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Mechanisms of Omniscience - a brutal and unrelenting journey through technical death metal, returns to the market as a special vinyl reissue, brought to you by our newly established record label. Originally released by Abnormality in 2016, this album has left a lasting mark on the genre with its punishing riffs, precise technicality, and intense lyrical content. Abnormality explores profound and provocative themes in every track, addressing existentialism, corruption, and the darker side of human nature. This is an album that defies genre expectations, marrying complex arrangements with raw aggression. Abnormality, a force hailing from Massachusetts, has carved a niche within extreme metal for its signature blend of technical prowess and relentless heaviness. Led by the fierce vocals of Mallika Sundaramurthy, the band is complemented by the exceptional talents of guitarist Jeremy Henry, bassist Josh Staples, and drummer Jay Blaisdell. Together, they create a sound that is as precise as it is punishing, offering fans a visceral experience in each performance. This reissue celebrates the lasting impact of Mechanisms of Omniscience while paying homage to Abnormality’s powerful contribution to metal.

»Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds« explores sound’s relationship with architecture, inspired by the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery of NSW. Created from sound prompts responded to by artists like Jim O’Rourke and claire rousay, the work reflects on space, collaboration, and the fluid nature of sonic environments.

I like to think that sound haunts architecture.

It’s one of the truly magical interactions afforded by sound’s immateriality. It’s also something that has captivated us from the earliest times. It’s not difficult to imagine the exhilaration of our early ancestors calling to one another in the dark cathedral like caves which held wonder, and security, for them.

Today the ways in which sound occupies space, the so-called liquid architecture, holds just as much wonder, albeit one that is often dominated by functionality and form. Beyond those constraints however, how sound operates in the material world is something that exists at the fundament of our understanding of music, and moreover within the broad church we know as the canon of sound arts.

Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is a record born out of these relations. In a direct sense, the record is the product of an invitation by curator Jonathan Wilson to create a sound environment, reflecting on the Naala Badu building at the Art Gallery Of NSW. The building’s name, which translates from the Gadigal language to ‘seeing water’, was opened in 2022 and this piece was offered as an atmospheric tint to visitors walking through the building throughout the year following its opening.

It’s also a record born out of a recognition for the porousness sound affords, especially as a device for collaborative endeavour. This composition is one born out of generosity and acoustic solidarity. Even The Horizon Knows Its Bounds is comprised not just of my sounds, but also that of an incredible array of artists who have also operated in the orbit of the Art Gallery Of NSW. The players include Amby Downs, Chris Abrahams, Chuck Johnson, Claire Rousay, Dean Hurley, Jim O’Rourke, JW Paton, Madeleine Cocolas, Norman Westberg, Stephen Vitiello and Vanessa Tomlinson.

The piece was constructed around two long form sound prompts that each musician responded and contributed to. These materials there when digested into the final piece you hear. The work could not exist without the substantial offerings these artists made, and I am immensely grateful to each of them.

I’ll finish with a little note that appears on the LP itself.

Place is an evolving, subjective experience of space. Spaces hold the opportunity for place, which we create moment to moment, shaped by our ways of sense-making.

Whilst the architectural and material features of space might remain somewhat constant, the people, objects, atmospheres, and encounters that fill them are forever collapsing into memory.

Lawrence English
Performed by Amby Downs, Chris Abrahams, Chuck Johnson, Claire Rousay, Dean Hurley, Jim O’Rourke, JW Paton, Madeleine Cocolas, Norman Westberg, Stephen Vitiello, Vanessa Tomlinson

Japanese artists Yumiko Morioka and Takashi Kokubo unite for Gaiaphilia, a journey through ambient soundscapes that seamlessly blends Morioka’s graceful piano compositions with Kokubo’s immersive field recordings and atmospheric synthesisers.

This collaboration brings together two of Japan’s most influential pioneers in ambient and new age music, each with decades of groundbreaking work. Morioka, celebrated for her 1987 album Resonance—reissued to critical acclaim by Métron Records—infuses her introspective playing with Kokubo’s vivid environmental textures, creating a dialogue between nature and melody.

After releasing Resonance, Morioka stepped away from music, moving to America to raise her family. For years, her work was quietly cherished by fans, only gaining wider recognition with its reissue in 2020. A devastating wildfire destroyed her California home seven years ago, prompting her return to Tokyo where she became a chocolatier before rediscovering her passion for the piano in recent years, playing live shows and making new recordings.

Takashi Kokubo’s legendary discography spans over 30 years, and has found wider acclaim in recent years via YouTube algorithms and bootleg uploads, wracking up tens of millions of plays. Yet he is probably best known for his sound design work, specifically the Japanese earthquake alert sound as well as credit card payment jingles - his creations are pervasive in Japanese society.

“From our love and concern for our planet, we both offer a unique sensibility and spirit of inquiry which we express through our music.”

Rooted in shared philosophical interests, Gaiaphilia reflects a profound reverence for nature’s resilience and harmony. Themes of Gaia, Mother Earth’s renewal, and the interconnectedness of life are central, with inspirations drawn from cosmology, sacred geometry, and Japan’s mystical Katakamuna tradition. The album invites listeners into a meditative space where sound mirrors the delicate balance of the natural world.

A master of sound design, Kokubo enhances this vision with his distinctive field recordings, captured using a self-made binaural microphone shaped like a crash test dummy’s head. From the jungles of Borneo to the gentle rhythm of ocean waves, Kokubo’s globe-spanning recordings transform into immersive soundscapes that perfectly complement Morioka’s introspective piano compositions.

“The title, Gaiaphilia, is a newly created word to encompass our love and respect for nature and life, this feeling is the theme we hoped to express.”

Released on Métron Records on 12/03/25 and with artwork from Ventral Is Golden, Gaiaphilia marks a remarkable new chapter for Morioka and Kokubo. Recorded at Kokubo’s log house studio named Studio Ion in Yamanashi, their collaboration offers listeners a deeply emotional and transcendent experience, rooted in the timeless beauty of Japan’s natural landscapes.

During their short but prolific career, A2L released two albums & numerous EPs on labels such as 1st Bass / Big One and Force Inc between 1988 and 1990. This is a collection of early and rare underground British psychedelic house gems from 1989, blending the trippy, mind-expanding sounds of machine funk, new beat, industrial/ebm, samplers and turntables techniques, with the birth of acid house wonderlandand and captures the raw energy of the UK rave scene.



During their short but prolific career, A2L released two albums, one of which strangely landed on a South African label. They also dropped numerous EPs on labels such as 1st Bass / Big One (home to acts like Deskee, Longsy D, and King Bee) and the German label Force Inc (which hosted artists like Alec Empire, Porter Ricks, and Mike Ink), between 1988 and 1990.

While Acid House is synonymous with the Roland 303, A2L is unlikely an acid house act. Instead, they stand as one of the finest examples of British psychedelic house music from the late 80s, falling between the likesof S-Express, Funtopia, Eon, and Acid Angels. With standout tracks like "Even Though It's Make Believe" and "Come On," A2L delivers infectious grooves over strobelight sample jams.

This here is a collection of early and rare underground British psychedelic house gems from 1989, blending the trippy, mind-expanding sounds of machine funk, new beat, industrial/ebm, samplers and turntables techniques, with the birth of acid house wonderlandand and captures the raw energy of the UK rave scene.


This is one testament to the creative freedom and experimental nature of that era.

For fans of the burgeoning British psychedelic and acid house scene.

On Chrystia Cabral's fourth album as SPELLLING, the Bay Area artist transforms her acclaimed avant-pop project into a mirror. Cabral's lyrics for Portrait of My Heart tackle love, intimacy, anxiety, and alienation, trading the allegorical approach of much of her previous work for something pointed into her human heart. The album's thematic forthrightness is echoed in its arrangements, making it the sharpest, most direct SPELLLING album to date. From the dark minimalism of her earliest music to the lavishly orchestrated prog-pop of 2021's The Turning Wheel to this newly energetic expression of her creative spirit, Cabral has proved again and again that SPELLLING can be whatever she needs it to be. The title track, with its propulsive drum groove and anthemic chorus of "I don't belong here," is the most potent embodiment of the album's turn toward emotional directness. Once the main melody emerged, Cabral used the song as a tool to process her anxiety as a performer and opted for a tighter, more rock-oriented composition. This transformation mirrors the album's broader shift toward energy and immediacy, driven by the core band of Wyatt Overson (guitar), Patrick Shelley (drums), and Giulio Xavier Cetto (bass), whose collaboration uncovers new contours of the SPELLLING sound. Cabral still writes and demos in isolation, but presenting the songs for Portrait of My Heart to her bandmates helped her discover their eventual lively, organic forms. So did working with a trio of producers_The Turning Wheel mixing engineer Drew Vandenberg, SZA collaborator Rob Bisel, and Yves Tumor producer Psymun. Key guest contributions further shape the album. Chaz Bear (Toro y Moi) delivers SPELLLING's first duet on "Mount Analogue," Turnstile guitarist Pat McCrory turns Cabral's original piano demo for "Alibi" into the crunchy, riff-y version that appears on the record, while Zulu's Braxton Marcellous gives "Drain" its sludgy heft. These parts aren't just incorporated seamlessly into the album; they feel like an integral part of its universe. Ultimately, though, Portrait of My Heart is nobody's record but Cabral's. She fearlessly draws the curtain back on parts of herself that she's never included in SPELLLING before_her feelings of being an outsider, her overly guarded nature, the way she can throw herself recklessly into intimate relationships and then cool on them just as quickly. "It's very much an open diary of all those sensations," she says.

A crisp, spellbinding intro sets the mood for the first song on 'Maintenant Jamais', Population II's third album. With the guidance of producer Dominic Vanchesteing (Marie Davidson, Chocolat, Peter Peter), the turbulence of the band’s previous releases is structured and refined. The result is a sophisticated rock album that surprises with its languorous grooves, as heard on "Le thé est prêt", while staying true to the raw power for which the band is renowned, as demonstrated on vigorous tracks such as "La Trippance" and "Rédemption naturelle".

The album follows with "Prévisions", a song that ripples with finesse before abruptly transitioning into the instrumental number "Macavélique rock". While "Haut-fond" and "Cardinaux" are true feats of elegant prog rock, "Mariano (Jamais je ne t'oublierai)" and "homme étoilé" prove that Population II is also endowed with a profound melodic sensibility capable of creating catchy and explosive hooks.

On this new album, the trio fine-tunes the distinctive style they’ve been developing for several years, thanks in part to a fusion of shared influences – from Soft Machine to MC5 to L'Infonie – but also to a rare complicity that can only blossom between such close friends. This creative chemistry is what makes the band's complex songwriting seem so fluid and supple. Population II breaks through their previous sonic frontiers while remaining true to their roots. Therein lies the achievement of 'Maintenant Jamais'.

A crisp, spellbinding intro sets the mood for the first song on 'Maintenant Jamais', Population II's third album. With the guidance of producer Dominic Vanchesteing (Marie Davidson, Chocolat, Peter Peter), the turbulence of the band’s previous releases is structured and refined. The result is a sophisticated rock album that surprises with its languorous grooves, as heard on "Le thé est prêt", while staying true to the raw power for which the band is renowned, as demonstrated on vigorous tracks such as "La Trippance" and "Rédemption naturelle".

The album follows with "Prévisions", a song that ripples with finesse before abruptly transitioning into the instrumental number "Macavélique rock". While "Haut-fond" and "Cardinaux" are true feats of elegant prog rock, "Mariano (Jamais je ne t'oublierai)" and "homme étoilé" prove that Population II is also endowed with a profound melodic sensibility capable of creating catchy and explosive hooks.

On this new album, the trio fine-tunes the distinctive style they’ve been developing for several years, thanks in part to a fusion of shared influences – from Soft Machine to MC5 to L'Infonie – but also to a rare complicity that can only blossom between such close friends. This creative chemistry is what makes the band's complex songwriting seem so fluid and supple. Population II breaks through their previous sonic frontiers while remaining true to their roots. Therein lies the achievement of 'Maintenant Jamais'.

»Shell I« is the second edition on Edições CN by Brussels sound artist Florence Cats. It is a magical collection of 23 edits for voice, field recordings, theremin, and piano. Cats’ recorded piano rehearsals and singing sketches reminds us of Cornelius Cardew works. They are at the heart of Edições CN, where a sketch or rehearsal holds as much, if not more, truth than a definitive composition.

A melody line from Debussy passes by. Waves crash in the distance. Sails and flagpoles are sounding by the winds. Florence singing a stream of consciousness poem next to a water stream. Track by track you dream deeper in this generous collection. While the album’s A Side is an aquatic storyboard, the B Side is the essence of storms and days spent in the forest.

Cats holds a singular position at the firmament of Belgian sound explorers. Her art, almost unspectacular, is an important voice in these algorithmic times.

Florence Cats (Be, 1985) is an experimental artist working somewhere between music, sound, visual art and acupuncture. In 2023, she was selected as an emerging sound artist by Stuk, Q-O2 and Musica. Her work is a needle or antenna, inspired by the vibrations of sound and light in nature, travel, telepathy and dreams. She plays the theremin in experimental ways, interacting with her body, voice, water, radio and various.

Nachdem sie letztes Jahr die französischen Charts im Sturm erobert hat, ihr Debütalbum das meistverkaufte Jazz/World-Album des Jahres in Frankreich war und sie in mehreren Ländern wie Japan, Deutschland, Kanada und den USA, faszinierende Live-Auftritte hatte, meldet sich Gabi Hartmann nun mit ihrem neuen Album 'La femme aux yeux de sel' zurück. Auf den 13 Liedern, die größtenteils auf Englisch und Französisch gesungen werden, bewegt sie sich erneut zwischen verschiedensten Stilen und vermischt Jazz, Pop, Folk und Soul. Die Titel, manche melancholisch, manche farbenfroh und manche voller rhythmischer Energie kreieren eine ganz eigene Welt, in der man aber auch immer wieder die großen Vorbilder Mercedes Sosa oder Miriam Makeba entdecken kann. So hat Gabi Hartmann mit ihrem warmen, klaren Timbre ein sehr persönliches und facettenreiches Album geschaffen, das Grenzen und Stile vermischt und in Gabi Hartmanns eigene Traumwelt entführt.

"Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" said the famous boxer Mohammed Ali, in reference to his legendary strike. This punchline also works wonderfully in music, listening to Roseaux's third album. A French success story, created with all modesty and honesty by the Parisian trio: Emile Omar, Alex Finkin and Clément Petit.

The three musketeers of sound cultivate their know-how, now acclaimed by critics and an ever-growing audience since their first project in 2012. It took them time to take a step back and gain perspective in order to offer us a return that is both joyful and resounding.

Roseaux takes root on the banks of soul, folk, jazz, and songs from all eras, a cascade of inexhaustible sounds, where the three composers draw their inspiration and merge their experiences.

The leaves of Roseaux soar to the breath of wonderful voices, chosen with precision by the three friends, like that of the American singer Aloe Blacc, present since the beginning of the adventure, essential enchanter of the three episodes.

Conceived as a dreamlike escapade full of emotions, on the fringes of the massive, instantaneous and often disembodied production, Roseaux is a totally artisanal group, a sort of UFO in the French musical landscape, which operates on instinct and above all on desire.

Thus, Roseaux has become an expert in bringing together, for the duration of a record, the artists who specifically form the DNA of their host: captivating voices, a plot on the piano and cello, but also encounters and reunions, in a poetic and deliberately nebulous universe.

A welcoming nebula, where the listener is invited to listen and immerse themselves without hindrance, in a luxuriant, wild, exciting sound forest. This third album is the work of 3 music lovers, capable of switching roles: writing, arrangements, production, from which emerge this time, eleven tracks with chiseled melodies including three colorful and unusual instrumentals.

A journey between melancholy and euphoria, which led Roseaux to the ends of the planet, from the Caribbean to Europe via Africa to unearth other vibrations and unique performers: the captivating Grenadian-British singer Ala.ni, the little English afropop prince from Ghana, Ghetto Boy, and the disturbing Swedish Isabel Sörling, sign here a first flamboyant collaboration with the group.

While the talented Haitian-Canadian Mélissa Laveaux, the hypnotic Scandinavian singer Olle Nyman, the sparkling French-Canadian Anna Majidson and our remarkable national Ben, already present on the second part, still manage to create a surprise by revealing new aspects of their range.

Roseaux's voices are decidedly impenetrable and its magic is renewed today by making the strength of all these scintillating elements dialogue, to be discovered in a setting of softness and voluptuousness.

Nature is full of reeds, this one is unique.

Sagacious reggae lyricist Vaughn Benjamin’s words are particularly cutting during Sow And The Reap, the final recording of Vaughns immense catalog of works with I Grade Records. Produced by Zion I Kings, and taken from 2021’s album Polarities, Sow And The Reap folds topics of political dominance, mass migration, and injustice into a thought provokingly coherent whole. The song brims with Vaughn’s characteristic dual-meaning word-play, using evocative metaphors of nature and agriculture to illuminate global policy. Sow And The Reap’s timeless lyrical principles are matched by its inexorable reggae rhythm, featuring hefty programmed drums by Romain “Teflon Zincfence” Arnett, and sombre trombone and space age synth, both supplied by much missed multi-instrumentalist Drew Keys. Backed by its correspondingly haunting dub.

This series honours both the vocal and version culture of the reggae sound system and the profound lyricism of Vaughn Benjamin. We have consistently received two requests in relation to releasing the LPs: "Can we have dub versions?" and "Where can we read the lyrics?" Our response is the 'Akae Beka - vocal, version and word-sound collection.' Before Zero Records worked with Tippy I Grade to mix a series of dub mixes from a carefully curated selection of his extensive works with Vaughn Benjamin. The vocal and corresponding dub mixes were then cut to wax by Lewis Hopkin of Star Delta and wrapped in a collage made of Ras Marcus's artworks, which he crafted for various LP covers of Vaughn's works throughout the years with the lyrics transcribed and printed on the rear of each sleeve.

"“It clicked for me one day, that the album was going to be about hornets,” explains Sputnik, the mononymous songwriter behind the noise-pop project Weatherday.

“It just made sense to me.” Hornet Disaster, Weatherday’s follow-up to their 2019 debut Come in, and spiritual successor to 2022’s collab release Weatherglow, is their most expansive work to date. In Weatherday’s initial bout of inspired writing and recording, they produced over 70 songs for the record, but not before they had a complete, overarching narrative that was coherently tied back to Sputnik’s previous work.

It’s a bustling record with disparate songs each vying for space like wasps in a swarm. It can inspire caution and chaos, but there’s wonder, purpose, and a certain familiarity there, too. Weatherday has extended the knotted, thrashing maximalism of Come in by doubling down with the uncompromised, no-stone-unturned nature of Hornet Disaster. Where Come in was the product of an artist searching for their voice, Hornet Disaster represents the joyful abandon that comes from having found it."

"“It clicked for me one day, that the album was going to be about hornets,” explains Sputnik, the mononymous songwriter behind the noise-pop project Weatherday.

“It just made sense to me.” Hornet Disaster, Weatherday’s follow-up to their 2019 debut Come in, and spiritual successor to 2022’s collab release Weatherglow, is their most expansive work to date. In Weatherday’s initial bout of inspired writing and recording, they produced over 70 songs for the record, but not before they had a complete, overarching narrative that was coherently tied back to Sputnik’s previous work.

It’s a bustling record with disparate songs each vying for space like wasps in a swarm. It can inspire caution and chaos, but there’s wonder, purpose, and a certain familiarity there, too. Weatherday has extended the knotted, thrashing maximalism of Come in by doubling down with the uncompromised, no-stone-unturned nature of Hornet Disaster. Where Come in was the product of an artist searching for their voice, Hornet Disaster represents the joyful abandon that comes from having found it."

Now on album number seven , Metronomy has continued where many of their 2000s ‘cool’ band peers have dropped off along the way. Small World is a return to simple pleasures, nature, an embracing in part of more pared down, songwriterly sonics (some moments wouldn’t sound amiss on a Wilco release), all while asking broader existential questions: which feels at least somewhat rooted in the period of time during which it was made – 2020. For all that Mount seems to think he has made a comparatively sombre record, much of Small World still pulses with the zesty, tongue-in-cheek joie de vivre you’d expect of a Metronomy record.

So sure, things are different now Joe Mount is getting older and what’s on his mind is changing, but that doesn’t mark a change in quality for Metronomy. An immaculate set of tracks, Joe Mount’s ability as a songwriter and arranger shines through on Small World, evergreen. Metronomy might be growing up, but they’re not afraid to still have fun with it all. Through the tumultuous ebb and flow of the years, Metronomy continues to endure and make great pop music – and, really, that’s all that we could ask for.

On their most explicit venture into music for moving image, Miles Whittaker & Sean Canty rudely fracture piano and vocal recordings by US filmmaker-musician Kristen Pilon in a short-circuiting of style and pattern.

Shredding up definitions of electro-acoustic opera, spectralist chamber musique and concrète rave, Demdike hit square between the eyes/ears of film music vernaculars on a startlingly strong addition to their unique oeuvre, now in its 16th year of elusive psychoacoustic strafes and jump-cuts across putative borders. The 13-part, hour-long album dislodges source material made for the experimental film ‘To Cut and Shoot’, by Kristen Pilon, an NYC-based musician and filmmaker, to farther refract the film’s themes of serendipity and the nature of ghosts and dreams with a flickering flux of sound-imagery and aleatoric weirdness appropriate to her original meditations, but also freely messing with their forms.

Situated just a few miles north of Houston, Cut and Shoot is a relatively insignificant Texas town with an unforgettably bizarre name. Pilon grew up not far from Cut and Shoot, and it's there where she ran into 65-year-old machinist and motorcyclist Robert Lewis Stevenson, better known as Bobbo, who's pictured on the album's cover. The meeting occurred a few months after Pilon recorded her improvisations on piano, strings and voice in the basement cellar of the Halle in Manchester, with Bobbo providing the necessary narrative heft the trio needed to inspire an experimental film and its accompanying soundtrack.

Responding to Kristen’s initial piano and operatic vocal recordings, Demdike return a volley of discrete parts tilting from typically cantankerous mayhem to quieter, more clandestine buzzes sliced with crazed interstices of the imagination, all marbled with the plasmic contrails of the paranormal which have long been peculiar to their work. With a poetic flair reflecting Pilon’s own phrasing and melding of mediums, Demdike unfold and expand her melodic fragments into temporal mazes, variously resembling the most messed-up ends of The Caretaker in ‘A Grave Fall (January)’, but also liable to skew into buckshot club turbulence, as with ‘Belly Up’, or the bittersweet bruk contortions of ‘Twist’.

The storyline wickedly frays and loops into itself with a non-linearity that recalls the mid-to-latter stages of Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’ or waking from a sweaty fever dream only to pitch back into its thorny bush of ghosts, often within the space of one track. It’s testament to the ever-tighter binds of Demdike’s symbiotic vision that the results nevertheless hold a thread of logic that weaves in everything from their Jon Collin jams to reams of mixes and Gruppo edits with an unresolved, open-ended quality that still keeps us on our toes, perhaps more so than ever here.

Best known as a founder member of Submotion Orchestra, as well as Matthew Halsall’s pianist for many years & lately keyboardist for Portico Quartet, Taz Modi now returns with his long-awaited second solo album - the haunting and elegant ‘Involuntary Memories’ on Sehnsucht Records.

Recorded across the country on a number of different pianos, the album builds upon the eclectic nature of his debut ‘Reclaimed Goods’ by aiming to bring as wide a range of expression into post-classical piano music as possible, whilst also melding subtle electronic influences.

"Gudatall" Music Cassette Edition. Limited to 100 pcs on white cassette.

“Gudatall” by Murg offers a stark reflection on humanity’s cyclical failures and the looming retribution of nature. This compelling creation, rooted in the bleak landscapes of rural Sweden, channels the essence of black metal’s golden era while forging a path of its own. With “Gudatall”, Murg explores themes of isolation, ecological despair, and the inevitable return to our primal state, all through a meticulously crafted sound that resonates with the cold, harsh beauty of the wilderness.

Best known as a founder member of Submotion Orchestra, as well as
Matthew Halsall's pianist for many years & lately keyboardist for Portico
Quartet, Taz Modi now returns with his long-awaited second solo album - the
haunting and elegant 'Involuntary Memories' on Sehnsucht Records
Recorded across the country on a number of different pianos, the album builds upon
the eclectic nature of his debut 'Reclaimed Goods' by aiming to bring as wide a range
of expression into post-classical piano music as possible, whilst also melding subtle
electronic influences

Demonstrating the poignant power of experience + human connection + innate musicality + operating in the present moment, Jeff Mills' Spiral Deluxe collective unveil their second album - The Love Pretender. Driven by the free expression and creativity of improvised performance, Spiral Deluxe is an electronic jazz fusion project comprised electronic music visionary Jeff, along with legendary keyboardist Gerald Mitchell (Underground Resistance/ Los Hermanos), Japanese rocker Yumiko Ohno (Buffalo Daughter/Cornelius) on Moog synthesizer and the Japanese bassist, adopted New Yorker, Kenji "Jino" Hino - son of Terumasa Hino, the world famous jazz trumpeter. Together, the four key players formed a band centred around completely improvised journeys through sound.

During their unrestrained performances, what Jeff describes as sonic "conversations" arose between the musicians, as they each contributed to full-length live shows, and studio sessions. Within the boundless parameters of freeform spontaneity, they developed an unspoken understanding of one another, finding balance and poise within the unplanned performances. The resulting recordings have been used for three releases so far: Two EPs, Kobe Session (2016) and Tathata (2017), and their debut album Voodoo Magic in 2018. With The Love Pretender, we're presented with another stunning collection of "tracks" extracted from one long improv session.

With each musician proficient in their specialism and, of course, an all-out music lover, the communication between the group members became almost telepathic. Very little preparation was needed, and their performances flowed naturally and organically. This can be heard, and felt, throughout The Love Pretender. Tracks like 'The Soloist' evolve effortlessly, each new shift subtly influenced by one of the musicians nudging the conversation into a different phase, and the rest responding accordingly, or vice versa. It's music that embodies the true nature of mindfulness and letting go of fear. In their unstructured, liberated cocoon the artists thrive and create musical moments that have, fortunately, been captured for us all to immerse ourselves in. Jazzy notes fill the air, combined with electronic bass, synthesised beats, sparkling keys and an all-round warm and welcoming atmosphere, with the slight edge you can only get from improvised performance.

Sylvain Luc's posthumous appearance on the album is of significance too. The French guitarist died in March 2024 at the age of 59. His natural flair adds another dimension to the album, bringing a touch of that laid back 1980s American California Coast feeling to tracks such as 'Society's Man'. These contributions to the LP, recorded separately, add character - a final sprinkling of humanity to complement the aliveness and presence of this body of work. Three other musicians also added their creative energy to the project. They were; TOKU, a Japanese jazz musician who specialises in wind instruments, especially the cornet, trumpet and flugel horn. And there's Masa Shimizu, who also has wide-ranging with the guitar, as well as being a producer.

Themes on the album include the optimism one can have by simply trusting the process and trusting that everything will work out in the end. By playing together in the way they do, Spiral Deluxe place their trust in the mystery of what will happen next. Getting comfortable with not knowing is key to a sense of peace with regard to the future and this energy is vital to their collective musical output. By embracing the notion of the unknown, you become an eternal optimist, living in the moment, rather than projecting into the future. This cultivates excitement, an antidote to anxiety.

Meanwhile, the title alludes to the shifts and changes that have occurred in today's society, whereby it's possible to achieve success through pretending. The superficiality, and falsehood, that can often be presented via social media, can lead to questions about what's real and what's not. From AI to the fake personas that populate the dominant platforms, The Love Pretender speaks to a process that is symbolic of the time we're living in. Behaviour that has become acceptable in today's world, which may not have been as welcomed a few decades ago. But this is part of the cycle of life...

Jeff's intention with this music is to present it in high-fidelity, to be listened to over and over and over again. In post-recording he worked for hours to ensure the audio quality was as high as it could be. The goal is to create music that people can live with their entire lives, from his solo work to these masterful improvisations. Music that comes to life, music that has a voice we can replicate with our own vocals. Expressive, unstructured, and alive...

With The Love Pretender Jeff Mills continues his mission to experiment with music outside the bounds of what is typically expected. It's freeing, enlivening, vibrant and uniquely human. As ever, Jeff's visionary outlook and bold approach to musical performance and recording has produced a body of work that epitomises his often revolutionary capabilities. There's no pretending here, just pure unadulterated sonic transmissions from a wonderfully daring, inspiring and optimistic ensemble...

Eurorack tweaker, 8-bit master, king of carnival madness, Dutch producer Solo Moderna is back with his female alter ego singer Krage, for a perfect fusion of Afro-Latin and Caribbean rhythms with modern synth pop. Highly entertaining, Clever and unique blend of organic sounds, samples and vintage synths tweaking, "Daïsm" is a fun and enjoyable journey to the frontiers between electro, mento, dub, rocksteady, contemporary African rhythms and cumbia with a twist.

Certainly not your average tropical music. This new album is definitely a step up for the eccentric artist, as he's now reached the next level of mastering the fusion of genres and the art of blending organic sounds with electronic elements. Solo Moderna is one of the few “electro” artists you can immediately recognise when you hear one of his songs. In the creative process of “Daïsm”, Solo Moderna met his soulmate singer, Krage, who sings in a delightful mixture of English, French, Spanish and Jamaican Patois. Together, they found their very own way of expressing their love for nature and diversity through universal language.