Buscar:sur drone

Ostinato as resistance: Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark work reimagined. Marking the tenth anniversary of the American composer’s critically acclaimed album 'A Fragile Geography', this new edition arrives renewed, both sonically and visually.

First released in 2015 (Room40) during a period of personal upheaval and creative reinvention, it endures as a testament to resilience, transformation, and the connection we hold with the places that shape us.

Written in the aftermath of a devastating theft, A Fragile Geography was born out of loss. Just days before a cross-country move to New York, Irisarri’s entire Seattle-based studio was wiped out. Instruments. Recordings. Archives. Gone without a trace. He arrived on the East Coast to an empty room and the daunting task of starting over.

“This album wasn’t just a record; it was a lifeline,” Irisarri reflects. “It became a way to process the emotional chaos that followed: uprooting, instability, and ultimately, the slow, intuitive rebuilding of a life.”

Composed and recorded in the rural woods of the Hudson Valley, the album took shape in seclusion, surrounded by nature, and through a process guided by improvisation. Embracing limitations, Irisarri wove textural layers of field recordings with half-remembered melodies from his Seattle years, piecing them together like fragments of memory. Tracks like “Displacement,” “Hiatus,” and “Persistence” juxtaposed haunting stillness with restless momentum, mapping an inner terrain of grief, catharsis, and rebirth.

Among its defining sounds is “Empire Systems,” a monumental centerpiece built around a simple four-chord progression, organ textures, and guitar drones. Gradually, the track expands into layers of immersive loops and thick, enveloping distortion that wash over the listener like a rolling wave. Often cited as the album’s most majestic passage, it captures Irisarri at his most sonically ambitious. With a harmonically saturated structure crafted from restraint and repetition, it remains one of his most recognizable compositions: an exercise in the art of maximal minimalism.

From the outset, “Reprisal” received praise from BBC’s Mary Anne Hobbs, who championed the track on her radio show. Her support played a key role in introducing Irisarri’s work to wider audiences and solidifying his place within the lineage of electronic, drone, and experimental sound artists. A slow-burning elegy, the piece emerges from a haze of distortion and sub-bass, with dense, unrelenting drones carrying a sense of mounting tension. Just as it seems to collapse under its own weight, flickers of guitar emerge like distant light through fog. It’s a meditation on dissonance, resolve, and the elusive possibility of release.

The closing track, “Secretly Wishing for Rain,” is steeped in saudade: a longing for Seattle’s dour grey skies, lush green landscapes, and desaturated sunsets. Through it, Irisarri mourns a vanished chapter of life bound to the city, a time documented in scattered mementos and cherished collections, now permanently gone. A reflection on what could never be recovered: an era lost to time. Julia Kent’s looped cello motifs added a melancholic warmth to the track, marking the first collaboration between the two artists and sparking a musical dialogue that would keep growing in the years that followed.

More than a career highlight, A Fragile Geography has laid the foundation for Black Knoll studio, which Irisarri rebuilt from the ground up. The studio has since grown into a creative hub for countless projects, with Irisarri engineering records for iconic music figures like Terry Riley, Ryuichi Sakamoto, William Basinski, MONO, Devendra Banhart, Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt, Julianna Barwick, and many others. Carried by its lasting influence, the album has quietly captured the ear of a younger generation, its sound and emotional arc finding new listeners in unexpected corners.

The album’s new visual language was reimagined in collaboration with Mexico City–based designer Daniel Castrejón. Irisarri captured ghostly images at Gaztelugatxeko Doniene, a historic coastal site in Bermeo, Euskal Herria. Castrejón then treated the photographs with distressed textures and spectral overlays. The final artwork channels the rugged, elemental forces that shaped both the music and Irisarri’s aesthetic, renewing his ties to ancestral ground inspired by the Basque homeland of his bloodline.

Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with exceptional attention to detail, this anniversary edition uncovers every nuance in the sound design, enhancing clarity and presence. With each listen, new elements emerge, inviting discovery and reconnection.

“I don’t experience this album as a document of grief anymore,” says Irisarri. “I hear adaptation and I'm reminded that when everything falls apart, something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, can emerge.”

With »Roto«, Derek Piotr revisits the aqueous terrain first explored in his 2016 album »Drono«, where the paradox of water’s stillness and perpetual motion was refracted into looping voices and glitching textures. Conceived as a »spiritual successor« and recorded in 2019, the album has lain dormant for six years before surfacing on Discreet Archive. That stretch of silence seems to have deepened its charge – the sound feels unearthed rather than made, like a whirlpool biding its time in obscurity until now.

Unlike »Drono«’s mosaic of shorter pieces, »Roto« unfurls as two expansive half-hour tracks, allowing Piotr to probe repetition with greater intensity. Vowels accumulate until they shimmer with alien sentience, drones grow dense and psychoacoustic, and the smallest digital artifacts flicker like neural sparks. The result is a work that denies familiarity; recurrence here only breeds strangeness, unspooling into a procession of hidden pulses and altered voices that resist prediction, drawing the listener deeper into a submerged, otherworldly space.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines.

He is lead archivist and creative director of the Fieldwork Archive.

»Downriver« unfolds like a dérive through obscured geographies, echoing the psychogeographic journeys of Iain Sinclair. Just as Sinclair’s writing blurs the tangible and the imagined, Sequences, the project of Antwerp-based artist Niels Geybels, drifts into spaces where memory and environment overlap. Single-take recordings stretch into slowly mutating drones, fractured textures, and ghostlike voices that seem to seep in from unseen thresholds. The atmosphere is one of decayed grandeur, evoking disused monuments, neglected warehouses, and corners of the landscape where centuries of history accumulate beneath the surface.

This is music shaped by wandering without a map: a patchwork of distortion, hidden detail, and abrupt rupture. The sense of time loosens, the everyday unravels, and new contours emerge out of drift and delay. Downriver situates itself between sound art and environmental music, drawing listeners into liminal zones where place becomes porous, haunted by what has been and what might yet be.

Written and recorded by Niels Geybels Mastered by Jacob Calland

Gastr del Sol"s second album returns at last to the vinyl format - its first physical manifestation in well over a decade. Once again, a drop of the needle may ignite any number of queries, summed simply in one: What IS this music? Such is the potent energy of Crookt, Crackt, or Fly, retaining its otherworldly qualities some 32 years and countless musical movements since. Crookt, Crackt, or Fly expands upon The Serpentine Similar"s minimalist stance in unexpected ways, imposing further austerity in the soundscape but for an unpredictable expansive quantity periodically overflowing, waves of blood sluicing through the elevator doors. This is partially due to a change within the group dynamic: the departure of bassist Ken "Bundy" Brown and the arrival of a new partner for guitarist and singer David Grubbs - guitarist and sound fuckerer Jim O"Rourke. O"Rourke"s initial work with Gastr involved editing and recomposing recordings of the Grubbs-Brown-&-sometimes-John-McEntire lineup, producing an utterly outré collage of cut-ups and other types of tape processing. This became the "20 Songs Less" single, after which he was invited to play with the group. It was a time of flux; Brown recalls playing a Gastr show at the Metro around this time featuring himself, John McEntire, Grubbs and O"Rourke - and one of the pieces played was a Tortoise song! Throughout these shifts, Gastr del Sol"s music was never less than fully considered and composed, even in moments redolent with the suggestion of the random and the non-sequitur. Grubbs and O"Rourke made no attempt to replicate Serpentine"s arrangement of thick, scaly drones and hypnotic song-visions in their own partnership, finding Crookt, Crackt,"s sound instead in spiny, gamelan-like interactions between their (mostly acoustic) guitars, played precisely in and out of formation with bright, fleet-fingered abandon. O"Rourke"s fondness for field recordings and his capacity for tape manipulation intersected with Grubbs" sensibilities, edifying his evolving song style: written with increased sharpness and sly surreal humor, sung closer to silence. Halfway into "Work from Smoke", the sudden collapse of the sound-walls around us signals Crookt, Crackt"s major departure. From the thicket of guitars, a swell of drones and free-jazz squeals, made up of bass clarinet, vibraphone and organ, pulls the listener into an entirely other acoustic space. "Every Five Miles" derails in similarly tactile fashion: a guitar duet boils up thunderously, then fragments and spirals apart. As a free electric guitar part crops up, improbably holding the center, the acoustic space around it continues to disintegrate in ambient stereo. A wedding of folk music idioms to classical, improvised and modern compositional modes (including Gastr"s own formative post-punk mode), Crookt, Crackt, or Fly is a song-based reality steadily giving way to its alternative alchemies playing out within.

Itara is the debut solo album by Paul Pèrrim—guitarist, composer, and anthropologist—featuring a set of guitar-driven compositions that blend hallucinatory acid folk, abstract blues, mutant Eastern jazz, surreal ambient, and free improvi-sation into a vivid and distinctive sonic tapestry.
With a background in ethnomusicology and a degree in Music Education, Pèrrim’s work bridges popular and experi-mental music. He contrasts the acoustic guitar’s austerity with the expansive possibilities of the electric guitar, drawing from late ’60s folk traditions, contemporary fingerstyle, sound collage, drone, psychedelia, and improvisation.
A key figure in the Canary Islands’ experimental scene, he released two albums in the 2010s under The Transistor Arkestra, a Catalan collective merging free jazz and psychedelia. As Transistor Eye, his solo project, he merges ana-log electronics with guitar, using vintage synths and effects.
In 2022, Pèrrim gained wider recognition through his appearance on Manos Ocultas (Philatelia Records) and the in-ternational tribute Solstice: A Tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans (Obsolete Recordings). That same year, he founded GUITARRACO, a contemporary guitar festival in Tarragona, where he has shared the stage with Joseba Irazoki, Buck Curran, and Raphael Roginski.
Itara will be released in July 2025 via Keroxen. Recorded and produced by Pèrrim, the album features liner notes by critic Bill Meyer, who writes:
“While it’s common to call music cinematic these days, Pèrrim goes split-screen. One might say he composes econo, jamming scenes and sounds to psychedelic effect. But economy does not equate with poverty. Pèrrim draws upon a rich bank of musical notions, all of which he makes his own through the alchemy of recombination and transmutation.”

One of Romania’s most important composers in the last half-century, Octavian Nemescu (1940-2020) is among the few that were not “part of the system”, managing to survive and compose in a world that felt more and more “empty”, fragile, confused and scarce in prophecies. The mystical approach to his art defines Octavian Nemescu as an essentialist who believed in the power of archetypes in which he found inspiration. His pieces always start from an idea that has spiritual, cosmogonic implications and often involves synthesizers, sounds from nature (buzz of bees) and the “ison” (drone). When defining “meta music” or “imaginary music”, Nemescu was an advocate of looking from above, from the top of the mountain. Silence is very important in his work in order to keep the sound flowing and to reflect on the sound from before, as a space, as a pause for thinking. Nemescu put forward another kind of music: a song that has not yet surfaced through human voice, any musical instrument, orchestra or other electro-acoustic means: an intimate, interior, introverted inner sound that focuses on the individual and the imagination. Imaginary music is a reaction, it comes in contrast to the spectacular, it is anti-show. For him, music had a ritualistic function, it served no cultural purpose.

This 3LP set collects eight pieces for variable ensemble, tape and electronics, composed between 1968 and 2015, selected together with Erica Nemescu, who also mastered the tracks. Most tracks have been previously released on different CD’s but never before on vinyl.

State Change is the riveting new album from composer and performer Molly Joyce, out July 11, 2025 via FatCat Records’ 130701 imprint. Blending influences ranging from the 20th century modernist lineage to the spectral drones of Andy Stott, Missy Mazzoli, and Nico Muhly, State Change draws unflinchingly from the medical record of a childhood trauma for seven electro-acoustic tone poems — stark and oppressive in its medical aesthetic, yet ultimately cathartic and healing. Joyce crafted the album with Grammy-winning producer William Brittelle largely at Figure 8 Studios with engineer Michael Hammond.

When Joyce was seven years old, she was involved in a car accident that nearly amputated her left hand and required many intensive surgeries; to this day, her hand is still impaired. Joyce pushed through this life change, and over the past eight years, her reputation has swelled as one of her generation’s most daring, conceptually driven composers.

Joyce’s 2020 debut for New Amsterdam Records, Breaking and Entering, ruminated on this seismic shift in pieces for toy organ, voice, and electronic sampling of both sources. The New York Times noted her music’s “serene power”; The Washington Post described her as “one of the most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome.” Pitchfork lauded her 2022 album Perspective — a sonic portrait of disability built from interview recordings, also released on New Amsterdam — as “a powerful work of love and empathy that underscores the poison of ableism in American culture.”

6 months after the release of Ed Rain’s (one of Andrei Rusu, half of duo Khidja, solo projects) debut solo album ‘Met him on a Wednesday’, Malka Tuti records is presenting two Huge remixes for the title track’s collaboration with Fantastic Twins.On the A Side we have Pilooski on the banger duties. Heavy sub bass frequencies and edgy rhythms reminiscing of late 90s UK energies (but with a somewhat modern twist) push forward a dance track with a unique structure and unexpected sonic surprises. Big room IDM. Big Big Tip. On the flip side we finally managed to collaborate with one of our favourites Superpitcher. The Kompakt x Pachanga Boys x Hippie Dance xxx alumni is one of our all time favourite people and producers, and we are oh-so-happy that he joined us on this special ride.His interpretation of the track takes it into more “poppy” realms. The entire track is laid over a beautiful sub bass droney kind of bassline and the result is one of those “this has been on repeat the entire day” kind of songs. A melancholic hue paints the song with a ‘Happy-Sad’ kind of energy and gives it more emotional depth yet always keeps it playful.

Crafted entirely on an analog monophonic synthesizer with no overdubs, Pièces Monophoniques is a tribute to simplicity in an era of limitless digital possibilities. Since his debut album, Music For Prophet (Les Disques du Festival Permanent, 2017), Majorca-born composer Marc Melià, now a long-time resident of Brussels, has been redefining the contours of electronic music through a minimalist, reductionist approach. Much like a solitary hike through the vastness of mountains, where one carries only the essentials, Melià’s work invites listeners on a journey stripped of excess, focusing instead on the purity of sound and intention.
While some have dismissed monophonic music as overly simplistic, others have embraced its distinct charm. Historical records, such as those by Johannes Quasten, reveal that early Church leaders were drawn to monophonic music because it resonated with the era's cosmological beliefs, highlighting the harmony and unity of all creation. In an age of digital abundance, Marc Melià deliberately embraces constraint, crafting an album that thrives within a limited palette of choices. Yet, from these self-imposed boundaries emerges a stunning universe, brimming with rich textures and elegant harmonies. For his debut album, Melià worked exclusively with a Sequential Prophet. With Pièces Monophoniques, his third LP, he returns armed solely with an analog monophonic synthesizer and handcrafted MIDI sequences etched directly onto a single stereo track. These recordings seek to uncover beauty within the boundaries of limitations and simplicity, rejecting any embellishments that are not essential. Melià presents the bare skeleton of music, highlighting the power of absence and silence as creative forces. Like the hidden mass of an iceberg, what is not heard becomes as significant as what is heard.
The album navigates the boundary where the quest for an uninhibited emotional response intersects with the mechanical sounds generated by synthesizer circuitry. Despite being a collection of beatless tracks, a pulse occasionally surfaces, like in the closing piece, "224 Steps. A sharp sequence blended with multiple delays and reverbs creates the vaporous celestial specter of multiple voices in "Illusions of Polyphony", while "Échoes et Fantasies" conjures the illusion of dual harmony. The expansive reverbs and silences between the euphoric synth phrases in "Overture" transport us to an imaginary magestic landscape shaped out of an electric field. "Resonances," a one-note drone-like sequence, embodies the album's aims as a series of resonances created with the synth filter emerge from the fundamental note.
"Pièces Monophoniques," aims to contribute to a tradition that dates back to the dawn of humanity. After all, there is no denying that the earliest music crafted by humanity was monophonic, from the soothing lullabies sung to newborns to Gregorian chants, traditional labor songs, and the repertoire of solo compositions by countless composers.

Spectral Bounce’s fifth instalment comes courtesy of L.A.’s rave archivist and dancefloor operative Dreams, A.K.A. Jesse Pimenta. Throughout his decade-long career the California native has inspected, dissected and concocted all manner of dance musics, leaving his mark with drops on Apron Records, Pinkman, BANK NYC and his own imprint Dance Data. On SPEC05 — Dangerous When Wet — he hijacks the synapses with 4 accomplished productions, plotting a high BPM course through manifold styles using the raw aesthetic that characterises his output.

“Losing Control” is a frenetic dancefloor invitation, immediately locking into a pacing groove. Beneath wild hand drums, Dreams plays with an insistent 303 bassline alternating between rasping buzz and oily squelch, while stern vocals are layered on top of breaks that have been processed to a viscerally satisfying end.

Taking things from delirious dance circle to underwater biosphere, the EP’s eponymous track explores a submerged 1980s Miami. Weighty & enveloping, “Dangerous When Wet” is pure aquatic pop-n-lock — hydraulic electro for a drowned world. Ocean floor caustics are transmuted into auditory form: arpeggios bubble up; drones shimmer mystically; hi-hats hiss like air from an open valve. Amongst the sonar bleeps, a barrage of pummeling low-end is sure to give subwoofers a workout.

“XTC Messenger” delivers an infectious paranoid dispatch, astutely balancing the sensual with the deranged. A slow-mo dial tone unfolds languidly, running counter to nervously twitching high frequencies. Its punchy percussion is tuned for maximum dopamine release; the track’s abrupt vocal chops and mechanical kick-snare pulsation evoke the leather jackets and jagged edges of 1980s industrial discotheque.

“Pressure Points” closes the EP on a heady and mesmerising polymetric trip. The parting track is a lithe yet spacious number, propelled by a rattling break. Here Dreams follows from track 2, creating an immersive environment in which sounds tightly twist and twirl. Shifting oscillators call out like tiny creatures as the bass throbs and wriggles further into your brain, long after the needle hits the runout groove.

The first in a proposed series of transmissions, Surface Detail's mystifying debut introduces an incorporeal body that exists only through sound and sensation, prompting listeners to discern a spiritual realm beyond the physical. Its surging electro-acoustic compositions push past the material world to plunge into deeper sonic dimensions, slowly revealing a philosophy borne of near-death and out-of-body experiences that challenges perception itself.

Overhauling vintage experimental techniques with their bespoke modern methodologies and processes, Surface Detail rearrange the musical timeline, merging vastly different concepts to hint at questions rather than provide solid answers. Their uniquely immersive soundscapes use texture, rhythm and tonality to help brush away the superficial and contemplate the unknown, approaching its delicate, controversial subject matter with sensitivity and sensuality. Not just an auditory experience, 'Surface Detail' tests the potential of sound itself, eliciting visceral physical reactions with its uncanny subtleties.

Those principles are divulged immediately on opening track 'Marée Noire', as breathy saxophone notes loops and swirl over cosmic oscillations and microtonally tuned drones. It's music that cracks open a passage that snakes through various genres, suggesting silhouettes rather than affirming banal musical preconceptions. Skeletal rhythms appear in the ether for only a moment, disappearing into the sonic landscape, and Surface Detail's bespoke instrumentation materializes just to bring out the cellular intricacy of the music, concentrating the gaze on microscopic textures and irregularities that discompose the senses. As the album drifts forward, it bends material reality even further: on 'Southern Breach', warm, lower-register organ tones intermingle with sinewy guitar twangs, evaporating into warped, hypnotic oscillations and eerie echoes; and by 'Superbook of the Dead', the conspicuous details have almost disappeared completely, replaced by subterranean clangs, industrial ambience and other-worldly electrical interference.

It's in this way that Surface Detail softly assert their convictions, insinuating a narrative that subliminally ushers listeners down an hypnagogic River Styx by removing all traces of the familiar. On closing track 'Broken Silicates', distant lullabies, dissociated stutters and ghostly woodwind sounds blot fractal patterns on the wide open space, reincarnating the album in a liminal zone that's not constrained by somatic logic. Whisper quiet and utterly beguiling, it transcends material existence, dissolving barriers between surface and depth.

'the fun years', comprised of multi-instrumentalists Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks, have been making music together since the turn of the century, producing intriguing interrogations of ambient, drone, post-rock, and turntablism. Originally released in 2008 on the now-defunct Barge Recordings, 'baby it’s cold inside' is perhaps the high watermark of their discography. Equally concerned with microtonal nuance and harmonic intensity, it is both a product of its time and something well past it. The chief protagonist is surely the turntable, deployed to create woolly, evocative loops from unidentifiable source material that recall, at times, the work of Philip Jeck or Jan Jelinek—churning, roiling, hissing, atrophied textures further articulated with nuanced processing and buoyed by baritone guitar drones and anti-riffing.

The title of opener "my lowville" feels like a wink to the famed slowcore duo, with spare post-rock motifs hovering in a dusty ether, slowly consumed by distorted washes of rich, harmonic sound. One of the most satisfying aspects of the album is that despite the recumbent nature of most of their sound design choices and compositional proclivities, Recht and Sparks are loath to sit still. "auto show of the dead" is a serpentine piano/guitar exploration full of subtle detail, preceding the immaculately titled "fucking milwaukee’s been hesher forever," in which the tactile delights of clicks+cuts are liberated from the laboratory and allowed to slum it in the world of tape gunk and '90s plate reverb. Later, "re: we’re again buried under" presents an inky black ambience that feels truly expansive and almost overwhelming, and closer “The Surge is Working” tears apart an anthemic shoegaze dirge at the seams, leaving only billowing filtered noise and negative space in its wake.

Presented here with a brilliant remaster by LUPO, 'baby it’s cold Inside should be considered alongside records like Belong’s October Language and Polmo Polpo’s Like Hearts Swelling—an arresting early aughts ambient marvel that warrants ongoing investigation.

In a world where physical experiences are becoming rarer, artists are looking to connect their process to something more tangible, and with A/V rinsed, scent is an obvious next sense to plunder. Florian TM Zeisig - who last appeared on Somewhere Press as Angel R, goes the extra mile, teaming up with perfumer Angel Paradise to develop a suite of music that plays like a bouquet of memory-triggering aromas, coupled with a fragrance that captures the oily essence of their bucolic alpine setting. The project came about when both artists were living in Hinang, a small farming village in the rural Bavarian alps. Paradise was studying alpine plant behaviour and using her research to inform her approach to scent creation, developing natural perfumes based on the landscape. Zeisig, meantime, composed his own response to the mountains and forests that surrounded them. He wrote ‘Spool’ as a poignant farewell (or spiritual rebirth) as they prepared to leave, considering teenage nostalgia as well as the idyllic locale, and the pastoral suite of lulled loops, field recordings and dissociated instrumental vamps plays like a contemporary Heimatfilme soundtrack, locking into the genre’s idyllic, fantastical simplicity and romance. Drunken horn loops and mushy piano chords concertina around a wobbly axis on ‘Oneandhalf’, met by dreamy guitars and whispered, lysergic vocals. The sweet-smelling notes form an enigmatic compound, prompting us to think of Codeine or Galaxie 500 without solidifying completely. It’s music that works with outlines and traces, catching us off guard with flickers of samples and veiled base notes: the Cocteau Twins-like phased piano on ‘Threeandhalf’ that’s drowned out by gunked tape fog, or the smudges of ‘Spirit of Eden’ ambience on ‘Alright’ that creep between tweezed piano phrases. There’s depth too; Zeisig doesn’t restrict himself to Romance-cum-Basinski loopmuzak, he intersperses his GASeous orchestral waves with serene, relatively demure reflections that capture the pristine beauty of a dewy alpine morning. ‘Four’ is an ASMR-rich blend of crunching leaves and mossy, decelerated pads, and ‘Plus’ burns its drones down to crackling embers, letting the faint harmonies flicker through the coal dust. Importantly, it’s emotional music, but not overly melodramatic, finding peace in nostalgia and the calm of nature.

This edition explores identity, presence and the fragmentation of self.
It features a standout work by iconic Los Angeles photographer Parker Day, whose hyper-saturated portraits dissect the construction of persona and the tension between surface and essence.
Design is handled by legendary New York illustrator Braulio Amado, injecting the project with bold typographic energy and haunting visual language.

The zine includes poetry by Cristiano Grim, alongside original music by:
Foie Gras – drone and reimagined Americana from San Francisco / Los Angeles
Machino – Mexican electronic producer out of LA, blending distorted guitars, psychedelic riffs, and cinematic pulse into a sound that feels like driving through a neon fever dream
Valley Latini – dark Latin pop performer from New York
David Oliver Rose – post-punk rude boy from New York
Nick Hadad – dark ambient producer based in New York

FAKE4-MASK VS PERSONA presents a 25-page, 11x11” offset-printed, paired with a 12” 180g vinyl record featuring all contributing artists.
Audio mastering by Spaventi Studio.
It operates as both an aesthetic object and a critical inquiry, merging the disciplines of literature, music, photography, and design into a single act of publication as performance.

On their debut album Seven Dances to Embrace the Hollow, Zurich-based artists Magda Drozd and Nicola Genovese, as Sopraterra, offer exactly what’s announced: seven compositions which, as they unhurriedly flow into each other, mark potential entry points to discover what might be lying underneath. By choosing Sopraterra, which translates to “above the earth” in Italian, as their shared project’s name, Drozd and Genovese indicate their own position in this archeological-looking endeavor, hinting at the potential for sonic explorations to produce deeply submerged discoveries.
Sopraterra’s object of inquiry isn’t easily grasped, traversing histories and blending influences alike. In a time-line-bending manner, musical signifiers from the past, along with specific tonal scales lifted from baroque and medieval music, get digitally synthesized. As sonic matter, the result is distinctly of today: a collection of electro-acoustic compositions that remain experimental at their core, referencing genres like post-rock, shoegaze, or psychedelic, while evoking aural memories of ancient times. Seven Dances to Embrace the Hollow pulls backward and pushes forward alike. Without ever forcing a didactic listening experience, musical motifs and archetypes are thoroughly investigated. But there is no scientific ambition at play here. Rather, the harmonies of late medieval Ars Nova or the transcendent elegance of Baroque chamber music lend their emotional qualities to perceived ideas of old times.
Oscillating between ambient and drone, the album’s seven brooding compositions bring primal connections to a universally shared past to the surface. In its multi-directional positioning, Seven Dances to Embrace the Hollow makes the case for embracing the confusion of warped time and paying attention to all that’s rather felt than seen.

Emerging from the Minneapolis underground and heading straight towards the sky, IE arrive on Quindi with a full-length album of sparkling, sophisticated wonder. Touching on kosmische grandeur, Riley-esque cyclical patterns, lounge pop and dubbed out psychedelia, the five-piece allow their songs to unfurl with a natural, hypnotic elegance which can take many different forms.
There's a loose, live quality to the recordings IE's members commit to record, which reflects their steady presence gigging in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Since putting out their first release in 2016, they've glided from drone and synth-led jam band ambience (2018's Pome) to strung out, stoner-tinted slowcore (on 2023's outstanding Junk Body). For Reverse Earth they strike a smoky note that wraps itself around your skull across extended run times that evolve with a meditative poise.
From the deceptively driving 4/4 thrum of the opening title track through 'Divination Bag's snaking tryptamine mantras on to 'Simplify's slow and smouldering indie-soul, IE's sound is bathed in a sumptuous warm glow that rounds out the lows and the mids, creating a nocturnal shroud in which their nebulous song structures can feel deliciously endless.
Meredith Gill's drums provide rolling and tumbling undercurrents for the slowly shifting phases of the instrumental players, as Michael Gallope and Travis Workman trade keyboard parts and Workman and Sam Molstad chop and pick at their six-strings. Atop the thrum of her bass, Mariel Oliviera's vocal adapts to the scenery, from a distant, dreamlike siren song on 'Reverse Earth' to a spoken word meditation on 'Babel'.
There's space in each track for every instrument to cut through and have its moment, from a spiralling key vamp to a chicken-scratch guitar flex. The gently twisting, head-feeding groove exercises of the first four tracks give way to a slow and powerful march on 'Dark Rome', closing the record on a noirish anti-ballad fit to peal out in the closing slot at Twin Peaks' Roadhouse (circa season three).
As much as the tracks teem with composition, musicianship, and production to savor, a sound like IE's has a soporific quality that soaks in unconsciously. It's an evocative portal where the band feel as if they could just play on each piece ad infinitum - where the time itself seems to dislodge from its moorings.

Ziúr lines up with The Tapeworm for an exclusive cassette-only release featuring Kenichi Iwasa, exploring the electroacoustic realms.

Invited to perform solo at Tarek Atoui's performance series at Kunsthaus Bregenz in October 2024, Ziúr decided to write a new piece for the occasion. This composition, 'Turn Liquid Into Dust', was then performed within the framework of Tarek Atoui's 'Waters' Witness' exhibition as an 8-channel spacial audio piece, transmitting sounds through the installation's structure – metal bars, stones, compost piles… Composed in London in autumn 2024, its principal source of sonic material is recordings of Atoui's instruments which Ziúr had recorded in his studio in Paris during the summer of 2024. In addition, she invited the Japanese woodwind player and virtuoso Kenichi Iwasa to join on all pieces, his contribution providing a binding element, tying the pieces together.

Opener 'A Cold Drip' consists solely of Iwasa's spectral squalls. The tense noir drone of 'Long Call' features a string instrument built by Atoui. For the airy yet dense title track, Ziúr recorded an organ named The Reed Box, with Iwasa floating atop its smoggy soundbed. Closer 'Chips 'n' Crumbles' echos and reverberates with the rattles of household items Ziúr found around her home.

Driven by a relentless appetite for boundless experimentation, Ziúr has been subverting expectations since she was a teenager, corkscrewing through hardcore, metal and punk before veering towards electronic music's turbulent fringes. She produces just like she DJs, gathering a wide variety of ingredients and figuring out the most intriguing, unexpected ways to simmer them into a coherent narrative that helps listeners synchronize the conflicting messages that surround them. Genre isn't a fixed point for Ziúr, but a colour in a vast palette that stretches across history and borders, helping illustrate music that's powerfully subversive. Her The Tapeworm edition follows acclaimed recordings for Planet Mu, PAN, Objects Limited and Hakuna Kulala.

Kenichi Iwasa is a London-based improviser and multidisciplinary artist from Japan, also known for his legendary Krautrock Karaoke night as well as collaborations with visual artists and musicians such as Beatrice Dillon, Maxwell Sterling and Linder Sterling. He currently performs with Naima Karlsson under the name Exotic Sin.

Audiophile 180g Vinyl 33RPM LP
All Analogue Mastering by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering!

Pressed at RTI
Impex Treatment packaging featuring a 4-page heavy-stock booklet with rare photos and new historical notes by producer/author/historian Charles L. Granata



"Although Donovan had already captivated listeners with hits like 'Sunshine Superman' (a #1 Billboard Hot 100 hit in September of 1966) and 'Mellow Yellow' (#2 on the chart in December of that year), it's The Hurdy Gurdy Man issued in the fall of '68 that became a benchmark of the psychedelic era. The album artfully captured the essence of the moment with its fresh, smart and stylistic approach to songwriting, endearing melange of rock, pop, drone, folk, world and jazz overtones (coupled with deeper psychological undertones, i.e. transcendental consciousness and a yearning for an 'ideal' world).

"Musically, Donovan and producer Mickie Most made liberal use of multiple feels inspired by a wide range of styles, most remarkably the drone: a harmonic effect in which a note or chord is continuously repeated throughout a composition and commonly forms the tonality on which the piece is built. This brought an unusual and memorable quality to many tunes on the album, as did Donovan's whimsical, spiritual-esque vocals. Then, too, both 'The Hurdy Gurdy Man' and its namesake album reflect a tougher rock sound than the singer's earlier recordings."

—Charles S. Granata

Our AAA HQ-180 33.3-rpm LP was mastered from Epic Records' analog master tapes by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, plated and pressed at RTI for flat and silent surfaces and incredible detail. The 4-page insert features a new appreciation by producer, author, and historian Charles S. Granata that puts in context the positive effects of Donovan's clever, innovative writing and performances.

“Egypt’s “official” popular music throughout much of the 20th Century was a complex form of art song steeped in tradition, well-loved by the middle and upper classes, and even accommodating to certain non-Arabic influences. It was highly structured by professional musicians working an established industry centered in the capitol, Cairo. However, far from the bustling cosmopolitan center of Cairo, north and northwest, in towns like Tanta and Alexandria and extending across the Saharan Desert to the Libyan border, dozens of fully marginalized artists were developing a raw, hybrid shaabi/al-musiqa al-shabiya style of music, supported by smaller upstart, independent labels, including the short-lived but deeply resonant Bourini Records. Launched in the late 1960s in Benghazi, Libya, Astuanat al-Bourini اسطوانات البوريني (Bourini Records) published some 40 to 50 titles from 1968 to 1975. Bourini released 7-inch 45 RPM singles by 15 artists, all but one of them Egyptian, igniting brief careers for Alexandrian singer Sheikh Amin Abdel Qader and the blind Bedouin legend Abu Bakr Abdel Aziz (aka Abu Abab). The tracks compiled here comprise a full range of styles covered by the label, while highlighting some of its most gobsmacking moments, from Basis Rahouma’s beastly transformation into a growling and barking man-lion by the end of “Yana Alla Nafsa Masouda,” to Reem Kamal’s hopeful-if-bitter handclapping party pivot “Baed Al Yas Yjini,” which descends into an almost Velvet Underground outro-groove of nihilistic dissonance. All the tracks on this compilation were laid down in stark divergence from the mainstream Egyptian popular music topography of heightened emotions buoyed by lush arrangements. The contrast is most evident in Mahmoud al-Sandidi’s “Ana Mish Hafwatak,” wherein his voice weaves heavily but deftly through a constant accordion drone, and Abu Abab’s “Al Bint al Libya,” a sparse, slow-burning lament with minimal percussion, violin, and Abab’s nephew Hamed Abdel Muna'im Mursi on lyre. Whereas the Egyptian mainstream was aspirational, attempting to reflect Egyptian culture at its most refined, the performances captured by Bourini were manifestations of everyday life lived by the mostly otherwise ignored masses. More than half century old, this music has lost none of its urgency, presence, or relevance. We hear these artists as if they’d just joined us in our living room, and not on a stage decades ago surrounded by tens of thousands of long-forgotten acolytes.

“On course towards future raucous, beer-soaked headline festival
sets.” - NME
“Screw-you power, relentless motorik rhythms and impressively large
choruses.” - The Guardian
“Unrelenting, gritty energy” - Daily Star
Sprints unearth their frenzied new EP, ‘Manifesto’, out via Nice Swan
Records.
Produced by Daniel Fox of Girl Band - Dublin’s answer to Steve Albini
- the four tracks make for a hard-hitting gloom-punk journey you
can’t miss. Like the Irish guitar acts who have paved the way for
them - Fontaines D.C., Silverbacks and Girl Band - Sprints sound
urgent and vital at every turn.
‘Swimming’ is a confluence of rabble-rousing stadium rock, sleazy
garage rock and Sonic Youth experimentation. Lyrically, there’s a lot
to hang on to too, which is unsurprising given how topical the band
are: ‘Drones’ took on imposter syndrome; ‘Manifesto’ tackled
homophobia.
‘Swimming’ scorns on the increasing lack of opportunity after
following prescribed paths to become society’s idea of a ‘success’.
Sprints singer Karla Chubb explains: “While the homeless crisis
worsens, the city is sinking in debt and everyone can barely keep
their heads above water, you see an article stating that a new €25
million white water rafting centre is being developed after approval
by Dublin City Council. Sometimes you’d just rather drown.”
Sprints have hit a nerve. The velocity of this argument comes from
personal anguish but will chime with a generation. And with such
honesty running through their core it’s no wonder The Guardian,
NME and BBC Radio 1 and 6Music have tipped them for big things.
Tourdates - October 7 Roisin Dubh Galway, 8 Kasbah Limerick, 9 The
Grand Social Dublin, 21 The Waiting Room London, 23 Heartbreakers
Southampton, 26 Sneaky Pete’s Edinburgh, 27 The Attic Glasgow, 28 The
Castle Manchester, 30 The Sunflower Lounge Birmingham, 31 Bootleg Social
Blackpool, November 2 Surf Cafe Newcastle, 3 Sidney & Matilda Sheffield, 6
Mutations Festival Brighton, 7 Festival of Voice Cardiff, 9 The Shipping
Forecast Liverpool, 10 Oporto Leeds.

Every so often an album of such deceptive genius, of such aesthetic clarity, comes across our desk and transfixes us. Thought Leadership's III Of Pentacles is one such work of art. It's an instant classic and glides into the pantheon of timeless guitar-soul totems. Originally out on cassette only, we present the first ever vinyl issue. It's a hideously limited pressing of 300 for the world, so don't sleep on this.

Thought Leadership has already garnered big support from such tastemakers as Ruf Dug, Jason Boardman, Nathan Gregory Wilkins, J Walk, Evan Woodward, Justin Robertson and Heavenly's Jeff Barrett. The first time we heard III Of Pentacles, we nearly wept at the thought that something so beautiful, so bursting with real hope, could even exist in this brutal world. To quote the Quietus, "imagine if Stockport was situated somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway rather than the M60, and you’ll have some idea of the coordinates to the post-industrial, sunburnt dream space opened up here."

So, who is Thought Leadership? What do we know about them? They reside in Stockport and are obsessed with ethereal guitar records. That’s about it. That and these X ideas shared with you, the listener.

Captured on a multitrack recorder in a terraced house in Stockport, this is as DIY as it gets. Glaringly obvious is a love for classic Factory and early 4AD. Perhaps it is the proximity to the River Mersey where the ideas arrived, and there being but three miles between where this and the Durutti Column’s classic “LC” was recorded, as the two operate across a familiar aural plain. Be it geographic or otherwise, limited by a true economy of means, namely guitar, pedals and drum machine, the fruit borne from these humble tools has been indelibly shaped by the perma-gloom that hangs low over the Manchester and Stockport environs.

Ushered in on 808 kicks, “I” opens the record as a beautiful Sketch for Stockport; a chiming maj7 chord dripping in chorus and delay sets us on our way. The Vini Reilly comparisons are unavoidable. “II” is all John McGeoch, with its trippy goth-psyche arpeggiated pattern cascading across the stereo image. Do those drums swing? But goths don’t swing?! They do here. We’re treated to a bit of crunch on the lead guitar part and some really lush reverb. We even step forth into shoegaze territory, albeit briefly, for the middle eight. “III”, a firm Be With favourite, continues the dreamy psyche leanings of the previous track, with an even bigger melody this time. We’re hearing The Teardrop Explodes on quaaludes here. A proto-dream pop cut soaked in melancholy. But watch out! The coda finds Johnny Marr has gotten into the ‘ludes and gatecrashed the final bars with some incredibly ignorant B minor pentatonic noodling.

“IV” ditches the drum machine for the first in a suite of three beatless electric guitar duets. The first of these semi-improvised rubato ideas is a striking departure from the earlier playful pieces, coming over emo and moody. Greyscale sulking for Stratocaster. Sign us up. “V” contains some really lyrical phrasing; a gorgeous conversation between two guitars. Real Stopfordian Primitive; meditative, crude, rain-soaked. We cycle through the same feels, then end on an alluring chord that breaks the pattern. Sometimes thoughts are like this. “VI” creeps in all plaintive, then a huge reverberating descending guitar line comes tumbling in like something off those classic Dif Juz 12”s. There’s some Maurice Deebank in there too, for sure, and the coda nods to early Meat Puppets.

“VII” rounds out the A Side, and succinctly presents a summary of all ideas explored thus far on our journey. The drum machine is back, this time with some wispy delay, before both guitars enter together playing interlocking lines. As we start, we end, with the delayed 808 guiding us out.

Opening Side B, “VIII” sees us embark on the other side of our journey as we slow down and space out. The drum machine is here, but the guitars are different now. Think Sensations Fix or Göttsching at his most peeled out. Drones, ambient drifts of broken chords and distorted lead lines all swirl round the mix. Side B is one for headphones for sure. “IX” is almost too exquisite for words. A New Age Mixolydian voyage through the cosmos. If you’re unmoved by the end you’ve probably got no pulse. We were left blunted ineffable by this one, such is the smudged elegance radiating from this idea. All hail the Thought Leader.

“X” is a full circle moment, and a fitting end. If you’ve not already elsewhere across the platter, you will be getting heavy Robin Guthrie vibes from this piece. Like the rest of Side B, this improvised jam sticks within a framework of related chords but the celestial energies channelled might invite us to wander “outside”, especially when the Tubescreamer is engaged.

RIYL Durutti Coulmn, Cocteau Twins, Dif Juz, Sensations Fix, Spike and adjacent guitar musicks – but, ultimately, this is just its own thing; such is the strength of ideas presented. "It’s good music to chill out to." (??)

Be With is honoured to present the first ever vinyl release of III Of Pentacles, carefully remastered by Be With's engineer Simon Francisco to ensure it sounds better than ever after its initial tape release. Cicely Balston's expert skills have made sure nothing is lost in the cut whilst the records have been pressed to the highest possible standard at Record Industry, in Holland. The original tape cover artwork, so crucial to Thought Leadership's striking visual aesthetic, has been rejigged for vinyl issue here at Be With. Its stark presentation befits the music contained within. They inform us that they shuffled their tarot deck to ask what the album should be called and the card you see on the cover popped out. The III Of Pentacles tarot card represents teamwork, shared vision and the ability to achieve goals through collaboration. We like to think Thought Leadership and Be With have nailed this one.

On April 4th, Brighton-based Australian vocalist, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Penelope Trappes will release her fifth full-length album ‘A Requiem’. It comes alongside news of her signing to London imprint, One Little Independent Records. ‘A Requiem’ collects ten haunting, ambient soundscapes - incantations of dreams and nightmares, of death and grief, as well as power and autonomy. Carnal, transcendent cello drones are used to exorcise historical and generational traumas in an evocative and macabre piece of gothic experimentalism.

Seeking solitude for what she knew would be an intense and cathartic writing experience, Trappes travelled to Scotland and isolated completely. Amidst meditative and psychedelic states, she channeled demons and accessed parts of herself she’d long desired to cleanse. During candle-lit recording sessions she found herself drawn to cello, an instrument she has no formal training in, she explains, “I always felt an affinity toward the cello, I embraced it, held it, and became one with it as a way to accompany my voice. The nerve-like strings of the cello became external chords of my vocal folds… I scratched on them, leaned into them, and conjured all of the textures I could muster”.

‘A Requiem’ is a musical service in honour of the dead, a sanctuary Trappes built for herself to explore familial chaos and history. “I was looking for an equilibrium between a ‘heaven' and a ‘hell’” she explains, “screaming out to the wisdom of our foremothers - surfacing and leading me into true strength and beauty. I listened to the sorrow closely. Death is a part of our reality. Inevitable. Omnipresent. But nightmares can be beautiful”.

She continues, “This album is my personal requiem for my parents, my ties to the land where I was born, along with all of my epigenetically connected ancestors before them. The songs helped me summon up the strength to move through my own awareness of mortality, death, and impending loss. This album is a living funeral. It’s a ceremonial collection of music. It’s an externalising of the power and strength to fight the generations of abuse and darkness that my parents self-admittedly played out in their parenting and to keep it away from my own social patterns and my psyche. It’s not an uncommon thing in the world and this lamented warcry goes out to everyone to help exorcise patriarchal, political, and religious systems of abuses of power”.

j.o.y.s. is both the moniker of and the debut self-titled LP by the Los Angeles based artist Ramon Narvaez. j.o.y.s. is an acronym for “jump out of your skin”. While the phrase can conjure moments of shock and surprise, Narvaez, however uses the phrase as a foot lamp illuminating a path towards momentary transcendence through creating beautifully conjured ambient music that recalls work by Daniel Lanois, suss, Dean Hurley and Tim Hecker. While the pedal steel is prominent, j.o.y.s., as a project, is more in conversation with shoegaze and noise than what has recently been deemed ambient country. Heavy brutalist slabs of noise, swirling feedback create the sound bed of these songs. Collaborator Justin Gaynor’s pedal steel on this album operates as important connective tissue as both the road and the traveler between the light and shadow zones. Drones are wrapped in distortion, processed just below the threshold where we’d throw the word “harsh” around. Rather, there is a delicate dance between Gaynor’s top-rope pedal steel lines - always sweet and always just a bit mournful - with Narvaez’s ringing bass notes and noise chatter. j.o.y.s. revels in intransigence. Nothing can last. As Matt Colquhoun puts in the introduction to Mark Fisher’s heartbreaking Ghosts of My Life - our identity and relationship to the past are “portals in perpetual collapse”. Depression, friendship, longing are all briefly satiated while in the peak experience of creating something as a response to them. But even that is impermanent. These sounds - improvised, exploratory, ecstatic - are eventually edited, whittled down and pressed to wax - not tombs but portals to the past.

London-based vocal and electronic collective NYX have announced their long-anticipated eponymous debut album, to be released digitally and on vinyl on 28th March 2025 via their own label, NYX Collective Records.

Alongside today’s news, they’ve also shared the first single, “Daughters”: a hair-raising, untamed cry that surrenders to the intensity of the human experience. With the lead vocal recorded in a beach-side kitchen in New Zealand, cicadas bleed through the soaring chant and heavy, visceral drums. The track opens soft and earnest, expanding in their rage, resilience, and liberation, transforming pain into a re-wilding of the spirit, a celebration of their collective power.

NYX say of the track: "Daughters” is an initiation into the underworld - an invitation to come face to face with our losses. To look towards the shame, rage, and pain embedded in our bodies, and open through the fear that has closed down our throats. These are our wild voices that want to be heard and loved - by ourselves, by our pack."

NYX is the result of years of collaboration and transformation, reflecting the collective’s signature blend of experimental vocal techniques and electronic alchemy. NYX’s debut album pulses with primal energy and delicate introspection, weaving together the ancient and the futuristic. It’s a spellbinding journey through the human experience, crafted not just to be heard, but also deeply felt.

The album brings together the group's full evolution and experimentation, collaborators on the album include sound designer, composer and NYX string player Alicia Jane Turner, harpist Miriam Adefris, as well as additional drums and production by Memory Play and Sebastian Gainsbourgh (Vessel), artwork by NYX member Shireen Qureshi, co-produced by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry.

NYX showcases the choir's far-reaching emotional breadth. The introduction, “Mother”, is inspired by the first chapter of the foundational work of Taoism, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. In this, NYX’s opening prayer, the listener finds themselves in a swelling crescendo of NYX’s all-encompassing vocals and synth drones. The album spirals through swirling loops of haunting voices and layered strings that come together like crashing waves, bursting through in feral upheaval. “Through Fire” and “Daughters” erupt into heart-wrenching post-apocalyptic chorus and pounding bass-heavy drums, then slip into a blissful sound bath, “Awe”, whose choir harmonies layered with lush harps radiate pure wonderment, and the closing track, a cover of Suicide’s 1979 “Dream Baby Dream”, dissolves into reverberating echoes. NYX leaves an indelible mark, reminding us of the radical potential of healing and love.

In Greek mythology, NYX is the primordial goddess of the night, born from chaos giving birth to light and day. Inspired by this duality, NYX’s music harnesses the voice as a limitless medium for profound emotion, capturing the vast spectrum of human experience with power and authenticity.

London-based vocal and electronic collective NYX have announced their long-anticipated eponymous debut album, to be released digitally and on vinyl on 28th March 2025 via their own label, NYX Collective Records.

Alongside today’s news, they’ve also shared the first single, “Daughters”: a hair-raising, untamed cry that surrenders to the intensity of the human experience. With the lead vocal recorded in a beach-side kitchen in New Zealand, cicadas bleed through the soaring chant and heavy, visceral drums. The track opens soft and earnest, expanding in their rage, resilience, and liberation, transforming pain into a re-wilding of the spirit, a celebration of their collective power.

NYX say of the track: "Daughters” is an initiation into the underworld - an invitation to come face to face with our losses. To look towards the shame, rage, and pain embedded in our bodies, and open through the fear that has closed down our throats. These are our wild voices that want to be heard and loved - by ourselves, by our pack."

NYX is the result of years of collaboration and transformation, reflecting the collective’s signature blend of experimental vocal techniques and electronic alchemy. NYX’s debut album pulses with primal energy and delicate introspection, weaving together the ancient and the futuristic. It’s a spellbinding journey through the human experience, crafted not just to be heard, but also deeply felt.

The album brings together the group's full evolution and experimentation, collaborators on the album include sound designer, composer and NYX string player Alicia Jane Turner, harpist Miriam Adefris, as well as additional drums and production by Memory Play and Sebastian Gainsbourgh (Vessel), artwork by NYX member Shireen Qureshi, co-produced by Marta Salogni and mastered by Heba Kadry.

NYX showcases the choir's far-reaching emotional breadth. The introduction, “Mother”, is inspired by the first chapter of the foundational work of Taoism, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching. In this, NYX’s opening prayer, the listener finds themselves in a swelling crescendo of NYX’s all-encompassing vocals and synth drones. The album spirals through swirling loops of haunting voices and layered strings that come together like crashing waves, bursting through in feral upheaval. “Through Fire” and “Daughters” erupt into heart-wrenching post-apocalyptic chorus and pounding bass-heavy drums, then slip into a blissful sound bath, “Awe”, whose choir harmonies layered with lush harps radiate pure wonderment, and the closing track, a cover of Suicide’s 1979 “Dream Baby Dream”, dissolves into reverberating echoes. NYX leaves an indelible mark, reminding us of the radical potential of healing and love.

In Greek mythology, NYX is the primordial goddess of the night, born from chaos giving birth to light and day. Inspired by this duality, NYX’s music harnesses the voice as a limitless medium for profound emotion, capturing the vast spectrum of human experience with power and authenticity.

“Eerie, wailing sounds over distorted feedback drones… Vibrato-heavy harmonies chirrup and throb in agonisingly slow motion.”
The Guardian, Album of the Month

“Cinematic...carefully orchestrated...delicately explores unfamiliar territory with uncanny finesse.”
The Wire

Acclaimed Icelandic theremin musician Hekla returns with Turnar, her third album of devastatingly heavy, spectral soundscape-songwriting, entering a sublime paranormal plane of haunting dread.

Now augmenting her virtuosic solo theremin work with cello, voice, and the sacred church organ of Icelandic master Kristján Hrannar, the evolution of Hekla’s unique magic summons new worlds with Turnar. The album was recorded partly in (and named after) a medieval castle tower in rural France, its ruinous black broken in spare beams of angelic stained-glass light. But, writes Hekla, “the sound of theremin kind of opens up a portal into a new realm that both looks into a dark old world and to the future.” The record is an alternately beautiful and crushing space voyage into a glacial underworld cascading with phosphorescence and cave drip, conjuring ancient choral ritual just as readily as redolent sci-fi gloam.

Opener “Inni” begins with swooning and shimmering lines of theremin that shiver with electrified energy before subfrequency bass elevates them into a glowing plasma, hovering above a crystallised surf. Key moment “Gráminn” wails with ghostly harmonics while distorted drones crash together in a stormy and blackened netherworld sea. It traces a neat progression from Hekla’s last album - the acclaimed Xiuxiuejar - while also welcoming an expanded timbral palette and flourishing compositional confidence. At the end of side A, “Var” delicately places sonic artefacts about a desolate negative space, creating a dense inverse gravity. As with the rest of the record, a claustrophobic gauze hangs over music that could otherwise be called subverted songwriting, aligning Hekla’s sonics with avant-garde, musique concréte and sound-art.

Second VHF solo LP from the Pelt/Black Twigs mainstay, following 2022’s acclaimed “Evening Measures.” “April is Passing” builds on the striking solo Hardanger-style fiddle performances on the previous LP to take the music even further out, with deep drones and extended techniques defining a vocabulary that is Americana-adjacent, but a unique and special sound that Mike is pursuing almost alone. Joined on selected tracks by Cara Gangloff’s Sruti and Kaily Shenker’s sonorous Cello, the all-original, all-live performances are resonant with both overt melody and a cloud of thick string overtones, whether on the more upbeat tunes like “Ironto Dancer” or the epic 11+ minute LP closer “Helen’s Song.” “September Air” is a mournful slow build, the fiddle embroidering a minor-key melody over the drone of the Surti box and a low cello counter point. “A Fallen Palace of Snowville” is a solo performance where the additional sympathetic strings of the hardanger fiddle are strongly heard as a ghostly accompaniment, as Mike’s elegant melody switches back and forth from minor to major. “Helen’s Song” closes side 2 with a complex, ever-changing swirl of melodic and harmonic invention, with Mike’s keening, languorous bowing leading the way through multiple moods and sounds.

A maelstrom of music and metaphysics, a crushing conduit for connection, contemplation and catharsis; ritualistic sludge-metal juggernauts Pothamus return to this plane of existence with new album `Abur', the highly anticipated spiritual successor to their colossal debut, `Raya'. The search for meaning stands central as a pillar of belief in the enigmatic world of Pothamus. Whilst blending eastern philosophy and western esotericism into a unique ontology, the band stay true to the fundamentals of music: sounds, instruments and bodies coming together just as they too drift away. To experience Pothamus is to open yourself to an immersive, out-of-body experience that transcends the ordinary and delves deep into the profound. `Abur', Pothamus' sophomore full-length is an odyssey of truly epic proportions. As well as honing their already formidable live sound in the intervening years, the band have widened their musical palette in order to explore a truly original take on heavy music that steers them ever further away from well-trodden post-metal paths. On `Abur' the Pothamus' signature ritualistic sound is elevated by the glacial sounds of the Surpeti, an drone instrument originating from the Indian subcontinent traditionally used for mantra singing, whilst drummer Van Hulle adds his voice in harmony with guitarist Coussens' to create an astounding richness and depth. Capturing Pothamus at their creative zenith was musical contemporary and close friend Chiaran Verheyden (Psychonaut, Hippotraktor) who recorded, mixed and mastered `Abur'. A 44-minute pilgrimage through nature, animism and the depths of the human soul, `Abur' is Pothamus' answer to the big, existential questions that keep us all awake at night. Titanic, all-consuming heaviness is met with ethereal, airy beauty as the band contemplates the interconnectedness of all things, creating a singular sonic universe balanced perfectly between cosmic creation and absolute destruction. FOR FANS OF: Amenra, Heilung, Om, Wardruna, Briqueville, The Black Heart Rebellion 3-panel gatefold CD + 28 pages booklet, gatefold LP + 28 pages booklet

Ivory coloured vinyl! A maelstrom of music and metaphysics, a crushing conduit for connection, contemplation and catharsis; ritualistic sludge-metal juggernauts Pothamus return to this plane of existence with new album `Abur', the highly anticipated spiritual successor to their colossal debut, `Raya'. The search for meaning stands central as a pillar of belief in the enigmatic world of Pothamus. Whilst blending eastern philosophy and western esotericism into a unique ontology, the band stay true to the fundamentals of music: sounds, instruments and bodies coming together just as they too drift away. To experience Pothamus is to open yourself to an immersive, out-of-body experience that transcends the ordinary and delves deep into the profound. `Abur', Pothamus' sophomore full-length is an odyssey of truly epic proportions. As well as honing their already formidable live sound in the intervening years, the band have widened their musical palette in order to explore a truly original take on heavy music that steers them ever further away from well-trodden post-metal paths. On `Abur' the Pothamus' signature ritualistic sound is elevated by the glacial sounds of the Surpeti, an drone instrument originating from the Indian subcontinent traditionally used for mantra singing, whilst drummer Van Hulle adds his voice in harmony with guitarist Coussens' to create an astounding richness and depth. Capturing Pothamus at their creative zenith was musical contemporary and close friend Chiaran Verheyden (Psychonaut, Hippotraktor) who recorded, mixed and mastered `Abur'. A 44-minute pilgrimage through nature, animism and the depths of the human soul, `Abur' is Pothamus' answer to the big, existential questions that keep us all awake at night. Titanic, all-consuming heaviness is met with ethereal, airy beauty as the band contemplates the interconnectedness of all things, creating a singular sonic universe balanced perfectly between cosmic creation and absolute destruction. FOR FANS OF: Amenra, Heilung, Om, Wardruna, Briqueville, The Black Heart Rebellion 3-panel gatefold CD + 28 pages booklet, gatefold LP + 28 pages booklet

South-London, British-Bengali musician Tara Lily shares her debut album 'Speak In The Dark'. The LP is about "speaking your truth" and combines alternative R&B, jazz, electronica and traditional Indian sounds into a unique fusion. The record, produced by Dom Valentino, features American jazz trumpeter Theo Croker, UK rapper Surya Sen, and Archy Marshall (aka King Krule) on guitar.

Growing up in Peckham as part of a British Bengali family has given Tara Lily a unique perspective on music and global culture. She has spent her life absorbing a multitude of sounds and genres from her surroundings, ranging from electronica to jazz and RnB to traditional Bengali folk music. From training at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music (where she studied jazz piano and voice) to learning Indian classical music and being the first act signed to Motown Records UK. Tara is a musical anomaly.

Debut album from South-London, British-Bengali musician and rising star Tara Lily, featuring American trumpeter Theo Croker & UK rapper Surya Sen
LP produced by Dom Valentino with additional contributions from Bad Sounds, Jaz Lee, Archy Marshall, Chiranjeeb Chakraborty, Akash Parekar, Mei Kerby, Ian Stratford
European Tour supporting JP Cooper (1st week of October, 2024)
UK Tour w/ Juabi - Manchester, Barbican (London) - Sept 2024
Artwork by Jay Vaz (Dreaming Vinyl)
"No Way Out" video shot in association with The North Face in the Himalayas, Nepal. Directed by Siddanth Ghosh
Press support - The Guardian, Evening Standard - "One to watch", Wonderland, ID, Notion, Clash
Radio support - 'Double Time' was track of the week on BBC Radio 1, other spots plays - BBC 6Music, Jazz FM (playlisting), BBC Asian Network, NTS
Recipient of the FAC x Amazon Music - Step Up Fund
Tours - UK, India (Echos Of Earth / Vh1 Supersonic festival / Jazz
Weekender), Nepal, Bangkok, Hong Kong, EU
Festivals - Glastonbury (3 sets - BBC introducing - Televised / Leftfield B2B Billy Bragg / PRS), We Out Here, Shambala, Daytimer Dialled In, Wilderness, Cross The Tracks
Career highlights - SHAKTI JAZZ NTS show, joined King Krule on stage at Apollo Theatre and supported RAYE at the Royal Albert Hall, Jazz Cafe w/ Mahalia, playing live on TV on BBC2 (The Kia Oval)

'Liberamente' is now available for the first time on cassette. Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea create soft-textured and slowly unfolding sonic landscapes, somewhere between guitar-oriented drone music and modern classical. Liberamente is the kind of album that demands attention and patience from the listener, yet it's ultimately a very rewarding one. Stylistically Dawn Chorus and the Infallible Sea sums up several decades of American soundscape and drone music, taking threads from Windy & Carl, Auburn Lull, and Stars of the Lid then weaves them into a contemporary, and sonically adventurous whole. On the surface it suggests simplicity, but dig deeper and the seven pieces on Liberamente reveals a rare compositional dexterity. This is minimalism at its finest.

FELT welcomes back Civilistjävel! with »Följd«, the follow-up to last year’s »Brödföda«. 7 tracks further chronicling his melancholic murk, ever drifting towards that faint dub glow. Features a collaboration with Thomas Bush Jolly Discs.

Uncanny are the nocturnal sounds that ebb patiently from Tomas Bodén and his machines. His music continues to uncover equal parts beauty and dread from isolation, a purposeful slow pace guiding those gentle noises through the arctic air surrounding its author. No matter the weather, these expressions as Civilistjävel! continue to find a loving home on Fergus Jones’s FELT imprint.

On »Följd«, he naturally develops on the inclinations found on »Brödföda«. »XIII«’s unsettling warble melts into the dusky spurts of »XIV«. Further on, the dew-glowed ambience of »XV« precedes »XVI«’s dub trudge which casts a hypnotic grey shadow. »XVII«’s wind-swept acid redux then quietly transitions into the stunning introspective drone of »XVIII« before closer »XIX« comes into view, its positive dawn enacted through Thomas Bush’s croons lilting amongst organs, guitars and tempered sound design.

Civilistjävel! continues to emote a great deal with very little, a reliable abstract practitioner that posits »Följd« as an arresting audio tale within his celebrated oeuvre.

Rauelsson's third solo album for Sonic Pieces focuses on simplicity and minimalism. It recalibrates his love for ambient with an austere approach that conjures an atmosphere of silence and solitude. On Niu, the artist has traded his craft for shimmering layers of sound clusters and electronic editing in favor of a predominantly raw and acoustic recording.

Recorded primarily in Sofia and Berlin and mixed at Saal 3 of Funkhaus Berlin, Niu presents a 9-song journey that includes orchestral compositions, delicate synth miniatures, and sparse brass and woodwind drones with room for spoken word and a hint of psychedelic noir fable. The result is an album that, despite the eclectic choice of instrumentation, paints a landscape of spiritual clarity; an album that without being typically classical, still feels like a classical album. Three themes vary across the 9 pieces, starting with the purely orchestral "Prelude No. 7" before moving on to airy synth bass arpeggio and pedal steel. With more changing instruments, Raúl next takes us into a fairytale flute composition with guest flutist Heather Woods Broderick and brass vibrations by the trio Zinc & Copper. Finally, Katrine Grarup Elbo recites a poem by Raúl, ending the piece on a somber but beautiful note. The rest of the album continues in this vein, creating a unique sound that surprises the listener at every turn. Niu is a real departure from the artist's previous works in both scope and musicality. Everything was recorded without overdubs and with only minimal editing, trying to preserve the feeling of music coming from a room where musicians play live. Overall, this is music that finds comfort in movement as much as in pause and silence; music in which tenderness and tension exist in the same gesture.

The album also follows a certain mysticism with its poetic interludes, alternate track lists and titles like "Podium Of Riddles", "A Keyhole-Shaped Island" and "Ceramic Swallows, Set Of 3". Perhaps, given enough time, a hidden meaning or a new perception will be revealed. Niu is also set to be expanded into an art book, containing poems and photographs by Raúl, as well as an exhibition. Perhaps the key lies somewhere in there.

In Signal, Brendon Moeller takes his expertise in techno, ambient and dub techno into deeper ambient and drone territory, crafting a richly atmospheric journey through sound for Constellation Tatsu’s thoughtful cassette label.

This album gently balances textures, merging natural and synthetic elements for a unique sonic experience. Highlights include the track 'Light', which opens with a minimal drone and subtle, pulsing sub-bass notes, setting a calm yet immersive tone. In 'Wires', Moeller skillfully intertwines organic and electronic soundscapes, bringing together the natural and technological in seamless harmony. 'Nowhere' shifts to a more aquatic feel, conjuring the sensation of being submerged in an otherworldly lagoon. The serene, electronic layering in 'Bask' adds beauty and peace through calm sequencing and warm tones. Closing with 'Beam', Moeller expertly blends real-world sounds and hints of a surreal, alien atmosphere, rounding out an album that’s both tranquil and otherworldly. Signal encapsulates Moeller's thoughtful production approach, giving listeners a deep dive into ambient landscapes that feel as expansive as they are introspective and adventurous.

Alkisah Versi Hitam is a radical deconstruction and reimagination of Indonesian duo Senyawa's most recent album Alkisah by Hamburg's Marc Richter aka Black To Comm. The original album was released to critical acclaim in February of this year as a decentralized release on a multitude of labels from all corners of the world, Germany’s Dekorder being one of them. Richter is now completely reinventing the original album from scratch by doing an almost Teo Macero-level production job here, cutting up the originals and (re)constructing new material from scratch.

Arcane chants and vocal cut-ups, fierce freeform percussion, grimy No Wave collage, monochrome drones exploding into multicolour streams, unearthly psychedelic Noise and sheer sonic mayhem, warped discordant rhythms between moments of calming beauty - it's never easy to digest but the outcome is both ecstatic and transcendental - never sounding anything less than a fully formed singular album.

A special cassette version of the album will be released by Jordanian label Drowned By Locals.

BLACK TO COMM is the moniker of Hamburg composer/musician Marc Richter who is creating intricate multi-layered collage based works for labels like Thrill Jockey, Type and Dekorder. His 2019 album "Seven Horses For Seven Kings" revealed an increasingly angry, transcendental and fearless approach, attaining new levels of urgency through noise, volume, rhythm, repetition, atonality and beauty.

Jogjakarta’s SENYAWA embody the aural elements of traditional Indonesian music whilst exploring the framework of experimental music practice, pushing the boundaries of both traditions. Their music strikes a perfect balance between their avant-garde influences and cultural heritage to create truly contemporary Indonesian new music. Their sound is comprised of Rully Shabara’s deft extended vocal techniques punctuating the frenetic sounds of instrument builder, Wukir Suryadi’s modern-primitive instrumentation. Inventions like his handcrafted ‘Bamboo Spear’; a thick stem of bamboo strung up with percussive strips of the animal skin along side steel strings. Amplified it fuses elements of traditional Indonesian instrumentation with garage guitar distortion. Sonically dynamic, the instrument can be rhythmically percussive on one side whilst being melodically bowed and plucked on the other.

They have collaborated and performed with many notable musicians such as Stephen O'Malley of Sunn o))), Otomo Yoshide, KK Null, Keiji Haino, Rabih Beiani, Trevor Dunn, Greg Fox, Arrington De Dionysus, Melt Banana, Damo Suzuki and Oren Ambarchi.

Glory Fades is a song book written using a common collaborative musical language developed by Yair Elazar Glotman and Mats Erlandsson, building intimate musical spaces, primarily focused on acoustic instrumentation with electronic counterparts contributing light and shade. Throughout the eight songs on the record, each piece unfolds according to its own logic while simultaneously reflecting the overarching tonality of the song book as a whole. The music focuses on the topography outlined by a melodic and harmonic modal framework and the exploration of the negative space found in the decay and in between the notes. There is a tension in this music caused by a reduced and stark emotional expression on the surface and the complex structures hidden underneath, where the harmonic material shimmers and shifts, and tempo and time signature modulates imperceptibly. The instrumentation forms a non-traditional chamber ensemble consisting of plucked and bowed acoustic guitars, zithers, bells, double bass, violin and percussion with additional treatments through manipulated tape and reamplification techniques. Mats Erlandsson is part of the vibrantly re-emerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, and is associated with practices characterized by the extensive use of sustained sound. Utilizing synthesized and recorded analog and digital sound, contaminated field-recordings and extensive tape processing his music slowly unfolds sets of precisely tuned harmonic material while textural properties of the imaginary rooms where the music takes form shifts, shimmers and moves from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. In addition to his own artistic practice, Erlandsson holds a position as studio technician at the world-renowned Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm and has frequently presented electroacoustic music and new music from Sweden in concert. Yair Elazar Glotman is a composer and a musician based in Berlin. Glotman trained in classical music as an orchestral contrabass player and in electroacoustic composition. His work for film as well as his independent musical releases are informed by both classical and electroacoustic traditions, and employs a range of improvisation, extended contrabass techniques, and a special interest in textural and spatial compositions and in combining analog and digital processing. His compositions for film began through his close work with the influential, late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, writing additional music for Mandy (2018) and co-composing Last and First Men (2020). He also collaborated on two oscar-winning soundtracks (Joker and All Quiet on the Western Front). Glotman also regularly releases and performs his own music, which has been released on notable labels including Deutsche Grammophon, Bedroom Community and Subtext Recordings. As a duo Glotman and Erlandsson have been collaborating since 2015 and have previously released music on the labels Miasmah Recordings and 130701. This record is the third installment in a series of collaborative records and live presentations by Yair Elazar Glotman and Mats Erlandsson and will be their first published by XKatedral.

Tours (France) -based post-psych and deep-shoegaze powerhouse Stuffed Foxes are set to release their third LP, Standardized, on December 6th, 2024, via Bristol’s Stolen Body Records and French labels Reverse Tapes and Figures Libres. Songs / Revolving and Songs / Motion Return, a discographic diptych released in 2022, established Stuffed Foxes as accomplished ambassadors of the French rock scene. True to its predecessors, Standardized was recorded live in the Rennes studio of producer and musician Thomas Poli (Laetitia Sheriff, Dominique A). Mastering was entrusted to Matt Colton (Spiritualized, Swans, Shame). Early on, the six members transformed their youthful camaraderie into an adventure, embracing communal living (sharing a leaky roof had to be an integral part of the ride) and diving into the underground with their label, Reverse Tapes, a source of endless exciting music. They also adopted a democratic approach to creation fueled by endless jams, with the sexted striving to compose together from the outset. It is from this collective spontaneity that the unique expression of their music is born: long, hypnotic tracks, swirling mists of noise, and moments of vocal urgency that should be experienced in person during their invariably cathartic and incendiary concerts. It is a band that strives to stay true to its ethos, its soul haunted but never enthralled by the ghosts of its musical ancestors and battered icons. Their influences create joyful chaos: the musical walls of noise of My Bloody Valentine, the No-Wave drones of Swans, the psychedelic vapours of Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Post-Shoegaze eclecticism of Six-By-Seven. Standardized opens with Biting the Dawn, a Noise elegy that builds with relentless intensity. Léo's recitative voice soars above a searing blend of saturated guitars and echo-drenched drums. Next, Merry Xmas unleashes sharp, incisive guitar riffs reminiscent of Gang of Four and Fugazi, only to surprise with a dramatic twist that builds to a breathtaking, soaring climax echoing the brilliance of Ride’s most epic moments. Rough Up emerges as a Velvet Underground-inspired ballad, built on two simple acoustic guitar chords and an organ, showcasing a more subdued and vulnerable side of the band. In contrast, Standardized plunges into a powerful trance, unleashing a massive, deliciously primal wall of saturation with raw, unfiltered intensity. With Standardized, Stuffed Foxes appear to have reached an aesthetic milestone, transcending the semantics of the genres that once defined them. They have ‘de-standardized’ their sound and embraced a sense of freedom, opening up to the possibilities of a wider creative spectrum. Stuffed Foxes - Pretend to Be a Dog (Gamelle) (Official Video)

The intrepid composer and field recordist Jacob Kirkegaard is no stranger to perilous and hostile regions of the world. His 4 Rooms invoked the radioactive decay through the amplification of architectural resonance in Chernobyl, Ukraine; and he has ventured to the arctic environments of Greenland on a number of occasions to document that barren, icy territory. His recurrent use of shadow and mystery through his work both as metaphor and as extended sonic technique reflects the complex, existential conditions that cross-contaminate what we consider civilization and what we consider wilderness. Waste disposal, firearms, the decomposition of dead bodies, the eerie stillness of morgues. These have also been the source material in Kirkegaard's formidable work.

With Snowblind, Kirkegaard turns to history, and a poetic, failed attempt for a team of Swedish explorers to reach the North Pole by balloon in the late 19th Century. Perhaps driven by blind adventurism, perhaps consumed by his own delusions, S.A. Andrée launched this ill-fated flight in July 1897, registering only two days in the air before crashing into the ice and ultimately failing to navigate the frigid waters and ice floes. Yet documentation of their expedition - photographic, scientific, and diaristic - survived, to be discovered some thirty years after their deaths.

"I wanted to created a cold and hostile album, where there is no escape, no warmth and no happy ending," as Kirkegaard explains about Snowblind. "Yet, I wanted to leave out any immediate drama. It is the creeping shock, the icy feeling from realizing what has been lost and that there's no escape."

Yes, Snowblind is a very bleak album, but one that eschews the isolationist, long-form drone of conceptually similar works by Thomas Köner, Lustmord, Werkbund, and Lull with interconnected constellations of cryptic tone, thrumming reverberation, arctic bluster, and a plethora of harrowing sonic proclamations.

Out of the murky, mystic world of Komodo Kolektif slides the Gamma Knife.

In the corner of a dank, dark mind, a nebulous notion condenses and solidifies, featureless and blind...and from that Komodo Klay a new kreature is hacked, molded and (mal)formed.

“The foundations of some of these pieces were laid almost a decade ago, others more recently. All of them came into being as sketches intended as Komodo Kolektif tracks to develop but for various reasons this didn't happen. The Seven Heavenly Elements was first presented to the group in 2019 but partly through personal differences in musical taste as well as COVID throwing a spanner in the works it was put aside and never worked on collectively. The two Disciple of the Drum 'dubs' are essentially rhythm tracks using the rhythm and percussion of Disciple Of The Drone, also from 2019, stripping away the drone, the gamelan melody and finally, even the bass line, which was initially intended to be the fundamental driving force of at least one of these dubs. In the end neither of these two tracks became anything like the idea that I had in mind, but that's how creativity works sometimes. The vocal parts in Cantation Dub were added most recently, just a few months ago. Fire Dub is just an exercise in me trying to rein in some insane delays and barely managing. The Ghost of Water is an anomaly because many of the fundamental parts are taken from the same jam session recorded in 2015 that led to Djakarta 3001 from the first EP. If you listen closely you'll hear Graeme Miller on guitar (back when guitar was still featured in our weekly jam sessions). I discovered this unedited hour-long jam session on an older hard drive in late 2023 and decided to fashion something from it until what became Ghost of Water materialised: the heavily delayed saron instruments, the jaw harp, the percussion and so on. What makes the track an anomaly is that it is in some ways both the oldest and newest piece of the five. The Seventh Element takes one of the seven elements of The Seven Heavenly Elements (in this case the Mopho synth tuned to the Indonesian pelog scale and ran through the Boss DE-200's depth modulator) to which I then added some gong parts and field recordings from Bali.

Once complete, I realised with an album's worth of material sitting there which was more “Komodo Kolektif” than anything I would normally produce solo, there came the problem of trying to work out what to do with this distinctly Komodo-esque, non-Komodo material. I came up with the idea of releasing it under the name Komodo Kuts...but a part of me felt I'd be cashing in on the Komodo name so ditched that part entirely...but the kuts remained, which seemed appropriate when used alongside my Gamma Knife moniker (which has a long story of its own...in a nutshell I had a benign brain tumour which only 1 in 10,000 people get and which is most frequently removed with a gamma knife (radiation). In medical parlance the device used in this treatment is often shortened to GK machine. I had been using the DJ name GK Machine, which came from my signature GK Mackinnon, since 1994, in other words long before this diagnosis. In the end I had brain surgery in Spain without use of gamma radiation...but the synchronicity of the name connection fascinated me nevertheless. Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways).

Lastly, now that I've sent these tracks out into the world, I feel somewhat liberated and can move on from this fairly niche and specific sound. The gamelan instruments have been returned to Gamelan Naga Mas, from who we'd borrowed them, and the masks hung up. This does not mean that Graeme Miller and I won't work together again in future...I'm sure we will...it just means we won't be tied to working within the constraints of gamelan, synths, percussion and dub that we became known for. So stay tuned...surely something lurks around the corner” GKM, November 2024

The Last Wave (also known as Black Rain in the US) was the final chapter in a trilogy of films scripted and directed by the leading auteur of the Australian New Wave, Peter Weir. Beginning in 1974 with the absurdist black comedy-horror The Cars That Ate Paris, and followed a year later by the lush gothic mystery Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Last Wave was a landmark in existential horror. Sitting alongside other Australian eco-terror films (e.g. Long Weekend) the film featured a haunting electronic soundtrack that is as mysterious and beguiling as the spiritual themes of the film itself. With no LP issued after the films premiere in 1977, and together with the mystery surrounding the true identity of its enigmatic composer 'Charles Wain', the score is a largely unheard recording of pioneering experimental film electronics, easily compared to the music that contemporaries Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream were composing for Australian films during the same period or the electronic soundtracks of John Carpenter. Tense atonal electronics, synthesizer drones and manipulated Didjeridu all perfectly capture the film's ominous atmosphere, punctuating the slow hypnotic pace of this brooding supernatural thriller.