Buscar:acceptance

black LP

DevilDuck wagt sich in neue Gefilde vor! WISENT heißt die bisher "härteste" Band im Label-Kontext und sicher liegt man mit dem Genre "PostHardcore" bei dem Quartett aus Leipzig ziemlich richtig. Allerdings mutet nicht nur das Genre etwas ungewöhnlich für das Hamburger Label an, sondern auch die Tatsache, dass es das erste Konzeptalbum einer Band auf DevilDuck ist. "The Acceptance. The Sorrow" heißt das recht ambitionierte Debütalbum der aus dem irischen Sänger Stephen Lyons, dem Bassisten Morris Duff, dem Gitarristen Mathias Bauer und dem Drummer Oliver Ruß bestehenden Band. "The Acceptance. The Sorrow" ist nicht nur musikalisch ein recht harter Brocken voller Kummer und Reflexion über viele vergangene Ereignisse und Gedanken, aber auch über die Hoffnung, die weiter in uns und den Menschen um uns herum herrscht, ohne die das Leben einfach unerträglich scheinen würde.

In August 2020, following some typical delays at the plant, Fourth Dimension Records released the limited edition 2LP (and now sold out) set of Kleistwahr's This World Is Not My Home and Over Your Heads Forever albums, originally released by the same label in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Packaged together in a single sleeve with printed inners reproducing all the artwork found on the original CDs, the 2LP was always designed to represent the first volume in a series of them. This next volume gathers everything on the next two albums, Down But Defiant Yet and Acceptance is Not Respect, both also initially released on CD in, respectively, 2017 and 2018, and presented in the exact same way. 2017's long sold out at source album, Down But Defiant Yet, collects four lengthy cuts which catch Gary Mundy (also known for Ramleh, Breathless and Broken Flag Records) furrowing his distinct and recognisable take on a kinda contemporary psychedelia with dystopian leanings. Each piece nods towards the fug generated by certain ‘krautrock’ groups whilst retaining threads of those uncompromising power-noise surges he built his reputation on, this is music guaranteed to take you to new spaces before forcing you to nervously look over your shoulder. 2018's Acceptance is Not Respect collects two lengthy pieces themselves broken down into seven parts often tempered to the point restraint assumes new, often disturbed (and disturbing) psychedelic or even filmic, properties, this music arrives like a spitting and foaming scream into the insanity of the void and the myriad challenges and questions it inexorably keeps hurling at us. Whereas Ramleh captures the sound of at least two people dealing as best they know how with the constantly rising rivers of shit around us, Kleistwahr is akin to one man having scaled a great height poking out of an infinite chasm and wondering why he bothered. This is uneasy listening sometimes renderedvirtually elegiac by dint of a prowess rarely found in such realms. Of this, Gary himself quite prophetically, in light of how events have shaped the world since said, “I was trying to make the music more spiritual sounding this time as the album is about belief. The first half is about personal and political belief and the second half about religious belief. I was wondering about whether in the 21st Century, you can seriously get anyone to completely change their beliefs and [am] asking is there anything you believe that you would be willing to die for, and the difference between the way that most beliefs have been accepted/tolerated and [are] supposedly respected in recent times in [the UK]. Now our society is starting to break down, it becomes clear that that acceptance tends not to actually be the same thing as respect at all.”

New Zealand-based, award-winning duo TRUTH are champions of contemporary dubstep. Back with their first studio album in over 4 years, TRUTH unveil the second and final single taken from Acceptance. The mystical title track from the LP “Acceptance” is due for release Friday, July 2 via Deep Dark & Dangerous.

Following a long, quarantined year and a string of heavily-trafficked Twitch streams, TRUTH is now back in full effect with ‘Acceptance’ - their 5th album. Combining their razor sharp synchronization and innovative flair, this 13-track opus is a dreamlike journey through lush basslines, eerie rhythms, and vintage synths. At the heels of “Pages,” the widely-celebrated lead single from the album, TRUTH unveils the album’s namesake and title track “Acceptance.” A brilliant follow up to its predecessor, “Acceptance” is at once technical, ethereal, and deeply affecting. A psychedelic musing that encompasses the kaleidoscope fractals of sound that make up the album, “Acceptance” is a cornerstone of the project it belongs to.

The 'Stages of Grief' series made up one of the inaugural releases on the newly launched Vaknar label, back in 2018.

3 years later, the series comes to an end via its third and final iteration, ‘Acceptance’, which is presented via 2 parts, containing compositions by both, old and new label affiliates and friends.



As the curtains draw on one stage, a new light might be shining somewhere else, and we are reminded that with every ending, there is always a beginning. Thus, hopefully this final segment will let us review these arduous and tumultuous previous months through a forward seeking gaze, accepting the weight of the past, while embracing the virtues of tomorrow.

This is part two of ‘Acceptance’.

Dub inna electro sweet style !

Esencia is proud to present Forgotten Ones, the new album from London based quintet Culross Close. The album opens with 'Fractured', a cosmic musing carried delicately by electric piano and decorated with a synthesized dalliance. The album then cruises into 'Forgotten Ones', a spiritual made potent by their choral-esque vocals by far their most accomplished piece to date.

'Acceptance' finds the quintet in familiar hip-hop territory, carving out a top tier groove with a recurring piano motif of the highest order. Their vocals, this time more chant than choral makes for a brilliant 5-minute mantra.

'Mood' is a stark contrast to anything else on the album, an acidic and rugged illustration of the group's present state. 'The Tiniest Lights Still Shine' is a syncopated excursion in 5/4 time. With an electrifying percussion solo, this will be the song that finds its way onto the dance-floor. 'Healing' is a percussion heavy journey, draped in synthesizers and style, embodying elements of 70's fusion and bossa-nova, a perfect closer to the album.

1 x LP Full Colour Sleeve, shrinkwrapped

Joanne Forman's Cave Vaults of the Moon created in 1987 for an exhibit of sculptures in Taos, New Mexico is a mesmerizing score for voice, Ensoniq Mirage, Juno 106, flute, guitar and effects. The playful extra-terrestrial recording wafted through the exhibit every day for its duration and then lay dormant for nearly 30 years. Unearthed now, Cave Vaults of the Moon sounds prescient and timeless, as if Pep Llopis and Iasos scored a Wicker Man remake set on Mars. Restored, remastered and cut using DMM.
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We humans, the nascent beings that we are, still haven't quite figured out the full potential of music. Dancing, meditating, emoting, protesting, these are all pretty basic. But what if we communicated more complex ideas with music What if we codified all of our activities with music This idea came to composer Joanne Forman
when commissioned in 1987 to create the soundscape for an environmental exhibition of sculpture called Artifacts from an Alien Civilization in Taos, New Mexico. The sculptures, elaborate ruins that had been found on the moon, begged the question: who created them and for what purpose

Joanne Forman imagined that Earth's moon was a vacation spot for advanced beings from another galaxy. In her mind, the sculptures in the exhibit were the remnants of a deserted playground. Cave Vaults of the Moon became a collection of sonic texts describing the recreational activities that went on there, earth-viewing, collecting information, building and playing.

Kicking off Vivod's new pheasant series and making their debut on the label, UNI.OMNI are a Glaswegian duo comprising of MWX and Wave Energy Converter. Inspired by feelings of duality and the unpredictability of our dynamic world, UNI.OMNI respond with challenging dark electronic notes, driven vocals and expansive percussive backdrops. Their tracks emit contradictory feelings of chaos and calm, motion and stillness, frustration and excitement, whilst using the energy and turmoil of big city life as motivation for their first EP. "Acceptance Resistance" kicks things off with an experimental, cavernous foray that shifts to the rhythmic, subliminal undertones of "Metaphysical Lives". Both "Sequential Self" and "Viral Dread" are attuned to empowerment, exacerbated by the strains of the modern world, with strong vocals reiterating the need for resilience in the forgotten generation.

The premiere soundtrack release to Peter Weir's 1977 Australian New Wave classic.
Lost electronic score from the enigmatic composer Charles Wain.
12-track LP sourced from the original stereo master tapes.t.
180g vinyl and deluxe packaging including archival film stills and original press material

The Last Wave (also known as Black Rain in the US) was the final chapter in a trilogy of films scripted and directed by the leading auteur of the Australian New Wave, Peter Weir.

Beginning in 1974 with the absurdist black comedy-horror The Cars That Ate Paris, and followed a year later by the lush gothic mystery Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Last Wave was a landmark in existential horror. Sitting alongside other Australian eco-terror films (e.g. Long Weekend) the film featured a haunting electronic soundtrack that is as mysterious and beguiling as the spiritual themes of the film itself.

With no LP issued after the films premiere in 1977, and together with the mystery surrounding the true identity of its enigmatic composer 'Charles Wain', the score is a largely unheard recording of pioneering experimental film electronics, easily compared to the music that contemporaries Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream were composing for Australian films during the same period or the electronic soundtracks of John Carpenter.

Tense atonal electronics, synthesizer drones and manipulated Didjeridu all perfectly capture the film's ominous atmosphere, punctuating the slow hypnotic pace of this brooding supernatural thriller. The Last Wave soundtrack is released in conjunction with the lost film music to Nicolas Roeg's 1971 New Wave masterpiece Walkabout composed by John Barry.

May 2026 marks the arrival of TYGAPAW (aka Dion McKenzie)’s first full-length album on Tresor Records, entitled Together You Gather All Power Applied Worldwide. An acronym of its creator’s name, TYGAPAW’s third studio album is a deeply personal collection of music building worlds where Black queer and trans siblings can thrive, while unifying dancefloors worldwide. A proposition that collective wisdom liberates us from the matrix of domination we live within. The album unfolds as the latest chapter in TYGAPAW’s ongoing techno opera opus, continuing to center the voices of Black women, which surface as layered incantations rather than lyrics - powerful, haunting, sensual, activating.
With the process of creating the album starting in 2023, as TYGAPAW (Dion McKenzie) was in the first year of their transition, the music reflects the intensity of that period, where they were experiencing deplatforming as a response to the shift in their physical appearance: Tracks like ‘M32 Riddim’ and ‘Helicopter hovers over my Crown Heights Apartment’ feature high-paced rhythms intersecting with intense siren-like synths to form demanding compositions echoing a heightened sense of alert. Yet throughout the album, relief comes in the form of TYGAPAW’s vocal features, co-conspirators, and chosen family, whose voices are treated with reverb and echo, a sonic fingerprint that leads back to the pioneers in the legendary studios of TYGAPAW’s native land, Jamaica, an important reminder that the past will always inform the future. It is an album for dancers first and foremost, where joy, defiance, and integration with the natural body coexist, and every drop feels less like a climax than a transformation. Expect a bass that permeates your soul and melodic synthesized sequenced phrases echoing the dancehall eras of TYGAPAW’s youth, reshaped into hypnotic melodies that glow over industrial kicks designed to command attention, reasserting Jamaica's pioneering yet often overlooked contribution to electronic music.
In the opening track, ‘Can I Live’, Precious Okoyomon’s words feel like the beginning of a ritual; setting the intentions for the rest of the proceedings. As McKenzie puts it, their “work is about regeneration, resetting, getting integrated into nature, and about rebirth. That’s the tone I wanted to set at the outset of the album.” Ms Carrie Stacks continues this thread of support in ‘Don’t Panic’ with heavily processed vocals on top of a beat that takes inspiration from another important ingredient in the antidote to the oppression of isolation: Ballroom culture. “ I feel like I found my queerness in Ballroom, that’s why this track is very important to me.”
Echoes of NYC Black queer nightlife scene also permeate in the energetic drums of ‘Exorcise the Language of Domination’, in which Julianna Huxtable’s spoken performance complements the various movements and tones of the music. “My producer brain thought this was the one that Juliana’s vocals would be best suited for. I hinted: ‘what do you think of this one?’ She just went into her notes and picked some passages to go with the first section of the track. From there, it was a year-long process of development. It required time and space for this thing to evolve, but I think it’s one of the most powerful tracks on the album.” London’s SUUTOO contributes the album’s only musical collaboration on ‘B2B’, a track that emerged from sessions in McKenzie’s New York studio where the real objective was to connect and have fun; a time out from the demands of life outside.
The album closes out with a double hit of emotion in the form of ‘Effects of Resistance and Black Trans Masculine Experience’. The former features South African scholar Khanyisile Mbongwa drawing connections that exist between Africa and the Black diaspora, whilst looking to the future and calling for a shared sense of community.
The latter piece, an instrumental version of the piece which featured on the IMMIGRANT E.P. of 2025 is a gentle and deeply affecting end to the record, a place of peace and acceptance. This end-of-cycle tone is mirrored in the sleeve photography, which also ties back to IMMIGRANT by finally revealing what was hidden: a portrait of the artist fully self-actualized; a step towards true inner liberation. TYGAPAW is sonically defiant across this album; bass frequencies feel tactile — less heard than inhabited — infectious lead synth melodies remain with you long after the track ends. An overall sound that leaves asserting an urgent need for connection. From Detroit to New York to Berlin to Jamaica, despite geographic distance, this album reminds us that we remain in solidarity, recognising that meaningful world-building requires collective input and action, both personal and communal, if we are to move toward liberation.

REPRESS ON SILVER VINYL . COMES WITH 24”x24” POSTER + DOWNLOAD CARD + GATEFOLD JACKET.


On The Beths’ album Expert In A Dying Field, Elizabeth Stokes’ songwriting positions her somewhere between being a novelist and a documentarian. The songs collected here are autobiographical, but they’re also character sketches of relationships – platonic, familial, romantic – and more importantly, their aftermaths. The shapes and ghosts left in absences. The question that hangs in the air: what do you do with how intimately versed you’ve become in a person, once they’re gone from your life?

The third LP from the New Zealand quartet houses 12 jewels of tight, guitar-heavy songs that worm their way into your head, an incandescent collision of power-pop and skuzz. With Expert, The Beths wanted to make an album meant to be experienced live, for both the listeners and themselves. They wanted it to be fun -- to hear, to play -- in spite of the prickling anxiety throughout the lyrics, the fear of change and struggle to cope.

Most of Expert was recorded at guitarist Jonathan Pearce’s studio on Karangahape Road in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand) -- and sometimes in the building's cavernous stairwell at 1am -- toward the end of 2021, until they were interrupted by a four-month national lockdown. They traded notes remotely for months, songwriting from afar and fleshing out the arrangements alone, the first time they’d written together in such a way. The following February, The Beths left the country for the first time in more than two years to tour across the US, and simultaneously finish mixing the album on the road. That latter half felt more collaborative, with everyone on-hand to trade notes in real time, until it all culminated in a chaotic three-day studio mad-dash in Los Angeles. There, Expert finally became the record they were hearing in their heads.

Expert is an extension of the same skuzzy palette the band has built across their catalog, pop hooks embedded in incisive indie rock. The album’s title track “Expert In A Dying Field” introduces the thesis for the record: “How does it feel to be an expert in a dying field? How do you know it’s over when you can’t let go?” Stokes asks. “Love is learned over time ‘til you’re an expert in a dying field.”

The rest is a capsule of The Beths’ most electrifying and exciting output, a sonic spectrum: “Your Side” is a forlorn and sincere love song, emotive; while “Silence is Golden,” with its propulsive drum line and stop-start staccato of a guitar line winding up and down, is one of the band’s sharpest and most driving. “When You Know You Know” skews a bit groovier, pure pop and a natural addition to the band’s live set. “Knees Deep” was written last minute, but yields one of the best guitar lines on Expert. There’s a certain chaos across the 12 tracks, the palpable joy of playing music with long-time friends colliding with the raw nerves of pain.

Stokes strings it all together through her singular songwriting lens, earnest and self-effacing, zeroing in on the granules of doubt and how they snowball. Did I do the wrong thing? Or did you? And are we still good people at the end of it? She isn’t interested in villains, but instead interested in just telling the story. That insecurity and thoughtfulness, translated into universality and understanding, has been the guiding light of The Beths’ output since 2016. In the face of pain, there’s no dwelling on internal anguish - instead, through The Beths’ music, our shortcomings are met with acceptance. And Expert In A Dying Field is the most tactile that tenderness has been.

Holy Sun Opera House at its core is soprano and drummer Krissy Barker with composer dl Salo. Along with a revolving cast of collaborators, singers and performers, they create emotionally engaging and haunting symphonic music embellished by electronics, heavy drums and synthesizers. The group has been described as “Opera Cult” and as one who would play at the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks. They draw influence from early Dead Can Dance, Fever Ray and Klaus Nomi.

The Holy Sun Opera House is the group's self-titled debut set for release in May 2026 on the label Hologram Opera. The self-produced album was conceptualized as a way to describe an obsessive mind with music and inspired by the recurring dreams of singer Krissy Barker. In it is a realm of shifting rooms, dilapidated houses and passages. These unsettled rooms and spaces pose a striking confrontation of fear and anxiety from deep within.

In its conception, The Holy Sun Opera House was written as a passage through these ethereal dreams and spaces. The song Latched On depicts the compulsive psyche as a draining physical entity attached. While Voice of Gob, Decrepit Mansion, and Room with the Rain observe and attempt to find acceptance in this conflict. The Passages I & II travel between the curtains to the unknown entity residing in The Attic, who looks inside the mind of the dreamer and determines she has no soul.

The album blends genres with electro, darkwave, and contemporary classical music. The ritualistic passages of the choir throughout the album are reminiscent of Wicker Man and 1970's mystic cults, praising the deities residing within the dream. The arrangement of synths, electronics, heavy drums and operatic singing lend itself to something uniquely memorable.

On 27 March, fabric Originals presents Shō, a five track EP of introspective, transcendent electronics from Japanese techno icon DJ Nobu. Inspired by the Buddhist Brahmavihāras - joy, compassion, loving-kindness and equanimity - Shō unfolds as a meditative, emotional journey rooted in Nobu’s experiences of Tokyo, mindfulness and inner clarity. From kinetic renewal to serene minimalism, the EP channels presence, acceptance and the simple truth that breathing itself is living.

Each track on ‘Shō’ marks a step in an emotional and spiritual journey, channelling the foundational virtues of the Brahmavihāras, which are the four ‘Sublime States’ of Buddhist practice: ‘Muditā’ (joy), ‘Karuṇā’ (compassion), ‘Mettā’ (loving-kindness), and ‘Upekkhā’ (equanimity). Together these principles form a path towards an open, boundless heart, which is mirrored in the EP’s unfolding sonic narrative.

“In recent years I became overly sensitive to my surroundings and society, finding myself strongly affected by every daily occurrence. It was during this time that I discovered meditation. And beyond that lay Buddhism. Through this, my sensibilities became able to express themselves more naturally. I decided to portray my feelings, and the scenery in Tokyo, conveying what I was experiencing in real-time, as music.

The EP title ‘Shō’ denotes views, thoughts, and actions aligned with Buddhist truth, and encapsulates my striving for presence, clarity, and acceptance. It also represents the conscious, mindful understanding that simply breathing is living.” DJ Nobu

‘Confession' is an album of quiet upheaval. An album about closeness that arrives late and unexpectedly. About stability rubbing up against desire. About the way friendship can suddenly tilt into something charged — and how that charge unsettles everything around it. Where earlier work often observed from a distance, Confession turns inward. The voice is closer, warmer, less shielded. “This wasn’t the album I intended to make,” says Carla dal Forno. “I originally wanted something veiled and abstract, but I realised I couldn’t hide behind abstraction — the songs only worked when I leaned into emotional truth.”

This is dal Forno’s fourth LP, written and recorded over several years in a small country town, in a studio housed inside a partially abandoned hospital. Long corridors, humming lights, emptied rooms — a place built for care and waiting, now quiet enough for thoughts to echo. That stillness shapes the record: intimate, watchful, unadorned. “I live in a small country town that offers a stillness my life didn’t previously have,” she explains. “In that quiet, feelings I might’ve ignored in a busy city grew loud.” Dal Forno sings plainly and conversationally, with an emotional precision that sharpens the everyday into something quietly unsettling.

The album moves through paired states: going out and staying in, wanting and withholding, devotion and distraction. Domestic calm set against private unrest. A long-held relationship offers safety and routine, while a newer connection opens emotional fault lines — longing, jealousy, fantasy, self-exposure. “At the heart of the album is a friendship that became emotionally charged in an unexpected way,” dal Forno says. “That shift brought daydreaming, jealousy, tenderness, confusion, self-awareness — and eventually acceptance.”

The drama here is internal, incremental, lived. Musically, Confession feels lighter on its feet than its subject matter suggests. Melodic basslines anchor the songs while guitars, harmonies, and gently off-kilter rhythms move around them. There’s a looseness, even a playfulness — “like the sensation of tension lifting once you finally admit something to yourself,” as dal Forno puts it. The album traces a subtle arc: attraction blooming where it shouldn’t; obsession quietly taking hold; fantasy overtaking reality; clarity arriving slowly, sometimes painfully. Visually and emotionally, Confession returns to modest spaces: backyards, beds, night streets, overgrown paths. “The record exists in that contrast,” dal Forno reflects. “Peaceful surroundings, unsettled interior.”

Like all of dal Forno’s work, Confession resists clean conclusions. It doesn’t moralise desire or romanticise restraint. Instead, it lingers in the in-between — where love is stable but not total, where yearning teaches as much as it hurts, where solitude becomes a form of care. Plain-spoken but emotionally complex. Rooted and restless. Held together by bass, breath, routine, weather. An album about admitting what you feel —and living with what that admission changes.

For his new full-length on Second End Records, Lyon-based artist Jonnnah turns deeply inward. Conceived as a form of therapy, as much as a reflection and a testimony, the record retraces a process of introspection and confrontation with one’s own history, looking back at origins, DNA, and the invisible ties that connect us to our ancestors, while opening paths toward new connections.

The double-sided structure of the album makes this journey tangible. The first side lingers in uncertainty : opaque atmospheres, fragmented rhythms, and restless textures mirror the doubts, questions, and fragile states of self-analysis. The second side, in contrast, embraces clarity and resolution, dense yet luminous soundscapes where reconciliation and acceptance take shape, culminating in The Blue Comet, a piece charged with finality and revelation.

Opening with the multipart suite N-zero, symbolizing the beginning of therapy, and closing with O-one, evoking the soul’s original purity, the record traces a complete emotional and spiritual cycle. Between them, the third edition of Insomnia Never Ends once again portrays the struggle between sleep and the irresistible pull of musical distraction, a fragile tension that runs through the album as a whole.

The record condenses Jonnnah’s language into something rawer and more direct. Layers of dub and dub sonic resonate against ethereal ambient passages, while techno impulses maintain tension and forward motion. Each piece feels at once intimate and expansive, designed as much for solitary listening as for collective experience.

A new chapter in Jonnnah’s trajectory, the album is a document of transformation : from shadow to light, from questioning to acceptance.

"Remnants" is an album marked by the ambiguity of presence and absence. The pieces, recorded using minimal equipment in what Suzuki describes as a ritual-like atmosphere, began as a way of processing the loss of her father in 2019. But beyond this, they also come to speak to the ways in which loss changes our relationship with someone, and our experiences of the world. Indeed, the experience of loss is not marked merely by a single event, but is instead a process that unfolds over time. Despite the other's absence, a particular location, the smell of a certain brand of tobacco, a look on a friend's face - traces such as these are enough to bring about a renewed presence.

It is through these subtle traces and remnants, encountered over time, that we come to understand loss as not only the acceptance of absence, but the recognition of a continued presence. As Suzuki says, "this is not a solo album." Its creation was instead shaped by an ongoing dialogue, the continued elaboration of a complex and ambivalent relationship. At once melancholic, warm, and embracing, it is this ambiguity, these subtle traces, that Suzuki’s compositions speak to. These are not merely the sounds of mourning, but instead have been shaped by the evolving dialectic of presence and absence into something far more subtle and haunting. (Zefan Sramek, 2026)

“The Long Transition From Death To Wisdom” marks a new chapter in Dmitry’s evolving sonic world – a contemplative, slow‑burning journey through grief, memory, and the quiet emergence of clarity. Rooted in a brooding fusion of shoegaze, goth, and darkwave, the album drifts through washed out guitars, spectral synths, and poignant vocals – its emotional landscape suspended between sadness and awakening. On vocal duties is Dmitry’s longtime collaborator Valeria Simonova, whose presence deepens the album’s atmosphere. Each track feels like a step forward in the ritual of becoming aware of one’s own existence, moving through silence and ancient memories toward a sense of spiritual renewal.

The album opens with the mysticism and layered metaphors of “Liar,” before descending into the ancient, biblical presence of “Serpent Queen.” Midway, “Zenith” rises with shimmering synths and steady, triumphant percussion, while “Echoes of Yesterday” lingers in celestial melancholy, dissolving the boundary between remembrance and insight. The Bside begins with “The Other Side of Life,” a threshold into a quieter, more reflective space, followed by the meditative, ritual like ambience of “Shrine of Ruins.” Closing track “Cold” offers a final exhale from the fading realm of the past – an acceptance shaped by distance, time, and the erosion of old wounds.

An array of musicians contributed to the recoding of the album: Mathys Dubois (No One Is Innocent, exBlack Strobe), Loïc Maurin (M83), Victor Sologub (Deadушки, Странные Игры), Alexander Titov (Кино, Аквариум), Ben Easton (Deary), and others. The album was mastered at Abbey Road Studios by Miles Showell.

Leopard DaVinci is the official keyboardist of Dabeull's Band.

“Casual Conversation” pairs Leopard DaVinci’s high-gloss funk production with Moniquea’s signature vocal charisma for an instantly addictive modern funk single. Flirty, confident and groove-heavy, the track balances retro-inspired synth textures with a contemporary boogie pulse, making it a strong fit for editorial playlists centered around funk-forward, danceable and soulful music.
Moniquea already holds a respected position in the global modern funk community, and this release delivers exactly what that audience wants: attitude, melody, replay value and undeniable groove. “Casual Conversation” has crossover potential between dedicated funk listeners, nu-disco audiences and feel-good R&B selectors.

“Flaws” pairs Leopard DaVinci’s signature synth-led funk production with Helena’s fresh and expressive vocal presence for a release that feels both timeless and relevant. Built around a message of self-acceptance and inner strength, the track transforms vulnerability into groove, offering a refined mix of modern funk, boogie and soulful pop energy.
Its lyrical theme makes it especially effective beyond niche funk circles, opening space for playlisting tied not only to groove and retro-funk aesthetics, but also to confidence, empowerment and uplifting mood. “Flaws” is melodic, elegant and emotionally direct — a strong crossover track with both artistic identity and listener accessibility.

Leopard DaVinci is the official keyboardist of Dabeull's Band.

“Casual Conversation” pairs Leopard DaVinci’s high-gloss funk production with Moniquea’s signature vocal charisma for an instantly addictive modern funk single. Flirty, confident and groove-heavy, the track balances retro-inspired synth textures with a contemporary boogie pulse, making it a strong fit for editorial playlists centered around funk-forward, danceable and soulful music.
Moniquea already holds a respected position in the global modern funk community, and this release delivers exactly what that audience wants: attitude, melody, replay value and undeniable groove. “Casual Conversation” has crossover potential between dedicated funk listeners, nu-disco audiences and feel-good R&B selectors.

“Flaws” pairs Leopard DaVinci’s signature synth-led funk production with Helena’s fresh and expressive vocal presence for a release that feels both timeless and relevant. Built around a message of self-acceptance and inner strength, the track transforms vulnerability into groove, offering a refined mix of modern funk, boogie and soulful pop energy.
Its lyrical theme makes it especially effective beyond niche funk circles, opening space for playlisting tied not only to groove and retro-funk aesthetics, but also to confidence, empowerment and uplifting mood. “Flaws” is melodic, elegant and emotionally direct — a strong crossover track with both artistic identity and listener accessibility.

The fourth episode of the Barbatus odyssey comes from Torrent, a Barcelona-bred pirate, who translates an intricate story of a malicious time loop that Captain Barbatus and his fellow pirates get stuck in.



From sorrow and remorse, to acceptance and hope, the four tracks are packed with emotion. Bouncing between Progressive house to Breaks, but cleverly stitching it together with Electro, 80s drums, and melodic synths, Torrent describes a voyage of pirate captain and his crew across the seas of the New World.



The new chapter on Barbatus D. Wreckords is out this Autumn.

For its 25th anniversary, Cocoon Recordings returns to its roots with an elaborate vinyl LP box set, marking the first part of a two-volume anniversary project. 25 Years Cocoon Recordings – Volume
One brings together exclusive contributions from international artists who have defined the sound and diversity of the label over the past two decades, complemented by fresh talents who are helping to shape its future.
Over the span of 25 years, Cocoon Recordings has created a catalog that now comprises hundreds of releases, 12-inches, albums, mix CDs, and iconic compilation box sets, always bridging past, present, and future. While firmly rooted in techno and house, the label has also provided space for electronica,
ambient, and other evolving genres.
25 Years Cocoon Recordings – Volume One is more than just a compilation. It is both a homage to the label’s history and a glimpse into what lies ahead. With exclusive tracks that embody the Cocoon sound in all its depth and complexity, this release marks a milestone in the legacy of one of electronic
music’s most influential labels, arguably the strongest compilation in Cocoon’s history. To mark this special occasion, Sven Väth’s label presents the first of two carefully curated volumes, uniting 15 exclusive tracks from international artists in celebration of nearly three decades of Cocoon
Recordings. The luxurious 5x12" box set features a spectral-reflective foil finish and includes contributions from renowned names such as Butch, Robag Wruhme, Josh Wink, Guy J, and Dino Lenny, alongside longtime companions of the label including Extrawelt, Harvey McKay, Johannes
Volk, and Raxon. New discoveries of recent years, Jonathan Kaspar and Riccardo De Polo, enrich the release in their own distinctive ways. The compilation is completed by the unmistakable talents of Damiano von Erckert, Fedele, and ja:ck, who provide the perfect conclusion to the first of two parts.
This release sets the stage for what's next: a daring diptych where musical voices emerge, shining with originality and passion, carrying the spirit forward. The story is just beginning. Something special is on the horizon. One can only wonder which artists will shine on the second chapter.

The definition of the word 'fado' is technically 'fate', though the Portuguese meaning bound up with this term is more complex. The music itself can be fairly closely compared with that of Greek rebetika - also the American blues or the original working-class tango music of Argentina and Uruguay - and similarly takes it's common subject matter from the various cruel realities of the world. Though perhaps what distinguishes fado in character is it's often poised acceptance of the pains of life rather than protestation or resistance - as writer Paul Vernon says "It speaks with a quiet dignity born of the realisation that any mortal desire or plan is at risk of destruction by powers beyond individual control"

Death Is Not The End compile here a spine-tingling collection of fado recordings, taken from records issued in the mid 1910s through to the 1930s. The fado's Lisbon and Coimbra variants are presented here by some of the music's earliest recorded stars - spanning a time period leading up to the emergence of the fado's all-conquering star, Amália Rodrigues.

'in a fugue state' finds pedal-steel guitar maestro Joe Harvey-Whyte collaborating with tape loop sound scientist Paul Cousins on a warped ambient excursion into the subconscious. Originally written and recorded in one night, the eight tracks of hypnotic electro-acoustic music explore the concept of memory and time.

The duo study how we remember and misremember things; forming an imperfect reorganisation of time, events and emotional states. This album exists at a cross- section where loss, confusion, trauma and dissociation meet moments of joy, healing, acceptance and groundlessness

Slowly yet firmly blooming into focus, An Unfinished Rose is the new album from Australian duo Troth.

This is their first since relocating to Hobart, Tasmania and their introduction to Night School Records. With a detailed web of past releases on labels A Colourful Storm, Mammas Mysteriska Jukebox, Knekelhuis and Bowman’s own Altered States Tapes imprint, An Unfinished Rose is the group’s most realised and composed work thus far. While still drawing on the improvisatory and DIY practices that informed Troth’s beginnings, it points to a new incarnation of the duo’s music; an intentional language emerging from the fog of obfuscation and mists of uncertainty.

Over these 9 meditations on change, acceptance, renewal and rebirth, An Unfinished Rose finds Amelia Besseny and Cooper Bowman peeling back some of the roughhewn architecture that defined their earlier releases to reveal a masterful - if auto-didactic - use of space and melody. Composition and improvisation compliment and feed each other throughout, with locked-loop earworms providing the springboard for lines of clarinet or synth melody, and the negative space between chord clusters giving ample room for Besseny’s most confident vocal performances to date. Shaving off a little of the defining dissonance and tape compression of old reveals Troth’s music in radiant daylight, humbly accepting of its place in the world while yearning for better, more sympathetic modes of living. Leaning more heavily on acoustic instrumentation and post-production processes than previously, the result is a transcendent body of work infused with an almost zen-like presence.

Troth’s music exists in the border between forming and becoming, its goal to project a kind of preternatural beauty, leaving interpretation open to the listener. Field recordings, happenstance and improvisation may provide seeds for the duo’s compositions, particularly on Side A, but there is a deft touch of songcraft on show. Loam Loom Leaf Litter opens An Unfinished Rose, directly referencing natural cycles of life, death and regeneration, before the blissed-out drum machine groove of Gold Plum continues a discussion concerning the totality of nature and one’s place in it. Besseny’s vocal, swelling like an ocean churn in duet with itself is adorned with synthesised harp and a revolving synth pattern, conjuring plumes of medieval smoke. Thistle’s rounded, bass-heavy drums, nodding to the vast echo of dub, is a relatively new terrain for Troth. It’s propulsive and thumping, pulsing with a meaning and symbolism consistent with Troth’s past work, referenced overtly in Bessey’s lyrics - “Say it too much and it loses its meaning…”. Similarly, the sprawling modern-classical suite, Tides Reflected In Her Eyes, is intentional in its lyrical themes while traversing new ground, revelling in layers of bowed cello and vocal intonations. Side B’s 4 tracks feel like Troth’s most thoroughly accessible and affecting music to date. Leaning into their own detoured version of Synth Pop, Cocoonist explores downtempoisms via a crunchy low frequency synth, and dream-like, fuzzy trip-hop modalities, not unlike Besseny and Bowman’s other group, Th Blisks. Following on, Myrtle Mystes is an open and searching DIY pop song, forged out of drum machine, bass guitar and cello. (An) Unfinished Rose’s title-track is a clear stand-out, built upon an evocative rhythm sample that appears to change emotional resonance with each undulating repetition. Its cascading waves of affect, interjected with a subtle breeze of synth, bowed instrumentation and soaring, densely-layered vocals.

An Unfinished Rose is enveloping, warm, forgiving. Difficult, yet retaining a unique beauty. Troth’s music aims to celebrate the duo;s shared experiences of being in the world, despite the complexity often surrounding us all. Theirs is a message of hope and perseverance, learning and patience.

Dense, deep, drifting in the universe between dream, memory and reality.
Thought-provoking impulses with a philosophical background add an empathetic component to the power of the narrators' words in a charismatic way.
The common thread running through the four tracks like a warm red ribbon is a homage to the freedom of the individual.
A utopian sound clip that tells of acceptance and departure.

After what seems like an aeon of anticipation, Yugen Blakrok returns bolder than ever with The Illusion of Being, a raw, fearless exploration of emotion and resilience. This album is a call to triumph. Through poetic lyricism and experimental soundscapes, this project offers the listener a journey into the heart of uncertainty and the power of perseverance. Created and recorded in a world in flux, The Illusion of Being reflects the artist's evolution as a storyteller and resonates directly with the era that shaped her. Driven by incisive lyrics andsoundscapes blending grunge, trip-hop, and 90s spirit, this project tests the boundaries of alternative hip-hop. Here, rhythm speaks louder than reason, and the acceptance of "Being" becomes the thread that ties each track together. This album captures a bold new chapter in Yugen Blakrok's discography. While rooted in the lyrical mastery and poetic precision that fans cherish, it marks a departure from the familiar, embracing a more unfiltered and experimental approach. The collaborations seem purposeful, and match this intensity: Sa-Roc delivers combative and sisterly energy,Cambatta brings his visceral urgency, while Hannah Allen offers a touch both delicate and impactful. Instrumentally, the arrangements dare to break new ground: wailing electric guitars,enchanting flutes, and hypnotic beats create a striking sonic alchemy. As described by Yugen in three words: Free. Involved. Anti.Free from convention. Involved in the fight. Anti-establishment. In many ways this album is a sonic manifesto. Each track resonates as a call to rebellion, an anthem for those who refuse to bow down. The Illusion of Being is not just a work of art; it’s a statement: for freedom, for community, against oppression. A mirror of our collectivestruggles and a light for those who keep moving forward. It promises its listeners a deeply personal connection, offering a glimmer of hope amidst despair and a soundtrack for their fight.

REVOLT hits double digits with a special release from Athenian underground veteran Other Reality—aka Alex Psaltakis—a figure deeply rooted in the rave culture of the ’90s. His journey began in the late ’80s via the Amiga demoscene, inspired by the raw energy of acid house and hardcore breakbeat. By the mid-’90s, he was DJing at raves, clubs, and open-air festivals, fueled by a passion for psychedelic trance, ambient, Goa, and experimental acid rock. His dedication to the underground has remained unwavering ever since—fed by records, synthesizers, and a deep love for sound exploration.

Still Thrill EP is a 4-track release shaped by a wide musical range, bringing together elements of Detroit techno, trance, house, Goa, ambient, and progressive. More than just a debut on the REVOLT label, this is Other Reality’s first-ever release on vinyl—a deeply personal milestone shaped by years of dedication to his craft and the support of close friends and peers.

Crafted with a mix of hardware and software, the EP draws from years of studio sketches and archived musical ideas. A hidden detail runs through it: a fragmented sample from a rock track that deeply marked Alex in the past—a line that never fully completes in the track.

Each piece carries emotional weight and narrative depth, blending analog warmth with timeless dancefloor energy. The EP moves effortlessly through moods—nostalgic yet forward-looking, playful yet deeply personal.

Ohm ’95—with a name that subtly hints at the Goa trance soul—delivers acid basslines, trance elements, and dreamy pads. A transcendental, unifying experience. Kinda Free pulses gently like a groovy caress at dawn, with dreamy layers, steady rhythm, and acid touches that feel both tender and elevating. More Than Advice embraces movement, disorder, and acceptance, rolling through intricate percussions, hypnotic loops, and a cosmic atmosphere. Emotional and raw. Still Thrill closes the EP with slow-motion energy, submerged in flowing textures and a fluid, nostalgic groove.

Vinyl only. Limited edition.

Eudaimonia is the outcome of a spontaneous connection between two artists, united by a shared passion for deep and emotional sounds. What began as an unplanned session evolved into a deeper exploration, flowing so naturally that it felt inevitable to create something more.

Inspired by the ancient Greek concept of Eudaimonia - a profound sense of fulfillment found through living authentically and purposefully - this EP dives into the inner world of its creators. From moments of reflection to waves of intensity -each track serves as a chapter in a journey toward inner exploration, embracing both the light and shadow within.
Eudaimonia celebrates the beauty of imperfection, the power of acceptance, and the pursuit of authentic expression. It invites listeners to lose themselves, to feel deeply, and to find meaning and healing through sound, connecting to something greater within themselves and the world around them.

Zara is the first album of Parus ethno-ambient project from Belarus that combines pagan songs that are sang by ethnographer and folk singer Hanna Silivonchyk on various dialects of Belarusian language and mixture of synthesizers and field recordings that where reordered in national parks of the country by electroacoustic music composer - Anton Anishchanka. The songs where collected during ethnographic expeditions in remote territories by Belarusian ethnographers in different periods of time

"What I choose to sing from the vast amount of authentic material are songs that
somehow feel like mine for all sorts of reasons, but that I love to be inside." - Hanna Silivonchyk

"Soniejka" is a summer song from the Dnepr river region, which sings about the readiness to meet life in any of its manifestations, about acceptance and love. "Zara" is also from the Dnepr river region, depicting the main Indo-European mythological story of the heavenly love between the Moon and the Dawn and their melting.

"Ruzovyja cviaty" is a lyrical song from Dzvina river region, romantic and touching, which sings about the very beginning of love between two people. And the song "Oj luhom idu" is a spring song from the territory of modern Poland, from Podlasie region, which tells about the life of a married woman, about the fate that may befall her and how it can be experienced. All of them are about one's own feeling of the present time, one's life, about personal life
experience, but at the same time - about universal human contents and meanings that exist outside of time.

Delicate Records delves into the swamp laden depths of heartbreak; inexplicable depth, darkness and twisted beauty with a 9 track full length debut from Saffron Bloom. The Iranian-American producer and performer; already prolific as Sepehr and known for his expertly raw and freaky sound, develops this alias to indulge the silver linings of agony. An illbient force of nature drawing on industrial atmospherics, trip hop flow and unbothered breakbeat influx. The record serves as an ode to the ever changing phases of lost love and grief, seasons of emotion weathering the passage of time each with their own ferocity and relation to the evolving cycle; one so personal yet universally understood.

Intro, the infrastructure of aura laced throughout the record, builds around an ominous and evocative piano soundscape bleeding with delay, intruding barely human vocal cries and percussive injections. Dripping into the DNA of Dirge of the Lonely and Jealous Desire, there comes a yearning, cries from beyond the grave; mourning relationships lost with an eerie familiarity. This sinister sanctuary bred through low slung stripped back breaks, those that echo within the soul and tie themselves to an anchor of inconspicuous growling sub bass; a signature idiosyncrasy perfectly elevated with Saffron Bloom timbre.

Quelling the urge to disintegrate, with power through distortion and commanding drumwork, corners of the B side like Curtain Call and Apathetic Rose reiterate a primal and hypnotic sonic discourse. At the heart of the LP and the artist’s ethos, it resonates through the mind and body in a psychedelic manner while remaining powerfully minimal. Time’s Up (It’s Over) featuring. Sam Weinberg feels like a fever dream, saxophone drenched and echoing throughout your brain, while album closer Ultimate Acceptance is named perfectly. A melancholic realization, soft in nature yet rich in complexity and beauty, a bittersweet conclusion.

Full of bounce and experimentation in equal measure, ‘Triple Transit,’ Braille’s new album for Hotflush is about leaving his Sepalcure project (with Machinedrum) in the rear mirror, moving back to New York and using its energy to fuel new moves, confronting our hyper layered world and overcoming personal difficulties by being creative.

Focused squarely on utilising modular synthesis in sprawling studio sessions, the album covers a wide stylistic range and draws on the artist’s formidable battery of experience to craft a body of work that packs real emotional punch as well as a dancefloor sensibility.

We had a quick chat with him to wet your appetite…

Praveen Sharma aka Braille:
Moving on from Sepalcure
“That period of time when Sepalcure was at its peak was really inspiring. I’m still really in awe and humbled by the fans. It’s always amazing to hear about how music you’ve made has brightened up other people’s lives in some way, but ‘Triple Transit’ is really about transitioning from that period to something new. I’m intentionally not using many vocal samples on this album. That became quite a crutch for Sepalcure and I wanted to try and find ways to evoke those emotions and connect with the audience in other ways.”

The roots of his Bounce
‘Sour Patch Kiss’ and ‘While We’re Free’ are inspired by classic house and some early Detroit stuff. Songs like ‘Big Fun’ (Inner City), ‘I Wanna Be there’ (Model 500) and slowed down ‘Sex on The Beach’ (DJ Assault) have stuck with me since the beginning. I used to listen to this slowed down and doubled version of ‘Sex on The Beach’ on an early Juan Atkins mix cd on REPEAT when I was in high school.

Getting ambient
Triple Transit slows down and transitions through a bit of sadness and eventually acceptance at the end of the album. A lot of the music I’m making these days is trying to recreate that manic feeling so many of us have in 2024. Between social media, ridiculous hustle culture expectations and depressing global and national political events, it’s hard to not feel overwhelmed. I feel like Triple Transit is kind of a parabolic curve from mania to joy to a sober realization that yeah, actually the world is just fucked but somehow we carry on.

Savage Grounds is the synthpunk and minimal synth swiss project of LUX REC head Daniel Cosmo among Florin Büchel and the mesmerizing Kleio Thomaïdes (part of Bound by Endogamy as well). After nine previous releases, Separation Shock represents the last record by the trio before the temporary hiatus they have decided to start. You could expect the classical, raw, and minimalistic sound that defines one of the best acts in the genre coming from central Europe. Pure analog synth madness with the always-evoking and hypnotic vocals of Kleio. A must-have for any minimal wave collector. Presented in ONE-OFF truly limited edition of 300 copies lacquered pressed on 180 gr. high quality solid SILVER GREY vinyl. All tracks have been specially mastered for vinyl by Daniel Hallhuber at Young and Cold Studios (Germany).

Hannah Archimbault is a multidisciplinary French artist based in London. Hannah opens up her inner deep emotions throughout minimal sequences and loops of sustained and touching organ notes, with reminiscences of Philip Glass, Eva-Maria Houben, Harold Budd or Kali Malone and a contemporary vein that questions love in current times. "The EP came after a break up as I decided to compose in the process of going through this love grief and how you could grow from it, learn to love oneself after the break-up. Each song represents a different stage on this life chapter.". Indeed moving anger, sadness and acceptance are well represented on this sonic, brave redemption of the grief through the artform.

Pellegrino & Zodyaco, with their new single 'Malìa', continue the aesthetic and sonic journey of the project led by the Neapolitan producer, with a mixture of Neapolitan disco-funk and fusion steeped in Latin flavour that already explored the innermost corners of the soul with 'Quimere'. This new work captures the frenzy and vibrant character of Naples, with its rarefied atmospheres and infectious groove that evoke the beating heart of the city and take us on a journey through the wonder of life in search of the Mediterranean essence.

The 'Malìa' is enchanting, it’s that mysterious force that hides deep inside, transforming itself into a vortex of emotions through the fusion of involving rhythms and reflections on inner battles, on the importance of finding the 'light' to overcome conflicts and difficulties that hinder the ability to choose, a dreamlike mirage that opens a window on human vulnerability, a hymn to authenticity, to self-acceptance.

The celebration of dance in the Caribbean Escapade version is also an exhortation to escape from everyday life; it takes us into a sonic imagery that plays with the Neapolitan musical tradition and the freshness of Caribbean and Latin sounds. This summer single becomes an ode to the vital energy of dance music: there is no more time for hesitation, one must let oneself be carried away by the enthralling embrace of 'Malìa', like a call to awareness and the search for authenticity in life. Malìa becomes the guiding thread, the mystery that urges us to go beyond the confines of everyday life, to explore and celebrate the complexity of existence.

The masterclass collection of deep melodic house & techno sound is going into the 21st round! "Parquet Most Wanted Vol. 21", featuring worldwide supported & breathtaking productions by SOLEE, JAMES HARCOURT, RAUSCHHAUS and NORS KODE. These tracks are already played by A-List DJs like Kölsch, Innellea, Dave Seaman, Fideles, Dosem, John Digweed, D-Nox, Magdalena, Eelke Kleijn, Bebetta, Markus Kavka and many more.

Green Black Vinyl

With her second full-length album, Zanias condenses her post-punk, techno and italo influences into a collection of simultaneously brooding and uplifting pop songs. ‘Unearthed’ explores the multiplicities of human connections, written at a time when connectedness was a resource more scarce than ever before. Field recordings from nature, vocal samples and an array of acoustic instruments are manipulated within a structure of catchy melodic synth maneuvers and driving rhythms, accompanied by her familiar and powerful voice conveying personal musings on hopeless desires and stoic acceptance. ‘Unearthed’ seeks the light and finds it within the exquisite pain of reckoning loneliness.

Encounters with the ineffable.
The dormant roused.
Openness, observation, questioning, humility, sincerity.
Re-imagining the known, that which is untapped, all that was concealed.
Pathways to wholeness unearthed.
Meeting of truest self.
Temporal versus infinite.

The fallout.

Sudden disintegration, falling away, continuity shattered.
Facade ruptured, persona released, identity laid bare, history withdrawn.

Appearance of no-thing-ness.

Pregnant with possibilities, birth out of chaos, mystery unfolds.
Healing through anguish, renewal through trauma.
Newborn imaginings.

Accept the summons.

Chapters of lucidity, adventures in clarity.
Alignment in harmony.
All encompassing.
Reorientation emerges, subsequent renewal, transcendent insights, enlightened revelations.
Surrender reached, acceptance embraced, liberation appears.

Transmutation.

Solemn symbols of gratitude.
New found depth of meaning, of understanding, of moving, of seeing.
Beyond mental illusion, unifying as nature, expression of stillness.
Vision of the undivided, transmission of wisdom.

Flowering into being.

- Kas ॐ

With his highly accomplished third album If This Is It, DJ Seinfeld (Armand Jakobsson) evolves further into the artist he always set out to be, refining his emotional, club-leaning sound across nostalgic house, UKG, and 2000s-tinged trance.

The 12-track LP — featuring SG Lewis, Confidence Man, TS Graye, Dan Whitlam, ARY, “Norwegian pop witch” Moyka, and Barry Can’t Swim affiliate just lil — explores letting go in a world that can often feel overwhelming.

“A million ideas turned into a few, a few turned into no ideas at all, and no ideas eventually turned into one,” says Jakobsson of the album, which he began the week his acclaimed 2021 record Mirrors was released. “Through writing it, I’ve tried to turn long-held anxieties into acceptance, and I hope listeners can take their own meaning from it.”

With his highly accomplished third album If This Is It, DJ Seinfeld (Armand Jakobsson) evolves further into the artist he always set out to be, refining his emotional, club-leaning sound across nostalgic house, UKG, and 2000s-tinged trance.

The 12-track LP — featuring SG Lewis, Confidence Man, TS Graye, Dan Whitlam, ARY, “Norwegian pop witch” Moyka, and Barry Can’t Swim affiliate just lil — explores letting go in a world that can often feel overwhelming.

“A million ideas turned into a few, a few turned into no ideas at all, and no ideas eventually turned into one,” says Jakobsson of the album, which he began the week his acclaimed 2021 record Mirrors was released. “Through writing it, I’ve tried to turn long-held anxieties into acceptance, and I hope listeners can take their own meaning from it.”

Sem is the first album by Victor Negri under his own name, after a decade making music as Arubu Avua. Released via Stray Signals (Berlin) in partnership with Mutum (Portugal/Brazil), the album was composed between late 2023 and early 2025 during a prolonged period of compounded grief and relocation, and is built upon layers of guitar in irregular loops, alongside samples, experimental electronics, and field recordings.

Begun in Lisbon and finished in Campinas, Brazil, Sem (meaning “without”) deals with loss by juxtaposing new material with unfinished recordings from previous years. As the process unfolded, catharsis emerged as much through editing as through raw expression. The album became a symbolic attempt to glue together fragments and memories from a world that ceased to exist, in order to move forward.

Across its eight tracks, some pieces gradually unfold while others crumble or explode into distortion and feedback, while some seem almost suspended, as if unsure of the next steps. There is a loose trajectory from disorientation and collapse (“Voçoroca”) through astonished frustration (“Não”) and numb acceptance (“Obrigado”), toward a fragile optimism on the closing tracks “Os cacos” and “Boa continuação.” Negri’s first fully instrumental album, Sem contains no vocals at all. That absence emerged gradually after fruitless attempts at songwriting during the period; overwhelm and speechlessness ultimately prevailed. The result leaves room for ambiguity, wandering, and the unfamiliar.

Victor Negri is a Brazilian musician and songwriter. Previously known as Arubu Avua, he makes music framed by noise, feedback, irregular loops, and field recordings.

Music To Watch Seeds Grow By continues its second season with Seoul-based left of centre ambient duo Salamanda - Uman Therma (Sala) and Yetsuby (Manda) - and their meditation on the inner life of a basil plant. Seeds 008 is an ambient composition born from quiet domestic observation: a single basil on a windowsill, its days shaped by light, warmth, and the slow passage of time.

The album moves through a full day in the plant's life opening with ‘introduce my atom which is my favorite one’, an act of quiet self-declaration in morning light, before settling into the unhurried rhythmic pulse of ‘to to ki toki tok’- the drip of water, the tick of a clock, the slow beat of photosynthesis. ‘allez, pousse!’ - one of the standouts in this journey - carries the basil's gentle will to grow, to push, to tilt toward the sun, while ‘hungry snail’ captures a moment of creaturely encounter on the glass: an uninvited visitor, moving slowly, wanting. As the afternoon deepens, 'Basil's Ritual' traces the daily ceremony of light and warmth, repeated with calm devotion from root to leaf. Night falls across 'Basil's Dream', and in the stillness something like sleep arrives - the plant resting, imagining tomorrow's sun. The album closes with ‘the blue wine’, a final mysterious reverie in which the basil seems to contemplate its own fate, somewhere between acceptance and wonder.

Bristol experimental band SUGAR HORSE are delighted to announce that their third album, Not A Sound In Heaven, will be released on 10th April 2026 via Fat Dracula Records.

To celebrate the news, the band are sharing the bruising lead single ‘Secret Speech’, available to stream on all good digital service providers from 12th February 2026.

Also announced today are a run of April 2026 UK album headline tour dates and an appearance at StrangeForms Festival 2026, with tickets on sale now (see below for full listings).

“We are fortunate enough to live in what is generally known as ‘The West’,” says front man Ash Tubb of the lyrical themes behind the new track. “I say fortunate with gritted teeth, because I know—as I’m sure the reader knows—that living in the West isn’t always rosy. The vast majority of people struggle everyday to feed, clothe and house themselves. Let alone receive adequate healthcare, schooling and workers’ rights.”

“We are, however, where all the world’s wealth is hoarded. We are at the centre of Empire. The people outside of this empire—those of the Global South—have had their resources extracted and their populations exploited by our own governments, with very little given back in return. This won’t go on forever. It will inevitably end, as all great empires do.”

“We in The West have a choice to make in the meantime; either help create a new, fairer world, or let the greed of our ruling classes become the undoing of all of us.”

The first glimpse of new material from the quartet, ‘Secret Speech’ starts as Not A Sound In Heaven means to go on—a politically-charged wrecking ball of a song that smashes its way through the often unbelievable chaos and brutality of the 21st century with vitriolic malice.

How do you capture the machinations of the geo-political industrial war machine—and all the horrors that go with it—in the studio, without seeming trite or crass? That’s the question that Sugar Horse have posed themselves on their forthcoming third album Not A Sound In Heaven, and they must surely be one of the only bands in existence capable of delivering on just that premise with both musical substance and cutting philosophical insight.

“Ever since I was born I can remember visions of war, famine, and death being beamed directly into my living room via the magic of television,” says Tubb of the record. “These visions were accompanied by newsreader narratives designed to either humanise or dehumanise the people involved. We humanise our government’s allies and dehumanise their enemies. This is taken as common sense, or even wisdom to some degree. People watch the news and accept it as fact, simple and true.”

“As a person gets older they move in one of three different directions with this acceptance of reality; They embrace what they’re being told, they fall into a kind of trust free nihilism or they learn that there are deeper narratives at play.”

“Not A Sound In Heaven is an aged acceptance of the latter. An acceptance of sitting at the centre of a global empire of both military and economic dimensions. An acceptance that the stories we’re told as a nation, or what’s generally in the zeitgeist, isn’t necessarily reality itself.”

“How does a person cope with the weight—and, frankly, the guilt—of a society that perpetuates such distinct inequalities? A society that thinks a bit of killing abroad is fine, as long as it improves the lives of people at home. You can see why so many choose to embrace it. Hell, nihilism seems pretty sensible. Once a person decides upon pursuing a degree of truth however, things get a bit depressing. Beyond depressing...maddening.”

“This album explores this kind of breezy, frivolous subject matter in a manner that will no doubt be uplifting to the listener and massively financially rewarding for the artist.”

The new album follows on from their standalone AA single ‘What’s Your ETA? Let’s Have A Tear Up’/‘Would You Like Me To Be The Cat?’ which was released late last year as a surprise double drop.

New album from Pictish Trail, AKA Johnny Lynch, known for his wildly inventive electro-acoustic psych-pop. Life Slime is the sixth full-length album by Pictish Trail (AKA Johnny Lynch) - a strange, tender, psychedelic electro-pop record shaped by transformation, exhaustion, hope, guilt, and renewal. Written at home on the Isle of Eigg and recorded at Mike Lindsay's studio down in Margate (Tunng / LUMP), the album follows 2022's critically acclaimed Island Family, further refining Lynch's world of lo-fi electronics, warped pop melodies, baggy psych rhythms and emotionally direct songwriting. It's a record that balances woozy synth-pop, motorik propulsion and intimate acoustic songwriting, all infused with the emotional messiness that gives the album its title. Across the album's singles - the guilt-stained psych-pop ballad 'Hold It', the life-affirming shimmer of 'Infinity Ooze', the late-night confession of 'Torch Song', the expansive eight-minute centrepiece 'Another Way', and the cinematic closer 'Werewolf Ending' - Life Slime charts a journey from emotional fracture to uneasy release. 'Sorry Eyes' brings a punchy electro-pop strut with a sharp emotional edge, 'Crystal Cave' drifts through crystalline guitars and shoegaze haze into transformation, and the title track 'Life Slime' moves with a slow, weary swagger toward bittersweet acceptance. Together, these tracks form a cohesive album statement about surrender, resistance, change and renewal. "Wonderfully weird pop"- Brooklyn Vegan For fans of Hot Chip, The Flaming Lips, Liars, Mercury Rev, Beck, John Grant, Empire of the Sun, Grandaddy. Colour vinyl and digisleeve CD

Embrace The Abandon is the new project by THE MON, the solo vision of Urlo, vocalist, bassist, and founding member of the Italian heavy-psych veterans Ufomammut.
Structured in two complementary chapters - Songs of Abandon (November 7th, 2025) and Songs of Embrace (March 6th, 2026) - the project tells a journey of duality: loss and surrender on one side, acceptance and rebirth on the other.
“
Songs Of Embrace” is the second chapter of “Embrace The Abandon”, expanding its emotional landscape rather than closing it.
Where the first part explored abandonment and loss, “Songs Of Embrace” focuses on presence, proximity, and the physical act of staying.
It is the answering breath, the inner voice.

The album avoids resolution and comfort, embracing slowness, repetition, and bodily tension.
It is not just music, it is a stream of consciousness, an inner search, a way of inhabiting what weighs without letting go.
While “Songs Of Abandon” is a collection of songs, nine tracks written in nine days, Songs Of Embrace is a continuous musical flow.
It is a movement that changes, grows, erupts, slows down, settles, and rises again.

It feels like the sea: calm and still one moment, then moved by a simple breath of wind, suddenly breaking into a storm.
“Songs Of Embrace” was conceived more like a ritual, a work of classical music, a suite.

Different parts unfolding one into the next, each a continuation of the previous one, finding meaning only as a whole.
The pieces are deeply interconnected, like embraces: some bring comfort, others carry pain.
These are compositions meant to be listened to in one continuous breath, allowing yourself to be held, rocked, and sometimes pushed away, just like in an embrace.

This is her first album in five years, she returns with a renewed sense of clarity and control, asserting herself as a generational songwriter with a sharpened perspective. While her early work chronicled the emotional turbulence of young love, Ricochet reveals a deeper fixation: time, mortality, and the quiet terror of watching the things you love slip away. The album"s 11 songs are steeped in introspection, anxiety, and acceptance - an acknowledgment that the world keeps turning regardless of what"s unfolding in your own small orbit.

This is her first album in five years, she returns with a renewed sense of clarity and control, asserting herself as a generational songwriter with a sharpened perspective. While her early work chronicled the emotional turbulence of young love, Ricochet reveals a deeper fixation: time, mortality, and the quiet terror of watching the things you love slip away. The album"s 11 songs are steeped in introspection, anxiety, and acceptance - an acknowledgment that the world keeps turning regardless of what"s unfolding in your own small orbit.

Undun is the story of a man, Redford Stevens, dying in reverse, rewinding from the moment he became a statistic and hitting the points in his life where he's at his most self-aware. That he's a criminal who got caught up in the familiar street-hustle trappings that the modern media's documented countless times is a pivotal detail-- it's hit at an angle that seems to emphasize the futile inevitability of it all. His life could be any number of misdirected narratives that ends with a toe tag, and what details listeners learn about him are hazy, buried under archetypal turns of fate and decisive struggles. That this protagonist is a fictionalized composite of a handful of real people, filtered through a matter-of-fact narrative that splits character ambivalence with journalistic impartiality, only makes his lack of direction and the failure of any real closure stand out even more. "Lotta niggas go to prison," Dice Raw states on "Tip the Scale", "how many come out Malcolm X?"

So the Roots' latest album isn't a sprawling, rise-and-fall crime story, not a condemnation or a veneration of a man living outside the law, not a bullet-riddled grand guignol heavy on explicit details of soldiers getting cut down. It's a character study of a man whose existential crisis ends only with his death-- a death gone largely unspecified, the glamor and tragedy washed over with a doomed resignation. That's a hard thing to pull off, even for a band as given to deep-thinking concepts as the Roots are. And when your main lyrical catalyst is Black Thought-- a man more given to allusions than direct statements-- it's likely that it'll take a while for the full scope of Undun to really sink in.

If and when it does, it might strike listeners as a bit skeletal: omit the mood-setting instrumental bookends, including a brief, four-part orchestral suite that builds off Sufjan Stevens' "Redford (For Yia-Yia and Pappou)", and you've got maybe a half hour's worth of material. By ?uestlove's accounts, writing Redford's story introduced the headaches and challenges that come with scriptwriting into their songwriting, and what's left on Undun is the end result of frequent revisions and rewrites that attempt to reconcile character, theme, and continuity. If it comes at the expense of nuance, it's not always obvious: There's an easy-to-trace narrative line from Redford's acceptance of his fate ("Sleep") to his acknowledgement of how close it's approaching ("Make My"), back through declarations of aggravated toughness ("One Time"), and celebratory fatalism ("Kool On"), along ups and downs that juxtapose motivation ("Stomp") and helplessness ("Lighthouse"). When the vocal portion of the album ends with two of the bleakest sets of verses in the Roots discography, peaking with the estrangement of "I Remember" and the desperation of "Tip the Scale", Undun reveals itself as a story where a man's actual death isn't quite as tragic as the circumstances that pushed him to it.

Stine Janvin & Morten Joh unveil "Or Gare," a stark and deeply atmospheric excavation of funeral-processional music from Ryfylke, Norway. The release marks the debut collaboration of both artists, recasting a near-forgotten tradition into ghost-lit contemporary form. Rooted in the bygone custom of "Liksong" (literally "corpse song") that was once sung by small groups of singers who guided rural funeral processions, Janvin and Joh tap into its uncanny, unbearably slow intervallic structures, reanimating the practice as a kind of ancient electronic microtonal devotional music.

The definition of the word 'fado' is technically 'fate', though the Portuguese meaning bound up with this term is more complex. The music itself can be fairly closely compared with that of Greek rebetika - also the American blues or the original working-class tango music of Argentina and Uruguay - and similarly takes it's common subject matter from the various cruel realities of the world. Though perhaps what distinguishes fado in character is it's often poised acceptance of the pains of life rather than protestation or resistance - as writer Paul Vernon says "It speaks with a quiet dignity born of the realisation that any mortal desire or plan is at risk of destruction by powers beyond individual control"

Death Is Not The End compile here a spine-tingling collection of fado recordings, taken from records issued in the mid 1910s through to the 1930s. The fado's Lisbon and Coimbra variants are presented here by some of the music's earliest recorded stars - spanning a time period leading up to the emergence of the fado's all-conquering star, Amália Rodrigues.

Political thriller Je Suis Karl, produced by German director Christian Schwochow, has a strong Czech connection. The soundtrack has been created by Czech musician and composer Tomáš Dvořák, a.k.a. Floex, who joined forces with British composer and pianist Tom Hodge. The soundtrack for Je Suis Karl will be released on September 16, 2021.
"In this project, Tom and I built on music that we wrote together three years ago for the album A Portrait Of John Doe. While this was the first feature film for me, Tom has extensive experience with composing music for movies and series," commented Dvořák.
Co-produced by the Czech company Negativ and filmed in part in the Czech Republic, the movie features characters played by Czech actresses Anna Fialová and Elizaveta Maximová. The picture makes use of the story of a young German girl, Maxi, and her family to draw attention to rising extremism among right-wing nationalists. Je Suis Karl was premiered during this year's Berlinale film festival in the Berlinale Special section.
At the director's initiative, music for Je Suis Karl was composed based on the script before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. “Christian Schwochow asked for a demo, but when Tom and I set to work in Prague, we came up with a huge amount of inspired stuff within a short time, and the music became the foundation of the soundtrack. Because of the pandemic, the music itself was created on a long-distance basis. It was a game of ping pong of sorts," Dvořák added.
The soundtrack for Je Suis Karl features a unique timbre, far from the traditional symphonic sound. Instead, the sonic design relies on a fusion of dark, discordant, dirty sounds that present the symphony orchestra in a novel fashion.
Floex and Hodge created a database of loops, sounds, soundscapes, and sonic experiments with no specific compositional context. In composing music for individual scenes, they used this musical database, remixed themes and versions of compositions, and worked with vintage equipment, such as the Yamaha MT4X cassette player. Considering the large quantity of music recorded, the album contains 14 compositions from the movie itself, plus bonus tracks that did not make it into the film.
Tomáš Dvořák, a.k.a. Floex, is a Czech clarinetist, composer, producer, and multimedia artist, the recipient of multiple Anděl Music Awards. His discography includes two long-play records, Pocustone and Zorya, soundtracks for the games Samorost 2, Machinarium, Samorost 3, Pilgrims, and Papetura, remix albums, and extended-play records. In 2018, he joined forces with Tom Hodge to release the album A Portrait Of John Doe.
British composer, pianist, and clarinetist Tom Hodge challenges the boundaries of contemporary experimental music. He composes music for film, series, documentaries, advertising, and ballet. His most recent projects include the soundtrack for Je Suis Karl and music for the movie The Mauritanian filmed by director Kevin Macdonald. He has released several solo albums, including Piano Interrupted and Second Moon of Winter, and has pursued a long-term collaborative partnership with musician Max Cooper.

Malena Zavala is an Argentinian-born, London-based artist, producer, and filmmaker, known for crafting ethereal, genre-blending music that navigates the space between her Latin heritage and her British upbringing. With the forthcoming album If This Life Could Start Again set for release on 30 January 2026 on Paraná Records, Zavala presents her most intimate, cohesive, and accomplished work to date, marking a significant evolution in her artistic journey.
With her new album, Malena creates an atmospheric dream pop world, weaving singer-songwriter intimacy with synth pop, Argentine folk, indiepop, rock and experimental music, threaded together by her blissful vocals and dreamy guitar work. Gorgeously warm and vivid, If This Life Could Start Again charts the journey from pain to acceptance, mapping out the non-linear nature of healing through a sonic landscape. Each song embodies a distinct emotion within that journey, from grief and chaos to feeling lost, seeking refuge, finding confidence, and finally acceptance and letting go. Drawing on her Argentinian roots, Malena uses the Andes mountains as both a visual and thematic anchor – the difficult climb towards higher ground becomes a metaphor for healing, whilst being lost at rock bottom reflects the darkest moments of the journey. 
Completely composed and performed by Malena herself, the album was recorded in Girona’s L’Empordà countryside in Spain with producer Luke Smith. As a professional producer and audio engineer, this was Malena’s first time relinquishing production control – an intimate creative shift that allowed their shared vision to shape the album’s rich, enveloping sound. 
However, Zavala’s career to date has been a testament to self-sufficient artistry. Her critically acclaimed debut, Aliso (2018), was written, recorded, and produced alone in her parents’ garage, which honed her dreamy bedroom pop sound. The album, praised by The Guardian for its “gently warped and beguilingly melancholy guitar pop,” ****, immediately catapulted her from DIY beginnings to prestigious stages, supporting acts like Lord Huron at London’s Roundhouse and Men I Trust at Village Underground and subsequently continuing on their UK/EU tours. Later with standout performances at Latitude, Green Man, and All Points East. Her consistent radio support from key influencers including BBC Radio 6 Music, BBC Radio 1's Huw Stephens, and Steve Lamacq has solidified her presence on the airwaves.
Her second album, La Yarará (2020), saw Zavala delve deeper into her roots, exploring Latin traditions like Cumbia and Bolero. This exploration of identity continues powerfully on the new album, but with a newfound lyrical depth and sonic confidence. The new album, If This Life Could Start Again, is a raw and transformative eight-track journey that maps the emotional landscape of healing. Written after a period of personal upheaval, the album traverses themes of grief, hereditary trauma, and self-discovery. The record’s narrative is structured like a mountain ascent. A challenging climb through varied emotional terrain, posing the central question: “Will you join the journey?” Sonically, this journey mirrors the non-linear path to acceptance, evolving from acoustic folk and synth-pop to funk-infused rhythms and rock anthems.
As a formidable live performer, Zavala has built a robust touring profile across the UK and Europe. She will embark on an extensive tour in February and March 2026 to support the album, with dates spanning major cities from London and Glasgow to Berlin, Paris, and Barcelona.
With If This Life Could Start Again, Malena Zavala fully realizes her artistic vision as a self-taught producer to an autonomous artist commanding her career through Paraná Records whilst reflecting the vast landscapes of her heritage and affirming her place as a compelling and evolving voice in contemporary music.

Stoop Kid is the jangly indie rock project of Diest-born Jens Rubens. After Camp Careful (2021) and Mount Cope (2023), Stoop Kid returns with his third full-length album Office Overdue, a ten-song collection that captures the quiet fatigue, flickering humor, and
fragile hope of keeping it together in a world that won't slow down.

'Office Overdue' is a collection of songs Jens made at home in his modest home studio. For this album, he wanted to let go of pressure and expectations more than ever, and only work on music when he genuinely felt like it.No fancy studio, no producer, just walking upstairs and messing around. The result doesn't always sound perfectly polished: the drums are sometimes clumsily programmed and more than a few wrong notes made it onto the record. The guitars were allowed to hit a bit harder this time, with the '90s slacker vibes coming through more prominently. The result is a record that feels raw and honest, and above all, was made purely out of enthusiasm.

Office Overdue explores the attempt to keep functioning in everyday life while the world around us feels on the verge of collapse. The songs move between mental exhaustion and self-reflection, carried by a dry, sometimes bitter humour that helps lighten the weight. The album focuses on repetition and routine, and on the tension between wanting to care for others and being trapped inside one's own head. Themes of anxiety, guilt and dissociation recur throughout, but are always accompanied by small moments of connection, gentle resistance and acceptance. Office Overdue embraces the mess, the doubt and the false notes, without drawing grand conclusions. Not everything is resolved, but the persistence remains.

IS THE BEST is the manifestation of Prontaxan's collective mindset as a music group formed by visual artists, musicians, producers, and filmmakers.

IS THE BEST tells a story about release — how the constraints of routine can break free through celebration, and how Funkot becomes a universal language to speak about resistance, pressure, and acceptance of reality within the context of today's working class.

IS THE BEST is an expression of this phenomenon — where a masterpiece is one that breaks out of its shell to shine, be admired, discussed, and criticized by its audience.

IS THE BEST is born as Prontaxan's remedy for electronic music lovers across the globe.

Goodbye Matters retraces Silly Boy Blue’s intimate journey through a year shaken by the loss of a loved one and the emotional transformation that follows. This EP explores the emptiness left by this sudden absence, and how, over time, that void slowly fills with acceptance.


Each track represents a stage of the grieving process, associated with a color and a season, reflecting the emotion that accompanies it.



Summer 1 opens the story with an apparent calmness of everyday life that hides an inner turmoil. Autumn dives deeper into the tangible pain of absence, as memories gradually fade away with the falling leaves of the season.



With Winter, the EP reaches a breaking point. The music is stripped down to its bare essence, conveying an emotional landscape emptied out, where the outer cold mirrors inner loneliness.



Then comes Spring, where sadness still lingers but gives way to a glimmer of hope, symbolizing the struggle between memory and renewal.



Finally, Summer 2 marks acceptance — a last imaginary conversation, a gentle farewell. The cycle closes, yet light returns, offering a peaceful conclusion to this journey through loss and reconstruction.

In 2019, a brutal epileptic seizure changed my life - the first of more to come. I was forced into solitude, and in that quiet, music became my lifeline. In the following years, I poured everything I had into creating between you and me: a raw, DIY album that is a distillation of my lived experience during this time. The album explores emotional authenticity, freedom of expression, and acceptance: not as abstract concepts, but through visceral experiences that have fundamentally reshaped my art and my sense of self. As a listener, I invite you to explore your vulnerability by joining me in mine. This album is truly between you and me.

Ozzy Jones is a Dutch-Australian interdisciplinary artist whose music blends electronica with indie. Drawing from personal struggles and raw emotion after his seizures started, his debut album between you and me explores vulnerability, male identity, and authentic self-expression. Rooted in Amsterdam's vibrant creative scene, Ozzy's work fuses sound, visuals, and storytelling to create a deeply immersive and honest artistic experience.

Embrace The Abandon is the new project by THE MON, the solo vision of Urlo, vocalist, bassist, and founding member of the Italian heavy-psych veterans Ufomammut.

Structured in two complementary chapters — Songs of Abandon (November 7th, 2025) and Songs of Embrace (March 6th, 2026) — the project tells a journey of duality: loss and surrender on one side, acceptance and rebirth on the other.
The first chapter, Songs of Abandon, is perhaps the most intimate and vulnerable work Urlo has ever created.
Born in a moment of solitude and personal darkness, the album originated from a radical exercise: writing one song a day, for nine consecutive days, using only acoustic guitar and voice.
A collection of stripped-down, emotionally raw ballads. Rooted in acoustic textures and intimate songwriting, these songs explore loss, vulnerability, and the quiet spaces left behind — a personal exorcism of what could have been but never was.
Later, these sketches were shaped into fully realized tracks, with lyrics and subtle layers of sound — not to overwhelm, but to underline the fragile, raw atmosphere that pervades them. The result is a stripped-down, emotionally charged collection that embodies an inner search: the power of music as a tool to face abandonment, to dig into oneself, and ultimately to glimpse the possibility of an embrace.
With Embrace The Abandon, THE MON reaffirms itself as one of the most personal and uncompromising projects.
It is a body of work that fuses vulnerability and strength, speaking directly to the listener with sincerity, leading them through shadow towards light.
An intimate yet powerful sound experience, intertwining the minimalism of acoustic folk with the dark, visionary tension that has always defined Urlo’s artistic path.

Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time traces an audio-spiritual journey through time and place, recorded across a long-awaited debut tour of Japan in the fall of 2024. Compiled from environmental improvisations captured in and for the moment, material at once welcoming, responsive, and inimitable, the album distills a voyage guided by psychic wayfaring, unbound presence, and activating performance for a reciprocal exchange with space, listener, and each fully engaged instant. The Japanese tour documented on Cloud Time held an almost mythic significance for Sprague, taking on properties of her own sonic white whale. After many near-departures and dropped plans to play in the country, "the empty spaces of cancelled trips and forgotten music turned into strange little misty spirits that I felt followed by," she says. "When I began preparing for the tour, I couldn't shake a sense that the invitation to Japan was more about opening myself up to this new place instead of bringing something into it tightly under my control. Improvisation has always been such a pillar in my music practice, and I really wanted to meet the country, spaces and people through that process." To amplify these intuitive whispers on-stage, Sprague reimagined her time-tested live rig, designed to be as free from error as possible, as a looser, more flexible set up that would allow her to interface with what was essentially a blank sonic canvas every night. Each performance became a collaboration between environment and instinct, Sprague processing the events, energies, and emotions informing the evening through her new sound ecosystem, and projecting an entirely present and unique version of herself to each open-eared and hearted crowd. "It was very much more than just an act of playing for me, but a total experience of time and place," she says. The seven long-form pieces that plot the course of Cloud Time, excerpted from over eight hours of recordings archived on the artist's on-stage recorder and generously shared on the album with no additional mixing and only minimal editing, invite listeners to become still in these deep-rooted moments of presence as the album moves from city to city, venue to venue. Cloud Time chronicles material recorded at each tour stop, Sprague selecting and sequencing the album around mood-based storytelling more so than linear chronology. "I tried to make the whole album flow in the way that any one of the complete live performances did," she explains, "while also keeping the spirit of the whole thing as a journey." The result is equal parts travelog, love letter, and impressionistic collage channeled from the potent ferment of a now encased in the glowing amber of memory. Intrinsically inspired by kankyo ongaku, an environmental music philosophy, known both in and widely outside of Japan that tunes into the similarly expansive ethos as Pauline Oliveros' deep listening practice and posits the listener as composer, Cloud Time is ambient music that seems to be listening right back, grounded in heartfelt synthesized frequencies that abundantly hold and heal. Pieces like "Nagoya," "Tokyo 1," and the ten minute "Matsumoto" in particular hum with the atomic resonance of gently tended landscapes, offering space for tuning way in and dropping far out from perspectives that stifle and bind. Cloud Time is an invitation to embrace each moment as both fleeting and eternal, floating by with nothing to grasp onto and absolutely everything to gain. The exercise in acceptance and letting go that Sprague practiced throughout the tour deeply impacted her understanding of self as both a guest and venerable performer. "The process of loving wherever I am, being present and focusing on a clear channel of communication for mind and emotion, rooted so deeply in respect for the space, those within it, and myself, ended up being profoundly healing," she says. "My vision and hope is that this album can be released as a gift back to anyone who either was or wasn't there. A cloud time of life passing by."

Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time traces an audio-spiritual journey through time and place, recorded across a long-awaited debut tour of Japan in the fall of 2024. Compiled from environmental improvisations captured in and for the moment, material at once welcoming, responsive, and inimitable, the album distills a voyage guided by psychic wayfaring, unbound presence, and activating performance for a reciprocal exchange with space, listener, and each fully engaged instant. The Japanese tour documented on Cloud Time held an almost mythic significance for Sprague, taking on properties of her own sonic white whale. After many near-departures and dropped plans to play in the country, "the empty spaces of cancelled trips and forgotten music turned into strange little misty spirits that I felt followed by," she says. "When I began preparing for the tour, I couldn't shake a sense that the invitation to Japan was more about opening myself up to this new place instead of bringing something into it tightly under my control. Improvisation has always been such a pillar in my music practice, and I really wanted to meet the country, spaces and people through that process." To amplify these intuitive whispers on-stage, Sprague reimagined her time-tested live rig, designed to be as free from error as possible, as a looser, more flexible set up that would allow her to interface with what was essentially a blank sonic canvas every night. Each performance became a collaboration between environment and instinct, Sprague processing the events, energies, and emotions informing the evening through her new sound ecosystem, and projecting an entirely present and unique version of herself to each open-eared and hearted crowd. "It was very much more than just an act of playing for me, but a total experience of time and place," she says. The seven long-form pieces that plot the course of Cloud Time, excerpted from over eight hours of recordings archived on the artist's on-stage recorder and generously shared on the album with no additional mixing and only minimal editing, invite listeners to become still in these deep-rooted moments of presence as the album moves from city to city, venue to venue. Cloud Time chronicles material recorded at each tour stop, Sprague selecting and sequencing the album around mood-based storytelling more so than linear chronology. "I tried to make the whole album flow in the way that any one of the complete live performances did," she explains, "while also keeping the spirit of the whole thing as a journey." The result is equal parts travelog, love letter, and impressionistic collage channeled from the potent ferment of a now encased in the glowing amber of memory. Intrinsically inspired by kankyo ongaku, an environmental music philosophy, known both in and widely outside of Japan that tunes into the similarly expansive ethos as Pauline Oliveros' deep listening practice and posits the listener as composer, Cloud Time is ambient music that seems to be listening right back, grounded in heartfelt synthesized frequencies that abundantly hold and heal. Pieces like "Nagoya," "Tokyo 1," and the ten minute "Matsumoto" in particular hum with the atomic resonance of gently tended landscapes, offering space for tuning way in and dropping far out from perspectives that stifle and bind. Cloud Time is an invitation to embrace each moment as both fleeting and eternal, floating by with nothing to grasp onto and absolutely everything to gain. The exercise in acceptance and letting go that Sprague practiced throughout the tour deeply impacted her understanding of self as both a guest and venerable performer. "The process of loving wherever I am, being present and focusing on a clear channel of communication for mind and emotion, rooted so deeply in respect for the space, those within it, and myself, ended up being profoundly healing," she says. "My vision and hope is that this album can be released as a gift back to anyone who either was or wasn't there. A cloud time of life passing by." Emily A. Sprague's Cloud Time will be released Friday, October 10th in vinyl, Japanese import CD (via Plancha), and digital editions.

“Tunggak Semi” is the third album from Indonesian musician and producer Bambang Pranoto. Originally released in 2000, it’s an exemplary slice of what has become his signature style, a dream-like meditation on aspects of nature, combining elements of accordion, acoustic guitar, flute and percussion. The compositions cross eastern and western notation to inhabit a world of their own, a world between worlds, where harmonies reflect the beauty and joy of nature.

Bambang had a rather atypical entry into music, and studied electronics and telecommunications, before he took advantage of the wave of computer software like Cubase and Protools in the 1990s that enabled him to set about recording his own compositions and soundscapes. After playing in groups, he developed his own approach to constructing his productions. He invites musicians to record interpretations of his themes, which he then pieces together in Protools like a jigsaw puzzle. “The musicians have never even met!” he chuckled on a Skype call.

“Tunggak Semi” refers to the giant trees that appear all over Bali, and their process of renewal and regeneration. “If you cut the tree, and leave the roots, they will grow again. Everytime we cut, they grow again. It’s limitless. This philosophy means there’s always something new coming, whether an idea or music, anything.” This approach has grown out of Bambang’s studies into meditation, including Indian and Chinese scriptures, also Balinese and Indonesian religions. Music, like meditation, is a daily practice, and acceptance of the music and its ‘unfinishedness’, forms a central part of the process.

“We must not just think, but we must also feel, and we must accept that feeling,” explains Bambang, and that’s a step of opening one’s mind to possibility. It seems in keeping with two of Bambang’s musical inspirations, namely Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel, both known for their love of world folk music, and fusion of musical traditions. That’s mirrored in Bambang’s own collage-like approach, recording elements and piecing them together to make something unimagined. While the acoustic sound palette for “Tunggak Semi” is rooted in live recordings, Bambang is not afraid to put the digital technology to good use.

“We have to use the computer as a tool in the best way we can,” Bambang says. “Sometimes people say music is made by people, not by the computer, but it’s just another piece of equipment. What can we compose from this equipment? It’s technology music!”

Written and produced by Bambang Pranoto at interactive garden studio, Depok, Bogor between September and December 2001. 2025 version remastered by Wouter Brandenburg at Brandenburg Mastering.

Released in 1985, Misplaced Childhood includes the hit single ‘Kayleigh’, hit #1 in the UK and stayed in the charts for 41 weeks. As the band’s first concept album, Misplaced Childhood explores themes of lost love, sudden success, acceptance and the fading innocence of youth.

Second part of second album! Originating from Normandy, France, psychedelic noise-pop quartet You Said Strange presents a unique blend of indie rock that incorporates elements of psych pop-rock, shoegaze, and proto-grunge. Thousand Shadows volume 2, a second chapter was needed to highlight the many shadows that still linger everywhere. The shadows that linger on the borders, hiding the violence of the fights for them. The shadows that time has on the relationships and their persistence, because the shadows move. Plato's cave, modern version, would be the one of toxic relationships, antidepressants and the acceptance of the regression of freedom and/or the vision of a dying world... Between shoegaze, noise pop and psychedelic rock, You Said Strange absorbs its time to incant a music in which melancholy, love and the search for plenitude meet. The band recorded their first album, Salvation Prayer, in 2018 in Portland (USA), with Peter G. Holmstrom from The Dandy Warhols, which saw release via Fuzz Club Recirds. In 2022, the band shared their LP Thousand Shadows Vol. 1. Mythomaniac kings, the Mediterranean, the colors of mourning _ these are the detailed subjects, described against a backdrop of psychedelic pop, proto grunge, and shoegaze. The first part of a powerful, reverberant, melodious second album, drawing its inspiration and production stem from encounters during their 2022 European and North American tours, between Normandy, New York, and Oregon. Most recently, You Said Strange shared the second part of their sophomore release, a follow-up to Vol. 1 entitled Thousand Shadows Vol. 2.

‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ is the latest collection selected by Mikey Young (Total Control, EddyCurrent Suppression Ring) and Keith Abrahamsson (Founder and Head of A&R at AnthologyRecordings), the mangled minds behind the beloved ‘Follow the Sun’, ‘Sad About the Times’,and ‘…Still Sad’ compilations. The twenty tracks of ‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ make a conscious(and unconscious) detour from its predecessors, sourced entirely from private press releases,spanning new decades and production modes within homespun folk, soft rock and otherwise70s and 80s FM radio adjacent music.  The magic of ‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ is the untold story of the artists behind these songs; thosewho missed the big time, but whose song craft and unrequited care hit the right notes, bothhigh and low.
Where ‘Follow the Sun’ and ‘Sad About the Times’ introduced us to the fame chasing, ambitioncrashing crooners who missed their shot in the mainstream, ‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ delvesdeeper into the isolated wilds - a private world where production quirks, late-night tape hiss andone-man studio dreams were not necessarily a choice but the hand that was dealt.
With the parameters set to ‘private press only’, Young and Abrahamsson follow a circuitous trailof invention and emotion, documenting a spirit that’s more homespun, sometimes lonelier andoften a little weirder. The guitars still strum, but the keyboards’ hum is more prevalent andprecious; wistful harmonies brush up against lo-fi drum machines; a bittersweet fog lingeringover even the brightest melodies.
As with their previous collaborations, Young and Abrahamsson weren’t interested inconstructing a museum or drafting a historical survey. ‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ is a sentimentalmixtape, assembled late at night when the mind wanders and old memories blur with imaginedfutures, those within reach and those far too mysterious to ever encounter. Songs wereunearthed in personal collections, deep YouTube burrows, dilapidated web archives and thedim corners of Discogs, with many selections tied not only to intuition but to personalconnection.  Some tracks arrived via friends - Kelley Stoltz, a frequent guide for Young, tipped him off toboth Peter Kraemer’s lost gem ‘Let the Light Slip’ and Awakening’s revelatory closer - addingan unseen but deeply felt thread of camaraderie to the compilation.
The journey takes in a wide, strange sweep: The Watson Brothers Band’s ‘Just Whistle’ opensthe collection with a sigh and a shrug, a song that feels like it’s been waiting for decades to beheard again. Jim Huxley’s ‘Tessa on a Magazine’, rediscovered after a long and winding searchby Young, shimmers with a distinctly Australian melancholia. The heartbreak of Rick Penta’s‘My Story Changes’ and Twice As Nice’s delicate ‘Thoughts of You’ float easily alongside themore buoyant, radio-dream sheen of Barracuda’s ‘Baby I Love You’ and MAK’s sunshinedappled ‘That’s Life’.
Widening the aperture to the late 1970s and early 1980s allows for a deeper exploration intoevolving production techniques and musical technologies. The Squad’s ‘D.L.M.H.I.M.A.’ andChristoph Spendel Group’s ‘Forever’ crackle with the kind of bedroom synth warmth that couldonly come from the analogue age, while the soulful, yearning undercurrent of Awakening’s‘Gotta Do Somethin / Might As Well Cultivate’ caps the collection with a call for action - ormaybe just acceptance - in an accidental Brian Eno ‘Here Come the Warm Jets’ parroting.
While ‘Maybe I’m Dreaming’ moves away from the ‘sad man with guitar’ archetype that hoveredover its predecessors, it remains tethered to a familiar emotional gravity - a balance of longingand lightness that defines this corner of the musical universe. Each track shuffles gentlybetween resignation and hope, sadness and serenity, as if the artists themselves were chasinga dream just beyond reach, recording not for fame but for the simple act of getting it, thatprimal, creative itch, out into the world.
Available on CD and 2LP, featuring the third eye-opening artwork of Dang Wayne Olsen. Thedouble LP set arrives in an outrageous double-wide spine jacket with printed inners and adream journal entry by Pacific Northwest artifactual authority Josh Lewellen.

Vines, the solo project of New York-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Cassie Wieland, offers a window into her inner world through expansive swaths of sound. She pieces together a celestial mix of synths, percussion, strings, and vocoded voice, making music that is at once deeply personal and cinematic in scope. This diaristic approach first took shape with her 2023 EP Birthday Party, and is crystallized on her debut LP, I’ll be here. With the sweeping and vulnerable I’ll be here, Vines arrives fully formed as an artist who crafts deeply resonant and open music–the kind that invites listeners in to listen, reflect, and share in the journey of learning through living.

“It was through making music that I was able to meet myself,” Wieland said. “Anything I’m going through or feeling is something that somebody else out there can relate to, and that’s really special to me.”

I’ll be here is both a culmination of years spent creating gossamer soundscapes and an opening to a new journey for Wieland as an artist. The album grew out of her years as a composer and songwriter, and builds on the language she developed on Birthday Party, which transformed the tumultuous feelings of the passing of time into minimalist meditations. It was just a start, though–a prologue, a development of the kind of language and ideas she wanted to express. With I’ll be here, she digs deeper and writes music that feels more sprawling, further solidifying her singular voice.

Wieland’s musical composition process is similar to journaling, lending itself to the music’s honesty. When she writes, she makes room for all the ideas she has; in these sessions, there are no wrong ideas, and she allows the music to be attuned to the experiences she’s having at the time. With I’ll be here, Wieland zeroes in on themes of anxiety, loneliness, navigating human connection, and having to grow up from a young age, ultimately coming to a place of acceptance. And though it began as a journal written in solitude, her collaborators shape the music with her.

Working with friends, in fact, was a crucial part of bringing the record to life. “Everything that was supposed to happen came together so easily because of the people involved,” Wieland said. I’ll be here was co-produced and recorded with Wieland’s longtime collaborator Mike Tierney, a four time Grammy-nominated engineer who has worked with artists across the contemporary classical and experimental scene like minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, LA’s preeminent classical ensemble Wild Up, and various bands on Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music label. Percussionist and composer Adam Holmes and violinist Adrianne Munden-Dixon are two other longtime collaborators who are frequent fixtures of her live show. Holmes plays synths, drums, and banjo; in live settings, his kit is loaded with elements of the songs that are then triggered by MIDI, making the music an interactive, evolving experience. The album’s gentle, filamented edges are colored by Munden-Dixon, whose poignant string melodies elevate Wieland’s introspective compositions, as well as cellist Helen Newby, saxophonists Julian Velasco and Jordan Lulloff, and bassist Pat Swoboda.

Wieland takes an economic approach to writing music, building the swirling and immersive landscapes of Vines through short melodies, lyrics, and phrases. As each element layers and interweaves, they grow into sprawling webs of ghostly sound. Prior to Vines, Wieland composed pieces for other people to play using a minimalist’s sensibility, writing slowly unfolding melodies for instruments like violin and saxophone. In recent years, she sharpened her solo style across a variety of singles and covers which have garnered significant attention on social media for their emotional resonance (“being loved isn't the same as being understood” in particular went massively viral on TikTok in 2024). Birthday Party, her debut as Vines, brought her writing to a much more intimate space, centering on her vocoded voice cloaked in feathery reverb. A series of recent singles, meanwhile, including “I am my home,” showcase the way that Wieland’s music is born from the story of her innermost feelings, extending far beyond just the self.

Though Wieland’s music often deals with dark themes, it unfolds with tender melancholy, the kind that feels like a warm embrace. On “Evicted,” Wieland wonders if she’s getting sick or moving on, if she’s lost or found. Her vocals expand with each lyrical repetition, as the instrumentals slowly encircle and the music’s rhythm grows and bursts into a heart-wrenching, yet radiant wave reminiscent of post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky. “Tired” follows a similar trajectory, building from a looping, melancholy rhythm and floating lyrics into a solemn resignation. Elsewhere, Wieland takes a more ruminative approach: “Omw” begins with twinkling piano and melancholy strings that gradually transform into an undulating mass. It is a song born out of the warm feeling of reminiscence, the slight return of hope that comes with nostalgia.

With any searching journey, there is also a point of understanding. The title track closes the album with the freedom of acceptance. A marching drum beats steadily beneath Wieland’s open vocals, moving forward, ever onward as it flies into the ether. In Wieland’s delicately textured music, there is room to come into yourself, and learn to love whomever that is. I’ll be here is a special space that can be all your own, one in which to feel what needs to be felt. “This is music for your story,” Wieland said. “I want you to use it how you need it.”

From small beginnings in 1974 as a local cinema and university event, Film Fest Gent has grown yearly in stature and is now recognised as one of the major destinations for the film industry. A vital component is the celebration of film music in the shape of the World Soundtrack Awards which honours the very best composers at work in the world of cinema. In 2016 the award went to one of the most brilliant composers of his generation, Ryuichi Sakamoto. This is the first overview of his remarkable catalogue of film scores, fully approved by the composer and performed by the masterful Brussels Philharmonic under the baton of Dirk Brossé. Sakamoto was already a celebrated pioneer in electronic music and composer/pianist/singer in Japan when director Nagisa Oshima asked him to write the score for Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in 1983 and also to star alongside David Bowie. In a 30 year plus career since then he has worked with the cream of film directors including Bernardo Bertolucci (The Last Emperor), Brian De Palma (Snake Eyes), Pedro Almodovar (High Heels) and most recently Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant). This compilation is a fitting tribute to his status as one of the greatest living musicians and film composers.

Alanis Morissette Delivers the Equivalent of a Spiritual Awakening on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie:
Introspective Themes and Compassionate Emotions on Eastern-Tinged Album Have Grown More Relevant
1998 Smash Plays with Enhanced Detail, Rich Textures, and Sharp Focus on Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 33RPM 2LP Set:
First-Ever Audiophile Edition Strictly Limited to 3,000 Numbered Copies
1/2" / 30 IPS analogue master to DSD 256 to analogue console to lathe

Alanis Morissette refuses to adhere to convention on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. While most artists follow-up their breakthrough with an album that closely parallels the approaches that helped make them famous, the maverick singer-songwriter stayed true to herself and drew inspiration from travel to India before she began the recording sessions. As much as the preceding Jagged Little Pill put her on the global radar, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie confirmed her role as a vital generational voice — and proved her blockbuster success was no fluke. Having set a mark for most sales of an LP in its debut week by a female artist, the 1998 smash remains a pop-rock staple.

Sourced from the original master tapes, strictly limited to 3,000 numbered copies, housed in a Stoughton jacket, and pressed at Fidelity Record Pressing, Mobile Fidelity’s 180g 33RPM 2LP set of Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie presents the triple-platinum LP in audiophile sound for the first time. Benefitting from defined grooves that befit the album’s nearly 72-minute length, this pressing plays with enhanced detail, refined clarity, sharper focus, and broader dynamics than prior versions.

Those traits are key given Morissette’s use of more textured and atmospheric soundscapes, not to mention her evolution into a more nuanced and controlled singer. Similarly, the scale and reach of David Campbell’s string arrangements come across as orchestrations should. Ditto the synth-based architecture shaped by producer and principal Morissette collaborator Glen Ballard. All in all, Mobile Fidelity’s collectible edition simply delivers more information via transparent means.

Notable for its balance, sophistication, and richness, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie at heart finds Morissette pausing, taking a breath, and learning how to navigate life in a healthy manner after enduring one of the most exhausting and rocket-to-fame stretches any musician ever experienced. It’s the sonic equivalent of a spiritual awakening, a call to betterment, a brave assessment of the self and humanity as a whole. As such, the tunes on her second international (and fourth Canadian) release teem with gratitude, compassion, love, empathy — emotions that lend themselves to the largely mellow, contoured scope and Eastern-tinged melodies of the songs themselves.

“How ‘bout how good it feels to finally forgive you,” Morissette sings on the lead single “Thank U.” “How ‘bout grieving it all one at a time.” Those sentiments, and the vocalist’s embrace of concepts such as divinity and acceptance, not only provide a foundation on which Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie rests. They also reflect the personal maturation she gained from her embrace of Buddhist culture in India and a mindset bent toward notions of reconciliation, peace, and sensuality that were nearly absent in popular music in the late ‘90s.

Those themes continue on “That I Would Be Good,” a confident reflection that takes stock of one’s mental, physical, and emotional state in the face of both changing and unpleasant circumstances — and concludes with Morissette performing a flute solo, further exposing the raw intimacy of the introspective tune. She channels relatable simplicity and joy on “So Pure,” with her invocations of “dance” and “freestyle” speaking to the freedom of expression that courses throughout Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. And perhaps no song finds Morissette showcasing her refreshed attitude toward life and opening up more than the relationship-themed “Unsent,” whose unconventional structures and lack of a chorus only add to its directness.

Akin to many albums that were ahead of their time, and despite the critical and commercial accolades afforded it upon release, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie attracted new appreciation and perspective as it got older. Issued during an era where its ideas of serenity, absolution, tranquility, and contentment seemed largely alien, the record — akin to the ways its predecessor foreshadowed a movement — now functions as a visionary beacon that foretells of way to maintain sanity, dignity, and goodness amid a contemporary landscape filled with constant distractions, polarizing views, and incessant calls to purchase, promote, and produce without questioning the what-for purpose.

Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie dares to ask the questions and, at its best, supplies meaningful answers and alternatives that lead to longed-for enlightenment, healing, and laughter. For these reasons alone, it’s a record that never goes out of style.

“My hero’s back,” Madeline Kenney sings on the second track of her newest effort, Kiss from the Balcony. In a sense, she means herself; made with friends Ben Sloan and Stephen Patota across just a few in-person studio sessions in Oakland, these tracks represent a culmination of Madeline’s musings on growth and resilience reaching back years, brought to life through this generative and vibrant collaboration. Close listeners can hear the breadth of stylistic elements and themes carried through from various eras of her work, which all come together in a cohesive and timeless record.

In two week-long intensive sessions, the three collaborators grew these nine songs from fragments, sketches, and seeds. With a background in experimental percussion and sound design, Ben Sloan brings an electronic sound to Kenney’s writing; Stephen Patota provides ingenious guitar melodies throughout and grounds the project in acoustic elements. Kiss from the Balcony was originally intended to be an EP, but the sessions brought forth such fruitful ideation and play that the project was expanded to a full length album. It sits in Madeline’s discography as a thematic and musical progression that sees her iterate on ideas about love and explore new sonic motifs through her work with Patota and Sloan.

Much of Kiss from the Balcony is a meditation on modern relationships, a feminist and utterly human contemplation of power and who holds it. “Hereditary backward leaning,” she describes in ‘Slap,’ of the female condition; “But no-one ever likes to see the girls break down / So they keep it to the bathroom floor” she sings in the rapturous opener, ‘Scoop.’ While the songs are shrouded in metaphor, the ubiquity of heartbreak and resilience decode much of the internal conflict Kenney depicts. The album sees her recognize the precarity and peculiarity of life and take it by the horns, realizing she controls her own narrative:


She explores the relationships between joy and suffering, choosing to see them as inseparable, two sides of a single coin. “It’s never over / When will they love me?” Kenney asks on ‘They Go Wide,’ describing her positionality both as a woman in relationship and as an indie artist in the modern music industry.

A playful hopefulness pervades the record, providing a sense of revelation in the journey throughout, Kenney’s radical acceptance of life as it is like a lyrical tongue out at the absurd.

Anchored in the charmingly warm vocal presence that McNown partly honed by busking at the beach in Southern California just a few years ago, Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up) takes the latter half of its title from a gorgeously textured track that perfectly exemplifies his newly refined sound. With its rootsy and ethereal instrumentation—luminous steel guitar, lush mandolin, soulful organ—“The Cost of Growing Up” arrives as a clear-eyed but melancholy meditation on the inevitability of pain. “To me, the cost of growing up is an acceptance that difficult things are going to happen—from minor inconveniences to devastating loss, it’s all a part of life,” says McNown. “But there’s also beauty in that because, without those hard moments, you wouldn’t be able to truly love.”

The debut album from Addy Weitzman, ‘Light Months Will Fly Over Us’ explores new-wave, romantic pop and art rock with elegance and ambition, drawing from Weitzman’s scattered network of collaborators, as well as a “frighteningly vast” personal archive of compositions. Sequenced by Seth Troxler and released on his Slacker 85 label, it represents a pivot in musical direction for the imprint, and a showcase for the songwriting craft Weitzman honed as a member of cult electro duo Footprintz, and Montreal synth-pop projects The Beat Escape and Dawn to Dawn.

The title Light Months Will Fly Over Us is derived from a line in a poem by the Russian writer Anna Ahkmatova. Weitzman was immediately struck by its “hopefulness, its mystery… it gives the feeling of being suspended, hanging in a dream-like state”. This interpretation has been translated to the album, rich in memorable songwriting that nonetheless invites the listener to lean in further. Delicately mixed by engineer Pierre Guerineau, known for his work alongside Marie Davidson, each of the eight tracks gently interrogates life’s greater mysteries; fear, love and salvation, each defining and revealing the human soul.

Opener ‘End of The Line’ invites us into an immediately lush space of lounge lizard existentialism, soft brass and piano helping Weitzman introduce “where the journey begins and the fantasy dies”. Across orchestral arrangements arranged by Adam Wilcox, whose sensitive, ambitious compositions are weaved throughout the album, ‘Beyond The Speed of Life’ brings to mind the laments of Scott Walker. Navigating vulnerability via grandeur, Weitzman’s earnest vocals flourish in wide-eyed call-and-response with the object of a transcendent love affair.

Alongside collaborator, Richard Lamb, the next chapter of the LP plunges into contrasting machine-driven moods; the wry, bubbling ‘Entertainment Is All I Wanted (And I Found It)’ is imbued with the playfulness and experimentation of 80s electronic pioneers such as Fad Gadget, while the tougher, icier ‘Stranger To Your Kind’ shifts in a more instrumental direction, recalling Weitzman’s dancefloor experience, as well as contemporaries such as Matthew Dear.

Album centerpiece and striking first single ‘Running & Returning’ is the first of a suite of three tracks in collaboration with Weitzman’s The Beat Escape and Dawn to Dawn bandmate, Patrick Boivin. Blending lush saxophones and angular guitars with a wistful melodic touch and lyrics, its irresistible art-rock rhythm provides the foundation for one of Weitzman’s most involving vocal performances.

It’s followed by an anthem for existential absurdity: ‘Ice Cream Candle’ provides a driving acceptance that “the more and more you learn, the less you understand”; Weitzman submits to this uncertainty with equal grace on ‘No Man’s Land’, as baroque invocations of “words swept through the fields” and meeting “where the water lilies grow” give way to a blistering guitar solo, humbly riding hypnotic percussion.

For the compassionate finale of Light Months Will Fly Over Us, Weitzman narrates the experience of ‘Gabrielle’, a woman slipping between rooms between shuttered blinds in the towering city, “where cigarettes and roses fill the air.”

As lyrically delicate as it is musically ambitious, Light Months Will Fly Over Us is a sublime debut album, enriched with care, love and much-needed enchantment.

Fresh off the momentum of his City Smile EP, Aleqs Notal wastes no time unleashing his next seismic release, Pain ofTruth, as a bold statement of his unstoppable creativity.The release delivers four distinctive tracks, unified by a shared identity yet offering unique perspectives through adynamic interplay of melodies and rhythms, allowing for endless interpretation and total emotional liberation.The central theme is "Self-acceptance"—a journey only unlocked by surrendering to the sound and letting go. Can youfeel it now?

Set in the pressure cooker of fresh adulthood, Jahnah Camille's defiant new EP My sunny oath! is a guitar-based grab at self-acceptance. Romping through alt-rock, lo-fi grit, and sardonic grunge with unflinching momentum, the new six-song collection channels Jahnah's era-agnostic songwriting influences, from The Sundays and Liz Phair to Minnie Riperton and Japanese Breakfast. Largely written before a breakout year including tours opening for Luna Li, Tops, and Blondshell, My sunny oath! is set in stormy self-development. Dreamily layered vocals, modern shoegaze sheen, and keyboard lines accompany Jahnah's ear-worming guitar parts and coyly detached tone, as she pushes through the muck of outgrown relationships, misogyny, and hometown anxiety with the help of producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman). The clear-eyed sonic expansion of My sunny oath! marks a decisively bold, exploratory new direction for Camille's sound with fearless hooks and swirling production abound. It's a messy, vulnerable, and inviting picture of early adulthood.

Set in the pressure cooker of fresh adulthood, Jahnah Camille's defiant new EP My sunny oath! is a guitar-based grab at self-acceptance. Romping through alt-rock, lo-fi grit, and sardonic grunge with unflinching momentum, the new six-song collection channels Jahnah's era-agnostic songwriting influences, from The Sundays and Liz Phair to Minnie Riperton and Japanese Breakfast. Largely written before a breakout year including tours opening for Luna Li, Tops, and Blondshell, My sunny oath! is set in stormy self-development. Dreamily layered vocals, modern shoegaze sheen, and keyboard lines accompany Jahnah's ear-worming guitar parts and coyly detached tone, as she pushes through the muck of outgrown relationships, misogyny, and hometown anxiety with the help of producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza, MJ Lenderman). The clear-eyed sonic expansion of My sunny oath! marks a decisively bold, exploratory new direction for Camille's sound with fearless hooks and swirling production abound. It's a messy, vulnerable, and inviting picture of early adulthood.

Claudio PRC's fifth album, Self Surrender, unfolds as a reflective journey of self-acceptance, a story embracing reality in its purest and most unfiltered form. Released via Delsin Records, this marks his first full-length album on the Amsterdam label following up an impressive line of EPs over the past 5 years. Self Surrender moves through ambient, dub, minimal house grooves and deep techno. It blends techno and house elements flawlessly, a blend that Claudio has naturally made his own during his long going career. Further on the sound shifts to more energetic techno. It's driven by heavy kicks and dreamy atmospheres, with acid-laden textures and haunting strings. Self Surrender closes with an ethereal track, fully embodying the theme of surrender and acceptance to conclude this personal story.

Man was meant to replace God as the universal measure. The events of the 20th and 21st centuries, however, have brutalized the creature once known as Man beyond recognition. There is no going back. We are left with an erased image, a misnomer-a sacred animal wasting away in a profane world. Man is both insufficient and irreplaceable. Man Under Erasure is a musical exploration of this new, uncertain universe, where the last remnants of humanist hopes and dreams have been reduced to embers-barely legible carvings etched into eroding earth. Our trust in ourselves has been misplaced. Everything we ever knew will be erased. Feversea is a post-metal band from Oslo, Norway drawing on influences from black metal, sludge metal and shoegaze. Their music lies in the intersection of fast black'n'roll ferocity, heavy and fierce metal riffage and ritualistic and ethereal soundscapes. Musically, their debut album Man Under Erasure draws from various forms of metal while incorporating influences from neofolk and post-punk. The album is melancholic, despairing, and cathartic. Haunting and melodic while maintaining a strong sense of structure with recognizable riffs-an element often lacking in atmosphere-driven music. Fluctuating between song and scream, the voice is both from beyond and from below. Lyrically, it is deeply personal but delivered through impersonal images, parables, and riddles-like a spiritualist or Orphic medium carrying messages from beyond. A muffled scream buried under several inches of ice. The album begins in sardonic despair and ends with uneasy, desperate acceptance.