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Santaka is truly the sound of a culture. The name means “confluence” in Lithuanian, and the project has been exactly that from the moment DJ/producer Manfredas and drummer/producer Marijus Aleksa resolved to work together in the early days of 2020.

Not only does it bring together the talents that Manfredas and Marijus have individually honed over their own illustrious international careers in the club underground and young jazz worlds – but their recordings have drawn on talents from across styles and generations within Lithuania, creating a fusion of experimental sounds that represents the living nation. The highest common factors of post rock, jazz, dancefloor and abstract electronics, classical and more all flow together. Now, they are deepening this further, by reworking recordings by composer Rytis Mažulis and the avant-garde choir Melos Collective.

Over two tracks, they create haunting but hopeful, weird but truly wonderful atmospheres that look back to the deep history of their home nation’s music and culture but also forward to sonic science fictions of their own. In “Autoportretas”, disembodied voices emerge from the air around Marijus’s percussion subtly at first but becoming more and more corporeal as the ritual takes shape.

The eight-minute “Ramybė” is less linear, more dreamlike, with orchestral drones, free jazz fluttering and retro electronics joining the voices and drums. But for all their eeriness and oddness, both are built on the pleasure principle too: this exploratory music joining past and future is thrilling and sustaining in the moment.

For this special release he provides 8 cuts of advanced techno, from mental and hypnotic to broken and industrial or simply arpeggiated and beatless.

WHEN THE UNCANNY ARISES starts with No Gender Role an elastic mental exercise with metallic and processed components flying over a solid kick and white noise percussive elements add some hypnotic pads and you have a powerful mind and body tool.

Blue follows in a similar approach, clean drum programming, bleepy synth lines and a progressive arrangement constantly evolving and changing Flipping the vinyl, it’s time for the broken rhythms of Feel and understand combining distorted kicks with gummy sequences again administered in a quite wise structure.

Klonger closes the B side with obsessive metallic hits repeating until madness, a powerful industrial beat for the experienced dj’s out there.

The second vinyl slice begins with Negative One, returning to the martial beat combining a precise drum workout with floaty and liquid components, followed by Anonimo coercitivo exploring the deepest side of techno using textures and drones to spice the relentless beat.

Zero opens the C side, providing a solid distorted groove with metallic details and sci fi interstellar bell like sequences, proper futuristic vibes here.

Saying goodbye, the beatless Nothing To fear, an arpeggiated synth solo reminiscent of the old Berlin School of electronics from the seventies.

A touchable proof of his craftsmanship in the studio by one of the key figures in the European techno scene.

After two years, Carl and Andreas present their second album, and once again, it opens up a wide associative space for us. What strikes us initially is the uncommon instrumentation: a church organ, harpsichord, glass tubes, and more. Like their first album (The Aporias of Futurism), it is mysterious and dark. But it also carries a strong touch of rebellion and adrenaline, sometimes quite pointedly. The pieces are now shorter and feature intricate yet irresistible rhythms. The impact is immediate, yet it maintains a sense of solemnity and ceremony. The Apollonian complexity of the rhythms and subtle melodic interweavings is transformed into a Dionysian, ecstatic, hypnotic, and at times tribal context. "Music for Unknown Rituals" oscillates between primitive instincts and avant-garde intrigues.

The process began in Döblitz, a small village on the Saale river in Germany, inside an old church that houses an organ built in 1886 by Johann Adolph Ibach. Carl and Andreas gained access and secluded themselves there for a few days, accompanied by the organ, an instrument made of glass tubes, and a set of modular synthesizers. After recording the basic tracks in Döblitz, the work continued in Munich and Berlin. Carl played electric guitars, harpsichord, bass, metallophone, xylophone, Indian harmonium, and various percussive instruments. Andreas added layers of electronic sounds, noises, and atmospheric drones. He also created percussive structures extracted and derived from recorded material of technical and industrial noises, which contrasted with the acoustic drums played by Carl. The antithetical approach continues with the dichotomous arrangement of the instruments, often panned hard left and right in the stereo field, creating an antiphonic communication. Some parts, especially the use of the electric guitar, evoke memories of the psychedelic sixties. However, this is anything but a nostalgic album—these musical references are merely remnants, set pieces, and fragments used from a contemporary, post-modern, post-youth-cultural, and post-romantic perspective.

Although Andreas and Carl continue on their chosen path of composing music with an almost literary narrative structure, this album is conceptually and formally completely different from their first effort. If “The Aporias of Futurism” was a revolutionary manifesto (in a pataphysical sense), "Music for Unknown Rituals" is more like the implementation in action; it is the practical application of the previous statement. To put it another way, if "The Aporias of Futurism” was the conceptual manifesto of a dark utopia of modernity, "Music for Unknown Rituals" is the staging of free will surrendering to the myths and catharsis of a Greek tragedy. And in response to this, the artwork features a leitmotif of histrionics with hands, the hands being the first and intuitive part of the body to express something: a ritual, a prayer, a defeat...

— Andreas Gerth is one half of Driftmachine, and Carl Osterhelt is part of F.S.K and collaborates with Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust. Both became connected through their participation in the Tied & Tickled Trio.

Taipan Tiger Girls’ third and final LP is a hypnotic, cosmic freakout that combines analogue electronics, drums, guitar and the mammoth drones of the Melbourne Town Hall Grand Organ. Recorded live at Melbourne Music Week in 2017 in front of an ecstatic sold out hometown crowd, this record marks the zenith of the short but incendiary career of an extraordinary band. An instrumental outfit with a relentless drive to experiment, Taipan Tiger Girls are composer, producer and all-round electric statesman Ollie Olsen (WhirlyWirld / Max Q / NO / Third-Eye / Psy-Harmonics), experimental drummer and synth obsessive Mat Watson (Boredoms BoaDrum / E.S.G / ULMD / Other Places), and feedback guitar droner and organist Lisa MacKinney (Mystic Eyes / Hospital Pass / Super-Luminum). On Live At the Melbourne Town Hall they are joined by very special guest guitarist Bonnie Mercer (Grey Daturas/Hospital Pass/Breathing Shrine) with MacKinney commanding the historic Melbourne Town Hall pipe organ. Live at the Melbourne Town Hall is a monument to the combined talents of a group of phenomenal musicians whose fusion created a magic elixir made all the more precious by its temporary nature. Showcasing the improvisatory prowess of the band at the peak of their powers and bolting off into the stratosphere in a thrilling surge of psychedelic expansion. GENRE: EXPERIMENTAL, DRONE, ELECTRONIC, ANALOGUE SYNTH, LIVE, PSYCHEDELIC, IMPROVISED Released in conjunction with Heavy Machinery Records

As an important agent of Gothenburg’s underground scene, Dan Johansson has been a member of several experimental harsh noise projects such as Sewer Election, and lo-fi indie folk bands like Enhet För Fri Musik and Amateur Hour. Ordeal is his latest solo output, and might as well be ashes stuck in the blast furnace's edges of his last longing career. Not by means of summing up genres or as a culmination of his musical development, but as a profound music piece weaved in his own household.

With not much more than a synthesizer, Vätterns Pärla is built by trembling, dissonant drones stained in feedback and reverberation, thickly textured by the no-fi quality of the recording, depicting a menacing atmosphere congested with heavy fumes. In Johansson's words, Ordeal "takes inspiration from the early 80’s albums of Maurizio Bianchi, filtered through a Gothenburgian no-fi bleakness. It’s an album for inner voyage, childhood memories, and places that now lost purpose and meaning”.

There's certainly intimacy and nostalgia, yet a claustrophobic, hypnotic ambiance wraps it all up in a contained and narrow space. Emphasis is put on texture rather than on detail, on color rather than on progression, on suspense rather than on conclusion. Tension varies stiffly, sometimes a drone layer dismantles and the mood seems to filter, but ragged edges are never polished. We can feel the walls and the air, which although tarnished, can be breathed in somehow. It's as if waking up in a dark room and having to recognize it with our ears and tact, testing its dimensions and its surface. The stillness in the chamber is like the stillness between gasps of storms.

Without visible stars, an enclosed share of night sky hides a heavy load of industrial debris underwater. These remnants are maybe the pearl regarding the album's title. It all can seem like a dream, a grim mechanical soundscape deafened by hefty, yet sporadic winds. Soil strives to make something grow, but sprouting is kept suspended, held by a dismal presentiment. Long shadows on the ground prove that darkness is about to befall. And as these shadows stretch, almost about to break up in a loud strike, the noise turns white.

Lonefront's new label Uncoiled returns with a four track offering featuring two collaborations with Dallas-based producer Decoder. The joint tracks are bookended by explorations in spectral tonality and employ subtle stereo-phonics with euclidean modulations to deliver a techno purity redux. Within, Decoder takes the lead on 'Null' a spacious yet jacking groove fit for peak-time. '56' defies Colundi convention with a monotonic motif before yielding with soft, undulating drones and harmonically-rich stabs.

Released in 1976, Eternity was Alice Coltrane's first album for Warner Bros. after eight wondrous records on Impulse! Combining the drones and textures of India, the gospel and R&B of her Detroit youth and the dissonance of modern classical composition, Coltrane's music in the '70s would become increasingly difficult to categorize.

Having moved a few years earlier to California (where she founded the Vedantic Center, an Ashram for spiritual studies), Coltrane stretches out on Eternity – incorporating various musical styles, including a stirring adaptation of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – and the results are dazzling, both in sonic scope and emotional range

Opener "Spiritual Eternal" sways between Alice's exploratory organ and the dramatic swell of lush strings. A meditative solo piece for harp, "Wisdom Eye," precedes the rollicking rhythms of "Los Caballos," which showcases some of her finest soloing.

"Om Supreme" is the album's first track to be built around bhajans (Hindu devotional songs). Featuring graceful keyboards backed by an angelic choir, this piece hints at the ecstatic devotional music that she would later make with members of her Ashram.

While Coltrane would delve deeper into her spiritual journeys and continue to expand her musical interests on subsequent LPs, Eternity remains a vivid and compelling display of her unique vision, myriad talents and passions.

»What is Dance?« contains two pieces originally conceived in 2017 for a performance/sound installation of the same name at Meinblau Projektraum (Berlin), as part of the series singuhr_projekte. Drawing inspiration from the works of American sound artist Joe Jones and his »Music Machines«, Robert Lippok (Ornament und Verbrechen, To Rococo Rot) arranged various sound objects (pieces of wood, cymbals, rotating plastic film), that were played mechanically. The sound piece—designed for a 4-channel system and condensed into a loop, that clocked in at around 20 minute—is his interpretation of three dances from the opera »The Fairy Queen« by Baroque composer Henry Purcell.

From this source material, Robert Lippok has now extracted and rearranged two pieces for »What is Dance?.« The result is music of its own right: Dense, but permeable drones are central, but complemented by harmoniously matching and gently pulsating sounds.

Structured Records presents the continuation of their previous work, signed by The Wire Alliance, untitled "Mathspace."

The new EP consists of 4 solid and impactful Techno remixes, where the diversity within each track defines this 12-inch as the perfect tool to set the dancefloor on fire.

Silez, Swarm Intelligence, Rommek, and Irrational Language dive into a whirlwind of drones, aggressive rhythmic patterns, exquisite basslines, and other sonic elements that creatively and deeply dissect the original songs.

A compilation that at times sounds reminiscent of early 2000s Birmingham, while at other times injects a sound closer to IDM, all without straying from its own essence: precise Techno execution, without frills or pretensions but with a lot of personality and a clear direction—to provide timeless material for the most demanding DJs.

Structured Records' new release is here to stay in your record collections. And we're not just saying it, just hit play. We love what we do. Enjoy it.

The visionary French musician stays true, in this third compendium too, to his path of planetary asceticism. A new treasure chest of secrets reveals to us the same spirituality of total experimentation, by balancing the universe and the inner soul. In Taste The Fullness Of Life Ariel builds his symphonic pillars toward the cosmos, eternal architectures that always smell of Indian fragrances. The music always communicates a state of full grace, spreading balms of bliss. An unprecedented whispered narrating voice, evident especially in Spiritual Chanson D'Esprit, is embellished with textures of harmonic bells, tropical flutes, spacey harmoniums and drones of mystical light. In the recordings of Going Inward, also made on the occasion of a Tantric workshop, Kalma oscillates between tribal electronic dances, metalic almost industrial rhythms, but then always falls back in a comfort zone made of desert carpets of synths and baths of sound (gong/bells). Harmonica Galactica crowns interestellar dreams with unscrupulous drum-machine gears and pulsing saxes, superb use of VCS3 with arabesque and Schulzian overtones, and suave touches of fingerpicking guitar with freak vibes typical of psych-folk.

When punk arrived in late 1976, the scene acted as a catalyst for an explosion of independent labels which swiftly sprung up around the UK. Named after a classic track by Manchester’s The Drones, ‘Just Want To Be Myself’ boasts classic sevens on imprints such as Small Wonder, The Label, Rough Trade, Dining Out, Deptford Fun City and Cherry Red (all London), Zoom (Glasgow), Attrix (Brighton), Heartbeat (Bristol), Good Vibrations (Belfast) and Bent (Manchester).

Many of the individuals and bands featured would later enjoy success in various incarnations – for example, The Pack mutated into Theature Of Hate, The Outsiders’ Adrian Borland attracted acclaim with his band The Sound, ‘O’ Level’s Edward Ball made an impact with various acts including The Times and Leyton Buzzards evolved into pop combo Modern Romance!

Pure Hell and The Electric Chairs’ Wayne County were American but eligible here because the tracks were recorded in the UK

“Praying to god whether or not I believe there is one” - PH

Petra Hermanova and Unguarded announce In Death’s Eyes (UGD-009), the debut solo LP under the artist’s own name. This LP features nine tracks utilizing folk and sacred musical technique and instrumentation which drift between song and heavy distorted drones. In a disciplined display of beauty, pain, and astute musicianship, Hermanova brings forth a notable accomplishment of an album. In Death’s Eyes confronts death from start to finish with a rare fervor that leaves one feeling it was utterly necessary for Hermanova to produce - to survive. The transcendent impulse, or the influence of religious music, bears heavily on Hermanova’s compositions in her choir arrangements, but is most apparent in her use of pipe organ, opening the record on Black Glass. Having written organ parts for a significant portion of the record, she sought out the renowned organist Denny Wilke to record with her in the Merseburg Cathedral. Captivated by Wilke's profound skill as a player and knowledge of the Ladegast organ, Hermanova invited him to collaborate on Two Deaths where he delivers an impressive improvisation. While religious music offers spiritual solace from grief, folk speaks to the human and earthly as told by the individual, be they songs of suffering or joy, sin or salvation. To Hermanova, the clean promise of liturgical music is not enough to alleviate the blunt pain of grief. Contrasting the spiritual is the voice of the individual sufferer - the folk musician. For Hermanova, the autoharp embodies this contrast. The autoharp, a familiar sound in Appalachian folk music since its mass production in the late 1800’s, is an affordable instrument designed for the unskilled player. It is the antithesis of the organ which is costly, gargantuan, reserved for skilled players, and quite literally a part of the church. Through In Death’s Eyes the sounds of transcendence blend with the worldly, the tension between them poignantly expressing Hermanova’s struggle for spiritual resolution against the reality of death and loss. Like Hermanova’s lyrics, the artwork, conceptualized by Enes Güç and Evelyn Bencicova, is riddled with symbolism and allusion. We find Hermanova on the cover, digitally rendered. Reclining like an anatomical Venus, her vital organs are exposed, suggesting she is denied a transcendent death and is instead immaculately human. Bearing a sickle, her legs are metallic like armor, both symbols of protection. We see here in this image, as we hear in the nine tracks of IDE, the metaphoric state of someone ravaged by loss, choosing to tear herself open in an attempt to heal. - Reece Cox Petra Hermanova is a musician and visual artist based in Berlin. In 2018, Hermanova began working with the autoharp, which has since become the central pillar of her musical practice. Drawing inspiration from folk, medieval drone, and contemporary textural expressions, as well as Appalachian autoharp music, she creates emotionally driven arrangements accompanied by vocals. In her lyrics, she speaks to the fragility and tenderness of the human condition, religious conceptions of death, and introspective landscapes through narrative and symbolism. Hermanova debuted live at the Berliner Festspiele event The Sun Machine is Coming Down, performed at Trauma Bar und Kino accompanied with her choir, and recently took part in Sorour Darabi’s durational performance From the Throat to the Dawn. Her debut solo album, In Death’s Eyes, is set for release in 2023 on the art platform and label Unguarded. The album, where she wrote for the autoharp, pipe organ, solo voice and choir, features the acclaimed organist Denny Wilke playing the 19th century Ladegast organ of the Merseburg Cathedral. She has toured internationally with previous projects, including extensive sound and visual collaborations with Jon Eirik Boska (Hydropsyche) as well as with her award-winning band Fiordmoss. She was recently announced as a SHAPE+ platform artist.

First time on Vinyl, presented in Gatefold Sleeve on Double LP. Originally released in 2015 and carefully forged between 2011 and 2014, "De Aeris In Sublunaria Influxu" showcases a magically crafted alchemical wedding between these two titans of drone ambient. The 2LP features an exclusive bonus track. Troum navigates through cavernous, subterranean spaces where cyclical sounds reverberate towards impressive crescendos of icy noise, luminous drones and dramatic, guitar-driven ghostly melodies. Their truly unique soundscapes shine in a perfect symbiotic movement with the Swedish dark ambient maestro Peter Andersson. Engulfed in a hauntingly beautiful kaleidoscope of grey-ish melancholia, raison d’être comfortably walks deeply into Troum’s vast territory, delivering his very own trademark of eerie tones, ominous sacral ambience and crystal clear constructions. Airy lush enigmatic atmospheres live together with dark breathing, reverberant transformative drones. Rich and gorgeously layered.
All sounds assembled and recorded by raison d'être (Peter Andersson) and Troum (Stefan Knappe, Martin Gitschel) between 2011-2014. All sounds processed, manipulated and structured by Peter Andersson 2011-2014. K-14 level mastering by Peter Andersson 2014. Artwork by Ritxi Ostáriz.

2LP Vinyl Edition of 300 copies, Gatefold Sleeve, Matt Lamination, Black Paper Innersleeves. 8 Tracks. Running Time 76:28

The Athenian producer Aggelos Baltas alias Anatolian Weapons captures on the album Earth the feeling of an optimistic future that grows on the soil of the sweet bitterness of the present and the past.

Under his pseudonym Anatolian Weapons, Baltas combines polyrhythmic percussion and wailing tones of Greek folk music with a thrilling and open Krautrock attitude. The album Earth takes us on a mystical journey through the northern Greek highlands, backed by Baltas’ unique machine-assisted folk, infused with psychedelic drones and exuding an aura that is neither then nor now, neither there nor here. Instead, it exists in a small pocket of its own cosmos. A crossroads of dimensions. A mystical offering to nature and the divinities.

Baltas has explored and reframed various Greek scenes of yesteryear in the past, such as with his Fantastikoi Hxoi project, which created Krautrock mutations from 60s and 70s pop, but Earth is an even more far-reaching expedition. It is a folk reckoning with ancient Greek musical traditions with a modern upgrade. The album reconstructs a sonic narrative of ancient traditions, enhanced with psychedelic and space-rock elements. In the reverb cycle, one hears a certain agrarian reinterpretation of the world, filled with harvest rituals and celestial incantations.

It is with great pleasure to welcome Anatolian Weapons to the label. During a longer stay in Athens, a friendship developed that led to a variety of musical projects and ideas. One of them is the release of the album Earth.

Having been deck slaying as near their London headquarters as Germany and as far as Canada, goth techno prodigy Lesser Of is steadily approaching double digit release count. With an established residence at queer x trans focused, revolutionary event series Subverted, their efforts have been welcomed to a formidable list of industrial electronic labels and remixed by a tidy sum of high profile scene icons.

Here at Depth.Request our sonars are attuned to emanant potential, and so we conscript Lesser Of to hammer out our fourth acetate offering to date. To this, harsh noise and drone music inspirations are declared, alongside an artistic secret of the trade: lights-off sessions in live room of a recording studio vibrating with the pulse of a bass guitar ran through a freeze pedal were what begot the tracks, and they are well intent on assaulting your headphones with noise. Reeko on the remix - yes, this record fucks.

Prolonged, ominous intro? Nah. Have a face full of Crude Manifestation Of Power instead, as an insatiable, 10-minute long opener braces your ears for a week of ringing with a sonic equivalent of metallic thrashing one could expect from being a sinful, rave-lusting scoundrel. On title-diverting continuation Within My Fragility the words "strength in fragility" are truly alliterated as the pace, abrasiveness and intensity of pummelling are all ramped up fiercely, with linear open hats thrown against them from time to time for good measure. Having reached 140 BPM and concrete mean, Masked proceeds in a well anticipated ra(n)ge: infernal atmosphere, sandy hats and layered tectonic tremors achieved with increasingly undefined low end consisting of a rumble line and rolling kick morphing into abrasive haze. Winding the tempo back a notch, a halftimearranged contemplation Our Descent grows in direct, hyperborean vector: glassy drones and sharp syncopulsation first - atonal reverberations, distorted arpeggios and punchy stabs endwise. Reeko's analog reinvention of Masked convolves the drum structure by borrowing from breakbeat narratives and authorizes the dystopian ambiance to rise and fall on more gradual, panning, confined terms; adding, however, more disorder to the mix with spectrum slicing, high-range chaos.

As you would have learned to expect from Depth.Request, Within My Fragility EP is not an easy listening five-tracker. If by the end of it you find yourself feeling as if you just stepped out of a pounding warehouse at 3AM and you don't know what day it is, you wouldn't have been experiencing this mindspace alone.

Moments of eternity: the first plucks at the strings, a bass note cementing the drift into place a little more than a minute in. The organ drones, iterating unrelivable ancient history, a chiming note of the church. Guitars strings, climbing that stairway to heaven. Gossamer-light when viewed from a distance; up close, the gears grind with a visceral physicality. With BCMC, Cooper Crain and Bill MacKay unite to create Foreign Smokes: provocalogues, equal parts avant-garde noir and fire-and-icy jams to recall bright shades and warm stretches of infinity drawn through the buzzy overdrive of this side of life"s strange and sunny days. Cooper"s organ and synths and Bill"s guitar draw songs from spontaneous statements and elegiac scraps, floating closer, then farther, and closer again to the sounds of the other. Starting with a melody, as set of progressions or even as little as a scale or just a key, gives room for either one of "em to take the lead, depending on where they are or are going at any given time. The reigning motif most often seems to be, to melt and wind around each other"s sound, part of a singular undulation, handed back and forth, a slowly emerging trip up into and through an ideal of exuberance.

The inaugural release on KMRU's own fledgling OFNOT imprint, 'Dissolution Grip' is an ambitious project that emerged from his studies at Berlin's prestigious UDK. The Kenyan composer and sound artist is best known for his field recording work, and as he traveled across Europe and the wider world for regular live performances, he made a point to snapshot each city. But the more he studied and the more he examined his practice, the more KMRU began to wonder what the purpose of these recordings were, and what bearing they might actually have on his self-expression. Simultaneously, he'd begun to dive more wholeheartedly into the world of synthesis. In a way, synthesis is the most basic form of sound, and KMRU started to wonder not just how he could harness these sounds but how he might be able to more dynamically combine them with field recordings.

Guided by Jasmine Guffond at Berlin's Universität der Künste (better known as UDK), KMRU looked at waveforms - the visual representation of sound itself - and embarked on a process where he would write scores from the shapes, gradually turning the scores into raw synth sounds. Considering the spaces he was inspired by and shuttled through, KMRU decided that instead of using environmental recordings as an aesthetic marker, he would use these captured moments to guide the waveforms. So each sound is birthed from a field recording, but none of those recordings are audible in their original form. For example, on the digital bonus track 'Along A Wall', KMRU recorded in an old shack on his family's compound in Nairobi, where wind was shaking the building to its foundations. Listening to the finished piece, we can hear subtle electronic tones that rub and vibrate against each other, slowly saturating and mimicking the erratic motion of the wind. The original recording has been removed, but the feeling remains.

The album's opening side 'Till Hurricane Bisect' is a 15-minute epic that evolves at its own glacial pace, carefully transforming blustering wind sounds into gasping drones, glassy oscillations and choked distortion. Cosmic and meditative, it's a testament to KMRU's skill as a sound engineer and patience as a composer, combining the gentle world building of his acclaimed Editions Mego album 'Peel' with the rumbling energy of 'Limen', last year's collaboration with Aho Ssan. On the title track, KMRU takes the opportunity to flex his orchestral muscle, conducting a cast of warbling synth tones into a durational symphony. Starting as quietly as a whisper, 'Dissolution Grip' expands at its own pace until it's a dense wall of harmony, powerful but never completely overwhelming. It's music embedded with a rich sense of place that informs us of KMRU's past and present, and signals where his musical philosophy might take us in the future.

a-Musik, the Cologne-based bastion of sonic exploration, unveils a new chapter in their quest for boundary-pushing sounds.

Timekeepers II, a split LP featuring recordings of two duos by Marcus Schmickler with Jaki Liebezeit and with Hayden Chisholm. Side A bears the imprint of Liebezeit's rhythmic flow fusing with Schmickler's digital Shepard Tone interpretation. A studio recording taken before a performance at Moers Festival in 2014. On side B, Schmickler's electronics converge with Chisholm's bagpipe drones. The piece was composed for their show at Art's Birthday at Berghain and a-Musik's 20th anniversary at Gebäude 9.

Tim Berresheim's artwork serves as a visual backdrop. Berresheim mostly works with computer rendered images, which have been created for a solo exhibition at JUBG in Cologne in 2022.

A Crimson Shore is Saåad’s first studio album since Présence/Absente in 2018. In the interim, Toulouse-based composer and producer Romain Barbot has enriched his experience as an artist through multiple collaborations, the composition of soundtracks and commissioned pieces, as well his involvement with the bands FOUDRE! and Sables Noirs.

This new chapter in the artist’s discography reflects this artistic maturity, evoking the project’s finest ambient recordings while revealing a new, unfiltered and decisive personality. Saåad’s use of a more direct musical language (exclusively electronic on this album) is intended to lay bare the inner life of its creator: the tracks are structured in a cycle of loops, vibrations and drones which respond to and confront each other like the torments of existence, torn between the twilight of sombre music reduced to its purest function of catharsis and the dawn of a new, luminous narrative journey.

A Crimson Shore is a raw, all-encompassing album, shot through with the fear of death, of growing old, of accepting it, of grief — past, present, imagined and future — and the search for a transcendental refuge.

After already having taken forward-thinking extreme music to unprecedented heights over the course of their short but propulsive career, Richmond's INTER ARMA are back with another opus of epic proportions. Like the band's previous works, the new album Paradise Gallows is direct and foreboding while maintaining a nuanced, artful perspective. INTER ARMA's signature palette of dissonant high-end and abyssal low-end has been augmented with swathes of thick, impressionistic melody that lend Paradise Gallows a truly biblical sense of scale, both lyrically and in terms of the album's sonic content. Harsh and acoustic passages (including the band's first-ever foray into clean vocals) spar with complex rhythmic structures across nine sweeping tracks over 71 minutes of expansive, progressive heaviness. Dense, funereal, and richly evocative, Paradise Gallows is a vibrant blend of doom, post-metal, sludge, avant-garde, black and death metal, and is a singular and powerful new addition to the band's already monumental discography. Includes Digital Download