Following a fallow 2023, a rejuvenated Growing Bin return to your turntable with this sublime collaborative LP from Gosha Martynov & Natasha Sinyakova. On their first foray into the physical, the duo expand the spectral ambience and medicated breaks of their earlier work with lithe touches of organic jazz and Cafe Del Mar cool, creating a complex assemblage of dreamy downbeat and emotive electronica that's entirely easy on the ears.
Opener "Pozhaluysta" seduces with smart syncopation and beguiling melody, its flute and fretwork finding ample space to slip around Natasha's voice, equal parts Cocteau operatics and jazz-club coquette, in an expression of a want beyond words. The mood shifting "Osvobodi Menia" sees the solemn, snaking sound of a sampled duduk drift into an optimism of airy pads and escapist mantra, suspended in reverb until the end of time. "Ya Tebia Zhdala" began life as a break-led experiment, gradually evolving into a romantic and naive sketch rich with splashes of piano and dynamic chorus pads. Naturalist hymn "O Dereve" weaves a dark and intimate tale from the point of view of a veteran tree as its buzzsaw guitar loops blossom into multilayered vocals full of emotion.
Awash with sonar sweeps, sumptuous pads and rolling subs, the titular "Imena Rek" channels post-rave bliss into the hypnagogic anthem the contemporary IDM-ographic have been searching for. Infectious hooks and spaced out pads ride the breakbeat rhythm for a dreamy experimental pop banger from another planet. The sombre sway of "Rany", filtered through the fog of a broken cassette recorder, trance djembe and unpredictable bass tones rivals the finest Motion Ward or In:dex releases for crepuscular charm, while "Smeshno" sees serrated drones sink into a slinking rhythm, playing counterpoint to the tender chords and yearning vocals.
"Iskra" closes out the chiasmus with a return to the organic experience of the opener, the flute and acoustic guitar augmented with nuanced hand percussion and a music box refrain. Listening to this album is like a midnight walk through an ancient forest - an experience which both scares and tempts you at the same time. From touching damp moss to feeling the thick fog with your body and watching mushrooms glow in the dark, 'Imena Rek' guides you through the terrain.
Flawlessly arranged and executed, this LP alludes to a long lineage of innovative downbeat, feels absolutely essential in the present and pushes the trip hop revivalists towards a fascinating future - Gosha Martynov & Natasha Sinyakova have created a timeless piece of music,
but what else do you expect from the Bin?
Buscar:spectral records
After last year’s Black Clouds Above The Bows, Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents the second entry of their trilogy for Important Records, which is dedicated to telling the story of the climate crisis and its effects on coastal areas around the globe. For this album the artists incorporated the sound of a dying organ, fatally wounded in a climate related event.
All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea consists of electro-acoustic threnodies for an environment at risk due to the effects caused by receding coastlines around the globe. Wailing odes tell the story of the catastrophic activity of eroding waves and winds shaping the land that are enhanced by the climate crisis. First hand experiences and meetings with local maritime experts on the subject of these receding coastlines inspired Wanderwelle to compose these albums.
During their travels, the artists stumbled upon a small church in a town on the east coast of Scotland. The building was quite damaged, the roof was being stabilized and the ancient walls showed great tears running vertically down the structure. One of the church’s volunteers told Wanderwelle that the damage had been caused by a nearby cliff that collapsed in the sea. An event increasingly common in the region.
The church organ was ruined in such a way that it was deemed unplayable, as most of the pipes were gravely damaged and in dire need of restoration. Musical instruments directly affected by the environment -and especially the climate crisis- are quite rare. Despite the damage, the artists were allowed to record a few tones of the instrument with their equipment, which was actually meant to be used for field recordings later that day.
In Black Clouds Above The Bows, antique cavalry trumpets were recorded and manipulated by Wanderwelle to sound an environmental alarm in the same manner as they were once used to warn men on the battlefield. Similar processing was used on the recordings of the dying organ, resulting in spectral, deconstructed tones beyond recognition. In addition to the damaged organ, the artists recorded piano, cello and harmonic additive synthesizers in later stages of the composition process, manipulating these sounds to mimic the perpetual activity of the sea shaping the land.Furthermore, a great deal of inspiration was found in maritime superstition, lore and mythology.
As told in the legend of Aspidochelone, a legendary sea creature of enormous size, was once mistaken for an island. After sailors docked and lit a fire, the beast submerged resembling a land mass sliding into the sea. The album’s title is derived from the saying ‘All Hands Bury The Dead’, a maritime burial phrase, as the duo likes to think ‘All Hands’ refers to all of mankind since we are all responsible for these impending catastrophes.
Cello, violin, voice, pipe organ (damaged), bowed guitar, EBow, Prophet-6 synthesizer, modular synthesizer, field recordings.
RIYL: Oliveros/Deep Listening, Arvo Part, Lambda Sond, Sarah Davachi
Workaday Strangeness: Gyrating Death Throes From a Void Axiom' is the new LP from Glasgow-based music originator Wormhook. The music therein, we understand, emerged for highly personal therapeutic reasons; nevertheless to describe it as ‘idiosyncratic’ would do a disservice both to Wormhook and to the concept of idiosyncrasy. While the record is certainly a profoundly unique, irreplicable creation, its music is nevertheless based on a visceral, breathing human rhythm which is common to all living bodies. It represents a celebration of the act of creation as a means of processing psychic and spiritual conflict, unconscious thought leading to spontaneous musical discovery.
Through something approaching the musical equivalent of automatic writing, Wormhook gives birth to fluid, home-woven spectral incantations and an untutored, backward-masked concrète hymnody. Brittle-as-glass guitar and grainy, hand-processed electronics underpin cantorial, intuitively modal vocals delivering a kind of raw, revelatory yet anti-prophetic ur-poetry, bridging the centuries between Hildegard von Bingen and Lonnie Holley and fixing the solitary star of Wormhook within the hermetic constellation which these visionaries inhabit.
- Alasdair Roberts 2023
KR3 Records, is proud to welcome – Shuya – to its roster. The Japanese producer whose influences come mostly from the Noise Scene, began his sonic journey as a singer and guitarist with the experimental avant-garde group called Qujaku. With his s/h/u/y/a solo project he keeps a noise-industrial attitude to his electronic music productions. The beginning of his collaboration with KR3 was therefore inevitable. The artist and the label share a mutual approach to sound, with the processing of raw materials into scratchy, deep and mental beats playing a key part in their interpretation of Techno. The Sleeper EP – is the first vinyl release under this pseudonym. The cover art is curated by the designer Pablo I Prada, who says about his works: “I try to capture human evil in my paintings”. With his music, Shuya does exactly the same. His productions are a disturbing mixture of noise-techno that perfectly evokes the infernal spirit of human existence that also appears in the artwork. The Sleeper, is a cerebral, red-painted sonic assault. The intro and outro are composed by recordings of his voice and guitar riffs that show us how deep is his connection to his artistic origins. Written & Produced by Shuya Onuki Artwork by Pablo I Prada
"Hayalet Kırıkları" unfolds like a diary of fragmented memories, where voices, textures and distant echoes blur into something both intimate and unsettling.
Hilal Can’s luminous presence meets Tzii’s raw sonic landscapes, creating a music that feels suspended—between memory and invention, absence and desire.
With the spectral violin of Ruben Tenenbaum, the record shimmers like a fragile world on the verge of dissolving.
WRWTFWW Records presents an ultra limited (100 copies !) vinyl edition of Meemo Comma’s Decimation Of I album, originally released digitally in 2024 on Mike Paradinas' Planet Mu label. The collector’s pressing is housed in a heavyweight sleeve.
Decimation Of I is the fifth album by Brighton-based electronic musician Meemo Comma. It's a work based on the Strugatsky brothers‘ 1971 novel Roadside Picnic, a book that was also turned into the Russian cult classic Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. The inspiration came from reading the book alongside the backdrop of global climate disasters where an environment is rapidly becoming less habitable, all while powerful nations occupy and commit genocide.
The rough story of both film and novel is about a select group of characters exploring a land that has been transformed by alien visitors. We never meet the extraterrestrials, nor is it important to, we only have the artefacts left behind. The environment itself becomes the character, neither wholly Earth-like nor alien, but a surreal blend of both, inviting introspection on our insignificance amidst profound change. Within this land’s rebirth, our characters confront ego death, a necessary step towards the profound revelation, the discovery of one's true desire in the absence of ego.
The album opens with the innocent flutes of ’They, spoke,‘ and the disorienting electronica of ‘The Soldier‘ building towards the Terry Riley like undulating clarinets of ‘The Poet’, whose intertwining synth organ drones set the scene. Nods to the seventies electronica of Wendy Carlos and Eduard Artemyev can be heard with the use of Bach melodies in ‘P3Alpha Exotoxin‘ and ‘Area X,‘ however each of these songs draw the listener to primal noise undercurrents, their disintegrating melodies hinting at humanity's gradual dissolution, unveiling profound revelations beyond our comprehension.
As the album reaches its midpoint, ‘Spectral Alignment‘ paints a hazy morning prairie scene with Aaron Copland style French horn, restful woodwinds, spatial arpeggios and a warm drone culminating in an emotional pitstop as the soldiers wake in the dewy morning of this alien landscape, unaware the last of their humanity remains.
The last sentence in Roadside Picnic “HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND MAY NO ONE BE LEFT BEHIND!” is the inspiration for ‘As It Is Written.’ We can either take from this the total annihilation of self has been filled with propaganda from their homeland, or the epiphany of their own autonomy in the war against a land and its inhabitants.
- Nocturne 1: Snow Dance
- Nocturne 2: Lovely Cold Ruins
- Nocturne 3: Darkusosy
- Nocturne 4: Goodbye Pork Pie Gal
- Nocturne 5: Piano Man's Pain
- Nocturne 6: Rain Soaked Choker
- Nocturne 7: Nosferatu
- Nocturne 8: Chainca Shadow
- Nocturne 9: Larks
- Nocturne 10: Satalight Song
- Nocturne 11: Meet Me In The Hills
- Nocturne 12: Pyjamas
- Nocturne 13: The Hissing Mist
Spectral, nostalgic, highly evocative, sometimes-desolate reflections — alone on the piano, and together with saxophonist and flautist Finn Peters — soaked in Satie, Ravel, and Mompou. Expressive and enchanting, but mournfully distracted, with a tentative, exploratory wonderment which reminds you of Paul Klee’s well-worn idea of a drawing as a line taking a walk. Easy to recommend to those of you who recently enjoyed Mashu Hayasaka’s Etudes LP, on All Night Flight. This is lovely stuff from Jesse, in an unexpected departure from his work with Elmore Judd, the Gorillaz, Nyege Nyege Tapes…
Yeun Elez opens a breach: that of a forgotten threshold, a gateway to Hell concealed beneath the peat and legends of the Breton marshes, from which Hoel Moce borrows the name for this project.
Born from Celtic tales passed down in hushed tones, it summons wandering souls, suspended spirits, and those who have already reached the end of their journey. Having escaped from Techno Thriller, Hoel founded Yeun Elez in 2022, as an autonomous and haunting sonic territory.
Surrounded by talented collaborators (Maria: NaturaMorta, Lou Savary de Reymour), he weaves a ritualistic and visceral music, traversed by dreamlike landscapes, misty battlefields, and a fantastical medieval Brittany.
Between pagan symbolism and spectral visions, the project explores the murky depths of the human condition. Thus, birth, love, decline, death: the themes emerge as archaic truths. Betrayal and revenge exist alongside devotion and the quest for an ideal that transcends us.
Mixed by Luc Bersier (Reymour) and then mastered by Tioma Tchoulanov (UVB76, Nze Nze), this album by Yeun Elez doesn't reconstruct the past: it invents it to better haunt it.
Music like a rite of passage, both rooted and timeless, like an inner journey, dark and necessary, to a place where myths refuse to die.
Ivy Chalice release their highly anticipated follow up to last years ‘Nachtmahr’, with Noctifer, on Library of the Occult Records. Drawing inspiration from classic cinema and the evocative sounds of the 1960s and 70s, Noctifer blends acoustic textures and ethereal vocals with a shadowy electronic edge, crafting a musical experience that is as haunting as it is hypnotic.
Noctifer ("bringer of night") is an album of shadowed landscapes and eerie tales. Ivy Chalice conjures a soundscape where dark folklore, dreamlike acoustics, and modern electronic elements meet. The album's narrative threads echo the haunting charm of films like The Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man, as well as the spectral allure of British folk revival acts.
Maria Perez Query of Hellebore writes:
"The dense, dreamy atmosphere conjured by Ivy Chalice reaches its zenith in “Der Wald, Die Spiegelwelt,” which has echoes of the classic folk horror series Moondial (1988). Ethereal and eerie, Noctifer feels like wandering into the woods to find a ruined chapel, like opening a gate that leads to a secret realm."
Featuring tracks that balance fragility and foreboding, Noctifer is both an homage to and a reinvention of folk horror soundscapes. The combination of acoustic instrumentation and shadowy electronic textures offers a contemporary twist on timeless themes of nature, ritual, and the unknown.
- 1: The Festering Depths
- 2: Beckoning Of The Moss Ridden Tombs
- 3: Fields Of Flayed Skin
Me Saco Un Ojo Records proudly presents the debut EP of Croatian death-doom maniacs Decrepit Altar.
Gloomy guitars greet you with a charnel atmosphere, eerily descending into the graves. This subsides to showcase putrescent riffing and gargantuan drums with a monolithic heaviness, the perfect recipe for fetid death-doom excellence. Morbidly snarled vocals reverberate into the abyss with the spectral instruments perfectly enshrouding their malignant presence.
Combining crushing heaviness with savage and creeping aggression, these three tracks lurk in shadowy cemeteries awaiting your arrival only to punish you with their flagellating horrors. From the warping progressions to the primal bludgeoning force, it will not take long for you to feel this band means business with their first release.
Each sinuous and stringy tendril of terror flows organically from the last, presenting darkness and evil with a veritably claustrophobic and tense sound. Churning malice and groove in equal measure, their vile concoction of festering offal is something pungent and addictive that keeps you coming back for more.
All three of these twisted offerings give something of their own with a personality and character while fitting together to forge a trinity of depraved darkness that doomed death metal fans will certainly cherish. Prepare for egregious defilement…
- A1: Wasting Your Facelift
- A2: Die Infektion
- A3: Knebelfreunde (Feat. Das Kinn)
- B1: Free Cigarettes
- B2: Going In Circles (Ft. Rosaceae)
- B3: Totengräber (Ft. Felix Kubin)
- C1: Beiss Mich! (Ft. Rosaceae)
- C2: Leaves Casting Shadows
- C3: Hell Was Boring
- D1: Ironsight
- D2: Deutschland Verreist (Ft. Konstantin Unwohl)
- D3: Second Thoughts (Ft. Children Of Leir)
Between 2023 and 2025, L.F.T. split his time between Hamburg and Berlin, slowly piecing together what would become his most ambitious work to date. The result is Hell Was Boring - a double album that plays like a fever dream, unfolding as a dark, mythical tale about life, death, and the strange spaces in between.
L.F.T. - the alias of German producer and multi-instrumentalist Johannes Haas - has always thrived on tension: between punk urgency and electronic precision, between raw emotion and mechanical repetition. On Hell Was Boring, those tensions are amplified. Drawing on the spectral drama of Bauhaus, the melancholic minimalism of Linear Movement, the futuristic romanticism of Gary Numan, and even the sly swagger of Falco, the album feels at once deeply personal and part of a much older musical lineage.
The sound is stripped down to its bones: drums snap and rattle from a Roland TR-808, TR-707 and Korg KR-55; basslines growl from a Roland SH-101 and Korg MS-20; shards of guitar cut through clouds of tape hiss. Everything was tracked to a Teac Tascam 80-8 reel-to-reel, giving each track a lived-in, imperfect warmth. Nothing is overpolished - L.F.T. wanted the listener to hear the edges, the grit, the moments when the music almost comes apart.
Along the way, he invited friends and long-time collaborators into the fold - Das Kinn, Rosaceae, Felix Kubin, Children Of Leir, and Konstantin Unwohl - each leaving their own fingerprints on the record’s world of shadows and static.
Hell Was Boring isn’t a mere collection of songs; it’s a narrative that drags you into its orbit and doesn’t quite let go. It’s music for the late hours when reality feels porous, and for those moments when you’re not sure if you’re waking up or still dreaming.
- A1: Fugee X Thaehan - The Storyteller
- A2: Tah. X Gatz2Gatz - Witches’ Den
- A3: Elaz X Ariel T - Treats Or Beats
- A4: Lucid Keys - Le Chaudron
- A5: Dosi - Crimson Clown
- B1: Pbdr - Bubble Trouble
- B2: Thaehan X Vimef - Whispers In The Walls
- B3: Fred Paci X Tosso - Vampire Night
- B4: Solar Body - Goosebumps
- B5: Xander. X Philip Somber X Luqęt - Pumpkin Moon
- C1: Goson X Softy - Ghost Nap
- C2: Myceliumbug - Cursed Carousel
- C3: Luqęt X Strong.al& - Muffled Spirits
- C4: Dani Catalá X Fool Parsley - Noche De Espíritus
- C5: Prithvi X Eva Gomi Tenshi - Ghost Valley
- D1: No Spirit X Fool Parsley X Odd Panda - Insidious
- D2: Dani Catalá X Flowray X Kiabits - Memory Lane
- D3: The Fox X Fugee - The Watchmaker
- D4: Klemsis - Spooky Dream
- D5: Towerz X Nadav Cohen - Aynac Rac
The night is restless, the streets eerily silent... only distant echoes and haunting rhythms fill the air. Halloween 2025 drags you deep into the atmosphere of a world forever changed.
As shadows lengthen and whispers grow louder, the familiar coziness of Lofi Girl’s room takes a darker turn. This 20-track compilation gathers artists from across the globe to conjure chilling melodies and spectral beats, the perfect soundtrack for the spooky season. Press play, and lose yourself in a soundtrack where the undead roam and even the walls seem to listen.
Amsterdam label Spectral Bounce recruits French club stalwart Chris Carrier for SPEC06 — Perfect Encounter. Active since 1994, the Parisian artist has released a wellspring of records on Robsoul, Slapfunk and his own Sound Carrier recordings, parallel to his longtime career as a DJ. Characterised by swirling delays and progressive arrangements, Perfect Encounter shows the producer exploring the mesmeric corners of tech house, ideally fitted to the Spectral Bounce aesthetic.
Opener “XLR8” starts with rolling toms that make way for fluid, modulated tones; each bar ebbs and flows to the sweeping synths set in motion by Carrier. Processed with a multitude of delays, rhythmic FX boldly swish above the drums, making for an immersive soundstage. Second track “Light Side” retains the billowing echoes but moves more nimbly, cutting things back to make for a spacious and breezy number. Its croaking synths hop around the stereo field, accompanied by tight percussion and a walking bassline.
The hallucinogenic “Third Moon” sees Carrier step further into trance-inducing territory. The track’s pulsing, syncopated bass note thrums underneath an arpeggio that evolves into a heady prismatic drone. While the chugging beat is ever-present, melodic refrains rise up and evaporate like wisps of vapour, alongside a vocal that fades away as quickly as it appears. The EP’s eponymous “Perfect Encounter” dials up the tension and closes the record with a mysterious touch. Speedy 16th note patterns propel the beat, creating shifty rhythms that rattle and hiss. A rasping, gelatinous synth and squeaky detuned tones resemble extraterrestrial signals — alien morse code for an enraptured dancefloor.
Credits:
- Bytheriver
- Onatightrope
- Briefglimpsesofclearsky
- Hatandraincoat
- Callhersunrise
- Bytheriver
- Twolonelyspacepilots
- Umbrellasonparade
- Whatkindoflove
Hekura are a Barcelona-based duo that create expansive soundscapes anchored in ritual minimalism. With influences ranging from the ethereal mysticism of Alice Coltrane to the hypnotic pulse of Steve Reich, their music explores the boundary between introspection and bold sonic exploration. Inspired by ethnographic traditions and the raw energy of Julius Eastman, their compositions fuse scattered percussion, shimmering textures, and hypnotic saxophone rhythms for moments of solitude and profound reflection. Hekura's work invites listeners to immerse themselves into a spectral world where tradition meets the avant-garde, offering a unique and evocative listening experience. Ernest and Edu met during their jazz studies at Taller de Musics in Barcelona. Their first conversation was about Charlie Haden Liberation Orchestra's "free jazz" version of the South African anthem, Nkosi Sikelele. That bond quickly translated into a shared world of listening, respect, experimentation, and sound that crystallized in Hekura. Edu Pons is a saxophonist and a music teacher at Taller de Mùsics in Barcelona. His music ranges from jazz to folk or from classical to free improvisation yet with his own distinctive voice. Ernest Pipó is a guitarist and composer from a small town in La Garrotxa. Currently based in Barcelona, he primarily focuses on music production and soundtrack composition. His influences range from jazz, electronica, noise, pop, and, although he dares to admit it, also ambient. For fans of: John Tchicai (with strings), Steve Reich, Arv & Miljö (Discreet Music, 2024)
Mister Water Wet returns to Soda Gong with "Things Gone and Things Here Still," an album that radically expands the project’s purview while preserving the homespun warmth and oblique tactility that have long defined Iggy Romeu’s work. Where earlier records tilted toward the dusty swing of sample-based beatcraft or spectral minimalist jazz, here Romeu opens the frame to a more ensemble-minded approach, inviting a stellar cast of supporting musicians, including SG alumni Memotone and K. Freund, into the fold.
The result is an album that feels both broader and more intimate, with live instrumentation such as piano, strings, and reeds woven into MWW’s signature lattice of hand percussion, production sleights, and slippery time signatures. Acoustic and electronic textures bend toward each other like plants angling for the same light: bowed strings blur into vaporous pads, brushed drums scatter under riffing guitars, a horn phrase lingers in the same space as a cracked cassette loop.
A tension between decay and presence - the “things gone” and the “things here still” - runs throughout the record. At times, the music evokes a chamber session refracted through waterlogged tape; at others, it recalls the afterimage of a hip-hop instrumental slowed into an oneiric haze. In the world of MWW, memory functions less as nostalgia and more as a living fabric - mutable and resonant. "Things Gone and Things Here Still" finds Iggy Romeu at his most expansive, offering up a generous record of open spaces and porous boundaries.
- A1: Sunset - Sonic Boom Remix (Ft/ Cian Ciaran)
- A2: There Is No Tomorrow - Resurrection Machine Remix
- A3: Fires In The Still Sea - Timothy J. Fairplay Remix
- B1: Blood - Hardway Bros Remix
- B2: No Place To Hide - Sonic Boom Remix
- B3: Sunset - Phil Kieran Remix
Following the reissue of their acclaimed debut album in July - Rocket Girl Records is proud to announce the second transmission in the triptych of releases from Welsh sonic alchemists, White Noise Sound (WNS): an exultant, transmutational remix album celebrating the band’s admired self-titled inaugural LP featuring Pete Kember/Sonic Boom, Cian Ciaran (Super Furry Animals), Phil Kieran (techno producer/DJ), Sean Johnson (Hardway Bros) and Timothy J Fairplay (Andrew Weatherall’s Scrutton Street Circle).
WNS’s cult 2010 self-titled debut saw the band channelling their own chimeric wall-of-sound - an incantation in layers of feedback, kosmische rhythms and celestial distortion. Now, that spell is rewritten.
Fold In Time - WNS1 Remixed sees an extraordinary line-up of artists from across the psychedelic and electronic spectrums dive deep into the band’s original recordings, dynamically reimagining the sonic architecture - unearthing new forms, hidden frequencies and arcane resonances.
Furthering the mythology of an album revered in underground circles - by peers and critics alike - these remixes push the band’s hypnotic, feedback-soaked sound into entirely new dimensions. Expect deep psych, repetitive beats, acid purity, expansive dubbed-out landscapes and spectral ambient drones. Tracks collapse and re-emerge, shimmering with new light.
“We wanted to honour the spirit of the original album while inviting some of our favourite artists to completely destroy it,” says White Noise Sound’s Adam Tovey.
Steve Hauschildt returns after 6 years with a new album titled Aeropsia. After a transcontinental relocation from the US to Tbilisi, Georgia, the electronic composer emerges from a personal and global transformation to explore themes of perceptual distortion, disconnection, and renewal.
Aeropsia (which roughly translates as “seeing the air”) refers to a visual phenomenon in which objects appear to float or shimmer, often due to changes in pressure, perception, atmospheric shifts or neurological disturbance. This becomes a metaphor for the liminality that informs the record: blurry visions, dreamlike displacements, and the fragile membrane separating what is seen from what is felt.
In the years since his last solo release, Hauschildt’s world has been marked by relocation and a growing sense of global turbulence. These experiences became the raw material for a work that navigates institutional haze and uncertainty itself. The result is music that employs decay as method, structure as entropy, and mutation as expression.
While Aeropsia remains subjective in its vision, Hauschildt invited two previous collaborators to expand the album’s gravitational pull. Cellist Lia Kohl, who previously performed on Nonlin, returns and brings a tactile warmth to select tracks, while guitarist Michael Vallera threads spectral harmonics into the mix. The album’s electronic foundation and its tactile elements meet in a state of luminous suspension to navigate the shifting in physical and psychological terrain.
- Firebrand
- The Fever
- False Dawn
Limited orange vinyl. A bombastic closure fi lled with energetic thrills delivered by the mighty Ring Van Möbius! Oh, wait..! Didn't they just vanish from the face of the earth? You're absolutely right, Prog Head! However; they had one last full-length album up their sleeves - a sparkling fresh and vital conclusion, filled with three lengthy compositions to wrap up their legacy. "Being able to now close this chapter with such a huge sparkling concept album feels terrific and quite satisfying. We really do feel that the inspiring playfulness during these spontaneous recording sessions shines through. Obviously, it's important to us to end this journey while sounding on top of our game, while still having fun!" the band says in a most humble comment, "A tremendous finale, directly from the analog Spectral Tape Studio".
Ostinato as resistance: Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer’s critically acclaimed album 'A Fragile Geography', this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually.
First released in 2015 (Room40) during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us.
Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri’s entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over.
“This album wasn’t just a record; it was a lifeline,” Irisarri reflects. “It became a way to process the emotional chaos that followed: uprooting, instability, and ultimately, the slow, intuitive rebuilding of a life.”
Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Tracks like “Displacement,” “Hiatus,” and “Persistence” juxtaposed haunting stillness with restless momentum, mapping an inner terrain of grief, catharsis, and rebirth.
Among its defining sounds is “Empire Systems,” a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. Often cited as the album’s most majestic passage, it captures Irisarri at his most sonically ambitious. With a harmonically saturated structure crafted from restraint and repetition, it remains one of his most recognizable compositions: an exercise in the art of maximal minimalism.
From the outset, “Reprisal” received praise from BBC’s Mary Anne Hobbs, who championed the track on her radio show. Her support played a key role in introducing Irisarri’s work to wider audiences and solidifying his place within the lineage of electronic, drone, and experimental sound artists. A slow-burning elegy, the piece emerges from a haze of distortion and sub-bass, with dense, unrelenting drones carrying a sense of mounting tension. Just as it seems to collapse under its own weight, flickers of guitar emerge like distant light through fog. It’s a meditation on dissonance, resolve, and the elusive possibility of release.
The closing track, “Secretly Wishing for Rain,” is steeped in saudade: a longing for Seattle’s dour grey skies, lush green landscapes, and desaturated sunsets. Through it, Irisarri mourns a vanished chapter of life bound to the city, a time documented in scattered mementos and cherished collections, now permanently gone. A reflection on what could never be recovered: an era lost to time. Julia Kent’s looped cello motifs added a melancholic warmth to the track, marking the first collaboration between the two artists and sparking a musical dialogue that would keep growing in the years that followed.
More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Carried by its lasting influence, the album has quietly captured the ear of a younger generation, its sound and emotional arc finding new listeners in unexpected corners.
The album’s new visual language was reimagined in collaboration with Mexico City–based designer Daniel Castrejón. Irisarri captured ghostly images at Gaztelugatxeko Doniene, a historic coastal site in Bermeo, Euskal Herria. Castrejón then treated the photographs with distressed textures and spectral overlays. The final artwork channels the rugged, elemental forces that shaped both the music and Irisarri’s aesthetic, renewing his ties to ancestral ground inspired by the Basque homeland of his bloodline.
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.
“I don’t experience this album as a document of grief anymore,” says Irisarri. “I hear adaptation and I'm reminded that when everything falls apart, something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, can emerge.”




















