Suche:mirrors

Compiled by Dead Man's Chest and drawing from some of the freshest talent in the contemporary jungle movement, Blunted Breaks Volume 01 aims to capture & document one of the most exciting musical resurgences of the era.

Blurring the lines between future & nostalgia, Blunted Breaks is intended as a true long-player, paying homage to the roots of jungle music & it's disparate & eclectic nature.

Lyra is DeWaltas fourth large solo-project and third full-length solo-album following Wander in 2012 (on Haunt), llumination in 2014 (on Meander) and Dark Matter in 2017 (on Amphia) besides - Residual' a collaboration-album with Mike Shannon.

The album consists of two individually available parts: a double LP (Lyra) with 6 tracks on Meander as well as a single LP (Lyra Pi) with 5 synth and ambient works. The Ambient-Part launches a new Meander Horizon Pi series-- a departure from Meander's well known dancefloor releases.

Lyra is by far DeWaltas most extensive and refined project to date. With 11 exclusive songs, a total running time of over 100 minutes - plus a collaboration with long time friend and Meander co-owner Fabian Geimer-Lorusso aka. Jupiter - it marks a new beginning of ambient and score-like modern electronic music works as well as the continuation of his inspired intellectual-emotional approach to dance music.

Lyra is a star-constellation in the northern hemisphere which is highest in the midnight sky in the early summer months. It contains one of the brightest stars in the sky - Vega. Many of the songs on this album were produced in these warm and gentle months during an inspirational creative time in Portugal.

In Greek mythology, Lyra represents the Lyre of Orpheus, Apollo's son. Made by Hermes from a tortoise-shell, it was given to Apollo who then passed it along to Orpheus. It is said to be the first music instrument ever made

Darker days are coming. BAR02 is a haunting and slightly dramatic winterproof ep. Zombies in Miami from Mexico created 2 tracks that would fit in a scary eighties movie. Haunted Strasse being the one that builds up, Mirrors representing the Climax. On the other side local act Pin Up Club created an 'out of your comfort zone' epic clubtrack which very accurately defines the word drama.

The neon lights that decorate a dive bar's window cast a vivid reflection in rainwater on the pavement outside, as steam rises from deep beneath the ground. A slow pan across the scene, past alleys cast in shadow, twilit corners & glass doorways streaked with the mist of humid bodies fuming inside: the camera catches the denizens of an unnamed city, studying faces heavy with secrets too sad to bear. Cut to the motorway. Sleek cars barrel through the night. Sirens moan. Engines rev. You're behind the wheel, over the edge as the credits roll.

This film does not exist — but the soundtrack does. Symmetry is Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker, & Themes For an Imaginary Film is their two-hour cinematic opus pokus, a sprawling score for a movie that screens only in your mind. A 'conceptual tangent between Glass Candy, Chromatics, Mirage, & Desire's more abstract sides,' as Jewel himself describes the project, Symmetry is a vigorous, electric, restless exploration of ideas on the bleeding edge of instrumental sound. Analog synthesizers roll and crest, drums collide, keys cascade clear & crystalline. These themes evoke the phantasmic images that inspired them: urgent and ethereal, sinister & romantic. It's a neo-noir epic of pink fog & femme fatales hidden behind rain drenched windshields after dark.

Produced By Johnny Jewel & Nat Walker

2nd Reissue
Fredfades & Ivan Ave's debut release
This time on black vinyl
300 copies
For fans of J Dilla, MNDSGN, Madlib, Yogisoul

Contains 17 tracks produced by Fredfades using the SP-1200 and MPC 2000XL. The A-side is all vocal tracks by the Norwegian lyrical genius Ivan Ave who is widely known for his projects with MNDSGN (Stones Throw). The B-side is a mesh of Fredfades instrumentals.

Black Truffle is honoured to present the first reissue of a true underground masterpiece, Massimo Toniutti's Il Museo Selvatico (The Wild Museum), originally self-released on LP in 1991. Like his better-known brother Giancarlo (whose classic 1985 Broken Flag LP La Mutazione was reissued by Black Truffle in 2015), Massimo Toniutti was active in the vibrant underground industrial/noise scene of the 1980s, contributing to releases on legendary labels such as Broken Flag and RRR and self-releasing a series of cassettes between 1984 and 1988. Existing in a private world apart from the noise and dark industrial tropes of many of his contemporaries, Toniutti's Il Museo Selvatico is an entirely singular work of domestic electro-acoustic exploration. Made up primarily of what Toniutti calls 'small and rare noises' or sonic 'knick-knacks' recorded between 1987 and 1990, the five pieces that make up the original LP usher us into a crepuscular space populated by mysterious traces of everyday life. Toniutti weaves a loose net of distant clanks, dull thuds, metallic resonance and skittering percussive sounds, allowing the sounds to breathe against a backdrop of near-silent atmosphere. Although the haunted ambience recalls the work of contemporaries like Organum, Toniutti generally steers clear of long tones and drones, preferring to arrange brief, sometimes staccato sonic objects into patters of repeating figures and isolated events whose overall compositional shape remains somehow ungraspable. Although glimpses of recognisable location recordings and instrumental sounds can occasionally be made out, for most of the record the sources of the sounds we hear remain teasingly mysterious, an abstracted memory of everyday actions and atmospheres. l Museo Selvatico is accompanied here by an additional LP of material recorded at the same time, composed especially for this reissue into two side-long suites that inhabit the same haunted space as the original LP while occasionally making use of more maximal compositional strategies. Black Truffle is pleased to return this overlooked masterwork to the world. Essential listening for fans of Organum, Nurse With Wound, Christoph Heemann, and the tradition of outsider musique concrète. Lovingly presented as a double LP in a lavish gatefold with printed inner sleeves featuring archival images and notes. Remastered and cut at D&M, Berlin

Originally released in 1993 by the Italian imprint Minus Habens Records, 'Concrete Jungle' is the second album by this seminal project of Dirk Ivens (The Klinik, Absolute Body Control). A work considered as groundbreaking by lot of fans of early 90s industrial, noise and EBM. There are few electro-pioneers that are still active and successful and Mr. Ivens is one of them, inspiring a lot of acts to follow in the past three decades.Concrete Jungle' is being released for the first time on vinyl in a limited/numbered edition of 700 copies. Double record including all the original tracks plus the 'Extended Play' EP (1994) and some songs from old compilations. Artwork based on the original design and presented on a deluxe gatefold sleeve with printed inner sleeves and numbered card.

* 15 brand new and exclusive cuts from some of their favourite producers, alongside another 13 tracks that have been the soundtrack to your clubbing experience their nights. If you have been to any of their nights in the last few months then you may well have heard these being road tested.

* Highlights include the Spectrasoul remix of LSB's 'Rollings Sideways' and the sublime Vanguard Project rework of BCee's 'Lost & Found'.
* Support from High Contrast, LTJ Bukem, Fabio, London Elektricity, Rockwell, Etherwood, Technimatic and a whole load more...

Repress

After last years slick selection for the series from MCDE, Young Marco steps up with a great set of obscurities. Top Tip!
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Born Marco Sterk, he certainly doesn't come from a standard DJ background. A former skate rat who grew up loving American post-hardcore and '90s hip-hop as much as early Warp Records, he's been affiliated over the years with Amsterdam institutions such as Rush Hour, Red Light Records (where you'll find him most weekdays!) and, of course, Dekmantel itself. Still, there's no question that he's always followed his own path, even during the years that playing his favorite records meant that he was occasionally clearing dancefloors.

Things are different these days, of course, as Sterk now regularly plays around the globe and has been widely hailed not just for his DJ talents, but also for his digging prowess and uncanny ability to pluck jams out of genres, eras and geographies that even veteran DJs will often ignore.

Still, Marco's entry in the Selectors series isn't some soulless collection of 'Holy Grail' rarities. 'Where's the fun in that' he explains. 'Anybody with an internet connection can check what flavor-of-the-month records are in demand.'

Just like the first Selectors compilation, this is not a mix CD, but a collection of hand-picked, unmixed tracks that Sterk has personally chosen from his own vinyl archives. Moreover, Marco has put together a collection of tracks that represent not only how he plays music, but also how he makes music himself. The songs here are melodic, electronic and bound together by a refreshing sense of naiveté. Nothing sounds overly calculated; the tunes here span several decades and include dollar-bin records, avant-garde records, club records and yes, a few things that collector types have likely been looking to get their hands on. It's not meant to be a grand statement, as Marco would rather provide an honest snapshot of his musical tastes and share a few of his favorite tracks and artists in the proc

Vintage Electronica aware smart leftfield House jams & Ambient interludes

Terror Danjah's second Hyperdub album is 'The Dark Crawler', a well-paced and much more upfront and energetic journey through his musical world than his debut 'Undeniable'. The album revolves around the 'Dark Crawler' theme, a blistering grime track that pops up several times, vocaled by MC's Riko Dan, Mayhem, Deadly and Saf One, and then lastly Trim and Kossie. That's not to say the album is one dimensional or relentless. It's subtley balanced with the 'Dark Crawler' thread of tracks allowing the album to spin off in a web of directions without losing any focus. It's a much more contained body of work, paced to keep the listeners interest. From the 'Dark Crawler' intro into the cartoonish horror soundtrack of 'Mirror's Edge', which tricks you into thinking its just any dubstep tune, before scattering into Terror's signature broken kicks and claps. 'Dark Gremlinz' featuring D.O.K. is a classic peak-era asymmetric grime instrumental. The album then drops down into the 130ish speed of 'Air Max 90' featuring Champion, which builds from a soca-like drum drill stretching the rhythm to the point of collapse with a wonky synth, before concluding on a driving baseline house 4/4. The first 'Dark Crawler' vocal is next, with a ferocious performance from veteran Roll Deep MC Riko Dan, who drops bloodthirsty threats at a breakneck pace. Next, the tempo drops down again to the drunk funk of 'Full Hundred', with criss cross claps and a rasping bassline breaking down into live drumming and tight trap door edits. Things speed up a little again with the intricate 8 bar funky of 'Rum Punch', a hard drum tattoo rolling out over a heavy detuned bassline and intense bleeps. On the second 'Dark Crawler', mic duties are shared by Birmingham MC's Mayhem , Deadly and Saf One. Their hard vocals contrast with lush styled R'n'B of 'You Make Me Feel' featuring Meleka. The album then rolls out into the galloping drums and smooth G-Funk synths of 'Baby Oil'. Trim and Kossie drop the final 'Dark Crawler' vocal, with Trim dropping deadpan threats contesting with Kossie's focussed hysteria. Next up 'Delicately', with Ruby Lee Rider, starts in slow motion R'n'B mood, sweet Rhodes chords drift and bubble up as the track doubles up into dreamy drum and bass with a fluttering tabla keeping the time, and Ruby's tender vocals tempering the pace and aggression. Overall, it's a brilliant exercise in breathless rhythmic arousal. 'Moschino', on the other hand is a darker, chunkier and grimier mirror image to 'Delicately', switching up into a ferocious metallic riffage, before the album closes on an outro of 'Dark Crawler' again. Form, function, energy and talent fuse perfectly over 'The Dark Crawler' s length. Enjoy the ride.

Parissior, moving between EBM, dark disco, indie dance and electronic music while blending analog and digital production.

The album brings together tracks that originally didn’t belong to previous EPs but eventually formed a coherent narrative exploring themes such as digital identity, illusion, authenticity and human imperfection.

From the sense of social pursuit in “The Chase”, to reflections on artificial validation in “True Connection” and “Smoke and Mirrors”, the record balances introspection with dancefloor energy.

The album also includes “Sintes Guarros” featuring Size M, and two additional digital-only tracks, expanding the project beyond the physical format.

Human Control ultimately works as a sonic map connecting machines, emotion and underground culture.

Peki Momés took hearts and ears by storm with her first 45 (Göç Mevsimi b/w Rüya) last autumn. Her dope outernational grooves and fresh singing style made it as far as Iggy Pop's show on BBC. Time for another double-sided single!

Yıldız is a Turkish cover of the beloved Marcos Valle tune Estrelar. Staying true to the spirit of the original, this version draws its energy from the bright stars, dreaming of meeting the stars up in the sky alongside the sun and moon. The production has been meticulously crafted, blending key elements of the original instrumentation with Peki Momés' distinct vocals in Turkish language.

Bahar is a psychedelic disco groove about longing for sunny days — both literally and metaphorically. It captures the exhaustion of waiting for brighter days in our homelands, our world, and our inner selves. As Peki Momés puts it, the wait for spring can be so long, it even wears down our pullovers. This track mirrors the duality of our reality and invites the audience to dance during this wait.

The Nightlife finds Honey Dijon exploring the space between house music’s past, present, and future — blurring boundaries, bending conventions, and inviting an all-star cast of collaborators to help redefine what club culture sounds like for today.

Rooted in the lineage of house yet never confined by it, the album moves effortlessly from sweat-soaked basement energy to lush strains of soul and R&B — and into unexpected spaces in between. It’s not a strictly house record; it’s an expression of nightlife itself: fearless, fluid, and in constant evolution.

At once reverent and forward-looking, The Nightlife honors the foundations of the dancefloor while pushing its possibilities outward. It captures the communal pulse, the intimacy, and the transformative power that only music at night can hold.

A love letter to the dancefloor.

Pre-order now and step inside.

Fresh from releasing projects on Method 808 and Future Classic, landing a huge collaboration with Chloé Caillet, and delivering an official remix for Fatboy Slim, PPJ are entering a new chapter in full force. Their expansive take on global street sounds, ranging from neoperreo to Miami bass, gets a cool re-coating.

Led by the magnetic vocalist Páula, with production from Povoa (individually supported by Four Tet, Ben UFO, and Barry Can't Swim, with recent releases on Live From Earth), the duo operates in maximalist mode: playful, sensual, and slightly unhinged.PPJ’s new era, JOKER, embraces a figure that appears everywhere from card decks to carnival culture as a symbol that mirrors their own DNA: funny, eerie, seductive, unpredictable. The EP leans further into club territory, but rather than polishing their edges, PPJ amplify them.

At the emotional core of the record sits “Coeur,” co-produced with Chloé Caillet. It begins with an MPB-tinged foundation flirting with bossa nova. It’s unmistakably Brazilian, bathed in sunset hues before being sped up and twisted into a dance-floor-ready electronic form. The groove shimmers with tension: warm percussion, elastic basslines, and Páula’s voice hovering between intimacy and tease. It feels like a remix of itself, romantic, but slightly untrustworthy.

If “Coeur” glows, “To Nem Ai” is a slow burner. A very deep and downtempo house cut, it unfolds slowly, almost luxuriously, guided by sensual vocals that feel whispered directly into the ear of the listener. A hypnotizing piano sample that feels like a late-night confession. It’s the kind of record that transforms a dancefloor into something tactile.

Elsewhere, “Me Pega” is a high-energy reinterpretation of the tech-house sounds from Santa Catarina, one of southern Brazil’s most feverish party states, twisted and accelerated for ferocious impact. Drawing direct inspiration from Sarro, a raw and vibrant Brazilian street dance, the track captures physical intensity in its purest form: sweat, bass pressure, collective release.

Its counterpart, “Tem Carnaval” channels Páula’s vivid storytelling into a thunderous ode to Rio’s carnival spirit, euphoric, chaotic, cinematic landed just in time for this year’s celebrations.

On “Sexy Doce,” rugged electroclash melodies collide with unexpected references. “It was inspired by Budots, which is dance music from the streets in the Philippines,” Povoa explains. “Then we mixed it with Páula’s Brazilian vocals. Baile funk is similarly from the streets, so there is a connection.” The result is raw yet futuristic, a cross-continental flirtation that feels both underground and explosive.

With this new EP, PPJ make music like they’re tuning into a dozen pirate frequencies at once. Pirate radio from Rio to Berlin to Manila intercepting fragments of street culture, sensuality, and chaos, and stitching them into something deliriously cohesive.
JOKER doesn’t just nod to club culture. It challenges it, twists expectation and leaves a lasting impression.

The North Carolina trio Setting brings together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative mindset to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Known for work in Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell, multi- instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Setting"s self-titled album is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures. The eponymous album from Setting is the product of three intuitive players and deep listeners, artists who use those skills to create transformative music. The trio shirk any broader categorizations, as their unique dynamic pieces are alight with arrangements urgent and smoldering, patient and emotive.

The North Carolina trio Setting brings together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative mindset to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Known for work in Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell, multi- instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Setting"s self-titled album is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures. The eponymous album from Setting is the product of three intuitive players and deep listeners, artists who use those skills to create transformative music. The trio shirk any broader categorizations, as their unique dynamic pieces are alight with arrangements urgent and smoldering, patient and emotive.

In Sheep’s Clothing announces the long-awaited vinyl pressing of Marc Leclair’s beloved 2005 album Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes. The album will also be available on streaming for the first time via Community Music Group.

For years after Marc Leclair released Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes, he heard from listeners who had lived with the record in an unusually intimate way. Many described how the music became part of the emotional landscape of the months leading to birth. “I never expected that,” Leclair says. “Many women told me they listened to the record throughout their pregnancies. They said it made a real difference, that it helped them. It became more than just a record.”

First issued on CD in the early 2000s, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes (Music for Three Pregnant Women) now returns in a new edition from In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi, appearing on vinyl for the first time as a double LP. The record is being pressed in Detroit at Archer Record Pressing, the historic plant behind deep-groove classics by Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, Underground Resistance, UR’s Jeff Mills, and J Dilla.

Listeners who know the Montreal-based Leclair through his better-known work as Akufen might be surprised by the tone here. During the same years he was shaping the intricate micro-sampling tracks that made Akufen a cult figure on labels including Perlon, Force Inc. and Trapez, Leclair was quietly developing this far more personal project. The meticulous craftsmanship remained the same, though the focus shifted from the hyper-detailed cut-up rhythms of his dance records toward something slower and more atmospheric. “I always compare my work to a jeweler,” Leclair says. “It’s really very precise. I’m a bit of a detail freak. I can spend hours or days on just one phrase in one song. Everything has to be perfectly put together.”

The project began almost accidentally. A few members of Leclair’s circle became pregnant nearly simultaneously, including one who had long believed she couldn’t conceive. The first track he recorded for the project wasn’t meant to advance a larger concept, he says. “It was meant to highlight the fact that three of my closest friends became pregnant at exactly the same time.”

Leclair was already a father with a three-year-old daughter, so the emotional terrain of early parenthood was familiar. Gradually the idea expanded. “I began thinking, why not make a whole album that celebrates this and also follows the entire pregnancy, the nine months,” he says. The music developed piece by piece, including a track originally commissioned by the Berlin experimental duo Rechenzentrum that would later become the album’s opening movement.

Nearly seven years passed between the first composition and the finished album, and the music mirrors the strange arithmetic of pregnancy itself. What begins as a single idea multiplies outward, sounds layering and branching until the album feels less like a sequence of compositions than a living process unfolding in time. “I work very slowly,” Leclair says. “Everything has to be something I’m completely behind. I never want to rush anything. I want things to come naturally.” Across its 72 minutes, the album blossoms with the patience of a long meditation on time, growth and emergence.

When Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes first appeared via Mutek, it circulated quietly but steadily. Critics who discovered it later recognized its unusual scope. In a 2006 Pitchfork review, Mark Richardson gave the record an 8.1, calling “150e Jour” “an unfailingly gorgeous and tightly sequenced quilt of guitar and piano samples reminiscent of Tangerine Dream,” and describing “85e Jour” as infused with “viscous pop ambient drift, the gauzy synth pads ebbing and flowing with rhythm.” Boomkat described the album as “a majestic opus from a producer that's always promised so much — here delving into a panoramic construction of almost visibly radiant music that works so beautifully through each and every second of its 72 minute lifespan.”

The new In Sheep’s Clothing Hi-Fi edition finally presents the record in the format Leclair long imagined. “I always thought that record deserved a vinyl edition,” he says. Spread across two LPs, the music now has room to unfold at its natural pace. More than twenty years after it first appeared, Musique pour 3 femmes enceintes remains what it was from the start: a carefully shaped meditation on transformation and the quiet miracle of life beginning.

KITCHEN. LABEL is proud to present AGATE, the latest album by Japanese artist MEITEI, marking a deepening of the world he first shaped through his Kofū trilogy released between 2020 - 2023.

Named after the mineral agate, a stone formed through slow accumulation, pressure, and time, the album reflects MEITEI’s patient approach to sound. AGATE brings together extended and newly rearranged works from across the Kofū cycle alongside new compositions and passages, refining material developed through years of performance and sustained practice.

The album presents seven tracks:

HAŌ (Previously unreleased track)
SHIN-OIRAN (Remodeled from Oiran I, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-SADAYAKKO (Remodeled from Sadayakko, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-WAROSOKU (Remodeled from Wa-rōsoku, Kofū III 2023)
KYŪGEKI (Remodeled from Shinobi and Akira Kurosawa, Kofū II 2021)
SHIN-OIRAN II (Remodeled from Oiran II, Kofū 2020)
SHIN-EDOGAWARANPO (Remodeled from Edogawa Ranpo, Kofū III 2023)
Across these works, MEITEI expands the musical vocabulary first introduced in Kofū, a sound he once described as “lost Japanese mood.” While Kofū drew from fragments of folklore, theatre, ghost stories, and forgotten urban memory, it was never an act of historical reconstruction. Rather, it reflected a sensibility of the past observed from the present. With AGATE, this worldview is clarified as Shinpu, a process of discovery in which historical awareness becomes a foundation for contemporary creation rather than a constraint.

During five years of Kofū tours across Japan, Europe, and Asia, MEITEI performed this material in a wide range of spaces, from underground live houses and listening rooms to culturally significant sites. These environments influenced pacing, dynamics, and structure, shaping how the material evolved over time. AGATE is therefore not only a studio album, but the result of material refined through repeated performance.

If the Kofū albums were windows into forgotten eras, AGATE explores what lies beneath, sediment and strata formed through time and pressure. MEITEI’s approach to sound mirrors the nature of agate itself. Grains become texture. Texture becomes narrative. Voices drift through decaying layers of sound, while ancient instruments are used in non-traditional ways, forming distinctive percussive rhythms and melodies that appear and vanish without fixed resolution.

The album’s visual materials were developed under MEITEI’s direction through physical art-making processes. The cover artwork originates from a letterpress print created by Kamisoe, a Karakami atelier in Nishijin, Kyoto, using Kyo-karakami paper. The original artwork, produced through traditional woodblock techniques on handmade washi, was subsequently reproduced on print for the album edition. Kamisoe continues to reinterpret this historical Kyoto craft with a contemporary sensibility.

The title calligraphy was created by Bio Xie, whom MEITEI personally invited to participate in the project. During his performances abroad, MEITEI encountered in Taiwan a lingering atmosphere reminiscent of “Shitsunihon” — a sense of old Japanese memory that quietly endures beyond time. He was deeply drawn to Bio Xie’s distinctive use of Chinese characters, which resonated with this experience, and asked him to contribute to the visual expression of AGATE.

In parallel, MEITEI continues to reinterpret Japanese sensibility through his concept of “Shitsunihon,” presenting it as a contemporary musical language. The refined Kyoto motifs envisioned by Kamisoe and the distinctive calligraphic expression by Bio Xie intersect with MEITEI’s singular artistic direction, weaving together a newly articulated worldview.

The accompanying visual imagery, including the liner photographs, was created by photographer Hiroshi Okamoto, who was also responsible for the visual direction of MEITEI’s previous work, “Sen'nyū.” It draws from MEITEI’s lived experiences of winter seas, solitary cliffs, and breaking waves. These scenes symbolize the inner conflicts of the ten years he spent living in Hiroshima, and his confrontation with solitude and the sounds he creates.

AGATE will be released on 17 April 2025 via KITCHEN. LABEL on 180g vinyl, CD, and digital formats. The album is mastered by Kelly Hibbert, known for his work with Flying Lotus, Madlib, and J Dilla.

With AGATE, MEITEI returns to the material of Kofū with greater focus and discipline, continuing an ongoing process of working forward with inherited material.