Search:ritual

Benjamin Hudson returns to Acroplane, following his last projects with us as Ebola (Wrong Music) and one half of Baconhead, with 'Slime'… and he's brought a load of his talented mates to collaborate with him.

Artwork by Everything Alllways

Mastering by James Forde Stewart @ Sorting Room Studios.

Brain Rays is part of queer collective, DOOMSCROLL, and Devon art & party crew, Bizarre Rituals. He is also a co-founder of Wrong Music alongside DJ Scotch Egg and Matt Lambert (Roger Species).

Known for his hectic, high pressure output with Quiet, and film soundtrack work (as part of Unknown Horrors) collaborating with director Dean Puckett (The Severed Sun, The Sermon, Satan's Bite) and Rhys Chapman (Wonderkid). As a DJ he has performed all over the world, including Transmediale Festival (Berlin), Today's Art (Den Haag) and Boomtown Fair, as well as two live sessions at Radio 1's legendary Maida Vale Studios. As a producer he has garnered support from the likes of Mary Anne Hobbs, ETCH, Huw Stephens, Drumskull, Annie Mac, and Nikki Nair.

Filippo Diana's “The Haunted Palace” is the second album of unreleased tracks published by Musica Per Immagini, or a sort of soundtrack for an imaginary horror film set in a bloody past, ispired by the book “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” by Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The artist formerly known as Joe Drive used analog and digital synthesizers, as well as microphones and computers, to describe in notes the ancestral practices of resurrection of the dead accomplished by a shy and unsuspected character, who slowly transforms into an alien, inspiring both fright and terror.

Nicola Conte & Nico Lahs return with their eagerly awaited second EP, continuing the musical journey they began with their acclaimed 12” Macumba de Oxalȧ / La Danse de l’Esprit.
This new release confirms the creative synergy between two producers who speak the same musical language: a refined blend of spiritual jazz, Afro-American rhythms and electronic sensibility, designed for the most eclectic and sophisticated dancefloors. The Tema Due project is aimed at a refined club scene, attentive to the depth and purpose of sound. Once again, Conte and Lahs are turning the dance floor into a ritual space, where body and spirit move in harmony in a musical language that not only entertains but also elevates.


In this “EP2”, Nicola Conte and Nico Lahs collaborate for the first time with the talented young Brazilian percussionist Gabriel Prado and consolidate their long-standing partnership with pianist Pietro Lusso, who plays a fundamental role in shaping the musical identity of this work. Among the tracks, “Share Your Love” stands out in particular, interpreted by Brazilian singer Nina Miranda, who brings emotional depth to a track that talks about peace, sharing and love between peoples, and is enriched by the participation of Giovanni Guidi on Fender Rhodes and synths.
“EP2” precedes the release of Tema Due’s full-length album, which is currently taking shape – a work that promises to further consolidate the duo’s shared vision, expanding their conceptual and sonic scope. To crown this creative cycle, the album will also be followed by a third EP with additional unreleased tracks, symbolically closing a trilogy of sound and vision. A coherent, intense and uncompromising musical journey, where club culture meets spirituality and artistic exploration.

New compilation by Coco Maria on her own new founded imprint Club Coco. Comes with a 4 page folded insert.

There are albums that aren’t just listened to—they’re lived in. Club Coco – New Dimensions in Latin Music is one of them. This compilation, curated by Coco María, marks the first release on her own label and serves as a sonic portrait of what Latin music can become when it’s guided by intuition rather than labels. Eleven tracks open the windows and cross continents as effortlessly as changing a song. Here, Neapolitan synthesizers coexist with digital cumbias, voices whisper from within the groove, and rhythms invite movement—without urgency or pretense.

This selection isn’t defined by a genre but by a feeling: that of someone dancing with an open heart and keen ears. Each track is a postcard from a corner of the world, and also a love letter to rhythm and the emotions it stirs. From Bogotá to Naples, passing through Lima, Amsterdam, and New York, this compilation offers a journey where past and future brush against each other in the present moment. Club Coco doesn’t aim to define a sonic truth, but to invite listeners to discover new ways of hearing and feeling.

The party has already started. Come on in.

The 3rd and final chapter in Cochemea's epic quest to explore and express the spiritual connection between his art and ancestry. For Vol 3: Ancestros Futuros, Cochemea entrusted his vision to a core group of longme collaborators-a powerful octet composed of New York-based percussionists and members of Daptone's famed rhythm section. Gabriel Roth (aka Bosco Mann) reprised his role as producer, recording and mixing the album live to 8-track analog tape. Cochemea continues to push the boundaries of his sound, blending past, present, and future into a ritual offering-an evolving sonic narrative where memory, survival and creativity converge.

Mit Aura Reworks präsentiert die japanische Vokalistin Hatis Noit eine außergewöhnliche Neuinterpretation ihres gefeierten Debütalbums Aura (2022). Acht internationale Künstler:innen - darunter Laraaji, Armand Hammer, William Basinski, Matthew Herbert, Alex Somers und Jlin - verleihen den Originalstücken neue klangliche Dimensionen zwischen Ambient, Electronica und Avantgarde. Die Ltd. Edition Translucent LP (First Pressing) erscheint in einer hochwertigen Pressung mit Download-Code - ein Sammlerstück für Liebhaber:innen experimenteller Klangkunst. Jeder Track ist eine eigenständige Transformation: Laraaji eröffnet mit einer meditativen Version von "Aura", Matthew Herbert verwandelt "Thor" in ein schamanisches Clubritual, während Armand Hammer und Preservation "Jomon" in ein politisch aufgeladenes Klanggedicht überführen. Besonders bewegend: William Basinskis Rework von "Inori", das mit Fieldrecordings aus Fukushima unterlegt ist - aufgenommen nahe dem Ort der Nuklearkatastrophe von 2011. Hatis Noit stammt aus Shiretoko, Hokkaido, lebt heute in London. Ihr Name - "Stiel der Lotusblume" - symbolisiert die Verbindung zwischen Leben und Jenseits. Diese Dualität durchzieht auch Aura Reworks: Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, Stimme und Stille, Ritual und Experiment. Ein intensives, emotionales Album - limitiert, hochwertig und klanglich einzigartig.

Following on from the sell-out ‘Folktronic EP’ , Crying Outcast resumes its descent through the soil with the Turf Step EP, the next chapter from Miles J Paralysis. Dialling further into the crevices between dubbed-out energy, murky house, and slow-motion ritualism, this four-tracker feels like a call from the belly of the land. Rooted in a shared sense of groove and disorientation, the four tracks move in different directions, laced with broken vocals, worn-down textures and a haze of echoes. The rhythms are thick, the atmospheres are blurred and the hand-worn quality to the music remains, luring you back into this familiar, low-lit world. Built for

In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.

Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.

Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.

Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.

Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.

As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.

Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.

Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.

Teresa Rotschopf, a musician and composer from Vienna, presents her second solo album, »Currents and Orders« – a radical, delicate, yet grandiose sonic journey between experimental pop, new music, and improvised composition. The album will be presented live on August 27 as part of the »Pop-Kultur« festival (silent green, Berlin) and at the »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Vienna) on 12 September.

»Currents and Orders« was recorded in an unusual location: a stalactite cave in Styria, Austria. Together with a small group of musicians (Maria Gstättner: bassoon, contraforte; Alex Kranabetter: tuba, trumpet, French horn; Patrick Dunst: saxophone, duduk; Florian Klinger: marimba, vibraphone, glockenspiel, cymbals, gong, stalactite; Patrick Pulsinger: gong, stalactite; Ulrich Schleicher: gong) and in co-production with Patrick Pulsinger, Rotschopf recorded the album in June 2023 – deep underground, far from daylight, but all the closer to archaic sounds and resonances.

The cave becomes not only an acoustic stage, but also a symbolic space of memory, retreat, and transformation. The album comprises four pieces – including two large-scale tracks:
- the opening, mantra-like title track »Currents and Orders« (over 10 minutes)
- the final, free-jazz, expressive »I Open My Gates (for You)« (over 20 minutes)

With a minimalist structure, choral voices, vibraphone, percussion, and wind instruments, fragile yet powerful soundscapes emerge, whose spatial depth is also palpable through the cave reverberation.

Rotschopf first developed the desire to record in a cave in the summer of 2022. What began as a visual and sonic image became a concrete project – supported by the Austrian Cave Association. In June 2023, Rotschopf and her musicians spent three days in a cave in the Styrian forest. Almost a kilometer of cable was laid, and equipment and instruments were carried deep underground. Rotschopf describes the recording situation as a kind of return to herself: »I descended into this cave, as if I could descend into myself, into my own womb ... What we did in the cave could just as easily be called ›recording music,‹ but it could also be called ›remembering‹ – remembering the earth, the cave, and humanity.«

»Currents and Orders« is an album like a ritual: haunting, atmospheric, bold in its form, and deeply rooted in both physical and emotional space. Music that takes its time, uses space, and pushes boundaries.

The pre-release single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (release: July 17, 2025) is accompanied by a striking music video shot by Antoinette Zwirchmayr on 16mm film: Teresa Rotschopf holds a real owl in her hand – an image that is as magical as it is enigmatic.

Label owner Martin Hossbach read a review of Rotschopf's first solo album, »Messiah,« in 2018 and contacted the artist. Joint releases followed, including a drone album on the sub-label Martin Hossbach Score and a Pet Shop Boys cover version on Martin Hossbach Cover.

Teresa Rotschopf, Musikerin und Komponistin aus Wien, präsentiert mit »Currents and Orders« ihr zweites Soloalbum – eine radikale, zarte und zugleich groß angelegte Klangreise zwischen experimentellem Pop, Neuer Musik und improvisierter Komposition. Das Album wird am 27.8. im Rahmen des Festivals »Pop-Kultur« (silent green, Berlin) und am 12.9. im »ORF RadioKulturhaus« (Wien) live vorgestellt.

»Currents and Orders« entstand an einem ungewöhnlichen Ort: in einer Tropfsteinhöhle in der Steiermark, Österreich. Gemeinsam mit einer kleinen Gruppe von Musiker:innen (Maria Gstättner: Fagott, Kontraforte; Alex Kranabetter: Tuba, Trompete, Waldhorn; Patrick Dunst: Saxophon, Duduk; Florian Klinger: Marimbaphon, Vibraphon, Glockenspiel, Becken, Gong, Stalakmit; Patrick Pulsinger: Gong, Stalakmit; Ulrich Schleicher: Gong) und in Ko-Produktion mit Patrick Pulsinger nahm Rotschopf das Album im Juni 2023 auf – tief unter der Erde, fern von Tageslicht, dafür umso näher an archaischen Klängen und Resonanzen.

Die Höhle wird nicht nur zur akustischen Bühne, sondern auch zum symbolischen Raum der Erinnerung, des Rückzugs, der Transformation. So umfasst das Album vier Stücke – darunter zwei großformatige Tracks: - das eröffnende mantraartige Titelstück »Currents and Orders« (über 10 Minuten) - das finale, free-jazzig-expressive »I Open My Gates (For You)« (über 20 Minuten)

Mit minimalistischer Struktur, Chorstimmen, Vibraphon, Schlag- und Blasinstrumenten entstehen fragile und zugleich mächtige Klangwelten, deren räumliche Tiefe auch durch den Höhlenhall spürbar wird.

Der Wunsch, in einer Höhle aufzunehmen, kam Rotschopf im Sommer 2022. Was als visuelles und klangliches Bild begann, wurde zu einem konkreten Vorhaben – unterstützt vom Österreichischen Höhlenverein. Im Juni 2023 begab sich Rotschopf mit ihren Musiker:innen drei Tage lang in eine Höhle im steirischen Wald. Fast ein Kilometer Kabel wurde verlegt, Equipment und Instrumente tief unter die Erde getragen. Rotschopf beschreibt die Aufnahmesituation als eine Art Rückkehr in sich selbst: »Ich stieg in diese Höhle hinab, so als ob ich in mich selbst hinabsteigen könnte, in meinen eigenen Schoß [...] Was wir in der Höhle taten, könnte man ›Musik aufnehmen‹ nennen, genauso gut aber auch ›Erinnern‹ – Erinnern von Erde, Höhle und Menschsein.«

Currents and Orders ist ein Album wie ein Ritual: eindringlich, atmosphärisch, mutig in der Form und tief verwurzelt im physischen wie emotionalen Raum. Musik, die sich Zeit nimmt, Raum nutzt und Grenzen sprengt.

Die Vorab-Single »O Please My Soul (Rest On My Back)« (VÖ: 17.7.205) wird begleitet von einem eindrücklichen Musikvideo, das Antoinette Zwirchmayr auf 16mm-Film drehte: Teresa Rotschopf hält darin eine echte Eule auf ihrer Hand – ein Bild, das genauso magisch wie rätselhaft wirkt.

Labelbetreiber Martin Hossbach las im Jahr 2018 eine Rezension des ersten Rotschopf-Soloalbums »Messiah« und nahm Kontakt zu der Künstlerin auf. Es folgten gemeinsame Veröffentlichungen – etwa ein Drone-Album auf dem Sub-Label Martin Hossbach Score und eine Pet-Shop-Boys-Coverversion auf Martin Hossbach Cover.

Sticking a dirty thumb in the eye of fate, our third collaboration sees this marrow deep family malarky turn official as Pace Yourself teams up with YS’s own imprint ERF REC for a split release. As if our status as minor celebrities and footnotes of the underground could level off no further: the unification no one asked for is here. Sticking it to the man, handing your arse to ya on plate; cauterising infected suburban minds world over.

Burn is the second YS album and written as a direct follow-up album to Brutal Flowers. If their first album was an exercise in the incremental, a construction of poise and patience, Burn, should be taken way the fuck at it’s word: it quite literally finds catharsis in twisted reverse. Birthed out the malignant kick found in deconstruction and chaos. Evil twin, psychotic younger sibling, call it what the hell you like. It might take you a moment to get the lay of the land in this darkly mutated world. Like a bug eye’d native first confronted with a zippo, the hit is radical and instant: a new way for the world to go up in smoke.

Splice the Seattle slacker scene with the spliffhead soundsystem culture of the 90s Bristol trip-hop scene, then cross-breed that with the DIY optimism and glee in creation found in the cut-and-paste worlds of skate, graffiti and hiphop, now run that through the skitzo basement mind of John.T. Gast and you’re close to the kind of scorched earth and spiked suburbia that birthed Burn.

Dunno quite what YS have been ingesting of late but this massively twisted LP touches on a host of gloriously fucked totemic underground sources while not sounding much like any of them. It has the ballsy swagger and hard flipping of the script as Massive Attack’s seminal Blue Lines. Indeed, the eponymous album tracks sound similar - the opener ‘Burn’ is like a hard nosed jammed out redux of ‘Blue Lines’. Getting into a kind of slow-spinning overdubbed maximal euphoria ending with mumbled downer vocals, struggling to conceal their tongues in their cheeks there’s an air of paranoia and proto-conspiracy theory. It’ll leave you scratching your head, feeling like you’ve stepped into a New World Order governed by a cacophony of drop outs, dope fiends and apocalyptic stoners. A cracked out world somewhere between Richard Linklater’s movie Slacker (1990) and Marc Singer’s Dark Days (2001).

The rest of the album parts like a tongue on a wine glass: Smith and Mighty, Bandulu, ambient Luke Slater records, Wah Wah Wino, Nurse with Wound, Land of the Loops, Placid Angels, Adrian Sherwood, Urban Tribe and DJ Shadow can all be heard in momentary splatters - but Burn like other works by YS, is its own ritual beast. ‘Moth’, a track which has been knocking about the underground deejai circuit for many moons, is a real raw chopped and screwed slice of stoner erotica that reeks of obsession and unrequited desire. Elsewhere, on tracks like ‘Switch’, ‘Trying’ and ‘Drift’ the throughline from Brutal Flowers can be heard. Underneath the driving heavy gravity the trademark emotional intimacies of YS linger: eternal recurrence, ghosts of static and shortwave, worn memories of the playful and painful sort. The brief moments where flashes of orchestral ambience get out from underneath the swagger are so pure, personal and unguarded that for a moment they leave you completely lonesome. In the album’s closer ‘End’, you can hear the fleeting promise and DIY possibilities of an analogue world and embers of ash that flutter in its wake: where it seemed, for a brief moment, that collective of DJs, engineers, rappers, graffiti artists and skate crews were emerging from the streets, giving the middle fingers to the system, before just as quickly disappearing back to the doldrums of obscurity. ‘End’ is a bittersweet ode to early soundsystem culture, MCs and pirate radio - an out of step time where for a moment the underdogs and weirdos seemed to be kicking on the door of something bigger.

A veritable teenage doof suite dosed with desire, claustrophobia and deviance. Burn is a good old howl at the moon: lonely, raw, and out for blood; basement style exegesis at its best. A thump to the gut, a stud through your blood. A dubbed-to-death classic straight out of the annals of nowhere. A perfect post card from oblivion. A bleak, bold and personally ferocious vision of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

This is everything that record collectors skip dates for. Fuck the scene and keep that shit underground. That’s what it is all about. Know what I mean, if you do? You’re in…

Mysterious Bristol based Rali Pibs, carves out 6 stunning tracks, undefinable in the left-field. File under Industrial-Synesthetic-Amnesia. “U Paradise” is a solid mix of atmospheric chugging, primal, bold and abrasive yet textured, rich and full of emotion. Outsider music with a hint of pop edge that is sure enough to make heads twist on the dance-floor (tried and tested). If you don’t believe us stick Shaka on in the club and see what happens. Weirdo music with a cosmic and emotive tinge that we love at the inc.

20th Anniversary Edition of «The Creep» by Slomo, this ambient doom masterwork is available on vinyl for the first time via Ideologic Organ. This is a storied album of verbal history, and emerged from a figurative long barrow deep within a virtual space of great depth and contemplation, an inverted framing of acoustic space with heavy floors ranging from the wake of COIL to the heaviest Japanese fire of psychedelia to the monuments of drone coagulating in the early ‘aughts. A first CDR edition in 2005 garnered focus of heavyweights like SUNN O))), Julian Cope, the esoteric legendary record store Aquarius, and the Wire.
Ideologic Organ are honoured to have been tasked to bring this to a limited LP for the very first time, and collaborated with mastering genius Rashad Becker to create a 61 minute single LP in a perfect cut.
Highly Ritualised Somnambulant Glumbient Downer band from Yorkshire, UK.
‘Slomo is a 2-piece made up of myself, Holy McGrail, and Howard «Iron Man» Marsden. Our debut album THE CREEP was released in a run of 100 copies on FUCK OFF & DI in 2005, after attracting a great buzz in its earlier promo form. THE CREEP is a single 1-hour-long track recorded live with minimal overdubs & zero eye-contact. Malnourished musical structures flourish, flounder and flag in virtual stasis.

Marja Ahti is a Swedish artist living in Turku, Finland. She works with found sounds, objects and electronics, creating auditory assemblages that reveal a profound sensitivity to sound’s tactile potential. This new record sees her palette expand to include more recognisable acoustic instrumentation, albeit working in collaboration with musicians who are already reconfiguring how those instruments can sound.

Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth has its roots in a tape piece presented at Lampo in Chicago. Ahti then started working with Isak Hedtjärn (clarinet), Ryan Packard (percussion) and My Hellgren (cello) at the electronic music studios (EMS) in Stockholm. Incorporating recordings from those sessions, Ahti presented a new iteration of the work at the Seventh Edition Festival for Other Music in February 2024 with the trio performing live on stage whilst Ahti helmed the mixing desk, spatialising a specially made tape part through the INA GRM’s Acousmonium speaker orchestra. The piece has since gone through several further iterations before arriving at the version we have here on the LP's B-side where immense bass pressure and high frequency tones buffer restless amplified breath and scrape that folds over itself with extraordinary dynamics and subterranean activity before giving way to gorgeous resonant forms and passages of ritual purpose and sheer, unmistakeable beauty.

The A-side is Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth’s gentle double. Still Life with Poppies, Mirror and Two Clouds offers a companion reconfiguration of Ahti’s resynthesised percussion sustain and the same recordings of Hedtjärn and Hellgren from EMS, but here they’re nestled in a sonic landscape of calm and restraint that gives them a wholly other character. Ahti also draws on older recordings she’d made of Sholto Dobie’s diy pipe organs and uses these to create repeating patterns and flourishes of sliding pitches that emerge unexpected out of cycling passages of Ahti’s clear struck metal, destabilising electronic interventions and minimal piano figures.

Marja Ahti: “I’ve been fascinated with the kind of elemental quality the sounds I'm using have such as airy sounds or earthy, wooden sounds. These qualities can also be found in wind instruments and percussion and the musicians I worked with on Touch This Fragrant Surface of Earth are really good at enhancing these qualities in their playing. I wanted to have this connection between found sounds, field recordings, or pre-recorded sounds, objects, and material, and see where these sounds might meet each other, and hopefully blend is a natural way without a divide between instrumental music, or acoustic music, or electronic music. But also, when you bring in people they come with their personalities and their ideas which is also energizing and brings surprising things into the collaboration that I couldn't come up with myself. I was really interested in making this a proper collaboration and not just coming up with the piece and giving it to them. We had the sessions at EMS where we could share ideas and Isak, Ryan and My could bring in their own ideas. Making recordings there gave me time to process these ideas and to also approach them in the same way that I would work with any other sound.”

It started like any other day on the cobbled streets of Lyon. The record store was humming, the usual diggers flipping through the usual crates. For Oscar and Anaïs, still new to the city, everything felt pretty normal. But the locals knew something they didn’t.

That’s when he walked in, a quiet humble presence, his magic key in hand. A producer with a daily ritual of one tune a day, every day. No fuss, just low-key consistency and a folder full of heat. We squeezed on as many as we could for his debut EP: a genre-blurring blend of head-turning cuts, all with creepy, classy, and catchy attitudes baked into every groove. Koffi is here.

Human Dynamics label debuts with a powerful vinyl collaboration EP from Uvall & Pierce.

The first-ever split EP from two close friends combines deep tribal grooves soaked in ritualistic textures and surgical low-end.
Four driving tracks have been crafted for different use-cases and moments, from warm-ups to peak-time and after-hours sessions.

Joint release embodies Human Dynamics' belief that the people and the sound are inseparably connected.

Hailing from the depths of Istanbul's ancient shadows, ASH MAGICK is a raw and unfiltered black metal project founded in 2022 by Necrosanctus and Graveyard Slut. Born from firsthand occult experience, the band channels themes of spiritual decay, cursed devotion, and forbidden knowledge into ritualistic sonic expressions. Drawing on Eastern mysticism, ancestral lore, and demonic narratives, Ash Magick conjures haunting atmospheres steeped in esotericism and ancient rites. Black metal in its most feral, feminine, and arcane form. Ash Magick are returning with their most spiritually charged and meticulously crafted work to date.

Indonesian duo Kuntari make music that's so distinctive, they had to devise their own genre: primal-core. On Mutu Beton, multiinstrumentalist Tesla Manaf and percussionist Rio Abror dialog with both history and their tropical surroundings in Bandung, West Java's mountainous capital. Using the cornet and hulusi, a free reed instrument made from a bottle gourd and bamboo pipes, Manaf echoes the bellows of local elephants, orangutans and rhinos, grazing Abror's ancestral Indonesian rhythms with potent overdriven riffs and evocative microtonal chimes.

It's music that's profoundly atmospheric and simultaneously raw, recorded live to fully encapsulate the dynamic and deeply human interaction between the two seasoned players. There are elements of sludge metal, noise and post-hardcore, references to traditional folk music and jazz, and gestures towards sound art, 20th century minimalism and dark ambient, but what Kuntari do is completely idiosyncratic -- it's hardly surprising it needed a similarly unique categorization.

Manaf started Kuntari as a solo project, debuting in 2020 with Black Shirt Attracts More Feather and animating his nimble instrumental improvisations with bold electronic processes and booming synthetic drums. And by the time he recorded 2022's acclaimed Last Boy Picked, his approach had evolved significantly; prioritizing organic sounds, he played prepared cornet and piano, bringing in additional percussionists to help devise a ritualistic rhythm section. Abror was one of those performers, and ended up sticking around, playing on 2023's furious LARYNX/STRIDULA, the stylistic precursor for Mutu Beton. At this stage, the duo have racked up a litany of accolades and collaborated with a spectrum of like-minded artists, from noise deity Keiji Haino to fellow Indonesian free-thinker Rully Shabara, who's best known for his work with Senyawa and avant-garde supergroup Osmium. Mutu Beton plays like a lap of honor, showcasing their most kinetic and most feral recordings to date. Kuntari surpass their own high standards, folding history and geography in on itself and suggesting a trailblazing Indonesian cultural movement that's not restricted by highbrow Western conventions. It's not just automation and technology that drives progression, it's interaction and observation. And there's nothing more primal, or revolutionary, than that.

Aura Sonora return with a second release to follow up the fantastic first one, this time it brings together two meticulous studio craftsmen, DYL & Tammo Hesselink. Their Moire Patterns EP kicks off with 'Pattern 1', a deep and rhythmic slice of rubbery techno that rides broken beats with atmospheric pulses up top. 'Pattern 2 slows down to a predatory crawl with icy pads making fro a dystopian vibe then 'Pattern 3' brings a sense of mystic tribal ritual deep in some futuristic jungle and 'Pattern 4' closes down with more fantastically crafted, dubby, broken rhythms that are topped with organic percussion and almost impossible not to move to. Pure rhythm science brilliance.

Seit 1989 liefert Desaster ihren eigenen unheiligen Mix aus extremem Metal ab - 2025 kehren sie mit Kill All Idols zurück. "Churches Without Saints war ein typisches Desaster-Black-Death-Thrash-Album, Kill All Idols etwas vielfältiger", erklärt Gitarrist und Gründungsmitglied Infernal. "Natürlich steht es für unseren klassischen Black/Thrash-Stil, aber diesmal hört man auch unsere Punk-Wurzeln deutlicher."Kill All Idols ist das zweite Album mit derselben Besetzung - live und im Studio zeigt sich, wie gut die Chemie stimmt. "Unser Drummer Hont ist live ein Wahnsinniger, privat ein ruhiger Typ. Technisch ist er uns fast überlegen - wir haben überlegt, ihm die Finger zu brechen, damit er sich anpasst!", witzelt Sänger Sataniac. Zum Albumtitel sagt Sataniac: "Alle 'Vorbilder' - ob politisch, religiös oder wirtschaftlich - verfolgen nur ihre eigenen Machtinteressen. Der Titel ist eine Einladung, selbst zu denken. Aufgenommen wurde wieder im eigenen Proberaum mit ihrem Live-Mischer Janosch Gensheimer. Gemischt und gemastert hat Greg Wilkinson (Autopsy) in Kalifornien. Infernal: "Wir wollten testen, wer unseren Sound 2025 am besten umsetzt. Greg hat uns einen neuen Klang gegeben, der zwar etwas untypisch ist, aber perfekt passt. Mit dem Ergebnis sind wir selten so zufrieden gewesen.