Night Sea is honoured to present their first LP to the Silent Season family. The album is the culmination of a two-year journey playing with the relationship between sound, repetition, and impermanence. The slowly evolving musical landscapes of Still are an invitation to slow down and explore the ever-changing facets of one's experience.
The experiment aboard orbital station Sequoia-4 began as a routine test of the acoustic array. The team attempted to synchronize an analogue resonator with a quantum audio synthesizer. The two incompatible frequencies were expected to cancel each other out. Instead, the instruments registered a stable wave. It didn’t fade, on the contrary, it did respond to every sound, every movement around it.
At first, they assumed a coding error, but the wave began adapting to the researchers’ voices, shifting its amplitude and rhythm. Within hours, its spectrum started to resemble a heartbeat. The recording was forwarded to the Analysis Division, where it was named Hybrid Dub — a hybrid resonance formed between the machine and the human senses. The phenomenon proved unpredictable: each listener described different effects, from gentle euphoria to vivid recollections of memories that had never occurred.
Even after the system was powered down, a faint signal persisted in the ether — as if the mechanism had learned to breathe on its own. Some claimed that, when replayed, traces of the ocean, rustling leaves, and distant voices could be heard — as though the signal had passed through layers of living matter and remembered them.
The project was shut down, and the archive sealed. Only one line remained in the final report: “The signal wasn’t created — it discovered us.”
Always lurking amidst the underground Porto music scene is Spitbender, the most stable moniker of the ever-morphing Francisco Antão. Spin gathers a collection of tracks that demonstrate his experimentalism & coy sonic precision. Spitbender takes cues from Jungle & Hip Hop producers to create his own unique blend of Downtempo. What becomes clear throughout the album is the attention to detail: it is infused as much by Industrial's red-line spectra as it is by the dubplate logic of the Darkside Continuum, yet it does so at its own tripped out speed.
Spin begins with the laid-back but constantly shifting 'Global Overgroove'. Its breakbeat science moves in & out of DSP glitch-work & dub reflections. When its slinky bassline melody arrives, a certain dread sets in.
'Weyward Fold' drops into a driving, hard-edged chug, threaded with snippets of Malcolm X's disobedient pedagogy. The momentum carries into 'Headnod Doctor', where the bass distortion thickens & the cymbal circuit is overloaded, landing somewhere between Hip‑Hop grit & metal weight.
Side A ends with the downtempo roller 'Dogs and Moles (Skylurk Mix)'. The familiar break drifts into new territory, pulled along & wrapped in a slap-back echo. A quirky melody cuts through the haze, giving the track a fresh tilt. The mulch of the track forms a steady, unhurried pulse.
Spitbender's spacious atmospherics & groove-focused approach comes further into focus on 'Nothing Here But the Recordings'. Creating his own chapter in the book of Trip Hop, his minimalist touch is laid out in full.
'Force the Hand Ov Chance' pulls Boom Bap gently into dub mechanics, letting space do the heavy lifting. Its simplicity hides a deep pocket.
Returning to broken-up distortion, 'Mirrors of Flesh (Dub Mix)' finds Spitbender using the mixer as an instrument to push & pull the heavy drums of Benjamin Brejon of Méchanosphere alongside the voice of Rui intoning the title phrase.
Sitting between the album's two poles, 'Out Take Dub' fuses the clipped‑obsession timbres of Spin's heavier moments with its blissed out flow. Feedback & distortion are welcomed & drawn long.
In the end, Spin hits like a fully formed statement—lean, focused, & unmistakably Spitbender. Every track pushes its own angle, but together they land with a clarity that feels earned. It's a sharp marker in his trajectory, & it leaves a charge in the air.
The limited edition EP features remixes of tracks taken from Ben Frost's latest album A U R O R A, by British producer Evian Christ (following his critically acclaimed Waterfall EP and work with Kanye West); Downward label boss and techno producer Regis (previous remix credits inc. VCMG, Terence Fixmer), Good by Air affiliated experimental artist Dutch E Germ (previous remix credits inc. Fatima Al Qadiri and Mas Ysa); Australian duo HTRK and raster-noton recording artist Kangding Ray
Hands Of Fate -- an industrial/tribal mini-album from Hands Of Fate (aka NGLY & Lycurgus). The release sits in a unique space sonically, appealing to fans of O Yuki Conjugate, Coil, and Zoviet France.
The producers take a timeout from their Metalheadz offshoot series to return to their own stable for the pair’s 25th collaboration 12”.
In the Air features rolling breaks with ‘Can you feel it’ vocal hooks, violins and chords that build emotion. On the tougher flipside, the duo kickback with rhodes, chimes and an infectious tabla groove in Come with Me.
Original art once again pens the physical jacket sleeve.
Following standout releases on Tusk Wax and Binh’s Time Passages, Hamburg’s own Difool returns with fresh material for his debut on the mighty Partout Records from Paris.
This new EP continues his exploration of intricate grooves and timeless electronic textures. On A1 duty “Space Monkey Down” is a peak time future rave classic, reminiscent of 1990’s Trance eternals. “Now Hear This” combines classic 808 Electro beats with dreamy pads and a drilling 303 pattern. On the flip “Zone of Avoidance” and “Mosher” both employ broken beats and maximalist sound design for the discerning club-palate. This latest outing is a natural evolution for an artist who has already left his mark on two of the scene’s most respected labels..
Ruby My Dear returns to Analogical Force with Iterations EP -- five cuts of precision-engineered electronica forged from repetition and control. Originally conceived for a videomapping project by Barcelona-based studio VPM and premiered at SIGNAL and MIRA festivals the music quickly evolved beyond its audiovisual origins into a fully independent sonic work. Razor-edged IDM, glitched breakcore and high-velocity drum programming collide with dark harmonic pressure and microscopic detail. Brutal yet deliberate. Chaotic yet exact. This is Ruby My Dear operating at full resolution.
UK bass music mainstay and SK1 Records co-founder, Synkro, links up with composer and sound design specialist, Tom Jarmey, for their debut combined effort on Of Paradise, minting their new musical alliance with North Star, an emotionally charged and lushly melodic collection of detail-driven club cuts.
Deftly joining the dots between drum 'n' bass, jungle, and trip hop, the duo serves up three original numbers, backed by two exquisite remixes from none other than Pugilist and label co-founder Silent Era, who meticulously distil the source material to produce a mixture of swirling breaks, dub techno, and atmospheric ambient stylings.
Available as a limited edition 12” and digital EP, North Star sees Synkro and Tom Jarmey combine to lethal effect, pooling their diverse influences together to fashion a trio of wide-eyed, hypnotic, and high-grade gems that give a nod to the most potent of ‘90s gear whilst being 100% future proofed.
WRWTFWW Records is proud to present THE GENTLE PEOPLE - Soundtracks for Living (Expanded Edition), ?the ultimate Lounge/Chill Out classic from 1997, reborn! Available as a limited edition white vinyl 3LP in heavyweight 3-panel gatefold sleeve.
When The Gentle People first glided into the mid-90s on clouds of strings, sugar and sine waves, they sounded like visitors from another, more glamorous planet. Signed to Richard D. James and Grant Wilson-Claridge's cult label Rephlex, this multinational "E-Z-Core" lounge unit took the aesthetics of 50s/60s easy listening and exotica and gently smuggled them into 1990s club culture.
Soundtracks for Living was their defining statement: an album that "takes the lounge scene and runs away with it entirely… blissful and heavenly," as one contemporary review put it. Imagine KLF's Chill Out or Space growing up on French 60/70s pop, bossa nova, soundtracks, vocal harmony groups, library music and easy listening then slipping out for a late-night date with dub, ambient techno and bubble-bath pop. That's Soundtracks for Living: a record that can score cocktail hour, 4am taxi rides, and daydreams in headphones with the same effortless grace.
The Gentle People - Dougee Dimensional, Laurie LeMans, Valentine Carnelian and Honeymink - began in early-90s Brixton, throwing dress-up theme parties before taking their audio-visual universe into the studio. For them, music was "a way of life": soothing to the ear, rich in pop hooks, and pitched somewhere between the playfully idiotic and the hyper-intelligent. Their debut on Rephlex was the single "Journey", later blessed with a shimmering Aphex Twin remix that pushed their sugar-coated sound even further into outer space.
This Expanded Edition of Soundtracks for Living finally gives this glambient lounge-pop milestone the treatment it has always deserved. Spread lovingly across 3LP, it features new mastering from the original sources, allowing every harp glissando, string swell and analog squiggle to float in high-fidelity widescreen. The core album is complemented by a bonus 12" of unreleased and rare material, offering a deeper dive into the Gentle world: alternate takes, lost interludes, and secret soundtrack cues for lives not yet lived.
Crucially, "Journey" appears here in its original version, Gentle Instrumental and the cult Aphex Twin remix, reuniting band and labelmate in one place and underlining the quietly radical nature of the project: this was lounge music that could sit next to braindance, acid and IDM and still steal the scene.
Pressed on limited edition white vinyl, Soundtrack for Living (Expanded Edition) invites long-time fans and new listeners alike to step back into The Gentle People's universe - a place of fondue parties, bubble chairs, star-lit elevators and endlessly rewinding sunsets, where "the pathway to the stars" is never quite out of reach.
In an era that often reduces the 90s to big-room bangers and grunge guitars, Soundtracks for Living remains a quietly subversive reminder that the decade was also about imagination, camp, softness and utopian possibility. As later writers have noted, The Gentle People weren't just a curiosity on a weird label; they became unlikely icons of a whole loungecore moment, gracing TV, compilations and magazine spreads, and proving that tenderness could be as futuristic as any drum machine.
In conjunction with this release, WRWTFWW has also unearthed The Gentle People's Peel Sessions, a 4-track EP from their 1997 BBC on-air performance, available on vinyl for the first time ever !
No names, just pickles and pickled beats! Vinyl Only!
Hedonistic club music from the mysterious Glasgow Sound System. Incredible productions from an artist that has appeared from the ether to bless our dancefloors with otherworldly and atmospheric tracks. Varied productions overspilling with excess and emotion. This record is split into 2 phases; the first comprised of 3 club-focussed tracks for dark rooms with a red light, the second phase are 2 downtempo trips to mellow the comedown. Welcome to the club, Glasgow Sound System – what a debut.
"Carol Maia & Jeremy Gustin’s haunting collaborative album is the result of a long distance partnership during which tracks were traded back and forth across thousands of miles, Jeremy working from his home studio in Brooklyn and Carol from hers in Rio De Janeiro. Later they enlisted support from a number of key players in the Rio scene, Frederico Heliodoro, Paulo Emmery, Ricardo Dias Gomes, and from Brooklyn’s musical community, Will Graefe and Ryan Dugre, to shape this understated masterpiece of sophisticated global pop and quiet experimentalism.
"It's hard to describe what Carol, Jeremy and their guests have achieved on 'it's nice to see a lake in your eyes', a kind of pop music that stands outside of time and is neither Brazilian, American or of any other recognisable place. Maybe it's risen out of the lake they imagined into being? Maybe it's formed like rain in the thousands of miles of air between Rio and New York? Whatever happened was certainly alchemical as you will hear.
"Carol told me her writing on this record was greatly influenced by her reading of Marcelo Ariel's poetry book A água veio do sol, disse o breu so maybe the best thing to do to describe this music is to let you read one of his poems:
A luz do ser é como a água
também veio do Sol
onde todos os planetas querem entrar
Dentro do Sol
O ser é imóvel
como a gratuidade de um êxtase
parecido com a respiração
Fora do Sol
o ser é móvel
Tempo eternidade
e tempo cronológico
The light of being is like water
it also came from the Sun
where all the planets want to enter
Within the Sun
Being is immobile
like the gratuitousness of an ecstasy
similar to breathing
Outside the Sun
Being is mobile
Time eternal
and chronological time
"Jeremy Gustin is an unorthodox drummer, percussionist and songwriter who has toured and recorded with Joan as Policewoman, Iggy Pop, David Byrne, Marc Ribot, Delicate Steve, and Norah Jones. If you follow Hive Mind then you probably know him best from his amazing work on Ricardo Dias Gomes' Muito Sol. Jeremy is also in the experimental pop bands Star Rover and Blurry the Explorer.
"Carol Maia is one of Rio's new generation of singers and musicians currently lighting up the city's vibrant music scene. She also featured heavily on Wolfgang Pérez's album Só Ouço, which was released on Hive Mind in 2025."
Spectral Bounce’s latest offering comes direct from Norway, courtesy of Anders Hajem — co-founder of Boring Crew Records. To date, the Oslo producer’s previous releases have been vessels for the exploration of myriad dance musics, seeing the artist fluently turn his hand to soulful house, dub techno and 2-step.
SPEC07 — the Myr EP — is a much more focused affair, finding Hajem in techno mode across 4 potent cuts typified by undulating drums and swelling echoes. Despite its emphasis on percussion, atmosphere has not been sacrificed for rhythm: vivid FX and meticulous attention to detail bring these tracks to life beyond the context of the dancefloor. This is music that can be stepped into and explored, productions that reward repeat listens.
Opening at full throttle, “Myr” is a jackin’ percussive workout, harnessing punchy drums for maximum effect. Its pulsating low-end runs in tandem with trembling synths that perpetually reflect and refract in the stereo field. Atop its rolling drums, hardgroove-inflected “Sprett” utilizes timestretched vocals, cavernous reverb and ecstatically quivering tones, elevating this 2000s-era framework to new heights. “Existence” brings things to a deeper and more hypnotic place: delays are turned up, siren calls reverberate and timbres ebb and flow. Hajem goes more chasmic still on “Concussion”, hitting the brakes for a much slower cadence and allowing space for a truly expansive listening experience. Heady and mystical, entrancing and otherworldly — listen close enough; beneath the dizzyingly shifting pulses and rattling drums you’ll hear incantations, while bass tones pulse in the depths.
SPEC07 — immerse yourself!
Credits:
Art by Susanne Janssen
Mastering & Cut by Marco Pellegrino @Analogcut
Words by Cameron Leaf
Nocta Numerica is happy to present its 14th release by Betonkust. "Sent Items' is a 4-Track EP that mixes Electro, New Beat and Acid music. The EP will be out on June 17th and available in digital & vinyl on all the usual platforms, Limited edition of 300.
