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The new album 'Aesthesis' from Shapednoise aka Sicilian artist Nino Pedone is out in November 2019 on Numbers.
Over the nine tracks and thirty seven minutes, there’s a controlled collision of noise and metal with rave and hardcore. Pedone’s penchant for the peak energies of gritty techno and modern rap/trap bleed through, with earth-shattering blocks of bass and beats conveyed within his practice of sonic sculpture. ‘Aesthesis’ melts these sounds down, evolving them into something new of his own - a complex, hybrid being designed to be played loud. The first listen, CRx Aureal, is one of the most arresting cuts from the record: a nightmarish thrill embracing a sense of constant movement, with intense shards of sound ricocheting and morphing, forged together through a series of metallic refrains. This flirtation with the extremes of sound has engulfed Shapednoise’s entire creative output and lifestyle - from his albums and EPs over the last decade, to his two labels Cosmo Rhythmatic and REPITCH, having recently dropped critically acclaimed releases by King Midas Sound, Shackleton & VTSS. Pedone describes ‘Aesthesis’ as “informed by a set of key elements that intwine all the tracks together, like steps in a long research process. It is intended as a sensory experience where the senses act as an interface, sound as space.” His experimentation with unorthodox rhythmic structures and radical cinematic design reveals actions grounded in direct experience, but “inspired by a kind of speculative realism”. In seeking to master the wild heights of noise and the weight of subsonic frequencies, Shapednoise aims to “generate a sense of unreal-yet-tangible space and time, where the physicality of the music builds up a place that exists between people and objects, rather than the other way around.”

A series of artistic collaborations are heard throughout the album - from the caustic R&B of album opener 'Intriguing (In The End)' which features vocals from multimedia artist E. Jane's alter ego MHYSA (of NON & Halcyon Veil), to Justin K Broadrick (founding member of Godflesh and ZONAL) on 'Blaze', and album closer 'Moby Dick'; a collaboration with Scottish legend Drew McDowall (ex-Coil and Psychic TV member), and Rabit (founder of Halcyon Veil).

Rounding-off a landmark year for Clark which saw an accelerated drive for variety and freshness - including skewed renditions of Bach performed at the Royal Albert Hall and a hugely acclaimed score for TV series ‘Kiri’ - the leftfield legend takes it back to the source with two bangers for the massive.

The riff-powered heavy electrics of ‘Branding Problem’ romp from Detroit to Belgium via Chicago and the M25. It’s platinum-grade dancefloor techno, but it’s more too. The production flair and inventive sound sculpting ensure a level of quality and originality not found in your average grist-for-the-mill DJ fodder.

‘Legacy Pet’ is hardcore and tech step dipped in loopy juice; it’s the sound of a raver wandering out from a cavernous warehouse, across fields and into an enchanted dingily dell dance, throwing gun fingers with the goblins and faeries.

“I’ve been quite amused at how easy it is to stream background music these days. How accessible it all is and how entitled we all feel to it, like it’s some sort of air freshener you spray in your Uber.

For some reason I’m imagining a future where Elon Musk does a streaming deal, so he can prance around controlling nano implant VR chips for 1 million amortal coastal elites, while the rest of us don’t have electricity and only manage one rave a year - to a sound system powered by rationed candles. This is music for that fantasy scenario, ha.

Anyway, I don’t want these 2 tracks to be part of background air freshener world. They are limited edition club gear. I wanna play them out so badly in my live show.

Influences: Hardcore UK rave, Detroit techno, Jungle, Oizo, Ed Rush and Optical, No U-Turn. The origins, the source and it’s constant subsequent mutations. BEHOLD THE CONTINUUM, HARDCORE WILL NEVER DIE.” Clark

With their debut, MME dUO send us across an impulsive sound collage omniverse of enigmatic Dada - long live imperfection! Formerly working together as Sculptress of Sound, Cologne based Patricia Koellges and Tamara Lorenz make use of a variety of instruments and devices: DIY electroacoustics, small synths, loopers, tuning forks, electric bass, percussion and voice are thrown into the game and shape a sound that’s as diverse as it is striking. The four sides of the record are the four seasons of the year. The cover artwork depicts an oddly shaped honey locust situated just outside MME dUO’s rehearsal room; homebase for a year of recordings for awholerunboom. From spring to winter the album opens up a wayward palette of experimental music. Sweet Cold Night could be a soundtrack for a movie scene of ourselves trudging through a swamp. CutCut somehow sounds as if caught in a loop early in the morning after an extensive club night. RZCK, a deliberately stumbling forward percussion piece is the longest of the 21 tracks. Several video clips go along with awholerunboom, one of which features the artists going through some kind of a ritual exercise inside of a two person costume, trying to put things straight it seems. The track itself Isn’t It Isn’t functions by way of permutations of spoken phrases and it might actually make you wonder if Gertrude Stein had gone electric. Mixed and mastered by Volker Hennes. Cover artwork by MME dUO. Edition of 300.

Amos’ Flat is a three part album by VASE in collaboration with Opal Tapes & INDEX:Records: an odyssey of sonic manoeuvres through ambient, bass and IDM. This trilogy reveals VASE dissecting compositions down to sparse rhythmic explorations, disruptive power shifts and nebulous bass bliss.

Amos’ Flat: Room 1 will be sculpted into the physical form of a 12” vinyl record, released by INDEX:Records, followed by Opal Tapes reeling out Room 1 & 2 on double Cassette Tape.

Room 3 transcends into the digital, where VASE passes the brush to fellow artists, to rework into their own decorative pieces. Featured artists for Room 3 include Basic house, Fis, Katsunori Sawa, Shelley Parker and PYUR.

2x12"

"Reactions" is the debut album from First Tone, the musical partnership of New Orleans-based artists Turk Dietrich (Second Woman, Belong) and composer Duane Pitre (Important Records). While the project has been at work quietly sculpting their sound for years, "Reactions" is the first available set of recordings. Those familiar with the respective works of the two artists will be happy to find a collection of music that is very much of the duo, and yet totally unlike anything they've produced before.

Over six tracks, First Tone unfurl poignant, flickering compositional works that utilize pitch material that is tuned using the system known as Just Intonation (which Pitre has studied for nearly 15 years) in conjunction with various software and a single hardware synth. The result is a collection of music that is both organic and alien. Layers of tone and texture build and dissolve from the ultra minimal to the enormous, on occasion seamlessly blending the two. A wide array of striking timbres patiently wash over one another, at times sounding like organic instruments, at other times sounding completely otherworldly.

"Reactions" is a masterclass not only in sound design and dynamic range, but also in sonic depth. The album's approach to the usage of time and dynamics work together to create the perception of a three-dimensional spaciousness of sound. The holographic effects produced from the spaces between the album's sounds are mesmerizing, with discreet arrangements that demand repeat listens to fully absorb.

With 'Onto Duat' Maenad Veyl sculpts Dark Eroticism. Four tracks that encode a vibrating sensuality within the scope of an insistent staccato, enforce a radical cancellation of the smooth. Proclaiming the quality of instincts, Maenad Veyl redescribes impulsiveness in music by a total cancellation of the smooth. An interplay between impulsiveness and violent positivity. 'Onto Duat' is an EP that will be released on Bedouin Records in late September.

It includes 4 tracks / Artist: Maenad Veyl / Title: Onto Duat Cat.
No: BDN024 Format: 12'' EP / Digital Label: Bedouin Records (2019) Tracks: A1. Change Your Mind (06:02 Min.) , A2. Onto Duat (06:38 Min.) , B1. Take Nothing With You (06:13 Min.), B2. Riot Patrol (05:06 Min.) .

‘Flush Real Pharynx’ is the title of sound designer/artist/composer and DJ Lee Gamble’s new three-part album for Hyperdub.
The triptych loosely explores three stages of the Semioblitz – the aggressive onslaught of visual and sonic stimuli of contemporary cities and virtual spaces. From ‘In A Paraventral Scale’ (the first part of the triptych released at the start of 2019) the coil springs out into the straight-up choked semioblitz of part 2 — ‘Exhaust’. Gone are the serpentine dopplers and seductive supercar engines. ‘Exhaust’s neon-charms coalesce into an MDMA rush of Boston Dynamics dog barks, hypnotic voices and imploding motion sculptures. From the backfiring splinters of ‘CREAM’ through disorientating photo shutter snare patterns of ‘Shard’, ‘Exhaust’s sultry voices take you for a 300mph ride down the psychedelic high street stitching together clashing strands of club soundscapes on its way.

‘Exhaust’ engages in a world well and truly with us right now – explosive, chaotic, unpredictable, contradictory, intoxicating, hyper-colourful, blown-apart and disturbingly engaging in its surreality. It’s Gamble’s ‘Gully Automated Music Concrète’, sounding out from a high rise overlooking the Ballardian motion-sculpture of a collapsing motorway system.

Yoshi Wada's Lament For The Rise And Fall Of The Elephantine Crocodile, originally released in 1982 on India Navigation, remains one of the most remarkable flowers to grow in the rarefied air of American minimalism – akin to Terry Riley's Reed Streams and Pauline Oliveros' Accordion & Voice, yet with a wild, liberated energy all of its own.

After graduating from Kyoto University of Fine Arts with a degree in sculpture, Wada moved to New York City in 1967 and quickly fell in with the community of artists known as Fluxus. In the early '70s, he began building his own instruments and writing musical compositions, studying with La Monte Young and Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.

Recorded during an epic three-day session in an empty swimming pool in upstate New York, Wada's first album brings together two of the oldest drone instruments – the human voice and bagpipes – to simple and glorious effect. A visit to the Scottish Highlands spurred Wada's interest in bagpipes, which the composer integrated into these sparse, otherworldly sounds heard on Lament.

"That swimming pool was quite hallucinatory," recalls Wada. “It was another world. I felt it in terms of resonance. I slept in the pool, and whenever I moved, I woke up because of the reverberations.... The piece itself is an experiment with reeds and improvisational singing within the modal structure."

This first-time vinyl reissue is limited to 750 numbered copies. Comes with poster.

FPO (onesheet currently in development):

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The digitally remastered release of JAK3's Moonlight Radiation is a menagerie of cyberpunk mutations arising out of the Memphis revival rap movement. The album's big, blown-out sound might have seemed an incidental result of an analog recording process in its original cassette release. Now, rendered in digital clarity, listeners can better perceive how JAK3 sculpts varying degrees of panic, aggression and resolve very intentionally through the hard mix of industrial noise, inventive beats, flush synths and recordings from a slew of rappers including Freddie Dredd (Toronto), Apoc Krysis (Memphis), and fellow Waistdeep Clique members Agnarkea and Calsutmoran.

The short format of Moonlight Radiation's 16 tracks allows JAK3 to cover a lot of ground, and even within a single track he keeps one guessing. Track 2, "2FAKE," goes from an atmospheric burn, to a slow drive with the snappy flow of Moistbread, and then abruptly crashes back into an oozing vortex of synths. The penultimate interlude "Return from Hyperspace" sounds like one is being forced through a hellish modem, only to land in a haunted and abandoned transmitter for the closing track, "This Night Will Never End."

Between, those tracks, one gets a tour of the wild possibilities that could come next from this producer and the sounds emerging from the Memphis chopped-and-screwed scene. In a milieu that is retreading the past, the mutants of Moonlight Radiation may seem to be arriving a little prematurely. But you can't stop evolution when the field is so wide, and young producers like JAK3 are moving fast.

Hailing from Modena, the Northern Italian motor city, Strata-Gemma produce a music of beautiful symmetry, intense craft and surprising angles. Born as a club night, the trio grew out of jam sessions where musicians would play over the records DJ/producer Billy Bogus spun. Their name came about due to the core members finding shared inspiration in records they considered "hidden gems" (gemma means gem in Italian) while paying homage to the Detroit Jazz label Strata Records. Thus from a love of jazz and soul, soundtracks and library music, Strata-Gemma were born.

Where Strata-Gemma's 2018 debut album had a lush, late-night ambience about it, Autunno 1 is more intense and agitated, a reaction to extreme political and weather conditions. As with all things Italian, Autunno 1 is both beautifully sculptured and filled with wild passion while serving as an intense soundtrack to our fractured world.

Strata-Gemma are Billy Bogus (beats), Andrea Moretti (double bass, strings) and Luca Cacciatore (brass, wind). For Autunno 1 they are joined by heavy friends on drums, synth and Hammond.

Fleeing her Soviet ruled home of Tbisili at a young age with her parents, Saze grew up as a nomad living in Russia, France, Canada and the USA before finally settling down and pursuing a career in NYC. A classically trained musician and dancer, before long the Georgian turned her back on corporate life to pour her heart and soul into the arts. Becoming a diligent and versatile electronic music producer, DJ and live act, Sophia Saze is as comfortable sculpting intricate and atmospheric productions in the studio as she is decimating dancefloors with robust Techno and frenetic Breaks. Reflecting on her turbulent life and how it’s formed her own identity, Saze composed her aptly titled debut album, ‘Self’. Released on cassette in two instalments, ‘Part I’ dropped in June and was critically acclaimed with support from the likes of BBC 6MUSIC’s Tom Ravenscroft, Mixmag, DJ Mag, XLR8R, Resident Advisor, Future Music, Attack Magazine, TRAX, Tsugi, Ransom Note and Groove Magazine, with the latter drawing a parallel between hers and Burial’s music. Completing the journey, ‘Part II’ meanders through genres like Ambient, Hip Hop and Breaks, and features very personal insights including handpicked samples from Soviet television shows and VHS cassette recordings from her childhood. Hidden allusions of her classical music education bring up distant memories and melt together the organic but thoroughly electronic ambience. Crackles, hushes and hisses are elaborated so well that the record virtually gushes over the ears like mountain torrents. It appears peaceful and quiet, then rousing and it is sparked with bewildering sounds. It lets scattered beats arise from the thicket and drown again in streams of noise. But

Time is Local is a project by Danish collective We like We and sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard built around a 12-hour live sound installation and performance at Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.

The piece was initiated and performed by the artists during the G((o))ng Tomorrow Festival in 2017. As they slowly wandered the halls and rooms of the museum for a whole day, they performed extended sound compositions for a visiting audience at each of the 12 chambers for a longer session - a haunting experience as the outside world disappeared and the focus was on quiet sonic moments unfolding in midst of the grand, reverberous space. For this album they have collected 12 fragments revolving around the chambers in the museum. Each chamber is being represented by its own handful of tones, instruments and voice. The statues within, depicted by neo-classicist sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen get their own soundtrack of quiet emanating gusts. Barely heard frequencies reflect through the walls. The marble carved busts of Greek gods that line the museum hallways gaze eternally with a blank stare as decades pass and new audience arrives.

Although We like We should need no introduction to followers of the Sonic Pieces label, the Danish all female sound quartet consists of Katrine Grarup Elbo (violin), Josefine Opsahl (cello), Sara Nigard Rosendal (percussion) and Katinka Fogh Vindelev (voice). Together they have forged a dynamic and intuitional sound beyond genres through the last decade. Only two years ago they released the nordic neo-classical opus Next to the entire All. This time they emerge in collaboration with sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard. Jacob’s works are sonic reflections on complex aspects of the human civilisation, treating themes such as radioactivity, melting ice, border walls and tones emitted by the ears. Through the last decades he has released records and sound documents through labels such as Touch, Important Records and more. As a document of their 12h performance, Time is Local is a beautiful sonic evocation that shines as a bright line of sun through the cracks of a tomb.

MUSAR continues to explore the healthy landscape of underground and alternative electronic music with the debut release on the label from Nightwave. 'The Journey' is a fitting title for the Glaswegian producer, DJ and promoter, who has been a lynchpin for the city's vibrant music scene since her first release in 2010. In the time since, Nightwave has a developed a punchy and highly original sound that blends potent influences of acid, techno and forward-thinking bass music, with releases on DABJ, UTTU, Fool's Gold, DEXT and her own imprint Heka Trax.

For her MUSAR debut, Nightwave celebrates, in her own words, "joy, dance, exploring inner worlds, the celebration of nature and life and how it all interconnects". On a delicate tip, opening and title track 'The Journey' establishes the EP's "rainforest rave" aesthetic, spiralling upwards with weightless energy. It's underlying percussion steps forward on 'Jiboia Groove', which blossoms thrillingly into wave upon wave of ethereal, breakbeat-led rave.

'Monkey Puzzle' pulls a similar, if more uncompromising trick, only with its rhythmic timber instead succumbing to layers of rough-hewn, squealing acid synthesis and pounding snare drums. 'Forest Guru' meanwhile restores much of the record's spiritual equilibrium in one fell swoop, finding a clearing in the landscape to sculpt a rolling, detailed jam that's as playful as it is creative.

Naive founder and Lisbon's rave goddess, Violet generously remixes 'The Journey' in intriguing fashion, unravelling a trippy and tense riddle at the heart of the rainforest.

Mondoj presents Jeremy, the latest release from LA's Roy Werner, who is perhaps better known for his work as G.S. Sultan. While the Max/MSP magician's previous works delved into ideas of "avant-garde pointilism" (ad.sculpt tutorial, Orange Milk Records) or presented "abstract noise as a communicative medium" (Redundancy Suite, Phinery), Jeremy repurposes pop music to create abstract, vaporous forms.

Ian Lambert's long-awaited debut EP on Analogical Force has been many months in the making and the wait was absolutely worth it. 'Coordinate EP' embodies a masterpiece of structured chaos sculpted by intricate acid lines, playful melodies, heavy breakbeats and razor sharp glitches executed with expert precision signature to his programist-driven sound. This record embarks on a cerebral journey and leaves you eager for more. Fans of Phoenecia, Aphex Twin, Richard Devine, Dwaallicht will surely enjoy. Daed is a welcome addition to Analogical Force.

The Summer sun is shining. New possibilities and a new signing for FireScope. Miles Atmospheric aka Miles Sagnia is a U.K. producer whose absorbing compositions have garnered him with releases on A.R.T., Finale Sessions and his own Atmospheric Existence Recordings.

Four works make up Sky Healer. As with all Miles Atmospheric’s productions, there is a liberated and untethered touch to the entire quartet. From a steady kick and rusted clank, “Exoplanetology” sets sail. The track soars on rising strings, muffled samples feeding back indecipherable messages to terra firma. Bright bars introduce “Our Future”, notes shimmering in their radiance as dew drop splashes of percussion form. Xylophonic keys, energetic drums and silken tones coalesce to create the aquatic journey that is the “Waters of Life” before “See The Light.” Snapping drums from the bedrock from which a plethora of tones and textures grow. Sweetened lines ascend to bring perfect balance to this superb finale.

With Sky Healer, Miles Atmospheric accomplishes a very difficult feat. Not only has the British musician produced a body of techno that is organic and unencumbered but also, he has sculpted soundscapes to escape to.

After making music individually for a couple of decades, Peraud and Ferguson decided to collaborate for the first time, joined together by an instinctive desire to blur the boundaries between improvisation and composition.

FZR Sethi is a visual artist, musician and composer who works in several mediums under the expression of draw/paint/volume/sound. His work, either canvas or sculpture, hinges on the fundamental principles of his art, as evidenced in his use of the geometric form.

Ferguson created his alias Rubbish T.C (Rubbish Techno Consortium) in 2015, producing slow and heavy techno made with martial patterns of movement. A producer for 15 years, Rubbish T.C. has been prominent in the free party scene for years.

Moving away from a dance-inflicted mode, Sâd Hu achieves more of a balance with skill and craft. A dense, textural approach hints at something more expansive and insidious. Diversity and richness unexpectedly coalesce into an eerie, percussive scapefest over sonorous layers of droning bass tones and raw power.

WRWTFWW Records is blissful to announce the expanded reissue of one of the most fascinating Japanese ambient/environmental albums ever made, NOVA + 4 by Yutaka Hirose. The double LP includes the album known as Soundscape 2: Nova, sourced from its original masters, as well as 50 minutes of never-released-before recordings. It comes in a beautiful gatefold sleeve, packed with liner notes from the artist in English and Japanese. NOVA + 4 is also available on double digipack CD.

Initially released in 1986 as part of the Soundscape series* commissioned by Misawa Home Corporation for use in their prefabricated houses, Yutaka Hirose's NOVA has grown to become a mythical piece of the Japanese minimalist/ambient/environmental scene of the eighties. Initiated around the enchanting landscapes of the two first tracks recorded for the project, "Nova" and "Epilogue", Yutaka Hirose's magnum opus serenely blends vintage synth with nature sounds, exploring soothing palettes and organic backdrops. For "Slow Sky", Hirose explains he "went for a pointillism-like sound, and tried to express a scenery of awakening, where the portal of a heart is opening up", while on "Humming The Sea", he "tried to compose a kind of music that expresses the daily, lazy life of child-like innocence in a summer vacation in some small town."

The bonus LP gathers four long unreleased pieces created around the same period of time for installations, described by Yutaka Hirose as "not music per se but rather sound sculptures", and including the haunting "Shadow Of A Water Droplet" which was recorded for an Ikebana exhibition.

All in all, NOVA + 4 is a transcendent experience of nature in the urban context, an oeuvre which, much like Midori Takada's Through The Looking Glass or Satoshi Ashikawa's Still Way, holds the power to appease the soul in turbulent times. As one inspired YouTube commenter once said when describing Yutaka Hirose's masterstroke: "I can't tell if the birds are singing inside or outside! Thank you!"

*The Soundscape series also includes Hiroshi Yoshimura's Surround album.

We’ve got something a bit different from usual for our next release: Meeting of Waters by Josiah Steinbrick.

Back in 2017 the unassuming Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and producer released his first collection of solo pieces and we’ve been listening to it compulsively since then. Given that its initial release was only in North America, both on cassette with Leaving records and in an extremely limited vinyl self-release via BANANA editions, we felt that this meticulously crafted, essential work righteously deserved to get a proper spin in Europe too!

The album is composed of what you could call nine sculptural environments, each a mixture of organic sketches and improvisations, recorded rapidly and more or less free of any processing. Each piece is based on up to five simple elements - electronic and/or (tonal) percussions - used to create subtle evolving patterns and harmonies. The sounds explore the wilderness of jazz in a concrete setting, devotional in nature, creating a timeless cartography.

No one sculpts volts & frequencies into a story quite like David Morley. For Futurepast’s third release, he has delivered a precise rendering of its vision to transcend temporal associations and perceptions. In the title track Boundary Travels, he ascends quickly into a weighty melodic line that oscillates like the natural intonations of an inner monologue, built upon a foundation of tightly knit hits and bleeps. The story of Limbo unfolds in the infinitesimal margin where intensity becomes softness, hesitation becomes resolution, and boundaries become intersections. Sounds drift past, above, and below in Crushing Pressure as if a city, or its memory, was suddenly suspended in a black hole. Boundary Travels might be the closest we can get to such a horizon.
- DVK