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(ASMR) is a tingling sensation that usually begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. It signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin." It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli.

We're proud to present the debut album by East-Sussex raised, London-based guitarist, composer and producer Peach Banquet (aka Jonathan Palmer). 'Rubber Leaves', a collection of solo guitar improvisations, invokes the feeling of jumping into a cool river in a heat-fogged daze, with meandering guitar lines that bubble and multiply like frogspawn before evaporating immediately into the ether. Recommended if you like Matsuo Basho's travelogues / haikus, John Frusciante's 'To Record Only Water for Ten Days', or Knobs youtube guitar pedal demos.

Pink Vinyl
Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

Canadian producer Dylan Khotin-Foote has kept his Khotin alias going for the better part of a decade; the impressionistic electronic project shifts with the movements in his life. Sometimes it leads, like when the club-friendly grooves of 2014's Hello World immersed him in the heart of Vancouver's underground dance scene, and sometimes it follows, like 2018's Beautiful You, a downtempo salve for DJ fatigue. His melodic sensibility and playful ear for atmosphere remain the rippling core of the project's fingerprint; whether beat-driven or ambient, a foggy smear or a dusted and pristine print, a Khotin track has a distinct and instantly recognizable swirl. During and after the 2020 release of Finds You Well, his second LP on Ghostly International, Khotin-Foote settled back into a slower vibe in his hometown of Ed- monton. Even before the pandemic, his pivots to softer production, and away from DJing, left him with fewer opportunities in Vancouver and club bookings overall, and as a self-identifying introvert, he was fine with that. But the change of pace did open space for Khotin-Foote to grapple with concepts of adulthood and career. At his lowest, he almost walked off this musical path altogether; instead, he doubled down on the craft _ the tone, pacing, and dynamism of new material _ arriving at a definitive full-length. With Release Spirit, Khotin releases himself from the pressure of expectation, fusing and refining everything we know about his music. The warmth and familiarity of Khotin's dreamy, dulcet style meet new ideas and frameworks, a natural progression, a modest revelation; Khotin confirms it is okay to move slowly and he's never sounded better doing it. The album title borrows from the "release spirit" mechanic in the video game World of Warcraft. When players die, they are prompted to release their spirit and return as ghosts to find their corpses and come back to life. Khotin sees it as a worthy metaphor for the impending change his return home presented and the resulting process of purging artistic expectations to find his creative self again. On this go- around, he is freer, more playful, and more intentional within his palette of warped synth, breakbeats, and piano sounds _ including the classic Casio SK-1 presets he's used since the start _ mingling with wistful samples, field recordings, and other abstract snippets. For the first time, he enlisted Nik Kozub to do the mix and assist with sequencing. Khotin-Foote has long worked with the Edmonton-based musician and engineer in the mastering phase, as well as their days co-running the label Normals Welcome, and this time was able to involve his ears earlier given their newfound proximity. "I think it's my best sounding record to date." We begin on "HV Road" or Happy Valley Road, where Khotin-Foote spent time during a family vacation in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake. His plans to record crickets at night are quickly foiled by his younger siblings; the cute exchange orients the listener to a core memory of sorts, setting the tone of universally understood warmth and wonder that has defined some of Khotin's most transportive tracks. Hazy percussion takes hold, and we are swept further into the wisp of "Lovely," a grooving, melodic standout built on the interplay between the beat and human voice-like hums. Khotin knows this zone well; equally suited for a reverie or a club warm-up. The bubbling atmosphere and absurdity of "3 pz" offer a cosmic/comic interlude and also speak to reflections on his family's move to Canada two generations ago, and the audio tutorials they used to learn English. "I can only imagine my grandpar- ents repeating some of the bizarre phrases." "Fountain, Growth" finds Khotin in collaboration with Montreal's Tess Roby (Dawn to Dawn) for the project's first-ever vocal track. Roby's soft cadence echoes atop spiraling air pockets of rhythmic production, lending a breezy, almost shoegaze pop feel. Throughout the single and the album, wind gusts between the compositional layers, akin to the roaming spirits of its namesake, curving around the birdsong of "Life Mask" and seamlessly reaching "Unlimited <3." The latter bumps in slow motion; disembodied whirrs from his Casio collide with 808 drums and sub-bass for a vibe that teeters on trap and instrumental hip-hop. Release Spirit rests in a dream sequence. Oscillating synth lines dance around the heartbeat of "Techno Creep," a hyperactive REM state before the digitized ambient sprawl of "My Same Size." In the final pass, Khotin imagines transcontinental travel from the glow of his screen. He recorded "Sound Gathering Trip" to soundtrack a genre of YouTube videos he's taken to that follows train routes through Europe and Japan. The scene is serene and moving; piano keys warble as static-filled sound design shimmers off the rails, from cityscapes to the countryside, an introspective ride through a world beyond his bedroom. It doubles as an apt parting image for Khotin's project as a whole: dreaming big but happiest when riffing on the details, shaping environments from the inside out. Over the last decade, he has stretched from his core in Edmonton, leaving a trace in Vancouver and beyond; but when all signs point home, he loops back to see it all from a different vantage, revitalized, refined, and free.

After opening the dimension door via a hypnagogic contribution to recent Ruf Kutz comp 'Expansion Pack 2: Textures' and offering a sonic submersion into his 'Deep Waters Mixtape', Inner Glow takes the controls for RK18, treating the DJs and dancers to a high grade house triptych.

For the uninitiated, the man behind the music is a lifelong friend from Ruf Dug's Sydney sojourn, when the two would host mushroom squat parties with the rest of the "Bodega Clan", and who helped mastermind the seminal Paradise Lost warehouse parties. Virtuously patient, the Australian spent the years since perfecting his craft, maxing out the XP and emerging as his evolved form, Inner Glow.

On the A-side, Inner Glow comes through with the two clubbiest cuts from the 'Deep Waters' cassette, unmixed, mastered loud and exclusive to vinyl. Already a firm favourite with Bradley Zero 'Party People' pulses on the A1, its one note bassline and taut pads keeping tension at a maximum. At the top of the frequency band sparse stabs and nuanced percussion dance in tandem, while the deft use of E-Smoove and First Choice acapellas provide an underground intertext Sprinkles would be proud of.

'Call Me' coaxes us into the shadow realm with the lure of Lynchian dialogue, slowly taking shape as a dub techno phantom. It's a heads down affair as urgent subs push against the mist of static, until a rising, wriggling keyboard riff unwinds waists with a hint of UKG exuberance.
Inner Glow brings the beatific on the B-side's 'Love Has No Age', combining rippling keys and MK vocal chops over waves of hiss and haze.
The percussion combines classic house swing with the tinny hats of electro, keeping perfect time as the soulful vocals swell into the sublime.

Over the last twelve months Ruffy's rocked the spot from Pikes to Houghton with these heaters, and now he's sharing them with you.

Queens Of The Circulating Library stands alongside Time Machines and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith as a post-industrial pinnacle of sensory-warping long-form drone. Crafted by the distilled duo of Thighpaulsandra and John Balance, the 49-minute piece unfurls in swirling, cyclical waves, tidal as much as textural, channeling the spirit of levitational minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young. Touted as the first part in "a continually mutating series of circulating musickal compositions" upon its initial release in 2000, the album remains a compelling case study in Coil's exceptional capacity for mutation and extremes. The theatrical introductory monologue delivered by Thighpaulsandra's mother - a career opera singer, in her 80's at the time of recording - sets the stage for a grandiose ascension. Written by Balance, the text is declamatory but dreamlike, refracted through megaphone echo: "Return the book of knowledge / Return the marble index / File under "Paradox" / The forest is a college, each tree a university." As her voice fades, the lulling synthetic infinity deepens, congealing into transient crests of volume and haze, like slow-motion surf misting in moonlight. Thighpaulsandra describes their aesthetic intention as a "bliss out," static but shape-shifting, an amniotic drift towards an eternal vanishing point. A supreme sonic embodiment of the slogan on the sleeve of Time Machines, two years prior: "Persistence is all.

Red Vinyl

Breaking from the strange monotony and abnormal norms that took hold during two years of pandemic life, Hammock returns with Love in the Void , an album that looks to the future, seizes the present, and unabashedly relishes the experiences and bonds that bring meaning to our days. Known for crafting orchestral works of stirring cinematic ambience, on Love in the Void the Nashville-based duo of Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson bring guitar-forward, heart-pounding urgency to songs that shout through and shatter the static of complacency. Since forming as Hammock in 2003, Byrd and Thompson have released 14 critically-acclaimed albums, and are renowned for their unique talent for bringing inexpressible emotion to life. The Covid-19 pandemic followed closely after one of Hammock's career-defining works, the Mysterium, Universalis, and Silencia trilogy that chronicled the incomprehensible loss of Byrd's 20-year- old nephew. At their homes and apart, Byrd and Thompson then recorded Elsewhere, an album of shimmering ambience that channeled alienated longing and displacement into avenues that gave way to worlds and possibilities yet realized. Shaken awake and needing to break free of frustrations and longings, Love in the Void pulses with an unbridled spirit for action and experience and a burning desire for connection Across songs that hammer home the keenly felt emotions of life's highs and lows, Byrd and Thompson crest soaring crescendos awash in reverb and delve to keenly felt moments of quiet introspection, with unflinching lyrics on tracks like "Undoing" and "Denial of Endings'' that weigh choices made and circumstances that can't be changed. Lush and dramatic string orchestration from Matt Kidd (Slow Meadow) and emphatic drumming from Jake Finch heighten the stakes in play, and Christine Byrd's (Lumenette) ethereal vocals leave mysteries lingering in the haze. Love in the Void is Hammock's loudest album to date, embracing daring and vulnerability with palpable vitality at its core, and moving into an unknown future without fear.

LIMITED EDITION DREAD BLACK VINYL LP, WITH THREE DOUBLE SIDED A4 INSERTS AND DOWNLOAD CODE. HOUSED IN PRINTED OUTER SLEEVE WITH POILYLINED INNER, AND HYPE STICKER. NON-RETURNABLE.
Bruxa Maria are G. Dread: Guitar, Vocals-Dave Cochrane : Bass (Head of David, God, Terminal Cheesecake) - Paul Antony: Drums (Ghold, Test Dept) - Robbie Judkins: Synth noise (Left Hand Cuts off The Right)
Bruxa Maria are back on their third full length; be grateful. “Build Yourself A Shrine And Pray” is 45 minutes of pummelling, punishing fury as unrelenting and all-consuming as your anger at coming up short for the rent.
The new record finds the band just as enraged as their 2016 debut, while continuing to evolve artistically. Bruxa Maria’s huge bass and guitar, frantic drums, and banshee shrieking vocals build tension with few moments of release, the frenzy sometimes dissolving into feedback, static, and synth drones.
Often the riffs have a swagger that makes you want to dance, and in a few places there are flashes of some genuinely pretty melodies and hooks. Those moments all shine through for just an instant before being shredded by the noise and wrath, torn apart flower petals under a line of razor wire.
This is dark music about and against a darkening world, where anger and art are crucial to how we keep on keeping on. You can call it now, this is going to be the best record of 2023.'
(Nate Holdren)

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in the incomparable 90’s band known as Brainiac. This is in part due to a 2019 full feature documentary about the band (Transmissions After Zero) plus the reemergence of surviving band members to celebrate their music in the last several years. In addition, a substantial pair of archival releases (Attic Tapes 2xLP, From Dayton Ohio 2xLP) were unearthed for release on Record Store Day 2021 by Touch and Go Records. Now, in 2023, comes the latest missive of the archive, harkening back to the band’s latter era - and their most prolific and confident period. The Predator Nominate EP is a celebration of what was to come before the tragic exit of ringleader/singer Timmy Taylor. Listen to these realized demos and imagine what only could have been the confident seed of what the group might be capable of in this future century versus the last one. The world will never truly know. BIO: Brainiac began in 1992 as the basement experiments of Dayton, OH natives Tim Taylor (vocals, synth), and Juan Monasterio (bass), who first met playing cello in fifth grade. Upon completing the lineup with Michelle Bodine (guitar) and Tyler Trent (drums), they released two full-lengths and toured vigorously, establishing themselves as the latest peg in Ohio’s diverse musical timeline. In 1994, Michelle left the band and was replaced by John Schmersal. In 1996, the band made their full-length debut on Touch and Go Records with the album Hissing Prigs in Static Couture. On May 23, 1997, only weeks after the release of Electroshock for President EP and the band’s return from a European tour supporting Beck, Tim lost his life in a car accident.

Just as Duster's landmark debut album Stratosphere was making its first orbit, Clay Parton, Dove Amber, and Jason Albertini tracked a largely improvised companion capsule under their Valium Aggelein alter ego. An ode to '70s Kosmische, Hier Kommt Der Schwartze Mond is a skeletal space nap for the prozac generation. Remixed and remastered from the original 16 track analog tapes, the 1998 album has been adjoined by 15 period-appropriate bonus tracks. A fuzzy masterpiece, hidden in plain sight, by the most important slowcore band of all time.

Transparent Blue Vinyl

Queens Of The Circulating Library stands alongside Time Machines and Nurse With Wound's Soliloquy For Lilith as a post-industrial pinnacle of sensory-warping long-form drone. Crafted by the distilled duo of Thighpaulsandra and John Balance, the 49-minute piece unfurls in swirling, cyclical waves, tidal as much as textural, channeling the spirit of levitational minimalism pioneered by La Monte Young. Touted as the first part in "a continually mutating series of circulating musickal compositions" upon its initial release in 2000, the album remains a compelling case study in Coil's exceptional capacity for mutation and extremes. The theatrical introductory monologue delivered by Thighpaulsandra's mother - a career opera singer, in her 80's at the time of recording - sets the stage for a grandiose ascension. Written by Balance, the text is declamatory but dreamlike, refracted through megaphone echo: "Return the book of knowledge / Return the marble index / File under "Paradox" / The forest is a college, each tree a university." As her voice fades, the lulling synthetic infinity deepens, congealing into transient crests of volume and haze, like slow-motion surf misting in moonlight. Thighpaulsandra describes their aesthetic intention as a "bliss out," static but shape-shifting, an amniotic drift towards an eternal vanishing point. A supreme sonic embodiment of the slogan on the sleeve of Time Machines, two years prior: "Persistence is all.

OZRIC TENTACLES' BECOME THE OTHER' IS BACK IN STOCK ON LP VIA
KSCOPE
One of the most influential bands to emerge from the UK's festival scene, the
Ozrics layer ambient & ethereal landscapes with freeform dub trips, incredible
rave grooves & psychedelic progressive rock. It's an open exploration of music &
the soul. The band's first release after Merv Pepler & Joie Hinton left to form Eat
Static, Become The Other' still possesses the cool, psychedelic spare rock of its
predecessors. With hints of techno, psybient & world music, the album kicks off
with some fine guitar & bass on 'Cat DNA', followed by the atmospherics of 'Ahu
Belahu' & 'Ghedengi'. 'Wob Glass' is all synthy techno whilst 'Neurochasm' is a
cool trippy rock track & so very Ozrics. The title track visits reggae with lengthy
finishers 'Vibuthi' & 'Plurnstyle' both smorgasbords of classic Ozrics sounds. And
that's Become The Other' in a nutshell: everything you'd expect of an Ozrics
album, but not sounding exactly like any other Ozrics album. BECOME THE
OTHER' IS NOW AVAILABLE AS A SINGLE LP EDITION

Experimental once-sludge metal duo branch out further with an album influenced by Middle East / North African / Asian pop and traditional music. Nazm sees Jucifer deploy their familiar studio tactic: writing, arranging, producing, engineering, and playing all instruments themselves to create a sprawling concept album. This time, it’s to celebrate their shared love for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and central / south / west Asian traditional and pop music cultures with fourteen highly textured, intensely personal and passionately delivered original songs. Fans of the band likely know they can expect surprises with each album, as well as recordings which differ drastically at times from their live sound. In this tradition, Nazm strays far from the brutal excess of a Jucifer show (and of their recent releases Futility and District Of Dystopia) but, as with all Jucifer’s recordings, the point is not to imply any static trait of the band but instead to bring to life a story they’re telling. Track Listing: 1. Return 2. Mood 3. Un Occupied 4. Welcome 5. Sahel 6. Endure 7. Pulverization (Becoming) 8. Displaced 9. Jucifer – Divided 10. Notice (Warning) 11. Water Woman 12. Mitochondria 13. The World Is A Sword 14. To The Lost

Dedicated to all b-boys and b-girls and all the graffiti writers around the world, DJ Regal returns to his Lexington imprint with the second part in his Inspired By series. New York '72 is an amazingly vibey tribute to the sounds & sights of the Big Apple 50 years ago, coming in a top notch instrumental hiphop style.

The Berlin based duo Itchy Spots combine falling words with tricky rhythms. Their music concerns the simultaneity of intensity and nonchalance, feverish high speed drumming, static sounds and tribal hypnosis. The vocal performance seems to stand alone, it is independent from whats happening rhythmically, yet it all melts together perfectly. Grooving skeletons of songs, rituals and shamanism. Itchy Spots are James Main (former singer and lyricist with Wild Daughter) and Ansgar Wilken (Ilse Lau, Feedbackorchester, Happy Zloty).

The liminal space between storytelling and dreaming is full of noise. Like whispers, flickering lines of static travel to the rhythm of tension, moving through moments of stillness and chaos. The sharp details of the hyper-personal become shared memories.

Dreams can be stories, their fabric transient and their logic malleable - like folk songs carrying ancient knowledge or clairvoyant wisdom.

White Dove Dream tells a story that only sound can. One that defies language and closed narrative; a story that is both a personal rumination and collective conversation.

There are layers of healing synthesis and dream logic improvisation; captured recordings coalesce somewhere beneath the scramble like deja vu. Like a diary entry, or a manifesto - noise is folk music and Icebear is noisy.

Icebear is Eilis Mahon, a sound artist from Kildare, Ireland.

White Dove Dream is her debut release on Weeding - an independent label and collective of friends based primarily in Dublin, Ireland, who love to make and share noise.

Recent play of “Funny Games / Garfield” on Pure Soil - NTS.

*Ltd Coloured Vinyl on Transparent Blue Vinyl* London-based musician and producer Ryan Lee West, aka Rival Consoles, creates driving, experimental electronic music that makes synthesisers sound human. His consistent desire to create a more organic, living sound, sees him forming pieces that capture a sense of songwriting behind the machines.

‘Now Is’ marks a new chapter in an ongoing quest for refinement and evolution. More playful and melodic, the album draws from much experimentation in minimalist songwriting and seamlessly blends synthesisers and acoustic instruments. “There are some pieces that are influenced quite strongly by the isolation and anxiety of these times. There are also pieces which are more optimistic and vibrant, which I think is a consistent attitude of my records, as I want art to express many aspects of life.”

From the elevating arrangements of ‘Beginnings’ and motorik beats of ‘World Turns’, to the isolation of ‘Frontiers’, influenced by the barren landscapes of Iceland, Rival Consoles’ eighth studio album subtly morphs and evolves. “The title of the record ‘Now Is’ interests me because it is the beginning of a statement, but it is incomplete. I like art that is open and suggestive of ideas even if they are inspired by very specific things. With my previous record ‘Overflow’ being very dark, heavy and almost dystopian, I wanted to escape into a different world with this music and ended up creating a record which is a lot more colourful and euphoric.”

For the sonic ‘Vision of Self’, West looked to create the kind of movement and colour a string section in an orchestra would construct, but with synthesisers. “I think there’s a lot of synergy between the two worlds. I wanted to create a hypnotic journey, where the synths and sounds weave in and out of each other, so you get lost in the music and don’t know where one sound starts or another ends.” This “journey” West refers to is symbiotic of the way he has approached music throughout a progressive career – an ongoing project that is never static and always moving forward.

A sense of euphoria is reached with the pulsating title track which bursts into colour like the appearance of the summer sun, while ‘Echoes’ is a vivid exploration of rhythm and sound for summer nights. The track starts with a dense collage of modular synths, fragmented metallic tones, broken sounding drums and a downcast melodic synth line. “This is a piece where the main melody has been in my head for a long time and was just waiting to come out. I kind of think of it as the sonic equivalent to an impressionist painting in that I wanted to explore the sensation of lots of small layers of different colours and textures that are constantly moving around each other.”

Rival Consoles is set to appear at festivals across Europe this summer, with headline shows expected to follow in the autumn.

The East Coast of England is a land living on borrowed time. Time we borrowed from the North Sea, reclaimed a thousand years ago. But now it seems that sea has come to claim it all back. Michael C Coldwell spent three years travelling up and down this rapidly disappearing shoreline, collecting ghost stories, photographing the roads to nowhere, the monumental sound mirrors and pillboxes teetering on the edges of cliffs, making field recordings of the waves and fog signals, and writing mournful electronic music from static caravans. This hauntological project finally culminated in a short essay film entitled Views from Sunk Island - and this new Conflux Coldwell album. More than just a film score, The Phantomatic Coast stretches beyond the original aims of the documentary, to evoke something deeper about our troubled relationship with the sea – the many towns and ships lost beneath the waves, and ancient forgotten lands lying out beyond the windfarms like some Yorkshire Atlantis. Memory and mythology became obvious themes in the work, as did the ruins and remains of the world wars, now slipping beneath shifting sands forever. The Phantomatic Coast will be released via digital platforms and limited edition pressed vinyl in a deluxe gatefold sleeve.

Futurismo are proud to present a deluxe remastered vinyl package of the classic 1980 album: Red Exposure by the uncompromising Chrome.

Arguably considered the San Francisco bands greatest work, Red Exposure, the fourth album to feature core members Damon Edge

and Helios Creed, was the definitive version of Chrome’s idiosyncratic approach to sound: a projected vision of near future dystopia via an undefinable guise of experimental space rock and punk-tinged alien soundscapes. Here, the band simultaneously draw from the otherworldly noises of their past records, whilst pushing their synthesizers forward into, albeit oblique, pop song structures.


Edge’s vocals are structured more like an instrument than a voice, lyrics painting images of humanities future on the edge of total destruction. As Creed’s guitar work multilayersit’s way into a completely different aural spectrum, beautiful yet violent, slashing against rhythmic pulsations, loops and experimentations, to create a sound that even today feels beyond the here and now. This distillation of the bands repertoire seemed to envision a deconstruction of rock ‘n’ roll, aimed to break past the shell of cliché that it would of course eventually come to inhabit. Which is why despite it’s age Red Exposure remains a record that still sounds like the sonic product of a far off civilisation, making this disk of new wave nihilism vital for fans of Space rock, Krautrock, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide.

The deluxe remastered version of this out of print 1980 LP is presented here in ltd edition coloured vinyl. It comes packaged in a chromed mirrorboard sleeve, contains a large screen printed poster printed with neon ink featuring unseen photographs of the band, and a bonus track.

With ‘Terrain,’ Joachim Spieth presents the fourth long player on his Affin imprint.
The follow-up album to ‘Ousia’ (2021), ‘Terrain,’ reflects on the human relationship with nature. The album title is a reference to a musical language that layers Spieth’s music production practices and intimacy with nature.
‘Terrain’ was forged in deep solitude.“It’s an interplay of euphoric flashes and introspection” – says Spieth. The eight compositions take the listener into a captivating cascade of sonic textures resembling internal states fluctuations and emotional release. The tension between the organic warmth and static curves broads tones into liquified roars and empty spaces.
Unlike Spieth’s previous albums, ‘Terrain’ holds more intimate gestures and emotional sensibility. Soothing frequencies here are intended to create a state of awareness in the listener. It is a work of conceptual and emotional beauty, evoking a form of spatial imagery that is as grounding as elevating.

Steve Thomas Lacy-Moya ist ein amerikanischer Sänger, Musiker, Songwriter und Producer. Er wurde als Gitarrist der alternativen R&B-Band The Internet bekannt. Sein zweites Album GEMINI RIGHTS ist endlich auf Vinyl erhältlich.

The Microphones, Bon Iver, Lomelda, Vegyn, Hovvdy, Dijon. “Lemon Cream” vinyl is for Indies Only. Follow up to 2019’s critically acclaimed ‘bunny’. Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. It’s filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed. Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone. // Ghost Orchard’s “bunny” is a blushing, beatific beat. - The FADER // Fluttering and transportive, a swirl of beats and plucky guitar and strings that feels like a cocoon. - Stereogum // Hip-hop inflected, stream-of-consciousness confessionals that’ll have you swooning in the lazy summer sunlight. – Paste // Track listing: 01. Rest 02. Jessamine 03. Cursive 04. Maisy 05. Cut 06. soot 07. memory storage 08. Dancing 09. bruise 10. sweet song 11. comfort (rainbow)

The Microphones, Bon Iver, Lomelda, Vegyn, Hovvdy, Dijon. “Lemon Cream” vinyl is for Indies Only. Follow up to 2019’s critically acclaimed ‘bunny’. Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. It’s filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed. Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone. // Ghost Orchard’s “bunny” is a blushing, beatific beat. - The FADER // Fluttering and transportive, a swirl of beats and plucky guitar and strings that feels like a cocoon. - Stereogum // Hip-hop inflected, stream-of-consciousness confessionals that’ll have you swooning in the lazy summer sunlight. – Paste // Track listing: 01. Rest 02. Jessamine 03. Cursive 04. Maisy 05. Cut 06. soot 07. memory storage 08. Dancing 09. bruise 10. sweet song 11. comfort (rainbow)

The Microphones, Bon Iver, Lomelda, Vegyn, Hovvdy, Dijon. “Lemon Cream” vinyl is for Indies Only. Follow up to 2019’s critically acclaimed ‘bunny’. Sam Hall’s new album as ghost orchard, ‘rainbow music’, is a collage of patience and meditation. It’s filled with nuances as quietly imperceptible as the seasons, or the profound movement of time, where one day looking back you realize your whole spirit has shifted. Where 2019’s critically revered ‘bunny’ was a love letter to a romantic relationship, ‘rainbow music’ documents the culmination of Hall’s first personal experience with loss in several forms. At the end of 2020, his longterm childhood pet passed away, and with it the last continuing threads of familiarity between being a kid and adulthood. Still based in the Grand Rapids, Michigan town he’d grown up in, the static ease of familiar living seemed to be coming apart at the seams, as friends moved on to bigger cities, relationships shapeshifted and in a short period of time, another kitten he’d adopted passed away prematurely, leaving Hall to question the trajectory in which he himself was headed. Like “songs in the key of life,” the title ‘rainbow music’ refers to the myriad of colors and qualities within Hall that are refracted throughout. It’s a symbolization of hope and the aftermath, the flickering light at the end of the tunnel (or “when a rainbow shows up after a big storm”). “Wish I could have fun anymore,” Hall ruminates on “dancing”, as well as confessing he “wish he made more upbeat bangers.” But reality packs more of a punch, and this collection of songs sees him finally be at peace with the current state of affairs. Relatable to anyone who has contemplated what it means to settle down, or even just catch your breath in an era where anguish is commonplace, the release of ‘rainbow music’ is a happy ending in its own right, a marker of survival that remains close to the bone. // Ghost Orchard’s “bunny” is a blushing, beatific beat. - The FADER // Fluttering and transportive, a swirl of beats and plucky guitar and strings that feels like a cocoon. - Stereogum // Hip-hop inflected, stream-of-consciousness confessionals that’ll have you swooning in the lazy summer sunlight. – Paste // Track listing: 01. Rest 02. Jessamine 03. Cursive 04. Maisy 05. Cut 06. soot 07. memory storage 08. Dancing 09. bruise 10. sweet song 11. comfort (rainbow)

"Stockholm Soul" is the third album by the Swedish synth-darkwave band T.G.T.B. Sounds and composition reveal a more mature level, engaging the listeners in almost 50 min of danceable dark electronics.

Melody Tomb is the first album in a new collaboration between Tokyo artist Teruyuki Kurihara and London drone pop band The Leaf Library. The nine tracks here have in common a metallic hum and a minimal, austere kind of beauty that recalls Teru's work on his 2020 Frozen Dust album (Mille Plateaux). Machine tones mix with static, noise and warm drones, whilst in other places the lineage of classic mangled Warp hardware is visible. In March 2020 The Leaf Library sent their friend Teru a batch of synth drones to play with in the hope a new collaboration would be born. "From the first time we heard Teru's music we knew we wanted to make something with him," say the band. "It has been such a pleasure seeing him take our minimal synth parts and turn them into something really strange and beautiful." The track Kite Beach was the first to arrive, featuring on The Leaf Library-curated Object Ten compilation on Objects Forever in 2021, with the rest of the album slowly appearing over the last year. The artists hope to continue the collaboration with another album in the near future.

For fans of: Autechre, Biosphere, Ben Frost

Positive Disintegration was DIÄT’s sophomore album in which they expanded their post punk to a new pop level, reaching their songwriting peak. DIÄT sound builds upon the FALLOUT/ SIX MINUTE WAR / CRISIS skeletal sound adding muscular marching drums and sparsely using synths and drums machines. Their trademark dead pan vocals is at the center of the mix narrating the inane existence of a soul under the dreads of late capitalism. Questioning your own existence in a sea of depression, low paid jobs, borders, information, lack of sleep and a fast moving world that threatens to leave you behind. All too familiar. Positive Disintegration was originally released in 2019. Re-released with a totally new mix on time for DIÄT’s rare appearance at Static Shock Weekend in London. Marking the 10 years since their first London show. Remastered by Guitarist Tobias Lill at Dong Xuan Productions the new edition sounds deeper and highlights many parts of the album buried in previous editions, breathing new life to it. This edition keeps the same artwork of previous presses. With sleeve artwork by Yuta Matsumura and including a lyric insert and poster by Nada Ollosp.

Collapso Calypso is the long-awaited third album from dreampop artist Chorusgirl. Initially planned for release in 2020, but the pandemic and a nervous breakdown brought everything to a screeching halt. It took Silvi Wersing - aka Chorusgirl - the rest of 2020 and 2021 to rebuild her life and reconsider everything, including her music and the band. She decided to relocate from London to her small hometown in Germany, to become a carer for her increasingly ill father and to take Chorusgirl back to its roots as a solo project, just like in 2014. She revisited old demos and wrote a few more songs, and steadily worked to complete the album as an anchor at a time of turmoil. With the album charting her progress back to health, she decided to call it Collapso Calypso, a riff on taking her despair for a dance. The album includes a multitude of references from music and film and features Silvi's trademark self-reflective lyrics on the themes of coming through a crisis, grief, resilience, and ultimately letting go, or the inability thereof, all set to the sounds of 60s girl groups and her favourite bands from the 80s. The release follows on from 2018 album Shimmer and Spin (Reckless Yes) and the self-titled 2015 debut (Fortuna Pop). “Chorusgirl pertain to a certain kind of cold, detached dreaminess you’d associate with a label like 4AD in its prime: their overall sound being seemingly informed by Lush’s successful hybrid of classic pop, fiery punk and shimmering soundscapes. … Yet, rather than reliving a sound there’s a sense here that Chorusgirl are more intent on reinventing it. Look no further than their debut self-titled LP for conviction.” (8/10) Line of Best Fit “Chorusgirl’s sound is distinctly London (although, more the London of the 80s than of now) but it’s also the sound of escaping London. (…) It’s the feeling of sleeping with the bedroom window open for the first time in months and waking up with a fresh wafting across your face.” Noisey “Chorusgirl explore universal themes with the catchiest of tunes, thundering rhythms, a wry sense of self and fascinating multi-meaning lyrics.” (8/10) Louder Than War “There’s no slack on the album – from the starting gate to the finish line, Chorusgirl bristle with static and nerves.” … Chorusgirl are simple, until they’re not. You might recognise the distant spirits, the razor chords, the surfy snarls. But where other bands coast on borrowed sound, Wersing bends it to her own life, creating a space that resonates with insight and empathy. Ever felt separate from the human race? Be comforted, for here is your kind.” (7/10) Drowned In Sound This is a record with teeth… one of the most impressive first albums of a year rich in strong debuts.” (5/5) NARC Magazine “Sparkling with bright rhythms and jangling pop…with hints of something shadier, bittersweet and more potent.” London In Stereo “Lovingly smudged guitars” (7/10) Loud & Quiet

On the eponymously titled final song of her debut album Land of No Junction, Irish songwriter Aoife Nessa Frances (pronounced Ee-fa) sings “Take me to the land of no junction/Before it fades away/Where the roads can never cross/But go their own way.” It is this search that lies at the heart of the album, recalling journeys towards an ever shifting centre - a centre that cannot hold - where maps are constantly being rewritten.

The evocative phrase is the result of a fortuitous misunderstanding. Reminiscing about childhood visits to Wales, Aoife’s musical collaborator and co-producer Cian Nugent, mentioned a train station called Llandudno Junction, which she misheard. “Land of No Junction later became a place in itself. A liminal space - a dark vast landscape to visit in dreams… A place of waiting where I could sit with uncertainty and accept it. Rejecting the distinct and welcoming the uncertain and the unknown.” Reveals Frances.

The songs traverse and inhabit this indeterminate landscape: the beginnings of love, moments of loss, discovery, fragility and strength, all intermingle and interact. Land of No Junction is shot through with a sense of mystery - an ambiguity and disorientation that illuminates with smokey luminescence. Yet, through the haze, everything comes down to what, where and who you are. Frances has built a universe full of intimacy and depth, with lyrics written through a process of free thought writing. It lends the record fluidity, each song in dialogue with the next not only through language, but the way each musical choice complements or threads into another.

Navigated by the richness of Aoife’s voice, along with the layers gently built through her collaborators’ instruments (strings, drums, guitars, keys, percussion), gives a feeling of filling up space into every corner and crack. A remarkable coherent sonic world: buoyant and aqueous, with dark undercurrents. The crossroads as a place where someone can be stuck, static in the face of the future, becomes instead an amorphous realm, where the remnants of the past and what is unknown meld together and come to an understanding. Where nostalgia and newness ebb and flow in equal measure.

DNO hits double figures as Denver’s Trisicloplox & Sectra return with more industrial-strength electro-sludge.

Sectra sets the tone with ‘Mail Theft’, a hulking mass of sand-blasting static, insectoid jitter and low-end boom. It’s an intimidating, uneasy listen, like tuning through the haunting emptiness of post-apocalyptic broadcast frequencies, only to be interrupted by sudden bursts of unseen filth and gore.

Trisicloplox follows with a brace of tracks. ‘Bruised’ does exactly what it says on the tin, gargantuan kicks pummelling layer upon layer of dense sound into an impenetrable wall of noise. Ritualistic rhythms and gluttonous amounts of overdrive swarm over distant wails, sending everything into a spiral into despair.On ‘Megastructure’, doom metal meets hip-hop, as rough-hewn drums crunch above a bassline that takes its cues from the Super Hans School of Electronic Music: “The longer the note, the more dread.”

And finishing up the vinyl offerings is ‘Dead On Arrival’. Coming courtesy of Sectra, the most traditionally ‘club-focused’ effort of the lot sees a serrated breakbeat and venomous acid lick sparring over dissonant pads.

As always, digital listeners are offered a little bonus, this time the only full collab: ‘The Dead InTheir Shrouds’. Shunted along by a systematic kick, the track’s jackhammer subs become all-consuming, seemingly sucking all the air from the room and hurling it back out of the bassbins in a violent frenzy.

A bold release that’s not for the faint of heart, the ‘Dead Structure’ EP further cements Trisicloplox & Sectra as truly original talents and DNO as an outlet that can never be pigeonholed.

Rhythms of postmodern realism at the very bottom of the DNO.

In 2011, Ard Janssen was one of the first musicians to grace Shipwrec. Now, some eleven years later, the sound sculptor returns for a full album on Phainomena. Music for Delirious Episodes brings together eleven compositions. Ard Bit is known for his delicate, almost brittle, works. This collection focuses on that same fragility that fascinates Janssen. From the first steps of "Troubled Veil", the listener is absorbed into a digital weave of field recordings, everyday undulations, other day modulations and loose harmony. Traditional instruments, string and wind, are filtered and re-imagined. The mundane echoes of routines are reborn as the percussive hum of pieces like "Stripped" and "Broken Respirator (White Funnel)." Behind the shifts and shuffles lurks something triumphal. Memories are given new form through audio carvings. Birdsong is handcrafted through knob tweaks, elephant trumpets bellow past swells of electronic insects as a glowing sun rises through the speaker. Hazes of static are shorn back, as in "Seppuku", to allow moments of intense focus and reflection. And then we return, to that ephemeral beauty that permeates this record, with the final embrace of "Awakening Delusion". An artist who finds the extraordinary in the often overlooked, or unheard.

Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Batespresents a solo ambient/noise album ofmelodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarilyunder the self-imposed 'limitation' of a Casio SK-1, this is his first entirely solo full-length albumin almost a decade. All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, noise-clustered side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic sensibilities and practices. An isolation record (like so many), itcombines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobictension and simmering political rage.Powerfully composed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droningoscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates hasmade an impressively dynamic, ardent and iridescent noise album of real depth and underlyingdevastation."This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all startedoff that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got,the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I hadfinished a year-long run of listening to Eno's 1 and 4. I preferOn LandtoMusic for Airportsalthough I love both.On Landjust has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Addingmore noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though italso felt like that could never happen again.In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! BlackEmperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and waspleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud."A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Batesplayed in hardcore and indie rock bands (Pull My Daisy, Bulletproof Nothing) prior to foundingthe Send + Receivefestival in 1998. A crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map foravant music and sound art, Bates helmed Send + Receive for seven years, then moved toTiohti:áke/Montréal, became Sound Coordinator at Hexagram (Concordia University), releasedsolowork on Oral and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on Dim Coast, and pursuedmyriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. Relocating toTreaty 6/Saskatoon the year before pandemic,All The Things That Happenis Bates' mostrecent purposive and purely 'recorded' work.Thanks for listening.

Toronto-based musician and producer David Psutka aka ACT! (fka Egyptrixx / Anamai / Ceramic TL) will release his latest project ‘Strange Bounty / About Life’ for his own Halocline Trance imprint.

‘Strange Bounty / About Life’ is Psutka’s debut album proper as ACT! following the release of the “sonic mixtape” ‘Universalist’ in 2018 and the augmented reality soundtrack ‘Grey Matter AR’ in 2021; a series of Snapchat filters created by artist Karen Vanderborght and soundtracked by ACT! which explored the poetic and existential potential of AR and social media.

The new album represents a refinement of aesthetic and compositional ideas that exist across Psutka’s various projects and collaborations. It is a bold blend of new psychedelia braided with ecstatic groove. It’s a collage of physical sound, composition and freeform electronics that is simultaneously original, bold, and balmy whilst retaining a certain timeless familiarity and the obvious, indelible hallmarks of Psutka’s creative vision.

“‘Strange Bounty / About Life’ is in some ways my most refined record. The previous period of solo material was quite experimental and spontaneous, whereas this was written slowly and with more intentionality, and as a result, feels very clarified. Robin Dann of Bernice, and Alanna Stuart of Bonjay both contributed lovely vocal work to the record and it was written and performed primarily on guitar. I think it is fair to call this an 'experimental guitar record'.” David Psutka (ACT!)

On opener ‘Oblivion Shuffle’ synths trickle and squelch beneath vintage arcade bleeps, an off-kilter rhythm and mournful vocals. The palette of faintly dystopian electronics, unnerving ambience and scorched, wonky rhythmic pulses reoccur across the album on tracks like ‘Separation Code Is Togetherness Meta’, ’50 Million Motives For Making’, ‘Peace Javelin Heaven Bound’ and ‘Street Racer’.

Elsewhere on the record the guitar is more obviously prominent, and its presence allows the thematic subtleties of ACT’s music to flourish. It becomes clear after numerous listens that there is a push and pull at play across the whole project; one of optimism vs existentialism, of anxiety vs hope - a consistent theme of Psutka’s back catalogue. The track titles themselves even begin to reveal juxtaposition contained within and a deeper inspection of the lyrics reveals more.

‘Lotto’ and ‘Rebuild Your Body’ and title track, ‘Strange Bounty / About Life’ all feature slick classic soul hooks, silky vocals and smooth Balearic guitar licks over the idiosyncratic beats and distinctive electronic instrumentation. A perfect melding of the two seemingly disparate stylistic directions on the album. A real testament to the refinement promised by Psutka on this project.

In addition to ACT!, Psutka has released music with numerous projects including Anamai, Egyptrixx and Ceramic TL, he has collaborated widely with artists such as Junior Boys, Ipek Gorgun, and Kuedo as well as Jessy Lanza (2016) and an official remix for Massive Attack’s ‘Hymn of the Big Wheel (2012). The contributions on this album, from Robin Dann and Alanna Stuart, reflect the deeply collaborative nature of the Halocline Trance label and the Toronto creative scene more broadly.

Many of Psutka’s releases have received critical acclaim from media outlets such as Pitchfork, Exclaim, The Quietus and Resident Advisor. As a live performer, he has toured extensively including performing at Sonar Festival, Roskilde, Mutek, MOMA PS1 Warm-UP and CTM Festival. He’s also presented sound installations at various institutions such as Galeria Civica Commune di Modena, and Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

In 2015, Psutka launched Halocline Trance as a home for his various sound projects, events and collaborations. Now a creative collective and label, it has grown to include a diverse array of artists including Casey MQ, Xuan Ye, Myst Milano, Colin Fisher and others. The label is described as “genre-agnostic” and conceptually open, supporting work across a wide spectrum of creative fields including soundtrack recording, AR design and traditional artist albums. Their impeccable roster also includes, theorist/improviser Eldritch Priest, and AR/VR artist Karen Vanderborght. In recent years, Halocline Trance has established itself as a platform that facilitates many of Canada’s most exciting creative music projects. Many of the releases have received critical acclaim from outlets including Pitchfork, Exclaim, Bandcamp and Resident Advisor.

The music on this album includes the audio explorations and experiments that led to the creation of the finished soundtrack - the used and unused elements as I worked to find the ‘Delia’ sounds I felt best connected not only directly to her life experiences that influenced her music, but were expressive of, and representative of her. The compositions are inspired by my research of the Delia Derbyshire audio archive, Delia's original compositional notes and techniques which in combination with my admiration and love of Delia’s

work provided a way to integrate her style and approach to music with my own. An alliance of our sensibilities. Cosey Fanni Tutti

Instrumentation: Synthesisers, Guitar, Cornet, Coolicon, Cymbals, Nagra Tape Recorder,Tape Manipulationsand Field Recordings.

Vocals by: Cosey Fanni Tutti & Caroline Catz.

Music written, composed, performed and produced by Cosey Fanni Tutti 2019 - 2021. Recorded at Studio 47, Norfolk and Twickenham Studio 3, London. Mastered by Chris Carter.

repress

"The haunting ambience of Beat fit somewhat with the then-popular Massive Attack and Portishead, but the album's subsonic drone made it more of a minimal mood piece than a collection of songs." MAGNET

The second in a trio of albums released by the core duo of Lawrence Chandler and Martha Schwendener, Beat is without doubt their definitive artistic statement.

Coming 20 years to the day of its original release, this is the first time this album has been available on vinyl in almost two decades, and the first ever U.S. vinyl release. (Was released here on Beggars Banquet, original copies very hard to find..)

The second album from New York City's Bowery Electric was released in late 1996, less than 15 months after their self-titled debut, but it found them having traveled light years musically in the interim, the group having seemingly decided to see how far they could take the guitar/ bass/ drums/ vocal setup into the atmosphere.

Every aspect of their approach had been refined and focused: squalling, distorted guitars had been transformed into hazy, sensual sheets; the live drums transmuted to sampled rhythms more in debt to the blossoming downtempo sound of the day; bass lines reduced to their most basic diagrams; vocals submerged to become one with the narcotized fog of the instruments; even the lyrics were reduced to a few minimal lines used sparingly so as not to overshadow the dynamic.

Beat is a lush and dense mantra of shadowy percussion, barely-there vocals and immersive drones that envelops the listener in an opiated blanket of sound.

quotes:

"Bowery Electric have made something utterly astonishing here. So deep, so wide, and somehow as intimate as a train crash. The first six tracks are just the most crushingly beautiful thing I've heard in 1997; the last five are even better. Good god, THIS IS IT." Melody Maker

"While cymbals shower down over the songs like a torrent of shattered glass, their austere beauty is never static. Ambience has rarely sounded so messy." Exclaim

A near-perfect mix of shifting dance beats, menacing electronic drones, analogue bleeps,
syncopated rhythms and ethereal vocals." Now UK

Runhild Gammelsæter and Lasse Marhaug are two Norwegian musicians/sound artists. Both started in the early 1990s music underground and have worked in many constellations with a wide range of collaborators.

Despite knowing each other for a long time, Gammelsæter and Marhaug’s first collaborative work was the “Quantum Entanglement” LP in 2014. The album ignited a collective spark that both wanted to pursue further. Still, other commitments got in the way, and the project lay dormant until Stephen O’Malley, and Greg Anderson invited them to open for Sunn O))) for a special gig in the St. James Church of Culture in Oslo in the autumn of 2019. The two gathered for a long series of rehearsals, and after the successful performance, it was clear that it was time to start working on new compositions and recordings. That process initiated in late 2019 and continued to early 2021, encompassing before and after the world went through the lockdown. The result of this long development to be heard accumulated upon their new album “Higgs Boson” on Ideologic Organ Music.

Throughout the profound process of creating “Higgs Boson”, Gammelsæter and Marhaug drew inspiration from various subjects and artists. For Marhaug, it was concepts informed by the structuralist experimental cinema of Japanese directors Takashi Ito and Toshio Matsumoto, futurist worlds of French comic book artists Philippe Druillet and Jean Moebius Giraud, landscape photography of Fay Godwin, Kåre Kivijärvi, and Tamiko Nishimura, amongst others.

It became a metaphysical juxtaposition involving Gammelsaeter’s research and lyrical ideas based on several seemingly unrelated principles. A process of association inspired by “the Glass Bead Game” by Herman Hesse. The discovery of the Higgs Boson as a confirmation of the physical universe. The work of Ernst Schrödinger on the uncertainty principle. The four forces of physics. The Force. Helplessness under armed forces - as the war sailors in World War II. The influence of magic as expressed in tarot.

Gammelsæter experiments with a boundary involving the thresholds amongst various states of focus and legibility by forensic experimentation with techniques such as exclusive expression of consonants, syllabic repetition, retrograde text vocalisations and multi-lingual layering. Her vocal inspirational sources include Sidsel Endresen, Diamanda Galas, Natacha Atlas, the choral works of Rachmaninov, and the bands Carcass and Grave.

Two worlds coming together, making the music special. Mixing hard facts with science fiction helps create a kaleidoscopic cross point between the complex realities of the past and a possible future.

“Quantum Entanglement” featured two long-form pieces centred around a prepared piano and layered voice, while “Higgs Boson” developed a much more elaborate and ambitious compositional work. Across eight parts, the two artists brought a broad palette of instrumentation and sound. Electronic and acoustic, objects and field recordings, and pipe organ define the structures of which the centre is Gammelsæter’s magnificent voice. She has become known for her legendary voice, with her vast and unique range of inflective techniques and affective colour through her 30 years creating music. In the mix, Lasse approached the instrumental elements like landscapes, then Runhild’s vocals as characters that inhabit those worlds. Often, Gammelsæter multiple characters fused with the landscape. Make them occupy space, sometimes blend into it, sometimes dominate it. Constructing and setting visual guidelines helps set focus and open possibilities.

As an album, “Higgs Boson” is direct and focused, drawing on song structures. Within these tracks are vast strata of sound, an immersive multi-dimensional depth of music. Creating a feeling of depth while working with a flat two-channel stereo format - and how dimensions of texture and distortion can help develop the illusion of a space. The album structure is a story-like arc, a malleable subjective path, set as the album traverses oblique and suggestive areas, opening the concepts for the listener to unpack as they like.

– exclusive consultation with Gammelsæter & Marhaug, edited by Stephen O’Malley, June 2022

Jdotbalance is a Chicanx producer from Texas currently based in Chicago. They run the GUD4U newsletter, party and mix series and have been featured for mixes on DAISYCHAIN, BIZAAR BAZAAR, PAPI JUICE, JEROME, RUMORS, and NEW WORLD DYSORDER. Here they are with a backboard smashing vinyl debut dunk full of a futuristic mix of sexy, raucous club and fast techno propulsions that showcases just how varied the energy palette of North American club music is.

“Let’s” opens up the A side with a fast techno kick and panned static flickers. Wonky pings wander left and right. This track is a true traveler…start to finish this will have the dancefloor wishing this condensed fantasy epic, inexhaustibly traversing moods and instruments, would swallow up the club and continue the stomping ride down down down the devil’s gut. A2 has a different boom but the same amount of bump. Claps dance around the 2s and 4s, showing you how to move to Jdot’s vision of gyrating, high-energy club music. A vocal sample swells like a siren. The kick moves in triplets. The peak is psycho. The track comes down just in time to pick its energy back up with big bass melodies that take it to a sonar underwater close.

Flip to the B side. “Wilin’” brings the club kicks and undulating melody that floats on top together in rhythm. Interesting rhythmic changes make you rethink your body. One can hear shimmers of the UK wobbling in to snuggle up with the ever-evolving contemporary US club landscape. “Whippit” closes out the whole shabang with a spinning, up-tempo jaunt that packs a dense punch, all bringing home the point that Jdotbalance is not messing around. CAUTION! HIGHLY FLAMMABLE TRACKS!

THE 1994 ALBUM REMASTERED BY ED WYNNE & RELEASED ON
CLASSIC BLACK VINYL.

One of the most influential bands to emerge from the UK's festival scene, the Ozrics layer ambient & ethereal landscapes with freeform dub trips, incredible rave grooves & psychedelic progressive rock.

It's an open exploration of music & the soul. The band's last release to feature Merv Pepler & Joie Hinton, who left to form Eat Static, 'Arborescence' was the Ozrics' fifth studio effort in as many years. Soundscape textures remained their focus & their strength, with the now trademark Steve Hillage- esque guitar, gurgling & whirling synths & tight rhythm section all wrapped around rave, techno, African & Middle Eastern influences.

The tracks alternate between the power driven ('Myriapod', 'Shima Koto', 'Astro Cortex'), classic Ozric Tentacles space rock ('Dance of the Loomi', 'There's a Planet Here', the title track) & those with an ethnic flavour ('Al- Saloog'). The powerful music here, embellished by plenty of synth dweedling & strong rhythm patterns, takes the listener of open mind & free spirit to somewhere special. Classic Ozrics then. Arborescence' will be released on classic black vinyl via Kscope.

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

The LP ‘All Welcome on Planet Ree-Vo’ due for release on 29th July could only really have been made in one city steeped as it is in Bristol’s decades of less conventional hip hop and bass music. Tweaked and fine tuned during the summer of 2020 the record punches with a mix of red eyed paranoia to a playful future funk.
The album was all recorded, produced and mixed by Andy at Christchurch Studios, Bristol (home of Mezzanine era Massive Attack) with all vocals written and performed by T. Relly.
During 2021 the first two singles from the LP were released. The first was the juggernaut that is ‘Groove With It’. T. Relly growling out polemic against the relentless cacophony spun by Andy Spaceland, The brutality of the bass and horns is temporarily smoothed with Relly’s soulful, swaggering placation of ‘Turn your speakers on/ Till ya speakers blown baby/ If you’re feeling strong baby/ We can keep it going baby’.
This was followed in April by the 12” release of Combat featuring a thumping remix by Surgeon (Tresor Records) and an extended electro remix by Ree-Vo themselves.
2022 began with the limited red 7” release of remixes by NØISE and Batbirds with stunning original artwork by Shepard Fairey who came to the project via mutual friend Joe Cassidy (Butterfly Child). The release was announced on OBEY’s website
‘Spacebox’ which will be the last single to be released in time with the album is their hookiest, a party throwing chorus spinning tipsy visitors around the intergalactic control booth of mission control.
“Lift off, blast off, shirt off, dance off! Naked in the dancehall SPACE BOX!” is the beamed mantra, Relly transmitting to all occupants of the galaxy.
“We wanted to make a hedonistic and colourful dancehall track, a bold response to the suppressive circumstances of the last two years”.
About Ree-Vo:
T. Relly​ is pure Bristol hip-hop royalty – known in the community variously for his links to all of the city’s major club nights, his passion and support for the most disadvantaged (through his work with the youth and prison leavers), through to compering stages at St Paul’s Carnival and his seminal 2018 LP with DJ Rogue ‘Let Them Know’. He collaborates with many crews including Innalife and Killer Crab Men.
Andy Spaceland​ (AKA Andy Jenks) got involved in Bristol bass music as soon as he moved to the city with Static Sound System​ and a collaborative 12” with Rudy Tambala (​AR Kane​) as Sugarboat Vs Sufi, before his band ​Alpha​ were signed to ​Massive Attack​’s label Melankolic, whilst he also became one of their tour DJ’s. His CV of collaborations range from ​Smith and Mighty​ to Madonna. He has released music on Dj Die’s label, Gutterfunk as White Bully and he is also currently releasing music with US producer ​Butch Vig​ in the band ​5 Billion in Diamonds​, whilst working on new tracks with ​Mark Stewart (The Pop Group) including remixes by Adrian Sherwood. His signature sound can also be heard on this remix for ​Elizabeth Fraser​ -

On July 22nd Mutant Joe unveils his debut release for Evar, 'Wrong Way Out', an EP that twists rap, electro and breaks out of shape with cool malice.

Since his arrival on the scene with a pair of 2019 releases for UK-based label Natural Sciences, the Brisbane-based producer's output has spanned underground trap,gabber, electro, jungle,breaks and various global club mutations, repackaged and delivered with a unique sense of impending threat and unhinged delight.

Mutant Joe repurposes mechanical SFX, stock horror movie samples, feedbacking hardware and crunching percussion to create a dark and theatrical soundworld. Building on his earlier work with underground trap artists like Freddie Dredd and TRiPPJONES, opener 'Bangin On' sees Joe revisit his love for dirty-south-indebted electro hybrids, combining fizzing bass and steely beats, plus rhymes courtesy of a close friend, Atlanta rapper Apoc Krysis. 'Static Effect' deploys similar Drexciyan influences, its overheating 808s colliding with aquatic machinery and disembodied vocal chops.

'Eyes Without a Face' presents a unique take on some classical rave combinations, with rolling, metallic jungle breaks, footwork-esque kicks and tightly layered, redlining hardware. The pace eases off on the ominous and aptly-named 'The Living Dead', a low slung, off-kilter breakbeat weapon. The EP closes with a pair of remixes: a twisted dungeon-rave tool by Ukrainian D&B specialist Limewax, and a tightly wound, detailed broken techno workout by EVAR regular Wheez-ie.

'Wrong Way Out' offers six wildly different approaches, united by Joe's mastery of gothic-horror sound design and unique ear for soundtracking end-of-night deviance. It's a cross-section of the sound Mutant Joe has so quickly made his own: unclassifiable, unrelenting and darkly euphoric.

Tape

Statique is the fifth full length album on Mille Plateaux and Force Inc. labels by Automatisme (the Canadian musician and conceptual artist William Jourdain active since 2011). Jourdain met the label owner Achim Szepanski in 2019 and did an album in solo (Alter-, Mille Plateaux, 2020) plus four others in collaborations (with iadema, Beyond Humans, Stefan Paulus and Viatorism in duo with Pheek). Automatisme now returns as a solo act on that label. The results are, on one side, an expanded vision of fast rhythmic clicks and cuts, like we heard on his Alter-Rate tracks and that are entitled Ultra-Rate on the Statique album. On the other side, it is the multiple Ultra-Scape tracks that are an augmented version of the granulized ambient dub techno he developed since the beginning of the Viatorism moniker. Jourdain adds elements of chaos and perturbation into algorithmic electronic music like static electricity is the presence of a disturbing body in a circuit.

Australia’s Nicolas Cage Fighter are coming out swinging. Combining ruthless hardcore, late 90s metal and death metal influences, the band deftly weave a sound that is as burly as it is brutal, pummeling all those that get in their way. Formed in Ballarat, Victoria in 2011, the band have worked slowly and steadily to build their profile, dropping singles and EPs and sharing stages with the likes of Attila, Thy Art Is Murder, Thick As Blood and Deez Nuts, building a devoted fan base. With The Bones That Grew From Pain now primed to be unleashed they are hoping for the opportunity to tour it internationally, bringing their merciless performances to stages around the world and engaging with the new army of fans that are sure to connect with their no-bullshit stance and killer material.

Indecent Proposal is the second studio album from Norfolk, VA duo Timbaland & Magoo. Originally released in 2001, the album features Magoo's Q-Tip-like flow and Timbaland's distinct production style drawing from reggae, retro and soul. Features include early appearances from Jay-Z, Twista, Petey Pablo and Ludacris, as well as looks from Aaliyah, & Static Major. Released nearly two months after Aaliyah's untimely passing, the album was dedicated to the memory of "Babygirl."

»Tableau« is Rolf Hansen's second full-length album under his given name and acts as a sequel to his solo debut »Elektrisk Guitar«, released in 2019 through Karaoke Kalk. On the 14 new pieces, the Copenhagen-based composer and musician further explores the sonic possibilities of the electric guitar by opting for a radically different approach and putting great limitations on himself as a performer. »Tableau« is an experimental record in the truest sense of the word, eschewing conventional modes of playing the instrument and instead turning the guitar into a sound source for compositions that are at once abstract and concrete.

Already on his last album, Hansen had found a different approach to playing and composing, but this time went even further and created a set-up in which the electric guitar becomes a different instrument altogether. This is also expressed in its title: a tableau is, broadly understood, an image-forming momentary bodily pause in a dramaturgical or narrative process. In the context of the album, tableau is the form and sound that emerge when the musician’s usual approach to playing and the compositional practice is halted and transformed. To achieve this, the guitar is placed on a table with microphones installed around it and tuned in a static microtonal modality thanks to wooden replacement frets that have been inserted under the strings. This alters how the sounds are being generated with the instrument, which is now played from above, occasionally strummed or stroked with a tool.

The opener »Begyndelse« already sets the tone by punctuating dense layers of sound with a one-note melody that provides a rough rhythmic structure and harmonic anchor for the track that still seems to mutate wildly the further it progresses. Even in moments in which Hansen opts for a more directly accessible approach like on the following »Over Grænsen« or »Tid«, the pieces’ emotional qualities are greatly amplified by their sonic idiosyncrasies. This is best exemplified by the first track on the second side of the LP, »Højre hånd«. Using high microphone gain to magnify the high-frequency acoustic sounds of the electric guitar, Hansen captured a rich near-symphonic changing spectrum of overtones. This is typical for the attention to detail put into the overall record whose approach maximises the music’s affective impact by focusing on minute nuances.

»Tableau« is full of moments marked by almost unnoticeable shifts and changes, offering a wealth of sounds that are as evocative as they come unexpectedly. Despite their aesthetic differences, the kinship between its predecessor »Elektrisk Guitar« and these 14 compositions is undeniable. Both are based on self-imposed constraints, a radical form of reduction that made it possible for Hansen to broaden his sonic palette and compositional approach. Though mostly short, concise, and abstract-sounding, the pieces on »Tableau« speak a clear, varied and simple language.

Margaret Dygas may be based in Berlin but her unique sound can't be tied down to any one city or scene, as she proves on her latest 12" across three tracks for the consistently exciting Half Baked label. Not that there's anything half done here, of course, with A-side tune 'Butterfly Effect' a prime slice of groovy. resonant techno that's understated and restrained enough to gain comparisons to Jaydee's 'Plastic Dreams' classic. 'CC Is 33' is warmer, with nicely slidy, jazzy organ chords and itchy technofunk rhythms, with the most minimal of the three tracks, the static-infused, atmospheric 'Subliminal 20A7', coming last but by no means least. A great showcase for a great, original talent.

Tresor Records is proud to announce 333 Mirrors from Torus, the artist alias of Joeri Woudstra. Coupled with its catalogue number
333, it indicates the large-scale conceptual thoughts behind the record, typical of Woudstra's practice. As an artist, he sets out to
frame re-interpretable references that trigger some subconscious recognition in listeners, with no set way to interpret them but leading to singular feelings and thought processes. The eect, a combination of static electronic sounds and looser field recordings, speaks to each listener differently.

333 Mirrors is, in part, the continuation of a project called These Cars Do Not Exist, made with videographer Mark Prendergast during the Covid-19 limbo. The live performed short film sold out selected popup cinemas in 2020 in a short sprint of shows. Two of the tracks on that project, Sound of the Drums and Chroniko, are re-imagined on 333 Mirrors, emanating as versions created in live performances. Set to be released as a single, Chroniko VIP will be accompanied by an enduring theme from that project, the three-winged bird, this time deceased. On 333 Mirrors, in exploring the ambient, stretched sonic universe of this project more, Woudstra moves from these three winged birds to the phoenix, finding a rebirth on the b-side with tracks that inhabit a similar sound as Deep Mid, Torus's inclusion on the recent Tresor 30 compilation. The sound of Torus places importance on the multi-faceted approach to sampling, pushing the idea behind the practice beyond usual boundaries. How to break the unwritten rules? Woudstra looks within by resampling previous Torus releases and reverse-engineering the sounds of the most revered pop and electronic musicians alive today, references that trigger recognition, melancholy and nostalgia in the listener.

3000 Mirrors features a staccato arpeggiating rigid pattern, the sonic eect of standing in front of a strobe until it becomes the anchor. Silence and interruption are used as a device to explore the physically uncomfortable, more the central compositional tool than the disrupted harmonic structures. Woudstra has never stepped foot in Tresor, so when writing this record, an enduring question spoke to him, what is Tresor when you have never been? How do you sample the essence of an unknown location? The closing track, Omnia, is the sound of anticipation, where the rave beckons. This imagined industrial space is calling for you.

Trees Speak are back!
Speak’s new album, “Vertigo of Flaws: Emancipation of the Dissonance and Temperaments in
Irrational Waveforms” comes as a double-vinyl edition, single CD and digital release. The limitededition first pressing only of the vinyl includes a bonus 45 enclosed in an 8-page 7”x7” booklet
insert housed within the gatefold sleeve with cover artwork created by Soviet Union propaganda
artist Lazar Markovich Lissitzky in 1911.
Trees Speak are back!
This new release is a vast leap into an ocean of space and sound, a quantum leap into cybernetics, biology, anti-gravity,
time travel, dream speech and transfiguration. A seriously next step release!
Showing no signs of slowing down their rapid creative pace – incredibly this is their fourth album in the space of just over
one year – ‘Vertigo of Flaws’ is a mighty 29 tracks, one and a half hours of music across one double album that is surely
going to be a defining point in their musical career, a giant leap into the sonic unknown, an epic exploration of intensity
and sound.
Alongside their now trademark German krautrock motoric-beat rhythms, angular New York post-punk attitude, tripped-out
60s spy soundtrack, psyche-rock, and 70s synthesizers and vocoders, here you will also hear a new cosmic spacial
awareness (both personal inner space and galactic outer space) and a truly wilful pushing of sonic boundaries - as police
sirens, static noise, alarms, radio signals, avant-garde voices, and orchestral string quartets, all collide to add beautiful
dissonance to uber-powerful, intense, addictive and propulsive rhythms - in the process creating a truly unique
soundscape that Trees Speak have made wholly their own.
If you ever wanted to hear Can, Hawkwind, Destroy All Monsters, Pere Ubu, electric eels, John Cage, Liquid Liquid,
Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Neu!, Laurie Spiegel, Art Ensemble of Chicago, John Barry, Mother Mallard’s Portable
Masterpiece Company, Sun Ra, Stockhausen, John Carpenter, Electro-Acoustic and Musique Concrete and Mars in one
band - then this is it!
Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic nighttime magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing
information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives - and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.
Special guests from the hyper-creative hub of the Tucson music scene on this release are Gabriel Sullivan, Ben Nisbet, Saul
Millan, Stephani Guilmette, and Davis Jones.
The album Vertigo of Flaws was recorded in Brooklyn, New York, and Tucson, Arizona during the plague of 2021.
Extract from Vertigo of Flaws sleevenotes:
‘As we travel through space and time, avoiding the discarded remains of the industrial period, the
deconstruction of social norms through the expression of art, music, and philosophy guide the human
experience towards the unknown.
All that remains are musical echoes scattered throughout the universe, like ancient vibrations that now
populate the cosmos. These waves now show signs of decay. Melody, beauty, tonality have all but fallen
away as dissonance blossoms. As John Cage wrote in 1937,
“Whereas, in the past, the point of disagreement has been between dissonance and consonance, it will be,
in the immediate future, between noise and so-called musical sounds. New methods will be discovered,
bearing a definite relation to Schoenberg’s twelve-tone system and present methods of writing percussion
music and any other methods which are
free from the concept of a fundamental tone”.
Similarly, George Van Tassel claimed the Integratron as capable of
rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel. So, what remains of the
“people”? We have adopted from them our own Zeitgeber: their pulses
now guide our sun, our planets, our earths, and are the new circadian,
diurnal, and ultradian rhythms of the galaxy. Traumsprache, dream
speech, is now the internal language of trees.
Decaying metal and machines liberated the note unto nature’s table,
and we sip the delicious nectar of music once more irrational, elaborate,
violent, vast. The past is the future, musical disintegration its own rebirth.
We are nature, once more the computer of the Universe.’

If you’re looking for a raw, sugary blast of distorted pop, look no further than
‘Weird Nightmare’. The debut album from METZ guitarist and vocalist Alex
Edkins contains all of his main band’s bite with an unexpected, yet totally
satisfying, sweetness. Imagine The Amps covering Big Star, or the gloriously
hissy miniature epics of classic-era Guided by Voices combined with the
bombast of ‘Copper Blue’- era Sugar - just tons of red-line distortion cut with the
type of tunecraft that thrills the moment it hits your ears.
 These ten songs showcase a new side of Edkins’ already-established
songwriting, but even though the bulk of ‘Weird Nightmare’ was recorded during
the COVID-19 pandemic, some of its tunes date back to 2013 in demo form.
“Hooks and melody have always been a big part of my writing, but they really
became the main focus this time” he explains. “It was about doing what felt
natural.”
 To be clear: Weird Nightmare is not a ‘pandemic album’, but an album - some of
which had been gestating for quite a while - that just so happened to be recorded
during the pandemic. “I had always planned on finishing these songs, but being
unable to tour with METZ, and forced to lock down, really gave me a push.” After
days spent homeschooling his son, Edkins would drive to the METZ rehearsal
room and tinker deep into the night on these songs’ deceptively simple structures
and rich, static-laden textures. “It was a godsend for me,” he states about the
creative process. “The hours would disappear and I would get lost in the music
and record. It was a beautiful escape.”
 ‘Weird Nightmare’ is, in its own way, a study in extremes: Edkins’ melodic
instincts and penchant for dissonance are both turned up to the max throughout,
the latter reflecting not only the barn-burning tendencies of METZ, but Alex’s own
sonic predilections. “It doesn’t sound right to my ears until it’s pushed over the
edge.” He also cites other artists who are masterful at mixing the sublime and the
punishing - Kim Deal and Scout Niblett among them - as influences on his own
songwriting. “My favorite songs are the simple ones,” he explains. “I’ve never
been attracted to virtuosity or technicality. Certain songs have the power to lift
your spirits like nothing else can. I wanted to create that type of song.”
 A few guests pitch in on Weird Nightmare: Canadian alt-pop genius Chad
VanGaalen adds his unmistakable touch to the ever-escalating ‘Oh No’, while
Alicia Bognanno of Bully lends her distinctive pipes to the thrashing ‘Wrecked’, a
collaboration that effectively saved the song. “I almost didn’t put it on the album
because I thought it was missing something,” Edkins explains. “I sent it to Alicia
and she lifted it way up.”
 And taking risks and reaching out of Edkins’ comfort zone was the name of the
game when it came to making ‘Weird Nightmare’. “I found myself doing new
things I didn’t have the guts to do before, recording everything by myself and
trusting all of my musical instincts,” he states. “I think when music manifests
quickly, a certain amount of honesty automatically comes along with it. When it is
a purely instinctual creation, there is no opportunity to obscure the truth.”
 Loser Edition LP pressed on Coke Bottle Green transparent vinyl.

If you’re looking for a raw, sugary blast of distorted pop, look no further than
‘Weird Nightmare’. The debut album from METZ guitarist and vocalist Alex
Edkins contains all of his main band’s bite with an unexpected, yet totally
satisfying, sweetness. Imagine The Amps covering Big Star, or the gloriously
hissy miniature epics of classic-era Guided by Voices combined with the
bombast of ‘Copper Blue’- era Sugar - just tons of red-line distortion cut with the
type of tunecraft that thrills the moment it hits your ears.
 These ten songs showcase a new side of Edkins’ already-established
songwriting, but even though the bulk of ‘Weird Nightmare’ was recorded during
the COVID-19 pandemic, some of its tunes date back to 2013 in demo form.
“Hooks and melody have always been a big part of my writing, but they really
became the main focus this time” he explains. “It was about doing what felt
natural.”
 To be clear: Weird Nightmare is not a ‘pandemic album’, but an album - some of
which had been gestating for quite a while - that just so happened to be recorded
during the pandemic. “I had always planned on finishing these songs, but being
unable to tour with METZ, and forced to lock down, really gave me a push.” After
days spent homeschooling his son, Edkins would drive to the METZ rehearsal
room and tinker deep into the night on these songs’ deceptively simple structures
and rich, static-laden textures. “It was a godsend for me,” he states about the
creative process. “The hours would disappear and I would get lost in the music
and record. It was a beautiful escape.”
 ‘Weird Nightmare’ is, in its own way, a study in extremes: Edkins’ melodic
instincts and penchant for dissonance are both turned up to the max throughout,
the latter reflecting not only the barn-burning tendencies of METZ, but Alex’s own
sonic predilections. “It doesn’t sound right to my ears until it’s pushed over the
edge.” He also cites other artists who are masterful at mixing the sublime and the
punishing - Kim Deal and Scout Niblett among them - as influences on his own
songwriting. “My favorite songs are the simple ones,” he explains. “I’ve never
been attracted to virtuosity or technicality. Certain songs have the power to lift
your spirits like nothing else can. I wanted to create that type of song.”
 A few guests pitch in on Weird Nightmare: Canadian alt-pop genius Chad
VanGaalen adds his unmistakable touch to the ever-escalating ‘Oh No’, while
Alicia Bognanno of Bully lends her distinctive pipes to the thrashing ‘Wrecked’, a
collaboration that effectively saved the song. “I almost didn’t put it on the album
because I thought it was missing something,” Edkins explains. “I sent it to Alicia
and she lifted it way up.”
 And taking risks and reaching out of Edkins’ comfort zone was the name of the
game when it came to making ‘Weird Nightmare’. “I found myself doing new
things I didn’t have the guts to do before, recording everything by myself and
trusting all of my musical instincts,” he states. “I think when music manifests
quickly, a certain amount of honesty automatically comes along with it. When it is
a purely instinctual creation, there is no opportunity to obscure the truth.”
 Loser Edition LP pressed on Coke Bottle Green transparent vinyl.

This is the second Haress album, a five piece from Shropshire. They channel the sounds of Fairport Convention, Lungfish, Papa M, Earth, Robert Wyatt, John Fahey, and Talk Talk. Taking influence and making it their own. The first vinyl press comes with a bonus flexi disc telling the story of the week the band spent recording the album, the weirdness, the positively supernatural happenings. On this album the core duo of Elizabeth Still and David Hand are joined by David Smyth (Mind Mountain, Kling Klang) on drums, Chris Summerlin (Hey Colossus, Kogumaza) on guitar, Thomas House (Sweet Williams, Charlottefield) on vocals and Nathan Bell (Lungfish, Human Bell) on trumpet. In early 2020 the group travelled to a disused water mill in North Wales for a week to record with engineer Phil Booth (JT Soar) and his mobile studio. The stories of what occurred are told on the flexi disc that accompanies the LP but the group’s plans for a relaxing break in the country were scuppered by events that were either highly unusual, or positively supernatural (depending on your own beliefs in such things). Well-made plans were abandoned and the recording was forced to develop according to the location it was being made in. Chance and accident were welcomed as a collaborator rather than a saboteur and the group exited the sessions extremely freaked-out but with the makings of an album. Ghosts is an incredible piece of work and posits Haress on their own when it comes to developing new approaches to traditional musical forms. The music contains many moments of immediate joy - the relative pop of House’s vocals on White Over, the wild horns of I Think I Think, the rush of warmth as Time To Drink morphs into focus. But it also stretches the sound Haress have carefully developed almost to breaking point with sections of music that feel like somebody - something - else is steering the ship. The 2 final songs – Litres Into Metres and Sussurus – are joined together by a collage of site-specific sound. It was decided to add the output from a detuned long wave radio to this section on the final night of recording. Static hissed from the device but as soon as the record light illuminated, a rich male baritone voice sang loud and clear from the radio, taking a solo right where it was needed and then disappearing into space forever like the Ghosts of the title.

Breez Evahflowin' is back on the scene and here he teams up with Big Deep of 2 Hungry Bros. to form Deep Breez. This first release reveals their passion for comics and Breez' career in illustration over an energetic Latin-infused Boom Bap beat, while the flip brings you a New York City True School Dream Team of Breez (Stronghold), P.so the Earthtone King (AOK Collective), Jise One (The Arsonists) and DJ Static over Deep's breakdance-ready production.
Both tracks are part the "Bring Out Your Dead" EP coming out on HiPNOTT Records.

arbitrary presents the first in a series of remix collaborations and releases by Mads Emil Nielsen and Chromacolor, a project from the German sound artist and producer Hanno Leichtmann.

Mads Emil Nielsen’s Constellation (side A) was created by combining several granulations and textures based on a single short recording, extracted from improvisations made with the Buchla synthesizer at EMS, Stockholm – combined with randomly looping orchestral samples, edited and produced in his studio in Copenhagen.

After having heard Nielsen’s live performance in Berlin in 2017, Hanno Leichtmann suggested remixing various of his tracks including Constellation (Remix – side B). For this rework, Leichtmann provides an ambient feel by working with various sources, all of which generate sound using vibrating metal plates in different sizes – including a Premier Vibraphone, a Fender Rhodes and a Hohner Guitaret.

Constellation written & produced by Mads Emil Nielsen at EMS Elektronmusikstudion, Stockholm and in Copenhagen. Constellation Chromacolor Remix written & produced by Hanno Leichtmann at Static Music, Berlin. Mastered and cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Karel Martens.

Like many of his favorite songwriters (John Hartford, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy), Izaak Opatz is an ungulate in life’s winter pasture, chewing on and metabolizing disappointment, heartbreak, and the other tough stuff into enjoyable musical carbohydrates. A compulsive metaphorager (and inveterate wordplayboy), Opatz breaks it all down with enzymes of wry humor, thoughtful simile and close observation - a therapeutic process of narrativizing his own life that, almost as a byproduct, turns out savory nuggets of literate, confessional pop. Where 2018’s 'Mariachi Static' drew from Opatz’s fragmented love life as a seasonal Park Service employee and resonated especially with the sensitive dirtbag set, 'Extra Medium', his latest release, splits time between romantic Hindenburgs across his native Montana, up the East Coast, and in faraway Los Angeles. Montana and LA especially decorate the album, supplying wells of metaphor and scene-making, and as characters in their own right - LA’s alternately charming (“In the Light of a Love Affair”) and discomfiting (“East of Barstow”), and, in “Big Sandy”, Montana evolves from setting to subject as the girl’s feelings he traverses it to see prove less than his own feelings for the state. In LA, Opatz learned from and worked alongside Jonny Fritz at Dad Country Leather, and met bandmates and 'Extra Medium' collaborators Malachi DeLorenzo (drums, producer, engineer) and Dylan Rodrigue (multi-instrumentalist, producer). He now lives in Missoula, Montana, where he runs his own custom leather shop, is writing the next album, and getting ready to pursue a Journalism degree at the U of M.

VINTAGE CROP serve to serve again. Over the last four years the Geelong group have become a burgeoning force in the Australian punk scene. Their burly, brusque yet supple songs have evolved from the garage rock of 2017’s ‘TV Organs’ album into the post-punk panic attack of last year’s ‘Company Man’ EP. Now they’ve sculpted their sound further, the barrage now offset with robust songwriting, their full-pelt bounce tempered with flailing guitar lines and sardonic commentary. Bringing to mind Wire tackling tracks from early 7”s by The Yummy Fur, it’s an inspired approach, both striking and effortlessly mirthful. Vintage Crop still dish-up plenty of commanding stomp, their lyrics remain as keen-eyed as ever, but now they’re unafraid to mess with the tempo and drive their point home.
‘Serve To Serve Again’ is Vintage Crop’s third full-length album. It was recorded by Mikey Young after a year of playing solid shows, including tours in Europe and the UK alongside Louder Than Death and URSA and some of the band’s biggest shows to date in Australia with Amyl & The Sniffers, R.M.F.C. and The Stroppies. This allowed Vintage Crop to nail the songs live before committing them to tape, pulling and pushing ideas, stretching them into new-found territories. ‘First In Line’ races off the blocks with its sawtooth riff and splintered beat, all jagged edges and ragged vocals. Quickly follow a pair of totemic bruisers in the guise of ‘The Ladder’ and ‘The North’, both brimming with a nigh anthemic quality, confident in their faculty to rouse the rabble. ‘Jack’s Casino’ is a lurching romp about gambling, ‘Streetview’ is similarly propellent, only choosing to meander and divert itself with cryptic trips around the neighbourhood: “He only moved to that side of town because the postcode is worth it’s weight in gold”.
There’s no better poised nod to frustration than ‘Gridlock’ - “the hustle and bustle of inner-city traffic is driving me nuts because the radios on static”. Guitar lines entwine and wriggle wildly free from the song’s pouncing rhythm and potent vocal, making for the most vigorous of rackets. ‘Just My Luck’ prowls with a shared thrumming verve, whilst ‘Everyday Heroes’ closes out the album with measured flair. Skewed and fervent, rangy at times yet always assured in its intent ‘Serve To Serve Again’ is long-legged leap for Vintage Crop into the delirious now. These songs strive to make sense of futility, they criticise the chain of command, question privilege and most importantly make us want more from life. Now all we have to do is turn up the volume!

Kapriole is the debut album by Zurich- and Hamburg-based artist Leo Hofmann after working in music theatre, sound art, and performance contexts. Central to the album, which refers in its title to a joyous jump, is the ambition to translate an ephemeral practice into recorded matter. Fixed but never static, Kapriole is informed by intimate and detailed listening situations and sound practices like ASMR or the acoustically sheltered world of noise cancelling headphones. And while it is apparent that Hofmann has a deeply rooted understanding of technology and its abundant possibilities, Kapriole is a tender and almost analogue feeling affair. The human voice occupies a central role in the musical configuration of the album: quirky repetitions, hushed fragments and poetic statements, circling topics like communication, mobility, and immersion occupy the album’s eight tracks. The result is a sonorous sensation, which, in its scarcity, paves the way for meticulously crafted and delicate soundscapes. Kapriole as a joyous jump which is technological as much as it is emotional.

Loraine James' new ambient-minded alias, Whatever The Weather, follows her 2021 solo LP Reflection (Hyperdub). In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she'd ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as "free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done," allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment - the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at "25°C," a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James' proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, "0°C," its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout "17°C." Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. "2°C (Intermittent Rain)" ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side's opener, "10°C." The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. "4°C" and "30°C" display the range of James' vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones' Chino Moreno and American Football's Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at "36°C," while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

Der aus Los Angeles stammende Produzent/Songwriter Chris Adams aka PENDANT veröffentlicht auf Saddle Creek sein zweites Album HARP, ein üppiges Werk, das 90er Rave-Sounds mit Hip-Hop, Shoegaze und Pop kombiniert. Da er im Lockdown keinen Zugang zu seiner traditionellen Gitarre hatte, gab es für den langjährigen Fan elektronischer Clubmusik plötzlich keinen guten Grund mehr, sich nicht in die beatlastige, synthiegetränkte Welt zu wagen und HARP auf eine eher impressionistische, frei assoziative Weise zu skizzieren.

Loraine James' new ambient-minded alias, Whatever The Weather, follows her 2021 solo LP Reflection (Hyperdub). In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she'd ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as "free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done," allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment - the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at "25°C," a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James' proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, "0°C," its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout "17°C." Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. "2°C (Intermittent Rain)" ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side's opener, "10°C." The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. "4°C" and "30°C" display the range of James' vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones' Chino Moreno and American Football's Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at "36°C," while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

Der aus Los Angeles stammende Produzent/Songwriter Chris Adams aka PENDANT veröffentlicht auf Saddle Creek sein zweites Album HARP, ein üppiges Werk, das 90er Rave-Sounds mit Hip-Hop, Shoegaze und Pop kombiniert. Da er im Lockdown keinen Zugang zu seiner traditionellen Gitarre hatte, gab es für den langjährigen Fan elektronischer Clubmusik plötzlich keinen guten Grund mehr, sich nicht in die beatlastige, synthiegetränkte Welt zu wagen und HARP auf eine eher impressionistische, frei assoziative Weise zu skizzieren.

Trauma Collective returns to shock to your system on their fifth release, which comes courtesy of Spain's Rafael M. Espinosa aka Geistform. The Barcelona-based artist, also known for his exploits under the Univac alias, has crafted a singular style that exists at the interzone of IDM, digital noise and electro and having earned him releases on Pi Electronics, Femur and Hands Productions in recent years.
Espinosa executes four programs in sonic warfare on the Antena EP, all sounding akin to complex bitstream amplification. A multi-level barrage of frequencies play offense on opening cut "Proxima B", which sets the theme for more widescreen pulsations that gash the senses, as heard on the syntax error of "Note Repeat" and building up to a climax on the monochromatic soundstage of "Norc" - a jagged and angular exploration in bass artefacts and static redux.
Since unleashing the austere techno of Birmingham legend Mick Harris (as Monrella) and hometown hero Kwartz on unsuspecting ears, the Madrid-based collective has now ventured into more experimental spheres, as heard on the off-kilter mentalism of ASC's Loop Research and the brooding atmosphere of Makunaimadama's limited cassette release last year. Antena is the logical progression for the label's next chapter, where it continues to push the threshold of electronic music's outer limits.

180g LP + 10" im Gatefold mit Thermographie, bedruckten Innenhüllen und Download Coupon. GY!BE kehrt mit einem weiteren Soundtrack für unsere Zeit zurück, wie ihn nur dieses unnachahmliche und ehrwürdige Ensemble schmieden kann. Das neue Album besteht aus zwei fesselnden, 20-minütigen, LP-Seiten füllenden Epen aus lärmgetränktem Breitwand-Post-Rock, während die beiden begleitenden 6-minütigen Stücke der 10" die Band aus Kanada in ihrer verheerendsten, eindringlichsten und elegischsten Form zeigen. Unerbittliches Tuckern blüht auf, während einige der hochfliegenden, brennenden Melodien der Band inmitten von Geigen- und Basskontrapunkt abprallen und zusammenlaufen. Field Recordings und aufgewühlte, halb-improvisierte Passagen umrahmen diese inbrünstigen Epen. Ergreifende Atmosphären, geräuschhafte Orchestrierung, Drone, hypnotische Swingtime-Crescendos, unaufhaltsam geschichtete Türme aus verzerrtem Klargesang: STATE'S END verkörpert jede geliebte Facette der Band. Fünfundzwanzig Jahre später ist dieses neue Album so vital, mitreißend, zeitgemäß und unerbittlich wie jedes andere in der geschichtsträchtigen Diskographie von Godspeed You! Black Emperor. So wie STATE'S END die ganze Bandbreite der klanglichen Trademarks von Godspeed vereint, so umspannt auch das Album-Artwork die gesamte visuelle Geschichte der Band: die körnige, monochromatische Fotografie der letzten Veröffentlichungen findet ihren Weg auf die Innenhüllen, während das Klappcover auf die ikonischen Grafiken früherer Klassiker wie Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada und Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven zurückgreift. STATE'S END ist mit Illustrationen von William Schmiechen versehen, wobei die Taijitu-Blumen auf der Vorderseite und die Tränengaskanister auf der Rückseite des Covers in erhabener, thermografischer, schwarzer Tinte auf dem Doppelvinyl-Albumcover abgebildet sind. Das leuchtende Kreuz von Godspeeds Debütalbum F#A#INFINITY taucht auch auf der Innenseite des Klappdeckels wieder auf, als wiederkehrende Hommage an das elektrifizierte Hügelkreuz in der Heimatstadt der Band in Montreal. STATE'S END wurde im Oktober 2020 in Montreal im Homebase-Studio der Gruppe, Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango, von Jace Lasek aufgenommen und abgemischt, dem altgedienten und preisgekrönten Indie-Produzenten (und Mitbegründer von The Besnard Lakes), der mit Godspeed bei dieser Aufnahme zum ersten Mal zusammenarbeitet. Danke fürs Zuhören. UNSERE SEITE MUSS GEWINNEN. (R.I.P. D.H.) ENG audiophile 180gLP + 10" in gatefold jacket with thermography, colour flood interior, artworked inners, DL card. GYBE returns with another soundtrack for our times, like only this inimitable and venerable ensemble can forge. As the heretical impudence of the anarcho-punk title implies, Godspeed harnesses some particularly raw power, spittle and grit across two riveting 20-minute side-length trajectories of noise-drenched widescreen post-rock: inexorable chug blossoms into blown-out twang, as some of the band's most soaring, searing melodies ricochet and converge amidst violin and bassline counterpoint. Field recordings and roiling semi-improvised passages frame these fervent epics, and two shorter self-contained 6-minute pieces find the band at its most devastatingly beautiful, haunting and elegiac. Poignant atmospherics, noisedrenched orchestration, drone, hypnotic swingtime crescendos, inexorably-layered towers of distorted clarion sound: STATE'S END encapsulates every beloved facet of the band. Twenty-five years on, this new album is as vital, stirring, timely and implacable as any in Godspeed You! Black Emperor's storied discography. Just as STATE'S END summons the gamut of Godspeed's constituent sonic trademarks, so the album artwork spans the entirety of the band's visual history: the grainy monochromatic photography of recent releases finds its way onto the inner sleeves, while the gatefold cover art harkens back to the iconic graphics of earlier classic records like Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada and Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven. STATE'S END features illustrations by William Schmiechen, with the front cover taijitu flowers and back cover tear gas canisters rendered in raised thermographic black ink on the double-vinyl album jacket. The illuminated cross from Godspeed's debut F#A#8 also makes a reappearance on the inside gatefold drawing, in recurrent homage to the electrified hilltop landmark crucifix of the band's Montreal hometown. STATE'S END was recorded and mixed in Montreal in October 2020 at the group's homebase studio Thee Mighty Hotel2Tango by Jace Lasek, the veteran awardwinning indie producer (and co-founder of The Besnard Lakes) who works with Godspeed for the first time on this recording. Thanks for listening. OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN. (R.I.P. D.H.)

Vinyl Edition of 300 copies

Aesthetical in collaboration with Sync presents "Detect" by Marco Monfardini.

Originally developed as an audio/video live performance, Marco Monfardini based his research for Detect on the decoding of inaudible sounds, sound generated by electromagnetic emissions left from electronic devices and inaudible to the human ear. By using various electro-smog detectors Marco Monfardini creates a sort of detection mapping where electromagnetic emissions are the starting point for the sonorous development of each single composition.

A path that creates a parallel with our lives by questioning how much these emissions affect unconsciously our choices, tastes and perceptions, seeking a relationship between the massive use of technology in everyday life and our emotional state.
The album Detect is developed in 15 tracks in continuous play, an imperfect, faulty mosaic inhabited by invisible beings manifesting themselves in the form of sound streams, mutable entities that find a definitive form in the pattern of the compositional structure.

The album opens with “aR1 detection", sounds of pure detection place themselves in the sound space giving the initial coordinates for the exploration of unconscious parallel areas. The boundaries transform and gradually expand until they flow into the structure of "kernel variations", a growing rhythmic pattern decodes the impulses projecting a perspective that dissolves in the unstable and fluctuating electromagnetic emissions of the subsequent "[a]3020t detection", "binary defect "and "core[2] ". “[A.box]emission” confronts the use of sound downloaded random from internet sample banks and the emissions generated during the download itself, micro sound fragments arrange themselves in an organized and regular pattern, shaping a rhythmic structure. The first part ends with the short “[sa]6030” and “[det]x1a”, absence and presence provide an alternation of movements, inaudible and elusive signals all trying to establish a contact with our perception. “det : scan” opens the second part of Detect, a sort of scanning, leaving EMF (electromagnetic field) textures, a static multilayer that progressively expands until it dissolves into the rhythmic emissions of a common smartphone “[4s]detection”.The track “[rs]zone” " is pushing itself deeper, two minutes of sound speleology that reveal the existence of sound artifacts that seem to vanish getting in contact with the light accented by the bass drum of "[det] 0100+" a constant, rhythmic pumping, a luminous pulsation that reveals an apparent void, which seems to subside entering in the winding and waving atmosphere of "conductive [area]" and "[s3] microfunktion". Detect comes to the end with “[emf]terminal” a mirror of the unarrestable technological acceleration intercepting the flow of data that feeds the system of communication , digital micro waste suffocates the living space by centering up the invisible in an unconscious map.

[a] A1

[c] A3

[e] A5 core[2]
[f] A6 [A.box]emission (2)
[g] A7

[i] B2 [4s]detection
[j] B3
[k] B4 [det]0100+
[l] B5 conductive[area]
[m] B6 [s3]microfunktion
[n] B7 [emf]terminal

After 3 sold out albums, French Shoegaze heroes Dead Horse One comes back with a new EP, louder than ever, the band tends towards heavier territories such as post-grunge and alternative rock, heavier sound, massive production but still timeless catchy melody lines
Limited to 300 copies on transparent pink vinyl. "When Love Runs Dry is like a time machine. Time froze in 1991. Boris Yeltsin is still in the game, Bill Clinton laughs.. Ride and My Bloody Valentine are the best bands of this damn whole world. Liam Gallagher is fighting in the schoolyard and young Westerners think only of Nirvana. What happened between now and that era? Nothing. We are playing louder than ever."

Henning Baer caught our attention after his first release on Adam X's Sonic Groove label. Nearly a decade after, Berlin's techno front-runner tweaked his machines into a moody electro escapade for his debut on Pinkman. Industrial tinged heavy kicks layered with futuristic mellow soundscapes. With Sui Generis Henning Baer once again shows his versatility & years of experience.

A decade ago, the static signal of “Terminal” booting-up sounded and Galactic Melt launched into the atmosphere for the first time; Seth Haley’s Com Truise project arrived in full. A graphic designer based in New Jersey at the time, Haley found a sound on his synthesizers that sparked an immediate nostalgia response, tapping into classic sci-fi and proto-electro in a way that felt early ‘80s in scope, but also remarkably weird — stutter-step proggy and intoxicatingly psychedelic. Unknowingly he had stepped into a genre prism; suppose we know it now as synth-wave though the tag never landed squarely. To Haley, this was a space to explore and a story to tell, which he’d do across a saga of releases that would resonate with a legion of fans and send the producer touring the world in perpetual orbit. His full-length debut on Ghostly International, Galactic Melt delivered on the promise of Haley’s Cyanide Sisters EP as well as high-profile remixes for Twin Shadow, Neon Indian, and Daft Punk. Bold, imaginative, and unapologetically cosmic, the set occupies a beloved coordinate in the Com Truise catalog, considered the gateway for many. To celebrate its 10th

anniversary, Haley and Ghostly have repressed the long-sold out 2xLP and added five unreleased tracks to the expanded digital edition, giving this classic its due treatment as it passes the milestone.

From the keyed-up, skyscraping machine love of “VHS Sex” and “Cathode Girls” to pulsing cuts like “Air Cal” and “Ether Drift,” the music on Galactic Melt is mathy, forlorn, funky, and mighty in technical ambition. That they’re all noticeably cinematic is, of course, by design. Haley envisioned Galactic Melt as a “sort of film score...from the mind,” chronicling the life and death of Com Truise, the world’s first synthetic/robotic astronaut, from his creation and time on earth to his subsequent mission to a newly discovered galaxy called Wave 1 (released in 2014).

Jesus and Mary Chain, Shop Assistants, Black Tambourine, Sarah Records, My Bloody Valentine. Star Party began in March 2020 as a Seattle living room project between Carolyn Brennan and Ian Corrigan (Gen Pop, Vexx) - both sharing a love of high energy rock n roll music. The idea to start a band percolated during trips to the high deserts of eastern Washington to pick sage and see the sun as a brief reprieve from the misty and grey Pacific Northwestern Spring. A few months later, Star Party released Demo 2020 on Feel It Records, featuring two originals and covers of The Shop Assistants' "Something to Do" and the classic "All I Really Wanna Do" (in the vein of Cher's version). Over the course of 2021, Star Party wrote and recorded their debut LP, Meadow Flower, wherever and whenever they could. Employing like-minded Feel It label mate Caufield Schnug of Sweeping Promises (who also moonlights as one part of Melody Men Mastering) to mix and master the album, Meadow Flower follows a direct line from where Demo 2020 left off. Brennan's soft and clearly American vocals float over waves of feedback and drum machine racket like a delicate mist sitting just above a mountain lake. Melodies bob and weave inside an omnipresent static that fills in every nook and cranny of the recording. Drawing from a quiver of influences such as Black Tambourine, Confuse (JP), The Count Five, and of course The Shop Assistants (RIP Alex Taylor), Star Party's debut album seamlessly meshes together noise, melody, and harmony

First release on Sydney based label Natural-High comes from Neotex with four cuts ranging from club focused music to ambient home listening. Music for your body and mind.

Jamie Paton, something of a veteran on the label, is once again exploring the inner realms of electronic music. This 7” is not a step in the wrong direction from his earlier high-quality standard; Paton’s crystal-clear sound cuts like surgical laser through a block of ice.

“Parabolas” and “Fleshed Out” are in all their static cold beauty, quite advanced compositions in regards to cooperating rhythm patterns; Paton knows his machines like his own children, giving them a proper playmate in his synthesiser-day care – a man-machine playground!

This release manifests Paton as a master of leftfield-half tempo house oriented-kosmische music.

Matthew Halsall unveils new band and announces 'Salute to the Sun'

his new album on Gondwana Records

Limited edition Double Clear vinyl, printed on reverse board with Gold foil artwork plus double printed reverse board inner sleeves including download code. Cover Artwork by Daniel Halsall with design and layout by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.

Comes packaged in a resealable, re-usable Polypropylene anti-static, acid-free, crystal clear sleeve for maximum protection.

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. But at the heart of everything that he does Halsall is first and foremost an artist and a musician. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sound world. A sound that draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. A music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations.

Salute to the Sun is his first album as a leader since Into Forever (2015) and marks the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester's finest young musicians: Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion as well as long-time Halsall collaborator, bassist, Gavin Barras who has been at the heart of Halsall's bands for over a decade. For Matthew it was important to have a band based locally and able, pre-Covid, to meet and play each week, and who also performed a sold-out monthly basement session at Yes in Manchester. The album draws energy from these sessions and inspiration from themes and ideas that have inspired Halsall through the years (on albums such as Oneness, Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One) ideas of ecology, the environment and harmony with nature.

"I feel Salute to the Sun is a positive earthy album. I wanted to create something playful but also quite primitive, earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. I was listening to lush ambient field recordings of tropical environments such as jungles and rainforests and found myself drawn to percussive atmospheric sounds which replicated what I was hearing (bells / shakers / chimes / rain sticks) and I started to experiment with more wooden percussive instruments such as kalimba and marimba".

Salute to the Sun features lush wholly improvised tunes inspired by ambient rainforest and jungle field recordings, deeply soulful tunes built around hypnotic harp and kalimba patterns, deep Strata-East inspired spiritual jazz grooves and some of Halsall's most beautiful playing and inspiring healing melodies yet recorded.

The album was recorded at the band's weekly sessions, using Halsall's own recording set-up, giving the recordings a relaxed vibe and unforced energy that really lets the music breath. The album is also very much a family affair as Halsall's brother Daniel Halsall, artistic director of Gondwana Records, was an important presence at the sessions and co-produced the album. It is also his memorable artwork that adorns the cover of Salute to the Sun, an album beautifully designed by legendary designer Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic, who also created the covers for the recent archival releases Oneness, Sending My Love and Colour Yes and is one of Halsall's favourite designers. Together Daniel Halsall and Ian Anderson have designed all of Matthew's seven albums to date, so it felt extra-special to bring them together for, Salute to the Sun, an album that Halsall was determined to present in the very best way possible. The album was mixed with another long-time collaborator, George Atkins at 80 Hertz in Manchester, who works tirelessly with Halsall to perfect the sound and was mastered by noted engineer Peter Beckmann who brings an added depth to the sound specially around the bass notes as well as Halsall's trumpet. The magnificent double vinyl was cut as a Half Speed master by Barry Grint at Alchemy Mastering for the best possible analogue experience.

The result is arguably Halsall's most beautiful and complete recording to date, playful, charming and imbued with the warmth of the sun and the energy of life.

Almost exactly a year after Tower Block Dreams' Time Is Now debut and the launch of our white label series, the UK-born, Madrid-based producer returns with a club-ready 5 tracker which fuses together the most danceable facets of UKG, grime and breaks.

The opening track "Bare Dubs" pays tribute to UKG's antecedents in pirate radio with sporadic MC vocal samples and a womping bassline. The product: a soundsystem banger with a disjointed, yet fiercely controlled two-step rhythm and grimey, extended basslines a la So Solid Crew and early Scratcha. Flip over the record and the A-side's cold rigour is swapped out for a sultry groove.

Euphoric piano stabs and playful R'n'B vocal chops energise "If You Want The Reload" and video-game-esque bleeps lend "Last One From Me" its blissed-out melody. But don't get too comfortable. The aptly-named "From The Top" sees a return of the opening tracks' grime sensibilities and introduces an FM static atmospheric to take things back to the old school.

Time Is Now White Vol.12 drops 25th February 2022 via Time Is Now.

Exploring hybrid music styles and outernational, borderless musical influences, DJ soFa’s Elsewhere compilation series continues with a sixth instalment, and the second to appear on Kalahari Oyster Cult.

Always ahead of the tide, the Kalahari Oyster is a fine specimen when it comes to the discipline of next-level sound-snooping. Meticulously curated by Belgian sonic globetrotter soFa, Elsewhere XX showcases a dozen outstanding tunes, each dwelling in their own personal space between the imaginary worlds of post-kraut, DIY synth-punk and odd-pop ballads.

Melting these genres with contemporary club music is the mission here. Doused in a thick fog of arcane machine talk, tribal rhythms and cosmic synths, Elsewhere XX is an invitation to escape the hall of LED-backlit mirrors that we’ve so mistakenly come to call our “reality”.

Gathering artists from all corners of the globe – including Radio Hito, Anatolian Weapons, Eylul Deniz, Dame Area and Electronic Body Girl – soFa’s curation lays the groundwork for a unique and thoroughly immersive listening and dancing experience. Through a carefully selected suite of like-minded, yet diverse joints, we run the gamut from distorted funk (“Anita”, “Confiture") and cross-pollinated electroid blueprints (“Walk Away”, “An Abhainn Mhor") to oddball synthpop (“Credo” & Twin Peaks cover "She Can't Die"), reverb-soaked audio safaris (“Fifty Fifty (Anatolian Weapons Dub)") and static-filled postpunk (“Umani”).

soFa's Elsewhere series started in 2017 and this is the sixth compilation to date. Shifting focus with every new instalment, the compilations have previously appeared on labels likes Music For Dreams, Emotional Response and Crevette Records.

We are celebrating 20 years of Kellermusik Records with a new vinyl record.
Exactly 10 years after "Forget the Past". Klima fresh Kellermusik sound in a contemporary guise
We would like to thank R.A.N.D. Muzik and of course all the fans who have always remained loyal to us.
Without you this record would not have been possible.
To the next years of Kellermusik Records!

Carl Finlow keeps on keeping on. As the world changes around him, the veteran producer continues to do what he does best - craft top-quality electro tunes which invoke the sound's Drexciyan heyday, yet carry themselves with an assurance that is all of Finlow's own.

Finlow remains a prolific producer more than a quarter of a century on from his emergence. Still averaging several records a year across a variety of aliases, recent times have seen Finlow forge particularly strong links with the Central Processing Unit label. Now, after a run of EPs for the Sheffield imprint which began with 2018's 'Projections', Finlow's Silicon Scally project offers up CPU's first drop of 2022 in the form of the 'Field Lines' LP.

Silicon Scally productions have long been marked out by how they combine piston-precise beat programming with more textured synth play. 'Field Lines' runs with this formula to deliver some of Finlow's most atmospheric material to date. At once shadowy and expansive, listening to 'Field Lines' is the aural equivalent of taking a night-time drive around some futuristic metropolis.

The beats cruise sleekly here. Many of these burbling machine-funk numbers hover at mid-tempo, the crisp clip of their drum programming given shape and depth by all sorts of percussive tones fizzing around at the fringes of the mix. Even when 'Field Lines' seems to set its sights on the club - the Bunker Records-aping 'Amino', for instance, or the dystopian whizz-bang of 'Static Fire' - the tracks here strut sturdily rather than giving in to full-on freakouts.

However, from this sturdy base, Finlow moves outwards. Working with tones which range from rapid-fire machine-gun bass to keening, dawn chorus keyboard pads, Finlow leads us through the futurescape with the expertise of a seasoned guide. Cuts like 'Submerged' and 'Yield' are brilliantly cinematic, blooming from those reliable drum pulses into miniature masterpieces of nocturnal electronics. Elsewhere on 'Field Lines' there is a mechanical majesty to 'Inhibitor' and 'Altered Domain' which invokes the brave new worlds that Kraftwerk repeatedly conjured in their heyday.

Central Processing Unit's first release of 2022 is 'Field Lines', an LP of electro-funk explorations from Carl Finlow's Silicon Scally project which will thrill regardless of whether it's experienced through headphones or out on the dancefloor.

RIYL: Drexciya, Kraftwerk, Cygnus, Annie Hall

Dusky’s Life Signs project for Running Back remixed! The Londoners and their distinct hallmark of euphoric, yet multilayered dance floor dynamite get treated by Cinthie, KiNK and Rumu. Similar to the scope of original artists themselves, their interpretations are a wide choice of styles and suitable for different usages. Berlin’s true school house head Cinthie delivers her tried, tested and desired method of disco bass lines and deep house melodies on „Static“, while everyone’s favorite live act from Sofia turns the sounds of „Fridge“ into a lost mid-90ies techno classic. KiNK’s high-octane take would fit perfectly on every fantasy mixtape of Derrick May or Laurent Garnier of those days. Last, but not least, Dusky very own discovery and 17Steps artist Rumu uses „Lea Valley“ to punch his ticket with the UK bass and breaks fare. These goods sell well!

SA015 is a split vinyl taken care of by long term label artist, Pfirter, and by a new voice that's been adding to the SA story across the summer, Kangding Ray. Pfirter's 'Caos y Orden Superior' is a weighty odyssey spread across nine minutes. Its opening is languid but somehow relentless as strange synthesised sounds are interrupted by insistent beats. Across the arc of this track 'chaos' and 'order' lose their static definitions, and played over a large club rig this has the potential to throughly disorientate. From here Kangding Ray takes over duties with 'Wars', a fragmented meditation on the darkest side of human nature. Created from hues saturated by the pain of mistakes and regrets, it pulses, rocking gently, swooning in and out. This stunning slice of electronic music acts as a balm for the very wounds that conflict leaves behind.

Having already proven that he is capable of maintaining sonic quality and distinction over the course of a full original program, Chevel (a.k.a. Dario Tronchin) now makes his LP debut for Stroboscopic Artefacts. His other S.A. contributions (including the inaugural entry in the label's singular Monad series, the "One Month Off" EP, his participation to the label's five-year retrospective series) have already hinted that a more complete exposition of his unique inner world would surface, and here it is at last.

Over the course of his young career, Chevel has gained a mastery over several compositional elements: Polaroid-like slow melodic fades, sharp ricocheting beats, and simply making one's headphones feel like a viable means of physical transportation. All of these elements come into play shortly after the needle hits the grooves of (Track A1), a euphoric introductory track marked by a spectral panning sequence and by beats chopped with a culinary expert's sense of elegance. The drum kit sounds that feature throughout are used sparely but - either because of this or in spite of this - provide maximum impact upon the listener's nervous system. The almost 'far Eastern' use of 'block' percussion on (Tracks A2 and B1) perfectly complements the synthetic sheen produced by fuzz distortion, radio static and bandpass-filtered sound bites, taking us to a terrain where a palette of decay effects provides just as much aesthetic inspiration as the presence of technological advancement.

There is more than enough humor and playfulness at work here, too, helping to once again banish the persistent stereotype of the modern techno producer as a sterile technician: the queasy melody line, sliced-and-diced whistling and gelatinous bounce of (Track D2) evoke a child's wonderment at playtime more than they do the rarefied rigour of the laboratory. The less pulsating numbers like (Track C3) and the closing (Track D3) will engage the listener as well, being like short audio films of abiogenesis (i.e. spontaneous generation of life from 'non-living' material) taking place. These tracks are not so much 'interludes' or contemplative retreats from the action as they are enhancers of it, utilizing fluttering cycles of melody to engage in a kind of conversation with the more driving tracks. As to the 'driving' tracks themselves: the places that they drive the listener to are satisfyingly beyond customary experience.

In other words, despite Chevel's keeping the sonic toolkit and overall atmosphere consistent from track to track, there is a rich variety in the emotional affectivity on display here. The net effect is like a dream state that leaves strong impressions even though one can't pinpoint exactly why they are doing so (and which leaves one wanting to dive back into the dream pool and experience something similar again.) This is a talent that unifies the diverse constellation of Stroboscopic Artefacts producers, and one that makes Chevel in particular one to continue watching, listening to, and experiencing.
Wire (USA/Germany/UK) - ''Very intriguing, can/'t wait to dive in.''
Pitchfork (USA) - "Nice use of space, though do find the atmosphere a little one-note. Percussion really pops."
RBMA - "Thanks for reaching out. Having a listen now and the album sounds really good. Happy to give it a shout on RBMA Twitter whenever is best for you."
Paramount Artists (UK) - "20/10 top effort!"
NTS Radio (UK) - ''Nice IDM music with fine textures and bass frequencies..''
Groove (Germany) - ''Very interesting delicate structures. Suggested for review in Groove.''
Exclaim! (Canada) - "I like this. I'll float it to my team and I'll let you know if anyone's interested in covering it."
Big Up Magazine (USA) - "Absolutely epic album."
Vicious Magazine (Spain) - "Great sounds, for our september issue, thx a lot!"
Little White Earbuds (USA) - ''Fantastic album from Chevel. I have unfortunately been at work today without my usual headphones but even listening on very poor quality ones, the rich sonic mastery comes through. Can't wait to get home and listen to this properly.''
Cone Magazine (UK) - "Thanks for sending this through. Looks great, and always interested about a new Stroboscopic release. I'll let you know when something goes up."

‘Expressions of Interest’ is the debut album from Melbourne/Naarm post-punk group screensaver.

Sonically, the 10 track album is rich and detailed, and pays homage to its era of inspiration (late 70s-mid 80s post-punk and new wave) with gripping vocals, dissonant guitar, melodic basslines, washes of synths and motorik drumming. Engineered by Julian Cue alongside band member Chris Stephenson and recorded over multiple studio sessions between 2020-2021

The album opens with the ominously titled ‘Body Parts’, an immediately arresting song that showcases the bands penchant for blending classic post-punk elements, leaning into a sound somewhere between the Banshees and Protomartyr.

Maynard doubles down on these themes in the frenetic second track, ‘No Movement’. Guttural organ tones swim under overdriven guitar, jagged and intense. Additional textures and sound effects are used percussively to embellish the dynamics, creating a feverish atmosphere with some Martin Hannett like flourishes.

The album takes a surprising turn into electronic driven krautrock on track three with 'Buy, Sell, Trade' - a rollicking piece of danceable ephemera, dominated by swirling synth sounds and punctuated with electronics reminiscent of Sparks/Moroder collaborations. Chris Stephenson's masterful guitar work begins with Greg Sage-esque determination before a crescendo into a lush Frippertronics outro.

'MEDS' transports us back to the foundation established on 'Body Parts', a gothy piece, full of tribal toms and dirge-y synths. Industrial punk rock nearly swallowed whole by the keys in the middle and slowly building back to complimentary guitar and vocal hooks.

It's from this point in the album that the band let's their other influences rise to the surface, as they explore touches of EDM on 'Static State' - a brutal, death-disco style track, Krystal Maynard's lead synth and gloomy vocal complimenting the pounding drums and dub-esque bass line culminating in a track worthy of the dancefloor.


Opening side two we have 'Skin', beginning with a solid and simple backbeat, James Beck’s post-punk percussion provides a steady and minimal framework for the rest of the band to colour in with great depth and detail. Giles Fielke’s bass guitar wobbles brilliantly leading the verse melody, whilst Chris Stephenson’s guitar drives the chorus that folds neatly in on itself.

In ‘Attention Economy’, Krystal Maynard is flexible with her lyrical style, and knows how and when to lend her voice to the greater backdrop of the composition. ‘Attention Economy’ has an almost Kraftwerkian structure - repetitious, but engaging with its constant tom driven beat, lush synth lines and minimal bass tones.

Just when you thought things had slowed down, screensaver ramp things right back up again with ‘Overnight Low’ - a no holds barred thumper. Giles Fielke underpins the hard-edged sound with his bassline, keeping things smooth and tight. It brings to mind a hybrid of PiL’s ‘Annalisa’ and Wire’s ‘Two People In a Room.’

Before you can catch your breath, we have ‘Regular Hours’ - another industrial track, and perhaps the sister song to ‘Static State’ heard earlier on side one. Seething electronic drum samples cut through an abyss of growling synths, Giles Fielke hanging up the bass temporarily to accompany Krystal Maynard on synth duties.

The album closes with the fittingly titled ‘Soft Landing’, literally bringing the listener back down...softly. The song is heavy on atmos, and resembles the aesthetics previously encountered on ‘Attention Economy’ a few tracks earlier.

‘Expressions of Interest” was recorded at various locations across Melbourne, with a handful of songs being captured before the start of the Covid pandemic in January 2020. With the recording timeline being drastically altered, the band shifted focus to work on what would become their first single ‘Strange Anxiety’, throughout the first months of the Melbourne 2020 lockdown.

Get yo ass in the house, robot-- you cyber-spectre, you outhouse prime minister, you hard-headed mirror ninja, snapping selfies, living in the pixelated seams between bursts the of flashing images, birthed in a pool of TV static and Tik Tok dust. BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is here, not to save but to drown you. Heads better learn how to swim cause listen, this record is beat soup, hearty yet still minimal, a sonic mirage of prophetic soul that drop kicks your "chill beats to study to" Youtube playlist and hyper-intellectual rap podcasts into a hadron collider; it's only black matter on the other side-- 13 mesmerizing tracks about memory and imprinting and the future, all of them wafting through untouched space like the ghostly cinders of a world on fire, unbound and uncharted, vast and stretching across the universe. Moor Mother is a holographic figment of an Afrotopian dream, all at once goddess and warrior, mystic and cyborg, griot and future time traveller, etching noisy pieces of reverie into our consciousness for decades now. But check it: on BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA she's joined by a wide-range of friends, collaborators and co-conspirators on a trip through the murky cosmos, navigating the black universe with stardust as currency. In these times, they'll say, as they click and mash their way through the same inter-webs that seek to strangle them, BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is just what we need: a post-everything, 12:01 on the doomsday clock, anti-trip hop type of situation. "We ain't gotta fight no more," they'll say; the rest of us, we'll put this record on and imagine again that it's real.

ALTER- : A REACTION TO THE ALTERMODERNISM IN SOUND ART
For the Automatisme - Alter- album. I am inspired by how the art historian Nicolas Bourriaud defines the Altermodernism. Bourriaud understands the term "Alter" as a way to mean "other". The altermodernism would be another modernity that is different from the avant-garde modernism and post-modernism. More precisely, this is a new paradigm from the XXIe century with alternative ways to motivate artists to be more radical in art by traveling in the physical and digital world, by cutting the frontiers and by creating other time lines. I apply the "alter" subject to time and to landscape and those, to the rhythmic and the ambient glitch music.

1- THE ALBUM HAS A RHYTHMIC SIDE AND A LANDSCAPE SIDE.
1- a : The rhythmic tracks are named Alter-Rate. That means that I offer other types of rhythms by calculating beats with time rate experimentations. The form of the rhytmic tracks, expresses a course, a wandering, which, in the altermodern life, is not just in a standard 4/4 , or just grid based or non-grid based, but it's in a complex hybrid of all of those.

1- b : The ambient tracks are named Alter-Scape. That means that I offer another type of landScapes by a paused temporality and not by a random time or by the time of the nature. Alter-Scape tracks mimic the saturated globalized soundscapes of the XXIe century.

2- THE GLOBALISED AND SATURATED TIME
For Bourriaud, the artists respond to a new globalised perception. They traverse a cultural landscape saturated with signs and create new pathways between multiple formats of expressions and communications1. The Alter- album tracks have saturated rhythms Rates and static ambient soundScapes. The specific context within which we live is the age of globalisation2. In this album, it means that globalised or always evolving rhythm Rates are in constant movements and are also different every time an Alter-Rate track is exported or performed. On the other hand, a globalised landScape is an ambient track with a motionless temporality. In the era of the altermodern, displacement has become a method of depiction3. The movement of the sound in the Alter- album is two sound spaces. The first is the rhythms that make time movement become apparent and the second is an ambient paused or static time that makes possible to feel and to analyze the movement effect of our surroundings.

3- THE CONSTANT TENSION STATE OF ART
For Gilles Deleuze, art is in a constant state of tension, in as much as it oscillates between the poles of chaos and order4. The Alter- album is a tension between chaos and order in rhythmic beat tracks and ambient soundscapes tracks. It is a deterritorialization of the rhythms and the ambiences of today's natural and digital landscapes and it brings them into the computer glitch music format.

By pushing new softwares to their limits, I push at the extreme the software capacity to calculate and to generate sounds. The Alter-Rate tracks are experimentations with time rates and rhythms with the use of probability and artificial intelligence based sequencers. The partition signal starts from a master sequencer that gets into all instruments on a track. Each instrument receives this signal and modulates it with other sequencers that are each programmed differently for every instrument. Finally, all the instruments signals return to a master output that contains a stutter effect. This master channel is sequencing all other channels into one single rhythm. In short, a single rate merges and expands into a vast archipelago of rates and the transformed signal becomes a new single rate. The Alter-Scape tracks are experimentations with midi triggers that give the sensation of a timelessness. Multiple reverb effects are also routed into each other to create soundscapes of continuity. About the type of sounds created in this album, I do experimentations with deep frequency modulation synthesises (FM) on all Alter-Rate and Alter-Scape tracks.

I put a few layers in the tracks to be able to focus on the time space and perception. The tracks are generative and every parameter uses probabilities to be programmed. This is something that was not possible some years ago. The computers are enough powerful to generate that now. I export many times the tracks and i push the computers to their limits by making hard for them to calculate and to generate the tracks with a deep, a pointillist and an extreme software programming. These techniques do different versions every time that I export or perform a track and in my opinion, that opens a fresh and innovative way to do new experimental club music and ambient music. The computer has its own limits too.


Reviews in The Wire, Gonzo, A Closer Listen, Datacide, African Paper, Silent and Sound, and more