Techno News

Markus Guentner returns to his longstanding label, A Strangely Isolated Place following the triptych of ‘Theia’, ‘Empire’, and ‘Extropy’, presenting eight inspiring collaborations on ‘Kontrapunkt’.

Collaborations are nothing new to Markus, but it’s hard to see beyond his strong singular presence as a pioneer of long-form ambient and drone. Collabs have punctuated his albums in various places over the years, and he is no stranger to working as a duo amongst other projects, with such a strong conceptual thread throughout his prior ASIP releases, Kontrapunkt represents a literal pivot and counterpoint in his production approach. Instead of music encapsulating a strong conceptual narrative, Kontrapunkt sees Markus create a dialogue between himself and a collection of inspiring production partners.

Kontrapunkt opens with ‘Vanish’, a widescreen cinematic odyssey created in collaboration with fellow German and Affin label-head Joachim Spieth, forming the perfect opener with its modest subtleties. Australian-born Karen Vogt, renowned for her voice layering and looping, brings a beautiful, and natural addition to ‘All Light Will Remain’.

Sonae, who appeared on ASIP’s early digital releases, demonstrates her evolution into experimental flourishes with ‘Farbe Der Nacht’, adding pulsating techno tendencies and a menacing, metallic approach to Markus’ foundations. Multi-instrumentalist Pepo Galán harmonizes beautifully with Markus on ‘Ancestral Images’, adding complex nuances to a slowly evolving euphoric piece.
A master of synthesis, Arovane delivers a powerful display of supercharged electronics and coils of energy on ‘Utopian Fragments’. Benoît Pioulard's renowned expertise with guitars and tape distortion become a perfect counter to the electronics of Markus, blending styles seamlessly on ‘Father Of Waters’.

‘An unstoppable force meets an immovable object’ on ‘While Hunting Nightmares And Dreaming For Peace’, as Abul Mogard adds powerful restraint in a meeting of two drone titans. The album concludes with ‘Presence’, where Hollie Kenniff’s uplifting vocals provide a shimmering finish, perfectly bookending an album of perfected counterpoints and evolutions on the Markus Guentner sound.
Kontrapunkt will be available on Gatefold Black/Grey/Blue marble 2LP, digital and streaming on August 30th 2024. Mastered by Gio at Artefacts Mastering, Berlin, and featuring artwork by Noah M / Keep Adding.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

In spring 2025, Abul Mogard and Rafael Anton Irisarri created the source material for their second album, Where Light Pauses in the Silence of the Sun, during a three-day residency at Morphine Raum in Berlin. Functioning as both recording studio and performance venue, the space has no stage, with the audience gathered around the performers. Working within an open framework, the duo reshaped the music each evening while recording the performances live to multitrack. Rotary speakers, modular synthesizers and bowed guitar formed the core of their sonic language, captured through a 1970s mixing console and microphones placed around the room.

Back in Mogard’s studio in Rome, the material was further crafted as motifs were stretched, fragments isolated, and tempos dissolved. Irisarri recorded additional guitar textures and treatments in New York, while passages recorded by Martina Bertoni and Andrea Burelli in Berlin reinforced the harmonic centres and brought breath, refinement and a new sensibility to their compositions. The process continued as Mogard’s layering and subtraction reassembled everyone’s parts into the final arrangement.

The album opens with “In the Eastern Wild,” building from a sparse outline into a monumental formation of low-frequency weight, its internal motion shaped by the rotating Leslie speaker. “Over the Domes” widens into a broader acoustic field, where sustained modular tones meet waves of softly plucked guitar. The music then turns inward with “A Blue Descent,” centred on Bertoni’s cello, whose growling timbre introduces a melancholic depth.

At the album’s centre, “In a Quiet Radiance” unfolds around a slow guitar ostinato, its luminous stillness opening into a more expansive and reflective state. Across its ten-minute span, Burelli’s violin lines and Bertoni’s lower cello phrases gradually surface, weaving through the harmonic field. Mogard brings Burelli’s processed voice to the fore, its emotive, operatic presence becoming one of the record’s pivotal moments. “Of Blessed Ages” suspends the sonic flow, shifting between parallel major and minor chords as lingering, slowly decaying melodies shape the music’s internal drift. The closing “Among Shadows” settles into a darker resonance as layered textures recede.

Mogard and Irisarri’s shared language balances restraint and maximalism. UK magazine Crack describes the music as “a tidal wave held in suspension,” while Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant writes, “What a colossal sound, and how this music strikes at the emotions.” Reflecting on the residency sessions, Irisarri recalls: “At moments I genuinely couldn’t tell if a sound was coming from me or from Abul. It stopped feeling like two people making decisions and began to feel like we were inside a system moving on its own."

Marja de Sanctis’ cover artwork revisits the vessel sculpture from the duo’s first album, Impossibly Distant, Impossibly Close. There it appeared as raw, unfired clay. Here it has been fired in the kiln and finished with a glaze. Light gathers on its polished surface and spills into the surrounding space. As she explains, “I wanted to convey the idea of continuity within the duo, and the vessel became a kind of container for that idea. However, their music felt different this time, and with the collaboration of Martina and Andrea, I felt it should have a sleeker, softer, more glamorous look, very distant from the first raw appearance.” The transformation of the vessel from raw clay to fired form suggests a passage from immediacy toward permanence, mirroring the music’s gradual expansion.

Geoglyph is the new duo project by Alohn and Khey Mysterio, a convergence of two deeply singular practices into a single subterranean signal. Their debut album arrives as the eighth reference on Organic Signs, not as a collection of tracks but as a carved artifact: six inscriptions pressed into vinyl, mapping a sonic territory where time, rhythm and texture are no longer linear, but layered like geological memory.

Through Geoglyph, Alohn and Khey Mysterio convey a message from below, or beyond. A pulse engraved from forgotten times in the basement of reality, reactivated by abyssal basses, vibrating layers and fractured textures. Exhumed from the subterranean strata where psychedelic dub, mineral techno and fractal dubstep fuse into raw energy, their music becomes a point of contact: every beat, every silence, every oscillation acting as a coordinate toward another perception. What unfolds is not simply sound design, but an invocation, rhythms as sigils, timbre as gnosis, signals that seem to arrive already charged with intention.

Across the album, Alohn’s guitar notes fall like cascades through the mix, dissolving at times into controlled feedback and crystallizing into melodic fragments that hover between tension and release. These organic gestures are interwoven with Khey Mysterio’s dense low-end architectures and rhythmic frameworks, creating a constantly shifting terrain: from weightless transmissions and ritualistic voices to moments of overwhelming propulsion where the music suddenly breaks open with tectonic force. The record moves fluidly between meditative suspension and explosive motion, never settling into a single state for long.

A strong undercurrent of what has come to be known as “druidstep” runs through the album, a term coined within the 95 Open Tabs universe to describe a form of dubstep untethered from genre convention, rooted instead in bass as ritual, in groove as invocation. Here it meets dub-techno pulse, psychedelic echoes and high-velocity 4×4 pressure, drawing subtle influence from underground bass cultures without ever becoming referential. The result is a body of work that feels both ancient and forward-leaning, cyclical rather than linear: a living geoglyph that reveals different meanings depending on how (and where) it is read.

As the final movement accelerates into its closing phase, the album releases its energy outward, with frequencies stretched toward their limits, leaving behind the trace of a completed ceremony. In this sense, Geoglyph’s debut stands as a defining moment within the Organic Signs continuum: a record that unfolds rather than explains, offering an experience to be entered, absorbed, and carried. With this release, the label continues to explore new sonic spaces, evolving and expanding while giving deeper meaning to its own essence. A message from beneath the surface, waiting for those willing to tune in.

Más de este género

After several years of showcasing talent and craftsmanship through its podcast series, Forsvarlig Arkiv announces the first release of original music under their label.

Accompanied by a full-blown artwork, 'Arkiv I' presents four crisp tracks on wax by artists that left a mark on the channel in the past, while simultaneously excelling through their productions.

180g
Repress

Supported by Deepbass, Svreca, Pris, A Sacred Geometry, Amandra, Etapp Kyle, Takaaki Itoh and Abstract Division to name a few.

The Hypnus clergy is proud to present the 6th solo record by Feral. 'Ultraviolet Radiation' throws us head first into a sound that's been brooding for a time and now finally started to blossom, revealing the massive potential of this gifted producer. Those who heard his contribution to our latest Various Adepts record or have managed to catch one of his mind-bending live performances will recognize his uniquely psychedelic deep techno sound.

Marked by an awakened sense of depth, Feral consistently carries a thread of spirituality throughout his work. Embodying the sound of deep techno through his passion for audio engineering, hardware experimentation and fascination for percussive instruments, as well as an affinity for the shamanic becomes apparent when we swirl in tribal timbres and rhythms.

Finding comfort in the solitude of his studio; the sounds of Feral unearth the path of his multidimensional world, transporting the listener to a haunting, yet grounding refuge within.

Hild unites US sound sculptor zake and UK-based rhubiqs in a transatlantic collaboration steeped in plenty of their signature patience and emotional gravity. Across four slow-burning movements, deep drones, hushed piano lines and glacial textures unfold with cinematic allure as vastness and intimacy coexist. Rooted in both artists' post-rock backgrounds, this record feels less composed than discovered, as if each passage emerges organically from silence. There is plenty of fragile beauty in the stillness and looming sense of loss, so this is the sort of record that has a profound effect despite its knowing restraint.

Deep drone techno floating perpetually through the galaxies.

2026 Repress

The clergy is pleased to introduce you to a new initiate: Birds ov Paradise. This highly anticipated Hypnus debut comes split into three separate EP's which will be released one each full moon starting October.

Some of you may be acquainted with the music of Birds ov Paradise already as he's put out two stellar records on Jens and Aniara Recordings in 2016-2017, as well as making a contribution to our podcast series The Memoir where his sound was put on a grand display. Those of you who are new to the fantastic dream world of this very talented artist will quickly get lost in the flowing rhythms that drives his magical deep techno sound.

Early support from Etapp Kyle, Ness, Slam, Iori, Refracted, Svreca, Cio D'Or and Dorisburg to name a few.

We hope that you enjoy the trip into the Bayou.

Deaf Center travel through quiet pathways and grand boulevards in their fourth studio album “Through Time”.

Since their last full-length LP, “Low Distance” (2019), the duo has gradually shifted towards a more long-form electroacoustic sound which perhaps makes for their most immersive listening experience so far. Otto A Totland’s piano travels in less frequent rhythms than before, yet is felt even more as a relief in the quieter moments that contrast with Erik K Skodvin’s deep atmospheric worlds. There’s a searching quality within the record which feels like slow movements on the way towards something meaningful, capturing a sense of both peace and awe.

The latter part of the album takes a different turn: fluctuating electronic rhythms over deep strings create an ecstatic yet haunting duality. It is the first time a guest musician appears on a Deaf Center record: British composer and musician Simon Goff joins with violin and viola in the finale, “Further”, a hypnotising piece submerged in layers of strings and drones.

The subject of time is an ambitious one, yet Deaf Center manage to balance the humble with the grand in great warmth as seconds become minutes, hours become days and time seemingly freezes as a still-life moment.

Deaf Center travel through quiet pathways and grand boulevards in their fourth studio album “Through Time”.

Since their last full-length LP, “Low Distance” (2019), the duo has gradually shifted towards a more long-form electroacoustic sound which perhaps makes for their most immersive listening experience so far. Otto A Totland’s piano travels in less frequent rhythms than before, yet is felt even more as a relief in the quieter moments that contrast with Erik K Skodvin’s deep atmospheric worlds. There’s a searching quality within the record which feels like slow movements on the way towards something meaningful, capturing a sense of both peace and awe.

The latter part of the album takes a different turn: fluctuating electronic rhythms over deep strings create an ecstatic yet haunting duality. It is the first time a guest musician appears on a Deaf Center record: British composer and musician Simon Goff joins with violin and viola in the finale, “Further”, a hypnotising piece submerged in layers of strings and drones.

The subject of time is an ambitious one, yet Deaf Center manage to balance the humble with the grand in great warmth as seconds become minutes, hours become days and time seemingly freezes as a still-life moment.

Dennis Huddleston is 36, a prolific ambient producer who releases albums on a prolific basis but never lets the quality levels dip. He often roams around different labels and for this one lands on Pure Life with six more sublime and subversive sounds. 'Pre-Dream Condition' is a slow awakening that sharpens your senses then 'Manual Dream Transmission' continues the heavenly ascent with lush arps shimmering across an infinite horizon. 'A Bright & Tranquil Light' is soft focus and beautiful and 'Night Language' brings sharper melodic focus with 80s nostalgia ripping through the keys. Two more long-form and unhurried but dense ambient soundscapes close out a pure escape.

This album is not just a homage — it’s a gentle act of remembrance. A way of tuning in to what Lucier showed us: that listening is an art in itself. A meditation on resonance, memory, and the quiet power of pure sound. Or to quote Alvin Lucier himself: “I guess I’m trying to help people hold shells up to their ears, and listen to the ocean again.”

The influence of Alvin Lucier’s work on acoustic phenomena and the interplay between sound and space is difficult to overstate. His legacy continues to echo through the work of countless composers and sound artists today. Lucier’s music is marked by a sense of childlike wonder and sonic simplicity - shifting our perception from what we hear to how we listen.

At the heart of his compositions lies the sine wave: the purest, most elemental form of sound. Clarinetist Dries Tack pays tribute to this master of minimalism with an album centered around two works Lucier composed as intimate ‘In Memoriams’ for friends. Both pieces explore a single, elegant idea: the interaction between an instrumental tone and a sine wave.

Out of that interaction, ‘beatings’ emerge — a pulsating rhythm that accelerates or decelerates as the waves draw nearer or drift apart. Though built on the same concept, the two works are like mirrored reflections of one another: In Memoriam Jon Higgins, the sine wave glides in a slow glissando while the clarinet holds steady tones. In Memoriam Stuart Marshall, it’s the clarinet that dances around a fixed sine wave.

Dries Tack is a clarinetist specializing in contemporary performance practices. He performs with ensembles such as Nadar Ensemble, Curious Chamber Players, and Ensemble Fractales. As co-artistic director of the GLoW Collective, he explores collaborative practices across artistic disciplines in the broadest sense. In addition to his ensemble work, Dries curates solo projects that offer fresh perspectives on existing repertoire or give rise to entirely new works at the intersection of composition and improvisation.

Shaped from fragile, emotionally charged piano motifs that distort, disappear and transform into dense, cinematic textures, 'CANALS' is a debut that's finely matured, the result of years of friendship and growth. Italian artist Vanja Sturno and Montréal-based Belgian-Spanish composer Pablo Geeraert (aka Sanea Ima) have worked together extensively on various projects up until now, but 'CANALS' is their first official release as a duo. Having both studied music academically, the pair were eager to work more intuitively, so applied their well-honed set of skills to sound that, instead of fitting into a conceptual box, reflected more personal experiences.

Back in 2023, Geeraert travelled to Rome to support his friend at a difficult time and, during the trip, received some bad news of his own. The complicated feelings unconsciously surged through a series of delicate Ryuichi Sakamoto-inspired piano improvisations and a new project began to coalesce. They didn't realize it at the time, but once the record was finished, Sturno and Geeraert began to understand that the entire process had been a form a joint catharsis - a release of pressure. They were able to function so effortlessly and swiftly because they had already provided the space for each other to resonate emotionally and the music flowed from that point.

So the album's title, while remaining ambiguous, suggests its formation: a sequence of eight interconnected channels that feed a creative whole. On the first segment, Sturno and Geeraert's initial recordings can be perceived most nakedly, the melancholy, Satie-like phrases floating peacefully for a moment before the tranquility is agitated by stormy distortions and swelled into thick waves of harmony. The piano provides the record with its emotional anchor, offering focus and clarity as multi-dimensional noise wells up around it before inevitably dissipating, leaving gentle, unadorned sounds once again.

And the familiar instrument is reshaped into a wheezing artificial organ on the animated 'CANALS III', punctuated by percussive, tape-warped pitch fluctuations that seem to bite into its very essence. Gauzy acoustic granulations snowball into a powerful, bass-heavy crescendo on the fourth part, setting the tenor for the album's second half. But after the crushing 'CANALS VI', possibly Sturno and Geeraert's heaviest track, a brief tremolo-heavy vignette that ripples through experimental rock and ambient music's braided history, the duo clear the air with a jazzy diversion, introducing soft woodwind blasts as a palate cleanser before an epic, widescreen finale.

It's an album that's best absorbed as a whole, a vortex of ritualistic, rhythmic repetitions that Sturno and Geeraert appropriately refer to as "spiral listening".

2025 Repress

Forest Drive West returns to Livity Sound with the 'Dualism' EP, a tour de force of stripped dub aesthetics and swirling psychedelic rhythms.

One of the finest breakthrough UK producers of recent years, in a short space of time Forest Drive West has created an enviable catalogue across labels such as Livity Sound, Rupture, Echocord, Whities and Mantis. This new EP marks some of his best work to date.

The final track on the EP, 'Scorpion', features Melbourne based percussionist Lucky Pereira whose frenetic but tightly locked drums add a fizzing energy to Forest Drive West's deep atmospheric rhythm track.

Livity Sound is a label set up by Peverelist in 2011 as a vehicle for a raw and exploratory strain of UK techno, rooted in the heritage of UK dance music and sound system culture. It has since become one of the UK's foremost protagonists for cutting edge underground electronic music.

Oceanine, Jolanda Moletta’s third album and her first for Beacon Sound, is a powerful and ethereal statement of artistic community. Expanding on her previous work, each track represents a collaboration with a different female vocalist, with the foundational elements being generated entirely by her own voice. By turns haunting, enchanting, and inspiring, you won’t want to come up for air once you’ve been pulled under. Representing a
musical practice that is distinctly feminist, this is an album with a longer view in mind, to an age when the altars were to goddesses and women were centered as powerful beings representing the earth’s cycles of regeneration and renewal. Oceanine then, in all its beauty, can be viewed as an album of survival. It is deeply transportive, accessing something that lies within all of us. As the late, great Lithuanian folklorist and archaeologist Marija Gimbutas noted, “We must refocus our collective memory. The necessity for this has never been greater as we discover that the path of 'progress' is extinguishing the very conditions for life on earth.”

Jolanda Moletta is a multimedia artist and one-woman electronic choir. She creates wordless compositions through extended vocal techniques, integrating wearable-controlled live processing, alongside symbolic visuals. Moletta considers her performances to be a collective ritual and creates her Sonic & Visual Spells following the cycles of nature and the moon. Jolanda's 2022 critically acclaimed album Nine Spells was released on the Ambientologist label, followed by Night Caves on Whitelabrecs in 2025. Moletta’s artistic practice is a radical and spiritual journey through sound art, ritual, and the symbolic archaeology of the feminine.

Oceanine is inspired by sirens, water nymphs, and the timeless call of the sea. At its core lies Jolanda’s deep, lifelong connection to the Mediterranean Sea and to the ancient and modern myths and folklore that have emerged from its waters. Growing up by the Mar Ligure, Jolanda was surrounded by stories carried by salt, wind, and waves: legends of sirens, echoes of ancient voices, and the sea as both origin and oracle. This intimate relationship with the Mediterranean is not merely a backdrop, but a living source that shapes Oceanine’s emotional, symbolic, and sonic world.

Each track features a different female vocalist, creating a rich tapestry of voices, styles, and perspectives. This artistic choice not only broadens the album’s sonic palette, but also deepens its narrative core: celebrating the power, beauty, and mystique of feminine energy through myth, history, and sound.

The entire album is built exclusively from the human voice, processed and layered, yet always remaining voice, and nothing else. For each piece, Jolanda invited every vocalist involved to contribute a raw stem: a short, unedited melodic fragment of just a few seconds, inspired by the album’s themes. These intimate vocal seeds became the foundation of each track: the guest artists’ voices appear as brief, melodic stems, while the entire surrounding “orchestral” fabric is created solely from Jolanda’s own layered and processed voice. In this way, Jolanda’s voice becomes the Ocean itself, embracing, absorbing, and carrying the sirens’ calls within a vast, immersive soundscape. Every song is a unique expression of the feminine experience, revealing its depth, complexity, and emotional range, echoing the call of the sea and the many faces of the siren archetype.

The figure of the siren has transformed across centuries. In myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, sirens were hybrid beings, part woman, part bird, whose irresistible songs lured sailors to their doom. During the Middle Ages, the image shifted toward the half-woman, half-fish figure, often associated with temptation and danger. Historically, the voice of women has often been feared. Sirens were considered harbingers of misfortune not simply because they seduced or destroyed, but because they were powerful liminal beings.

In Ancient Greek, sirens functioned as psychopomps: figures who existed between worlds and guided souls, especially between life and death. Their songs were believed to carry forbidden knowledge, including prophetic insight and the ability to reveal truths about fate and the future. The danger of the sirens lay in what they revealed: knowledge that humans were not meant, or ready, to hear.

Oceanine confronts this legacy head-on. The voices heard throughout the album are not merely beautiful: they are dark and luminous, wild and enchanting, magical, soothing, dreamy, and at times fractured or distorted. They whisper, lament, beckon, and enchant. Like sirens, they skim the surface of the water and sink into its depths, hovering on the edge between tenderness and danger, vulnerability and power. They rise toward the sky, dissolve into mist, and return as echoes charged with raw, elemental emotion: voices that seduce, warn, mourn, and remember. They refuse to be reduced to decoration.

Alongside the album’s release in May, Oceanine will also unfold as a visual and performative work through a short art film. The film includes a live session recorded inside a sea cave facing the Mar Ligure, the very coastline where Jolanda spent her childhood, dreaming of sirens and listening to the sea as if it were speaking directly to her. This site-specific performance reconnects the music to its place of origin, allowing the voice to resonate within stone, water, and air, and transforming the cave into both a sanctuary and a threshold between myth and reality.

What if the sirens’ songs were considered dangerous because they carried another truth, an ancient truth long forgotten?

Oceanine embraces the idea that we are still deeply woven into myth. Though we may see ourselves as rational and modern beings, our world is saturated with ancient symbols and archetypes, often distorted, simplified, or stripped of their original meaning. And if those symbols are allowed to shift, if the mirror once held by the siren becomes an invitation to look beyond appearances and into what has been obscured, then we may finally uncover a deeper truth and reclaim the voice that was always ours.

Oceanine is not just an album. It is a reclamation, a spell, and a call from the depths.

Vivel is Alexander Eldefors’ second release under his own name. Built around eurorack and field recordings, many captured during still moments while traveling to visit family and friends. The album was created during a period of transition. It functions as an anchor in a time of change, representing a sense of home, safety, and stillness.

Alexander Eldefors is a producer, composer, and mixing engineer based in the countryside outside of Stockholm, Sweden. With a background as both a sound engineer and musician, he has spent years recording, mixing and playing in a wide range of bands and solo projects. In 2019, he consciously slowed down and returned to a more intimate and quiet musical expression, leading to the release of his debut album Bergen in 2020 under his own name. Bergen is the Swedish word for mountains and reflects the fact that Alexander grew up in the north of Sweden close to the mountains.

His music is minimalistic, melodic, and embracing, shaped by a deep connection to nature. Natural environments are a constant presence in his work, serving both as inspiration and as a sound source. Alongside this, he is drawn to the raw textures of everyday objects, working with foley sounds and field recordings. His arrangements unfold as organic sound collages, where elements blend freely and imperfections are preserved to maintain a natural, human feel.