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Named after the mythological hybrid of the chimaera, Forces’ first collection for mappa was put together in a similar fashion. The sounds all stem from a fruitful residency at Stockholm’s EMS Elektronmusikstudion in May & June 2022, leading to a bounty of source material with which to build. The sounds and concept are equally chimeric, stringing together disparate and unintuitive jams, the music mimicking the multi-limbed, sewn together beasts of both creative open source coding and destructive multinational concerns who hide their cores amid endless appendages. Like Doctor Moreau, Forces - aka Finnish artist Joonas Siren - weaves wildly varying attributes into something new, from short-circuiting 8-bit dream ambience to fractured digital groans, drones, and noisy freakouts.

Though EMS is best known for its Buchla and Serge modular systems, Forces went ‘digital’ and largely navigated a lesser-known synth rack one can wheel between studios, affectionately known as the ‘90s Wagon’. “It housed different digital rack synth modules,” explains Siren, “ like the super unknown EVS-1 by Evolution Synthesis, a UK company who only produced this one rack synth only and then vanished.” Some truly alien sounds emerge from Forces’ creative misuse of forgotten 90s boxes and sampled modular jams. The result is an erratic trip through mismatched circuitry and digital codes, slipping between emotional artifice and harshly logical music.

The track titles stem from both famous mythological chimaeras and multinational arms dealing conglomerates. “Different quite sinister firms can operate in broad daylight, easily hiding their true nature. Many of these mega-corporations have different branches (like chimeric limbs) that are producing quite normal mundane every-day items, as well as mass-producing weapons.” A dedicated SuperCollider user too however, Siren states how open source coding snippets are also ‘chimeric beings’. “You end up always using some part of some old code and then building completely new work on some old idea,” Siren explains. Despite its misuses, there’s also something hopeful in the malleability of ideas, and the ability to creatively collage the world as it is into something wholly new, even better.

Demdike Stare reunite with guitarist Jon Collin for a new album of concréte dreamweaving performed on tape, pedals and a homemade Swedish nyckelharpa - a type of keyed fiddle. More psychedelic than either of the trio's previous records, 'Minerals' drops the blues to dive headfirst into the smudged folk wellspring, touching on the pastoral ambience of Andrew Chalk via Loren Connors’ immersive drift and Tongue Depressor's subterranean drone expeditions.

With the trio all hailing from the Pennine moorlands just above the manc sprawl, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare’s shared musical expression understandably reflects a parallax purview that follows leylines between lusher nooks of the inner city and windswept, barren landscapes. Never ones to play it straight, the Swedish Nyckelharpa - a sort of hybrid viola/hurdy gurdy - is deployed deep into a mix of oblique soundscaping, seeping into a swirl of field recordings, screwed spoken word and phosphorescent drones pinging with tape delay.

Split into two distinct sides, the album opens with a scrape of wood and metal that introduces us to the nyckelharpa. Scratching its surface and strings, Collin reveals its peculiar tonality, while Demdike cut through its dissonant textures. Like ancient campfire rituals recorded to decaying 1/4" tape, the music on ‘Minerals’ feels as if it's in dialog with the past, shuttled into the present by abstract processes. By the side’s third act, resonant gongs billow around pitched wails that eventually collapse into silence.

The second side is more spirited, opening with a thumbed kalimba cut through reverberant strings that recall Arthur Russell's iconic echo-drenched recordings. Through elaborate concréte techniques, Collin's ancient fiddle dissolves into a ferric gloop that’s slowly pulled apart like toffee, taking it to a place where you can no longer really tell what you’re listening to or how it was made. In fact, unlike pretty much everything we’ve heard from Demdike before, the material here feels mechanical rather than electronic, making for one of the most impactful, unusual releases in the vast sprawl of their catalogue thus far.

A pre-lock down project by Laurent Kink Gong Jeanneau, given a new impetus whist home bound in 2020/21. Starting with a detuned Santur (Persian dulcimer) and then expanding the concept and playing techniques to various detuned acoustic guitars, first by raising 2 or 3 strings above the neck whilst hitting them with chinese chopsticks.

With the worldwide lock down of 2020 Laurent took this tecnique to its logical conclusion, by banging everything percussive with strings and exploring the various resonant boxes inherent to this type of instruments, real or not.

A list of forbidden spoken Chinese words were added later on, coinciding with a time when China isolated itself and control of the masses became an international issue.

Those compositions do not use the typical repertoire of south-east asian minority music Kink Gong is known for, instead they start from a completely acoustic home made source and involve minor electronic treatments. Perhaps a new sound where Kink Gong remixes itself, its own home recordings to further add to the already prolific and zigzagging Kink Gong catalogue.

In 2018, New York based composer and improviser Lucie Vítková made recordings in caves in the Czech Republic and an abandoned Gothic church in Slovakia. Their album Cave Acoustics combines a beguiling exploration of the physicality and acoustics of these unique locations with profoundly personal themes of family legacy and roots.

Lucie performed with their sisters in Výpustek Cave – an underground system of tunnels and former Soviet-era bunker. The choreography-based piece creates crescendos of metallic noise as the trio moves around the spaces. It begins with echoing clanks of tins and coins and accelerates towards a rattling cacophony with distant singing floating up from deep in the shadows. Bearing in mind the siblings had never performed together before, their frenzied kinetic outpourings seem even more special, a wordless cohesion forming between them. Lucie clearly doesn’t shy away from a physically full on experience; they embarked on a Fitzcarraldo-style journey to carry heavy props up a steep hill and across a river to reach the less accessible Jáchymyka Cave.

‘Hair Score’ is an attempt to process the death of the siblings’ mother through a serene then slightly unsettling swaying ritual, with rising and falling waves of wailing and emergency siren sounds growing in intensity as they emerge from their mourning mouths.

After the cavernous acoustics, ‘Stones’ by American experimental classical composer Christian Wolff feels more immediate with its textural sounds and fast, insistent rhythms, as we hear different sized stones knocked together rapidly, following the composer’s instructions not to break anything.

‘Inside the Ritual’ was a “transformative” experience for Lucie, where they felt their body merge with the forest and hills in Slovakia. The 23-minute long track is hypnotic, listening to cowbells and chirping insects at the end of a hot summer’s evening. Things get stranger as metallic clatter is punctuated with Lucie’s voice and reedy tones from their Japanese hichiriki flute.

The album is a calm, contemplative but also energetic and moving reflection of these rare and unheard environments and Lucie’s reunion with the people and places that have shaped them.

One of the most spoken of dnb formations is back with a double pack that's one of the most spoken of project since their collaboration with Mayhem and KRS-One. They're taking the word collaboration to the next level with this spectacular Collision EP. 4 tracks made by Noisia colliding with other heavyweight formations from across the globe! The opener is "Cannonball", it starts off as one giant drum roll and then turns into a dancefloor roller that just "stays classy" everywhere you play it! For the second track Noisia collabs with Black Sun Empire to bring real 100% Dutch flavor to the floor. "Infusion" is a track that takes its inspiration from the Negative camp but blended to perfection by these 2 grand masterminds of music.

Plate 2 brings a tune that sounds a lot like ram trilogy's titan classic but your ears deceive you in this one. Its none other then a collab by Noisia & The Upbeats with a track titled "Mudslide"! it's heavy, it's bad, it pounds, it flows, it's just one of those records that can't be beaten! The closer is another collab by Noisia & Phace called "Levitation", this roaring production shows what this scene is all about: heavy beats combined with sick reese basses and a neurotic funk that you just can't get your hands on!

Again Noisia delivers proper quality with this slamming EP. This is one Collision you just can't wait to feel!

Comes in standard full colour Vision Recordings repress sleeve.

The third release from Exalt Records Fallen Entertainers series is by an artist so hot right now, it's ridiculous. Having has recent releases on some of the hottest electronic music labels on the planet, this producer is certainly having 'a moment'. Electro superstar Sound Synthesis submits an incredible remix to complete the package.

FOR FANS OF : Brian Eno, Robert Rich, Ashra

Dreamland is the third album from Italian ambient band PCM. This time out, the trio of Francesco Perra (P), Matteo Cantaluppi (C), Matteo Milea (M) veer away from the inter-cellular themes of their previous collections to shed aural light on what humans spend most of their life doing: sleeping.

Each track on Dreamland focuses on a phase of sleep from that ever-frustrating half-awake feeling to tranquil R.E.M. and from disaffect- ing nightmares to blissful dreaming.

As a result, each of the album's works float by, some with a cloudiness that mirrors confused sleepy feelings and others that display the vividness of the most memorable of dreams.

Accepting the darkness can be a liberating experience. Realising, and struggling with just who we are and what world we live in requires it. By further complicating the fractured sense of beauty found on his droning 2022 release, ‘I dreamt we found a way’, Bristol-based composer, Rob Winstone creates a language that encapsulates the lifelong reach for our own personal heavens, along with the darkness and fear on which those foundations are built.

Winstone’s instrumental palette continues to reach out far from behind his keyboards, however the sound of ‘sifting through heaven’ is stripped back and pared down, putting melody front and centre. 'postcards and loose tea', a love song written for Winstone’s partner during a period coming to terms with health difficulties had previously self-released with heavy spectral and granular manipulation from the artist. Here Winstone re-presents the original: “the stripped back recording I made in my old damp and cold studio that was in a building that has since been demolished”. It reflects the composer’s own journey, doing away with veils and histrionics, and embracing emotional bliss wherever it can be found, warts and all. Even the rumbling dark ambience of ’hospital corridor’ - where distant chimings, groans, and droplets synthesized from field recordings made nervously in a hospital waiting for test results coalesce - harbours a sacred-seeming beauty and aseptic warmth within its very bleak sense of dread.

There’s no better way to describe Winstone’s method than ‘sifting through heaven’. The hymnal organ chords, sketched out acoustic guitar phrases, scattering drum thuds, and meditative field recordings may flit between tenebrous to incandescent, but his focus is always on the embrace of love; “a view of life that embraces positive growth, yet doesn't deny immense suffering,” as he puts it. The album is bookended by two of Winstone’s most outright peaceful moments, summarising his core message: 'in spite of it all...' '...love finds a way'.

Properly stunning fever-dreamweaving on this new one from sferic, the label behind modern ambient classics by Space Afrika, Perila and Jake Muir, featuring a typically scene-stealing appearance by YL Hooi and occupying an elevated space at the intersection of flickering dub-pop and ASMR soundscaping.

Zaumne is the alias of Mateusz Olszewski, whose last album could be found on the excellent Mondoj label, home to Antonina Nowacka, Piotr Kurek, Claire Rousay, More Eaze and other likeminded lowercase producers. For his Sferic debut, Zaumne enlists YL Hooi - a constant source of inspiration for many of us here, as well as Metoronori and the muted sax of Patrick Shiroishi. Loosely inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’ (soft spoken extracts of which appear throughout), the album is a sort of exercise in escapism and sensual wandering.

Throughout ‘Parfum’, faded pop is fleshed out with surreal elegance: all flickering neon and half-heard whispers suggestive of blurred late night fantasies; liminal, abstract, and highly evocative. Sounds hang in the air like incense, caressing the senses with an intentionality that's missing from so much landfill ambient. On opening track 'Voyageur’ he sets the scene with pastoral field recordings, dragging a pitched voice and elongated pads through a rhythmic throb that reduces dub techno to a faint knock. There are echoes of music from the fringes of the afterhours club scene too: Andrew Pekler's obscure imaginary landscapes, Jake Muir's druggy bathhouse vapours, DJ Lostboi’s balmy introspection. But despite a shared bleary–eyed aesthetic, Zaumne’s sound is more explicit and well defined, and with it brings a more acute emotional pull.

When YL Hooi appears on 'Sorcières', her voice; drenched in reverb but absolutely crystalline, takes proceedings to a whole other level, reminding us of Natalie Beridze’s perennially overlooked ‘The Wrestler’ from her 2003 album for Thomas Brinkmann’s Max Ernst label; a sort of echo chamber dub perfectly re-imagined as dreampop. A whispered French vocal introduces us to 'Éther', a smoked cloud of looping synths and twinkling bells, and on 'Nymphes’ a wash of pads, wind chimes and waves lapping at the shore somehow manages to swerve all the associated schmaltz you’d imagine and instead gives us the same tingling sensation we had when we first heard Art of Noise’s ‘In Visible Silence’ at dusk, on a beach in the south of France, what seems like forever ago.

There's a ritualistic quality to Zaumne’s music too, as if he's burning rare gums and mosses over smoldering coals in a remote Carpathian clearing. Hikari Okuyama, aka Metoronori, brings her pointed surrealism to 'Ombres', adding a softly spoken wonder to Olszewski's chimes, while Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Patrick Shiroishi contributes horn curliques to 'Prairie', ushering us towards the same sonic space inhabited by Bohren und der Club of Gore and Julee Cruise.

“Surf synth acid dancehall rock!!” is how Jackson Bailey (Tapes/Rezzett) describes the A-side of this new release from Osaka’s 7FO. This 7" single, marking 7FO’s return to EM Records, is an homage to both the vinyl single format itself and also to the legendary producer Joe Meek. “Healing Sword” is the first time 7FO has created a track expressly as a single. On the flip side, “Snake (Live)” is a dubby lo-fi mono travelogue. The ‘onsen’ (hot spring) artwork is by artist/performer Keisuke Yamao and friends.

“The earth shall rise again...”
AMOR/LEMUR finds the Glasgow quartet AMOR in partnership with Norwegian improvising ensemble LEMUR to hopeful and ecstatic effect. Conceived before the onset of Covid 19 but finished during spring lockdown, their eponymous EP is the most loose, alive and elevated recording in AMOR’s catalog. AMOR/LEMUR takes the template of throbbing avant disco expanded upon on previous recordings for Night School and lifts it into new

territories, with new tonalities and unexpected turns on the journey. More than anything, the expanded, near- cinematic expression of human connectivity feels like a lightning new energy to grasp in the dark.

Following a revelatory concert in Glasgow in January 2020 wherein the two sets of musicians met and performed together for the first time, a recording session was arranged the following day, resulting in the most elevated permutation of AMOR’s art to date. Each track was built upon a rhythmic bedrock of percussion and drums performed by Paul Thomson and samples/synthesizer by Luke Fowler. Thomson used bamboo Javanese gamelan (most notably on For You) and scrap metal, as well as traditional percussion and drums while Fowler incorporated processed ambient field recordings recorded in enclosed acoustic spaces around Glasgow. Singer/pianist Richard Youngs contributes some of the most bright and mindful work of his career. Acoustic bass player Michael Francis Duch, whose lush playing as ever provides the elastic spine to each song, scored the string parts for LEMUR on piano at home in Norway. The addition of swelling strings and drones fills out the AMOR sound significantly, lending a sonorous tone to 8 minute, epic closer For You or an ascending melodic introduction to Stars Burst that feels like a new morning dawning on a world saved from certain death. With the circumstances of lockdown forcing the musicians to work differently, a thread of optimism and utopia grounded in the moment weaves through these tracks. Unravel reveals a spine tingling vocal from Youngs. It’s a song about the simultaneously grounding and ecstatic effect of love, feeling connected to others. It’s a simple message, “I’m finding myself in your smile, always unravels me” speaks of ego death, the dissipation of the material into a nirvana of pure energy, the power of surrender. This isn’t a quasi-religious message, this is the power of each other, a love song to connection in a temporary age of isolation. Stars Burst is a play on the inner and outer cosmos, with narrator Youngs exploring wonder to a pounding galloping rhythm and snake-charming synth. It’s an open dance, with the group locked in together for the wild ride. Fear is the centerpiece of the record, starting with drones and scraped overtones before swirling synth notes filter upwards to meet reverberating minor chords. Over 8 minutes of tight but loose playing, Youngs is the shaman instructing us to use Fear as a celebration of the moment, embrace it and jump into the unknown. The only way to overcome your fear is to feel it, use it as an energy. The use of the studio as an instrument throughout side 2 is particularly important, with the dubbing and mixing prowess of engineer Paul Savage (who mixed unattended due to lockdown restrictions) and tape manipulations performed by Jason Lescallet coming into play. For You closes out with a largely instrumental, evolving composition that uses many of the abstract and novel aspects of this permutation to aid the trance. It’s massive, an unfurling creature with unexpected tonalities and serious heft.

With »Discreet Music« (1975), »Music for Airports« (1978) and »Thursday Afternoon« (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, Ambient Music, which he defined as »able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting«. These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what we expect from it. A mental base that takes us far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible.

The Dedalus Ensemble is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse, founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism such as Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Moondog or Philip Glass.

Earthtones is the musical identity of Serge Bandura, an electronic artist, former jazz musician, meditation teacher and ritualist based in LA. Kevin Nathaniel channels sound as a universal healing force through traditional African instruments and is a former student of legendary master musicians such as Ephat Mujuru and Chief Bey K.

Sending files back and forth during the pandemic, the two artists deepened a musical friendship and began a dialog between the Mbira Nyunga Nyunga, the Kalimba and analog synthesizers. Their music is offered in the spirit of peace + healing for all. ‘Of The Earth’ (Full Meditation) is 21 minutes long and the B side offers 25 minutes of music.

Born from a London-Auckland connection and friendship that’s lasted more than 25 years, we are delighted to welcome the long-awaited debut album from Sci-Clone.

Consisting of 2 members - Jason Cambridge (aka A-Sides), who is very much the drum and bass guy, and Nathan Haines, who has a long history of being involved in jazz music, the pair have concocted the perfect fusion album.

Their past Metalheadz releases, 3 of them in total, all came out between 1997-99 and stood out in the growing back catalogue for their ability to merge 2 authentic styles. Jason provided the beats and bass and Nathan provided the melodic and harmonic content, an approach they’ve thoroughly refined for the release of their full length album in 2023.

Titled ‘Radio Therapy’, the album comes in 2 parts consisting of 17 tracks in total. The first part is completely original and came together over the last decade via multiple extended trips to New Zealand and long studio hours. Made up of Jason’s production knowledge and skill as well as Nathan’s ingenuity and flair, the duo possess distinctive skill sets whilst admirably sharing all responsibilities equally. It’s a unique method of working bringing out the best in both of them, creating some exquisitely classy music in the process.

The second part is a celebration of the aforementioned 90s releases, now precisely remastered to assemble a memorable package.

Jason and Nathan were always set on releasing this album through Metalheadz and we couldn’t be happier to see it materialise as strongly as it has.This is their drum and bass rendition.

Emotional Response and Ocean Moon come together for a special collaborative release, where Seahawks take the music of WOO on a journey to the inner sanctum. Immersive, psychoactive and phased to perfection.

For those who know not the music of WOO, prepare to behold a rare and magical incarnation of transcendent beauty.

Perhaps Seahawks most spaced out voyage since Vision Quest One: Spaceships Over Topanga Canyon, ‘Celestial Railroads’ is a psychedelic odyssey that goes way beyond the norm.

'After the Last Train To Trancentral far Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, Celestial Railroads await….’ 

The Eighteen Minute Gap lets you embark on a mysterious journey into a world of ethereal ambient music, where beautiful and soothing listening experiences await. Using field recordings and manipulating textures and sounds, Sonmi451 creates minimal yet tantalizing soundscapes, filled with intimate whispering voices.

Since 2005 Bernard Zwijzen is creating his own blend of minimal, soundscape-laden atmospheric electronics under the moniker Sonmi451 (a character from David Mitchell's novel "Cloud Atlas"), based in Hasselt, Belgium. He has been previously released on labels such as : U-Cover, Slaapwel Records, Time Released Sounds, Eilean Rec. and this is his second album on LAAPS. "The Eighteen Minute Gap" is his thirteenth releases.

Sonmi451 uses various soft- and hardware synths and samplers to create a truly unique and immersive audio experience where one is captivated by mystery and intrigue and immersed in a world of mysterious sounds where boundaries between reality and imagination begin to blur.

CFCF returns with a glossy, euphoric and bright 150 BPM utopian shimmer and robotic vocal cooings courtesy of the mysteriously and adorably rendered vocaloid boy, “Troy”. First recorded in 2018, and blessed in 2020 with a pair of remixes from fellow Canadian dancefloor legends Priori & Ciel, the 9-minute-plus, 3/4 thump of “Never Going Home” has been a staple of CFCF DJ sets for the last few years. Montreal’s Priori’s mix brings a heady braindance crackle, with thick breaks, pinging signals and FM bass, while Toronto’s Ciel goes deep on a dubby and skittery ‘homesick bounce’. CFCF himself closes out the package with a wistful acoustic reprise suitable for a post-euphoria bittersweet sunrise.

First release from new label ANALOG CONCEPT from St. Petersburg, Russia! This EP contains four classic deep electro jams by new local talents CLOCKED DEVICES & STRANGE FM.

After the release of "3.3 magnitude" and the remixes of the single "1.3 HDG" unveiled last February, H3 Records continues its musical exploration between rap and electronic music with a new release, "Music 4 Tesla".

This time, rapper Kaba joins forces with producer Hyas and unveils a slender and festive 6-track track, true to the label's identity.

Hyas started producing music in 2017 and released his first projects completely independently. Today, he has more than twenty releases on labels such as 99CTS and Casa Voyager. The Lyon native, resident of Le Sucre and Rinse FM, has a string of dates and festivals in France and abroad and founded his own label Bardouin Music in 2020.

For his part, Kaba has released three singles this year, including two featuring Karmen (formerly Tortoz) and Samy Ceezy, and a 10-track "Long Story Short", a joint project with the young beatmaker Keno.

The connection between the two artists was very natural: the rapper's ambitions and Hyas' influences complemented each other and led to a first draft of tracks, convincing enough to form the basis of a joint project. With influences from UK Garage, Acid House, Ghetto House and 2step, "Music 4 Tesla" is a high-flying, catchy, danceable, warm and sunny project. Throughout the tracks, Kaba borrows incisive old school flows (like on "4daMob") but also "DMV" (overlap flows where the phrases overlap like on "Original G") and enriches the musical universe of the project, which carries in it this fever of H3 Records' sounds.

Between pervasive house influences and bouncy bass, borrowed from funk sounds, "Music 4 Tesla" depicts throughout its 20 minutes a captivating gradation of festive ambiences, and proves again that the marriage of rap and house is definitely made to last.

When was the last time music saved your life? Yasumu has his own story to tell in ‘Escaping Reality’, a 13-track album that examines his relationship with music growing up; which shaped him into the skilled musician he is today. The German composer translates deep-rooted feelings of loneliness and uncertainty into sounds, through carefully composed drums and signature piano compositions. Intertwined with the melodies are orchestral elements that evoke the underlying beauty in his journey of self-discovery.

In the digital age, words are no longer just symbols of communication, but a powerful tool that gives rise to meaningful interconnections between different universes.

Words have the power to transcend time and space, connecting two souls destined to meet.

Il Significato delle Parole (the meaning of words) is Adiel's new effort on her DanzaTribale, a crossover of two minds, generated together with musician Flavio Accorinti: techno sounds like the restless soul that pervades our days, deconstructed atmospheres like shattered generational dreams. The fusion of two cosmic currents, two ways of thinking and creating, characterized by an immanent power, pushing us to imagine new urban primitivism. Two creative processes, transcending individual boundaries to connect into a single overarching vision, to explore new forms of art and storytelling.

The EP, mixed by Donato Dozzy and mastered at Rome's Enisslab Studio by Giuseppe Tillieci, starts with Nulla Resta, a defragmented, dreamlike, ascending climax markedly cyberpunk: dense with references to 90s Progressive Dream, Nulla Resta, with its dulcet melodies, transports us to an artificial reality, a spiritual reality albeit dominated by technology. A reality suspended between fantasy and materialism.
Suspended, like the second track (Sospesa): dark trip-hop's echoes adorned by the voice of Jordie Devlin Mcmorrow. "Shadows on the walls orchestrate our downfall." Dystopian futures intertwine with mysteriously dreamy pasts in a fatal spiral of redemption.
But words remain the catalysing element of this EP.
Parole(words) represents a communicative rare faction that embraces tribes near and far. Black drums echo in the distance in an intimate ballad, in an epic ride, in an ethereal metaphysical journey to the dissolution of the boundary between time and space, between memory and perception.
Notturna, on the other hand, is the epilogue we all deserve; a solemn twilight, a lysergic, dragging escape from the objectivity of the real world.

The images of life do not simply exist in a vacuum. They are defined by the energy that surrounds them, and it is the explanation behind each of these words that we must find if weare to truly understand them. Thanks to the meaning of words, sooner or later, we will be all united again.

Substrata was the third studio album by the Norwegian electronic artist Biosphere, released 25 years ago by All Saints Records in London. Here are ten alternative versions picked from the Substrata recordings sessions that took place between 1995 and 1996.

What an honour to have the world renowned Krafty Kuts join the FF45 roster with 2 absolute bangers! Side A sees KK flip Nas’ Made You Look with Placebo’s Humpty Dump as championed by the Magnificent DJ Jazzy Jeff! Side B recreates Kenny Dope’s Get On Down with KK’s original spin on it – doubles are a minimum requirement – don’t sleep!

“Earthseed” is a four track EP on Transatlantic, ranging from
ambient to energetic breaks and melodic dub techno.

Lubree revisits the original motif of Hypress with luminous calculation, launching a series of new releases in the near future. Thus, the first release features electro ballads dipped in gentle rawness along with disco bangers and EBM-styled acid house. The original tracks are produced by "Volta Cab" and the remixes by Rotterdam's DJ Overdose and Venezuelan-born and Barcelona-based DJ/producer Cardopusher.

Parisian producer Nothingtosay is back after a long break with his album “Cold Thoughts”. Hauntingly beautiful piano melodies that linger like the chilly wind are accompanied by crisp drums and strings that pierce your soul.

The moon towering in the starry sky looks upon the icy desert coldly, while the wind whispers in your ear as if it is telling its deepest, darkest secrets. There’s something eerily peaceful about being alone in nature, far from the confines of humanity - the perfect time for some self-reflection.

aMess pays homage to his multicultural roots in his biggest project yet: ‘Tales from Babylon’. Divided into 3 chapters, the tracklist evolves meaningfully based on his cultural understandings, brimming with worldly elements that sound perfectly in harmony and transport you to new continents - from the Oud of the Middle Eastern desert plains to the djembe and wrist shakers of Africa. Come sit on the rug among the assortment of personal treasures, and play music to your heart’s content against the setting sun.

Faitiche welcomes Andrew Black aka blackbody_radiation. His debut album Ultra Materials gathers six ghostly drones, created with the help of sound masking.

Andrew Black, who hails from one of the UK's post industrial North West Milltowns has a sensitive feeling for space and its acoustics. Having trained as a designer and operated within the realms of architecture and public space, it was only natural to extend his interest to manipulating field recordings.

The six pieces collected on Ultra-Materials provide an insight into Black's highly sensitive minimalism: they stand for a subtly meandering mediation on room acoustics and place, which are manipulated with the help of sound masking, among other things - that is, the addition and superimposition of artificially generated frequencies to mask unwanted sounds.

Sometimes the pieces are reminiscent of warm engine noise, sometimes one thinks of carefully captured natural phenomena. Their strength lies in their elusiveness: free of concrete attributions or musical location, they can unfold their hypnotic pull without revealing anything about their origins. Harmonics at times shimmer, at times warble and at times coexist. It is an attempt to get in touch with our listening abilities.

"Black Earth" ist ein Album der Meisterklasse. Ein Soundtrack für den Film im Kopf, der beim Hören entsteht. Doch am besten passt wohl das Bild einer Stadt in der Nacht. Man fährt langsam durch die Straßen und schaut sich die Bars, die Menschen und die Häuserfassaden an. Es sind surrealistische Bilder, die im Kopf entstehen. Bilder, in denen sich die Protagonisten über die Gefahr klar sind, so klar und kalt wie die schneidende Nachtluft im Winter, jedoch nichts unternehmen. Die Gefahr ist immer vorhanden, unterstützt durch das Schlagzeug und das Mellotron. Es gibt keine Band, die nur vergleichsweise so konsequente Musik macht. "Black Earth" ist ein Re-release aus dem Jahre 2002 und erschien bis dato nur auf CD und als limitierte LP.

Dutch producers Casiio and Sleepermane unite once more in ‘Unexplored’. Every track feels alive and organic, painting the picture of an alien world, yet very familiar. Other-worldly synths and foley/ambiences represent the different biomes and strange creatures walking around in this world we created.

The steady pulse of soft drum loops and warm chords form the heartbeat of the landscapes - taking you on a journey through the Unexplored. ✨

Cosmic Koala and Lucid Keys are back with a Celtic-inspired treat ‘The Tale of the Druids’. Discover the authentic secrets of the long-lost, magical Broéliande forest, and the mysterious origins of the tall pillars of Stonehenge, in this unique project.

Beautiful woodwind instruments call on the elemental forces of nature, accompanied by relaxing guitars and pianos. Each track is named after a divine God - can you hear their presence in the music? // As the music draws together history and imagination, it’s up to you to decide which is real…

Debut album by Elias Mazian on Job Jobse’s label De Vlieger. A collection of Dutch synth-pop songs about love, longing and heartbreak. "The second release on De Vlieger comes from one of my dearest friends. I met Elias almost a decade ago on the dance floor of Trouw (a now defunct Amsterdam nightclub) and quickly became very fond of him. We bonded through music and discovered a mutual fascination for Dutch love songs. So when Elias told me he had started to write lyrics in his own language I was absolutely thrilled. After a long day spent together in his studio, deep down in the basement of the building right across the street from the place we had originally met, I realised this could turn into something really special. In the two years that followed I’ve seen Elias pour his heart and soul into this project, recording seven beautiful love songs that completely conquered my heart, and hopefully yours too." - Job Jobse

4 track EP from 1993 all tracks written and produced by Rob Haigh under his alias Haute Control.

On the one-year anniversary of ‘mist, shadows & i’, Kanisan embarks on a deep-orchestral journey with Dario and Claudia Lessing in their atmospheric and mystical album ‘Edda’. Strings and haunting pianos evoke profound feelings, while vocals seep into your soul, tinged with melancholy and bittersweetness.

It’s a path with an unknown destination, yet something stirring in the shadows speaks to you and draws you into their gloom - if you haven’t already, you’ll be back for more of this mysterious release.

The music heard on this album was originally the result of a commission to score the second half of the film Nico/Nico Crying made by Andy Warhol in 1966. The commission was made by Art Cinema OFFoff in collaboration with B.A.A.D.M for a screening of the film together with a live presentation of the score in September 2021 at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The recording presented here was made in the last week of that year and mixed soon after in January 2022. These recordings are essentially live-recordings performed by the composers together in the same room and recorded in a manner reminiscent of the record making process as it was in the late 1960s. The instrumentation used to make the sounds on this album consists of modular synthesis, zither, voice, contaminated field recordings and metal percussion.

Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician part of the vibrantly re-emerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is associated with practices characterized by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn. Recent releases include Gyttjans Topografi on XKatedral, Minnesmärke on Hallow Ground and the collaboration Emanate made with Yair Elazar Glotman on the label 13070. In addition to his own artistic practice Erlandsson holds a position as studio technician and was temporarily, from October 2022 to September 2023, the acting studio director at Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm.

The compositions of Maria W Horn implement synthetic sound, electroacoustic and acoustic instruments and audiovisual components, often devicing generative and algorithmic processes to control timbre, tuning and texture. She employs a varied instrumentation ranging from analog synthesizers to choir, string instruments, pipe organ and various chamber music formats. Acoustic instruments are often paired with digital synthesis techniques, in order to extend the instruments timbral capacities. Often based on minimalist structures, her music explores the inherent spectral properties of sound and their ability to transcend time and space, reality and dream.

Grey Marbled Vinyl

Clear water hits the surface of a grainy ball. The stream slowly dissolves and flows down the spherical structure until it finally drops on a candle. The flame extinguishes; fragile streaks of smoke ascend until they hit the rough surface of the colossal globe again.
The cover art to Marble Arch, the second long-player of Vienna- and Berlin-based artists Oberst & Buchner, depicts masterly the dramatic juxtapositions the musicians have always been reflecting in their musical outcome.
The massive density of a giant sound wall is contrasted by spacious openness. Fragile sonic details are sparkling out of colossal pitch-black clouds. The songs are filled with gentle warmth and cold roughness, bright digital clarity and deep analogue crackle, ranging in style from pulsating dark-disco over classic pop to experimental ambient.
The duo's two-week artist residency in a 250-year-old house, located in the mystic landscape of the Bavarian woods set this specific mood for the 10-track album which became a mixture of electronic synthesis, organic instrumentals and field recordings. Heavy-weight basslines in combination with bitter-sweet orchestral instrumentation and the minutiae of precise percussion recordings and drum programming are the characteristics that formed the sound of Marble Arch.
Oberst & Buchner's way to deal with tension is in how they compose their song structures as extreme arcs of suspense in a near classical manner. Their intense dynamic arrangements always alternate between rise and explosion or implosion and fall. This way the compositions pick up the motive of creation and destruction throughout the long-player in the same way as the cover-art.
Taken together, all these fragments form the duo`s signature cinematic articulation of dramatic slowed down club music and moments of surprise.

BIO
Oberst & Buchner are two friends and musicians living in Vienna and Berlin. They look back on a mutual musical journey that is as rich in variety as it is more then 15 years long. For one thing, countless high-energy DJ sets in clubs and at festivals all over Europe in recent years have earned them a reputation as a dynamic duo infernale. At the same time, their own productions draw from the full palette of moods and emotions.
Boiled down to the very essence, there's one common denominator running through the duo's musical works: colossally massive elements are masterfully set against a shimmering backdrop of incredibly detailed layers. Each so full of subtle suspense that they feel like the first raindrops before a monstrous thunderstorm. You can literally hear the calm before the storm in every break they build up, then feel the force of the wind in your face when it hits you.
Ranging from pulsating electronica over slow organic sounds derived from both nature and acoustic instruments to deep dance pop ballads, their songs are full of suspense and packed with drama. In their productions, the two friends conjure up soundscapes that are extremely dense and at the same time infinitely open and spacious. Within this framework, they play with stark contrasts of antithetic elements: repetition and improvisation, functionality and emotions, emptiness and overload, clarity and crackling.

The long side is a weird Drum & Bass tune, full of space tricks and quiet unformated : No More Hardcore (by Opiohm). B side starts with "Order" (by Snox) a good Bassline tune that turns into Hard techno after 3 minutes... The Last tune "Museilum" (by Snox) b1iss a space Drum & Break tune bringing the Freebreak into something total space. An excellent record.

Penguin Cafe kündigen heute ihr fünftes Studioalbum Rain Before Seven... an, das am 7.Juli 2023 bei Erased Tapes erscheinen wird.

Eine zuversichtliche Grundstimmung durchzieht das fünfte Studioalbum von Penguin Cafe, Rain Before Seven…, wobei es sich keinesfalls um jenen extrem selbstbewussten, fast schon prahlerischen Optimismus handelt, sondern eher um so eine auf bescheidene Art hoffnungsvolle Grundhaltung, die man den Menschen auf der Insel ja häufiger nachsagt. Auch wenn alle Anzeichen das Gegenteil behaupten, spürt man hier sofort diese Gewissheit, dass sich alles doch noch irgendwie zum Guten wenden wird. Vermutlich zumindest.

Der Titel des Albums geht auf eine alte Bauernregel zurück, wobei die gereimte Vorhersage – „… fine before eleven“: ab 11 Uhr also wieder alles klar – auf ein baldiges gutes Ende hindeutet, vollkommen unabhängig davon, was die Wissenschaft sagt: „Ich habe diesen Spruch in einem Buch entdeckt. Davor hatte ich ihn noch nie gehört“, erzählt Arthur Jeffes, der Kopf von Penguin Cafe. „Er hat so einen dezent optimistischen Beigeschmack, und das gefällt mir sehr. Man verwendet ihn heutzutage kaum noch, aber der Reim beschreibt tatsächlich Wetterphänomene in England, die vom Atlantik aus über die Insel ziehen.“

Angefangen beim leinwandgroßen und schwärmerischen Eröffnungstitel „Welcome to London“, der mit einem Augenzwinkern auf Morricone anspielt, bis hin zum „Goldfinch Yodel“, jenem „Maibaum-Banger“ (um es mit Arthurs Worten zu sagen), mit dem das neue Album ausklingt, zieht sich ein angenehmes Gefühl von Leichtigkeit und Lebensmut durch den Longplayer, unterfüttert mit der Ausgelassenheit exotischer Rhythmen. Alles wirkt spielerisch und verspielt, und selbst der Titel ist eine Anspielung – auf A Matter of Life… aus dem Jahr 2011, der letzten Veröffentlichung, deren Titel in eine Ellipse mündete Jenes Debütalbum von Penguin Cafe diente einst als Bindeglied und Brücke – zwischen dem legendären Penguin Cafe Orchestra, das einst Arthurs Vater Simon Jeffes leitete, und dem gefeierten Nachfolger, als dessen Mastermind seither Arthur verantwortlich zeichnet.

„Ich glaube, das wirklich Neue an seinem Ansatz bestand darin, spannende und schräge Ideen zu nehmen – und dann seltsame Dinge damit anzustellen“, meint Arthur, „dabei aber konstant im Blick zu haben, dass es hinterher auch schön klingt und emotional ansprechend bleibt.“ Dieses Ethos lebt weiter in der Musik von Penguin Cafe: „Dazu haben wir uns entschlossen, als ich daran anknüpfte, schließlich spielen wir die Sachen meines Vaters und machen dazu auch neue Musik, die im selben Klanguniversum angesiedelt ist. Das bedeutet, dass ich gewissermaßen moralisch dazu verpflichtet bin, den ursprünglichen roten Faden im Auge zu behalten – und dafür zu sorgen, dass wir nicht plötzlich in Richtung Thrash-Metal abbiegen.“

Dennoch waren die rhythmischen Elemente, die zum Teil sogar an elektronische Sounds erinnern, noch nie so präsent und tonangebend wie auf Rain Before Seven…, was durchaus auch dem Co-Produzenten Robert Raths geschuldet ist. „Find Your Feet“ etwa hat ein Beat-Fundament, das weit über einen bloßen Pulsschlag hinausgeht. Abgemischt von Tom Chichester-Clark, blitzt an Stellen wie diesen etwas auf, das Arthur selbst als „fast schon elektronischen Vibe“ bezeichnet, um dann ganz aufgeregt zu ergänzen: „Es geht vor allem auch einfach ums Spaßhaben, was auf den letzten drei Alben nicht so zu hören war.” Extrem ausgelassen klingt auch „In Re Budd“, das dem verstorbenen Ambient-Urgestein Harold Budd gewidmet ist. Arthur erfuhr von dessen Tod an jenem Tag, als er diesen feierlichen Ohrwurm komponierte, dessen Synkopen deutlich komplexer sind, als sie auf den ersten Blick wirken. Auf einem präparierten Klavier gespielt, wobei die Filzstücke dem Track zusätzlichen Bounce verleihen, setzt Jeffes hier auf einen Afro Cuban Cafe-Vibe – was wunderbar zum widerspenstigen Geist des verstorbenen Budd passt.

Und schließlich wäre da noch das bereits erwähnte „Welcome to London“, das seinen Titel erhielt, als sich die Welt gerade wieder zu öffnen begann und die Menschen auch wieder Fernreisen antreten durften. Jeffes, der somit nach langer Zeit endlich wieder einen Fuß auf britischen Boden setzen konnte, war sofort beeindruckt von filmischen Soundtrack-Qualitäten (à la John Barry) dieses Stücks, als er mit dem Taxi von Heathrow nach West-London fuhr und zur Musik die opulente, in Dämmerungslicht getauchte Metropolenkulisse auf sich wirken ließ. Hier kann man deutlich die eingangs erwähnte Zuversicht raushören – und dazu vielleicht auch einen Hauch von bissiger Ironie: „Robert Raths hat der Sache noch eine Nuance hinzugefügt, die ich interessant finde, weil doch so viele Londoner ursprünglich gar nicht aus London stammen. Man schlägt also in London als Zugezogener auf, man weiß noch nicht, zu welchem Lager man sich zugehörig fühlen soll, und dann wird man auf der Straße überfallen und ausgeraubt – und in dem Licht betrachtet, hat dieses ‘Welcome to London’ doch einen eher sarkastischen Beigeschmack.“