Suche:synth sense

Signals Aligned stands as a sonic testament to the intersection of science, spirituality, and the vast unknown. Inspired by pioneering theories on the nature of anomalous phenomena, viewing them not as extraterrestrial but as a complex, multidimensional enigma.

There’s a consistent theme of “discovery through distortion.” Truth is often obscured by layers of misinformation, disinformation, and misperception. The music plays with the concept of clarity and distortion, revealing hidden textures beneath shifting layers of sound.

The sound palette is vast and ethereal, incorporating elements of noise, shimmering synths, and organic textures. There’s a sense of both wonder and unease that mirrors theories on the strange and unexplainable.

Flags Are Walls is the latest release from an enigmatic electronic duo based in Barcelona. "Universal Comfort"

The album explores the boundaries of contemporary electronic music, blending synthetic and organic sounds, layering analogue and digital sources, where abstract and concrete elements shift in and out of focus.

Boundaries are not only physical-shaping how we experience time and space-but also emotional, framing the sense of place we attach to them. The tracks play with these flimsy, and uncertain intersections, exploring expression and perception through evolving, haunting and diffused sonic landscapes.

After the success of the first volume, “Nihon No Wave 2” continues to unearth the hidden history of Japan’s underground electronic scene from the ’80s. This second installment digs even deeper into the archives, showcasing more rare tracks from obscure artists who operated on the fringes of Japan’s independent music world.

Like its predecessor, “Nihon No Wave 2” captures the raw energy and experimental spirit of the "Nippon-wave" era—where lo-fi synths, minimal rhythms, and post-punk aesthetics converged into a uniquely Japanese take on global sounds. Many of these recordings, originally released on cassette compilations or small-run vinyl with no international reach, have remained virtually unknown outside Japan.

The album introduced a lush, complex dream world that the singer, composer, and producer created and inhabited largely on her own. She produced all the songs, and wrote and performed everything on the self-released collection outside of a re-imagined cover of Pink Floyd’s “Green is the Colour” and 2 other tracks (“The Time,” “Give It Back To You”), which started as instrumentals written by Survive’s Kyle Dixon (who composed the Stranger Things soundtrack with his bandmate Michael Stein), to which Ainsworth wrote melodies and added lyrics. Ainsworth, who’s relocated to Los Angeles from Toronto since 2017’s Darling of the Afterglow, explains that the collection revealed itself to her “as a play taking place in Mother Nature’s vanishing home,” aka Phantom Forest, and that she’s singing from 3 perspectives: herself, Mother Nature, and Greek Chorus. For instance, of the album’s opener, “Diamonds Cutting Diamonds,” she explains: “The Greek Chorus sets the scene, narrating and offering direction on how to enter Phantom Forest. It’s my hope that the listener will imagine the narration to be directed to them as well, as they begin the journey of the album.” You’ll get a sense of this from the collection’s edenic cover art and the playful, pastoral video for the album’s first single, “Can You Find Her Place.” Its inspiration came from Ainsworth’s love for Italian Renaissance painter Botticelli’s 15-century masterpiece “Primavera,” an allegorical representation of the burgeoning fertility of the earth in spring. She notes: “The video features the Greek gods of the painting in a choreographed Baroque style dance.” Keeping with the personal feel of the collection, her sister Abby Ainsworth directed the clip. In line with the classical and historical depths of Phantom Forest, Ainsworth, who holds a Masters Degree in film scoring composition from NYU and studied composition as an undergrad at McGill, notes that although the album might be considered pop, she approached it as an orchestrator. “Even if I’m dealing purely with synths,” she says, “The songs are like a score, each one an evolving journey. I love to use strings so I’ve included my string arrangements on ‘Tell Me I Exist’ and ‘Can You Find Her Place.’ I recorded live musicians on drums, bass, and guitar on ‘Edge of the Throne,’ ‘The Time,’ and ‘Floating Dream,’ and wove those live elements into my programmed elements.” Phantom Forest is a beautiful, vast collection that mixes the historical and the hands on, with hooks about the apocalypse and people obsessively using face-recognition software to see what paintings their face match with, in search of some kind of connection. It’s a journey that holds up to close listening (and lyric reading) and to dance floors, but that can also exist on a purely emotional plane. In all cases, it asks that you listen, and take some kind of action.

Blaney describes A Room With A Door That Closes as “a love letter to her blue,” an emotional state that she defines as “a kinetic, intense, and dark energy that needs to be expressed as soon as it is felt.” The eleven songs on the album span radioactive kiss offs, sorrowful meditations on yearning, and gossamer reveries about self image.

The music has a fittingly tumultuous, intricate sound: 1960s soul samples melt into warm drum n bass percussion, blips of glitch ping pong against grating synth, and Blaney’s vocals range from searing punk exclamations to gentle, exploratory croons. It’s the sound of a singer peering deeply within herself and presenting the world with everything she finds, unadulterated, in real time. Blaney produced the new project along with a tight team of three producers: Emerson Fossett, Harlan Steed (Show Me The Body), and Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Wednesday, Squirrel Flower, Snail Mail).

Blaney had just started playing guitar and producing around the time she began writing the songs that would become the album. Being new to both producing and guitar playing opened up a sense of exploration and freedom for her. She felt emboldened to employ more adventurous riffs and unconventional song arrangements when she was writing. A Room With A Door That Closes is a collection of songs that rigorously pursue honesty, that present feelings as they arise without rushing to categorise them or explain them away. In the process of understanding her rage or discomfort, Blaney often lands on a sense of pride and assurance, but that’s never the ultimate goal. She eschews the easy comfort of neat resolution for the excitement of ongoing discovery. The album is an exercise in unfiltered self-expression, and a celebration of life at its messiest.

Limited Edition ( 300 )

Heavy 180g Vinyl & Download Token Inside & Hype Sticker.

Full Colour Inners & Contextual Images
Curated & Sleevenotes By John Kertland Of CTR (English & French)

France-the 1980s. A local radio and studio system almost unsurpassed in Europe - add brilliantly inventive labels and producers with a sense of fun & adventure & the result ?

A golden age of Synth-Pop – Post-Disco..inventing the future ..celebrating the chanson of the past. Updating that for a new generation & a new dancefloor.

Virtually neglected until now - only the heads knowing...

Presented in the classic 45 (Quarante Cinq) 7" format - the way that these great records were produced for the radio and were meant to be heard at that moment..

Now, the "savoir" is yours also.

Hard to find 7"s by elusive artistes...

Glorious vocals ,soaring synths and irresistible basslines it’s all here ..

Bon écoute !

LP comes with 24 page 8.5x11 full color booklet. In the blurred and memorial hallways of bygone time, to remember is to wander between the rooms of our own experiences, to appear and disappear, like a play of overlapping shadows. In music set drifting through the architecture of his own memories, Moses Brown weaves a story that oscillates between the past and the present, like a mason turning over stones to reconstruct his childhood home in this beautiful and disquieting soundtrack to growing up. On Stone Upon Stone, Moses' first solo LP attributed to his given name after several releases under the brilliant and despondent "Peace de Resistance" moniker, he moves sidelong into the realm of soundtracks with this score to the construction of his childhood home in a story spanning 1993-2023. Laid out in lush and provocative minimalist instrumentals, the album unfolds a story about the planning, partial construction, and dissolution of a home in constant state of becoming through the lens of its only child, coming of age under flux. Influenced by the approach of friends and collaborators Straw Man Army's OST to Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, Stone Upon Stone was originally intended as a soundtrack to a novel of the same name by Wieslaw Mysliwski, an epic set in Poland about a family's construction of a mausoleum. Struck by the story's parallels with his own family's project, he got the idea to complete the work as a personal narrative. Created from layers of different mellotron voices then separated, re-amplified, and recorded as if they were a sitting chamber orchestra, the music eerily blurs the line between human and synthetic, giving way to something akin to a memory with it's blurriness of fact and fiction. In the same spirit of association, this record is certainly influenced by other minimalists working within the confines of "soundtrack", like Philip Glass' North Star and the film work of Michael Nyman. But Brown's soundtrack works within its own peculiar depth of field, living in the listener's imagination, thriving in its own sense of loneliness, aspiration, and confusion that only childhood can evoke. Listeners will feel the entropy of aging in Stone Upon Stone, like a memoir in cascading tones, that sets it apart from so much else in DIY music, and rewards with repeated listens. For Fans of Philip Glass, Kali Malone, Julius Eastman, Mica Levi, Roedelius.

A“This album is about what it means to be human, and its creation is my offering. I attempt to tell a tale of the human experience in the reflection of my own.”

‘In the Andean mythology, condors are believed to be immortal. It is said that once they feel old, without energy, and useless, they climb to the highest peak and let themselves fall to death.’

The Allegorist is a visionary, enigmatic, transmedia, and boundary-pushing artist known for crafting deep, immersive dark sonic tales. Embracing a wide array of influences, weaving together the mysteries, art and spirituality, the art project defies categorisation, resonating with those who seek the unconventional.

From Birth Until Death is an introspective and immersive concept album that reflects on the essence of the human experience. Crafted over six years by The Allegorist (aka Anna Jordan), the album traces the arc of life—from its fragile beginnings to its inevitable end—using sound art to explore existential and philosophical terrain. Inspired by the Andean mythology of the condor – a symbol of immortality – the album blends electronic soundscapes with raw field recordings, evoking a deep sense of connection between the natural world and human existence.

The album’s progression mirrors the stages of life, starting with the birth of new beginnings and culminating in death, with each track offering a unique reflection on the moments in between. From the dynamic energy of Momentum, to the ethereal, illusionary world of Fata Morgana, the tracks guide the listener through emotions, perceptions, and experiences that shape the human condition.

A distinctive feature of From Birth Until Death is its intricate production. The album incorporates field recordings from Grunewald Forest, a distant roar of a jet, barking dogs, blending the sounds of nature – footsteps in the snow, birdsong, ocean waves – with layered synthesisers and electronic beats. The bass and ambient textures are crafted using an array of analog hardware, while all vocals, both lead and backing, are performed and recorded by Jordan. Some of the vocal takes were intentionally left raw, capturing the spontaneous energy of early recordings, while others were re-recorded to balance the album’s organic yet polished feel. Each element is meticulously crafted, revealing its deeper meaning as the album unfolds like a multidimensional, living sculpture.

At its core, From Birth Until Death is a meditation on the full spectrum of life. The album’s title track, From Birth Until Death, encapsulates this journey, reflecting on the passage of time and the unique experience of being human. The final track, Death, offers a melancholic yet beautiful exploration of endings, not as finalities, but as moments in the grand cycle of life. With its combination of evocative sound design and deeply personal themes, From Birth Until Death invites listeners to contemplate their own lives, offering a moving experience of reflection, growth, and transformation.

About From Birth Until Death
Words By Robin Rimbaud (Scanner)

From Birth Until Death is a deeply personal and reflective album and beautifully crafted. A detailed listen reveals that Jordan was in search of a profoundly human and authentic expression. In an era when so much around us seems defined by speed, Anna Jordan, aka The Allegorist, stands apart – aware that skimming the surface of life is neither sufficient nor rewarding. She reminds us of the value of deep, authentic listening.

The track Andean Condor seductively draws us into a smoky, blurred rhythmic soundscape, capturing the essence of the darkest Berlin nightclub, while Birth pulses with an almost shamanic transformation of sound, moving from the organic to the musical. It features a recording of Jordan’s footsteps in the snow in Grunewald Forest, Germany.

At times, the music feels almost sculptural in shape and tone – lifting, pushing, lilting, opening, and closing – where each piece is given room to fully develop. Many of the works blend synthetic sound with the natural, incorporating the human voice alongside environmental recordings: the wild waves of the ocean, a jet flying overhead, and barking dogs.

With From Birth Until Death, Jordan, like an alchemical architect revealing in the process of getting lost and relinquishing control, leaves us with a taut, immersive soundtrack in which to lose ourselves.

About the album ‘From Birth Until Death’
words by The Allegorist

“The album From Birth Until Death did not come easily to me. I started working on it in 2019, and it underwent many alterations over the years. I produced multiple versions of the tracks each year, but the album name, the track titles, and the album cover art stayed the same for 6 years. Not everything I did fit into the album’s final form, but I hope the heavy selection just made it better. I played this piece live in my techno live set between 2019 and 2020, and in the years after, I performed different art, ambient, and vocal versions of it, most notably the one at the church St. Marienkirche in Berlin in 2022. It just wanted to live and didn’t want to be finished. As I aged, this album aged with me. And now I’m ready to let it go.”

The Vestige is the first fruit of a new intergenerational collaboration between Giuseppe Ielasi, a quietly prolific key contributor to the European experimental music scene for over twenty years, and Jack Sheen, a young composer-conductor-sound artist from Manchester whose recent projects have seen him moving seamlessly from enigmatic chamber music composition and installations to conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Their materials and working methods differ significantly, with Ielasi having focussed for many years on electro-acoustic techniques alongside his ongoing commitment to the guitar, and Sheen primarily composing for traditional instruments. More important, though, is what they share: a fascination with what Sheen calls “mysterious, liminal musical material,” using irregular repetition and cyclical forms to create structures at once alive with activity and almost static, as well as a rigorous exploration of spatial diffusion and the interaction of sound event and environment. Working individually with a library of acoustic instrument sounds from Sheen’s recent projects and Ielasi’s guitar, the pair eventually met for several days at Ielasi’s home studio in Monza, sculpting the fourteen pieces that make up The Vestige. Like Ielasi and Sheen’s solo works, the record shows an exquisite attention to details of sequencing and pacing, the sound palette and compositional approach consistent throughout while each piece asserts its own identity. The twenty-five seconds of the opening piece serve as an entrée into the record’s distinctive world of sound: repeated chirps fluctuate in volume as they move across the stereo spectrum, woven between strangled snatches of string glissando against a backdrop of percussive ticks, long tones, and white noise. Across the remaining thirteen pieces, Ielasi and Sheen sketch further dimensions of the ambiguous space, where distinctions between pitch and noise, repetition and irregularity, electronic and acoustic remain pointedly unclear. As the record’s title suggests, the origins of the sounds we hear have become remote: while at moments we get flashes of timbres and attacks that could come from wind instruments, bowed strings, or prepared guitar, these remain vestigial traces, glimpsed through a veil of shifting white noise textures. These textures are themselves difficult to trace, suggesting artefacts of the recording process, electronic synthesis, amplified room sound, rubbed instruments or objects. The Vestige shows an unusual degree of attention to frequency range as a compositional tool, something it shares with the hyper-subtle variations of Ielasi’s electroacoustic works and the deliberately ‘unbalanced’ midrange-heavy ensemble of Sheen’s Sub. Here, movement between episodes is as much about adding or removing a frequency band as it is about changes in density, harmonic content, or instrumental texture. Tracks are marked by the sudden appearance of subbass or exaggeration of high frequencies in otherwise similar material, contributing to our sense that these fourteen pieces are like different views on a scene that we can never quite see clearly. While calling up a range of past music, from the early works of Rolf Julius to Simha Arom’s recordings of layered polyrhythms embedded in the background sounds of central African villages to the temporal distortions and layered hiss of DJ Screw, the alluring and disconcerting world of The Vestige is entirely its own.

‘Best tunes for your answering machine’ is the debut album of oblique, introspective electronic music by the mysterious solo artist Tekamolo.

Fusing melancholic synth pop and absurdist trip hop, ‘best tunes for your answering machine’ is a special assemblage of pitch-modified vocals, retrofuturist samples and freeform electronics that coalesces into music both outlandish and bittersweet, playful and profound.

Produced by a renowned artist, opting to conceal their identity under the guise of a new pseudonym, Tekamolo presents a series of curious, incognito confessionals with ‘best tunes for your answering machine’. An album led by a voice like a sentient, heavy-hearted android, the nine tracks collected here contend with themes of inertia, solitude and longing, revealing an inspired, affecting stream of messages from an unknown caller.

Without preconceptions tied to provenance, this is music liberated from the burdens of biographical detail. Music that eschews ego and the cult of the self. An album that can be heard purely for the strange, poignant sounds unfurled throughout.

For Tekamolo, the album signifies an attempt to navigate aesthetic reductionism, as well as an absolute sense of seclusion:

“An audio diary of a lonely soul. Broken, wounded mantra-songs. Memories of things that never happened. Dreams that never had the chance to be dreamed. Disassembled songs. As if testing the limits of emptiness — how much void can a song endure while still remaining a song? How much can be stripped away, how bare can it be, and still, the groove lingers, the melody pierces the memory, sinking into the listener's mind.

These are the skeletons of songs, an attempt to assemble music from the bare minimum — words, sounds, fragments of memory.

The songs are filled with desperate calm. They are not sung to the world, nor to anyone tangible, but solely to oneself and to the unseen. In a way, they could be considered songs of the end of the world: you wake up, and there is not a single person left in the world. At least, no one you can see. You wander through empty streets and deserted shopping malls, humming softly to yourself, hoping that someone — anyone — might hear you.”

‘best tunes for your answering machine’ is a sui generis conception of warped 21st century blues from an enigmatic figure, a work filled with surreal, indelible songs of modern isolation. Lost contemporary hymns, now recovered. Voicemails worth hearing.

Known for his ability to create captivating, emotionally charged techno, Jonathan Kaspar eventually returns to Cocoon Recordings with his third contribution Twofold Split. One, yet simultaneously two releases that once again showcase his extraordinary talent through condensed techno with a pinch of trance, weaving together driving rhythms and atmospheric textures in a way that feels innovatively progressive.

Rooted in a minimalist rhythmic structure, ‘Power’ takes us in a new direction, steadily building momentum as its energy billows upwards, with the intensity never wavering throughout. A large, dented, tinny tuba sounds imposingly as Jonathan blows louder and louder into the old thing, its raw, metallic tone instantly commanding attention. What an explosion in the break, leading us into a wild, almost chaotic energy, before Kaspar’s meticulous attention to detail ensures that the shimmering synths feel perfectly placed, guiding us to the absolute freak-out moment. After all the insanity, Jonathan Kaspar takes us by the hand and leads us into a melodic, trancy after-hours mood with “1993,” bringing a sense of release after the wild ride of the previous tracks. What a successful closing track to this outstanding release. With its melodic trance influences, it offers a soothing, almost nostalgic atmosphere, bringing a sense of calm and closure, a perfect moment of introspection and euphoria as
the EP winds down

Known for his ability to create captivating, emotionally charged techno, Jonathan Kaspar eventually returns to Cocoon Recordings with his third contribution Twofold Split. One, yet simultaneously two releases that once again showcase his extraordinary talent through condensed techno with a pinch of trance, weaving together driving rhythms and atmospheric textures in a way that feels innovatively progressive.

Rooted in a minimalist rhythmic structure, ‘Power’ takes us in a new direction, steadily building momentum as its energy billows upwards, with the intensity never wavering throughout. A large, dented, tinny tuba sounds imposingly as Jonathan blows louder and louder into the old thing, its raw, metallic tone instantly commanding attention. What an explosion in the break, leading us into a wild, almost chaotic energy, before Kaspar’s meticulous attention to detail ensures that the shimmering synths feel perfectly placed, guiding us to the absolute freak-out moment. After all the insanity, Jonathan Kaspar takes us by the hand and leads us into a melodic, trancy after-hours mood with “1993,” bringing a sense of release after the wild ride of the previous tracks. What a successful closing track to this outstanding release. With its melodic trance influences, it offers a soothing, almost nostalgic atmosphere, bringing a sense of calm and closure, a perfect moment of introspection and euphoria as
the EP winds down

Known for his ability to create captivating, emotionally charged techno, Jonathan Kaspar eventually returns to Cocoon Recordings with his third contribution Twofold Split. One, yet simultaneously two releases that once again showcase his extraordinary talent through condensed techno with a pinch of trance, weaving together driving rhythms and atmospheric textures in a way that feels innovatively progressive.

Drifting hypnotically, this might be the most fitting way to describe what Jonathan Kaspar unfolds before us here. The rolling percussion grooves seamlessly intertwine with the siren's spectral tone, gradually blending into the alchemy of ‘Yah’ as it erupts into the mix. By the time the peak arrives, there’s a raw intensity in the air - the track seems to bend and stretch then drills and twists until it cracks, but never loses its sense of purpose and remainsanchored in its deep, pulsating groove. On the flip side, ‘Silver Lines’ stands as a counterpart, offering a contrast in both sound and atmosphere. With its minimalist arrangement, the track first nestles in gently, lulling the listener into its world—only to tighten its grip as a synth sequence gradually opens its cut-off filter, slicing through the calm, drilling into the mind, and shifting the mood from tranquil to tense.

An adversarial network of ideas, electronic post-punk trio The Wants welcome the possibility that embracing friction can give rise to something cathartic and unexpected. Formed by Madison Velding- VanDam and Jason Gates in 2017, and with the addition of Yasmeen Night in 2021, The Wants' sound is defined by the push and pull of its members' processes: floating rhythms upheaving grounded songwriting, pulsing synths overwhelming live instrumentation. Their new record, Bastard, is an evolution of many of the seeds planted in their debut record, Container (2020), with a refined sense of acerbic emotional urgency and sonic experimentation. Drawing from a deep well of influences across decades and genres, The Wants forge an unlikely alliance of sounds that feels both radical and inevitable. Velding- VanDam channels both the raw power and snark of Public Image Ltd. and The Smiths' romance, while Gates draws intensity from bands like Bauhaus and Throbbing Gristle, and inspiration from experimental techno. Night's sound bridges inspiration from '90s alternative rock like Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage between the nocturnal trip-hop atmosphere of Massive Attack. The result sits in its own category—too raw to be pure electronic music, too mechanised to be straight rock— drawing favorable comparisons to early PIL and contemporaries like Model/Actriz while remaining distinctly their own beast.

Between The Seed And The Timber is a cycle of six songs exploring ritual and mystical aspects of the modern era. At times both noir and psychedelic, they evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for a disappearing age. In contrast to industrial music’s dystopian semiotics, Jas Shaw challenges us to hear sounds inspired by machinery, electricity and mechanisation in a new light.

“I made the synth parts for a Swans gig,” says Shaw. “As SMD we’d supported Swans. James was away doing some production but I didn’t want to pass it up, so I offered to open solo. It turned out the gig was sooner than expected so I made all these synth things to do live.”

Shaw put the tracks to one side and forgot about them, only returning to them years later. “You know when you’ve changed as a person and you listen back to something from a different angle? I suddenly could hear what I had been after. It reminded me of experiences I’d had at Swans gigs. I wanted to achieve that energy and charge.”

Dubbing techniques are crucial to the sound of the record. “I set up a few synths on a table and had my mixer running loads of auxes back into the desk so it was all on the edge of feeding back. Then I realised that if I put a mic into the desk I’d have an extra feedback route. I found a setting where I could get it to build when I pointed the mic at the monitors but then turning it away you could put the brakes on the regen.”

Between The Seed And The Timber is Jas Shaw’s inaugural release for the London based, Kindred-affiliated TEETH label. TEETH is rooted in a reverence for texture, space, and sonic decay - amplifying experimental sounds that blend dreamlike melodies with weathered landscapes. Each release informs the next, with every track as vital as the last to complete the whole set.

Orchestrated by Jojo Mathiszig-Lee, founder of London’s Kindred, the label celebrates like-minded talent from the community, providing a platform for transgressing music.

Artworks are made by Scarlet Griffiths.

After impressions of Unguja and Borneo islands, Discrepant's chieftain Gonçalo F. Cardoso continues his sonic travelogue on insularity with 'Impressões de Várias Ilhas’.

Literally translated as "impressions from various islands", this third tome dwells on recordings and inspirations from three archipelagos of Macaronésia. Soaking in the sounds and recollections from Azores, Cape Verde and Canary Islands these diaristic endeavours spread throughout a number of real environments, from water caves and black stone beaches and lagoons to small harbours and everyday life scenarios, to project them into this not quite imaginary but not quite real memory haze that goes from a deeply personal impression to a resonating one.

Melding raw field recordings with processed ones and synthesized landscapes, Cardoso never falters into sonic tourism, conjuring small-ish takes both vivid and dreamy, infused with a sense of wonder that feels both bewildering, comforting and escapist. The breaking waves of 'Bufadeiros de São Vicente' soothing in their irregular pattern, mingling with the lone echoing tones not completely removed from Black Dice's 'Beaches & Canyon's most pensive passages, flow into the underwater ambience and suspended pads of 'La Cueva Scuba Livre', as reflections of the same sea crashing in on different lands, nature’s psychogeography. Further on, the queasy warm chord and scraping murmurs of 'Noite em Rabo de Peixe' mirror their nighttime framing while 'Rãs em Xoxo' veers closer to pure musique concréte, crossed by a subdued feeling of unease that lingers in the nostalgia of 'Cozido da Caldeira Velha', brimming within the haze of a Boards of Canada vignette. Summoning the past lives and future hauntings of its scenery, 'Salinas de Pedra Lume' is like the quiet epic of the album, meandering into the unknown among crackling field recordings, decaying synths and flute-like howls - or is it howl-like flutes? - recurring as glimpses from foregone existences, not necessarily Gonçalo’s own. Maybe ours?

Music & Photography by Gonçalo F. Cardoso
Artwork layout by Jeroen Wille
Master by Rashad Becker

Discrepant 2025
Pressed in Spain

Emerging from the Kansai underground with a sense of ritual and restraint, G Version III returns with a slab of meditative pressure, carved for sound systems. Following last year’s cassette release on Digital Sting, the Kyoto-based producer deepens his exploration of experimental steppers and sacred low-end science.

TRK 1 treads heavy—medium-tempo four-to-the-floor steppers, soaked in 80s/90s UK dub DNA and wired with flickers of celestial synth energy, edged with something unknown.

TRK 2 drifts off-grid—a 100bpm oddity conjuring sacred synth rituals and off-beat spatial tension. Droning and eerily weightless, it hangs like a vapor of frozen scent in an echo chamber.

Flip the plate and TRK 3 and 4 ignite—raw, unrelenting steppers built to test the physical limits of the rig. No compromise, no decoration—just ritual voltage for the floor.

Riddim Chango’s 16th release channels something ancient through circuitry, born for the weight.

For her second full-length as Plume Girl, Sowmya Somanath crafts a space where boundaries of language, feeling, and sound start to dissolve. ‘Unnameable Glory’ ruminates on the limits of expression, and the luminous freedom that emerges when we let go of the need to name. Elaborating on the exploratory songs of her debut, Plume Girl continues to bring together Hindustani classical improvisation, ambient soundscapes, and experimental pop.

Somanath’s voice—from gentle murmur to radiant call—guides the listener through dreamlike arrangements: sunrise guitar arpeggios, humming choirs, heartbeat kickdrums, and synths tremble. Elsewhere field sounds and old family recordings are collaged, a woman’s giggle transposed into a piano melody, a sloshing body of water mirrored by synth bleeps. Plume Girl conjures moments of revelation, drawing from the natural beauty and intuition, that unnameable glory.

Is there a divinity or a wholeness that exists beyond language, belief, or tradition? Unnameable Glory both celebrates and gently challenges the notion: Can we honour the creative richness of culture while also seeing through the divisions it creates? Can we meet the world—and each other—without assumption, without fear, with eyes made new? In these songs, the sacred is found not in grand gestures, but in the anonymous freedom of simply being: the iridescence of oil and water on a street, the smile of a stranger, the hush that settles by a creek.

At the heart of the album is a sense of curiosity and surrender—a willingness to listen without judgment, to let the moment be unnameable, to allow wonder to arise and dissolve. And yet, as Somanath notes, there’s an impulse to capture that’s tough to ignore; a need to replicate and remember. Unnameable Glory dwells in this tension: between holding and letting go, between the urge to define and the beauty of what cannot be contained. There is a quiet, revolutionary joy in simply living and sensing together. Music becomes a meeting place for the whole, the holy, and the unnamable.

LTD Repress !

LIZZ is back on PlayedBy with Chapter II, a compilation of new and unreleased artifacts and other treasures from his dense catalog. Diverse and expansive, it captures his versatile musicianship and ever-evolving production style.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of tracks produced by LIZZ: on one hand rallying for the right to party, and on the other, nostalgic odysseys, sometimes lustful and sometimes wistful. Chapter II has a bit of everything. Thirteen tracks of club heat varied narrative that is worth listening to carefully.

Opener "Seamless" and its steady snare keep spirits high while the spacey keys provide a trippy, out-there vibe. On the flipside, "Clasic Dewan" uses elements we've heard before - warm pads, a percussive organ, and a looped vocal sample - but still makes for a great dancefloor track. Both tracks are a throwback to LIZZ's tried and true Terrafirma.

"Cynelmoon" unravels a labyrinthine universe twisting in and out of misty existence, with its snake-like rattles winding through a maze of synth bleeps.

Refreshing and zippy, "Dip Si M" stands out as a gritty reinterpretation of a great space and sounds like the most fun he's ever had on record. On the other hand, "Chemical Chords" is ethereal, meditative, with a hushed musicality that is almost stoic.

LIZZ takes the listener on a journey of vertiginous peaks and deep valleys as he leads "Round Around" into spiraling locked down looped club music.

Listening to "Nothing with Nothing" feels like a video-game on its own. It’s a bundle of joy and energy, peaking with a crescendo of color.

On "69" the energy builds with such careful, gradual restraint that even the most active listener might wonder how they ever got to this point. Chopped up shards of melody and vocals combine to create a kaleidoscopic funhouse with a strong Perlon-esque flavour.
"Roaki" is the dreamy track with an irresistible groove, where LIZZ combines smooth synth pads with dubby and distorted electronic drums that add a sense of cyberpunk feel, reconfirming's Playedby's fanaticism for this project.

A bubbling, percussive roller marks the beginning of "Jazzohub" and skyrockets from there. The track hits with an inviting vocal that dissolves into a fluid swirl of layered hand drums.
"No More High" is a a real banger. This one bounces hard with a bass-heavy beat and a military snare, leaving you no choice but to tip-toe with its groove all night long.

Chasing an ever-vivid muse,"Electronic World" hits with its drumming rhythms, labyrinth of synth bleeps and bold vocals reminiscent of tunneling club nights.

Closing track "I Am Cross" brings an unusual kind of dark atmosphere to the fore: it's cavernous and enveloping, almost as if the rhythm was an afterthought.

Chapter II is every bit as ambitious as its predecessor. Across thirteen tracks, LIZZ approaches the dancefloor forms of his earlier work with a fresh and voluptuous groovy attitude. Somehow, individually, we must reclaim our own experience.\5