Cerca:the memory foundation

Debut album from Alex Ho out of Los Angeles.

In his foundational essay on Los Angeles, L.A. Glows, the essayist Lawrence Weschler speaks on the city's uncanny, immediately recognizable light; "The late-afternoon light of Los Angeles—golden pink off the bay through the smog and onto the palm fronds." Weschler traces the city's mysterious refracted light from the iconic paintings of David Hockney through the city's frequent portrayal on film and TV, noting its ability to put residents into a state of "egoless bliss."

Similarly, Alex Ho's new album for Music From Memory, 'Move Through It', radiates with the unmistakable LA glow. While the Pasadena native's studio work is just now coming to light, Ho has long been a fixture in the Los Angeles dance music scene, throwing what are perhaps the city's most musically expansive warehouse events and carving out a singular voice as a DJ, as heard on his brilliant Moony Habits show for NTS. The eight-track record, however, lands in a more contemplative zone, better suited for a golden hour drive than a night out.

Though it's his first record, 'Move Through It' is the accomplished work of a fully-formed artist, produced patiently between 2017 and 2020 with help from friends including Baba Stiltz, Phil Cho, Damon Palermo and John Jones. "Mark," the Koanic track conclusion side A, is an arpeggiated slow burn reminiscent of Pino Donaggio's brilliant score for Brian De Palma's 1984 film Body Double. Ho's stunning, pure falsetto soars above gentle melodies. "Miss Suzuki," the piece that originally caught the ear of MFM's Jamie Tiller and Tako, opens the record with a blue, cinematic sway. Ho's facility for poignant melodies—easily conveyed through saxophone, vibes, various keyboards and his own voice—shines on "College Crest Drive," as well as the title track. The lyrical "Move Through It" and the restrained and beautiful closing cut, "TYFC," are abetted by glimmering Kraut guitar figures courtesy of John Jones.

While Ho's rhythms and melodies paint a crystal-clear musical vision, the music's emotional centre is more elusive, indicative of a yearning feeling synonymous with the City Of Angels. Hitting these hazy and subtle notes, Move Through It falls within a canon of sun-addled records spanning from Herb Alpert's "Rotation" to Dam-Funk's Private Life trilogy as Garrett. An immersive and concise statement, Alex Ho's 'Move Through It' is as warm and uncanny as the city that inspired it, a definitive LA album.

with »redsuperstructure«, robert lippok created a new foundation for his musical endeavors. now - 7 years later - this system properly comes to life on »applied autonomy«. the title of the new album is a clear indicator as to what the berlin-based producer has been up to during the last couple of years, both on a conceptual level as well as how he molds his ideas into tracks.
»applied autonomy« orchestrates a certain state of frantic standstill, which occurs once a structure is set. has this state been reached, the artist is free to focus on other equally important aspects, balancing the various shades, pushing ideas even further to really make them shine and blossom in their self-declared autonomy. the more light one lets in, the more layers become visible.
layers are key when it comes to understanding »applied autonomy«. big chunks of the material with which the album has been produced derive from sketches specifically made for a club performance. rather than meticulously devising each and every detail, lippok focussed instead on recording as many fragments as possible in a short period of time, elements which he could later combine and layer on stage. based on this material and his experience experimenting with it in a live environment, the album slowly began to shape. an album culminating in a collaboration with klara lewis, with whom lippok spent 2 days at the EMS studios in stockholm, approaching the idea of autonomy from yet another angle. during the session, both musicians played and performed simultaneously, yet not explicitly together, lost in their own thoughts and ideas, only subconsciously taking in what the other one was coming up with. the result is »samtal«, 14 minutes of a constantly evolving state of poise, magically connecting all the dots Lippok had already defined as »applied autonomy«.

April Records proudly presents the new album from Danish trombonist and composer Lis Wessberg. Her most personal album to date, In The Wake of Blue is a song-driven work exploring transience, love, and transformation. Expanding her writing while remaining rooted in her distinctive instrumental voice, Wessberg creates an intimate musical landscape where lyric, melody, and texture carry equal weight. Wessberg has established herself as a leading voice on the European jazz scene through her band Yellow Map and a series of acclaimed releases on April Records. Her previous album, Twain Walking (2024), marked her first step into English-language songwriting and earned a Danish Music Award nomination in 2025 for the track Behind the Walls. In The Wake of Blue develops this direction further. The album draws on images from nature - sea, tides, clouds, mist, and birds - used as emotional anchors rather than abstractions. These elements frame songs that move from uncertainty and loss toward openness, connection, and renewal. The title reflects this arc: "blue" as melancholy, depth, and memory, and what emerges in its wake. Vocalist Veronika Rud is central to the album"s sound, bringing vulnerability and clarity to the songs. Rather than a traditional singer-led project, the music unfolds as a dialogue between voice and trombone, with Wessberg"s warm, airy tone mirroring and extending each song"s emotional core. At times the two move in close unison; elsewhere, they diverge and reconnect. The core ensemble - Steen Rasmussen (piano and keys), Lennart Ginman (bass), and Jeppe Gram (drums) - provides a responsive, understated foundation, while string quartet Live Strings appear on two tracks, expanding the ensemble"s depth and resonce. In The Wake of Blue offers a quietly assured statement from an artist continuing to refine a voice that speaks as clearly through brass as it does through words.

*Kissa* is an immersive ambient electronic project crafted by Mathias, drawing inspiration from the serene and evocative atmosphere of Japanese jazz kissa cafés. These intimate spaces, known for their deep reverence for music, serve as the foundation for *Kissa’s* sonic landscape—where warm nostalgia and futuristic minimalism intertwine. Consisting of eight expansive compositions, *Kissa* abandons traditional rhythmic structures, allowing sound itself to guide the listener. Ethereal textures, evolving drones, and subtle harmonic shifts create a meditative experience that blurs the lines between memory and imagination. Each track is a portal—an invitation to lose oneself in sound, to explore the spaces between notes, and to embrace stillness as a form of movement. With *Kissa*, Mathias redefines the boundaries of electronic music, crafting an experience that is at once deeply personal and universally resonant. Whether serving as a soundtrack for introspection or a companion for late-night contemplation, *Kissa* embodies the essence of timeless listening—where music is felt, not just heard.

JeGong, known for their immersive, rhythm-driven explorations of Krautrock and experimental sound design, now take an exhilarating leap into brighter, nostalgically stranger territory. `Gomi Kuzu Can` is an electrifying journey through Kraut, Post- and Experimental Rock, delivered with the analog warmth of the '70s. Across eleven meticulously crafted tracks, JeGong embrace their roots while fearlessly expanding into neon-lit, beat-driven worlds where kinetic rhythms meet playful sonic futurism. It is music built for movement, contemplation, and the ecstatic strangeness of possibility. Their approach borrows the endurance and patience of minimalism, but they subvert minimalism's austerity with grit, distortion, and physicality. The result is music that feels alive in motion: constantly shifting, tightening, unfurling, and mutating even when its core pulse remains unbroken. "We wanted to create a `70s sound as the recording foundation - a sonic aesthetic that sets a mood through warm tape saturation. Like a kind of memory box where you can store recollections, for example from childhood, when you would spend hours by yourself watching TV and listening to the radio, often both at the same time." (JeGong) `Gomi Kuzu Can`, is hand-built, lovingly assembled from circuitry, intuition, and raw creative impulse. This tactile quality is precisely what makes the album's danceability so impactful. In blending organic rhythm with retro-electronic brightness, they've created a sound that is both familiar and refreshingly new. In the end, JeGong's sound is less a genre and more a landscape: rugged, hypnotic, austere, and strangely spiritual. It is music built on the bones of rhythm and the electricity of repetition, crafted with the precision of engineers and the instincts of explorers. FOR FANS OF Neu!, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Swans, Mogwai, Sonic Youth, John Zorn The single colour edition comes as Glass Clear vinyl!

Synthpop, minimal wave, post-punk, goth, new romantic - fans and critics alike have dug deeply into their vintage thesauruses to describe the beguiling work of Nation of Language. And if you can't precisely define the band, that's the point. Frontman Ian Richard Devaney has become prodigious in expanding what synthesizer-driven music can evoke, such that his output is as much an extrasensory journey as it is an all-too-human destination. With that experience in mind, he wrote the band's fourth album - the spectral, spacious Dance Called Memory - in the most humble of ways: chipping away at melancholia by sitting around and strumming his guitar. Nation of Language's first two albums, Introduction, Presence (2020), and A Way Forward (2021), came as pandemic godsends: gorgeous, relatable soundtracks to our collective doldrums. But it was their last LP, Strange Disciple (2023), that catapulted the group from cultural standouts to critical darlings, with the album being named Rough Trade's Album of the Year. With that release, Pitchfork wrote that the band "are learning what it means to get bigger and better." This is Devaney's calling: soulfully translating individual despair into a comforting, collective mourning. The single "Now That You're Gone," which radiates and reverberates with a devastating wistfulness, was inspired by witnessing his godfather's tragic death from ALS, and his parents' role as caretakers for this ailing friend. At its heart, the song is a reflection of how friends can be there for each other, and also highlights a theme throughout the record: the pain and lost promise of friendships that fall apart. On Dance Called Memory, the band once again collaborated with friend and Strange Disciple producer Nick Millhiser (LCD Soundsystem, Holy Ghost!). "What's so great about Nick is his ability to make us feel like we don't need to do what might be expected of us," says synth player Aidan Noell, who, along with bassist Alex MacKay, rounds out the Nation of Language lineup. They imbued Dance Called Memory with a shifted palette - sampling chopped-up drum breaks on "I'm Not Ready for the Change" for a touch of Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine or smashing all of the percussion of "In Another Life" through a synthesizer to cast a shade of early-2000s electronic music. Ultimately, the hope was to weave raw vulnerability and humanity into a synth-heavy album. "There is a dichotomy between the Kraftwerk school of thought and the Brian Eno school of thought, each of which I've been drawn to at different points. I've read about how Kraftwerk wanted to remove all the humanity from their music, but Eno often spoke about wanting to make synthesized music that felt distinctly human," Devaney says. "As much as Kraftwerk is a sonically foundational influence, with this record I leaned much more towards the Eno school of thought. In this era quickly being defined by the rise of AI supplanting human creators I'm focusing more on the human condition, and I need the underlying music to support that_ Instead of hopelessness, I want to leave the listener with a feeling of us really seeing one another, that our individual struggles can actually unite us in empathy."

Released in 2016, It’s Immaterial found Black Marble refining its coldwave and synth-pop foundations into a warmer, more melodic expression of isolation, longing, and quiet resilience. Guided by Chris Stewart’s unmistakable baritone and a palette of analog synths, pulsing basslines, and minimalist rhythms, the album feels simultaneously nostalgic and forward-leaning. Its songs drift between shadowy introspection and subtle hope, creating a cinematic atmosphere that’s both intimate and hypnotic.
With It’s Immaterial, Black Marble deepened its signature sound, offering a collection that resonates like a faded memory—soft, hazy, and endlessly replayable.

"Melodies twist inward and out of the comfort zone, but never overstep their boundaries or demand extra attention they don’t deserve. The fragments that have been found, from beginning to end, click and fall into place almost effortlessly. It’s surprising how nothing feels forced." - Drowned in Sound

Wrapped Up In Time is the fourth vinyl release by Night Foundation; the solo project of Intermedia artist and Noir Age label owner Richard Vergez. An existential suite of sounds comprised of analogue synth and drum machine, guitar, clarinet, tape loops and other assorted space racket.

The LP offers solo, instrumental passages punctuated by duets with Noir Age alumni: Underground vocal legend Little Annie reputable for her past collaborations with Coil, Nurse With Wound, Swans and countless others, lends her lived-in pipes for Blue Garage; along with Belgrade-based sound artist Zhe Pechorin for Night Blooming Jasmine; a tribute to our passed brother David Lynch.

Both rhythmic and expansive, Hinterland searching; Wrapped Up In Time is a processing of grief, memory, and the current state of our revolving loop of life. Recorded in South Florida, 2024-2025.

Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi of Senufo Editions.

For fans of: Coil, King Tubby, Dead Can Dance, Scorn, Sabres of Paradise, and Vicious Pink

Limited edition of 100 on black vinyl with full color matte jackets

»La Traversée« (»The Crossing«) is Matthias Puech’s second album for Hallow Ground and follows up on 2023’s »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Profoundly inspired by re-reading »The Odyssey,« the French composer, instrument designer, and scholar used a Eurorack modular synthesizer to create four pieces that are by far the most intuitive and emotionally charged in his ever-expanding catalogue. Puech’s masterful command of sound comes to the forefront with even more urgency on this record. A wandering meditation on the human condition, »La Traversée« is an album that is constantly in motion—complex electronic music at its most gripping and evocative.

The foundation for »La Traversée« was laid when Puech prepared a live set for a tour organised in collaboration with Hallow Ground in support of »Mt. Hadamard National Park.« Before writing the first three pieces—»Ennosigaios,« »Polyphármakos,« »Nekuia«—the 18½-minute-long »Ithâké« was composed in near-total isolation in the South of France at the end of 2023. Puech performed the material live several times before taking a step black from it for a while. He revisited the pieces when preparingthem for a release. »I was struck by how the technical process and the intention behind the music had completely vanished from my memory,« he says.

What remained intact, however, was Puech’s association of the material with one of the most influential texts of Western literature. Reading a graphic novel adaptation of »The Odyssey« with his two four-year-olds, he noticed the effect that it had on them and himself. »Its themes of longing, fear of and attraction to the unknown, unresolved quests, and the struggle for control felt topical,« he says. »I was completely taken. Every story ever told seemed contained in this ancient tale; every story I have ever tried to tell as a composer seemed inscribed in this framework.« This also extended to formal motifs such as the repetition of incidents, narrative developments, or dramatic effects that also mark »La Traversée.«

Puech says that he perceived Homer’s writing as musical, »like an old Delta blues or a Renaissance counterpoint,« which inspired his writing process. »With a couple of knobs on my Eurorack system, I could control the unfolding of a story,« he notes. »This made me pass through different emotional statesand led to moments in which everything made sudden sense—when you as an artist get a glimpse atsomething essential, can touch upon something universal.« This shines through »La Traversée,« a wildly imaginative album that is deeply personal while also telling a story far more wide-reaching than that of its creator.

In between the folds of ceremony and commonality lies a perennial spring of musical expression.

A statement along the time continuum, or a testament to the resilient resourcefulness embedded in that truth, forms the philosophical approach of this album – the first outing of Dídac.
Studying an extensive archive of instruments, artifacts, and field recordings at the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève—a space steeped in folkloric gesture – Dídac encountered a cosmos of liturgical music and folk song. Anchored in reverance for tradition and transformation alike, this album navigates the old-world Mediterranean lore through a post-modern ambient lens, threading drone, gentle rhythm, electroacoustic textures and the crude tactility of archival material into one woven tapestry.

Under the guidance of Dr. Madeleine Leclair, Dídac was invited to work within one of the world’s most extensive ethno- musicological archives—L’AIMP. In the saturated basements and tape-lined backrooms of the museum, he submerged himself in the sounds of ritual and rural life: wax cylinders from the Eastern Mediterranean, tapes of liturgical hymn, the worn edges of communal song.
In a makeshift studio on the fourth floor of the museum, he sifted through the hours of material he collected, gradually discovering that the archive was no static source – It did not dictate; rather, it served as a companion—offering not answers, but questions. Not a beaten track, but a cluster of sonic clues and riddles. Samples do appear occasionally, tenderly interwoven into the dialogue of the songs. In Dídac’s self-titled debut, the past is not worn as ornament or kitsch; it is listened to and responded to. The museum, its archives, and the visit to Geneva became a foundational culisse of sorts, igniting a myriad of rough cuts and improvisational outtakes.
Dídac, or Diego Ocejo Muñoz, was born in Madrid in 1994 to a family of both Catalan and Castilian origin.

Brought up in a religious household, the influence of the Catholic Church innately shaped the social fabric, schooling and daily life. This lingering dominance led the adolescent Diego into a path of rejection of everything sacramental, promptly resorting to subversion in the shape of grafitti, skateboarding and underground music. Only later in life, after a rigorous venture as an acid and electro producer, the Church re-emerged before him in new light, invoking a deep fascination for its mysticism, iconography and choral tradition.

Spain in general and Catalonia in particular, has long served as a crossroads of the eastern–western Mediterranean continuum, with many of its cultures sharing aspects of way of life and ceremony. At the MEG, Diego found himself puzzled with this realization, resulting in a sonic amalgamation that reaches farther away from the rugged mountains of Catalonia than you might perceive at first encounter.

The deeply embedded memory of rite and public ceremony, religious hymn and landscape—sieved through the undercurrent of personal re-emergence, forms the emotional topography of this album. The record does not trace this landscape; it inhabits it. Its repetitive mysticism and ambient, wide-eyed gaze could possibly evoke (perhaps redundant) comparisons to artists such as Dimitris Petsetakis, or Popol Vuh’s late 70’s cinema scores.
The delicate lines between the sacred and the secular – between memory and re-invention – serve as a cipher to understanding this album in its entirety. Titles like Malpàs Mines or Pantocrator’s Portal Outro nudge toward a folkloric and devotional bedrock—places where labor and spirituality coexist, where names preserve both dust and veneration.

Nevertheless, this is far from mere nostalgia. It is a reclamation — singing alongside the spirits of the past, nurturing what still hums beneath the soil. It is an intimate reflection on tradition, rebellion, adolescence, ceremony and fantasy – a pastoral contemplation on what once was and what is to be.

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.”

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.”

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.”

"I Became Birds feels like emo once again flipping the switch on its eternal energy source." - PITCHFORK // "One of the most arresting and interesting rock albums in recent memory." - SPIN // "Composed of self-deprecating wails, crashing guitar riffs, and a flicker of lyrical hope that almost feels naive _ in other words, the perfect foundation for classic emo catharsis." - STEREOGUM //// With I Became Birds, Florida's Home Is Where push their unique blend of whirlwind hardcore aggression and warm, open-hearted folksy melancholy to even further heights. Frontperson Brandon MacDonald's Dylan-esque eccentricities are on full display here, from the occasional blast of harmonica (like on early standout "Long Distance Conjoined Twins" or the disaffected, despondency-soaked closer "The Old Country") to their knack for abstractly evocative neurosis-as-poetry. But far from being a copycat act, Home Is Where's wearily raw-throated aesthetic and dynamically vivid compositions feel idiosyncratic and vital. The bittersweet folk melodies seep deeply into the band's DNA, adding an element of accessibility and immediate nostalgia to otherwise churning and angular song structures and sonic assaults. Vocals range from an intimate, gentle, and disarming croon to a full-bodied expectoration of the soul, oftentimes in the same song (like "Sewn Together from the Membrane of the Great Sea Cucumber," which splits the difference between mournful, gothic post-punk and staccato-heeled screamo with aplomb). A devastating rhythm section and nimble, versatile, yet powerful guitar work assist with the record's genre-bending, which ranges from maniacal chemical mixtures to gymnastic flips, twists, and turns. And yet, even amid the din, Home Is Where find ample time for hooks-- the oddball effervescence of lead single "Scientific Classification of Stingrays" and the shimmering, propulsive, delightfully off-kilter late-album stunner "Assisted Harakiri" are more than proof of that. Ultimately, I Became Birds shows Home Is Where hitting an early high-water mark. A brisk record-- six songs in roughly 17 minutes-- it never takes a dip in enthusiasm and inventiveness. Home Is Where's inexhaustible creativity and restless energy is bound to serve them well, and I Became Birds is all the proof anyone needs.

Taba voices a subtle yet surprising shift for the Japanese musician and producer Satomimagae. Observing and absorbing the fleeting scenes and sounds of life flowing outside of her home studio, Taba unfolds as a series of vignettes that document the personal and the universal. Satomi sings beyond herself in an orbit of souls and systems known and unknown, seen and unseen, in the present and in the strange flux of memory, leaving linear songwriting to rest for circuitous stories expanded and expansive in tone and texture. Following the logic of taba, a Japanese term for a bunch, bundle or grouping together of different things, the album is assembled as a loose collection of short stories. Shapeshifting into something like a poet-narrator, Satomi casts her writer's eye to the often perplexing shapes that form from quotidian events and exchanges defining our increasingly alienated age. Where Satomi's last full-length, 2021's Hanazono, bloomed from the lush soil of a private inner sphere, the bird's eye of Taba searches to place the artist_somewhere, somehow_within a wider, wilder world. Collaborations with other artists and musicians close to Satomi's universe further elevate the album's sweeping sonics. Synthesizer lines from Norio, who also helps define the album's visual identity through photo and video, enliven the tender ballad "Kodama." The bell-like Rhodes piano ringing in and around Satomi's guitar on "Dottsu" is played by Akhira Sano, who created the cover art for her 2021 Colloid EP. Yuya Shito's clarinet was the missing puzzle piece that completed "Spells," and it was also Yuya who mixed Taba with an ear for its organic textures and elegantly frayed edges, giving utterance to a distinctly different energy than Satomi's earlier expressions. The tonal and rhythmic play that lay the foundation of these songs also animates a colorful palette of melodic gestures, noisy resonances and pointed moments captured by Satomi's close-at-hand recorder. While Taba is still carried by the innate intimacy that has defined Satomi's music to date, these songs channel her newly spacious and inquisitive songwriting approach, unlocking unusual layers in the process. Some are subsumed in the speculative poetics of sound design, while others peer through the window of bedroom pop. Gathering imagistic reflections, tracing vast ideations and quietly lingering in humble moments, Taba connects vivid lines between the individual and the collective, the constructed and the cosmic, the articulated and the felt. Satomi's sonic tales gain an eloquent coherence by the simple fact of existing in conversation, humming a harmony of parts that buzzes with the tangled circuitry of a life in motion. Taba is the fifth album from Japanese musician, songwriter and dream traveler Satomimagae, following her 2021 album Hanazono and the 2023 reissue of her debut album Awa, both for RVNG Intl. On Taba, Satomimagae leaves linear songwriting to rest for circuitous stories expanded and expansive in tone and texture, unfolding as a series of vignettes that document both the personal and the universal. Some of the songs on Taba feature intimate moments captured on Satomi's hand recorder, poetic moments of sound design animated by tonal and rhythmic bedroom pop foundations. As with Hanazono, Taba's album artwork features a wooden block print by Satomi's sister, the artist Natsumi Magae.

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.

At the border of genres, OGIVES is an ambitious musical project, initiated and led by composer and musician Pavel Tchikov. This large ensemble leads us onto a path to a sacred universe, to a cathedral of sounds, whose foundations are rock and classical music. Born in Liège (Belgium), OGIVES offers a resolutely intense personal and poetic work, dominated by layers of melodious, polyphonic, shouted or lyrical voices. This first album from OGIVES, 'La mémoire des orages' (The Memory of Storms), is build and orchestrated around poems written by two members of the group. These texts revolve around the themes of the perception of time and the perspective of death. We find here all the group's influences, ranging from post-rock, prog' to contemporary music, baroque and medieval music, through electronic music and noise, all exploited to forge a homogeneous and singular material. From the first choral notes to the last sharp riff, it is a dense and melancholic epic, carried by inhabited and versatile musicians. The album was mixed by Steve Albini.

Rhythm Section International, the impossible-to-define label founded in South East London by Bradley Zero in 2014 has reached the ripe old age of 10 years.Spanning 6 discs and 30 tracks, the compilation begins by taking us on a walk down memory lane and presenting one track from each year of the labels output

Rhythm Section International, the impossible-to-define label founded in South East London by Bradley Zero in 2014 has reached the ripe old age of 10 years. Funny thing is, it feels like it could have been almost double that. It’s hard to imagine the Landscape of the London music scene without this foundational force whose influence is felt more than ever.

With this special anniversary release, the label takes stock at this milestone to present a compilation in 3 parts: PAST, RE-IMAGINED AND FUTURE: honouring the labels tradition of always paying homage to what has come before while setting sights firmly forwards.

With 100-odd releases in their extended back catalogue covering every imaginable style and boasting influence in every inhabited continent on earth, it’s been quite a decade for the independent label, which began on a shoestring budget with funds made via the now legendary Rhythm Section pool hall parties in Peckham.

From humble beginnings to an era defining output - few would have predicted the slow and steady rise of the imprint and the impact it has had on generations of Dj’s, musicians and listeners - at home and abroad.

Spanning 6 discs and 30 tracks, the compilation begins by taking us on a walk down memory lane and presenting one track from each year of the labels output - highlighting some forgotten classics from the archives over the first 2 discs. For discs 3 & 4, the label invited it’s stable of artists to pick a track from the back catalogue to re-imagine in their own style. This process resulted in some incredibly playful contributions from the likes of Ruf Dug, Session Victim and Private Joy - whose playful reinterpretations add new depth to old material.

Finally, the last 2 discs are entirely new material for 2024, carrying the torch of the previous SHOUTS compilations - whose sole aim is to shine light on new music from emerging artists