reach. Das zusätzliche Artwork der Box wurde von der Grafikdesignerin Maren Landsnes erstellt.

Halo: Combat Evolved war der Inbegriff des Konsolen-Ego-Shooters und sein Soundtrack legte den Grundstein für den legendären Sound der Serie. Der Soundtrack ist von verschiedenen Genres inspiriert und kombiniert schwungvolle Orchesterklänge mit marschierenden Militär-Snares, Prog-Rock-Percussion und - wer könnte den gregorianischen Mönchsgesang vergessen?

Für Halo 2 taten sich die Komponisten mit hochkarätigen Musikern zusammen und verpassten dem Halo-Thema mit dem neuen „Mjolnir Mix“ ein Heavy-Metal-Makeover. Es war der erste Videospiel-Soundtrack, der es in die Billboard 200 schaffte.

Halo 3 zeichnete sich durch Tribal-Drums und Prog-Rock-Refrains aus, während Klaviermelodien, begleitet von einem 60-köpfigen Orchester und einem 24-stimmigen Chor, dem Soundtrack emotionale Tiefe verliehen.

- 83 Tracks aus Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2 und Halo 3
- Speziell für Vinyl neu gemastert
- Cover-Artwork von Isaac Hannaford (ehemaliger Lead Concept Artist, Bungie)

On Chrystia Cabral's fourth album as SPELLLING, the Bay Area artist transforms her acclaimed avant-pop project into a mirror. Cabral's lyrics for Portrait of My Heart tackle love, intimacy, anxiety, and alienation, trading the allegorical approach of much of her previous work for something pointed into her human heart. The album's thematic forthrightness is echoed in its arrangements, making it the sharpest, most direct SPELLLING album to date. From the dark minimalism of her earliest music to the lavishly orchestrated prog-pop of 2021's The Turning Wheel to this newly energetic expression of her creative spirit, Cabral has proved again and again that SPELLLING can be whatever she needs it to be. The title track, with its propulsive drum groove and anthemic chorus of "I don't belong here," is the most potent embodiment of the album's turn toward emotional directness. Once the main melody emerged, Cabral used the song as a tool to process her anxiety as a performer and opted for a tighter, more rock-oriented composition. This transformation mirrors the album's broader shift toward energy and immediacy, driven by the core band of Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass), whose collaboration uncovers new contours of the SPELLLING sound. Cabral still writes and demos in isolation, but presenting the songs for Portrait of My Heart to her bandmates helped her discover their eventual lively, organic forms. So did working with a trio of producers_The Turning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel, and Yves Tumor producer Psymun. Key guest contributions further shape the album. Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi) delivers SPELLLING's first duet on "Mount Analogue," Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory turns Cabral's original piano demo for "Alibi" into the crunchy, riff-y version that appears on the record, while Zulu's Braxton Marcellous gives "Drain" its sludgy heft. These parts aren't just incorporated seamlessly into the album; they feel like an integral part of its universe. Ultimately, though, Portrait of My Heart is nobody's record but Cabral's. She fearlessly draws the curtain back on parts of herself that she's never included in SPELLLING before_her feelings of being an outsider, her overly guarded nature, the way she can throw herself recklessly into intimate relationships and then cool on them just as quickly. "It's very much an open diary of all those sensations," she says.

THE SINISTER DEBUT ALBUM OF PURE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL
FEELING,FEATURING MEMBERS OF AURA NOIR, OBLITERATION &
CONDOR."Underground metal the way it should sound returns to
Kolbotn!" - Fenriz (Darkthrone)From the depths of Norway looms a new
rising beast of hate & misanthropy in the form of Avmakt
Featuring the duo of Kristian Valbo & Christoffer Brathen - known for their work
with such acts as Aura Noir, Obliteration & Condor - their debut album, 'The
Satanic Inversion of....', is a grim & revelatory offering. Primitive in a way that
captures the early magic of Kolbotn's metal kings, Darkthrone, as well as the stark
chaos of early-era Bathory along with their very own distinguishable stamp on the
genre, 'The Satanic Inversion of....' is a masterclass of real Black Metal feeling,
wrapped up in a hypnotic frenzy of ice-cold riffing.
Though both members had played in bands covering different genres since their
early teenage years, Black Metal had always been one of the most important as a
vehicle for an honesty & fierceness that resonated deeply within the duo, without
the need for extravagant clothing or pretentious concepts. And so Avmakt itself
was born as the vessel for channelling this stripped-down raw feeling.
Formed in 2020 & with their one & only demo release gaining traction in the
underground, the Norwegians quickly came to the attention of Darkthrone's Fenriz
& Peaceville Records & Avmakt was swiftly included on Peaceville's Black Metal
Compilation, 'Dark Side Of The Sacred Star' which launched at the end of 2022.
Avmakt itself means "powerlessness", the sense of being overwhelmed & not
able to have any influence - without choice, voice, or hope. And so, it is from far
down in this psychological abyss that Avmakt's ideas & expressions manifest
with the completion of their debut studio release; 6 sprawling epic tracks
recorded with the assistance of Arild Torp, also of Obliteration & encapsulating
such themes as emptiness, desolation & alienation in a powerful display of
sinister, uninhibited Black Metal.

Though often lumped in with New Orleans sludge bands like Eyehategod and Crowbar, Thou shares a more spiritual kinship with '90s proto-grunge bands like Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden (all of whom they've covered extensively, both in the studio and onstage). The band's aesthetic and political impulses reflect the obscure '90s DIY hardcore punk found on labels like Ebullition, Vermiform, and Crimethinc. From 2004 through 2016, the band has released four full-length albums, six EPs (some bordering on full lengths), two collaboration records with The Body, and enough material spread out over splits to make up another four or five LPs.

Sacred Bones Records is proud to present the new album, Magus, Thou's first full-length since 2014's Heathen. In the months leading into the new album, Thou will be releasing three drastically different EPs: The House Primordial on Raw Sugar, Inconsolable on Community Records, and Rhea Sylvia on Deathwish, Inc. Each record will focus on a particular sound—noisy drone, quiet acoustic, and melodic grunge—all of which is incorporated into the new LP, subsumed in the band's more standard doom metal.

While sonically, Magus may be a continuation of Heathen, thematically it stands as a stark rebuttal, a journey beyond the principles of pleasure and pain. It is more the culmination of these distinct EPs, which all orbit some internal black hole. FFO alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease.

Lee Gamble’s UIQ label unveils a second album from Filipina-Australian artist Corin Ileto, deploying a brace of swarming alien chorales and rapturous digital rave noise to explore the idea of sound as a sentient being. Bold and operatic, cinematic and cybernetic.

Named after the iconic choral work by 20th Century avant-garde legend György Ligeti (as immortalised by Stanley Kubrick in 2001), ‘Lux Aeterna' explores the idea of micropolyphony, a term Ligeti described as a complex polyphony "in which harmonies do not change suddenly, but merge into one another." Like Ligeti, Corin isn't primarily concerned with melody or rhythm, but timbre: the colour and quality of sound itself.

Taking its time to unfurl, the album opens with ‘lumen naturae’, winding tonal clouds that eventually latch onto a misshapen hoover sound that curves into the abyss. Corin shows her hand more formally on 'sunta', balancing layered cybernetic drones against ratcheting metallic rhythms and unstable textures. When the track cuts to almost-silence, it reminds us of Akira Rabelais' ghosted 'Spellewauerynsherde' (itself an impressionistic granulation of vocal recordings), before being disrupted by a dynamic kick that shares DNA with club music.

But despite her occasional flirtations with the club, Ileto doesn't appear to have any interest in making functional dance music. Instead, she emphasises momentum and texture. Like a celestial opera, ecstatic trance is reimagined within the context of sacred liturgy – merging hyper-real soundscapes with Gregorian chant and medieval instrumentation. Chrome-plated clangs and growling subs highlight the album’s sci-fi leanings, tapping into a sort of retro-futurism that balances a hi-tech mindset with a feeling of deep vulnerability and alienation.

Tape

The music of Melati ESP aka Melati Malay is a euphoric vision of megacity rhythm and rainforest escape, club breaks and weightless pop, mapping new dreams from the sound of futures passed: hipernatural.

Drawing on the music era of her teenage years growing up in Jakarta – Javanese radio Dangdut, gamelan cassettes, Moving Shadow-era liquid jungle, Japanese chill-out, etc. – as well as her current work in progressive percussion trio Asa Tone, Malay’s solo debut is boldly borderless, bridging worlds and wavelengths into a richly imagined hybrid synthetic utopia.

hipernatural is momentous linguistically, too, as Malay’s first foray into singing in Indonesian, the language of her youth. She characterizes her lyrical mode as “abstract, and a bit broken,” an intuitive collage of diaristic emotion and oblique poetry (“plant me in fleeting twilight / missing home, where is home? / I am another you”). Her voice serves as its own versatile instrument, alternately intimate and alien, sensual and sacred, shaded with the haze of hidden heavens.

Co-produced with long-time collaborator Kaazi (100% Silk, Asa Tone), the album’s 12 tracks are cohesive but eclectic, threading through temple bass music, cyber siren techno, Stereolab drum n bass, new age downtempo, and dial-up rave reveries, flecked with tactile fragments of offworld dialogue, computer hum, bubbling water, and beyond.

Malay’s technique of sampling and processing her voice into an electronic palette which she then performs on generative instruments gives the songs a bewitching artificial intelligence elegance, exquisite but uncanny. Hers is a hybridity both organic and hypermodern, deeply personal yet globally sourced – YouTube rips, nature tapes, cheap sample packs, club bootlegs. hipernatural champions a dynamic new language at the axis of then and now, of east and west

Italian sound artist GIULIO ALDINUCCI returns with his 4th album on KARL: "Real" is again a truly masterfully composed and sound-designed ambient masterpiece and a more than worthy follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Borders And Ruins" (2017), "Disappearing In A Mirror" (2018) and "Shards Of Distant Times" which all made it onto several year's best lists.

With now his 4thalbum for Karl, the sound artist from Siena / IT has proved a steady and prolific artist on the label roster. And each time, GIULIO ALDINUCCI delivers a new ambient masterpiece that clearly carries his signature as composer / producer and yet reveals a slightly different approach to his modus operandi. ALDINUCCI's massive layers of sound, built from field recordings and an array of electronic gear, blend droney ambient with heavenly voices / sacred music that create an atmosphere of a consolatory melancholy – alien, but with a graspable presence of human souls. And each album deals with a topic that ALDINUCCI came across in his observations of and reflections about today's society.

In the words of GIULIO himself:

"The digital media we live with shape and define reality by filtering it, letting us run the risk of living without our personal and unique one. My new album expresses a need of something unmediated and authentic. "Real" is a reflection on the endless possibility of sonic transformation, the ability we have to create new realities transmuting the soundscape around us and the inner soundscape inside us, even only by imagining it. A (deep)real experience permeated by dreamy lyricism."

This is a limited edition pressing of 500, 140-gram, black vinyl records in deluxe tip-on “old style” jackets. Exquisitely printed on textured, water color paper. Digital download included. Be Earth Now comprises forty minutes of potent poetic recitation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows from their seminal translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s The Book of Hours. Channeled in a spiritual fervor in 1899, The Books of Hours remains a profound and highly prescient body of work. Rilke’s poems illuminate paths of embodied mysticism, passionately express ecological grief, and reveal the exquisite expanses of the human heart. The Book of Hours, and now Be Earth Now, offer a poetic map for navigating the heartbreak, rage, and soaring love that so many of us feel in these ecologically urgent and socially emergent times. Rilke’s poems surge with passion and pain for a world that was already teetering toward peril at the turn of the last century, due to the rapid industrialization of Europe, and humankind’s increasing alienation from nature. This work flowed through Rilke in a torrent with sometimes as many as five or six poems arriving in a single day, each self-complete and with no need for later revision. While truly mystical poetry, Rilke’s musings on spirituality overtly critique fundamentalism and organized religion. Instead, Rilke extolls what he finds sacred in the mundane and conjures a sense of wonder for both the more-than-human-world and simply for existence itself. So, who better to give voice to these mystic treasures than Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows? Not only because of their enchanted translations, but also because these women are unquestionably two of our righteous elders. Macy and Barrows have worked diligently for many decades, through art, activism, education, psychology, and spiritual practice, to bring some balance back to this world. The same world that Rilke pleaded with his God to sustain for “just a few more hours,” so that we might have time to mend our relationship with the natural world, to cherish and connect with what is good and real, and to possibly even learn to “be earth now.” A1 Anita Barrows Recites Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours' B1 Joanna Macy Recites Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours'

Baton Rouge sludge band Thou have released over a dozen LPs worth of music, collaborated with divergent artists like Emma Ruth Rundle and The Body and released covers that run the full gamut of genres. Continuing their practice of bucking typical metal tradition, their latest record, a split release with composer Gewgawly I, is a soundtrack created for the highly anticipated new video game NORCO.

Gewgawly I has created a master work of ambiance, not only reminiscent of some of the best game soundtracks from the 80s and 90s but also a stunning work of contemporary experimental music pushing the genre forward in exciting ways. Thou have rounded out the game’s grit with a wash of downtuned doom and drone. The band has previously been described as “For fans of: alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease,” and these themes
come to life vividly in Thou’s collaboration with the richly illustrated world of NORCO.

“Thou represents an aspect of Louisiana that’s close to my heart. The members know the suburbs of New Orleans and Baton Rouge well. They capture a kind of strange irreverence in their sound and visuals that’s specific to the region and has influenced the game NORCO,” says Yuts from Geography of Robots. ”We’ve been trying to collaborate for a while, and I’m just stoked it’s finally happening!”

Baton Rouge sludge band Thou have released over a dozen LPs worth of music, collaborated with divergent artists like Emma Ruth Rundle and The Body and released covers that run the full gamut of genres. Continuing their practice of bucking typical metal tradition, their latest record, a split release with composer Gewgawly I, is a soundtrack created for the highly anticipated new video game NORCO.

Gewgawly I has created a master work of ambiance, not only reminiscent of some of the best game soundtracks from the 80s and 90s but also a stunning work of contemporary experimental music pushing the genre forward in exciting ways. Thou have rounded out the game’s grit with a wash of downtuned doom and drone. The band has previously been described as “For fans of: alienation, absurdity, boredom, futility, decay, the tyranny of history, the vulgarities of change, awareness as agony, reason as disease,” and these themes
come to life vividly in Thou’s collaboration with the richly illustrated world of NORCO.

“Thou represents an aspect of Louisiana that’s close to my heart. The members know the suburbs of New Orleans and Baton Rouge well. They capture a kind of strange irreverence in their sound and visuals that’s specific to the region and has influenced the game NORCO,” says Yuts from Geography of Robots. ”We’ve been trying to collaborate for a while, and I’m just stoked it’s finally happening!”

Back in stock on Black Vinyl !

Stars Are the Light, the luminous seventh album by the American psych explorers Moon Duo, marks a progression into significantly new territory. From a preoccupation with the transcendental and occult that informed Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s guitar-driven psych rock, and reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed Occult Architecture diptych, Stars Are the Light sees the band synthesize the abstract and metaphysical with the embodied and terrestrial.

Branching out from Occult Architecture Vol. 2, the album has a sonic physicality that is at once propulsive and undulating; it puts dance at the heart of an expansive nexus that connects the body to the stars. These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos.

Stars Are the Light, the luminous seventh album by the American psych explorers Moon Duo, marks a progression into significantly new territory. From a preoccupation with the transcendental and occult that informed Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada’s guitar-driven psych rock, and reached its apotheosis in the acclaimed Occult Architecture diptych, Stars Are the Light sees the band synthesize the abstract and metaphysical with the embodied and terrestrial.

Branching out from Occult Architecture Vol. 2, the album has a sonic physicality that is at once propulsive and undulating; it puts dance at the heart of an expansive nexus that connects the body to the stars. These are songs about embodied human experience — love, change, misunderstanding, internal struggle, joy, misery, alienation, discord, harmony, celebration — rendered as a kind of dance of the self, both in relation to other selves and to the eternal dance of the cosmos.

The 4th full-length by Tokyo Metropolis electronica entity UNKNOWN ME, Bishintai, is a sublime synthetic suite of cosmic wellness transmissions exploring “the unknown beauty of your mind and body,” appropriately named for a kanji compound meaning “beauty, mind, body.” Crafted with software, synthesizer, steel drum, rhythm boxes, and robotic voice by the core quartet of Yakenohara, P-RUFF, H. Takahashi, and Osawa Yudai, the album unfolds like a holographic guided meditation, soothing but cybernetic, framed by subways and sky malls. Latticework electronics flicker with texture, glitch, wobble, and mirage, themed around sensory perception and body parts.

A diverse cast of collaborators assist in actualizing the collection's uniquely urban expression of new age ambient, from psychedelic footwork riddler foodman to multi-instrumentalist institution Jim O'Rourke to Japanese underground shape-shifters MC.Sirafu and Lisa Nakagawa. Although the group cites a therapeutic muse (“made for the maintenance of the minds of city dwellers”), Bishintai shimmers with an alien strangeness, too, like decentralized relaxation systems obeying sentient circuits. This is music of utopia and nowhere, channeling worlds within worlds, birthed from a sonic ethos as simple as it is sacred: “in pursuit of beautiful tones.”

For Memory Pearl’s »Music for 7 Paintings« Moshe Fisher–Rozenberg traveled to art galleries throughout North America searching for paintings which would enrapture him.

Like the experience of being drawn into the worlds of those paintings, these seven tracks — each one directly referencing a single work by Joan Mitchell, Robert Ryman, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, or Jackson Pollock — are love letters to the sympathetic vibration of one creative mind encountering another. They trace the way art inspires and generates art. Each resonates with the reconstructive energy that comes from translating the visual to the auditory.

One might expect a jagged, alienating angularity, given the modernist and postmodern source material. Instead there is warmth and depth of sentiment, accented by the analogue and digital synth pitch–shifts and cascades. The pieces crackle with the energy of translation: something new is created as the medium changes, mediated across the boundaries of genre. There are associations, asides, tangents as each work is »read« into its new format. There is no alienation, no cold distance: only engagement and warmth. The album’s lead track, Natural Answer, 1976 opens with sounds that feel like the gaze being caught and drawn into an intimate emotional connection with a work. Cupola, 1958–1960 begins with a thickly layered wash of sound as nostalgic as a train ride through the outskirts of a city at night, then expands into a cavernous memory–scene of personal association.

Fisher–Rozenberg brings a vast experience to bear on the paintings that inspire »Music for 7 Paintings«. While this may be his debut full length as a solo artist, he is a consummate collaborator (Alvvays, Fucked Up, U.S. Girls, Youth Lagoon, Man Forever) best known as the drummer and synthesist in Absolutely Free. Also clear is his visual sensibility — his instinct for how to translate the emotive context of visual art into sound, honed in collaborative work on kinetic sculptures, immersive installations and film scores. But what most comes to the fore is perhaps his recent graduate work in music therapy, and the sensitivity learned through his leading of music therapy sessions at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. This direct encounter with music’s power to heal lends the tracks a sacred, therapeutic quality. They are suffused with curative frequencies that connect the isolated individual to a world of contemplative beauty.

»Music For 7 Paintings« catalogues the energy in the gaze of a seasoned musician, translating brushstroke to sound.

Tyyni is the third album by Finnish-born sound artist and musician Cucina Povera aka Maria Rossi. The second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year’s Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings – Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses. A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera’s soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi’s hymnal vocal performances. It’s a more adventurous work than Rossi’s previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja.

While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi’s singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic’d and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi’s voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop. This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi’s vocal to duel. The effect is often dazzling. On Salvia Salvatrix, an ode to the medicinal plant used to ward off evil spirits, Rossi’s invocation is encircled by a distorted synth sound tearing at the fabric of the composition. It’s an inspired juxtaposition, leaving the listener to appreciate both sounds as separate and as a duet. Anarkian kuvajainen embraces a sense of chaos, an accidental transmitting mobile phone’s pulse is swept up gently with looped synth swells as Rossi’s prayer-like vocal rhythmically teases the composition into loops that embrace and then drift apart. Teerenpeli flirts with a minimal beat rendered by sampler and processed, layered field recordings of capercaillies, while Side A ends with one of Rossi’s most beautiful, simple tracks yet recorded. Varjokuvatanssi is an a cappela recording built on top of a wordless glossolalia, a shadowy interplay which foregrounds the solo vocal.

Pölytön nurkka is the most melodic song yet recorded by Cucina Povera. While it still maintains an off-the-cuff performance style, the synthesized chimes and 4/4 beat are smothered by a distorted synthesizer which almost replicates the bravado of an electric guitar feedbacking into the night. Rossi’s subject matter talks of trying to start anew, getting rid of extraneous material, perhaps still feeling powerless to affect positive change. On Haaksirikkoutunut, the protagonist vocal is lost, a vessel rudderless on the ocean, buffeted by waves metaphorical or real, digital, atonal chords gurgling and splashing against the bow, a storm forever brewing on the horizon. Saniaiset recalls Coil in its eldritch, nocturnal tone and digital-bell like synth, Rossi’s half-spoken/half-sung voice attaining a creepy tone before flipping into flight. Album closer Jolkottelureitti uses an escalating, sequenced synth that splinters into both abrasive tones and harmonising chords creating a kosmische effect, reminding the listener of Kluster or synth-era Popol Vuh, all the while elevated by Rossi’s searching vocalising.

For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.

Mateo Kingman conceives of his second album Astro as a cure for the healthy. It’s a journey across the constellation of the snake, a journey at once earthly and cosmic. The poetic text expressed with a multiplicity of vocal timbres drives the musical journey, starting with the decision to face up to our demons, passing through a deep sense of vertigo and sacred healings, to return us to ourselves, reconciled and grateful.
 
Musically, Astro expresses an intense investigation, tying together different threads: contemporary urban song (trap, hip hop, and elements of electronic music), traditional Latin American melodies influenced by shamanic icaro chants, and the emphasis on synthesizers, resulting in a new, hypnotic kind of sound. 
In a world in which we increasingly need more stimuli and approval from the outside, Astro invites us to take a look inside and explore all the aspects of the self, from the darkest to the lightest. On this record, Mateo Kingman shows a strong point of view as the author, although he moves away from the sounds and themes with which he made his name, daring to mix current trends, urban rhythms and vocal experiments, forming a constellation through which we can all travel, showing a clear personal and musical evolution.   

"The more I hear this the more I'm loving it. As a starter while we wait for the main course which will be the album this is just perfect."Craig Charles on S.T.A.Y. (feat Eric Boss)

"It's fabulous and it sees the return of one of my favourite UK vocalists - the pocket rocket that is Gizelle Smith" - Craig Charles on S.T.A.Y. (feat Eric Boss)

"such a powerful singer...a real british soul talent" - Eddie Piller (Acid Jazz)

Radio support:

BBC 6 Music: Craig Charles - 'STAY' (25.11.17) (2.12.17) (9.12.17), 'Sacred of Something' (13.01.17)

KCRW (USA): Garth Trinidad - STAY. Jazz FM (UK): John Osborne - Sweet Memories'

3Fach (playlisted), Delite (playlisted), Mi Soul , NTS, Solar, 1BTN, Radio Krimi, Ibiza Sonica, Radio Pepper, Republic 100.3, Kane FM, WUTK 90.3, Juice brighton (playlisted) , Colourful Radio, Crackers Fresh, Radio Cardiff, Starpoint Radio,

DJ: Felix Da Housecat, Benoit C, Yamwho,Doc Scott, Basement Freaks, Dom Servini, Mat The Alien, All Good Funk Alliance, Marc Hype

Promo Support for new album 'Ruthless Day'

"The more I hear this the more I'm loving it. As a starter while we wait for the main course which will be the album this is just perfect."

"It's fabulous and it sees the return of one of my favourite UK vocalists - the pocket rocket that is Gizelle Smith" - Craig Charles (BBC)

"such a powerful singer...a real british soul talent" - Eddie Piller (Acid Jazz)

Radio support:

BBC 6 Music: Craig Charles - 'STAY' (25.11.17) (2.12.17) (9.12.17), 'Sacred of Something' (13.01.18) (17.02.18)

KCRW (USA): Garth Trinidad - 'STAY'

Jazz FM (UK): John Osborne - 'Sweet Memories'

Delite Radio interview w/ Chris Forbes

Colourful Radio interview w/ DJ Sly

3Fach (playlisted), Delite (playlisted), MiSoul , NTS, Solar, 1BTN, Radio Krimi, Ibiza Sonica, Radio Pepper, Republic 100.3, Kane FM, WUTK 90.3, Juice brighton (playlisted) , Colourful Radio, Crackers Fresh, Radio Cardiff, Starpoint Radio,

DJ: Felix Da Housecat, Benoit C, Yamwho,Doc Scott, Basement Freaks, Dom Servini, Mat The Alien, All Good Funk Alliance, Marc Hype

Online and print press: Blues & Soul, Echoes, Afropunk, EARMILK, The Cocoa Diaries, Vents Magazine, FIP, Wax Poetics, FleamarketFunk, Monkeyboxing, Monkeyboxing, Blue In Green Radio, Groovement, Reductive Reviews,