Beats Vinyl New Releases - News

“In a concert, I show something with a beginning, a middle and an end. But, there is no end. Of course, there is no end. Because I am the music, and I am still here.” - Sophie Agnel

‘Learning’ - Sophie Agnel’s first solo LP, feels like the dark, physical inversion of her excellent ‘Song’ which came out on Relative Pitch earlier this year. Sinking her unique sound into vinyl for the first time, the LP arrives as Agnel recovers from a brain tumour - a shocking discovery that will require Agnel to start again with the piano. It’s a terrifying prospect, but Agnel has been here before, having reorientated herself almost entirely away from her early classical training over the last 4 decades of her work.

‘When I was young I had very good ears, oriole absolute. Then later I began to make strange sounds with my piano, to do different kinds of music. I was more interested in the sounds than the melody, for example. I remember once I sat down in a shop to try to read the scores of Schubert and there was a light emitting a very strong bzzzzzzz. And I couldn't listen to my oriole internal - I couldn't read the score. I was entirely subjugated by the sound of the light. And I understood that something had changed. Ten years before I could read and not hear the light. Now I understood that my ears were completely different. I was more open to the sounds of life.”

Born in Paris in the 60’s and playing her parents piano as soon as she could stand up, Agnel quickly grew tired of the classical world. What frustrated her was the strange disconnect between the frame of the piano and its keyboard - a weird boundary that seemed to form some hushed code of etiquette. “The first thing I put inside the piano was a plastic goblet. I’d seen a few pianists do it: Fred Van Hove, for example, put rubber balls inside his. But what didn’t appeal to me was that there seemed to be no link between the pianos outside and inside.”If you see Agnel play now, the body of her piano is littered with fish tins, ping pong balls, wooden blocks - not that you’d recognize their sounds. Having absorbed the language of the European avant-garde, Agnel is known for pulling the piano’s interior outside of itself by tipping her handbag into it. But these ‘strange sounds’ don’t just come from Cage - they also share the poetic force of Cecil Taylor and ‘Learning’ demonstrates that Agnel’s work on the piano's keyboard is just as important as what she’s littered on its strings. The record lets loose her ability to unleash a formidable sound mass and then rope it back to one single, clarifying note. With one hand, Agnel plays 88 tuned drums and on the other an enormous guitar - with the LP rotating through oncoming trains, and blues harmonica and feedback. It’s single minded stuff, borne out of a dedication to a wholly personal language of gesture, accumulation and deft reduction. “Maybe when I’m 80 I will not need anything,” Agnel says in a recent film made at her home. “I will do the same but with one note, and one finger. Maybe it's enough.”

‘Learning’ arrives in a reverse board sleeve designed by Jereon Wille. Recorded live at Cafe OTO by Billy Steiger on 6th June 2023 and 4th June 2024. Mixed by James Dunn and Benjamin Pagier. Side B edited by Benjamin Pagier. Mastered and cut by Loop-O. Front photograph by Aimé Agnel. Typography and layout by Jeroen Wille.

With solid training as a classical musician, Sophie Agnel took a close interest in modern jazz before committing in the early 90s to the shifting, deliciously uncertain ground of free improvisation, thanks to her fascination for the powers of expression displayed by a few great keyboard-heretics such as Keith Tippett, Fred Van Hove or Christine Wodrascka. She began reworking the prepared piano techniques imagined by John Cage and transformed her instrument into a sort of extended piano.

Coming from a Punk music background Joke Lanz started in the mid 80s to play Experimental- and Noise music. Best known for his internationally acclaimed project Sudden Infant, Lanz is presenting his work since 30 years all over the world. Born in Switzerland and currently operating out of Berlin, he is one of the most prolific and profound artists working in the border zones where performance and body art meet Improvisation and Noise.

Agnel and Lanz have performed stunning live shows as a duo, now their debut album is coming out on Klanggalerie. Turntables and piano, a unique combination that is a lot of fun!

A new collaborative project from Matt Hales AKA Aqualung and Davide De Rossi - strings for the Verve, Coldplay, Goldfrapp. - They have worked on it in the last 5 years on the side. - Soren Lorensen is a made up character by Matt and Davide, hoping listeners will initially think it’s an Icelandic artist. Project is alternative, including vocals and strings, sometimes melancholic. Similarities to Apparat or Radiohead. - Name taken from Charlie & Lola TV Series, based
on the children’s picture book by Lauren Child. - Lauren Child has actually drawn up the character of Soren Lorensen carrying a rabbit. She’s done the album artwork.

Spaceship is Mark S. Williamson, a musician, sound artist and educator based in Todmorden, West Yorkshire. His work is often made in response to his environment, working on location, combining field recordings with electronic and acoustic instrumentation, usually recorded outside, amid the landscape and weather. Mark has recorded for wiaiwya, Apollolaan, the Dark Outside and his own Forged River Recordings. His work has been reviewed by The Wire, Electronic Sound, Shindig and The Quietus and he was recently one of the fourteen artists featured in Electronic Sound Magazine’s ‘field recording special’. His collaboration with Luke Turner on series of readings from Luke’s book ‘Out of the Woods’ has seen performances at Cecil Sharp House, Port Eliot Festival, The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, Krankenhaus Festival and the Horse Hospital and he recently collaborated with the artist Michael Powell on his Calderfolk project. A direct sequel to 2019’s Outcrops (also on wiaiwya), Ravines moves its focus from the uplands above Todmorden to the narrow, steep sided ravines, known as cloughs, that contain the streams that flow down the valley sides to feed the River Calder. These valleys, formed over hundreds, if not thousands of years can be peaceful sanctuaries, their stepped pools and waterfalls a shelter from the windswept moors. In time of heavy rainfall though, they become the conduits for the rapidly descending overland flows which reach the Calder and, in extreme circumstances, cause the floods which remain a part of valley life. These cloughs also saw the beginnings of industry in the area. Colden Clough and Jumble Hole Clough contain the ruin of small water fed mills which would evolve into the much larger steam powered facilities in Todmorden and Hebden Bridge. Mostly recorded in the field using portable equipment, these pieces are intended to reflect all three of these aspects; the peace, the violence and the beginnings of humankind’s ultimate separation from the landscape brought on by the industrial revolution. The sleeve is by Maxim Peter Griffin, an artist, illustrator and writer based in Lincolnshire. A fine art graduate and former stonemason, over the past few years he has been building a body of work that echo his experiences on foot between the North Sea and the hills. "...a luminous soundtrack to the passage of geological time." Shindig // "Williamson is building desire tunnels, churning through the layers of rock and soil to find his conclusions." The Wire // "These rumbling synth drifts and ominous drones transport you to entirely different places-like being cast adrift in a cosmic void" Electronic Sound // "...the droning synthesizer waves conjure up something spectral and eerie, stretching out like the wide horizon..." The Quietus // "Beautiful." Hannah Peel

Spemakh is a surprisemusic-group from Germany. Using a wide range of homemade and custombuilt wind- and percussioninstruments, aswell as viola, doublebass, voice-noise, guitar, objects and miniature-electronics, the band is aiming for a radical play with uncertainty, involving humour, gesture and collective surprise.

...in their own words:

Nonzigo hotn nu Hur, dattemal Pinkel-Gelöm deka Rier - segge ti
Lenkito Mulrö, fen Balás-tenu egal. Zitalle quesi á Butola muff kara
Sö-kebem; schi Bim, estena Bim, schickenoll teff Malazaste.

Reldefut rögel, ínoffe zert Gutsepul eider, kúttu nu Rum Dale tipsa, da
heup mila Zuffentalent. Agnete ka Zack, Riddarholm pismolle Geitis
flament, gangtalle kose Apelbarrsch. Kober.

Di riefn, di riefn, na rollebom so kappa Zirka! Otl kawummele gries
likatelébi Signa, pölte-mum Daff takipale ze Ressn di Tu. Optaset, rada
falémde zi Bommerlunder, sepsengestein Täng fálsepi Mümpel.

Sidaperále hemse me, kö Höllepöll kásaterápe Gunzu. Kuftebier, schieb malatena iks Geike, selb Nisati teinewutz rem dalla Sobel. Ziwinter
Aschenverfall hártbeete, uplida Tol, rénferti Sackpilode.
Genzen verschémerda olkot da Wii, séglegekt nieder geh unter.

Experimental rock quintet from Los Angeles for fans of Unwound, Duster, Slint, and Lowercase. Mixed and engineered by Tim Green at Louder Studios (Unwound, Melvins, Jawbreaker). Live appearances with Flenser labelmates, Have a Nice Life, Chat Pile, Midwife, and tour dates planned throughout 2023. Since its formation in 2018 by like-minded Calarts students Alex Kent (guitar, vocals), April Gerloff (bass), and Sylvie Simmons (guitar), as well as the recent addition of Clint Dodson (percussionist), Los Angeles-based quartet Sprain has honed its signature flavor of experimentalism to a razor-fine point. Gradually moving from twisting conventions in its early works of minimalist slowcore to now transcending the confines of genre altogether, Sprain's evolution over the past several years has encouraged the band to embrace a sound true to its muse. With its latest record, The Lamb As Effigy or Three Hundred And Fifty XOXOXOS For A Spark Union With My Darling Divine, the band has translated this intent into an ambitious work that pairs its resplendent scale with uncompromising honesty towards the band's artistic and conceptual essences. The most extraordinary of art isn't created without its fair share of trials, of which Sprain faced numerous during the recording process of The Lamb As Effigy, with the sum and circumstances of them nearly sealing the album's fate in limbo. With obstacles including session reschedulings as a result of a line-up change and a major studio electrical failure at the last possible moment, a mixing process that demanded the organization of several years of material across four separate studios, and the recording of the actual songs pushing the members of Sprain to their own physical limits, there were several times where the band considered scrapping the whole thing altogether. But Sprain persevered, applying the knowledge and willpower derived from those struggles to get The Lamb As Effigy across the finish line. Clocking in at nearly two hours, The Lamb As Effigy resembles an aural parallel to the human experience itself, with all the glorious beauty, crushing brutality, and unexplainable chaos that comes with it intact. Explosions of earth-sundering guitars, angelic keys, swirling strings, and bursts of improvised electronic noise coalesce to weave a visceral yet unique sonic tapestry bearing hints of no-wave, sound collage, 20th-century avant-garde, and free jazz. Spanning bellowing howls, emphatic spoken word, and nuanced croons, Alex Kent's dynamic vocal delivery adds texture to these eight meditations on otherwise immaterial topics and the meaning or the lack thereof they embody.

Squanderers sind David Grubbs (Gastr del Sol), Wendy Eisenberg und Kramer. Sie kehren zurück und liefern mit Skantagio den Nachfolger ihres Debütalbums If a Body Meet a Body (Shimmy-Disc, 2024). "Wir waren einen Tag lang im Studio und haben alle Stücke der ersten LP gespielt, bevor wir in die Mittagspause gingen. Skantiago enthält die Stücke, die wir nach dem Mittagessen gespielt haben", sagt Bassist und Shimmy-Disc-Gründer Kramer. "Wir mögen Squanderer (Verschwender) sein, aber wir trödeln nicht. Und wir vertiefen uns nicht zu sehr in unseren spontanen Erfindungen, während wir im Studio sind." Für Fans von: Gastr del Sol, Editrix, Pan American & Kramer, Jim O'Rourke, Bill Orcutt

Early, yet mysterious collaboration between Sun City Girls and Life Garden reissued on Unrock. Recorded live on Sept. 22, 1991 and originally released by visionary operator Nick Schultz on Majora Records, Tsunami .2↑ was, still is, and will remain a mysterious album. Because the music didn’t represent or sound like either of the bands involved, they decided to call the group Square 9 and chose to leave everybody’s names off of it. No further information was given, only "Recorded at Grand Theater, Buenos Aires, Argentina". Until today, nobody knows exactly who was behind the record. Rumors came up that is was part of the Sun City Girls legacy, but the "truth" lingered in the dark. So unusual and experimental the approach to record this album was, so remarkable it finally turned out. By the time it was released back in 1992 only a few dedicated core followers were aware of its existence. Everybody played anything and everything on this recording, no specific instruments are assigned to players. Different instruments, various percussion instruments, a piano and other sound sources. Insiders maybe recognize the voices of Su Ling and Alan Bishop or a piano sounding like Richard Bishop playing it. Some of the live sounds have been treated and processed live by W. David Oliphant. It was an impromptu series of improvisations by Sun City Girls and members of Life Garden (W. David Oliphant‘s main working group after Maybe Mental) and probably the last recordings made by members of Sun City Girls before the band fully re-located to Seattle. In retrospect it is a belonging and relevant part of the history of both bands, which needs to be broadcasted to a wider audience. 30 years after the recordings were made, a remastered version of the album is made available through Unrock. While the original release was two side-long tracks, the remastered version is split into 6 separate tracks, remixed and mastered by W. David Oliphant. Vinyl cut by Peter Koerfer at Ivory Tower. Square 9 were (in alphabetic order) Alan Bishop - Richard Bishop - Charles Gocher - Su Ling - W. David Oliphant - Peter Ragan

"In the wake of SQUID PISSER’s “Vaporize A Neighbor” EP and Comic Book Set and “Vaporize A Tadpole” Collection comes “Dreams of Puke”, the band’s second full length album. Weighing in at a meaty 12 songs and cut at a lean 45 revolutions per minute, “Dreams of Puke” refuses to let up or let down - emitting climax after scintillating climax - a bounteous bouquet of dayglow viscera and tumor-filled sonic snot.

“Dreams of Puke” is the face ripping, dolphin-loving, anthropomorphized mountain of nuclear sludge intravenously injected with methamphetamines that listeners have been clamoring for. Tommy Meehan's use of effects pedals and sonic textures create a dense soundscape of intestinal debris, mortared with a grout of pus, goo, gummy candy and pure, unadulterated insanity. Meanwhile, Seth Carolina's all out, rage-fueled and categorically pummeling approach to slamming the beats down lays out a visceral scene of absolute intensity - a great white shark attack on The Mall of America.

Tommy explains “The writing sessions for this album resulted in about 100 songs... Demos, seedlings, and scraps were strewn about everywhere. Then Seth and I assembled them into a viable and tangible fruition. I tracked all of the guitars, bass, and vocals myself at Los Angeles’ Castle Barf Studios. The drums we did at Sea Horse Sound downtown”.

“Dreams Of Puke” is an aural DMT trip that will leave brains boggled. Its atonal anthems of slime are a kaleidoscope of brilliant, bespeckled rage that, in the end, will scalp the world & mutate the throne.

Glass Mastered Compact Disc includes Mystery Matrix Message and comes packaged in a Six Panel Tri-Fold Jacket with corresponding Fold-Over Lyric Insert. LP and CD formats each sport unique, subliminally different cover art by painter Gregory Jacobsen of the band Lovely Little Girls. Parental Advisory: Explicit content"

Jim Jarmusch und Carter Logan (Gründungsmitglieder von SQÜRL) kehren mit einer klanglichen Erkundung des filmischen Werks des dadaistischen Pioniers Man Ray zurück, einem fesselnden Projekt, das Musik und Film miteinander verschmilzt. In den vergangenen acht Jahren haben SQÜRL das Publikum mit ihrer Live-Vertonung von Man Rays Kurzfilmen in ausverkauften Konzerten an renommierten Orten wie dem Centre Pompidou in Paris, der Queen Elizabeth Hall in London und dem Art Institute of Chicago verzaubert. Der Höhepunkt ihrer Bemühungen fand im Frühjahr 2023 statt, zum 100. Jahrestag von Man Rays erstem Ausflug ins Filmemachen, als der neu restaurierte Film "Die Rückkehr zur Vernunft" bei den Filmfestspielen von Cannes seine Premiere feierte. Der von Womanray (Marieke Tricoire) und Cinenovo (Julie Viez) produzierte Film ist eine Anthologie mit vier Stummfilm-Kurzfilmen von Man Ray - Étoile de mer (1928), Emak bakia (1926), Le Retour á la Raison (1923) und Les Mysteres du Château de Dé. (1929) - jeweils gepaart mit einer Originalpartitur von SQÜRL. Jarmusch und Logan, zwei multidisziplinäre Künstler, die für ihre Experimentierfreudigkeit bekannt sind, wollten mit diesen Partituren einen ekstatischen Zustand schaffen, einen Raum zwischen Bewusstsein und Unterbewusstsein, Realität und Surrealem. Das daraus resultierende Album "Music for Man Ray", das aus einer Live-Aufnahme im Centre Pompidou in Paris im Februar 2023 hervorging, enthält verzerrte Gitarren, hypnotische Rückkopplungen, Loops und affektierte Synthesizer Logan: "Es ist eine Reise, auf die wir das Publikum mitnehmen wollen, indem wir Themen in diesen Filmen beleuchten. Sie sind eigenständig, aber es gibt auch wiederkehrende Anklänge im gesamten Programm." Jim Jarmusch fügt hinzu: "Wir sind sehr stolz darauf, die Begleitband von Man Ray zu sein." Nun erblicken sowohl der Film als auch die daraus resultierende Musik in Form von "Music for Man Ray" das Licht der Welt - beide stehen als Zeugnis für die kreative Synergie zwischen Man Rays bahnbrechendem Kino und der innovativen musikalischen Interpretation durch SQÜRL.

Hearing Dominic Appleton take his voice in quieter, more intimate directions, exploring new textures and strengths, in combination with Matteo Uggeri’s flowing production, makes for a striking experience. Interesting and unexpected." – Ned Raggett (Bandcamp/The Quietus) // "Without exaggeration, Dominic Appleton is by far my favourite living male vocalist. He has such a beautiful, sad voice and comes up with melodies that do the same" – Ivo Watts-Russell (4AD founder). // "This Mortal Coil singer Dominic Appleton's crystalline voice and romantic lyrics set a mood of lonely grandeur” — Mojo (2013)

Fred Ventura & S-Tone Inc. presents seventeen years after its original CD release, the STATE OF ART collection is back in print, this time on vinyl. It features all the demos recorded by the first line-up of the band between 1981 and 1982. Funky flashes with pop touches, somewhere between A Certain Ratio, Talking Heads, early ABC and Spandau Ballet, all self-produced with limited resources yet filled with the band’s unmistakable energy.

Gatefold Green Vinyl Double LP with design by Dian Vandermeulen, the popular Canadian visual artist
(limited edition cassette version will be released by Not Not Fun).

Between December 2018 and 2019, Stefana Fratila embarked on a series of research trips across North America (including to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Centre), meeting with astronomers and scientists in order to address a complex question: “If each planet in our solar system were a different room, what would each room sound like?”

Her ongoing creative research culminated in Sononaut, eight open-source VST plug-ins created for digital audio workstations (DAWs) that emulate the atmospheric conditions of the planets in our solar system (made in collaboration with artist and coder Jen Kutler, using calculations by NASA astronomer and planetary scientist Dr. Conor Nixon).

Her forthcoming album I want to leave this Earth behind is the sonic extension of her creative research.

In her own words: “The album is conceptual, in that it centres on outer space exploration and my understanding of 'Crip futurity'. My vision is for the album to engage listeners in an exercise of imagining the sounds of interplanetary atmospheres– conditions which are inherently unlivable, unbreathable, converting all human body-minds into disabled-bodied-ness. Since I identify as Crip, or disabled, this idea deeply resonates with me. I am the first artist (a disabled producer/musician, no less) to have worked with NASA researchers on a sonic imagining of the solar system’s atmospheres that incorporates real scientific data. If we are all 'disabled' in (or by) outer space, my music is concerned with propelling all listeners into space, leaving Earth behind them, through my music.”

The solar system’s planetary bodies are inherently prohibitive even in regards to Earth’s most ‘able-bodied’ subjects. Her project seizes upon a form of radical agency and science-fictive ambition, placing all human subjects within new worlds, into the interplanetary bodies of our solar system, through her own sonic imaginings.

The album will be released by Toronto-based label Halocline Trance (Casey MQ, myst milano, ACT!).

During a 2019 residency at CMMAS (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras) in Morelia, Mexico, Fratila began writing the album on an octophonic sound system (8 planets = 8 speakers).

Afterwards, from her home studio in Toronto, she recorded additional synthesizer parts, finalized arrangements, and incorporated Sononaut (her 8 solar system VST plug-ins) into the album’s production. The album was recorded, written, and produced by Fratila. She worked with mixing engineer Jeremy Greenspan (Jessy Lanza, Caribou, Junior Boys), as well as mixing engineer Lisa Conway and mastering engineer Sage Kim.

Underlining each track is a five-minute soundscape representing the weather on that planet, based on Fratila’s research at NASA. The weather patterns are interwoven with layers of synths and time-stretched samples.

There are very few disabled femme electronic artists gaining exposure in Canada today.

Milan based Die Schachtel presents In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni (We turn round in the night and, behold, we are consumed by Fire) - a work for solo guitar by the Italian composer Stefano Pilia, the second release to appear on a new series from the imprint - Decay Music, highlighting inspired contemporary experimental efforts in the ambient, ethereal, and emotively abstract.

Born in Genoa and based in Bologna, Pilia is a guitar player and electro-acoustic composer concerned with the sculptural properties of sound, offering particular focus to its relationship to space, memory, and the suspension of time - the conceptual undercurrent of In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni. Comprised of corresponding compositional triptychs on each of its two sides - the final act of both featuring contributions from experimental music heavyweights, Rodrigo D’Erasmo on violin and David Grubbs on piano, the album builds vast, inhabitable expanses of ambience from long tones and shattered cuts and collisions, punctuated by clusters, sweeps, and careful interventions of texture and note. In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni – as this eerie palindrome and endecasillabo (a syntactic form in classical Italian verse) from Virgil suggests – moves through a path of alchemical symbolic narratives and poetic abstraction humbly reminiscent and allegorically inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and by the Nekyia (‘evocation of the dead’) parts found in Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey.

Based on symmetrical harmonic, melodic and narrative properties and filled with intangible narrative, haunting abstraction, fleeting visions of eerie space, and slow motion melody, Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni pushes electroacoustic music toward symphonic dimensions - dramatic arcs with echoes of high Minimalism, historic ambient music, and the radicalism indeterminate forms. Through a wise, peculiar and abstracted use of guitar instrumentation, the sound surface of the compositions reaches deeper electroacoustic-symphonic dimensions, echoing minimalist works, ambient music and indeterminate contemporary forms. The perfectly sounding Decay Music records have been perfectly cut and pressed using a surprising thick grey hi-quality vinyl featuring a "decay-like" marbling effect. The overall design is by the usual suspect Bruno Stucchi, who created a "half alchemic-half decadent" custom typeface for the series. The covers - featuring mysterious and obscure drawings by obscure artists – are printed in silver on heavy matt black paper stock, and hosted in a transparent outer sleeve, on which the typography is silkscreened in white on clear acetate.

Edition of 250 copies and pressed to 180g grey-marbled vinyl, one-time pressing, housed in pro-printed inner sleeve and jacket, itself contained in a silkscreened pvc sleeve.

Turquoise marbled vinyl. Handnumbered, limited to 200 copies. A bold new chapter in Stephan Thelen's sonic explorations, Worlds in Collision is a genre-defying fusion of polyrhythmic precision, hypnotic grooves, and experimental soundscapes. Inspired by the pioneering work of Brian Eno & David Byrne, this album pushes the limits of electric guitar textures, feedback, and layered rhythmic structures - bringing together David Torn's incendiary guitar work, Fabio Anile's rhythmic innovations, and Yogev Gabay's powerhouse drumming. Worlds in Collision captures the chaotic energy of Bullet Train, the eerie beauty of Voices from the Ether, and the intricate rhythmic interplay that defines Thelen's unmistakable style. Blending field recordings, speech samples, and complex time signatures, this album is an immersive journey into new sonic territory.

Mit "But remember what you have had" setzt Stephen O'Malley seinen musikalischen Ansatz fort und erweitert ihn auf multiphonisches elektroakustisches Schreiben und akusmatisches Hören. Stephen O'Malley schöpft nicht nur aus seiner umfangreichen Erfahrung als Komponist und Live-Instrumentalist, sondern auch aus den zahllosen Studioproduktions- und Mixing-Sessions, an denen er im Laufe seiner vielen Projekte (solo, mit SUNN O))) oder KTL, um nur einige zu nennen) teilgenommen hat. Die Arbeit von Stephen O'Malley an diesem neuen Stück ist ehrgeizig, eine inspirierte Forschung, die sich mit den tiefen Verwicklungen zwischen Polyphonie, Intonation und Timbralität beschäftigt, die durch melodische Motive verstärkt werden. Dazu beschwört O'Malley sein ganz persönliches Klanguniversum herauf, das sich aus verstärkten Texturen, instrumentalen Dauertönen und roher Energie zusammensetzt, um sie in Wellenfronten, Wellen und Schlägen zu brechen, die eine komplexe, reiche und faszinierende Materie weben. "But remember what you have had" ragt als wichtiges Werk in Stephen O'Malleys Repertoire heraus: Es vereint die Vielfalt seines musikalischen Ansatzes auf beispielhafte Weise und legt gleichzeitig die Grundlagen und Versprechen für die Zukunft einer bereits außergewöhnlichen Reise.

Brandneues Album von Stephen O'Malley, dem Mitbegründer von SUNN O))), mit neuen, bisher unveröffentlichten Stücken für Pfeifenorgel. Diese Platte hat zwei lange Stücke für Orgel von Stephen O'Malley, die er auf diesen Aufnahmen zusammen mit der bekannten Organistin Kali Malone und Frederikke Hoffmeier (Puce Mary) spielt. Das Album wurde an Weihnachten 2021 in der Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Schweiz, auf Les Grandes Orgues (Scherrer (1777), Walker (1867), Kuhn (1995)) in der Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Schweiz, aufgenommen und ursprünglich von Stephen im Rahmen einer Suite mit dem Titel Les Sphères (effondrez-les), Phasen I-V, für eine Zusammenarbeit mit der bekannten belgisch-schweizerischen Choreografin Cindy Van Acker komponiert. Neben den beiden Orgelwerken auf dieser Platte umfasste die Suite auch die Phasen III und V für E-Gitarre, Verstärker und Elektronik (gespielt von Stephen O'Malley und Kali Malone) sowie die Phase IV für Percussion-Ensemble (gespielt von Eklekto). Abgemischt von Stephen O'Malley im EMS, Stockholm, und von François-Xavier Delaby und Tristan Mazire, Paris, im Februar 2022. Gemastert und geschnitten von Rashad Becker, Berlin, Juni 2025. Perfekte Pressung bei Optimal, Deutschland. Dieses Album ist eine Koproduktion mit La Becque Editions. Stephen O'Malley ist auch auf der kommenden Compilation ,XKatedral Anthology Series III" vertreten. Stephen O'Malley ist Gründungsmitglied von Sunn O))), die 2026 ausgiebig auf Tournee sind.

American experimental composer Stephen O’Malley releases Avaeken, two sides of immense, immersive, self-annihilating music via Dais Records.

The record preserves site-specific work: O’Malley installed Avaeken as part of Wish You Were Here, the exhibition by renowned American artist Banks Violette, underscoring the tension between presence and absence, life and loss.

O’Malley and Violette have developed a distinct language of sound, space, and sculpture over the past two decades, reverberating through the walls of world-class institutions from The Guggenheim and Centre Pompidou to prominent galleries such as Maureen Paley in London, Gladstone Gallery in NYC, and Antwerp’s TICK TACK, the brutalist space where Wish You Were Here unfolded in early 2026.

Emerging now as an LP, Avaeken presents power and phenomena: low-frequency vibrations, deep oscillations, and phase cancellations that translate as innately effective in any environment. Violette’s visual expression — the impossibility of locating yourself within the loss of a friend and the broader decay of culture — now fills the LP sleeve and feels inextricable from O’Malley’s sound, both still without resolution.

“Natural harmonic tone coloured by the valves of the amplification is the one desired characteristic,” reads the initial notes.

“At first I asked, why would I write for another guitar player?” he says. “I realized how amazing it is to be a listener on the other side of the music; together we were able to try all these precisions with intonation, harmonics, specific microtonal ideas.”

The quartet performed Avaeken several times before O’Malley joined them for a recording session at Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, a 13th-century former hospital with modern acoustics in Ghent.

Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Batespresents a solo ambient/noise album ofmelodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarilyunder the self-imposed 'limitation' of a Casio SK-1, this is his first entirely solo full-length albumin almost a decade. All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, noise-clustered side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic sensibilities and practices. An isolation record (like so many), itcombines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobictension and simmering political rage.Powerfully composed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droningoscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates hasmade an impressively dynamic, ardent and iridescent noise album of real depth and underlyingdevastation."This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all startedoff that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got,the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I hadfinished a year-long run of listening to Eno's 1 and 4. I preferOn LandtoMusic for Airportsalthough I love both.On Landjust has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Addingmore noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though italso felt like that could never happen again.In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! BlackEmperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and waspleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud."A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Batesplayed in hardcore and indie rock bands (Pull My Daisy, Bulletproof Nothing) prior to foundingthe Send + Receivefestival in 1998. A crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map foravant music and sound art, Bates helmed Send + Receive for seven years, then moved toTiohti:áke/Montréal, became Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), releasedsolowork on Oral and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on Dim Coast, and pursuedmyriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. Relocating toTreaty 6/Saskatoon the year before pandemic,All The Things That Happenis Bates' mostrecent purposive and purely 'recorded' work.Thanks for listening.

Chicago-based contemporary electronic musician Steve Hauschildt has composed panoramas of synthesized sound for over a decade. First within his former band, Emeralds, an American touchstone of 2000s home-recorded psychedelic noise music, and later across a steady and critically-acclaimed stream of solo releases spanning ambient techno, arpeggiated electronica and post-kosmische styles utilizing synthesizers, computers, and digital processing. In 2018, he extended a collection of rich, visceral tracks titled Dissolvi, his first release on Ghostly International and his most collaborative work to date. Just a year later, Hauschildt returns with Nonlin, an album that's freer, leaner, and looser, both structurally and conceptually; less linear compared to its predecessor, but still captivating. Developed and recorded in several studios during and around the edges of tour - Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Tbilisi, and Brussels - this material emulates an alienating encounter with a smattering of places, a replicant of culture shock, a solitary and stark experience with uncanny environments, melody and dissonance as oblique locales. Nonlin finds Hauschildt evolving his palette of tools, integrating modular and granular synthesis. The improvisatory and generative nature of modular systems, when paired with his signature grid-oriented and hand-played techniques, guides these compositions slightly out of line to hypnotic effect. Opener "Cloudloss" permeates the mix with an unsettling smog, which reappears and all but engulfs "A Planet Left Behind." On cuts like "Attractor B" and "Subtractive Skies," pockets of air rest between sequenced pulses, whose crumpling and flattening folds build into a restrained rapture of crisp frequencies and milky reverb-swallowed coruscations. The album's title track and centerpiece logs on to a foreign network, a fractured percussion signal that modulates and stutters into static amidst curious melodic sparkling in the hazy bandwidth. "Reverse Culture Music" casts an elegant and brooding stream of strings, pizzicato and churning bow from Chicago cellist Lia Kohl, against chiming minimalist synth frameworks. A surprising pattern emerges in the taciturn systems at work. Hauschildt continues to expand his already horizon-wide repertoire, here exploring the effects of corrupting coordinates; a flight subject to the collapsable abilities of time in remote spaces, a smearing of the axis to elegiac ends.

REMASTERED

Heavyweight double gatefold vinyl with remastered audio and new and updated artwork reworked by the designer of the original sleeves.

Steve Jansen, the co-founder of new wave legends Japan and bona fide collaboration multi-hyphenate, is reissuing his first two solo studio albums: Slope and Tender Extinction.

But how to accurately parse Steve Jansen’s path through music? It’s a journey that’s taken him from 80s royalty as what The Guardian calls “a key component” of one of the UK’s premier new wave acts, releasing classic records like Tin Drum and Quiet Life, to a renowned collaborator, working with artists as diverse as Ryuchi Sakamoto, Anja Garbarek, Annie Lennox, and, most recently, Maiya Hershey. His is a career of ever-changing styles and genres, from blissed-out electronica made with YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, to his work with jazz-rock group Nine Horses, to the heavy atmospheres of his transcendent Exit North project, and far, far, beyond.

Based on his consistently excellent creative output, it’s not surprising that he’s also had time to fit in a clutch of excellent solo albums. Although on first listens the music on Slope and Tender Extinction can seem austere and chilly, it certainly bears further listening. Songs that might seem impenetrable can shyly give up their secrets - a moment of tenderness, say, or soaring strings, or a wistful chord change. Slope, his debut, was described by The Observer upon its release in 2007 as “unclassifiable”, a description that goes some way to detailing the album’s crystalline synthetic peaks, dusty analogue depths, and wide experimental sweep. To hear the icy IDM of ‘Grip’ rubbing up against the drone-led modern classical in ‘Sow The Salt’, and the strange sound experiments in ‘Gap of Cloud’ juxtaposed with the fractured emotion of ‘Playground Martyrs’ is to hear an artist capable of ploughing his own unique furrow through music.

REMASTERED

Material gathered from two of Steve Jansen's solo releases 'The Extinct Suite' and ‘Corridor’. Limited Edition 2 x Black 180g Vinyl (500
copies only pressed, Cargo only have 200 of those). 'The Extinct Suite’ - The third solo album release from Steve Jansen. A
reinterpretation of the more ambient and orchestral elements of ‘Tender Extinction’ (Jansen’s second solo album). Not a remix by any
means, some familiar passages are woven together with additional pieces to create a suite of instrumentals lasting over 55 minutes as
one single track split over Sides A & B of this 2LP album. // ‘Corridor' - A slowly evolving instrumental piece designed for playback in a
gallery space with uncontrolled acoustics and no sound insulation. Avoiding percussive and complicated bass content this audio is
designed to float in a live space at low level volume allowing sonic variations to subtly stimulate the ambience. Original installation at
the Cape Breton University Art Gallery, Canada to accompany a photo exhibition titled 'Through A Quiet Window' by Steve Jansen May
11 to July 6, 2018. Split over Sides C & D of this 2LP album. Steve Jansen - Piano, Synths, Guitar, Drums, Sampled Instruments,
String Arrangements, Sound Design. The Extinct Suit Additional Contributors: Melentini Toila – Trumpet Seigen Tokuzawa – Cello,
Thomas, Feiner - Background Vocals, Stelios Romaliadis – Flute, Giorgos Varoutas - Guitar Treatments, Charlie Storm - Additional
Sound Recording On ‘Corridor’. All Music Composed, Performed, Produced & Mixed By Steve Jansen Artwork By Anna Malina
Zemlianski Design By Carl Glover For Aleph Studio.

With nearly 25 years of solo recordings and releases to his credit, hermetic Californian Steven R. Smith goes back to the start with A Sketchbook Of Endings, the first solo release under his own name in eight years. Thids album continues Smith’s exploration of the intersection of moody post-punk and cinematic psychedelia, delivered in lysergic pop song-length spurts.

Brevity does nothing to sacrifice density or dynamics—Smith offers both in abundance across the album’s fifteen instrumentals. These songs are packed with all of the depth, intensity and nuance that have been trademarks of his music for so long. Despite appearing under his given name, A Sketchbook Of Endings includes traces of recent work, under guises such as Ulaan Khol, Ulaan Markhor and Ulaan Passerine, as well echoes of his forebearers Mick Harvey and Rowland S. Howard. This release is a highlight of Smith’s first quarter century of activities, a beacon of his rich and varied anti-career.

Instruments: electric guitar, analog synth, percussion, piano, organ, hurdy gurdy, spike fiddle

Mastered by Sean McCann / Artwork by Kuriyama Haruo

On Tomodachi, Hüwels gives us the best of his two worlds by combining his solo studio work with his collaborative efforts: “The starting point for this album was simple. I sent out a question to fellow musicians I deeply respect and whose work I especially like. I know all of them for some time, and they all have a significant influence on my work. I asked them to send me 'something', a sample, melody or fieldrecording I could use to create a new piece of music. This exchange of inspiration forced me to approach composing in a different way than I use to do, without abandoning my main gear (guitar and laptop). Slowly, I tried to make a consistent story from the different pieces I got. That's how the album was formed and how it got its final shape. I decided to call it ‘Tomodachi’, Japanese for ‘friend(s)’. That's the only thing I can say about the album: it's about friendship and music”.

"Stijn's invitation to contribute to his new album came at the moment when I was seeking closure to my ambient story. One I began in 1988 after my early industrial period and which transformed over the years, from the synth-based vidnaObmana to my guitar-orientated albums under my own name. EPITAPH became my last chapter and it was around that time I also recorded my source for Stijn. Very fond of what I recorded and especially what Stijn did with it. Respectfully but also enriching it with his own style of ambience makes it one of my favorite collaborative pieces. Proud to be part of this fantastic new album while feeling comfortable with the fact that a new generation stood up to represent the ambient field. Ambient is what we need in life to reflect, chill and live with. TOMODACHI is a pearl." (Dirk Serries)

"Idea. Project. Question. Contemplating. Answer. Contribution. Develop. Record. Copy. Paste. Variation. Particles. Transmit. Pause. Composition. Exchange. Details. Information. Release. Thank you!" (Ralph Steinbrüchel)

List of collaborators (in order of appearance on the album):

Heine Christensen / Ghost and Tape (Home Normal, Slaapwel)
Ralph Steinbrüchel (12k, Slaapwel)
Sylvain Chauveau (Flau, FatCat, Brocoli)
Yves De Mey (Line, Opal Tapes)
Yukitomo Hamasaki (mAtter)
Christoph Berg (Flau, Sonic Pieces)
Patrick Stevens / Hypnoskull (Ant Zen)
Dirk Serries (Consouling, Midira Records, Tonefloat, New Wave of Jazz)
Tomoyoshi Date (12k, Home Normal, Baskaru)
Ciro Berenguer (Dauw, Eilean Records)

The long running vessel for Cameron Stallones' psychedelic excursions, Sun Araw, returns to Discrepant after last year's split with Tarzana via Keroxen sister label (KRXN033).
Without much precedent in his own - already wide-ranging - back-catalog, 'Cetacean  Sensation' discards the dubby vibes, psych-rock sunburnt jams, tropical visions, or stalking sensibilities of such classic efforts as 'On Patrol' or 'Ancient Romans' towards a deeply focused and vivid solitary approach, while still retaining this Sun Araw blissed out escapist feeling.
Composed of hydrophone recordings of whales and dolphins sourced during a summer in Galicia, 'Cetacean Sensation' paints an impressionistic and sensory floating canvas that expertly escapes both academic-like documentarian purposes and any new-age spa vibrations one could associate with such subject matter. Processing those raw recordings into alluring collages that flow gracefully between moments of clear eco-location  and submerged impressions of wildlife social dynamics. By the third track - Dance of the Minke - we're introduced to this ringing MIDI tone that evokes a CD-ROM era of mystic educational programs and click-and-deploy strategies  that still feel very much like an unfulfilled future, conjured again by 'Spider Crab Elegy's sparse keyboard pads and sound effects that give way to this properly elegiac tentative melody. 'The Spider Crab Point' ends the album on a more uneasy vibe, with synth tones pointing towards no particular direction, confounding and strangely inviting at the same time. As sensations often do.
Music written and produced by Cameron Stallones using hydrophones and digital synthesisRecorded in 2019 in Galicia, ES
Mastering by Rashad Becker

Sunik Kim is a New York City-based Korean-American artist and saxophonist exploring the idea of a "New Korean Music."

After some time focusing on his education, Kim is re-emerging in 2019 with the debut album under his birth name. Zero Chime, Kim's new work merges Korean 시나위 exorcism, blinding free jazz in the vein of Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, sculptural computer music and mid-90s jungle in order to create an entirely new kind of rolling "energy music" that embodies a shamanic Korean spirit. Kim's work is grounded in a radical Korean politics, striving to convey as physically as possible Korea's largely disregarded—and ongoing—history of being oppressed, colonised and divided by imperialist powers.

Koreans have a specific word burdened with this history—"han"—briefly defined as "a feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered...a feeling of acute pain in one's guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge."

Kim's work is a sound-weapon aimed at the West, made of and embodying "han" in as true a sense as possible, a shamanic Korean colony-musik exorcising the ghosts of historical subjugation—and a brand new start.

Sunking is the experimental sights and sounds of Seattle natives Bobby Granfelt & Antoine Martel, an outlet for the duo whose music is "steeped in funk, fusion, and the dreamier end of the rock spectrum," said Seattle"s The Stranger. The Stranger also went on to say that "this city needs more groups like sunking, who flit among genres such as hip-hop, jazz, and shoegaze rock while messing with the DNAs of each style they address." Both Granfelt and Martel are also members of High Pulp, a jazz collective that draws influences from punk rock, shoegaze, hip-hop, and electronic music. Also signed to ANTI-, their album "Pursuit of Ends" came out in April of this year. "High Pulp blend old-school bebop with contemporary soul and electronica vibes, as though someone convinced the ghost of Duke Ellington to reinterpret a Chemical Brothers album," said the A.V. Club.

Suns of Arqa is a sonic mission created by luminary Michael Wadada, who began in 1979 after receiving higher guidance in Jamaica while working with roots reggae chanter Prince Far-I. It is a prolific traveling music collective that has seen over 200 collaborators, meant to connect people from all cultures and walks of life through a "deeply spiritual vibration that merges cultures, faiths and musical genres". Wadada combines ancient Hindustani raga systems with Piobaireachd and Nyabinghi roots drumming, creating ritualistic world music infused with dub and reggae. The lyrics combine both mystical and sensory elements, often including prayer and referencing a higher power but finding root in experiences common to all people- memory, sight, and physical sensation. Their first album, Revenge of the Mozabites, was a collaboration between Wadada and On-U Sound creator Adrian Sherwood. Following its 1980 release, Peter Gabriel invited them to perform at the first WOMAD festival. Today, the record is regarded by some as a cult classic.

Sunwatchers are a New York-based ensemble (featuring current & former members of NYMPH, Dark Meat, Chris Forsyth's Solar Motel Band & Arthur Doyle's New Quiet Screamers) that blur the lines between avant-jazz, punk, psychedelia, Ethio-jazz and desert blues, creating joyous, chaotic, mystical elegies to modern sound. Their eponymous 2016 album was released on Castle Face Records in 2016, followed by their Trouble In Mind debut, "II" in 2018, and their third album "Illegal Moves" in 2019. Despite (perhaps) being the band's most accessible & melodic work to date, New York quartet Sunwatchers` fourth album arrives in a flurry of notes with the buzzing hum of Sunwatchers vs. Tooth Decay"; the title referencing a 1976 album featuring athlete and activist Muhammad Ali. A cheeky nod to be sure, but laced with the utmost reverence. This attitude sums up Sunwatchers' aesthetic in a nutshell; the acknowledgement (typically via the band's irreverent song titles or album art) that the things in life we should take seriously are better faced and understood when disarmed by a wink or nudge. The band may cloak their fiery activism in a jester 's outfit, but it does nothing to dull the force of their attack. The one-two punch of "Love Paste" & "Brown Ice" hits next, with the former 's tender opening melody punctuated by exuberant "WOO!"s while the latter launches into an urgent, stuttering march that utilizes an effective musical wind-up and release, ratcheting up a ferocious intensity across its near six minute runtime. "Thee Worm Store" closes out the first side, beginning with a lumbering synth growl, until it picks up speed and ends as a frantic noisy free-for-all. Side two strides forth with "The Conch", an obvious `Lord of The Flies' reference, and a delicious subversion of the idea of a "hero's anthem" weighted down by the trappings of tribalism. The album's showstopper however is "The Earthsized Thumb", the near twenty-minute closing track. Guitarist Jim McHugh lays down a hypnotic Saharan guitar melody as the rest of the band ushers themselves in one by one over the tune's distinct musical movements, a cosmic "Quick One" for all the heads perhaps? The album's title "Oh Yeah?" is at once an homage to Mingus, Thee Oh Sees' album "Help" (whose Brigid Dawson hand-sewed the tapestry adorning the album's front cover), and (naturally) the rallying cry of oolBrave himself - the Kool-Aid Man-as-Braveheart avatar the band adopted as their symbol.

RIYL Jenny Hval, Leonard Cohen, folk music field recordings. Come When The Raven Calls is the second album by Suzanne Langille and Neel Murgai after more than two decades performing together. Langille fuses the rawness of American spiritual blues with Murgai's trance-like percussion and multi-note vocal overtones. The duo are unmatched in their timeless approach to song, a structure they summon from a tinder of melody or thundering charge of the Persian daf. A lyricist as well as vocalist, Langille is devoted to the spoken word. She pulls the listener into a world of ecstatic sorrow and rage that leaves them transformed as a witness to survival. These nine songs are testimonies to death, sorrow and loss. Yet in "Bury Myself Where I Stand," a song written by Langille's sister, the late blues singer Laurette Langille, she summons defiance and freedom. Langille's first recordings were on a string of rare, self-released 1980s LPs with guitarist Loren Connors. Murgai is a multi-instrumental performer, composer and co-founder of the Brooklyn Raga Massive, a raga inspired musician's collective. Limited edition of 300 copies, includes lyric sheet. Also Available From Suzanne Langille & Neel Murgai: Wild & Foolish Heart LP.

Minority Records is releasing a unique boxset Politique du silence with three early albums from Sylvain Chauveau, French composer of minimalist neoclassical music.
“When I made my first albums as a composer, I was obsessed with minimalism, and this quote from the film director Robert Bresson summed up my state of mind. I set myself three principles: 1) Use silence as a starting point, 2) Only add sound when it's absolutely essential, 3) Don't imitate the Anglo-Saxon musicians I admired, but draw on the musical culture of my country, France which lead me to listen intensively to Satie, Debussy and Ravel.” Chauveau explains the background to his work.

The collection Politique du silence contains the recordings of Des plumes dans la tête (2004), Un autre Décembre (2003) and Nocturne impalpable (2001) on coloured 180 gram vinyls. The cover features artwork by French photographer Valéry Lorenzo.

“When I discovered the simple and powerful black and white pictures by Valéry Lorenzo, in the 90s, I immediately fell in love with them. We became good friends and since then I ask him to let me use one of his photos for most of my album covers, or to make my portrait for press shots. It has become a real collaboration, music and images, for more than 25 years. It was then logical to ask him again for the cover of this boxset, like a gentle reflection on my piano and strings era. It's a true honour for me to see my early music recollected, repackaged, remastered after all this time. Which gives me hope that this music, in which I've put all my soul and heart during the years 2001 to 2003, is maybe not forgotten yet.” Chauveau himself adds of his collaboration with Valéry Lorenzo.
Nocturne impalpable and Un autre Décembre were re-issued by Minority Records in 2014 and 2015 and both titles completely sold out. This year’s release also includes the album Des plumes dans la tête in its world premiere on vinyl.

Nocturne Impalpable is a world of minimalism, abstraction, and contemporary rendition of classical music with variations for the piano, clarinet, strings, and accordion which are often compared to the compositions of composers Harold Budd and Claude Debussy. Here, Chauveau partially reveals his versatility as a composer by connecting electronic elements, noises, and ambient planes with monumental strings and piano preludes. The
album of piano variations Un autre Décembre is interspersed with field recordings and electronic noises. The inspiration for the recording of the album and for its name was the song Jaurès by the Belgian singer and composer Jacques Brel. This song tells the story of the grandparents’ generation who toiled in the mines. “Comfort and health won’t protect our generation from sadness and discontent. We also live through winter times, even if these are slightly warmer due to the current climate.” An album of 20 short instrumental sketches with several delicate intermezzos for the piano, string quartet, and the clarinet, Des plumes dans la tête, was composed for the eponymous film by director Thomas de Thier.
Sylvain Chauveau was born in 1971 in the French town of Bayonne and currently lives in Barcelona. His extensive discography of mainly meditative neo-classical recordings for the music labels FatCat, Sub Rosa, Sonic Pieces, and Flau is enriched by several collaborations and his participation in the Ensemble 0, Arca, and On projects. Chauveau has also composed many film soundtracks as well as music for the theatre. He has presented his works in Prague several times, most recently in the spring of 2024 at the Spectaculare festival. His compositions get tens of millions of streams on streaming services, and he’s been called the French king of minimalism.

Available from Blank Forms for the first time since its original 1980 release on ALM-Uranoia, New Sense of Hearing documents a collaboration between Takehisa Kosugi and Akio Suzuki, two luminaries of Japanese experimental music in the lineage of Fluxus. Blank Forms's high-quality reissue of the sought-after, long out of print LP, is produced by musician-artist Aki Onda and mastered from the original tapes recorded on April 2, 1979, at Tokyo's Aeolian Hall. Described by Suzuki as the "culmination" of their sound,New Sense of Hearing features the two musicians improvising together in that empty Tokyo theater, Kosugi on vocals, violin, and radio transmitter and Suzuki on the Analapos, his namesake glass harmonica, spring cong, and kikkokikiriki, all apparatuses of his own invention. Suzuki and Kosugi first met at the city's Minami Gallery in 1976 on the occasion of "Sound Objects and Sound Tools," an exhibition of Suzuki's homemade instruments. Two years later, at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, Suzuki invited Kosugi to join him for a suite of performances as part of the exhibition "MA: Espace - Temps au Japon," organized by architect Arata Isozaki and composer-writer Toru Takemitsu. Suzuki and Kosugi performed together at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, nearly fifty times, honing their approach to mutual improvisation, before traveling with the exhibition to Stockholm and New York_critic Tom Johnson wrote in the Village Voice that he had "seldom seen two performers so completely tuned in on the same types of sounds, the same performance attitude, the same philosophy, the same sense of what music ought to be."For New Sense of Hearing, the duo reunited in Japan and produced an extraordinary dispatch from their collaboration of arioso violin, echoing vocals and bangs, and metallic twangs. As Johnson observed in 1979, Kosugi and Suzuki are "in a very subtle artistic world where there can be no direct relationships. . . . Only coincidence." Takehisa Kosugi (1938-2018) was a composer, artist, and violinist from Tokyo. In 1960, Kosugi founded Group Ongaku, the country's first improvisational performance collective dedicated to Happenings, with Mieko Shiomi and Yasunao Tone. Four years later, Fluxus leader George Maciunas published Events, an eighteen-piece set of his text compositions. Between 1971 and '74, his band the Taj Mahal Travelers produced four live albums. In 1977, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company invited Kosugi to be their resident musician; from 1995 to 2011 he served as the company's musical director. The Whitney Museum of American Art presented "Takehisa Kosugi: Music Expanded," a two-day retrospective of Kosugi's work, in 2015. Akio Suzuki (b. 1941) was born in Pyongyang, North Korea, to Japanese parents. For the artist-musician's first Fluxus-style work Kaidan ni Mono wo Nageru (Throwing Things at the Stairs), 1963, Suzuki tossed a bucket of miscellaneous objects down a flight of stairs in Nagoya Station and listened to the sounds it produced. During the next decade, he would create original instruments including the Suzuki-type glass harmonica and the echo instrument Analapos. In 1976, Tokyo's Minami gallery hosted his first exhibition, "Akio Suzuki's World: Sound Objects and Sound Tools." For his 1988 performance piece Space in the Sun, Suzuki spent twenty-four hours listening to his surroundings on the meridian line which runs through Amino, Kyoto. Suzuki has performed and exhibited at many venues and music festivals, including Documenta 8 (Germany, 1987), the British Museum (2003), Musée Zadkine (France, 2004), Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany, 2018), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2019).

Acquiesce, Natalie Chami’s newest album as TALsounds, was recorded at home as improvised sessions; the album a fluid extrapolation of her thoughts, worries, and stresses, that were later trimmed down and reformatted into songs. Over the years, she’s honed her skills onstage, particularly her ability to block out what’s happening around her to instead focus on her subconscious, letting it guide where she steers each song. Performed entirely by Chami and
produced by Cooper Crain (Bitchin’ Bajas, Cave), the album is full of entrancing moments, be it the trumpet-like call in ‘Muted Decision,’ the typewriter beat of ‘Instance,’ the flickering vocals in ‘Else,’ or the alien-like glitching of ‘Dynasty.’ TALsounds has made a name for herself within Chicago’s DIY electronic scene for her innate sense of feeling, flow, and fascination. With Acquiesce, she demonstrates not just how hypnotic her music is or how stirring her vocal range is,
but how these two combine naturally for her as an improvisational artist ‘ and she’s poised to break out nationally because of that.

1989 soundtrack album Destination Berlin by Tangerine Dream was composed to support the 360° movie by the same name. The movie was shown at the premier of the Imagine 360 theater in West Berlin. All the tracks are jaunty, bouncy pieces of cheery pop music with not a heavy thought in sight. After a few spins the strength of the melodies shines through and the album becomes more and more enjoyable.

Destination Berlin is available as a limited edition of 1000 individually numbered copies on transparent blue vinyl.