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Deprived of sanity, Paul Régimbeau aka Mondkopf found new territories of expression with »Spring Stories«, a collection of post-rapture moods full of glorious chaos, ready to absorb and re-ignite all that is worn.

As a phoenix raising from the ashes, »Spring Stories« captures the earth in full bloom. Darkness & Insanity looses it´s grips as the roots and fresh leaves creates a slow dance towards the sun. Similarly sine-wave drones move around exploding electric guitar improvisations as new light beams on shadow cast corners. The album feels like a 60ies jam set in the post-world psychedelic underground. Heavy, absurd, beautiful and ready to sooth burnt out, depleted minds. Paul has citied that he´s affected as much by folk improvisors such as Master Wilburn Burchette & Robbie Basho as well as the doom drone of giants Earth & Sunn O))). Spring Stories invokes on these, while feeling like a personal blow-out, coming right from the core. Touching and grand, like spring itself.

The album also features Frederic D. Oberland on two tracks playing variously Duduk & Alto Saxophone. Lastly, The Necks drummer Tony Buck shakes & rattles all over the final - and seriously epic - piece “Continuation”, as the world aligns while the sun rises over its near-dead shape.

Murmer is the long-standing project for Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and in Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as begin fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that which alien, sublime, and profound. Here lies the tremendous prowess of the contact microphone, as wielded by an accomplished musician! The source material cited by McGinley includes cables, fences, wires, and vents.

There is a heft to many of these sounds as heard throughout all of "Taevast" with deep throbbing pulsations from arctic wind generating subharmonic patterns upon thick high-tension wires. Elsewhere the subtle dissonance from a rasping cooling fan blooms into a brooding ambience that is sublimely rich in its metallic timbres and complex reverberations. McGingley has long been an exemplary artist in the field of phonography even as he is less prolific than others. On Tether, he has produced a majestic if occasionally foreboding work on par with the mythic wire recordings of Alan Lamb, Jacob Kirkegaard's haunted resonance from Chernobyl, and much of the Touch catalogue for that matter!

Patrick McGingley on Tether:

In 2006, I made a collection of recordings at a mobile phone mast in Mooste, southeast Estonia. It is a guyed tower, 80 meters tall, affixed to 3 support points with heavy cables. I attached my self-made contact microphones to these cables with poster tack, and spent many hours over several weeks recording the various wind and weather variances (it was summer), and the birds that passed or settled on the tower or cables. This was one of my first visits to estonia, where i now live, and one of the things that marked me about that experience was the access: the tower had no fences or protections around it (I have not been back there recently to answer my own question of whether or not this is still the case); it stands in the middle of a field of tall grass along a dirt road in the countryside, just out of view of the few nearby houses, and during all the hours I spent there I was never disturbed or shooed away.

For more than 16 years, I have been thinking about this location and these recordings, and have made several attempts to work with them. I have used the sounds in installations a handful of times, and uploaded one short edit to the Aporee soundmaps, but have never managed to use them in any composed work. They always seemed too big for any structure I could provide them, whether I left them on their own, or partnered them with other sounds. Finally, in 2019, after putting them down and picking them up again repeatedly over so many years, they seemed to allow me in, although it took me another few years before they were happy with what I could offer. They stand now not quite alone - the majority of the layered sounds in the piece come from various edits of those cable recordings, but I added two other contrasting sounds, related to one another: one is snowflakes landing delicately on a plastic cakebox with microphones inside it, and the other is a frosted field of grass thawing on a lightly warming autumn morning (both these recordings can also be heard on their own on the Aporee maps).

Coming back to those cables brought to mind so many other wind-driven sounds that I had spent time with and recorded, but never returned to, that I began digging through my archives looking for them. I ended up with a pool of sounds from resonant wires, cables, fences, poles, fans, and vents, which became the basis for the 2nd work on this release. One of these sounds is among the first sounds I ever recorded, possibly within a month or so of buying my first microphone and minidisc recorder: the rhythmic fan of a beer cooler in a pub where I worked in North London in 1999. Other sounds in the piece include another phone tower, recorded on the northern coast of France in 2008, a telephone pole recorded in the Beaujolais region in 2010, the drone of ventilator fans at a factory in Tezno, Slovenia in 2012, an electric sheep fence in the Scottish borders in 2013, a hanging wire in a storage space in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2016, and, with no relation to cables or wind at all, calcium deposits being cleaned from the inside of an electric kettle here in Estonia in 2019.

I offer these two new pieces as my first solo publication since 2018, the first release on a physical medium since 2016. No one has ever accused me of working too fast, or being too prolific. I have a need, it seems, to leave a physical space of time around my work, before I can consider it 'finished'. Perhaps it is a simple need to forget how I did something, or that I did something; perhaps I have a need to be able to hear a work as a first-time listener would, before I can consider it ready for such an encounter. In some part of my mind I have to forget it before I can let it go. Well, I've just about forgotten that London beer cooler now, and that walk in the Beaujolais (with my father, who has since passed away), and that sheep fence next to our campsite in the borders, and that kettle that is now leaky. So I guess it's time.

The second instalment in the Titrate series marks the debut of Pagan Red. This 180g vinyl album, housed in 350gsm reverse board print packaging, contains three experimental compositions featuring subtly enveloping drone, weightless percussion and immersive tonal resonance. Field recordings interweave with the synthetic, sparse rhythms emerge and dissolve, absorbing textures layer and evaporate. Exploring the symbiosis between the natural and the nonmaterial, Materia guides listeners on a journey across the threshold.

Essential UK experimental composer Richard Skelton returns to Phantom Limb for new album selenodesy, interweaving his newfound love of electronics and synthesis with mastery of gritty organic texture.

Skelton’s music has always been rooted in landscape, in the loam and grit of the earth: from his 2009 Pennine Moors-inspired modern classic Landings to his more recent Moraine Sequence of geological excavations, his work has been bound inexorably with the stark and untended wilderness of northern landscapes. With this new album, however, Skelton shifts his gaze skyward — in part the result of a move in 2017 to the countryside near the Kielder Observatory, and to a so-called ‘dark sky’ region of the UK. In this remote landscape, light pollution is minimal, allowing the austere majesty of the night sky to be seen with greater clarity.

The resulting album, selenodesy, reveals a new, reverberant spaciousness to Skelton’s use of electronics. It marries the twin worlds of his previous Phantom Limb release - 2020’s These Charms May Be Sung Over A Wound, and its abandoned-factory threnody - with the landscape-revering arcana of his earlier work, which saw him bury instruments in the soil to return months later to recover and record with them, newly imbued with the land they occupied. selenodesy was prefigured by a period of insomnia and the relief found

in stargazing, during which Skelton tried to transcribe his hypnagogic visions: “much of this music came to me in the early hours, in that nowhere state between dreaming and waking. I’d look out the window and the night sky would be swirling with stars. Mars or Venus would be hovering in the corner of the room. I’d lie there and watch the Aurora Borealis dance across the ceiling.”

In selenodesy, we find the lingering, distorted sine waves of album opener “Albedo” that thrum and fizz with an icy, foreboding moonlight, rays of subtle movement that illuminate and darken alternately. Next follows lead single “The Plot of Lunar Phases”, whose passive shrieks echo about a cold, yawning space, reaching an ecstatic crescendo of hissing sonics and swirling celestial drone. Its dynamic range acts like the light of a lunar passage, from utmost darkness to radiant luminosity. Elsewhere, the pulsing, precessional bass of “Faint Ray Systems” gradually opens to reveal mournful, elegiac synthesis that reaches high into the night sky with an unearthly beauty. It is as if, during those long months of lockdown in the Scottish countryside, Skelton tapped into a series of sidereal electromagnetic transmissions, and transposed them into musical form.

SQÜRL was formed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan in 2009 to score Jarmusch's movie The Limits of Control. Over a decade later and with numerous EPs and film scores under their belt, SQÜRL are set to release their very first full length record. Silver Haze was produced by Randall Dunn, who has also worked with the likes of Sunn O))), Boris, Earth, Zola Jesus, and Marissa Nadler, all of whom are artists that SQÜRL cite as inspirations. The album enlists Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, and Mark Ribot as collaborators, resulting in a communal offering that shares an energetic lineage with the New York School of Poets, a school they nod to on the track "John Ashbery Takes a Walk," which features Gainsbourg and turns two early Ashbery poems into an irresistible melodic siren's song. Silver Haze expands on SQÜRL's passion for creating rich textural sounds, finessed by a keen ear for production. The band is known for playing with everything from analogue synths to broken radios and pulling inspiration from painters, writers, and birds on the street. Silver Haze is a poetic journey of spoken words, dynamic instrumentals, drone riffs and distorted effects, one that features tubular bells and a cello in addition to their signature stacks of delay, encircling the listener in a warm oscillation both delicate and devastating.

SQÜRL, the duo of filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan, have announced their debut album, Silver Haze, out May 5th via Sacred Bones.

‘SilverHaze’ was produced by Randall Dunn, who has also worked with the likes of Sunn O))), Boris, Earth, Zola Jesus, and Marissa Nadler, all of whom are artists that SQÜRL cite as inspirations. The album enlists Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anika, and Mark Ribot as collaborators, resulting in a communal offering that shares an energetic lineage with the New York School of Poets.



‘SilverHaze’ expands on SQÜRL’s passion for creating rich textural sounds, finessed by a keen ear for production. The band is known for playing with everything from analogue synths to broken radios and pulling inspiration from painters, writers, and birds on the street. ‘Silver Haze’ is a poetic journey of spoken words, dynamic instrumentals, drone riffs and distorted effects, one that features tubular bells and a cello in addition to their signature stacks of delay, encircling the listener in a warm oscillation both delicate and devastating.



The announcement of ‘Silver Haze’ comes on the back of sold out live shows across Europe. Originally intended to happen in 2020, the rescheduled dates saw Jarmusch and Logan perform an original live score to four films by Man Ray. More live dates will follow in due course.

Constantly evolving and adapting his sound, Shackleton has releases
spanning labels such as Honest Jon’s, Perlon and his own imprints, Skull Disco (co-founded with Appleblim) and Woe to the Septic Heart!.
Shackleton now finds a home for a brand new project on the Barcelona-based, Modern Obscure Music.

Undoubtedly Shackleton, but taking the meditative aspects of his sound to a new plane, The Purge of Tomorrow, is an alias born to transmit a less dancefloor-orientated experience to whomever is ready to receive it.
‘The Other Side of Devastation’ is an investigation into a novel form of
deepness. Adverse to the reductive label of ‘Ambient’, these tracks are spawned from a live performance context. The essence was to create an immersive encounter where listeners are called on to actively unburden their mind of unnecessary thoughts. Staying true to the trance elements that Shackleton is renowned for, this EP is not dependent on traditional structures or a linear narrative.
‘Time Moving’ presents itself through a journey of disquieted moments and contemplative states. Hypnotic strings provided by Kathy Alberici construct pastoral phrases that mesh with the larger looming drones,
culminating to conjure a daydream-like energy. Following on, ‘Waves’
twists through various forms, awash with cascading vocal splices and
soothing murmurs contrasted with rousing sub pressure.
Reflective and sometimes provocative, as an artist who resents the
pigeon-holes of genre, The Purge of Tomorrow presents an exciting new direction for Shackleton. Bursting-at-the-seams with emotional
complexity as to echo the woes of the human condition, this EP is
steeped in feelings of forgone events doomed to be replicated.

DEAD SEA APES are back with a passion to deliver their most essential and cohesive album to date. Formed in 2009, DEAD SEA APES have become a fixture of the psych scene, sharing stages with the likes of Part Chimp, The Heads, Acid Mother Temple and Mugstar while producing a distinctive body of work, ranging from psychedelic punk to experimental dub, from freeform jams to constructions of loops and drones. Following a slew of collaborations and split releases, REWILDING sees them return to a power trio of Brett Savage (guitar), Jack Toker (bass) and Chris Hardman (drums). From the chaotic blast of opener ‘Denialist’, beaming out like a maniacal emergency broadcast, through to the monolithic pounding of the title track, REWILDING is unrelenting, taking in blown-out guitar wails and jet black psych noise while the irrepressible rhythm section moves from claustrophobic motorik beats to a thunderous rolling juggernaut. These blackened pearls have been recast and refined over the course of the past three years, strung out deeper than the night and now embodying our present uncanny, disorienting times, as we emerge into an altered world to find Mother Nature reasserting herself while the human madness intensifies, locally and globally. Savage and uncompromising, this is DEAD SEA APES at their most direct and visceral. REWILDING is released by Cardinal Fuzz (UK/Europe) and Feeding Tube Records (USA) as an edition of 750 on black vinyl.

From the viscerally punishing and nerve wrecking, to the wistfully sublime, Kevin Drumm ‘s work often yield a ferocious intensity through the timbres of minute details. Now, throughout this series of archival works dating from 2000 to 2022, his mastery is once again on full display.

On »Battering Rams«, sinister forces interlope with sanguine glimmers of respite and contemplation, while recurring drones ceaselessly crescendo to near paralysing effect, only for the albums final moments to offer a lofty reprise of boundless oscillation, dispelling all the pent up tension into a sanguine state of bliss. Once again underpinning Drums’ genius of turning apparently trivial hums into elongated microtonal worlds that stay etched deeply in your conscious, often long after the works final resonances have already subsided.

"Akuphone is proud to present the Jerusalem-based improvisational trio Leviot and its hypnotizing debut album. Leviot (Hebrew for “Lionesses”) is a brainchild of multi-faceted musician and composer Yael Lavie, who’s joined by classically trained percussionist and music teacher Cnaan Canetti, and synth enthusiast Yishay Seroussi. The project is a result of Lavie’s ongoing explorations beyond the restraints of classical kanun playing and fascination with electronic sound and modern composition. Initially started following her experience performing and recording with Spiritczualic Enhancement Center, in Leviot, Yael gives up rehearsed pieces in favour of improvised sets, based on virtuous interpretation by Cnaan and Yishay. The three have been active since 2019, playing their immersive shows in a wide variety of settings, venues and festivals. The trio’s debut release is a live session, recorded in late 2020 at Mazkeka Studios (Jerusalem) for the lockdown edition of the annual Zikuk Festival. It’s a meditative improv piece in five parts that combines and melts boundaries between the traditional and the experimental, the primal and the futuristic. With setup as the foundation of the piece and Lavie’s graphic score as the road map, Leviot takes off on a cosmic journey between deep drones, whispering chimes, mesmerizing Arab melodies, pulsating rhythms and iridescent ambient patterns."

Peter Culshaw was described by Malcolm Mclaren as “the Indiana Jones of World Music” and has tracked down music from the Amazon to Siberia and lived with Pygmies in Central Africa and dervishes in Istanbul. The result of decades of research is this, his first solo album.

The music is a mysterious mix of East and West, ancient and modern, led by minimal tantric piano, objective, meditative music for a chaotic age.

11th album by the one-of-a-kind collective: psychedelia and free form jazz (not jazz) trigger a sophisticated excursion into weird textures with drastic turns. Dislocated dense music full of secret connections!

Kammerflimmer Kollektief – "Schemen"

Before reason prevails, invoked by those who want everything to remain as it is, Kammerflimmer Kollektief disrupts the established supply chains of sound. It seeks more interesting ways to assemble them. Trusting in this, because of the fact that every sound that still comes out of a guitar, a bass, a harmonium, drums and electronic devices has already been taken into the common mangle of meaning anyway. Enough of all that. Here, nothing is explained. Here we speak in schemes. Polished and jerky.

The images that Kammerflimmer Kollektief conjures up therefore happen not in the focus of consciousness, but rather in its outer realms. In those to which one does not give one's full attention at the moment, but which are nevertheless perceived. For example, when a leaf falls from the ground back up to the tree in the corner of your eye, and for an instant you think this is possible, before you realize it was a small bird flying into the tree; it is in just such irritating moments between perception and realization that the art of the Kollektief also unfolds. On "Schemen", familiar fragments float gently around their core – a Fender Rhodes tone, a bass figure, a guitar motif, a masterful drum shuffle, a moment of icy stasis borrowed from the harmonium playing of Christa 'Nico' Päffgen. Triggering brief associations, they slowly rush off in other directions through free jazz-informed editing work, whereupon such zones can also arise in which perception has a few tricks ready and earlier experience suddenly breaks into the now in a completely different way. Half suspected, half seen.

Half-music like Can from Cologne – also masters of improvised editing – sometimes produced a few decades ago in their in-between moments. The first minutes of "Future Days" for example, which fade in gently, sketch a barely graspable figure emerging from all directions of the room. Kammerflimmer Kollektief also engages in similarly open moments of development. Loosely, it eludes the first formative impressions, keeping itself ready for moments that do not follow any logic of appointment. This looseness in handling makes Kammerflimmer Kollektief so fluidly audible, even when dissonant peaks and free playing arise. What Karlheinz Stockhausen is to Can's understanding of composition, the recordings of The Cocoon are to Kammerflimmer Kollektief. The Cocoon, a meeting of garage psychedelics from the Hannover area with free jazzers from the Galaxie Dream Band, whose album "While The Recording Engineer Sleeps", recorded in 1985 in unguarded moments, operates in a very similar way with decentralized perceptual ambivalences and only appeared more or less secretly four years later on Wilhelm Reich Schallspeicher. Other traces of "Schemen" lead to the debut album of Quicksilver Messenger Service. The guitars of Gary Duncan and John Cipollina, which refer to themselves in an unforced manner, are instructions to let go. They don't want to be traced in every note as a solo, but they give their music a sense that the essential takes place off center, in the mutual and intuitive gift of loving attentions. Consciousness-free.

Loving turns like the little guitar phrase that, like a kind of leitmotif, is repeatedly ghosting more or less unchanged through all of the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums. A Coricidin induced, very catchy slide idea filtered out of ancient Æther, which – who knows – maybe even centuries ago found its way from somewhere to America – the old, the eerie – and from there wafted on through the ages to southern Germany, to a smoky studio in the Upper Rhine lowlands. A memory of which even the memory no longer knows what it once reminded. Unsaid, then forgotten.

In Kammerflimmer Kollektief you will also find a friend of slowly building, unhurried music, which probably would have been appreciated by the old Franz Mesmer, who 200 years ago, after tranquilizing treatments, sometimes used to play for his patients ambient melodies on the enormous glass harmonica. However, in order not to surrender completely to the flow of one's own life energy, as Mesmer had in mind with his therapies, Kammerflimmer Kollektief occasionally adds hectic tensions, gently embraced by the droning of a sine wave generator, as if a trance could briefly refesh. This old analog sine wave generator is new in the Kammerflimmer assortment of sounds. So, the art of the Kollektief likes to dock occasionally in modern times, yet with the past in mind. Mental states begin to flicker between imagination and certainty, between culture-bound art expression and coincidences: A cawing and scraping can always just be a cawing and scraping with Kammerflimmer Kollektief, the way Andy Warhol's mushroom eater just eats a mushroom.

Heike Aumüller's cover works, which illustrate all the Kammerflimmer Kollektief albums, additionally act as amplifiers of unexplained refractions. Her style consists of eye-corner art that remains so, even when looked at directly. Her shots remain disquieting because they do not jolt themselves into a reassuring order, even in retrospect. Rather than evading the fear that arises when looking at them by trying to impose some irrational rhyme or reason, that fear must simply be endured. This strategy of endurance is equally applicable to the music. The trick is to let parts be parts without compulsively seeking delusional patterns that lull us into a false sense of security and in doing so, possibly delude ourselves. In this context, freedom means not having to anxiously attach a fantasized superior meaning to everything. "Schemen" has an conspiracy disintegrating effect.


b A2 Zweites Kapitel (ruckartig) [feat. Heike Aumüller]

Modular synthesizers / electronics + a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors: on its self-titled debut album, the duo hÄK / Danzeisen creates a sonic energy that oscillates between high-precision rhythm patterns, analogue sounds and frenzy climaxes.

One must imagine hÄK / Danzeisen as a man-machine apparatus. A collection of cables, resonating bodies and restless limbs that together question all routines. Who overthrow conventional role of instruments and explore the possibilities of a new sound language. Bernd Norbert Würtz alias hÄK operates modular synthesizers, self-soldered circuits and control knobs. Philipp Danzeisen plays a drum kit enhanced with triggers and sensors. These two poles are connected to an interdependent whole in which a constant musical dialogue takes place. The dependencies within this system have been meticulously defined by hÄK / Danzeisen: Drum rolls and sound modulations are interconnected in such a way that there is no contradiction between the strict technological structure and the creative outburst that is possible at any time.

What drives hÄK / Danzeisen is the basic idea that the contrast between acoustic drums and synthetically produced sounds must be overcome in order to create a new experience. Würtz, Danzeisen and their combined instrumentation simultaneously rub up against the same edges, finding a single, piercing voice.

Ideal manifestations of this approach are the duo's live performances: raw energy that oscillates as precisely as it surprises between drones, abstraction and noise attacks, driven by an impudent take on jazz. Constantly oscillating between the registers of "composed" and "improvised", each performance by hÄK / Danzeisen ultimately becomes one of a kind. (Arno Raffeiner)

Russell and Craig have collaborated on several site specific projects over the years (Cotton Goods & Wist), notably sharing a graphic score concept for the production of their Atlantic Cable release. The album Diagenesis represents a change in their working process through which the materiality of field recordings is somewhat privileged over musicality. This work was created through a process of exchange - passing tracks back and forth, each layer of sound buried a little deeper beneath the next.

Diagenesis: The watery interactions, microbial activities, alterations, compactions, and chemical transformations of sediments slowly converting to rock.

Russell Burden (Being) is a sound and visual artist living on the south coast of the UK. His practice develops work that explores qualities of ambient perception, most often through the lens of hydrological, geological or biological processes. He has delivered gallery exhibits in various mediums including live cymatic feed, and dark space installation. Russell was also a member of The Humble Bee & Players and last year as artist in residence for a site specific project produced a set of drone works on his own imprint, riverwork press.

Craig Tattersall (The Humble Bee) works across music and visual art with an interest in their intersection, and often works collaboratively producing art objects and sound works which have been released on numerous labels. His main focus is with environment(s) and his own interactions within. He has curated a number of micro-labels including cotton goods, mobeer:: | moteer::, our small ideas and now co-curates umbrella publishing.

Bristol-based producer and DJ 'Drone' present his album on 1985 Music. This 13-track long play, like his previous releases, continues to push the boundaries of underground dance and grime while retaining a sub-heavy, 808-laden coherence within his productions and selections, as anyone who has caught one of his sets can attest to.Since his first release on the imprint in 2020, Drone and his productions have grown from strength to strength. His debut EP ‘Evil Sky’ in 2021 received critical acclaim and support from all the leading figures in underground dance. His production work blurs the boundaries of trap, grime, and dubstep while enjoying support from the likes of Mala, V.I.V.E.K, and Kahn, it seems Drone’s inimitable sounds are becoming favoured by both scene stalwarts and club-goers: an admiration which looks set to grow as he continues to produce thoughtful and original music that promises a reaction in the club. ‘All I Know’ feat. Nottingham’s rising star Snowy kicks off the campaign and is a track that dominated the 2022 festival season. Calling on fellow production friends, this album also sees collaborations with label head honcho Alix Perez, Notion, Hyroglifics, and Deft. Kicking off 2023, Drone undertakes his first North American tour with a month of back-to-back performances and showcases of his new music ahead of release. He returns to the UK with a very special album launch party in his hometown Bristol before taking the party to the capital in early March.

Mammal Hands announce spell-binding new album 'Gift from the Trees', their fifth studio album, pointing to subtle shifts and exciting new departures for the unique trio
"We're at a point now where playing and writing together can sometimes feel almost telepathic, that as individuals we can tune in to a collective resonance..."
Mammal Hands fifth album 'Gift from the Trees' offers a fresh perspective on the unique trio's singular music. The first to be recorded in a residential studio, the band enjoyed the opportunity to go late into the night searching for a deeper, more organic experience, closer to both their writing process but also their trance-like live performances. While some of the music was pre-composed and had even been performed live, the band also enjoyed the opportunity to improvise ideas in the studio. Drummer Jesse Barrett explains:
We wanted to have a more immersive experience that felt closer to our writing process. One thing that was really important to us was feeling free to jam out ideas as they came to us. We're at a point now where playing and writing together can sometimes feel almost telepathic, that as individuals we can tune in to a collective resonance and just follow that thread where it wants to go. Sometimes it's something as simple as a rhythmic, textural flow, like in Sleeping Bear.
There was also a conscious decision to move away from the sound and ambiance of the recording studio, with the band opting to engineer the record with their go-to live engineer Benjamin Capp before mixing the sessions with Greg Freeman in Berlin. The idea was to try and capture more of the energy of the band's captivating shows, saxophonist Jordan Smart explains:
Considering the group of tracks we had, it made sense to try and capture this process as organically and honestly as possible, and so a change in studio environment felt like the right move to us. Some of the tracks have a raw joy and energy that came with being able to play together again after a long period of time of having been apart, and capture that feeling of just being happy to be in a room with our instruments altogether again.
Whereas for pianist Nick Smart there was also the chance to really go deep into the band's music:
The new studio environment really opened us up to different ways of working and thinking because we could record at any hour of the day or night. I think this allowed us much more freedom to try unusual ideas and push elements of the music to extremes because we had the time to really focus in on the detail and work on things without time pressure. With some tracks, we were trying to find the boundaries of our playing ability and push beyond that point. With others, it was just getting into the right mindset and putting as much energy and emotion into the take as possible.'
The Welsh environment outside the studio doors seeped into the music presented on Gift from the Trees, with two recording sessions (one in winter and one in the spring) bringing different moods: one bleak and wintery, the other more hopeful and bright – an energy that permeates through tracks such as Kernel and Dimu.
Gift from the Trees opens with wonderfully elevating The Spinner which grew from one of Nick's piano parts and was developed and arranged into a complete tune without losing the feeling of constant flow and motion. It is almost like a dance, with the interaction of different melody parts and the doubling of certain parts melding together and fitting into the overall energetic flow, while Jesse's drums are both floating and deeply melodic. Riser aims to capture the band's raw energy and intriguingly is influenced by both breaks and modern drum production but also minimalist classical composition. Nightingale features the band at their most delicate and lyrical – a band favourite it draws heavily on modern folk with a beautifully realised melody that came unforced to pianist Nick Smart before being jammed out together. It was recorded early one morning, bringing an extra light and brightness to this beautiful performance.
Another album highlight is Dimu which utilises one of drummer Jesse Barret's favourite rhythmic devices from the Tabla repertoire and draws inspiration from Indian, Greek and Arabic music as well as modern folk arrangements. Dimu starts with saxophone over a bed of drones and percussion and moves through many different sections that frame and present the melodies in unique ways. The beguiling, intimate Deep within Mountains aims to place you in the room with the band as they play; it was recorded late at night to capture a dreamlike, liminal ambiance. The piano solo really reflects this mood and energy while the tenor is some of the softest and closest on the recording. Elsewhere, the remarkable Labyrinth started with what Nick describes as "some weird recording on my phone from a soundcheck, where Jordan was playing some crazy sounding bass clarinet part and I quickly recorded him", giving birth to a captivating, complex slice of propulsive 'almost' contemporary classical that like so much of the music on Gift from the Trees really couldn't be any other band than Mammal Hands.
Finally, the album draws to a close with the glorious Sleeping Bear, a tune that was wholly improvised in the studio. Nick and Jesse entered a simple but 'weird' locked groove and Jordan improvises melodies over the top. The track came about without any planning or thought; it was one of those special things that came by surprise and the band felt offered the perfect ending to their latest gift to us all: a deeply enthralling album that captures so much of what makes Mammal Hands a special band while mapping out new routes and paths for their beautiful, beguiling music.

Swedish drone alchemist Mats Erlandsson is sitting in a fictional room on ‘Gyttjans Topografi’, imagining a virtual chamber orchestra using zithers, tapes, double bass, harmonium, organ, and various synthesisers to draft a treatise on alternative tuning and non-normative harmonic structures. Transcendent material.

“The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that alternate between gestural foreground and passive landscape. The three pieces contained within this release are tied together by sharing similar harmonic material and instrumentation and could ideally be perceived as parts of one long performance stretching through the two sides of the record. The textural room in which this musical performance operates is unreliable, unstable, constantly shifting in size and activity from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. Inside this non-euclidean performance space a chamber ensemble made up of zithers expanded through analog tape transposition, harmonium and organ, double bass, digital FM, feedback-convolution and Serge modular synthesizer perform a music made from justly tuned intervals arranged in a way that blurs the distinction between traditional minor and major tonal harmony in favour of harmonic progression within an essentially modal framework.

‘Oxidationstabell för Hytta A’ unfolds the harmonic material slowly in three sections where individual lines move independently initiated by the attack of the zither while the textural properties of the room shifts and shimmers. ‘Törnar’ forms a dense harmonic counterpoint where lines built from the same intervallic relationships gradually shift the balance from one spectral focal point to the next while the textural-spatial elements move under pressure and permeate the harmonic layers. The double bass heard on this piece was performed by Yair Elazar Glotman.

The whole of Side B is made up of one piece - ‘Sänka’, using a series of chords made from harmonic inversions of a single set of intervals as an anchor, or synchronisation point, for voices gliding towards, or away, from their designated goal as parts of the harmonic structure of the piece. In addition to the harmonic and textural layers previously present, a third percussive voice is present here whose rhythmic material is intimately tied to the intervallic relationships present throughout the record.

The material used to make these pieces included non-harmonic sounds and contaminated field-recordings that have gone through a sort of feedback process between digital and analog, or acoustic, processing where the recordings were edited, processed and re-amplified and recorded again in acoustic spaces to shape their character and imprint acoustic identities on the recordings. The tonal instruments were treated in a process analogous to this - harmonic material built from recordings and digitally generated synthesis recorded, transcribed, rearranged and overdubbed again with additional electronic or acoustic instruments to form a composite electroacoustic instrumental sound.

Mats Erlandsson is a composer and musician, part of the vibrantly reemerging field of drone music in Stockholm, Sweden, associated with practices characterised by the extensive use of sustained sound. Erlandsson presents his work both as a solo artist and in collaborations, most notably together with Yair Elazar Glotman and Maria W Horn.

Dauw presents 'babel', the debut album from Belgian duo ZONDERWERK. The duo’s name means ‘’without work’’, but it also comes from “bijzonder werk”, where bijzonder is particular, special, unique. They like to work with images/paintings that are “bijzondere werken”, odd works.

babel is an ambitious exercise in translating images into sound. babel was initially created for the eponymous theatre piece by architect and artist Steve Salembier. Inspired by the biblical legend, Salembier envisions the legendary city as an abstract, sprawling modern metropolis in continuous flux. Its steel and glass skeleton is a representation of both an accumulation of overlapping contemporary cityscapes and a metaphor for the anonymous repetitiveness of our daily routines mirrored by the architecture. Subway lines, sky scrapers and whirling highways converge into a megalopolis of monstrous proportions. Despite the composition’s initial context as soundtrack for a theatre play, for the band this album is seen as a standalone work, whose complex sonic material can be appreciated without having seen the piece.

Their score focuses on fleshing out the imposing imaginary universe both in terms of scale and meaning. One of their biggest inspirations were Michael Woolf’s photographs, which served as the basis for the original theatre piece. His use of grey and repetition is translated into looped harmonies and fine-grained drones that progressively open up like blooming ice flowers.

With sounds of bells and metal as their primary materials, Carrijn and Sanders build soundscapes that are at once seductive and unsettling. The atmosphere on tracks like “DreamArp4Kort4” make for majestic, mysterious synths conjuring otherworldly visions, while the angelic glockenspiel set against subtle explosions in “VuurFeest” suggest a serene yet potentially dangerous place. Other tracks like “RoomCarousselTapeLoop5” create multi- layered textured drones through the process of tape decay, a commentary on the cannibalistic nature of the city.

Resulting from an arduous improvisational processusingold samplers with elements such as the Beam harp, a self-made metal instrument with piano strings, reel to reel tape recorders, field recordings and violin, babel perfectly captures the oxymoron of the man-made concrete jungle that is at once inhospitable yet endlessly awe-inducing.

ZONDERWERK is a duo consisting of Linde Carrijn and Dijf Sanders who started this project during the pandemic as a way of exploring their relationship as creative partners. Carrijn has a background in acting but recently came more to the fore as composer/performer with original scores for theatre and her other band Brik Tu-Tok founded with multi-disciplinary artist Maxim Storms. Sanders is a composer and gear enthusiast, more well-known for his eclectic works that draw from a wide-array of non-Western music. His milestone-album Moonlit Planetarium paved to way to a broader audience and recognition from major press in Belgium. In 2021, his work as a producer was recognized with a nomination at the Music Industry Awards.

Remastered Reissue von WANDERMÜDE, einem exquisit-seidigen Stoff aus den kombinierten Fäden des deutschen Klangkünstlers Stephan Mathieu und des hochgelobten David Sylvian. Das 2012er Werk erscheint erstmals auf Vinyl, beide Formate enthalten einen unveröffentlichten Bonustrack. Als Interpretation von David Sylvians kathartischem Meilenstein BLEMISH (2003), mit dem dieser mit seiner musikalischen Vergangenheit brach, ist WANDERMÜDE ein feines, futuristisches Gemälde elektroakustischer Kunst. Es erforscht die ruhigeren, elektronischen Seiten beider Persönlichkeiten, liefert experimentelle, drone-eske Formen und lammfromme Themen, und mit dem Gitarristen/Elektronikkünstler Christian Fennesz ist wieder ein BLEMISH-Gast mit von der Partie.

Das Debütalbum des Electro-Punk Musikerkollektivs aus Teesside im Nordosten Englands um Frontmann Kingsley Hall.
Gegründet 2019, schloß sich die Band - bestehend aus Hall (Gesang und Gitarre), Robbie Major (Synthesizer), Hugh Major (Bass und Sequenzer) und Jonny Snowball (Schlagzeug) - aus "einem kollektiven Misstrauen gegenüber den politischen Entwicklungen" heraus zusammen. Nails ist ein wütendes, an Dringlichkeit kaum zu übertreffendes Statement, brutal und minimalistisch, in dem Hall über Beats, Drone Noises und Gitarrenfeedback mit seinem unverkennbaren Sprechgesang gesellschaftliche Mißstände lauthals anprangert. "a shit-hot artist" (NME). Darüber sind sich auch Anhänger der Band wie Sleaford Mods, Black Francis (Pixies), Steve Albini und Modeselektor einig.

Für Fans von Idles, Sleaford Mods, Divide And Dissolve, Bob Vylan und Billy Nomates!

Roadburn festival is arguably the world's most cutting edge boutique music festival out there, and has been a fertile breeding ground for innovative acts from a broad spectrum of musical genres for many years. Last year saw the unique collaboration of Danish electro-industrial duo John Cxnnor and Hungarian doom-folk artist The Devil's Trade take the stage to deliver a sonic journey into the void of deep space. Today, we are ex- cited to release this iconic set on vinyl to immortalise this one-time convergence of three akin artistic minds. John Cxnnor is made up of one half of Danish sci-fi-sludge metal juggernaut LLNN and sees the brothers Rasmus G. and Ketil G. Sejersen collaborating with numerous fellow artists to explore the synth side of their main project. Inspired by the Terminator-franchise and the scores of other sci-fi movies, the Sejersen brothers have been creating menacing industrial electronic opuses, the frst of which a crushing rendition of a The Devil's Trade track. "We've been enjoying the music from The Devil's Trade for quite some time now," commented the duo on the release of «Dead Sister Merope», describing it as "an interesting match of musical expressions formed by the same DNA." Indeed, the haunting atmospheric folk compositions of The Devil's Trade mastermind Da'vid Mako' carry a similarly cavernous quality which, when taken to the stage of Roadburn, is only reinforced by the sonic violence of John Cxnnor. Unlike many other live records, this set is captured and excellently produced down to the finest level of detail. On centrepiece «Lullaby», the trio seem to have perfected their definition of heaviness, with heavy bass blasts beyond anything you've heard before booming from the speakers. Together John Cxnnor and The Devil's Trade reach new heights in their respective trades capturing both the pressing darkness that gathers `round a bonfire at night as well as the void darkness of deep space. FOR FANS OF Author & Punisher, Godfesh, Lustmord, LLNN, The Devil's Trade, The Body, Uniform Ltd Gold (single colour) edition!

TEN. KR3 marks the double-figure release, starring David Foster: the man behind the Huren project, which has been churning out influential tracks for the past three decades. Blood Fire Debt – has been described by David with one word: ‘survival’. Indeed, in this tenth release we rediscover an already legendary artist of the power electronics scene, in his most honest and consistent form. Expressing himself through cinematic-noise, harmonised by dark drones and slo-mo rhythms. Still navigating through the chaos, this ride will take us back to the 90s, thanks to the presence of a track (B2. Mytologinen) produced in those years. There will be a unique insert with the HUREN portrayed under one of the twin towers. Written & Produced by David Foster Mastered and Vinyl Cutting by: Tim Xavier at Manmade Mastering Berlin

Alternative Hip Hop Artist Rebel ACA Channels his Pain in "Migraine" ft. Spragga Benz, Rodney P

LONDON - The word "migraine" can make you twinge, especially if you experience the pounding head, vertigo, and tinnitus associated with migraines. Imagine if you put all those feelings into music - that is what Rebel ACA did with his latest single, "Migraine."

Rebel ACA's new single flows through his twenty-year journey of advising on international tax by day and rapping and producing by night. Perhaps, the ACA stands for his accounting qualification.

Dropping in April, there will be two versions, an original version and a DJ Phantasy Remix of "Migraine" on streaming platforms. Depending on the version, "Migraine" is a musical representation of a severe headache. The drum and bass mix features a funky, constant drone throughout the track, while the original version is a funk-latent hip-hop song.

"I suffer very badly from migraines every week," said Rebel ACA. "To me, it was logical to write a song about migraines. The lyrics talk about what it feels like by using synthesizers to bring out the feeling of a migraine."

Joining Rebel ACA on the single is Spragga Benz and Rodney P. The duo shares their thoughts on using marijuana to cure a migraine. While Rebel ACA acknowledges he is not a medical doctor, studies have shown that smoking weed can reduce migraine pain.

"We talk about smoking weed to fight the migraine," he said. "The lyrics revolve around what it feels like to have one in your head. Doctors have told me that migraines are caused by triggers like alcohol and getting f*cked up. Then you get a migraine and now you get more f*cked up on pills or weed to feel better." This revolving cycle spirals throughout the single.

Born and raised in the UK, Rebel ACA experienced London's musical melting pot from birth. Hailing from northwest London, he was exposed to the rich Caribbean influence and massive underground music scene.

From squat parties to illegal raves, London's music was all mashed up, and Rebel ACA soaked up every genre and cultural influence. As a result, he is a successful singer/songwriter/producer who fuses hip hop, reggae, and indie sounds to create his unique style.

"Where I come from, the UK hip hop is like the 90s hip hop in America," he stated. "There is a hip hop scene that talks about poetry. I'm trying to keep it real with my lyrics and talk about things that are important other than guns, money, and bitches."

Rebel ACA's music is versatile but uniquely his own by utilizing numerous live instruments and coming in hard with a big boom-bap sound. The Rebel ACA sound is born by adding a funk influence on his tracks aligned with funky bass. On "Migraine," he uses some vintage 70s French influence vibes to give the single a flavor of its own. There is nothing out there like "Migraine."

Rebel ACA records under Buttercuts Records, a company he owns and operates. The London-based production company has been "bashing out buttery beats" since 2000. Buttercuts Records is the go-to place for releasing hip hop, reggae, breaks, funk, soul, and folk records with a tongue-in-cheek attitude and marketing that surpasses witty wordplay.

As "Migraine" gains international attention, it is easy to understand how Rebel ACA combines old and new hip hop with effortless flows and brilliant lyrics. Maybe the world is ready for an international tax advisor who drops bars and vibes out to some wicked rhymes.

Make sure to stay connected to Rebel ACA on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.

a A1. DJ PHANTASY VOCAL MIXfeat. Rebel ACA
b A2. DJ PHANTASY DUB MIXfeat. Rebel ACA
[c] A3. DJ PHANTASY INSTRUMENTAL MIX [feat. Rebel ACA]
[d] B1. OLD KOOL F U NKY MIX [feat. Rebel ACA]
[e] B2. OLD KOOL F U NKY INSTRUMENTAL [feat. Rebel ACA]
[feat. Rebel ACA]

In April 2023, Tresor Records will unveil a new EP from DALO entitled "GUM". DALO, aka Nadia D'Alo, is one of the founders of the R.i.O label and half of the duo INIT. After several years of performing as INIT with Benedikt Frey, she had her solo live debut in Berlin in 2022. This record follows releases on labels such as ESP Institute and Warning. "GUM" showcases DALO's expert mastery of rising tension through analogue sound sources, as it swings in and remains with minimal changes and accentuation.
"Woodpecker" enters a tunnel of reverberant claps, moving in a potent exercise of deftly manipulated acid. "Wavehall" draws vocal smears across expansive, droning basses and 140bpm techno rhythms. In "Bachlash", she takes inspiration from events of Iranian and Afghan women revolting for their rights, expressing hope for the rebound of control after long political oppression. Electro beats are introduced underneath the full-frontal melodic acid, while processed spoken word samples bring a new focus.
DALO takes the rebounding control and strives forward into the unknown with "GUM", its segmented vocal samples playing a
captivating partnership with acidic slides. The EP closes with "Pilot," a digital bonus track that releases some of the tension built up throughout and propels the dancer towards transcendent shapes.

Brazilian experimental multi-instrumentalist Carla Boregas follows plates for Bokeh Versions and Hive Mind with a ghostly set of deep listening electronics that plays like a symphony for an imagined woodwind orchestra.

Carla Boregas is best known from her tenure in São Paulo's genre-bending experimental post-punk scene, playing in long-running outfit Rakta as well as other related offshoots. Her solo material has been knottier to unpick, here developing ideas from a collection of unfinished fragments and notebook scribbles exploring the possibility of finding a wind instrument that could be played collectively by several musicians. Coinciding with the pandemic, however, she soon realised the inherent risks involved with sharing breath and so the concept took a different direction, with added resonance.

Boregas developed a synthetic alternative, layering vocals and environmental recordings to suggest wind instrumentation without attempting to mimic it. The sounds here are airy, but rarely diegetic - on the title track, Boregas uses analog arpeggios and plucked, sustained tones to approximate the kosmische world of Ash Ra Tempel or more recently Emeralds, as if trapped in a wind tunnel, moved forward by an unseen force.

There's a whisper of the ancient past that harmonises with Wojciech Rusin's speculative medieval gasps, and Bloedneus & de Snuitkever's severely underheard ‘Milli Mille’, an examination of the ancient Greek aulos. On ’Grafia Do Invisível' the sound is completely different again, but the concept remains, using precise analog drones and minuscule timbral shifts to imitate the character of a wind instrument and simultaneously harmonise with the deep listening meditations of Éliane Radigue and Kali Malone.

A voice enters the frame on 'Sopro’, chopped into deviated gulps and syllables, creating a language that's unfamiliar and percussive. The use of breath is subtle, and vocalisations criss-cross between synths and faint whistles, forming an expression that's different from its predecessors but intrinsically interlinked. This is where ‘Pena Ao Mar’ excels, by viewing breath and its application in electronic music from multiple angles simultaneously. Fans of Lucy Duncombe, Lucrecia Dalt, or Sarah Davachi - don't miss this one.

When we established Balmat in 2021, neither of us could have imagined that within two years, we’d be putting out an album by one of our musical heroes: Mike Paradinas, aka µ-Ziq. The British producer has been an inspiration to label co-founders Albert Salinas and Philip Sherburne since the 1990s. In fact, his album-length remix project The Auteurs Vs µ-Ziq was one of the very first pieces of electronic music that Philip bought, way back in 1994. To have the opportunity to release his music now feels like a real full-circle moment.

Paradinas, of course, needs no introduction. Under a slew of aliases, chief among them µ-Ziq, the British artist revolutionized leftfield electronic music in the 1990s—coincidentally, this year marks the 30th anniversary of his debut album, Tango N’ Vectif, for his friend and sometime collaborator Aphex Twin’s Rephlex label—and his label Planet Mu has built up a formidable catalog of visionary, forwardlooking records, mapping virtually every corner of the electronic spectrum. With 1977, he turns the clock backward in a sense, and not just with the album’s title: Rooted in classic ambient and electronic sounds, these 15 tracks evoke the anything-goes spirit of the early ’90s, before the tools and tropes had calcified into cut-and-dried styles.

There’s no shortage of familiar sounds on 1977. There are echoes of raves and chillout rooms and transmissions from the fringes of techno; there are detuned synths and glistening reverb tails and, above all, gauzy vox pads, the eerie glue that holds it all together. The title, he says, is meant to invoke a general sense of nostalgia, bookmarking a year in his boyhood when he became more selfaware. More than anything, 1977 sounds like µ-Ziq distilled: Stripped of his signature breakbeats and customary chaos, Paradinas’ first-ever strictly (well, mostly) ambient album presents the essence of his music in a whole new light.

Along the way Paradinas touches on dark-ambient drones (“Marmite”), horror-film themes (“Belt & Carpet”), jungle breaks (“Mesolithic Jungle”), and even house music (“Houzz 13”), which marks the first bona fide dance-floor moment on Balmat to date). Yet the album never—to our ears, anyway— feels expressly retro. Rather, Paradinas plucks timeless sounds out of the ether and gives them a gentle tap, spinning them into unexpected new orbits. At times, 1977 feels like an experience of extended déjà vu: When we first listened to it, we had the sense that we already knew this music. It was as though we had heard it years ago, perhaps on a battered cassette tape lent to us by a friend, and been searching for it ever since. We hope you feel the same.

Civilistjävel! returns to Copenhagen label FELT with a four track EP following on from 2022's Järnnätter album.

Equally well placed next to the Biosphere / early Fax +49-69/450464 camp as well as various decades of electro-acoustic drone practitioners, Fyra platser (Four Places) also includes a trip-hop leaning collaboration with Cucina Povera. Whilst Järnnätter drew influence from the cyclical, chasmic nature of dub techno, Fyra platser hones further in on the ‘between’ areas in a minimal, reductivist fashion. The rhythms are there to follow but are primarily beatless and more expansive, though skewing perceptions of time in the same trademark manner.

Three locations in the Nordingrå area of the Swedish high coast are exorcised and channelled through sound. ‘Kolugn’ is a deliberately grainy, sepia-tinged continuation of the likes of Robert Rutman’s work across the 70s American avant-garde. It sits in contrast to the more obviously synthesis-led direction of fellow longform piece ‘Valmsta’. The location slowly changes to Finland via Athens, scenes of cafe conversations and hazy polaroids informing the lyrics of ‘Louhivesi’. The result sounds like a 90s illbient record dropped around 30 bpm and the stylus has caught on a perennial 8-bar loop. The balance of Cucina Povera’s cold, reverb-heavy vocal inflections drive the track into another dimension. If Moral were the Scandi Joy Division, this pairing must be the Scandi Massive Attack.

Mammal Hands announce spell-binding new album 'Gift from the Trees', their fifth studio album, pointing to subtle shifts and exciting new departures for the unique trio
"We're at a point now where playing and writing together can sometimes feel almost telepathic, that as individuals we can tune in to a collective resonance..."
Mammal Hands fifth album 'Gift from the Trees' offers a fresh perspective on the unique trio's singular music. The first to be recorded in a residential studio, the band enjoyed the opportunity to go late into the night searching for a deeper, more organic experience, closer to both their writing process but also their trance-like live performances. While some of the music was pre-composed and had even been performed live, the band also enjoyed the opportunity to improvise ideas in the studio. Drummer Jesse Barrett explains:
We wanted to have a more immersive experience that felt closer to our writing process. One thing that was really important to us was feeling free to jam out ideas as they came to us. We're at a point now where playing and writing together can sometimes feel almost telepathic, that as individuals we can tune in to a collective resonance and just follow that thread where it wants to go. Sometimes it's something as simple as a rhythmic, textural flow, like in Sleeping Bear.
There was also a conscious decision to move away from the sound and ambiance of the recording studio, with the band opting to engineer the record with their go-to live engineer Benjamin Capp before mixing the sessions with Greg Freeman in Berlin. The idea was to try and capture more of the energy of the band's captivating shows, saxophonist Jordan Smart explains:
Considering the group of tracks we had, it made sense to try and capture this process as organically and honestly as possible, and so a change in studio environment felt like the right move to us. Some of the tracks have a raw joy and energy that came with being able to play together again after a long period of time of having been apart, and capture that feeling of just being happy to be in a room with our instruments altogether again.
Whereas for pianist Nick Smart there was also the chance to really go deep into the band's music:
The new studio environment really opened us up to different ways of working and thinking because we could record at any hour of the day or night. I think this allowed us much more freedom to try unusual ideas and push elements of the music to extremes because we had the time to really focus in on the detail and work on things without time pressure. With some tracks, we were trying to find the boundaries of our playing ability and push beyond that point. With others, it was just getting into the right mindset and putting as much energy and emotion into the take as possible.'
The Welsh environment outside the studio doors seeped into the music presented on Gift from the Trees, with two recording sessions (one in winter and one in the spring) bringing different moods: one bleak and wintery, the other more hopeful and bright – an energy that permeates through tracks such as Kernel and Dimu.
Gift from the Trees opens with wonderfully elevating The Spinner which grew from one of Nick's piano parts and was developed and arranged into a complete tune without losing the feeling of constant flow and motion. It is almost like a dance, with the interaction of different melody parts and the doubling of certain parts melding together and fitting into the overall energetic flow, while Jesse's drums are both floating and deeply melodic. Riser aims to capture the band's raw energy and intriguingly is influenced by both breaks and modern drum production but also minimalist classical composition. Nightingale features the band at their most delicate and lyrical – a band favourite it draws heavily on modern folk with a beautifully realised melody that came unforced to pianist Nick Smart before being jammed out together. It was recorded early one morning, bringing an extra light and brightness to this beautiful performance.
Another album highlight is Dimu which utilises one of drummer Jesse Barret's favourite rhythmic devices from the Tabla repertoire and draws inspiration from Indian, Greek and Arabic music as well as modern folk arrangements. Dimu starts with saxophone over a bed of drones and percussion and moves through many different sections that frame and present the melodies in unique ways. The beguiling, intimate Deep within Mountains aims to place you in the room with the band as they play; it was recorded late at night to capture a dreamlike, liminal ambiance. The piano solo really reflects this mood and energy while the tenor is some of the softest and closest on the recording. Elsewhere, the remarkable Labyrinth started with what Nick describes as "some weird recording on my phone from a soundcheck, where Jordan was playing some crazy sounding bass clarinet part and I quickly recorded him", giving birth to a captivating, complex slice of propulsive 'almost' contemporary classical that like so much of the music on Gift from the Trees really couldn't be any other band than Mammal Hands.
Finally, the album draws to a close with the glorious Sleeping Bear, a tune that was wholly improvised in the studio. Nick and Jesse entered a simple but 'weird' locked groove and Jordan improvises melodies over the top. The track came about without any planning or thought; it was one of those special things that came by surprise and the band felt offered the perfect ending to their latest gift to us all: a deeply enthralling album that captures so much of what makes Mammal Hands a special band while mapping out new routes and paths for their beautiful, beguiling music.

Brilliantly remastered (picture) LP/CD with new stunning artwork!
Lo-Fi India Abuse was recorded in 1998, some tracks are “pure” Muslimgauze and some are re-mixs of tracks from Systemwide’s “Sirius” CD (see also Systemwide meets Muslimgauze “at the City of the Dead” 12″). Nearly all of the tracks have hand percussion in varying tempos and intensities and at least 1/2 make use of electronic noise surges. The sound is very crisp and clean, extremely well produced, recorded and nicely varied throughout the length of the disc. Some track by track comments: “Antalya” is obviously from the same sessions as “Fakir Sind” seeing as it shares the same hand percussion sound, whistles, vocal wailing, cut-ups and delays. “Valencia Flames” sounds like a Systemwide remix. A dub bass line, hi-hat and background vocal of some sort are all obliterated by numerous delays, starts, stops and re-starts with an unpredictable nature in these cut-up tracks. “Al Souk Dub” injects background voices, market sounds and drones into the cut-up mix of slow hand percussion playing. “Catacomb Dub” and the final two tracks make use of twinkling synth waves, presumably a Systemwide sound source. “Dust of Saqqara” has a heavy pulsating electronic sound wave over an old beat box rhythm. “Android Cleaver” is brutal (as is “Nommos’ Afterburn”) hand percussion, jabs of noise and an oft repeated, unintelligible vocal sample. Yes, Lo-Fi India Abuse is yet another great Muslimgauze release, grab it!
All tracks recorded by Muslimgauze 1998
Some tracks are re-mixes from Systemwide’s “Sirius” album
Re-mastered by Višeslav Laboš
Sleeve by Oleg Galay
Originally released in 1999 via BSI Records (BSI 1999-3).

Damage and Their Slices” is a collaborative album NVST and Theo Muller, in which they invite the listeners to a deep dive into an esoteric universe where dark magic meets political revolt.

The Swiss artist NVST shouts, preaches, stirs up and questions the consciences of his audience with a deluge of words about this sick society, the capitalist infection and the abuse of power. In tune with this mantra of georgeorwellian rhetoric, the music by Frenchman Théo Muller turns the malaise of the content into form: paranormal psychedelia, arcane dub, industrial ectoplasms, esoteric ambient and paranormal drones. In short: a friction of electronic sounds that Kraftwerk, years ago, unwittingly defined as metal on metal. Live, this call to action to necromancy and revolution takes on an amphibious, organic, almost cathartic and revealing form.

Platform 23 again explores to the dense voids, this time with a touch of the funk, with a reissue of Dutch experimentalists De Fabriek and two tracks from their "Music For" cassette series, this time calling all Hippies.

Featuring both original and reinterpretations from modern-day heads, Dunkeltier and Khidja, this double-pack is something of an oddity, showcasing the bands' expansive range, moving away from the noise, drone and industrial soundscape releases they had become known for and crafting here, free flowing, groovy longform jams.

Active since the late 70s to today, De Fabriek (The Factory) have never considered themselves a real band - being also a label too - with an evolving and irregular line up centred around Richard van Dellen, they present their music and output as a kind of work-union.

With literally four decades and dozens of releases across all formats, 1988's cassette release, 'Music For Hippies', has become something of a cult curio, with the long improvisational tracks, Lullabye and Coming Down eschewing the rougher, industrial experience for something completely different.

In opener Lullabye, we go full leftfield P-Funk meets Motorik undertones. An incessant beat is laid from the start and doesn't cease for over 10 minutes, while spoken vocals call closer to the Krautrock realms of Can and hark to Liebezeit's stylised grooving best.

Analog, echo washed, with touches of glam and wrapped in simple effects pedal work, the secrets are passed to Dresden / Berlin inhabitant Dunkeltier aka Sneaker DJ aka Thomas Smorek. His darker moniker, appearing on obscure edits for Macadam Mambo and the much-missed Bahnsteig 23, his 'Hey Robot' mix adds bass, percussion, strings and synth to remold Lullabye into a late night, red light, basement denzien. This is followed by an additional, bonus reimagining, creating an all-new time piece, an ear worm of the best kind with Tik Tok Goes The Clock.

The second slab presents in Come Down, a more resembling De Fabriek werk. Edited to fit, the darkness is entered as snapshot vocal quips, oscillations and synthesised mutations are laid over a lazy, relentless ostinato rhythm where cymbals crash on the bar. Inviting, calling, De Fabriek's aptly titled downer is in fact, a joyous journey.

To complete, label affiliates, Khidja take a break from finalising their debut album to unfold their 'Psychebabble Mix', a dozen plus minutes of warped, twisted, cassette machinations that suck the listener further along the trip. Added bass propels their edit suddenly to a new direction, a hook for mind and for the open willed, the body. De Fabriek's "coming down lullabye" arriving on vinyl for the first time, with a twist and shake, calling deeper to acceptance.

Originally from Manchester now based in Lewes, Kalli co-runs the GODDEZZ parties and record label.

Sonically, Kalli can't hold back when interconnecting the dots of hoover synths, electro, gritty rave and off-kilter weirdness.

Soft Play is a primal techno beast with punk undertones and monstrous hoover rave drop.

Gems Per Capita shows Kalli in full club mode, unleashing a bass heavy electro tinged track with a killer Acid break; a peak time weapon.

The memory of trying to naively connect to an identity, along with searching for daily eccentric enjoyment in a rural, rainy post-industrial town’ Kalli.

Magna Pia, a.k.a seasoned producer, DJ, and composer Hüseyin Evirgen, announces his second full-length album, ‘QUT’, arriving on Inland’s Counterchange label in March on double vinyl.

After 2 steamrolling EPs of club tracks on the label - now entering its tenth year of action - Magna Pia presents his most complete and advanced body of work to date, weaving a dense narrative of drone, figurative synthesis, bass-heavy electronica, and abstract techno.

Over eight tracks each referencing his rich cultural and musical background, we are treated to a unique overview of a producer at the crest of his art. The word ‘Qut’ is an ancient positive affirmation, in one short word encompassing all that is scared, pure and good. The Old Turkic term meaning not only ‘good fortune’ and ‘joy’, but in shamanic circles, the ‘wonder of the heavens’, permeates the roots of Evirgen’s multi-heritage history.

That Evirgen expresses his interpretation of this central theme through the marriage of bewitching melodies with atonal, experimental and rumbling electronics is a conscious comment on the distortions and mutations of our Modern Era. We now exist in the digital age of the Technosphere for better or worse, and must seek beauty where-ever possible.

The opening ‘Prologue’ invites the listener into a futuristic yet organic sound world, where lush stereo processing goes hand in hand with rumbling bass and subtly detuned drone languages. From the echoes of traditional Uyghur folk music, translated via synthesizers into a glistening slow-diving opus (‘Qizil’), to churning dub-techno adorned with a symphony of evolving sine-waves (‘Venus M’), Evirgen then deploys ‘X’ - a haunting experimental piece composed predominantly with his voice and electronic processing.

The interweaving synth lines of ‘Gudanna’ pierce the fog with a radiant and transcendent club-techno bounce before the ode to the ancient Bronze Age goddess ‘Astarte’ unfolds its snare-driven broken-beat formations. The title track ‘Qut’ embodies by far the heaviest club track of the album, in a deadly, stripped-back moment of future-techno hypnotism. Dancing flames of purple-tongued synthesis are held (just) in line by a wonderfully tough throb of drums.

With his ‘Epilogue’, Magna Pia allows the spectral ideas and concepts laid out across the LP to connect and travel full circle, confirming our suspicions that this could be one of the most coherent and exciting works to emerge in the brave new field of introspective, and sensitive techno-electronic language.

Ambassade’s 2019 ‘Duistre Kamers’ album was a huge favourite here at Optimo Music towers so we jumped at the chance to release the follow up; ‘The Fool’.

Following hot in the heels of the acclaimed ‘Young Birds / Palette’ 12” on Optimo Music, ‘The Fool’ is destined to be another Cold Wave, Synth, New Industrial, Experimental …whatever you want to call it …classic. We asked Ambassade to tell us a bit about the album – Born from several years of research and contemplation on the human mind ‘The Fool’ can be understood as a reflection to the dark energies – natural, political, human and otherwise – that are released when it comes to religion, greed and power.

Historically, some rulers have used religion to legitimise their power. We were also inspired by wanting to examine what negative impact religion can have from the fact that it’s always dominated by men.

This was pursued by exploring a wide range of diverse and unusual types of instruments that took on a new approach of tonal expression, with the use of detuned choral and voice samples, droned tape loops and DIY metal and found percussion. It’s from these diverse sources that the process of creativity keeps persistently mutating. This process was focused through the enigmatic electronic and percussion composition from the band which alternates between foreground and background for the haunting vocal performances.

After the experience of Camizole, Dominique Grimaud began a new (and different) adventure in 1979 with Monique Alba. Alongside Gilbert Artman (Urban Sax), Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun), Vidéo-Aventures is composed of instrumentals capable of reconciliating Captain Beefheart, Henry Cow, Suicide and... John Barry. All with the backing of Rock In Opposition, which enabled this Musiques pour garçons et filles to become known worldwide.

“Let us enter your hearts”: is the request made by Vidéo-Aventures, and how can we refuse? Especially as Musiques pour garçons et filles, recorded by Dominique Grimaud and Monique Alba fifty years ago along with handpicked colleagues, is as fresh as ever.

1979: having improvised a huge amount (and how!) with Camizole, Grimaud tried his hand at composition and studio recording with Alba. Their first instrument was the AKS synthetiser, with which the duo recorded the instrumental tracks that were then offered to their comrades Guigou Chenevier (Etron Fou Leloublan), Gilbert Artman (Lard Free, Urban Sax), Jean-Pierre Grasset (Verto) and Cyril Lefebvre (Maajun).

At the end of the year, they all came into the studio for a week to record the eight tracks of this mini- album that Chris Cutler would issue a few months later on his label, Recommended. In France it was the beginning of the agitation around Rock In Opposition, to such a point that Musiques pour Garçons et Filles would rise to second place in the NME independent Charts. And this is hardly surprising...

For these instrumental miniatures (here with the bonus of rare archives, some of which are previously unpublished) are uncontrollable: electronics augmented by lap-steel guitar (“Tina”), cunning pop (“Zazou sur la piste”), mechanic sound (“Une vie modern”), street piano (« French Kiss »), disturbing atmospheres (“La ballade des cardiaques”) or something like a TV theme tune capable of adjusting all the colours (“Telstar”)... With such promising ingredients, why stop Vidéo-Aventures from entering?

Pressing Info: 180g clear blue vinyl, printed inner-sleeve. Based between Brussels and Berlin, Golden Hours is comprised of past and present members of Gang Of Four, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Tricky, The Fuzztones and The Third Sound, to name just a few. A band with mileage and stories, they trade in rock'n'roll missives that are at times dark, tense and hypnotic, at others sweaty, relentless and danceable. Made up of Hákon Adalsteinsson (Guitar/Vocals), Rodrigo Fuentealba Palavacino (Guitar), Tobias Humble (Drums/Vocals) and Wim Janssens (Bass/Keys/Vocals), Golden Hours' self-titled debut album is due for release March 31st 2023 on Fuzz Club Records. Wim says of the project and its incoming debut: "The musical backgrounds of each member are pretty broad but somehow when we come together there's a pretty clear definition of what our music should sound like. There's a beautiful friction between the noise we produce and the love for melody that seems to overtake at just the right moment. There never seems to be a lack of ideas when we come together. In silent agreement, every idea gets tried and will be further developed into a song or skipped in a heartbeat. No time is wasted. It all happens pretty automatically."