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Memories are, to say the least, complex. They can weigh us down like stones or be treasured in their unresolved ambivalence. In Ciro Vitiello’s debut album, they take on a dynamic and elusive nature, both bouncy and tricky, moving away when approached and dipping into the haze of the subconscious. Dreams, in turn, find their shape through memory itself. The Island Of Bouncy Memories is, for Vitiello, a place populated by reveries and hypnagogic impressions, interwoven with the imprints of childhood experiences—a threshold between the comforting embrace of nostalgia and the acceptance of adulthood.

The album's inception traces back to a collection of toy recordings initially amassed by Vitiello as a backdrop for his wide-weave synthetic fabric. Evolving these initial sketches, the Naples-born artist intended the 13 tracks to form a continuous flux of undeciphered impressions. Repeating motifs phase in and out of the cloudy ambience, punctuating the inevitable waves of melancholy with delicate melodic structures.

Crucial to the album's development were contributions from vocalist Zimmy, vocalist/guitarist CRÆBABE and guitarist Attilio Novellino. Their input not only expanded the sonic palette but also cultivated themes and poetic scenarios through intense and sincere exchanges of personal experiences, recurring dreams, and childhood remembrances. CRÆBABE’s lyrics, in particular, provide an adult counterpoint to the album's more childlike elements—a map of murmured relics and epiphanies as she sits in conversation with herself.

The music's emotional depth envelops Vitiello's Island in an ocean of pure sensitivity, its tides drifting through apparitions of talking animals, reminiscent of those in his recurring dreams. At other times, it reflects the tragic echoes of Nisida—an island off the coast of Naples, infamous for hosting a youth detention center.

The Island of Bouncy Memories is a meditative reconnection with the past, a puzzling journey through pain and acceptance. Notably it marks the first-ever co-production between Hundebiss and Haunter Records, uniting two main players in the Italian electronic and experimental scene in an unprecedented collaboration.

Dwell Time II is the second part of a three-part project on Past Inside The Present from T.R. Jordan. Each of the albums was made using the same material in the same time frame, and they are all part of one overarching and coherent suite that he refers to as "musical composting." This is the cassette tape version and it is full of grainy, fluttering howls, soft warbling pads, pastoral references like flowing streams and mossy rocks and plenty of grand spatial elegance that harks back to the likes of Hiroshi Yoshimura and early Brian Eno experiments. Another immersive offering from this fine label, then.

What a difference a year makes, right? HOUSE Of ALL's follow-up to their self-titled debut came about at some risk to band and label . . . so absolutely sure of their debut, Martin Bramah asked for an advance on recording costs for the follow-up before their self-titled album had even been released. Needless to say, things went pretty well with the debut, which led to a few sold-out tours, wildly enthusiastic press and great sales. Follow-ups do come with perils, but perhaps Bramah's presumption was the very thing which has allowed CONTINUUM to escape the dread second album syndrome, because . . . it's fantastic! Whatever initial re-establishment of synaptic connection was needed to get things grooving on their debut, after many years since they'd last played together (excepting Peter Greenway, whose genuine bravery in joining four former members of The Fall whom he alone had never played with before) is history now. The grooves are bigger, the lyrics brilliant, Tomos Williams' production is top-notch and the necessity sitting on this album while the first one kept on rolling offered the advantage of allowing Dave Trumfio (of The Mekons and Pulsars) time to fine-tune the mixing and mastering . . . and it sounds HOT.

My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, ANOHNI"s sixth studio album, expresses a world view by shape-shifting through a broad range of subject matter. Through a personal lens, ANOHNI addresses loss of loved ones, inequality, alienation, acceptance, cruelty, ecocide, devastation wrought by Abrahamic theologies, Future Feminism, and the possibility that we might yet transform our ways of thinking, our spiritual ideas, our societal structures, and our relationships with the rest of nature. On her first full album since 2016"s HOPELESSNESS, she explains the creative process was painstaking, yet also inspired, joyful, and intimate, a renewal and a renaming of her response to the world as she sees it. "Some of these songs respond to global and environmental concerns first voiced in popular music over 50 years ago." ANOHNI"s approach since her last record has shifted from someone tasked with challenging global denial, to an artist seeking to support others on the front lines. "I learned with HOPELESSNESS that I can provide a soundtrack that might fortify people in their work, in their activism, in their dreaming and decision-making. I can sing of an awareness that makes others feel less alone, people for whom the frank articulation of these frightening times is not a source of discomfort but a cause for identification and relief. On "It Must Change," ANOHNI soulfully describes systems in collapse with a note of compassion for humanity: "The truth is I always thought you were beautiful in your own way // That"s why this is so sad." ANOHNI"s voice is sensual and smoothed, selectively reaching to the edges of what it can contain. "We"re not getting out of here // No one"s getting out of here // This is our world," she murmurs. A portrait of legendary human rights activist Marsha P. Johnson taken by Alvin Baltrop features on the cover, reflecting a 25-year relationship with the memory of Johnson that ANOHNI has held space for in the presentation of her own work. Elsewhere, the album artwork states "IT"S TIME TO FEEL WHAT"S REALLY HAPPENING". In some ways it feels as if she is reaching across her life"s expression, and has found a moment of unique composure, wearing her long exploration of disarming intensity, with the maturity of a painter carefully choosing her colors. "I want the work to be useful, to help others move through these conversations we are now facing, to move with dignity and resilience through this bitter dawning."

First compiled as a double CD in 2002, Moon's Milk (in Four Phases) is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super-Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, Moon's Milk captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on Spring Equinox, a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, Summer Solstice skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice-as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). Autumn Equinox exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung folk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto-Asphyxiating Hierophant" to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance's oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album's final chapter, Winter Solstice, is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall's doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare Moon's Milk Bonus Disc CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus MacLise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation - both sonic and bodily. From postindustrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

Straddling the elusive boundary between the corporeal and the transcendent, Montreal-based psych-pop band Elephant Stone has cemented its reputation as a band deeply invested in probing the contours of dreams and consciousness. Over a 14-year odyssey, their sonic tapestry has evolved into a rich and intricate form of art, capable of capturing the boundless terrain of human emotion and cognition. Set for release on February 23rd 2024, their upcoming album, ‘Back Into the Dream’, serves as the ultimate culmination of this musical evolution, offering listeners an entrancing passage through realms of introspection and wonder. The band's driving force, Rishi Dhir, has an innate ability to bare his soul through music, plumbing the depths of his vulnerabilities and musings. "I'm often caught in the web of intense, recurring dreams, which I think reflect my ongoing quest for identity and a sense of belonging," Rishi divulges. Centred on the enigma of dreams—whether they're subconscious murmurings or portals to parallel universes—’Back Into the Dream’ encapsulates the eternal cycle of waking and dreaming. “We're perpetually oscillating between two realms, trying to comprehend each," says Rishi. "If our music can serve as a bridge between these worlds, then we've accomplished our mission

Following on from their contribution to theButter SessionsCome Togethercompilation released in March this year, Melbourne'sPolitodeliver their debut EPUltraparallel.Politois the collaboration between musicians Robert Downie and Finnian Langham and dancers Arabella Frahn-Starkieand Hillary Goldsmith. The ensemble integrates improvised techno and contemporary dance to form well-considered and captivating performances. The spirit of these performances are masterfully captured on the 12" record. On the transition between mediums, the group states; "we always aim to capture the unpredictability and liveliness of our improvised performances when we record, and try to sculpt the feeling of continuous movement which is so intrinsically tied to Polito's identity."

Ultraparallelconsists of four tracks that were extracted from studio sessions, emerging organically whilst jamming. The EP's introductionHornet's Webwields mutilated samples of vocals and spoken word, paired with abrupt rhythms to forge anomalous techno. The eponymous trackUltraparallel, recorded in 2018, is a dark and brooding arrangement with a murmuring melody and an infectious recurring bassline. Polito reflects; "this track is from the first batch of studio sessions we had as Polito where our intention was to create more discrete 'tracks' which could be played by DJs, rather than the longform compositions more similar to the live performances which we had recorded up to that point."

Turning the record over,Seventh Limbembodies the music for dance nuance by infusing dub with sounds from outer-space. Polito reveals; "we wanted to explore creating something more in line with the mood of our live performances, which are typically slower and have a rather meditative atmosphere. The more relaxed tempo allows the dancers to move at a sustainable pace and gives the musicians more space to prepare and manipulate the various musical elements in real-time. The result is our first formal exploration of 'the chugger.'"Ultraparallel'sfinaleSublunaryis a playful sequence mingling electronics with an airy clarinet and saxophone.

Attuned to their audience,Politoimagines how their music will be consumed throughout the creative process. They comment "while making music in the studio, we try to transport ourselves mentally to hypothetical dancefloors the music we're making could be played on, adding moments and sounds which would excite, energise, disorient, or have some other desired somatic effect. We're also considering not just how the music sounds, but how it would 'feel' when played on large sound systems."Ultraparallelultimatelypresents a refreshing visual take on literal dance music; a considered and holistic approach to enhancing the experience of listening and moving.

Thee Alcoholics are the brainchild of Rhys Llewellyn, a longtime Rocket Recordings alumnus whose background leans as heavily into the bassbin-shaking realms of electronic music as it does the tinnitus-inducing world of howling, cranked-up ampstacks. Not content with hammering drumskins for numerous floor-shaking records on the Rocket discography from the likes of Hey Colossus and The Notorious Hi-Fi Killers, he’s also been responsible for brain-rearranging electronic works under the Drmcnt and Acidliner monikers. Thee Alcoholics, however - which initially gestated as a result of Rhys himself wanting to pursue the somewhat hostile sound in his own head during lockdown - maps out a collision course between all of the above. Cranky and cantankerous yet lysergically aligned, Feedback is mesmeric rock with swagger, warped into sci-fi shapes by the spirit and sonics of bass and soundsystem culture. The psychedelic shapes here are redolent of the ur-klang of The Fall and the monolithic lurch of The Heads, the motorik malevolence less an uplifting trip to the heavens than a drill down to the earth’s core. Discernible in these jackhammer beats, grimly murmured vocals and delirious dirges to certain heads may be the trash futurism of Chrome, the decomposed stomp of unsung legends Earl Brutus and the electro-punk attack of Six Finger Satellite, yet all of the above co-ordinates are waylaid effortlessly by a balls-out intensity and a 6 fearsome intent on aural oblivion at all costs. Feedback may be elemental and primal, yet this is no psych comfort-blanket nor retrofetishism, rather a repetition-driven journey headlong into intimidating territory unknown. Get on board and strap yourselves in for a bumpy ride.

Part of a (very) loose but somewhat like minded kaleidoscope where one can trace something like a Portuguese hauntology, centred around labels like Russian Library or Prisma Sonora Records, Alexandre Centeio joins Discrepant with the surefire release of 'Panorama'. A multi-instrumentalist and sound artist based in Porto, Centeio - who is also part of Stellarays and The Murmurous Playground - delivers his second album under his own name after 2022's 'Movanta'.

Signalling a departure from the intimate synth driven beautifully soothing landscapes of 'Movanta' while still working within a realm where space and memory play a significant part of both escapism and connection, 'Panorama' opens itself up to a "surrealistic soundscape filled with real and dreamt sound", perfectly illustrated by Ruca Bourbon’s artwork. A sonic fiction conjured from a variety of sources - hand drums, disembodied voices, scraps of unknown realities, skewed loops, oneiric collages, flutes, spectral synths - that float freely between disruption and continuity but within their own internal logic. A very particular and hallucinatory one at that, mind ya. Collapsing notions of time and geography in an aural canvas totally aligned with Discrepant's ethos. 'Panorama' indeed.

Telephone Explosion proudly presents the self-titled debut LP from Toronto’s UH HUH, out physically and digitally on April 14, 2023. The album features eight tracks of dub-damaged art rock which conjure a potent vision of spaced-out 1980s post-punks feeding their angular rhythms and bass-heavy grooves through layer upon layer of grime-spattered spring reverb.

There is a palpable sense of discovery and exploration throughout UH HUH’s 37 heady minutes. Elastic basslines and serpentine guitar phrases throb and glide, cutting through dubwise reverberations like hands moving through an opaque cloud of reefer smoke.

Formerly known as Teenanger, the reconfigured (and reinvigorated) group’s newfound sense of sonic identity is put on display the moment the door kicks open. The percolating spaciousness of opener “Somewhere Beyond” is followed by the cyclical grooves of “Redemption Pause.” Vocalists Christopher Swimmings and Melissa Ball each take respective turns at lead vocal duties, showcasing their contrasting yet complimentary styles.

“Babylon”, a slab of overcast, loping funk features both singers on the same track, alternating between Swimmings’ stoned syncopation and Ball’s saccharine melancholy. This juxtaposition leans against a backdrop of reverb-soaked drums, watery guitar chords and rippling trumpet.

The slinking, fractured grooves of “Rain (In The Afternoon)” and “Citrus Song” call to mind the deranged minimal dub-wave of Naffi or Vivien Goldman. Both songs feature lyrical content heavily inspired by the Florida swamplands, although the aural landscape on these tracks is decidedly more brutalist than Boca Raton. Two of the songs included here are reworkings of previously released Teenanger numbers. “Blinds Drawn” is reduced to its core elements of bottom-heavy rhythm, spliced guitar shanks and Swimmings’ murmured ruminations. “Good, You”, on the other hand, is completely re-imagined as a blissed-out melt of opiated bossa nova.

After countless hours of experimentation during the album’s recording sessions at Toronto’s Studio Z, the band decided to send their drum machines, snare drums and percussion through an obscure 1960’s Japanese Guyatone guitar amp with a notoriously ecstatic spring reverb sound. The result was immediately inspiring.

The dank, busted and clanking tones produced by the Guyatone evoke a muggy, humid atmosphere that mimics the photo on UH HUH’s cover. The process of re-amping is literally the means through which UH HUH found the sound of this record. UH HUH is a record that asks more questions than it does provide answers. This is searching music that requires that the listener lean into it, the more time you spend in between the beats, bars, notes contained within, the more vivid the picture becomes.

2023 Repress

It's the quiet ones we should watch, they always say. Which is particularly astute advice right now, when loud, constant self-declaration and saturated 'brand' visibility have become the norm. But above the babble and brightness, some voices will always speak quiet volumes ­- with calm eloquence and the kind of certitude that comes from valuing the playing out, not just the prize.

Sweden's José González is just such a voice. He first charmed his way into the UK's earshot via the murmurous and elegant, classically finger-picked folk pop of his 2005 album, Veneer, which has since sold over a staggering 430, 000 copies in UK alone. Two years later came In Our Nature, a further exploration of José's influences (Argentinian Folklore, the '60s US folk tradition and the British pastoral folk-pop style of the same era), on which he resisted the temptation to beef up his alluringly introvert aesthetic. The albums made the UK Top 10 and Top 20 respectively.

Conceived as the natural third part in an acoustic trilogy, Vestiges & Claws is a(nother) hushed and delicate solo set that forefronts the artist and guitarist's compellingly intimate vocal style and intricate playing technique, but it's often strikingly rhythmic in nature and cohere's perfectly, with hand claps and taps on the body of his instrument underlining the songs' mantric rise-and-fall pattern, while elsewhere, over-dubbed guitar parts and multi-tracked vocal harmonies entwine to sweetly immersive effect.

The title refers to both cultural practices and biological features that survive despite having lost their original function, and to currently useful tools, ie the 'claws' of modern life.

Vestiges & Claws was recorded almost entirely by José and self-produced, mostly in his Gothenburg home, using computer plug-ins to achieve a warm, analogue sound. He prefers working alone, mainly for artistic reasons. 'There were a couple of things that enabled me to complete this record: one was curiosity, to be able to play percussion and do a lot of harmonies and also to produce and mix the album; the other was aesthetics. I love to listen to Arthur Russell and Shuggie Otis, to music that has been done mostly by one person in their solitary state.'

As José sees it, the record is his personal, 'zoomed-out eye on humanity on a small, pale blue dot in a cold, sparse and unfriendly space. The amazing fact that we are all here, an attempt at encouraging us to understand ourselves and to make the best of the one life we know we have - after birth and before death.

Corey Fuller and Tomoyoshi Date are the Illuha duo but for this new Tobira album they link with percussionist Tatsuhisa Yamamoto. He is a skilled drummer who has worked alone on Black Truffle but has also collaborated with Jim O'Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Keiji Haino, Phew and Oren Ambarchi among others. This new record focusses on electro-acoustic sounds that are run through with all manner of precise sonic details and are carried by Yamamoto's unique playing style and singular sense of groove which were recorded over two sessions. That playing style finds him playing very lightly with closely mic'ed drums so plenty of softness is captured and then interwoven with layers of Rhodes, piano, distant synths and metallic murmurations.

Ben Sterling joins Damian Lazarus’ renowned Crosstown Rebels imprint, partnering with Caitlyn Scarlett for ‘Don’t Truss’.

Building on the release of arguably one of the tracks of 2022 with his remix of Tiga’s iconic ‘Mind Dimension 2’, UK hotshot and Planet X boss Ben Sterling has made 2023 another year of raising the levels, with his debut on Solomon’s Diynamic becoming an instant summer anthem in the midst of his busiest summer to date. Adding yet another huge label debut to the mix, he continues to showcase his range across house music as Damian Lazarus invites him to Crosstown Rebels for the first time, partnering with singer/songwriter Caitlyn Scarlett for ‘Don’t Truss’ on the revered imprint.

A rolling and crisp production with Scarlett’s alluring and hooky vocals at its core, it’s easy to see why ‘Don’t Truss’ has become a stand-out track from Sterling’s own sets across the globe over the past 12 months. Fusing tightly programmed percussion, warped murmurs, and a slinking, snaking groove, it’s a track crafted for the dancefloor, moving crowds unison and leaving a lasting impact. On the flip, ‘Bring Me To The Surface’ is a groove-led and bubbling cut that keeps the energy levels with skittering drums, acid-dipped basslines, resonant synths and yet more vibrant vocals.

"Creating this record took me around 2 years, I was moving quite a bit, without a steady working or living space, travelling and playing live again for the first time since the pandemic. At first there was creative insecurity and many abandoned ideas, I wanted to make something special for YUKU but everything felt dry and soulless. In my head this was supposed to be a dancefloor record, but this idea quickly became an obstruction in my creative flow.

During this time I started learning modular synthesis, and although there was definitely a learning curve this method of making music gave the record direction and refreshed my way to approach composition. It is also very fun to learn. What came out is a collage of sorts that is more honest and reflective of my emotions and those of the people and spaces that I have exchanged with. Thanks to YUKU and the amazing people that took part in this record and in my life in the past two years. Hope you all enjoy."

- Joaquin Cornejo

Whispers is the first proper P.G. Six album since 2011"s Starry Mind. Time passes slowly, as they"ve been known to say out in the country, and before you know it, there"s a bunch of it behind you. After five releases in the first decade of P.G. Six, it may seem a bit of a surprise to have not heard something new in the past twelve years - but a cursory listen to Murmurs & Whispers will answer why, as the deep acoustic focus of the tracks imply an investment of the type of compassion and understanding that takes time and concentrated effort to conjure. Additionally, Pat Gubler"s always got a few pots going at once in his ever-expanding musical universe. He"s been active since the mid-90s, first with Memphis Luxure and Tower Recordings, then as P.G. Six, and as a member of Metal Mountains, Wet Tuna, Garcia Peoples and Weeping Bong Band. Additionally, some time was spent making collaborative records with Dan Melchior (in 2019) and Louise Bock (in 2021). Pat"s been playing the harp for more years than he"s been in bands, but when he realized that he was writing a set of songs centered around harp compositions, he spent some time in the woodshed with his instrument, a late 80s model Triplett Celtic 34 String Harp (which replaced a lovely Paraguayan harp he"d played for years previously). After the previous P.G. albums of electric band arrangements, he was in a place of writing songs with more silence in them. He ended up playing a lot of the parts himself on Murmurs & Whispers, adding guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder and hurdy gurdy, in addition to his harp and vocals. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson, who Pat plays with in Weeping Bong Band, played and sang a bit themselves, and the record was recorded piece by piece in houses around upstate New York by Mike Fellows. Returning to the quiet acoustic sound of the first couple of P.G. Six albums, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (which has seen a much-needed reissue in the past year after too many years OOP) and The Well of Memory, Murmurs & Whispers is more straightforward in expressing its vision of rural celestial wonder. Bucolic and comfortably lived in, Murmurs & Whispers nonetheless projects the transcendent heart of P.G. Six once again, and as ever, it is magnificent to hear it passing through us.

Whispers is the first proper P.G. Six album since 2011"s Starry Mind. Time passes slowly, as they"ve been known to say out in the country, and before you know it, there"s a bunch of it behind you. After five releases in the first decade of P.G. Six, it may seem a bit of a surprise to have not heard something new in the past twelve years - but a cursory listen to Murmurs & Whispers will answer why, as the deep acoustic focus of the tracks imply an investment of the type of compassion and understanding that takes time and concentrated effort to conjure. Additionally, Pat Gubler"s always got a few pots going at once in his ever-expanding musical universe. He"s been active since the mid-90s, first with Memphis Luxure and Tower Recordings, then as P.G. Six, and as a member of Metal Mountains, Wet Tuna, Garcia Peoples and Weeping Bong Band. Additionally, some time was spent making collaborative records with Dan Melchior (in 2019) and Louise Bock (in 2021). Pat"s been playing the harp for more years than he"s been in bands, but when he realized that he was writing a set of songs centered around harp compositions, he spent some time in the woodshed with his instrument, a late 80s model Triplett Celtic 34 String Harp (which replaced a lovely Paraguayan harp he"d played for years previously). After the previous P.G. albums of electric band arrangements, he was in a place of writing songs with more silence in them. He ended up playing a lot of the parts himself on Murmurs & Whispers, adding guitar, bass, keyboards, recorder and hurdy gurdy, in addition to his harp and vocals. Clark Griffin and Wednesday Knudson, who Pat plays with in Weeping Bong Band, played and sang a bit themselves, and the record was recorded piece by piece in houses around upstate New York by Mike Fellows. Returning to the quiet acoustic sound of the first couple of P.G. Six albums, Parlor Tricks and Porch Favorites (which has seen a much-needed reissue in the past year after too many years OOP) and The Well of Memory, Murmurs & Whispers is more straightforward in expressing its vision of rural celestial wonder. Bucolic and comfortably lived in, Murmurs & Whispers nonetheless projects the transcendent heart of P.G. Six once again, and as ever, it is magnificent to hear it passing through us.

If your brain has a shortlist of bands that instantly evoke New Wave, Suburban Lawns deserve a slot right next to the likes of Devo, Talking Heads and the B-52’s. After putting out two singles on their own Suburban Industrial imprint, the Lawns signed to I.R.S. Records and released their debut LP in 1981. While the band gained cult status thanks in part to a Jonathan Demme-produced music video which aired on Saturday Night Live, their self-titled album would sadly be the five-piece’s only full-length statement. Suburban Lawns’ asymmetrical aesthetic is personified by co-vocalist Su Tissue, whose mesmerizing stage persona was at once childlike and terrifying. Her unique style embodies the awkward/arty female singer of the Reagan era, while the group’s male vocals—courtesy of Frankie Ennui, Vex Billingsgate and John McBurney—maintain the satirical themes of Southern California’s postwar mirage of limitless sprawl. Suburban Lawns’ catchiness can be attributed to their drum-tight performance and taut songwriting. Listen to the vocal trade-offs on “Anything,” which could have easily come out on any purely Punk label from LA at the time, while Tissue’s deadpan delivery on “Janitor” glides into the best art-warble this side of Lene Lovich, broaching the possibility of nuclear annihilation with a murmured “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom.” From a West Coast scene dominated by 7-inch singles and EPs, the Suburban Lawns’ lone LP remains in a class with precious few. It’s not surprising that they found acceptance in the Hollywood punk scene, despite their Long Beach roots, and would influence other bands such as Minutemen. This is not a disc that will get parked in your collection hoping to get pulled once in a while; this is a record you will play.

Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin (Fourteen Reflections on the End) originated from an installation exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2019. Fourteen magnetic bodies of tape that dialogued with the fourteen pieces of electroacoustic music now contained in this album composed from the sound anthology of Angélica Castelló. Thus, Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin is a complex piece consisting of multiple parts that, although articulated with each other, hold a life of their own.

Like every body, these have a unique history made up of mixed fragments spun by Angélica, ranging from field recordings, references, and self-references to previous pieces, experiences, and voice recordings made specifically for these compositions re-recorded in various formats, from lo to high fidelity, analog and digital, composed, decomposed and recomposed (Castelló, A., 2019). Likewise, as any body, they also reflect on their end, whether absolute or temporal, of the many ways of being finite and of saying goodbye.

During the Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin, Castelló takes you on a journey that is difficult to locate. An ethereal space between shattered glass, stridulation of cicadas, war drums, murmurs in French, Italian maledictions, and soft recitations in Spanish. From uproar to solace, all wrapped in a soft abstraction that only allows access to the subtle whisper of these expressions. A gesture between invitation and sharing because who does not recognize oneself in this emotional storm?

First, the approach of the winds, the first breeze that caresses the body. Then the bewilderment announced by the scent of uncertainty condensed in the air’s humidity. The prelude to the storm, to something that will shake you from head to toe, something from which there will be no return.

To the acceleration of the winds comes the percussions, the tremor of the storm with its lightning. la Ira (1). A vibration running through the whole body, unstoppable. This reverberating sound, resulting from its re-percussion with our body acoustics, owes its tones and echoes to the cavities and organs of different masses. From what is hollow and what is full; what is void and what is matter. There is no turning back. It is a dive into the void; to fight and resist because there is no other way to go. It is a matter of survival.

Ma fin est mon commencement Et mon commencement ma fin (2)

After this, the cicada resumes at the crack of dawn, a gentle breeze, and solitude, that temporarily musical silence of embraces (3) with hints of harpsichord and bells.

The breaking of the waves in Sicily is accompanied by the antenna that picks up radio transmissions that already invite other tastes. The Mediterranean and its currents mingle and divide tense routes of escape, exchange, and struggle between Blutorangen, tides, and birdsongs.

An immersion into deep waters.

And in the end, we all commit sins! Queste maledette! (4)

Lorena Moreno Vera, 2023

A Colourful Storm presents Seance, a new set of songs by Maxine Funke.

Following a productive recording period beginning with Silk (2018) and ending with Forest Photographer (2020), Seance marks a remarkable levitation of Funke’s tender, softly spoken songcraft first documented on Lace (2008) and Felt (2012) into new creative heights. Folksong confessionals with the burden of memory. Ghostly confines, murmurs from the cracks. Soil, blood and skin. The beauty and mundanity of the everyday.

The voice of Funke is a distinctive instrument, one which perfectly elucidates her sometimes confessional, at other times deeply inward allusions to love, loss, joy and disquiet. Lyrics grounded in observation and adventure (“Eyeballs, asphalt, grass clippings, peppercorns”) unravel into uneasy truths daubed in self-consciousness and forbidden desire (“I’m not shy / There's just a sparkle in your eye and I don't feel right”). The simplest things can be the most difficult to express.

Opener ’Fairy Baby’ and ‘Homage’ are sensuous and probing, celebrating new beginnings while cautiously closing old chapters. ‘Quiet Shore’, a seven-minute reverie of guitar strum and poetry, conjures spirits long forgotten and shines as Funke’s first solo foray into longform songwriting. A perfect accompaniment to the album’s centrepiece, ‘Lucky Penny’, a euphoric, entrancing rush foreshadowing the delicate dreamspeak still to come.

An assertive, visionary recording by one of New Zealand’s most extraordinary voices, Seance is a lover’s lament, a revealing of self and a secluded wander through fields of enchantment.

The next chapter of the Natural Information Society is here. Since Time Is Gravity, credited to Natural Information Society Community Ensemble with Ari Brown, presents a newly expanded manifestation of acclaimed composer & multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams nearly 15 year, 7 albums &-counting flagship ensemble. Joining the core NIS of Abrams (guimbri & bass), Lisa Alvarado (harmonium) Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) & Jason Stein (bass clarinet) are Hamid Drake (percussion), Josh Berman & Ben Lamar Gay (cornets), Nick Mazzarella & Mai Sugimoto (alto saxophones & flute), Kara Bershad (harp) & Chicago living legend of the tenor saxophone Ari Brown. Recorded live to tape at Electrical Audio & The Graham Foundation, cover painting Vibratory Cartography: Nepantla, by Lisa Alvarado. 2xLP on Eremite USA, 2xLP & CD on Aguirre/Eremite Europe. Out 14-04.

Since first developing Natural Information Society in 2010, Joshua Abrams has been gradually expanding the group’s conceptual underpinnings, its musical references & the sheer number of the group’s members. Its music is, in a sense, an expansive form of minimalism, based in repeated & overlaid rhythmic patterns, ostinatos & modality. Its roots, its scale & its meaning become clearer in time. If time is gravity, it also allows us to carry more. Having begun as fundamentally a rhythm section with Abrams’ guimbri at its core, the version here can stretch to a tentet, including six horns.

Abrams has been expanding his minimalism gradually, but he has long understood a key to minimalism’s potential: the breadth of its roots in the late 1950s & early 1960s, ranging from the dissatisfaction of young European-stream composers with the limitations of serialism to the simultaneous dissatisfaction of jazz musicians with the dense harmonic vocabulary of bop & hard bop. The former began exploring rhythmic complexity & narrow tonal palates in place of harmonic abstraction (Steve Reich’s Drumming, Philip Glass’ Music with Changing Parts; perhaps above all Terry Riley’s In C & his late ‘60s all-night organ & loop concerts); the later reduced dense chord changes to scales (signally with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, but rapidly expanding with John Coltrane’s vast project). In the 1950s the LP record opened the world with documentation of Asian & African musics, key influences on both minimalists & jazz musicians. If John Coltrane’s soprano saxophone suggested the keening shehnai of Bismillah Khan, the instrument was rapidly taken up by two key minimalists, LaMonte Young & Riley, similarly appreciative of its flexible intonation, the same thing that kept it out of big bands.

If the guimbri, the North African hide-covered lute that Abrams plays with NIS, involves a rich tradition of hypnotic healing music associated with the Gnawa people, Abrams’ music also touches on other musics as well — other depths, memories & healings, different drones, rhythms & modes. As the group expands on Since Time Is Gravity, he has made certain jazz traditions in the same stream more explicit as well. If there is a mystical & elastic quality involved in the experience of time, both in direction & duration, you will catch it here. The parts for the choir of winds expand on the roles of Abrams’ guimbri, Mikel Patrick Avery & Hamid Drake’s percussion & Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium: at times, the winds are almost looping in the tentet version, each hitting a repeating note in turn, at once drone & distinct inflection on temporal sequence. The brilliance of the work resides in Abrams’ compositions, the NIS’ intuitive execution & in Ari Brown’s singular embodiment of the great tenor saxophone tradition, including the oracular genius of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, & Yusef Lateef. The three pieces by the expanded NIS featuring Brown —the opening “Moontide Chorus” & “Is” & the ultimate “Gravity”— have an immediate impact, & togther might be considered a kind of concerto for tenor saxophone. Here Brown presses almost indistinguishably from composed melody to improvised speech, getting so close to language that he might have a text. Everything here is a sign. Note the tap of the Rhythm Ace that links “Moontide Chorus” to “Is”, the attentive heart always present, even when signed by a machine. There’s a link here to the methodologies & meanings of dub music & the linear & vertical collage of beats, textures & tongues: treated with reverence, a sample of a beat-box can be as soulful, as hypnotic, as a mbira or a tamboura. If those pieces with Brown are heard as a suspended concerto, the three embrace & enfold the other works, like the sepals of a flower. That placement will also touch on the mysteries of our perception of time.

Particularly in “Is”, but elsewhere as well, a phenomenon of transcendence arises in which time appears to be tripartite, at once moving backwards & forwards & standing still. This is an act of technical brilliance certainly, but also an illumination of music’s ability to represent temporal consciousness through polymetrics. This particular listener has only heard it before in a few places, including the horn shouts & bowed basses of Coltrane’s Africa, in moments of Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady, in certain pieces where tapes were literally running backwards, & earlier still in Dizzy Gillespie’s Cubana Be, Cubana Bop, in which the composer George Russell & conguero Chano Pozo found a music that spoke at once in the voices of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring & the vestigial rites, rhythms & songs of the Yoruba language & Santeria religion of inland Cuba.

In Joshua Abrams’ compositions & the realization of them by the NIS, in the time of one’s close listening & memory thereof, distinctions between the “natural” & the “social”, the “quotidian” & the “transcendent” are erased, suspended or perhaps irrelevant. Consider two of the ensemble pieces, one named for nature, the other social science. In “Murmuration” the repeated wind figures of flute & alto saxophone combine with the interlocking patterns of harp, guimbri & frame drum (tar) to create a perfect moving stillness, not an imitation but a witness to the miracle of the starlings’ astonishing collective art, a surfeit of beauty that might be the ultimate defense tactic.

“Stigmergy” takes its name & concept from the Occupy movement’s Heather Marsh, who proposes a social system based on a cooperative rather than competitive models, one in which ideas are freely contributed & developed as ideas rather than an individual’s property. In its form, Abrams’ “Stigmergy” is the closes thing to traditional jazz, a series of accompanied solos by each of the wind players. However, the composed accompaniment is a radically collectivist notion: a repeated rhythmic figure, call it ostinato or riff, in which the different winds each play only a note or two of the figure, a concept both more collectivist & individualistic in its conception than any typical unison figure. It suggests another of the underlying recognitions that propel the Natural Information Society, the group as social organism, the teleology of hypnotic anarchy, all parts in place, functioning systematically, evolving & expressing itself, its nature & society, as a transformative organism.

George Lewis has described music as “a space for reflection on the human condition”. This suggests that, rather than a “distraction”, at least some music might serve as a distraction from distraction. It’s a focus, a clarity, a awareness, an external invitation to interiority, as if music itself is a model for form & contemplation, an organism contemplating for us or as us. If that is a possibility, & I am sure I have heard such musics, than this music is among them. How many of our rhythms, melodies & harmonies (cultural, historical, biological, psychic) might such music carry, translate & transform in the particulate ecstasy of our own murmuration? (Stuart Broomer, April 2022)

Birds chirp through a tape-hiss breeze atop a bed of airy pads, and a cleareyed, forlorn guitar springs forth: this is the beginning of the debut album from Sans Merit, a new rock project from Griffin James, otherwise known as Francis Inferno Orchestra.

For over a decade, the Melbourne-raised—and now L.A.-based—producer has been indulging his indie and alt interests, and this fuzzed-out bedroom janglepop and shoegaze LP, Early Grave, is his first extensive deliverance.

The album represents a gestalt of sorts: years of approaching different genres and songwriting styles, and producing not “in the box,” with soft synths and
samples, but with live instruments (and sometimes a band), has led to this focused and succinct thirteen-track musical journey.

In pursuit of a pure and low-key aesthetic, James recorded demos on phones and chose to rely heavily on budget instruments, clapped-out synths, and
crappy amps, and would often cut tapes live in bedrooms, lay down vocal takes in closets and put microphones to broken speakers, all in part of the quest of using limited resources to create a truthful body of work. The finishing touch is a thick coating of nostalgia ooze; soundbites from internet clips flitter throughout the record, and goofy sound effects flicker above like dying incandescent bulbs.

A dream-pop album for our times: its lyrics are off-kilter romantic musings, sarcastic self-loathing mumbles, reflections on the unrealness of real life.

Constantly evolving and adapting his sound, Shackleton has releases
spanning labels such as Honest Jon’s, Perlon and his own imprints, Skull Disco (co-founded with Appleblim) and Woe to the Septic Heart!.
Shackleton now finds a home for a brand new project on the Barcelona-based, Modern Obscure Music.

Undoubtedly Shackleton, but taking the meditative aspects of his sound to a new plane, The Purge of Tomorrow, is an alias born to transmit a less dancefloor-orientated experience to whomever is ready to receive it.
‘The Other Side of Devastation’ is an investigation into a novel form of
deepness. Adverse to the reductive label of ‘Ambient’, these tracks are spawned from a live performance context. The essence was to create an immersive encounter where listeners are called on to actively unburden their mind of unnecessary thoughts. Staying true to the trance elements that Shackleton is renowned for, this EP is not dependent on traditional structures or a linear narrative.
‘Time Moving’ presents itself through a journey of disquieted moments and contemplative states. Hypnotic strings provided by Kathy Alberici construct pastoral phrases that mesh with the larger looming drones,
culminating to conjure a daydream-like energy. Following on, ‘Waves’
twists through various forms, awash with cascading vocal splices and
soothing murmurs contrasted with rousing sub pressure.
Reflective and sometimes provocative, as an artist who resents the
pigeon-holes of genre, The Purge of Tomorrow presents an exciting new direction for Shackleton. Bursting-at-the-seams with emotional
complexity as to echo the woes of the human condition, this EP is
steeped in feelings of forgone events doomed to be replicated.

Coherence is overrated. Especially if keeping things hazy, and not smoothing away all the rough edges, and allowing all the seeming contradictions to find their own unique harmony with each other in their own time can result in the heady magic of Lock Eyes & Collide, the second EP from South London-based quintet Moreish Idols. Across these four tracks, Moreish Idols deal in tangles of hyper-melodic guitar, sleepy-eyed murmurs glowing with unassuming poetry, blossoms of wise saxophone, rhythms that pulse and purr to their own inarguable logic. You could spend days trying to define what exactly it is they are doing over these fifteen or so minutes, but you’d be wiser to just lose yourself within Lock Eyes & Collide’s laser-guided twists and turns.

Pulling into focus. They passed tracks from initial collaborative song-writing sessions along to Dan Carey, who signed Moreish Idols to his Speedy Wunderground label and produced their first release on the label, the Float EP, in the summer of 2022 (they’d released a pair of self-released 7”s before lockdown). Restless, jerky, jagged and rhythmically centred, many of Float’s energetic pleasures bore the influence of their earlier flirtation of post-punk, but the ruminative When The River Runs Dry spelled deeper treasures lay within, while the erratic, wonderful Speedboat spoke to Moreish Idols’ essential gift for mystery. Lock Eyes & Collide is something else altogether, though – a looser constellation of ideas, a clearer hint of the group’s future.

The elements that compose the EP – swooning tremolo guitars, prickly melodic riddles, erudite saxophone improvs, loose and flexible rhythms – make perfect sense together, on vinyl if not on paper, sounding like Watery, Domestic-era Pavement one second and some bucolic Canterbury Scene prog the next, but always, always like Moreish Idols most of all.

The future that is undefined is limitless. If Lock Eyes & Collide captures Moreish Idols’ present, what do they see in their future? “If we’d just made Float II for our second EP, people would be, ‘Oh, they’re the band that does that,” says Tom. “I’m so glad we’ve made this weird alter-ego of our first EP; now we feel we can do whatever we want.”

One of the most notorious hatemongers in movie history is Captain Ahab from John Huston’s 1956 classic Moby Dick. His manic monologues cast a spell on generations of viewers. Berlin based musician and sound artist Jan Jelinek has now turned the voice of Ahab into a musical instrument.

Faitiche presents Jan Jelinek's soundtrack for SEASCAPE – polyptych, an audio-visual software developed in collaboration with Canadian new media artist Clive Holden in 2022.

SEASCAPE – polyptych is based on image and acoustic source material from Moby Dick. While Holden works on manipulating film sequences, the voice of Ahab plays a central role in Jan Jelinek’s soundtrack. The dynamic volume and tone of the captain's speech control a synthesizer system that turns Ahabs voice into ten abstract soundscapes.

In this production the voice gives the impulse and controls things but is not the sound of spoken word itself that we hear. Only occasionally can snippets of speech be heard so that syllables or sounds are recognisable. Instead we hear compositions made of hissing, soundscapes and eruptive sounds. The atmosphere is dark and sinister. Still every piece has a clear sonic structure and follows an understandable dramatic composition. This music is abstract but not overwhelming. Quite the opposite, SEASCAPE – polyptych is an invitation to listeners to let themselves be carried by the stream of sonic events. Although part of a media art work, the soundtrack can be enjoyed without any of this connecting superstructure. It works with no previous knowledge. But what happens when one does know that it’s the sonic waves of a human voice that is controlling a network of synthesizers?

If you want to hear Ahab, you will hear a choir of Ahabs in every piece of sound. The subliminal threatening as well as the conjuring Ahab. Finally the Ahab who whips up his crew and tears them with him into their downfall. The majestic „on the quay now, waiting and watching“, the oppressive “drawn towards the whirlpools center” - they are all music as well as sonic discourse.

Artesian Sounds welcomes Cicada Ensemble to the label with his debut EP 'Murmuration Clip', featuring a remix from London-based producer Otik.

The title track is light and nimble, swelling with shimmering arps, weighty subs and no kick drum in sight. 'Kepler' layers intricate sound design with head-spinning breaks and an aggressive bassline. 'Buchla & C7' is a five minute epic, patiently building to its climax for almost half of the runtime - a true exercise in tension and restraint. Last but not least, Otik's remix of Kepler slows the original, combining dub infused atmosphere with driving percussion.

Second Editions is pleased to present two new complementing works by René Margraff and Malte Cornelius Jantzen, as a double a-side split album.

Margraff utilizes various beautiful ramblings from the one and only AL and weaves them together two floating pieces that are both a reflection and caricature on what punk (what about ambient?) actually is in the age of ever-bloodsucking tabloid consumerism and commercial image branding, and how to keep your head up as a protagonist/heroine.

Jantzen's side pays homage to a time when a kickflip down a flight of stairs mostly ended in bruised hands and knees. In what can barely be considered field recording, the sound of skateboard decks and wheels on cement and railing, the occasional shouts and murmurs form a "real-time listening piece" (aka a moment), most aptly titled after AL's acclaimed debut album.

Second Editions is coming full circle and is calling it a day. Limited to 100 copies. Half on "not punk pink" and other half on "complicated green" cassette shells. For good luck and good vibes!

A1 - French artist aka Dylan Dylan hits first on the record with energetic groove, breaks and deep synths - that's how we do it!

A2 - HATT.D is a Belgian music maker. A truly moving track with a soothing bass and both broken and straight rhythms. The tune may conjure up images of tropical flora and fauna.

A3 - Dawn Again, a faraway Australian artist, hits with the charming track “I’m Like a Bird" - a minimalistic style house tune with catchy rhythms.

B1 - Manhood is a collaboration of two Russian artists, Denis Kazakov and Lachetto.
The boys wrap us in delicate breaks with cosmic sounds, as if to remind us that we are not alone in this universe.

B2 - German musician Palmate continues the vibe with his dreamy and slightly lo-fi deep house "departure," which sounds like you're going home with happy recollections after a fantastic time with old friends.

B3 - The conclusion of this story will be presented to us by Dj Bigspin, a musician originally from France who now lives in Copenhagen.

He reminds us with his melancholic deep acid hous

Star Funeral is the full-band solo project of Nikki Es- posito. Stepping into the spot light from behind the bass in Secret Tapes, Esposito adds guitar and lead vocals to her list of duties while drums are handled by Ethan Kreidemaker. Sonically, Star Funeral walks a fine line between pleasant and somber tones- dreamy guitars splash through plodding bass and drums with Esposi- to’s vocals driving them forward through a flurry of aching longing and regret. This is indie rock at its finest and Star Funeral feel set to be a standard bearer for a long time. “In the Dark” came together in 2020 after urging from close friends and producer Billy Mannino (Bigger Better Sun, Oso Oso). Singer/multi-instrumentalist Nikki Es- posito built this solo project from the ground up, per- forming all instruments alongside Ethan Kreidemaker’s studio percussion. It’s a lightning bolt of intensity and harrowing growth set to honor and expand upon her primary influences, a flash of self-understanding while re-entering a lightless era. Star Funeral’s debut is a potent discovery of new ways to shoulder old wounds, such as the murmurs of body dysmorphia trailing be- hind double-jaw surgery (“Mouth Bleeder”), the lack of closure in lost friendships (“Outgrow”), and the anxiety of letting others in after these hurdles (“Breather”).

After his superlative and rather unexpected foray into Afro and Latin fusion with his Sol Set project, John Beltran returns to more familiar territory with a rendition of his classic mid-90s album 'Ten Days of Blue' recorded at this year's Dekmantel in Amsterdam. We get a real feel for the whole gig experience, from the sound of murmured anticipation and intro tape to the resolution at the outro and the main meat of the music itself - lively, optimistic, groovy but understated and chilled at the same time - sits somewhere between his ambient and harder techno work. Among Beltran's very finest output.

When the pandemic hit, Hannah van Loon adopted a dog named Gizmo, who became a much-needed companion while the Bay Area musician wrote her second album as Tanukichan. Aptly Named after her new four-legged friend, GIZMO is an exercise in release, whether from situational hindrances—a forced lockdown, for one—or from self-imposed hedonistic coping mechanisms.“ A theme I always had floating around was escape,” van Loon explains of her follow-up to 2018’s Sundays. “Escaping from myself, my problems, sadness and cycles.”

To channel the more uplifting spirit she wanted for GIZMO, van Loon turned to the radio pop-rock of her childhood: “I was struck by the in-your-face positivity of the lyrics,” she adds,referencing artists like 311, The Cranberries, and Tom Petty. “I wanted to bring that positivity while writing about the sad and helpless emotions I’d been grappling with.” But GIZMO’s lightheartedness doesn’t make it shallow: “I think that I could let it go, as beautiful as snow,” she murmurs on “Don’t Give Up,” a nu metal-meets-Cocteau Twins groove about the sudden awareness that all the relationships you depend on could vanish instantaneously. Van Loon’s main collaborator on GIZMO was Toro y Moi’s Chaz Bear, and the jangly pop earworm “Take Care” showcases the heavily distorted, in-your-face guitar work reminiscent of Bear’s own psych joints What For? And Mahal. On the hypnotic, wall-of-sound-rocker “Thin Air” featuring Enumclaw, van Loon channels the triumphant grit of The Smashing Pumpkins as she ponders the impermanence of even the most impactful relationships: “I’ll always have the memories/Of how you used to make me see/Until they fell in the ocean/They’re not swimming/They’re not floating.”

Existentialism aside, GIZMO also sees van Loon break out of her sonic comfort zone. “One ofthe main changes of how I’m approaching music now is that I want to have more fun in the process,” she says, and she walks the line between melodrama and whimsy gracefully: “I can learn something because I’ve been here before,” she sings on the soaring, bittersweet “Been Here Before.” Deftones-inspired thrash drums and screeching electric guitars are gracefully contrasted with van Loon’s hypnotic, almost deadpan vocal style and a crystal clear acoustic guitar she describes as “cute.” Gizmo the dog suddenly passed away right as van Loon finished the album, but he’s immortalised with his photo on the cover—a fitting emblem of this new era of Tanukichan.

Still transmitting from Lockdown in the UK. Banoffee Pies Records 14th release in the original series comes from London based ANGEL D'LITE. A deep passion for rave and NRG with an established high-octane approach to music, heavily influenced by hardcore and early pop bangers, her debut EP further reflecting this mood. Three heavy club tracks and a broken beat dubbed remix from JAY to round things off.

The A side is laced with harmonic 90's vocals and euphoric trance synth lines with two versions of "CRYSTALZ". The original, heavily packed with punching drum patterns and UK hardcore builds, followed neatly by the "DIAMANTÈ MIX". A nostalgic UK Garage take with building pads and rolling hats, partnered by murmuring emotional vocals. Perfect late night club fodder.

The B side flips the mood with "DANCE LIKE DOLPHIN" - the original version setting the tone for early AM adventures. Junglists, sonic communications and club lazers setting in throughout the growing euphoric 90's blends, aquatic frequencies and swirling sub bass. The remix from JAY, another London based producer, follows with an energy shift to a more minimal and rough edged depth of textures and colour, with splatters of surprise elements throughout. Everyone has a crystal and dolphin side right? Love core music from BP xx

Tracks by Cajal, Christian Bistany, Blurry Slur, Daniele Bussoleni, Funkytino, Lotrax, Lucio Agustin, Matichap, One Over, Parsec, Shane Mahon, THEBENS, Wodda, XXX Culture

We are excited to welcome French avant-garde metal duo WuW to our ever-expanding roster of for- ward-thinking artists. Inspired by classical music, free jazz and drone the two classically trained brothers Benjamin and Guillaume Colin have been creating lo-f experimental post-doom epics in the vein of Year of No Light, Dirge and Omega Massif since 2016. "WuW is the sound wind makes when it blows on a hot night," explains the band, "It's a low-end murmur that grabs you by the guts, a blast of air rushing through the mountains and the oceans." Their upcoming third album Orchaostre is an anthem to a restless journey, a fve-part doom symphony that creates a shroud of oppressive atmospheres with only a pinch of light. With their third studio album, WuW deliver a veritable post-metal odyssey, one that takes you on a journey through rhythm and texture and that lets your soul wallow in a soft shell of desolation. The marching rhythm of «Orchaostre 1» and the swaying rhythm with the slow chugging patterns of «Orchaostre 2» take you along on this intric- ate journey, slowly numbing the senses in the throes of repetition. Nevertheless, for those who manage to keep their eyes peeled on this descend into forgetfulness, there is a world of beauty and a spark of hope to be found. The atmosphere is thick, the mood is heavy, and across the slow rifs and funerary drumbeats, the wailing e-bow guitars and myriad of synthesisers evoke kafkaesque at- mospheres as well as strange poignant textures that inspire desolation. Evoking the work of early electronic music innovators, notably during the climactic fnale of «Orchaostre 1» but also halfway through «Orchaostre 3» WuW breed a sense of pristine beauty, like unadulterated nature. In fact, the beauty of Orchaostre feels so un- spoilt, so devoid of any human infuence, it becomes alien, resulting in a harrowing ex- perience of the exquisite in the eye of a hot and hazy storm. FOR FANS OF Russian Circles, Year of No Light, Dirge, Omega Massif, Neurosis, Telepathy, Celeste, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving Limited (100 copies ww) Single Colour Orchaostre 4 (Pink Vinyl) Edition!

FUSE launches its new ‘X Series’, a new instalment on the label centred around collaborations, with the first four-track offering courtesy of anonymous partnership eb_flow.

Continuing to evolve, adapt and blossom as an imprint leading the way across house, minimal and beyond, London favourites FUSE have undeniably levelled up once again as they approach a decade and a half in the game. Adding to their global events and long-standing sub-label INFUSE with sister imprint LOCUS, the brand has delivered quality productions across the electronic sphere from a mix of label regulars and emerging names, with founder Enzo Siragusa heading up and curating the subtle nuances and directions across their wide-reaching ventures. A new project for 2022, late August, welcomes the arrival of the label’s ‘X Series’ - a collaborative introduction which will see label favourites and special guests combine to unveil a string of unique releases in partnership with one another. The inaugural release sees anonymous pairing eb_flow join the label, delivering four cuts which have been essential records amongst the head honcho’s sets this year.

Opener ‘Transmission’ welcomes an otherworldly trip through hazy vocal murmurs and sweeping lead melodies as skippy percussion and rumbling sub-bass take hold before ‘Show Me’ delivers an impactful, bottom-heavy anthem fusing murky basslines beneath garage-tinged drums, funky grooves and dubby sonics.

The vinyl package comes loaded with two further cuts in the form of ‘Elevate’ and ‘Space’, with the former delivering a dreamy, mind-altering trip guided by bright stabs and loose, free-flowing drum shuffles, while the latter serves up a late-night skittering ride through resonant electronics, elongated pads and rubbery bass.

Jon K and Elle Andrews’ MAL imprint returns with a new LP from one of the London experimental underground's best kept secrets, Rory Salter aka Malvern Brume. His music is rare, eccentric and mysterious - somewhere between Coil's bleak ritual magick and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's most experimental, minimal fringes. 

Malvern Brume operates just beneath the radar, occasionally turning up at Café OTO lineups and on a smattering of releases for Low Company, Alter, Infant Tree and Kasual Plastik - but he’s never one to shout too loudly about his work. ‘Body Traffic’ is his most interesting set to date, laying bare a process melting found sounds, field recordings and spoken word into throbbing, pulsing rhythms. It’s an evocation of a fraught mindset during the early weeks of lockdown in 2020; sequestered in his flat next to a trainline, the infrasonic - and more audible - rumbles of rolling stock and a nagging sense of dread infecting his ambiguously discomfiting recordings.

Operating in a headspace that values world-building and vivid, visual emotionality, Salter’s careful melodies are familiar - the distant, weeping melancholia of 1970s British TV hangs off the recordings like net curtains, and his atmosphere loops into experiments that weave through bare traces of industrial music, blank-faced electro pop, and hedonistic Brummie techno, all reduced to a cinder. 

The mood is set on the bellyaching resonance and crawling walls of the title tune, while 'Through Beaked Fog Horns' is drowned beneath morning mists: lopsided synth drones choke and drift, percussion mutates into inebriated bubbles, and tape-f*cked environmental whirrs create an atmosphere that’s hard to decipher in one take. 

‘Moss Spines Clenched’ follows cryptic stains on peeling flocking, and the icy creep of ‘Tense Branches Waver’ quivers beyond a cracked windowpane. The artist’s voice appears from beneath a cardboard box fort in the imaginary world of ‘Cornered Into Sleat’ as a distant drum beats out a marching thud and traffic squeals are sculpted into chirpy whistles, before ‘Bri Dun’ resolves the eerie tension in an OOBE-like ascent above the dado-rail and across the tracks, watching himself fade into a dissociative bliss.

"All chatter falls quiet…” Salter murmurs thru saturation and white noise. It’s a sound that’s gonna stick with us for a while.

Tape



The Manchester based artist Craig Tattersall aka The Humble Bee returns to Dauw with 2 longform compositions centered around piano. The recordings were partly captured by a contact mic attached to his garden bird feeder adding an organic and intimate touch to the music. Hence, the album presents itself as a more outside experience and complements the Autumn season quite well. Susurration is available as a limited risograph cassette edition and digitally with artwork for Skrew Studio.

For the occasion, the label decided to reissue Craig's earlier Dauw cassette releases including "Instruction booklet n. 1232", "Deathless songs" and "Things are sweeter when they're lost". These albums sold out shortly after their release or were not even available publicly until now. The original silkscreen artwork by Femke Strijbol has been reinterpreted with risograph techniques. These albums will be available separately on limited cassette editions.

Dressed in a powder blue suit with the frilly shirt to match, DJ Yoda invites you to be his +1 for ‘Prom Nite’, his new album promising retro Americana full of daydreaming reverie, international megastar guests, trip hop acknowledging the likes of Morcheeba and Nightmares on Wax, and the turntable extraordinaire’s bread and butter of cuts, beats and rhymes.

Certainly no stranger to retro sounds having famously peppered his DJ and AV sets with the unexpected the world over, and his ‘How to Cut n Paste’ mix series going all the way back to the 30s, Yoda’s harp-laden puppy love vibe spreads from the sweet and mellow sound of 2019’s ‘Home Cooking’, an album described as ‘boundary-breaking’ by Mojo upon slotting nicely into the UK’s blooming jazz canon. Think deliciously harmonised doo-wop murmuring ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ with an eye for dreamboats en route to Makeout Point – on ‘My Energy’, Eva Lazarus takes the form of an earth angel, with Yoda on jukebox cut-ups, taking it back to starry-eyed, clean cut days of wonder (or more recently, Little Mix’s ‘Love Me Like You’).

Beginning enigmatically with the assistance of Hollywood A-lister (and former next-door neighbour) Lily James, ‘Breathe’ demonstrate Yoda’s continued evolution as a musician (not to mention shrewd decision maker), with James’ vocal confidence - a little Lana del Rey to her breathiness - returning on the velvet-smooth ‘Airplane Mode’. It’s a smartly executed soundclash accentuated by LA rapper Choosey, the star of the album’s straightest hip-hop shooter ‘Harder I Rock’. Homeboy Sandman adds some kick to the prom punch with typical wordplay sent down ‘Coconut Grove’, and Liam Bailey is perfectly cast for the darkly cinematic sway of ‘Don’t Even Try It’.

On an album of many talking points, the LP’s crowning glory is opening single ‘Feel Like Home’: featuring the vocal comforts of the House Gospel Choir, it’s your go–to pick-me-up when the chips are down, targeting the hairs on the backs of necks like a softer focus version of Jamie xx’s ‘Loud Places’. Extended into an alternative, equally uplifting form by Beardyman’s ‘Don’t Mean Thing’, summer festival season already has its homecoming anthem.

With tongues wagging, the twists and turns step away from Heartbreak Ridge when O Love tucks into the mouthwatering shopping list funk of ‘Way Home’; and ‘Lesson 1956’, featuring Jamie Cullum and DJ Woody, jauntily pays homage to classic Cut Chemist alchemy, Yoda’s celebrated turntable tomfoolery back in full effect and extending the flavours found in ‘Home Cooking’.

Again maximising the experience and enjoyment gained from recording live instruments and prioritising songs over beats, Yoda continues to progress with a mixture of risk-taking, elite musicianship, nostalgia brought bang up to date, and ultimately, good clean fun capable of stirring your soul, making ‘Prom Nite’ a date to remember.

Magpie artwork supplied by London’s ENDLESS, whose signature style has tagged Liberty and Lagerfeld as but two high profile clients, Yoda again maximises the experience and enjoyment gained from recording live instruments and prioritising songs over beats. His continued progress mixes risk-taking, elite musicianship, nostalgia brought bang up to date, and ultimately, good clean fun capable of stirring your soul, making ‘Prom Nite’ a date to remember.

Featured 7” Vinyl singles:
Feel Like Home (feat. The House Gospel Choir)/ Don’t Mean A Thing (feat. Beardyman)
My Energy (feat. Eva Lazarus)/Lesson 1956 (feat. Jamie Cullum & DJ Woody)

Das 2021 erschienene Dream Unending-Debütalbum "Tide Turns Eternal" stellte für Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) und Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands) eine deutliche Veränderung ihrer musikalischen Ambitionen dar. Obwohl das Album fest im Death/Doom-Bereich angesiedelt war, zeichnete es sich durch eine weitaus höhere Zielsetzung und Progressivität aus und distanzierte sich damit von anderen Vertretern dieses Stils. Jetzt, nur ein Jahr später, kehrt die Band mit dem atemberaubenden "Song of Salvation" zurück und lässt diesem Erkundungseifer wesentlich mehr Raum, sich zu entfalten und zu glänzen.

Der 14-minütige Opener des Titeltracks beginnt wie ein morgendlicher Sonnenaufgang über einem ruhigen Meer, bevor er sich zu ätherischer Schwere steigert wie die reich strukturierten Wellen eines plötzlichen Meeressturms. Der Schwung des Songs zieht sich nie in mühsame Wiederholungen zurück, sondern öffnet immer wieder neue Türen, ebbt und fließt wie das Wasser eines Flusses aus seiner Quelle.

Wie ein einsamer Blick aus dem Fenster eines abgedunkelten Zimmers auf die nächtlichen Lichter der Stadt, so bietet "Secret Grief" die Gasttalente des Sängers Phil Swanson und Leila Abdul-Rauf an der Trompete, was die Bandbreite der beteiligten musikalischen Talente und die Tragweite der unverwechselbaren Erzählung von "Song of Salvation" noch weiter vergrößert.

Das ruhige Zwischenspiel "Murmur Of Voices" weicht dem beschwörenden "Unrequited", das mit einem einsamen Gitarrensolo beginnt, bevor es in eine treibende Nachmittagsträumerei und unterbewusste Meditation übergeht.

Schließlich kommt das epische Ende des Albums, der 16-minütige Abschluss 'Ecstatic Reign'. Es enthält die vielleicht schwersten Doom-Momente des Albums sowie die Rückkehr von "Tide Turns Eternal" mit den Gaststimmen McKenna Rae und Richard Poe. Tomb Mold-Schlagzeuger / Kehlkopf Max Klebanoff taucht ebenfalls auf und liefert sich ein beeindruckendes Vocal Battle mit DeTore. Die cineastische Vision des Albums und die akribische, farbenfrohe Detailtreue bringen diese fesselnde Reise zu ihrem dauerhaften Höhepunkt.

Nur ein Jahr nach "Tide Turns Eternal" bieten Dream Unending auf dem grenzenlosen Panorama von "Song of Salvation" eine fortgesetzte Abkehr von begrenzenden Genre-Normen - und gleichsam eine geschickte Neudefinition derselben.

- Decibel Magazine Album des Monats November 2022 Ausgabe
- Gastauftritte von Phil Swanson (Solemn Lament, ex-Sumerlands, ex-Hour of 13), Leila Abdul-Rauf (Vastum, Ionophore) und Max Klebanoff (Tomb Mold, Death Kneel)
- Die Vinyl-Edition enthält ein riesiges 24x36-Zoll-Poster
- Aufgenommen von Sean Pearson und Arthur Rizk. Gemischt und gemastert von Arthur Rizk (Gravesend, Daeva, Eternal Champion, Power Trip, Kreator).
- Wunderschönes Cover-Artwork von Benjamin A. Vierling (Joanna Newsom, Nightbringer, Aosoth)
- Hauptmitglieder sind Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) und Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands, Solemn Lament)

- FFO: Anathema, Evoken, Tiamat, Opeth, Trouble, Blue Nile, Live, Alice In Chains, Kings X

The Discomfort Of Evening is the incredible and original soundtrack by prolific Belgian composer Michiel de Malsche to 2020 International Booker Prize winner The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld. Visceral and virtuosic, Rijneveld's novel follows Jas, a girl growing up in a devout Christian family that runs a Dutch dairy farm, whose brother dies in an accident after she wishes he would die instead of her rabbit. Lost in grief, her family falls apart as she becomes consumed by increasingly dangerous fantasies.

Michiel de Malsche has captured the atmosphere and spirit of Rijneveld's book perfectly, moving through moments of confrontation and introspection, sinking into spirals of despair, stasis and subtle hope and change. Brooding ambient basslines, driven by droning murmurs, are offset with melismatic electro-acoustic pieces that embody the novel's haunting and dissonant world, whilst also incorporating manipulated field recordings such as animal sounds and a church service, allowing for a full manifestation of Jas’s world in a completely new way.

De Malsche achieves this by rallying an unusual combination of acoustic instruments (16 in total) played by top-of-their-field musicians, creating a truly unique sound world and tonal palette, including an Ondes Martenot, a 7-stringed Chinese instrument called a guqin, a marimba, a string 6-tet, a toy piano and a bass flute.

De Malsche always confronts all emotional levels of his source material head-on, making his soundtrack into much more than just a fever dream. It is a precise description of, and accompaniment to, a devastatingly impactful book.
Michiel De Malsche is a Belgian composer, multi-instrumentalist and sound designer. He studied classical composition at the conservatories of Rotterdam and Ghent. His music has been performed all over the world and he has composed and produced dozens of soundtracks for contemporary dance, theatre, movies and documentaries.

Besides his work as a contemporary classical composer, he is active as a studio musician and producer in the world of electronic music.

Oscean comes out firing from the outset on their new 12” entitled Multirays. The Argentinian duo of Andrés Zacco and Sebastián Galante are following up on the first release of their collaboration, Ideoma, also released on Tresor Records. With Multirays, this burgeoning collaboration reveals a promising evolution, moving into
more rhythmically diverse environments and playful structures.
The opening track, Multidimensional, strikes with confronting beats and a searching, woolly bass sound.
Constantly growing, it moves confidently with its skittering percussion work, ebbing and flowing through filter movements and expansive synths. Invisible Rays draws in breathing techno pulses, as Zacco and Galante cast drenches of feedback across the spectrum. A
deceptively mellow melody, recalling Spiral from their debut EP, teases at a deeper melodic progression, but the focus stays locked on the animated rhythms, tempting towards divergent grooves but expertly keeping feet on the floor.
In Drivion, Oscean investigates electro territories, simultaneously bubbling and driving. Echoed arpeggiations and upfront beats funnel impulses between neurons. Broad synth gestures oer gateways into abstraction before, without barely a hint, the rhythms beat once more.
On the closing track, Horizonsz, the duo drive forth through skipping rhythms and soul-searching bass murmurs. Synth pads beckon with fresnel lens reflections and rising warmth, motioning towards a
stunning moment of euphoria, where futurist mirages coexist with distant memories.

Drawing the night in around his private, unnerving vigil, Ellis Swan returns to Quindi Records with an album of cracked beauty and haunted balladry. The Chicago-based singer-songwriter debuted on the label last year with a collaborative project called Dead Bandit, a vividly produced instrumental set in thrall to the badlands and a laconic, languid Americana.

Under his own name, Swan records intimate, poetic songs in a stark fashion, so fragile they might disintegrate in between your fingers were you to pick them up. He draws the microphone close to pick up every whisper and drags the music through layer upon layer of tape fuzz, leaving room for atmospheric impressions which loom out of the walls like the ghosts of past misdeeds. These pieces play on the natural distortion and delirium which occurs at the farthest end of the night - the hour before dawn might hope to break the veil of darkness.

Swan's is a hauntological sound, but like the late Israeli rockabilly icon Charlie Megira his process strikes a spooked tone past revivalism and out of time or place. The only anchor which places Swan anywhere is the subtle presence of Katherine Swan providing lyrics to '3am' and lyrics and backing vocals to 'It Could Be Worse'.

The impression cast is of one man and his guitar, but there are other textures tucked into the music - the muffled murmur of a drum machine or a low frequency organ hum, some desolate piano, other treated percussive impulses which might well have been the work of incidental sprites while the four-track was rolling.

There are fuller cuts like 'Evening Sun' and the title track '3am' which play with structural dynamics and creep out of the shadows a touch, while passages of plaintive, instrumental unease such as the hypnotic, mantra-like 'Chinatown' protract the space between songs. 'Swing' lolls between moments of bottomless silence and a discernible, rickety funk, and 'Puppeteers Tears' teases out a buried drama. But primarily, it's the light touch of 'Horses Bones' and tin can tenderness of 'She's My Sweet Summer Storm' which spell out the spellbinding character of 3am; a singular creation fusing the best qualities of folk, blues and Americana with a fearlessly experimental sound palette.

Björk announces her tenth studio album Fossora -

each album always starts with a feeling that i try to shape into sound
the feeling was landing ( after my last album utopia which was all island in the clouds element air and no bass ) on the earth and digging my feet into the ground it was also woven into how i experienced the "now" this time around 7 billion of us did it together
nesting in our homes quarantining being long enough in one place that we shot down roots my new album "fossora" is about that
it is a word i made up it is the feminine of fossore ( digger, delver, ditcher ) so in short it means "she who digs" ( into the ground )
so sonically it is about bass , heavy bottom-end , we have 6 bass clarinets and punchy sub i would like to especially thank bergur þórisson and heba kadry and side project , el guincho , hamrahlíð choir , soraya nayyar , clarinet sextet murmuri , siggi string quartet ensemble , emilie nicolas , serpentwithfeet viibra and last but not least : sindri and dóa .

visuals were made by viðar logi , james merry , m/m , nick knight , andy huang , edda , isshehungry , tomi , sayaka , sunna , sara and heimir and my ever so loyal and magnificent team : derek , rosamary , catherine , chiara , hilma and móa

Björk announces her tenth studio album Fossora - each album always starts with a feeling that i try to shape into sound the feeling was landing ( after my last album utopia which was all island in the clouds element air and no bass ) on the earth and digging my feet into the ground it was also woven into how i experienced the "now" this time around 7 billion of us did it together nesting in our homes quarantining being long enough in one place that we shot down roots my new album "fossora" is about that it is a word i made up it is the feminine of fossore ( digger, delver, ditcher ) so in short it means "she who digs" ( into the ground ) so sonically it is about bass , heavy bottom-end , we have 6 bass clarinets and punchy sub i would like to especially thank bergur þórisson and heba kadry and side project , el guincho , hamrahlíð choir , soraya nayyar , clarinet sextet murmuri , siggi string quartet ensemble , emilie nicolas , serpentwithfeet viibra and last but not least : sindri and dóa .

visuals were made by viðar logi , james merry , m/m , nick knight , andy huang , edda , isshehungry , tomi , sayaka , sunna , sara and heimir and my ever so loyal and magnificent team : derek , rosamary , catherine , chiara , hilma and móa

After Dinner’s Paradise of Replica is a concise nugget of tomfoolery that occupies a whimsical no man’s land between art pop, Japanese folk music and full-assed Art Zoydian avant proggery. Gentle, arcane and covertly sweeping, it typifies that friendly strain of experimentalism that Eastern music seems so predisposed towards and which curious minds find such great delight in.

Assembled by the enigmatic chanteuse and composer known simply as Haco, After Dinner was less a band and more of a loose art collective that utilized a plurality of different musical disciplines stapled together through free improvisation sessions. And some of this does come through on Paradise of Replica—the record is a scrapbook of bells, strings and koto humming under Haco’s ethereal vocals, and the effect, while perfectly tuneful, does come off more as a musical project than a conventional album.

But Paradise of Replica is far from an impenetrable scholastic endeavor—in fact, there’s something of an Elephant 6-like quality in its ability to warp conventions while still coming off more or less like pop music. Counter to the ramshackle hostility of much improvised music, After Dinner’s choices are melodious and feel deliberately sequenced. Even crescendos don’t tend to rise above a murmur, and there are even apparent hooks on tracks like “A Walnut” and “Ironclad Mermaid.”

Ultimately, there’s not much to be said about Paradise of Replica that can elucidate more than actually hearing it will be able to. Proggy, playful and lush, it’s a brief glimpse into something in the vicinity of genius, and just outside the realm of commercial music. It’s a quietly bold project that shows a softer side of the avant-garde, and makes a perfect companion to Stereolab and Magma at once.

The four tracks that comprise Giving Water to the Dead were composed using sound materials originally recorded for the sound installation Histories of the Present, a public artwork commissioned by the City of Berkeley in 2019. But where the installation was about a melding of practices and sounds into a single gesture, Crouch and Novak wanted to take the opportunity of a split release to exploring divergent paths starting from common ground. For Giving Water to the Dead, each artist started with the same source material and plotted their own direction without direct influence from the other. As artists in a relationship and sharing a studio this was no easy feat. Despite the planned divergence the resulting tracks compliment each other, as the artists do.

Yann Novak and Robert Takahashi Crouch are a creative and romantic couple living and working in Los Angeles. Their collaborative practice incorporates field recordings, photography, and video as tools to investigate the relationship between site and subject. Their performances and installations have been presented at the AxS Festival, Pasadena; California Museum of Photography, Riverside; Desert Daze Festival, Southern California; Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza, Berkeley; Gays Hate Techno, Northern California; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; LACMA, Los Angeles; PØST, Los Angeles; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York and others. Their compositions have been published by The Tapeworm, Murmur Records, Estuary Ltd., IO Sound, and Untitled & After.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their approach while simultaneously pushing into challenging new areas. Comprising nine pieces ranging between two and seven minutes in length, the album’s opening title track promptly introduces the distinctive palette of just-intoned electric guitars, subtle electronic processing, and voice that is rigorously explored throughout. Where much of Reidy’s guitar work on previous recordings explored rapidly pulsed cycling figures, here notes often hang in the air in a more spacious, lyrical fashion. The elasticity of rhythm and non-linear repetition of pitches initially suggests improvisation until the listener becomes aware of the precise arrangements of spatialised lines. At times, World in World suggests classic bedroom electric guitar works of the 1990s such as Loren Connors’ Airs or Roy Montgomery’s Scenes from the South Island; like those works, Reidy’s possesses a wonderfully live ambience, with frequent pedal clicks adding to the music’s powerful sense of intimacy. In Reidy’s case, however, the yearning, melancholic mood of Connors or Montgomery is tempered by the unorthodox guitar tuning, which at points produces a unique and uncomfortable effect somewhere between the hyper-precision of Harry Partch or Lou Harrison and Jandek’s slack-stringed descent into the void. While World in World plots out its terrain with a bold single-mindedness that allows some pieces to appear almost as variations on a common theme, subtle changes in emphasis distinguish each track. Tactile percussive interjections skitter across the tremolo tones of ‘Paradise in Unrecognisable Colours’, while ‘Ajar’ ramps up the role played by the electronics, with glitching pitch-shifted and back-masked textures threaded through the guitars and thickly harmonised vocal layers. Ranging from autotuned melodic lines to buried murmurs, Reidy’s voice is a frequent presence throughout these nine pieces, at times creating the impression that a more conventional series of songs lurks underneath the chiming microtonal guitars. On the stunning ‘Poised’, whispers and distant, ghostly wails surround the layers of guitars, at times suggesting the foggiest outer reaches of Liz Harris’ Grouper. Both rigorously experimental and emotive, World in World is undoubtedly Julia Reidy’s finest work yet.

"Sound Space Variations" is a delicate and restrained sound bath. A mix of atmospheric, suspenseful drone sounds and meditative aspects. It is an album made for those moments when we just are.

zake has managed to capture the moments that lie between sounds; the unagitated murmurs and atmospheric hisses. The artist connects this in-between-world and our earthly one with calm and sonorous scores, making us think about everything and nothing.

The six pieces on the record do not seem heavy-headed or overloaded but much more airy, wide and open for interpretations. They stimulate the imagination - in a wonderfully unbiased way. In the last track. James Bernhard mixed and mastered the album, written and produced by drone artist zake, at Ambient Mountain House Studio. zake himself provided the artwork and photos himself."

The latest offering from French shape-shifter Maxime Primault (High Wolf, Black Zone Myth Chant, etc.) is both a distillation and deepening of psychedelic soundsystem strategies honed across a decade plus of production and performance, in crisscrossing trenches of vibrational exploration. The four cuts comprising IN D EV IL were born of bass and syrup, designed as anthems for baser desires: “I just wanted to make bangers really.” Alien squelches and insectoid chatter pulse above thick swells of low end, intercut with sirens, screwed voices, and seasick wobble, alternately pummeling and prismatic. Masterfully disorienting, flickering with FX, drops, and narcotic murmuring, at the threshold of dissociative and dubstep.

Recent years spent performing in clubs influenced Primault’s listening habits, both in taste and production methods, skewing towards a starker contrast of highs and lows. IN D EV IL encapsulates this evolution, hallucinatory but urgent, like DJ tools for an underworld afterhours: tight, tripped, and lightless. The EP’s tracks vary in energy and density but share Primault’s premise of “tunes that sound fat and heavy.” Club music as dimensional gateway, booming and liminal, rippling with tremors, texture, and undertow. Whether deployed in public or private, these designs manifest vividly altered states, testament to their creator’s omnivorous vision of rhythm and sound.

Flock is a brand new collaboration between five leading musicians from London's open-minded jazz and experimental scenes: Bex Burch (Vula Viel), Sarathy Korwar, Dan "Danalogue" Leavers (Soccer96, The Comet Is Coming), Al MacSween (Maisha) and Tamar Osborn (Collocutor).

The Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin released her seventh studio album Yeah!!! in 1965. Despite the overdubbed sounds of audience murmurs, the album is not a live album. Instead, the album was recorded live at New York's Columbia Studios and produced by Clyde Otis. Yeah!!! features “Misty”, “If I Had a Hammer” and “There Is No Greater Love” amongst other

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

- First vinyl reissue, available on LP for the first time in 20 years - Completely remastered audio and restored artwork - Side D lunar vinyl etching art // After leaving London in 1999 for the sleepy seaside retiree town of Weston-super-Mare, Coil co-founders John Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson set up shop in a palatial eight-bedroom estate to pursue the outer reaches of the group's heightening cabalistic chemistry. Among the staggering string of late-era masterpieces they produced is lunar opus Musick To Play In The Dark, widely hailed as an artistic zenith upon its release. The sessions that birthed it were in fact so fruitful that a second LP took shape during the creation of the first one. Aided by the recent addition of Welsh multi-instrumentalist engineer Thighpaulsandra, Coil mined further into the recesses of surrealist eldritch electronica Balance termed "moon music" - post-industrial spellcasting at the axis of narcotic and nocturnal energies. Musick To Play In The Dark² spans a full witching hour of bad acid sound design, synthesizer voyaging, opiated balladry, Luciferian glitch, and subliminal hymnals, alternately ominous, oracular, and absurd. Scottish gothic icon Rose McDowall guests on vocals for two tracks but otherwise the album is a hermetic affair, tapping into the group's limitless insular synergy. Opener "Something" is stark and incantational, a spoken word experiment for windswept voids. "Tiny Golden Books" unspools an aerial whirlpool of cosmic synth, both whispery and widescreen. "Ether" is an exercise in funeral procession piano and intoxicated wordplay ("It's either ether or the other"), while "Where Are You?" and "Batwings - A Liminal Hymn" lurk like liturgical murmurings heard on one's death bed, framed in granular FX and flickering candlelight. As a whole the collection skews more muted and remote than its predecessor, as if having grown accustomed to the nether regions of these darkening seances. But music box hallucination "Paranoid Inlay" captures the group's oblique comedic side, always glimmering beneath: over a warped, wobbly beat Balance intones an opaque narrative of serenity, Saint Peter, and suicidal vegetables, accompanied by spiraling harpsichord and stuttering squelches of electronics. "It seems concussion suits you," he repeats twice, like a macabre pickup line, before dictating a dear diary entry about risks and failures, finally concluding with as close to a self-portrait as Coil ever came: "On a clear day I can see forever / that the underworld is my oyster."

This album doesn't blurt it out: There is no loud "Ta-Dah!", no exclamation mark. "The ghost that carried us away" flatters in a rather unobtrusive way. However, it has encircled you after the third song at the latest. Fragile hymns of nonchalant casualness, created by the 24-year-old Sindri Már Sigfússon. Guitars, piano, his almost bashful and yet so present voice. "Nature, mortality, love", these are the topics of his debut album. Even the one who listens only briefly, is able to make them out within the sounds. "Do you remember how the things look when you were young."

Reykjavik again. Iceland, the musical heartland. On top of that, there is a violinist with her voice in the clouds: Gudbjörg Hlin Gudmundsdóttir (violine, vocals, harmonica). There further are musicians Sindri shared his hometown and his passion: Orn (guitar, lapsteel) who forms together with Sindri and Gudbjörg the inner triangle of Seabear. Or Eiki, Orvar, Gudni and Dóri. One plays the flugelhorn, the slide-guitar or upright-bass. One belong to the live line-up of Sigur Rós (Eiki). Another is part of the sensational múm (Orvar). Some are stage members of Benni Hemm Hemm's Band - the other Icelandic artist on morr music. Sindri Már Sigfusson has invited them into his small studio, placed them in front of the only microphone, let them think about his musical thoughts. He likes the notion and the feeling of LoFi, Sindri says. Only for the recording of the drums three microphones were used. The result is reminiscent of the reduced stereo recordings of the 1960ies.

Libraries is the most direct promise that pop music is able to make. Tiny and gigantic, unobtrusive and exciting at the same time. A song like a blink into the most beautiful sunrise. A tumbling piano, swinging drums. Melodies, melancholy: "My little bird flew away from me". Or "hands remember", the singing being close to one's ear. "The voice of an old friend", a murmur, two violins. There is later "summer bird diamond", birds twitter to the accords of an old banjo, a glockenspiel. It is almost a radio play, chamber folk. And "seashell" at last, a pocket symphony, arranged around jumping drums. Sufjan Stevens would have done it in a very similar way.

Amatori’s second various release, a dark/dub 12” EP on heart murmurs, emotional changes, and turbulence.

Heart sounds are noises generated as a Lub and a Dub that occur in sequence. Emotions can interfere with the force and rhythm of the heartbeat and murmurs can be a normal condition or a symptom of abnormality. The album goes through different emotional states of the 4 authors living in unprecedented times.

Spoon’s tenth album, ‘Lucifer On The Sofa’, is the
band’s purest rock ’n’ roll record to date. Texasmade, it is the first set of songs that the quintet has
put to tape in its hometown of Austin in more than
a decade.
 Written and recorded over the last two years - both
in and out of lockdown - these songs mark a shift
toward something louder, wilder and more fullcolour.
 From the detuned guitars anchoring ‘The Hardest
Cut’ to the urgency of ‘Wild’, to the band’s blownout cover of the Smog classic ‘Held’, ‘Lucifer On
The Sofa’ bottles the physical thrill of a band
tearing up a packed room.
 ‘Lucifer On The Sofa’ is an album of intensity and
intimacy, where the music’s harshest edges feel as
vivid as the directions quietly murmured into the
mic on the first-take. According to frontman Britt
Daniel, “It’s the sound of classic rock as written by
a guy who never did get Eric Clapton.”

Möbius is an aerial ballet created by Cie XY in collaboration with the choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, and composers Jonathan Fitoussi & Clemens Hourrière.

One of the most sensitive sets of ears in Paris, GRM affiliate Jonathan Fitoussi meets Clemens Hourrière for a beautiful 3rd album called "Möbius". After their acclaimed "Five Steps" 2015 & "Espace Timbrés" 2018 on Versatile records, Fitoussi & Hourrière tethered again to the classic Buchla modular synthesiser, but this time for composed the soundtrack of an amazing aerial ballet in collaboration with Cie XY and famous choregrapher Rachid Ouramdane; Widescreen results
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"For Möbius we have teamed up with two composers, Jonathan Fitoussi and Clemens Hourrière; for several years now they have shared a common passion for electronic instruments with their unique incredible sound. We soon found there was a lot of common ground between our own acrobatic research and the way they create music : their sounds meeting, colliding or clustering together in a slow and finely nuanced progression, requiring the same continuous adjustment as our own process. This constantly evolving music with its expansive percussion will leave the door wide open to flights of the imagination, transporting us to strange atmospheres, at times disturbing, at others invigorating..." Cie XY

wars will release their second studio album 'A Hundred Shivers' on 26th November 2021 via A Wolf At Your Door Records. Not afraid to buck the trends the band have been releasing tracks from the record in ‘chapters’, which although untraditional, according to vocalist Rob Vicars, that was part of the appeal, “It’s meant we have been able to wrap all our little communications around each individual selection of songs really tightly, and be creative in a tonne of different spaces, all over the course of this one record. “Getting to release what we’ve been working on, putting more music out frequently feels like the perfect complement to the way we write and create.”

Following the 2019 soundtrack release of ‘Matthias & Maxime’, Mercury KX are thrilled to share Jean-Michel Blais’s upcoming LP aubades. The new album from the Montreal-based icon of modern-classical music shows a new side to the artist. The album features some of his best piano moments but also has grand orchestral elements and arrangements which show a new side to the artist – and has a lot of moments in uplifting major as opposed to melancholic minor.In his own words: “With this album, I was definitely responding to certain trends in classical music. For example, the fact that the solo piano tends to always sounds melancholic. That’s good, but I’ve done that already, I wanted to go beyond that. It was also the first time I’ve ever written so much in major, not minor. So much of piano music, especially in this modern classical music world, is in minor. I wanted to go there but without being kitsch.”

Nach der Veröffentlichung des Soundtracks von Matthias & Maxime im Jahr 2019 erscheint nun die neue LP ”aubades” von Jean-Michel Blais. Das neue Album der in Montreal ansässigen Ikone der modern-klassischen Musik zeigt eine neue Seite des Künstlers, oder wie er sagt Neben der Entscheidung, für ein Ensemble zu schreiben, hat Blais auch andere Parameter für das Projekt festgelegt. ”Mit diesem Album habe ich definitiv auf bestimmte Trends in der klassischen Musik reagiert”, meint Blais.

”Zum Beispiel die Tatsache, dass das Soloklavier dazu neigt, immer melancholisch zu klingen. Das ist gut, aber das habe ich schon gemacht, ich wollte darüber hinausgehen. Es war auch
das erste Mal, dass ich so viel in Dur und nicht in Moll geschrieben habe. So viel Klaviermusik, vor allem in der modernen klassischen Musikwelt, steht in Moll. Ich wollte dorthin gehen, ohne dabei kitschig zu sein. Was ich in dieser Zeit am meisten liebte, war, zu laufen oder Rad zu fahren, während ich mir meine Demos anhörte und beobachtete, wie die Natur in die Stadt zurückkehrte, während es so ruhig war.

Die Natur geriet einfach außer Kontrolle.” Blais zögert, ”Aubades” als ein Pandemie-Album oder gar ein Trennungsalbum
zu bezeichnen. ”Das sind Dinge, die wir alle erleben”, sagt er. ”Aber gleichzeitig war es ein sehr fruchtbarer Moment der Kreativität für mich.

“I’m reeling, I’m restless,” sing Deep Throat Choir from the heart of their second album. That restlessness manifests in a set of tremendously abundant, original songs from the east London female and non-binary vocal collective, founded by Landshapes member Luisa Gerstein.

 Released via Bella Union, ‘In Order to Know You’ is a multi-layered assertion of freshly expansive range, driven by two core virtues: a sense of strength in unity and an open embrace of its singers’ personal experiences, shared through collective, supportive vocal expression.

 After 2017’s largely covers-based debut album, ‘Be OK’, the choir recognised the call to evolve. “Having been singing together for five-plus years, and having released an album of mostly covers, it felt like the logical next step to make our own music together,” says Gerstein. “This album is the alchemy of all the specific voices and players that make up the choir, and a collaborative process of writing and sharing music and ideas. Sonically, I wanted to move beyond just voices and percussion, to see what richness could be brought with acoustic instruments and electronics, and to transition from a choir that
does covers to a band with loads of vocalists.”

 ‘In Order to Know You’ heads towards its climax without seeming to touch the ground, from the title track’s devotional exhalation to the stealthy, smoky shimmer of ‘Unstitching’. Its lyrics drawn from a poem by Emma Cleave, the sublime ‘Field of Not Knowing’ closes the album in a vivid tapestry of folkgothic images (moon beams and pipistrelles) and serene-to-soaring arrangements, revelling in possibility: “It’s the place where I begin,” sing the choir.

 For Deep Throat Choir, the result is both an exquisite culmination of journeys taken so far and a lustrous, exquisite springboard for further adventures. Their travels began in 2013, when the collective took shape from a desire to strip music back to the basic elements of raw female voices and drums, united in a fashion that both honours and transmogrifies personal expression.

 A small group of four or five singers steadily expanded, with Zara Toppin’s drums providing a propulsive energy. Cathartic live shows and collaborations followed, ranging from team-ups with Peggy Sue, Stealing Sheep, Horse Meat Disco and Matthew E White, to performances at Green Man, Wilderness, the Southbank Centre’s WOW festival, London’s Scala and beyond. ‘Be OK’ provided a gutsy showcase for the band’s close, collective strengths, bolstered by weekly gatherings at a church in east London to blow
the roof off. A fruitful collaboration with techno-pop duo Simian Mobile Disco on the 2018 album ‘Murmurations’ followed: a testament to the choir’s alchemical abilities.

Already iconic in London’s underground queer rave scene, Josh Caffe makes a characteristically upfront and disruptive arrival to Phantasy with his debut single for Erol Alkan’s label, ‘According to Jacqueline’. Produced in collaboration with Quinn of Paranoid London, for whom Caffe has previously provided vocals on club favourites such as ‘Vicious Games’ as well as for their rapturous live sets, ‘According to Jacqueline’ fully centres and cements Caffe’s personal vision of club culture as a raw and demanding force.

Loosely chronicling a hi-NRG pursuit across the club, ‘According to Jacqueline’ follows murmurs on the dancefloor concerning one such individual, a “freaky butch queen on the scene, dancing round like a machine.” Outrageous, confrontational and disappearing further into a space between ecstasy and submission, Caffe’s attitude and sound spans Chicago house, vogue culture and the resurgent spirit of his home city’s current LGBTQI+ landscape.

A complimentary dub provides dancers the opportunity to luxuriate in the sensuality of Caffe’s advances, but no matter what side the needle lands on, Jacqueline’s wicked tongue persists in cheek.

Sound Wonders: A Series of Epics is the second compilation from Touchtheplants, the imprint and multidisciplinary creative environment founded by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Sean Hellfritsch (aka Cool Maritime). Following 2020's Breathing Instruments, the new collection features sonic responses to a new prompt. Like its predecessor (which explored music as an extension of the human body and the natural world), the medium of focus here dates back to ancient civilizations. Smith invited artists to compose music based on the idea of epics: the long poems and narrative verse works that have detailed deeds and adventures since the dawn of storytelling. The musicians — some of today's most exciting practitioners of experimental sound design, instrumentation, and synthesis — took this directive loosely, realizing a series of vibrant and transportive songs evoking wondrous visions, subjects, and locales.
From Elori Saxl’s chamber piece to Olive Ardizoni’s ode to the strange and beautiful phenomenon of starling murmurations with synth and xylophone tones the album splays out like chapters in a panoramic account of all that surrounds us.