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Eisenmund, the debut by Berlin-based Schimmel über Berlin is a thing of pounding, brittle beauty that seeks to continue on from where angst-ridden, early-eighties Berlin left off. Angular, monophonic synths, guitars that slice through with wiry yet melodic urgency, basslines that pulse with a taut, driven precision and drums that meld everything together. Liv Billerbeck’s vocals come from the middle distance, drifting between detached and desperate, as if transmitted through a wintery cityscape.

Title track Eisenmund jangles with reedy synths floating over a carpet of bass and mournful vocals dripping with a sense of loss. This mood spills over into the other tracks, like post-punk jewel Schreck with its iridescently lovely guitars.

Eisenmund is sharp, atmospheric, and quietly thrilling - proof that the shadows of the eighties can still dance under today's flickering lights. The album, immaculately produced by T-Rex, captures that classic post-punk mood of urban decay, late-night introspection and stubborn sense of motion, which for someone like me, who was there back in the day, seems utterly familiar without ever sinking into mere nostalgia.

Fiona Sangster (Xmal Deutschland)
Die Band Schimmel über Berlin ist eines der vielen Klanggesichter der Liv Billerbeck, ein Gesicht, das man niemals sieht, das im Verborgenen sich umblickt und agiert und das trotzdem aber in einer seltenen Klarheit erscheint. Man sieht es beim Hören, schemenhaft. Ihr Schaffen ist befallen vom West-Berlin der 1980er Jahre (Xmal Deutschland, Malaria etc.).

Eine Rolle, gerade in der musikalischen Brillanz und Produktionsraffinesse, spielt britischer Post-Punk, der sich sehr klar auch im treibenden Spiel von T-Rex ​​​(Bass + Produktion), Việt Phương Vũ (Gitarre) und Christian Ramisch (Schlagzeug – mit Phương übrigens bei der ebenfalls sehr guten Band NOJ) zeigt: The Sound, Killing Joke et. al.!

Es handelt sich bei dieser Musik um einen Sound mit retroesquem Anstrich, der spürbar eine vergangene Luft atmet, einer Nostalgie an eine ferne Zeit anheimfällt, die das Quartett ob ihres Alters nicht erlebt haben kann, und die vielmehr eine Sehnsucht bedeutet, in der Unerfüllbarkeit eine Melancholie mitbringt, eine Art treibende Traurigkeit spürbar macht. Das allein ist groß! Was weitergehend daran aber so interessant, besonders und wahnsinnig schön ist: Das klingt in Billerbecks Schaffen – und insbesondere hier, beim Schimmel über Berlin – nicht wie eine Kopie, ein Abklatsch, eine Reminiszenz oder das, was in der so called NNDW bald flächendeckend geschieht: das Anzapfen einer überholten Coolness. Denn etwas ist ganz gegenwärtig daran, in der Eigenständigkeit, macht einem eindringlich das Hier und Jetzt spürbar, auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen: Traurigkeit, ja, aber auch Bock, bis in die Morgenstunden auszugehen, schnellen Schrittes über rutschiges Kopfsteinpflaster zu traben. Musik dann wieder zum Verkrümeln in zugigen Altbauten, von Schreien über einen nebelbedeckten See im Umland Berlins.

Und eben kein Eskapismus, auch wenn die Musik zur Flucht taugte. Merkwürdig ist, dass in dieser Retroschleife dann etwas Märchenhaftes mitschwingt. Vielleicht liegt es auch in der authentischen 1980er-Jahre Produktion, in der immer wieder so ein Klimpern, ein Schellen durchkommt. Es mag aber auch an den Texten liegen, die etwas von Minnesang haben und in ihrer Klarheit, die aus der Kühle und den Kargheiten (der Vergangenheit, der Gegenwart, der Zukunft) entsteht, doch Wärme transportieren.

Wir hören darin heute, trotz all dem Bewusstsein für die Vergangenheit, den Sound einer seltenen Dichterin der Gegenwart. Das ist von einer Intensität, die einen bald absorbiert. Eisenmund etwa, das Titelstück, ist so ein Song, bei dem man sich hinsetzen oder gleich hinlegen muss. Da sind Dinge, die man nicht ändern kann. Wie geht das? Also: nach vorne, heftig, und dann aber so weich und traurig. Hätten Schimmel über Berlin die 1980er-Jahre dieser Stadt beschallt, sie wären hiermit, das mögen sie selbst vielleicht gar nicht hören, die Helden dieser Zeit gewesen. Eisenmund ist das tollste Album, das mir seit Jahren begegnet ist – und die bisherige Klimax dessen, was aus der Allee der Kosmonauten hervorgeht.

Und wenn man das alles so hört, aufmerksam hört, wird einem, obwohl das alles so ein einziger, riesiger Hit ist, völlig klar: Hier geht es nicht darum, irgendwo damit zu landen, irgendwo mitzumischen, erfolgreich zu sein oder in aller Munde. Hier geht es darum, einfach nur genau das zu machen, was es ist! Alles andere ist egal.

Der Klagegesang wird mich immer umwehen.

– Hendrik Otremba

Going through his music files from the past fifteen years, LFU found some unfinished and long forgotten projects. One particular track caught his attention, made by former 'Pantoffeldiertjes' VJ Bas Klompmaker, now known as Pantov. This track, called 'WannaBe', was remixed at some time by LKRT and LFU, but was never finetuned and stayed on the shelf for a long time. When you listen to the original 'Pantov - WannaBe' theme, it feels like you get caught in a magic spell. A boost of freedom and positive energy flows from the speakers straight into your brain. Pantov & Casa Meganika polished up the original track, while LKRT and LFU re-created the remixes. You simply cannot sit still when listening to LFU's catchy and mesmerizing punchy breakbeat remixes: a 7inchMix and a full version boasting even more breakbeats (how many breaks do you want?). The LKRT RMX has a trippy progressive - four to the floor - energetic feel: keep moving straight ahead!

Unreleased 80s psychedelic funk rock out of Boston, MA. Influenced by Funkadelic, Sly Stone and James Brown, to name a few.

Sherman Williams Started playing and writing music at age seven, he played through middle school.

Travelled with a group, called Total Eclipse, throughout the East Coast during his high school years.

He was on a mission to be a professional musician/singer/songwriter, of a band – he wanted heavy rhythms to match his huge guitar action, this is how Black Axess came about.

"I badly wanted to record the music that I helped to create with the Black Axess so paid out of pocket for the studio time." - Sherman Williams

From that session one single, "Tonight" was released on 7" but the lost album "The Golden Seal" sat on tape almost lost to time. That was until Robert Garcia and Daniel Mathis spoke to Sherman while tracking the "Tonight" Single, and discovered the lost LP we have here, credit to them both for sorting out and hooking us up and special thanks to Daniel for saving the tapes when UPS almost lost them, which might have been the end of it!

Lay back, light one up, and listen on loop.

2025 Repress

At the end of the day, it's about human touch, personal connection and emotional reactions.
With great pleasure we are more than happy to welcome Session Restore and Bernhard Hudalla to the family with a superb debut 12" for the Mojuba sublabel a.r.t.less. A friendship and collaboration that connects musical dots between Hanover and Leipzig resulting in this release called Pathfinder EP. Session Restore might be familiar to some of you through his label rauh, from the party series he's doing in and around Hanover over the last couple of years or as one of the finest vinyl DJs the city has to offer. The debut EP for the Mojuba sub label is a true love letter in four parts to deep and dubby Techno with an emotional touch. As always, let the music do the talking and enjoy! Limited edition in hand-pulled screen-printed cover.

Clear Vinyl. Luxurious jacket with embossed logo and details plus cut-out on the side. Explore an emotional sci-fi game with a unique blend of survival, adventure, and base-building elements. Help the sole survivor of an ill-fated space expedition create alternative versions of himself to escape a hostile planet and tackle personal turmoils with this unconventional crew. 11 bit studios, the creators of the award-winning games This War of Mine and Frostpunk, present The Alters, an ambitious sci-fi survival game with a unique twist. You play as Jan Dolski, the lone survivor of a crash-landed expedition on a hostile planet. To survive, you must form a new crew for your mobile base. Using a substance called Rapidium, you create alternative versions of Jan -The Alters- each one shaped by a different crucial decision from the protagonist's past. The one-of-a-kind soundtrack for The Alters was created by Piotr Musial best known for his compositions for games like The Witcher, Frostpunk and This War of Mine. For The Alters, Musial chose to stray from the obvious path when it comes to this genre of games and head for something more original: "While many sci-fi soundtracks these days favor the sound of analog synths, the idea behind the music of The Alters was a bit different. We wanted the music to feel more untraditional and mix digital, glitchy elements, unstable reverb with organic sounds, all of which together could support this unique story." With this approach, Musial dove deep into the world of The Alters to turn abstract ideas and atmospheres in very concrete music: "We aimed for the planet to feel overwhelmingly strange and hostile at first. The music starts as more abstract and based on dense atmospheric sound design. Our circular base, a place of safety and comfort inspired to create a theme that 'goes round' by a repeating leitfmotif. You will always feel at home there, unless there's something bad happening, and that's where the theme will get changed, broken." Musial further explains: "One of the key elements we get to discover in the game is the Rapidium crystal. A strange mineral, with yet unexplored properties. We felt like it could have its own theme too, and therefore, wherever you find it, it 'sings' to you with it's strange, bassy voice, supported by a trace of live recorded strings, that were digitally destroyed to create this translucent texture, that sound unlike the real thing. A glitch crystal, is what they call it after all. But the more we explore the planet, the more the story we uncover. We wanted the music to gradually gain momentum and show the leitfmotifs more often, guiding you through emotional moments, fun moments, tough ones, reaching a grand finale. I hope you'll enjoy this ride." Enjoy playing and listening to The Alters!

London-based Aketi Ray are all-acoustic dub-jazz dons that blend double bass, drums, upright piano, horns and percussion into original compositions rooted in post-independence Jamaican instrumental traditions. Their sound also weaves in Ethiopian jazz, West African percussion, US jazz influences and UK Steppas vibes. Here they join up with K�ln, Germany duo Hidden Sequence, regulars on the likes of Mosaic and Lempuyang. 'Call On His Name' is flute lead and liquid dub, 'Time Is Now' has a mystic quality and moody sax lead, then 'Sinai' brings slowly unfurling melodies and lovely woodblock hits that echo away to infinity. Alternate versions on the flip make this a timeless excursions into endless dub depths.

DJ Support from Alan Dixon, Danny Tenaglia, Made By Pete, Nick Warren, Hernan Cattaneo, Anthony Pappa

The Magic Black Plastic series reaches its 8th instalment for another carefully curated vinyl EP that features a quartet of bestselling tracks from Dave Seaman & Steve Parry’s Selador Recordings imprint.

Wending their way onto wax for this edition is Andrew Sant & Andre Espeut’s achingly beautiful vocal gem ‘The Call’, Dilby’s classy hypnotizing ‘Closer’, Levi David & Abigail Bailey’s anthemic ‘A Better Place’, and last but in no way least, Aubrey Fry & Nick Stoynoff’s heavy hitting rework of Danny Howells’ ‘Stereodrama.’

it’s another awesome foursome to satisfy your vinyl needs.

On “Cold Sweat,” James Brown famously called to “give the drummer some.” In 1974, Philadelphia vibraphonist Khan Jamal called to Give the Vibes Some, with superb results. Pianist and composer Jef Gilson’s PALM label gave Jamal the platform he needed to deliver a thorough exploration of contemporary vibraphone. After launching PALM in 1973, Gilson quickly demonstrated that he would only produce records not found anywhere else. Give the Vibes Some, PALM number 10, was another confirmation of this guiding principle.



Raised and based in Philadelphia, Khan Jamal took up the vibes in 1968, after two years in the army during which he was stationed in France and Germany. Decisively drawn to the instrument by the work of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s Milt Jackson, Jamal studied under Philadelphia vibraphone legend Bill Lewis and soon made his debuts in the local underground.



Early in 1972, Jamal made his first recording, with the Sounds of Liberation. The band attempted an original fusion of conga-heavy grooves with avant-garde jazz soloing. Saxophonist Byard Lancaster, an important figure in Jamal’s development, contributed much of the solo work. Later in 1972, Jamal made his leader debut with Drum Dance to the Motherland, a reverb-drenched, never-to-be-replicated experiment with live sound processing. Both albums appeared on the tiny musician-run Dogtown label.



“We couldn’t get no play from nowhere. No gigs or recording sessions or anything. So I took off for Paris,” Jamal recalled in a Cadence interview with Ken Weiss. “Within a few weeks, I had a few articles and I did a record date. It didn’t make me feel good about America.” That was in 1974, while Byard Lancaster was recording the music gathered on Souffle Continu’s recent The Complete PALM Recordings, 1973-1974.



Jamal’s record date delivered Give the Vibes Some. At its core, it was an exploratory solo vibraphone album, even if two tracks added (through technological resourcefulness?) a très célèbre French drummer very much into Elvin Jones appearing under pseudonym for contractual reasons. Another track, for which Jamal switched to the vibes’s wooden ancestor, the marimba, added young Texan trumpeter Clint Jackson III. The most notable article published on Jamal during this stay in France was a Jazz Magazine interview. Jamal’s last word there were “The Creator has a master plan/drum dance to the motherland.” “Give the vibes some” could be added to this programmatic statement.

Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Studio Recordings brings together the complete studio recordings by the Bill Evans Trio featuring Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Included are the albums Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, plus 26 alternate takes - 17 previously unreleased. The collection includes rare photos, introduction by John Densmore (The Doors), and new liner notes by Eugene Holley Jr. and audio is newly remastered by Paul Blakemore, with lacquers cut by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio.

"Marionette presents Mélodies pour Clairons, the debut album by multidisciplinary artist Ioa
Beduneau. Based in the South of France, Ioa’s world is rooted in creation - building intricate
self-playing installations and handmade DIY electronics. His practice is driven by a desire to
connect, challenge, and open up dialogues around disability and other social constructs.
Proudly identifying as a disabled artist who is attuned to how our bodies interact with the world,
Ioa brings a fresh and inimitable perspective to electronic and electroacoustic music.
On Mélodies pour Clairons, Ioa contemplates lifeforms using modular synths, channeling
principles of physical modeling and bioacoustics. Ideas begin on paper and evolve into sound,
forming an abstract yet intentional sonic ecosystem. Clairons refers both to a musical instrument
and to a loved one with whom this music was shared, serving as a kind of sound diary during
the stillness of the pandemic. The movement of air, pressure, resonance, and the physical
properties of the clairon (a medieval trumpet) are reimagined and manipulated on this album,
resulting in impressionistic and deeply moving compositions with poetic sensibility. Organic
ASMR tones, synthesized bird calls, and pirouetting melodies of pipes and bells score an
imaginary biodome where chaos and harmony coexist. Striking and singular, these works
embody the kind of boundary-pushing music that defines Marionette."

Karen Willems is a Belgian drummer/percussionist active in various fields. Started as a drummer in rock and pop bands. With a number of musicians she built up a tradition within improvised music and sound art. Since 2020, with ‘TERRE SOL’ Willems is searching for personal modifications within her play of instruments and objects, with the focus on solo work and compositions.

"When I make music, there’s no plan. I draw my inspiration from everyday life. Small encounters, people, and the greatest source, of course, is nature. There we find all the beauty, all the sounds we need. With my solo work I try to stay far away from my familiar drum set. Only then I can create a special universe. Eccentricity and playfulness go hand in hand with exercises in tension and release, and calls for connection in antisocial times. It's difficult in this world obsessed with productivity and results, and you really have to be crazy to release music these days. So ‘A Fool’s Guide to Reality’ is a fitting title." Karen Willems

All music performed by Karen Willems using citer, casio, fieldrecordings, tambourin, mikado, xylophon, pots, bells, kindergarten instruments, snare, noisebox, crispy shakers, synths, effects...

Drummer and NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart releases his first live album, MULTIDIRECTIONAL, with his longtime all-star quartet featuring saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street. --- Legendary drummer Billy Hart credits the great Rashied Ali for introducing him to the term “multidirectional” – a descriptor for the elusive, daring approach to the kit that Hart and others of his generation had developed intuitively in response to the increasing freedom and exploration of the era’s jazz experimentation. “Rashied Ali told me that ‘multidirectional’ was what John Coltrane called this freeform feel, where conventional structure was abandoned and the rhythms could cut in any direction,” he writes in Oceans of Time: The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart, his captivating new memoir. Hart had begun to explore that style under the influence of Coltrane’s pioneering work, first venturing into the terrain while playing with Pharoah Sanders at the famed East Village club Slugs’. More than half a century later, Hart has refined and evolved the approach into a singular percussive voice of unparalleled elegance, finesse, and intricacy – as exemplified on MULTIDIRECTIONAL, the first live recording by his longstanding quartet featuring tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson, and bassist Ben Street.

Pablo Sánchez´s new solo album “Archipiélago” is out now. The new long player, a follow-up to his “Nocturnal” album as Basic Need will be released on Sisternoise Records and is a 42 minute voyage sailing through uncharted waters.

Every archipelago is a constellation of islands, distinct yet bound by invisible tides. Archipiélago, the latest work from Pablo Sánchez, follows this same geography of sound and memory. Its islands are not of sand and rock, but of places which inspired the artist throughout his life; Buenos Aires, Caracas, Puerto Rico, New York, Madrid, Berlin, and Barcelona. Each city has left a trace, a shoreline carved into Sánchez’s musical journey and left a distinctive musical mark.

The ten songs gathered here are like sovereign entities, each with its own character, its own rhythm, its own language. Together they form a single territory, a map drawn by musical experience, longing, and imagination. They are ports of call, but also fragments of a larger voyage, where tradition and experimentation, nostalgia and discovery, coexist to create a common territory. Along the way guest magicians Animal Feelings and Salomeya add their vocal sparks to the voyage.

Archipiélago is not a destination but a map of crossings, a territory of sound where the journey itself becomes home.

For his last solo record ‘Through a Room’, Bill Nace shifted his usual saturated guitar sound and added tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, bird calls and the mysterious Japanese taishōgoto. Setting up for the final night of his three day residency at OTO with only the taishōgoto soundchecked, Nace hoped that Parker would arrive with his small soprano as its opposite. “I’ve been interested in state change, you know, playing until there’s a shift in time.” Known for his development of multiphonics to produce a constantly shifting pattern, Evan Parker has evolved an instantly recognizable sound - his work the soprano most distinct. Happily, it was the soprano Evan brought with him and as soon as the two start to play they entwine - taking off in a double helix of keys and reed primed for endless reconfiguration. Space warps under the velocity of playing, the pitch rising unrelentingly. It felt like unending lift off in the room, sheer energy until the last note makes remember your feet have been on the floor the whole time. Total time bending shredding.

–

"They had never played together before. They had never even met each other before this springtime 2024 concert at London’s Café Oto.

Evan Parker, circular breathing maestro of the saxophone, a legend in the universe that is Free Improvisation since the late 1960s and Bill Nace, one of the most intriguing experimental “noise” guitarists of the 1990s/2000s underground scene.

For those of us who have been enamored by the live and documented work of both these gents, this Café Oto duo was a must-hear event. It could have gone anywhere musically and that would have been totally fine. Particularly with Evan having a history of being thrown into a variety of challenging collaborations throughout his career, employing the learned elegance of trust in his own sensitivity to listening, responding, leading, following, sparring, intertwining, dialoguing, creating in the instant and, essentially, dignifying the non-hierarchical grace of chance.

The aesthetics of socialist consideration in Evan Parker’s playing, in his community of expanded and personal technique, for a younger player such as Bill Nace, strikes an exemplary model. This notion of respect would be entirely the reason Nace, when offered a residency at the most critical “new music” room in England, would request to play in duo with Parker.

Bill Nace came to prominence mostly during the apex of experimental music activity in and around Western Massachusetts in the early days of the aughts, with a focus on visual art and free improvisation guitar action. He could be found in the daytime hours, his head hanging down over a notepad, penning fine-tuned illustrations and abstract line drawings, while in the evenings he’d be attending any number of basement noise gigs, many of which he’d be participating in. His guitar style came across as being informed as much as by the physicality of his writing utensils in friction to the page as it was to his hearing and redefining of radical recordings ranging anywhere from the Black Unity Group to Black Flag.

Utilizing various metal files and other small cylindrical objects Bill would allow his guitar and amplifier to be in tandem with the improvisatory movements of his body as the instrument balanced, intentionally and, at times, precariously, upon his lap. The performances came across thrilling and daring and they would be mostly in the context of venues nothing more than a low-ceilinged damp and dank New England basement, a clutch of people hanging onto rusty pipes or sitting up on dilapidated washer/dryer machines, the shards of Bill’s “file guitar” sounds ringing out like the most alive music on Earth.

By the time Bill reached Café Oto in early 2024 he had relocated to Philadelphia all the while releasing a succession of collaborative LPs on his Open Mouth label to present his developing progression of solo and collaborative work. He also would find himself considerably engaged with playing the electric taishōgoto, a keyboard-activated string instrument from Japan which can exist as a one, two, four, five, or six string oblong sound object. Bill’s approach to the taishōgoto would not be too unlike his approach to the traditional electric guitar, though no outboard implements such as files, sticks, and rocks are utilized. The similarity would lie wholly with Bill’s full immersion of high velocity action-playing where, with the taishōgoto, an electric drone beauty occurs. The flurry of sonics and resultant harmonics emanating from the amplifier (which Bill opts to dial into with borderline loud-as fuck volume settings) furthers the meta-mantra properties of the instrument in an astounding display of drone dynamism.

This sound world of Bill’s two-stringed taishōgoto on this Café Oto night worked beautifully with Evan Parker’s improvisatory saxophone conceptions. The duology achieved instant lift off at ground zero only to find it’s eventual finale as if it were organically ordained. Time seemingly morphed from its ancient human construct of control, rendered inconsequential to the torrential transcendence of the room wildly activated by the magic resonance of the multi-directional pan-spatial sonance of the music as if it were some beatific blessing. It was one of those nights where art as a liberating force of spirit gifted the listeners with an offering of exaltation and joy. It was entirely mystical and mind blowing. A night of Total Music."

Thurston Moore, London, 2025

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’:

“I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option to notation. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”

In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space.

After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity. They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances.

It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In Slip, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

Or Kantor returns with his sophomore album Snake Island, a vivid and cinematic journey through imagined landscapes and lost love, for fans of Eden Ahbez and other seekers of sound and spirit.

Following the critical success of his 2024 debut Sarda Sarda, praised by BBC Radio 6 Music, FIP Radio, RRR Australia, WYEP, KCRW, and Songlines Magazine, Kantor continues to refine his distinctive sonic identity, grounded in instrumental storytelling.

With Snake Island, Kantor ventures deeper into what he calls Subterranean Music, an atmospheric fusion of Mediterranean ballads, desert blues, spiritual jazz, and psychedelic textures. Drawing inspiration from artists such as Gábor Szabó, Omar Khorshid, The Budos Band, Dorothy Ashby, and Tommy Guerrero, he crafts instrumentals that feel both timeless and cinematic.

"Snake Island was written as a soundtrack to a fictional film that disappeared from the world, one that most likely no one has ever seen," says Kantor. "It began as a tragic love story, imagined during my time on a remote island in the Cyclades. Every landscape felt like a scene waiting for music. Eventually, the story gave way to sound."

A respected tattoo artist and founder of the Love Light Studio, Kantor's musical path began after a chance encounter with Johnny Sharoni (Garden City Movement, A&R at Anova Records). During a tattoo session, Sharoni heard Kantor's demos and was immediately struck by their raw beauty.

Kantor now steps confidently into the next chapter of his creative journey. Snake Island is more than an album. It is a mythic, imagined soundtrack to a film that only exists in memory, rendered in tones that shimmer like heat on stone.

Recorded in concert at the University of Sheffield in March 2025, Reality Is Not A Theory is the first collaboration between Mark Fell and Pat Thomas. Major figures in British experimental music since the 1990s, Fell and Thomas have developed their rigorous practices from radically different backgrounds and perspectives: where Fell’s singular take on synthetic abstraction emerged from Sheffield’s electronic underground, Thomas is a virtuoso improvising pianist steeped in jazz and modernist art music who has simultaneously worked with sampler-based electronics for decades. As the record’s wonderfully academic subtitle explains, we are presented here with two sides of ‘algorithmic and improvised music for computer and piano’, exemplifying both players’ insatiable search for new (and sometimes uncomfortable) playing situations.

The performance begins with Fell’s electronics close to the timbres of acoustic percussion, attacks that suggest wood, metal or glass threaded along a rapid pulse while Thomas focuses on the lowest registers of the piano, deadening the strings. As Fell’s electronics start to ring out and occupy more harmonic space, Thomas turns to wide, repeated clusters, which slowly expand into patterns of chords. Like in his recent solo recordings and his trio work with Joel Grip and Anton Gerbal, Thomas’ playing combines extreme dissonance with a deep lyrical sense. Fell’s work gradually shifts its focus toward drum sounds, drawing on the microtemporal processes that have characterized his practice in recent decades. Heard together with Thomas’ probing piano, the computer sounds call up unexpected associations with the klangfarben antics of improv drummers like Paul Lovens or Tony Oxley. Throughout its second half, the music grows increasingly frenetic, as Thomas sounds out rapid, irregularly repeated figures and beautifully sour chords in the upper register, while Fell’s percussion develops into angular pan-pipe-like feedback and waves of glissandi.

With great confidence and patience, Fell and Thomas often let their individual contributions remain rhythmically distinct and unsynchronised, allowing unexpected correspondence and coincidence to guide the music’s development. Recorded in a hall named after Sheffield steel manufacturer and Master Cutler Mark Firth, the location might suggest a model for understanding how Fell and Thomas interact here: two workers in the same workshop, each immersed in their own part of the production process. Arriving in a striking sleeve designed by Mark Fell, with liner notes by Francis Plagne, Reality Is Not A Theory is an invigorating document of the meeting of two mavericks of contemporary music.

Los Angeles-based producer and composer Hayes Bradley returns with his most ambitious work yet, Audience, out now via StrataSonic Records. A departure from his years composing for film and fashion, the 14-track album marks a return to his dancefloor roots by melding breakbeats, trip-hop, and ambient textures into something both nostalgic and forward-thinking.

After two beatless, melodic LPs on Secular Sabbath, Bradley arrives at Los Angeles’ StrataSonic—an independent label celebrated for prioritizing artistic freedom—with Audience, a record defined by moody, churning breaks and rich soundscapes. Across the album, he merges the emotional depth of his scoring work with the kinetic energy of underground dance music, crafting a deeply-layed and adventurous project that exists beyond trends while highlighting his versatility as both producer and performer.

The album features collaborations with Luna on the ethereal “Dear Treasure” (accompanied by a music video with collaborator and partner Luna Blaise) Amtrac on “Be Right With You,” and Oxis on “Wishes,” alongside a range of instrumental cuts that highlight Bradley’s approach to rhythm and sound design.

At its core, Audience is an exploration of embracing personal and musical chaos. Bradley channels moments of anxiety, uncertainty, and raw emotion into tracks that are unpredictable and immersive. The album reflects his philosophy of leaning into disorder—turning moments of anxiety, unpredictability, and chaos into kinetic music that moves both body and mind.