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Fractal head rearrangement from Keith Fullerton Whitman on his first vinyl release in what feels like years, here blessing Japan’s NAKID label with a new instalment in his forever-evolving Generators project, arcing from bleeping post-Kosmische sounds into completely unexpected drum mutations in footwork and grime modes. It’s properly head melting gear that links the algorithmic mind-fukkery of Laurie Spiegel with the floor-bending rhythmic experimentation of Mark Fell, Rian Treanor or Jana Rush, and the first in a three part series that offers some of the strongest gear we’ve heard from one of the very best in the game.

Modular synth scientist, critic and historian Keith Fullerton Whitman first debuted his »Generators« set in 2009, using a modular setup to create non-repeating melodic patterns that basically came close to generating themselves. Over the course of hundreds of live shows (and a handful of releases on Root Strata, Editions Mego and other labels), Whitman glacially honed his process and allowed the concept to slither down different avenues, mutating as it picked energy from the various venues it was situated in. His rigorous method meant ‘Generators’ was never played out the same way twice, veering from psychedelic Kosmische experimentation to obliterated, off-grid Techno.

In 2019, on the tenth anniversary of the project, Whitman was invited by the GRM in Paris to set up in Studio C, where he avoided the arsenal of pristine, museum-worthy modular synthesizers and instead reprogrammed his classic ‘Generators’ patch. Recorded in a single take using luxe analog- to-digital convertors, the result is a 45-minute durational piece, split into two distinct sides for this release.“Very little manual interaction happened,” Whitman explains. The music is, as its title suggests, generative, and at this point basically sounds as if it reached its most advanced, final form. The first few minutes of the opening side mine the original theme, with clocked LFO shapes triggering oscillator blips in mind-expanding non-looping patterns. Soon, percussion enters the matrix, at first wrong-footing us with a 4/4 fake-out - possibly nodding to the piece’s 2010 Root Strata iteration - before splitting into staccato polyrhythmic abstractions of the most loose- limbed and deadly variety.

General MIDI drums can sound almost hilariously boxed-in, but handled by Whitman they show off a plastic cultural sheen to piercing effect, deployed in a way that re-draws the rhythmic bass music of someone like Jlin while nodding to Mark Fell and Rian Treanor’s quasi-generative dance explorations. These comparisons take on even more weight on the second side, where Whitman opens up his filters to allow the synth bleeps to sing even more loudly, introducing that all- important clap/hat interplay that dialogues with Atlanta and Chicago simultaneously.

Cocteau Twins, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Julia Holter, DIIV, Washed Out, Broadcast, Insides, Beach House, Drug Store Romeos. Introducing Beneather, a BAFTA-nominated composer from North London obsessively crafting sad, lo-fi, cinematic, ambient scandi-dreampop submerged in gently fuzzy tape loops. Much like the paintings of Gerhard Richter or a heavy mist rolling through a familiar landscape, the debut long player from Beneather obscures and blurs ten beautiful tracks beneath washes of cinematic, ambient scandi-dreampop – details emerge and fade, voices ooze and flow, tunes soothe and unnerve, metronomic beats click and swing. It would not be out of place on a David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch soundtrack. Inspired by the likes of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Hammock, Grouper, Low, GAS, Huerco S., Emeralds, Jenny Holzer, William Basinski & ABBA!! Beneather is the solo project of Lewis Young - composer and collaborator in The Leaf Library, drone pop from north London. As a composer, Lewis recently scored the British short ‘Lucky Break’ which found its way into the BAFTAs short list only to narrowly miss out on the gong. Lewis is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, designer and filmmaker currently living in Walthamstow, London. He started as a guitarist in noughties math-rockers Tea with the Queen, shifting to bass for multi-harmonied Naomi Hates Humans before returning to thumping roots as drummer for The Leaf Library. Objects Forever - the imprint label created by The Leaf Library - has provided Lewis with the vehicle to jump back into experimental song craft, inspiring the genesis of Beneather. “I just needed to make a project which spoke to all the aspects of music I’ve loved creating as a multi-instrumentalist. Plugging things into things to make satisfying little electronic loops, then layering extremely minimal bass and guitar lines with a lo-fi aesthetic. Melinda and I spent a few days in the studio - picking out objects, patterns… items that could inspire a thread of instinctive wordless melody. I took that expressionism and sliced it to pieces, rearranging it into ambient vocal hooks.” Beneather is an exercise in hypnotic simplicity. Experimental, dream-like music built on layers of scratchy electronic tape loops, chiming spacious guitars and abstract pulsing vocals. These cinematic songs combine Grouper's wistful deviations with the warm fuzz of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, the nocturnal hum of Emeralds, the crackling collapse of William Basinski and Low's glacial pop melancholy. Outside of compositions for film, TV and Podcasts - Lewis plays with the indie drone-pop band The Leaf Library, featuring Matt Ashton from John Peel faves Saloon (“World-weary yet innocent, blissful dream-pop” - UNCUT - 8/10). Lewis has supported the likes of Lali Puna, Joanna Newsom, Lætitia Sadier & Alexis Taylor.

Tape

You can’t keep a good thing down: 99 marks the triumphant and long overdue return of Matthew Edwards’ Rekid project. More than just Radio Slave records slowed down, his alter ego preferably ploughs the field between ambient excursions, downtempo hypnotism, sample sculptures and the general space in between raves.

Since its first appearance with the Lost Star EP for Classic in 2004 and the still breathtaking follow up Made In Menorca opus on Soul Jazz Records, Edwards firmly established himself as a producer of many, if not all trades. Thought of, produced and conceived during the first lockdown of 2020, 99 is conceptual (with the tempo firmly set at that tempo), concise (34 minutes and 34 seconds long) and content with exploring the possibilities of limitation (one track a day, live takes, no editing).

Without departing the original Rekid ethos of glacial music, it presents a modernized and contemporary version of IDM tropes, chill out topics and a capturing sound of mesmerizing materiality.

After a while, it all made sense to Edwards as one piece, was presented to Running Back, where the A& R department thought the same and is now available as a continuous cassette mix and a separated vinyl single album as well as for streaming and downloads.

Jeep music for ballet dancers.

Legendary privately pressed 1979 LP from Scotland. This illusive, super rare and sublimely wonderful percussion album is like no other. Hypnotic, celestial, even cosmic and ambient in parts and totally unique in all ways, it was played by a group of 11 girls with an average age of 14. The group included Evelyn Glennie, who was destined to become one of the world’s greatest percussionists. This is her first ever record.

The Cults Percussion Ensemble was a group formed by percussion teaching legend Ron Forbes in the mid 1970s. The ensemble must have one of the best group names of all time. To many it will immediately come across as something sinister, a touch spooky and possibly a bit dramatic too. They are certainly two of those but the use of the word “Cults” here is easily misinterpreted. Cults, in this case, is the suburb of Aberdeen.

The average age of the students was just 14. They came from a few of the schools in the area, including the Cults Academy, Ellon Academy, Aboyne Academy, Inverurie Academy and Powis.

My original copy of the album came from Spitalfields market in London. I loved the music the second it started, because it reminded me of Carl Orff and peculiar library. So I started to investigate it further, and eventually, thanks to the highly tuned world of percussion, was given the address of Ron Forbes. I got in touch with him and now we have this, a formal release of something quite lovely that was only previously available very briefly in 1979 at concerts when the young girls performed.

The music here is really quite unique, with a celestial swirling hypnotic quality. The blend of glockenspiels, xylophones, vibraphones, marimba and timpani drums is quite intoxicating and can recall the shimmering warmth of the desert sun one minute (“Baia”) or freezing glacial ice caps the next (“Circles”). The Ensemble perform with an effortless tightness and deftness of touch, building textured layers with recurring percussive motives which appear simultaneously dense and yet sparse, almost sounding like modern sampling. In fact, while struggling to find a musical comparison, during the pulsating introduction to "Percussion Suite" I found myself recalling "Gamma Player", a piece of soulful Detroit techno minimalism from Jeff Mills (Millsart - “Humana” EP 1995) with its rhythmic percussion layered with complex emotion. Weirdly enough, other tracks on that EP also prominently feature xylophone and tuned percussion, although obviously synthesised and programmed, a good 20 years after the CPE first recorded.

Sleevenotes also include a letter from Ron Forbes:
“I decided to form a percussion group to provide an outlet for my percussion pupils to play music specially written for them. The group soon became well known in the region and as a result of winning the outstanding award at the National Festival of Music for youth on three occasions, they were invited to play at other festivals within Europe, one being in Erlangen in Germany - hence the Erlangen Polka - and Autun in France - hence the Autun Carillon. During these visits we were often asked if we had any recordings and so it was decided to make an LP”.

Thanks to Ron Forbes and Trunk Records, more people can now enjoy the simple hypnotic musical charms of the Cults Percussion Ensemble

You can’t keep a good thing down: 99 marks the triumphant and long overdue return of Matthew Edwards’ Rekid project. More than just Radio Slave records slowed down, his alter ego preferably ploughs the field between ambient excursions, downtempo hypnotism, sample sculptures and the general space in between raves.

Since its first appearance with the Lost Star EP for Classic in 2004 and the still breathtaking follow up Made In Menorca opus on Soul Jazz Records, Edwards firmly established himself as a producer of many, if not all trades. Thought of, produced and conceived during the first lockdown of 2020, 99 is conceptual (with the tempo firmly set at that tempo), concise (34 minutes and 34 seconds long) and content with exploring the possibilities of limitation (one track a day, live takes, no editing).

Without departing the original Rekid ethos of glacial music, it presents a modernized and contemporary version of IDM tropes, chill out topics and a capturing sound of mesmerizing materiality.

After a while, it all made sense to Edwards as one piece, was presented to Running Back, where the A& R department thought the same and is now available as a continuous cassette mix and a separated vinyl single album as well as for streaming and downloads.

Jeep music for ballet dancers.

Hotel Paral.lel, released in 1997, marks the full length debut release from Austrian Christian Fennesz, originally released by MEGO, following the twitching drone as found on the 1995 EP Instrument, also included in this deluxe 2LP reissue. Once launched, Hotel Paral.lel was to instigate a sublime exploration of a wide variety of forms, from formal abstraction to shimmering drone around to ground zero glitch pop.

Recorded just before mobile computing devices became omnipresent it was an investigation into the sonic possibilities residing in guitar based digital music. Sz launches the career with a constantly buzzing sound that resembles a fax machine encountering a G3 laptop for the first time, realising the game is up. Nebenraum is the first foray into the style for which one would attribute to Fennesz. A glacial drone unexpectedly morphs into a gorgeous melody and microscopic groove. Adding pulse and melody was hearsay in the radical end of experimental music up until this point and with this single gesture, everything changed, for everyone. Blok M nails this trajectory home with a straight up 4/4 beat. Such rhythm also features on Fa with a euphoric mix of a thudding beat, sharp splinters of noise and a devastating exploding melody. Repetition plays heavily through this album as the hyper metronomic beat on traxdata lays a bed for all manner of buzzing electronics. On the closing “Aus” we see a glimpse of what was to come in the future works of Fennesz, an experiment in popping, bubbling pulse pop. A far more darker and experimental work than Fennesz’ subsequent work. This is an exquisite radical field of freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient texture all coming together to create a timeless work. There’s little out there in the world of music, still to this day, that sounds remotely like Hotel Paral.lel.

With a radical reinvention of music Hotel Paral.lel is an essential addition to collectors of pioneering music in the late 20th Century and sounds as enthralling today as it did to the shocked ears occupying 1997.

Remastered by Stephan Mathieu.

A repress here of 2019's under the radar 'Box EP by The enigmatic British producer JS Zeiter, who executed more greyscale dub techno excursions of a typically high caliber on this one. After some spookily sensual ASMR action on intro 'The Code' he continues to build the suspense on the beatless Subarctic Soundscape of 'Darkness Falls' before dropping the power on the cavernous and glacial beats of 'On The Moor'. Flip over and take on more of the frozen seascape on the deeply hypnotic groove of "Empty" before one more emotional ambient outro in the form of 'Endgame'.

His last LP has barely touched record store shelves and Ivan ave is back with a EP for Mutual Intentions. Mid Season finds Ivan Ave in bloom as he evokes the sounds of
spring on his latest offering. The EP title also refers to a mid-album-recording process, which Ave currently finds himself in. Mid Season gives the listener insight into a
forthcoming full length album, entitled All Season Gear.
The prolific Norwegian rapper continues to charm with a seductive baritone that blows like a cool breeze through the production’s warm accompaniment. Dusty drum
machines under glacial keys and guitars offer a platform from which Ivan waxes lyrical about everything that touches him. He has crafted a unique voice in Hip Hop echelons, finding quirky analogies in the mundane. While in the past, he could find a parable for love in a bicycle lock or existential questions in an worn out sock, he turns his
attention increasingly to social realities.
He regularly takes aim at the ridiculous aspects of our contemporary society throughout Mid Season, with lyrics that poke fun as much they ask what the fuck?
“Spotify owner 'bout to buy a whole ball team… That mean I own a corner flag or some seats at least?,” he sings on «What a Day!!!». The record is peppered with these
types of anecdotal metaphors that come together like a social media story through a bionic AI. Ivan Ave is the product of this generation and it’s only right he should reflect
that. He does it in a unique way that requires the listener to untangle these preternatural allegories.
Playing with a dichotomy of words, he doesn’t labour on a thought before he’s lazily propelled onto the next at the turn of each bar. His laissez faire approach is only
emboldened by the slow moving percussion and keys that have come to define his sound. Picking up on early nineties influences from the likes of Native Tongues or Dilla,
the music on Mid Season continues to reassess and revolutionise these archetypes. It’s in the keyboard sounds of this latest EP, that Ivan Ave and producers have found
yet another new evolution in his sound.
Synthesisers that sound like they belong to a Maynard Ferguson record rather than a Hip Hop EP make the record come alive over a chugging and forceful rhythm section. It provides an airy and playful contrast to the more serious elements on the track, and much like Ivan Ave’s lyrical prowess offers an extra layer of depth that often
eludes Hip Hop’s most successful stars. The more you listen to Ivan Ave the more you get entrenched in his work and Mid Season continues to send the artist on an
exciting trajectory.

The Sound Of Love International 004 is a particular poignant collection of rarities, collectables and unearthed gems, pulled together by the Italian DJ and crate digger Budino. For the last two years, the pretty coastal town of Tisno in Croatia has been devoid of the (now) legendary Love International week-long celebration of music, leaving thousands of revellers and regular devotes with only the sounds of Love International to keep the spirits strong until the next time friendships are rekindled and dance resumes under the sun and the stars. Luckily, the fiesta is scheduled for a return to Tisno from 13th – 19th July 2022.

Budino, AKA Valentina Bodini, has a lifelong passion for vinyl, amassing an enviable collection of multi-genre LPs and singles via her years spent in Italy and now in Berlin. As resident DJ for Discodromo’s CockTail d’Amore parties, her enthusiasm for music and digging knows no boundaries, and her instalment into the Sound Of Love International series gives us an aural insight into her musical realm.

Musically, The Sound Of Love International #004 is a smorgasbord of sound. Opening with the glacial tones of Peter Seiler’s 1986 new-age gem ‘Serengeti’, the twelve track selection glides through proto-house, tribal ambience, industrial EBM, balearic dance and so much more. It’s a testament to the ground- breaking nature of these tracks that most of the music here was originally released some 30-40 years ago. Inclusions from Oliver Leib’s The Ambush project, Vibes Of Rhythm and Scott Edward stem from the post house & techno explosion of the early 90s, whilst the early proto-electronic experiments from the likes of Kirlian Camera, Clock DVA, Bourbonese Qualk and Pyrolator are welcomely revived for a new audience. Interestingly, a flexi-disc only release of ‘Hark’ by William Orbit & Laurie Mayer’s early 80s Torch Song project is also included here, elongated by Budino herself in the edit suite. Two brand new productions from DJ Blasy and Budino & Berko ensure that business is brought bang up to date, offering a unique and modern spin on the sounds of Budino, and her tantalising selection on this compilation.

London-based record label Wisdom Teeth kicks off 2021 with something close to home: Blush - the playful, dynamic debut LP by label co-founder, Facta. Recorded unusually quickly over a short stint in early 2020, the record is the product of a period of refreshed and unfussy creativity. It’s an innovative and distinctly contemporary album that moves a good few steps beyond the artist’s work to date - loosely rooted in UK dance music but taking added influence from ambient, modern classical, dreampop, Balearic, folk music and beyond. The result is a lush, ornate record populated by aqueous pads, bleeping arps, wandering melodies and sparse broken rhythms; acoustic instruments that play out alongside FM synths, all processed with a pristine UV sheen inherited from modern pop music. The record opens with ‘Sistine (Plucks)’ - a crystalline synth piece with a stumbling, shifting metre revolving around an odd-ended MIDI harp loop, coloured through with washed-out pads and snatches of found sound. This breezy mood follows through to ‘On Deck’, where an FM vibraphone rings out on top of woozy, warping chords and a subby soca groove. Moving forward the record moves cohesively through a range of shifting moods and hues. The machine jazz of ‘Brushes’ is tense and coiled, with nods towards Burnt Friedman, Photek and Eli Keszler. ‘Iso Stream’ sees a rich, colourful sprawl of arpeggiated synths and dissociated vocal chops unspool slowly to form pooling, lowlit melodies. Title track ‘Blush’ is a forlorn Autonomic love song built from clicks-n-cuts - like dBridge & Instra:mental reduced and reinterpreted by SND. Throughout, bold, broad melodies take centre stage, and the tracks build like compositions rather than loops or club tools. There are echoes of the dancefloor - particularly in the slo-mo bruk of ‘Verge’ and the glacial subs underpinning ‘Diving Birds’ (a collaboration with friend and Trilogy Tapes regular Parris) - however the end results find us somewhere far off. ‘Blush’ is the second long-form release to come from Wisdom Teeth following K-LONE’s 2020 debut album, ‘Cape Cira’, which was widely ranked as one the best LPs of 2020.

The latest thrilling incarnation of master rock'n'roll storyteller Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon, Thug, Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, Tex, Don et Charlie.) and the Fat Rubber Band began with a rare vinyl copy of Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album, recorded in 1971. Perkins and his respected musician, songwriter, producer and bandmate Matt Walker share a mutual admiration of the American electric guitar innovator, whose iconic power chords in his signature 50s rock'n'roll instrumentals, had a profound influence on the evolution of rock guitar. The Fat Rubber Band is borned with this rare vinyl, the pair have enjoyed countless musical conversations over the decade while hanging out backstage and on the road. Walker offered the debut album's opening track, the wide-screen drama of "Pay The Devil's Due". Perkins responded with the plaintive blues of "My Philosophy". Walker replied with the album's fuzz driven debut single "Danger Has Been Kind" and Perkins countered with the glacially-paced, intimate "Poor Simple Minded Fool". The pair road-tested their works in progress as a duo before enlisting bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and Evan Richards on percussion to complete the Fat Rubber Band line-up to record the album's ten tracks at Walker's Stovepipe Studios in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges. "At Matt's studio - you open the door to the studio and nature floods in," Perkins says. "We wanted it to sound rural, to feel the dirt and the grass and the leaves." Even after all these decades, when you think you know that gravelly baritone inside out, Perkins finds new emotional tones in the service of the Fat Rubber Band's songs vivid narratives, with their characters wrestling, but sometimes dancing, with the tougher, darker qualities of the human condition. This is truly existential blues. Bubbling underneath those upfront vocals and raw harmonies are intricately entwined guitar conversations and unexpected percussive flourishes. "Another aspect that we wanted was for the sound to be sometimes a collision and sometimes a marriage of acoustic and electric instruments. We wanted that tension between mandolins and bouzoukis meeting fuzz guitars." "We also considered percussion to be a vital element of the sound we were going for; we noticed in the recordings we loved from the 50s and 60s that often the tambourine hit, or the maracas, or whatever percussion, was right up there in the mix, right next to the vocal," Perkins says.

HESITATION return with a heartfelt take on the Christmas record. A gift of seven traditional pieces fed through a brandy-oiled machine of analogue synthesizers and robotically assisted singing, festooned with wayward horns and primitive sprigs of guitar recorded in a conservatory in Dorchester.

The emotional hit of the results - from the deconstructed Macca synth and plucked harmonics of 'Good King Wenceslas', to the zero gravity glacial cloud that forms 'Once in Royal David's City' - is undeniable. Think John Fahey and Beefheart pulling an augmented reality wishbone, and you're halfway there.

Recommended if you like CS + Kreme, Zappa, Colleen.

Originally hailing from Scotland, now based in Copenhagen, Numbers present 23-year old producer and deejay Perko with his debut release NV Auto.

The six tracks on this EP hear Perko mining the grooves between his favourite genres for building blocks of inspiration. Drawing from UK soundsystem culture and modern experimental music, half of the record explores deeper atmospheric passages and meditative repetition, characterised by layers of subtly shifting chords, field recordings and delicate polyrhythms.

Three dancefloor cuts, spread throughout the rest of the record, retain this detail and interplay with added energy. Perko's sense of rhythm & space is clear with 'Rounded's glacial synths, blown out drum machines and sculpted sub sine waves. 'What Otters' forges playful UKG touches within a paperclip framework of space-echoes and sparks, whilst 'Songbirds' flips into 4/4 drive with percolated alarms and shimmering pads.

'Density, Noise, Dust, Distortion, Space...' says Perko, if you want it simple.

Psychemagik are the renowned duo of Daniel McLewin and Thomas Coveney hailing from the UK, best known for their carefully crafted DJ sets and distinctive edits.

In 2019 they released their long lost LP ‘I Feel How This Night Should Look’ featuring for the most part a collection of unreleased material written and recorded over a decade ago. Two of the tracks had made it out ahead of the album with a life of their own; a self released EP that featured ‘Above the Clouds’ and the 10th Anniversary of Phonica which included ‘Triumph of the Gods’.

Here Psychemagik revisit the latter with brand new remixes from Prins Thomas and Richard Norris. Thomas stays true to form with a percussive, glacial take that vibrates around the existing arrangement composed by Richard Chester at the infamous Air Studios. Whilst Norris ups the psychedelia pulling on Renate Staal Nygard’s stunningly melodic vocal accompaniment.

Both noted for strikingly forward-thinking bodies of solo work dating back to the 1990s, the duo of Andrew Pekler & Giuseppe Ielasi - collaborators for the better part of a decade - reemerge with 'Palimpsests’, their first outing with Shelter Press. Built from deconstructed layers of texture, tone, and arrhythmic percussiveness, the album’s 2 sides distill 6 years of work into 9 splintered, airy reimaginings of minimalism - each surprising, creatively rigorous, and startlingly beautiful - that rest at the outer reaches of contemporary electroacoustic practice and musique concrète.

Based in Berlin and Milan respectively, Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi have individually carved singular paths across numerous disciplines within experimental music for more than 20 years, each deploying sampling, synthesis, and acoustic sources to weave their own, distinct worlds of sonorous abstraction. Brought together by years of friendship and a shared devotion to layered texture and complex, fractured structure, the pair first joined their creative energies in 2013, a collaboration that culminated as the LP, ‘Holiday For Sampler’, issued by Planam.

'Palimpsests’, the duo’s second outing, draws its material from a series of improvisations made by the Pekler and Ielasi in Milan during 2015. Over the ensuing six years, those recordings would undergo various transformations - cut, reworked, sampled, and added to by each artist, working at geographic distance between Berlin, Kyoto and Monza - before culminating, like the album’s title suggests, as a unique manifestation of musical palimpsest; “an object reused and altered, while still bearing visible traces of its earlier form”.

With each of the album’s compositions nodding toward a city with which Pekler and Ielasi hold biographical connections, 'Palimpsests’ constructs sound as poetic metaphor; a series of ghosts - traces of memory, image, and action - cut and reassembled, in cycling permutations, before been set into action at a glacial pace with layered, transparent forms.

Defined by remarkable restraint and pointillistic precision, across the album’s two sides Pekler and Ielasi weave the fractured remnants of their sessions - reduced to glitches and warbling fragments of texture and tonality - into pulsing expanses of spatial ambiance that defy imagism, blur the boundaries between the synthetic and organic - reducing their sources to a series of unknowns - recast the boundaries of electroacoustic practice on markedly singular terms.

Shelter Press is thrilled to present 'Palimpsests’, another brilliant outing from the duo of Andrew Pekler and Giuseppe Ielasi. Issued in a limited edition of 500 copies on black vinyl, with artworks on printed inner and outer sleeves by Traianos Pakioufakis.

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed - cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically - during the height of the COVID- 19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their thirddecade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that's saying a lot). But where MONO's foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and - perhaps most notably - faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date - replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done. MONO began in Japan at the end of the 20th Century as a young band equally inspired by thepioneers of moody experimental rock (My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai) and iconic Classicalcomposers (Beethoven, Morricone) who came be fore them. They have evolved into one of the most inspiring and influential experimental rock bands in their own right. It is only fitting that their evolution has come at the glacial, methodical pace that their patient music demands. MONO is a band who puts serious value in nuance, and offers signi ficant rewards for the wait. "glacial, metallic, all-consuming post-rock" - Stereogum ,Stunning, eloquent, emotionally gut-busting" - Pop Matters "it's the kind of album that's best played start to finish (and best played loudly), and that can truly suck you in and transport you to another world if you do so." - Brooklyn Vegan

Flatland/Spaceland is the debut solo release from renowned pedal steel player, visual artist and composer Joe Harvey-Whyte, who has worked with the likes of Tony Visconti, The Hanging Stars and Susanne Sundfor. Flatland/Spaceland blurs the borderlines between ambient and neoclassical to create an engaging and meditative listening experience.


The first side of the 2 track EP, titled Flatland is a glacial ambient creation made using pedal steel guitar processed through multiple effects together with field recordings and occasional revelatory sounds from Himalayan singing bowls. Spaceland, on side B, takes the composition and refracts it through an orchestral lens. A 26-piece ensemble delicately creep in to the calming world echoed by side A. As the piece develops the result is something more akin to a film soundtrack. Occupying the space between ambient and neoclassical, Flatland / Spaceland by Joe Harvey-Whyte invites us to take a step back from the busyness of our lives for 20 minutes and reflect.

Diving into the archives of Alter Ego - the experimental ensemble of Manuel Zurria, Paolo Ravaglia, Aldo Campagnari, Francesco Dillon, Oscar Pizzo, Fulvia Ricevuto, and Eugenio Vatta - Die Schachtel is thrilled to present Pranam - A(Round) Giacinto Scelsi, a never before released body of recordings interpreting the works of the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi, made with Matmos (Martin Schmidt and Drew Daniel) in 2005. Resting at the outer reaches of avant-garde chamber and electronic music - moving at a glacial pace of tightly wound energy - Pranam’s two sides radically rethink the terms electroacoustic music in ways that still feel radically ahead of their time, more than 15 years after they were first laid to tape.

A modular chamber ensemble with a pointedly anti-academic approach to music, over the course of its activities - running roughly between 1990 and 2010 - Alter Ego developed a devoted following among some of the most forward thinking voices in experimental music, all the while collaborating widely with artists spanning a vast range of practices and disciplines, including Robin Rimbaud, Philip Jeck, Pan Sonic, Matmos, Gavin Bryars, Andrew Hooker, William Basinski, David Moss, Alvin Curran, Terry Riley, and near countless number of others.

Alter Ego’s diverse activities can be understood as interventions with the disposition toward formality within contemporary chamber music, often pairing themselves with artists working well beyond their own context as a means to develop highly original interpretations of a specific composer’s work. In 2005, this process led them to invite Matmos, the American duo of Drew Daniel, Martin Schmidt - acclaimed for a body of visionary albums at the vanguard of electronic process and sampling - to collaborate on a series of interpretations of works by the legendary Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi.

Realized in collaboration with The Fondazione Isabella Scelsi, which holds Giacinto Scelsi’s archives, and performed at the Festival Roma Europa and the Festival Aeterforum during May of 2005, the album’s four works - Estratti dal Quartetto per archi n.3 (1963), Ko-Lho (1966), Riti: I Funerali di Carlo Magno A.D. 814 (1976), Aitsi (1974) - shift the boundaries of 20th Century chamber music toward markedly new and contemporary terms, incorporating everything from the sounds of the Revox tape machine that Scelsi used to record his own improvisations and processed electronics, to the plastic trumpets used by fans during football matches.

From intertwining, shifting lone-tones that render startling resonances and dissonances, to passages guided by a vast pallet of electronics and flurries of acoustic sounds, joined as a single ensemble, across the two sides of Pranam, Alter Ego and Matmos infuse these four works by Scelsi with humor and playfulness, while retaining all the urgency and rigour with which they were initially composed.

Delicate and meditative, while tightly wound and brooding, Pranam brings the works of Giacinto Scelsi to life in ways that almost no group ever has. Riveting and immersive from start to finish, Die Schachtel is thrilled to present these never before heard recordings from the archives of Alter Ego. Pranam is available on black vinyl, in a limited edition of 350 copies.

Blue light. No heat. A glacial wall of denser-than-dense sound. Dallas Texas’ FROZEN SOUL lives up to their name as the sound of death metal at its most cold and classic. Riff after slow, grinding riff, there’s no mistaking the themes of isolation and suffering that permeate the quintet’s massive sonic missives. “The feeling I’m getting from playing in FROZEN SOUL is powerful in a way I wasn’t getting from other bands I’ve played in before”, says frontman Chad Green. “The sound. The lyrics. Even the logo itself has a harshness to it that just feels powerful and cold. Add to that the depression of dealing with real life and the venomous people that can inhabit it and the vibe of the band just makes sense.”
FROZEN SOUL’s brand of straightforward, in-your-face death metal is a gasp of fresh air in a genre that’s stretched the very limits of technicality. Fully formed in 2018, the quintet has rapidly made a name for itself and churned the underground with a sound that evokes the old school sound of bands like Obituary, Mortician and Bolt Thrower. That reverence for death metal’s roots was apparent from Frozen Soul’s initial four-song Encased In Ice demo (which includes a cover of Mortician’s “Witch’s Coven”) that was released in early 2019 on California’s cave dwelling, knuckle dragging, Maggot Stomp Records.

Kulk are a Norfolk two-piece wielding a barrage of sonic density across sludge, noise metal and psych. Jade Squires (drums and synth) and Thom Longdin (vocals and guitar) are distinctive and stark in their execution; a hungry new face of UK heavy music, cultivating acclaim from Metal Hammer, Echoes and Dust, Outline, Anti-Despair Machine, Down The Front Media, with radio plays from IORadio, BBC Introducing Suffolk and Future Radio as well as Steve Lamacq (BBC 6 Music).

Kulk’s sophomore monolith ‘We Spare Nothing’ is a demonstration of their importance within the UK underground and their progression into sharper, harder hitting noise rock. Glacial, pummeling riffs and drum passages give the spine to their stifling atmosphere, a refreshing take on the psych-tinged doom of entities like Sleep, The Melvins and Pigsx7. With their blistering live performances in tow,
‘We Spare Nothing’ will sear it’s mark into the UK scene in 2021.

Pilgrimage of the Soul is the 11th studio album in the 22-year career of Japanese experimental rock legends, MONO. Recorded and mixed - cautiously, anxiously, yet optimistically - during the height of the COVID- 19 pandemic in the summer of 2020, Pilgrimage of the Soul is aptly named as it not only represents the peaks and valleys where MONO are now as they enter their thirddecade, but also charts their long, steady journey to this time and place. Continuing the subtle but profound creative progression in the MONO canon that began with Nowhere Now Here (2019), Pilgrimage of the Soul is the most dynamic MONO album to date (and that's saying a lot). But where MONO's foundation was built on the well-established interplay of whisper quiet and devastatingly loud, Pilgrimage of the Soul crafts its magic with mesmerizing new electronic instrumentation and textures, and - perhaps most notably - faster tempos that are clearly influenced by disco and techno. It all galvanizes as the most unexpected MONO album to date - replete with surprises and as awash in splendor as anything this band has ever done. MONO began in Japan at the end of the 20th Century as a young band equally inspired by thepioneers of moody experimental rock (My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai) and iconic Classicalcomposers (Beethoven, Morricone) who came be fore them. They have evolved into one of the most inspiring and influential experimental rock bands in their own right. It is only fitting that their evolution has come at the glacial, methodical pace that their patient music demands. MONO is a band who puts serious value in nuance, and offers signi ficant rewards for the wait. "glacial, metallic, all-consuming post-rock" - Stereogum ,Stunning, eloquent, emotionally gut-busting" - Pop Matters "it's the kind of album that's best played start to finish (and best played loudly), and that can truly suck you in and transport you to another world if you do so." - Brooklyn Vegan

AMSIA is one of those hidden representatives of Basque experimental music that happened and disintegrated long ago.

Called "The other musics" or "Risky music" it originated two decades ago in the slaughterhouse of the Basque town of Azkoitia (Gipuzkoa).
This native music scene was an attempt to summarise the evolution of contemporary pop/experimental/ contemporary music, rather than an attempt to generate something new.

Its character is solitary and its nature is electronic; the result is a sound collage of MIDI orchestrations combined with synthesized sounds, vinyls and sampler libraries.

The sound of it is chaotic, unpredictable and strangely beautiful.

Fake Laugh & Tarquin first became acquainted a very long time ago, before they were either Fake Laugh or Tarquin. Two humans in their late teens with a keen interest in sound, they would indulge each other in whatever conversation they could muster while loitering in the corridors of their sixth-form college. Their place of learning existed in a sleepy Sussex town where once a year, the skies are filled with explosions, while burning effigies are carried through the cobbled streets by inebriated locals. The two did not suspect that much would become of their light friendship - but in good time that would all change…

In the years that followed, the two young artists moved to London and embarked upon their own totally distinct musical journeys - Fake Laugh was playing in venues with ‘rock bands’, while Tarquin was carving out a niche for himself in the bubbling, lava-like instrumental grime scene, which brought a new kind of heat to the clubs of the city. His vibrant, unapologetically obtuse (and at times absurd) brand of club-music delighted the ears of listeners, the feet of dance-floor dwellers and the brains of music theorists - all in one fell swoop. Having released with Mr. Mitch’s crucial Gobstopper imprint as well as big-guns Rinse, Tarquin has become a household name in the homes of those that know. All the while, Fake Laugh was in his bedroom writing scores of songs and occasionally releasing collections of the strongest cuts on a variety of indie labels who believed in his talent for timeless melody, focussed through his own rose-misted, yet modern lens.

It wasn’t until the fabled summer of 2019 that Fake Laugh & Tarquin would make music together in the same room. The first session resulted in album opener Slow, a song which for the previous two years, lay dormant in an acoustic form on a dusty Fake Laugh hard-drive. Fake Laugh had the idea that perhaps the song could be transformed into something far bigger and better in the hands of Tarquin - a theory which was proven correct.

Throughout Fake Laugh & Tarquin the pair continuously confound the listener, fusing sharp and glacial synthetic elements with warm organic tones and heartfelt vocal performances. Money was written at the start of the global pandemic, a time in which people had more financial concerns than usual. Rejecting total doom and gloom, Fake Laugh & Tarquin turn this dystopian angst on its head and create a one-of-a-kind club mover that pulls inspiration from the super-slick grooves of early noughties stalwarts Moloko and Groove Armada. The album twists, turns, morphs and mutates until it’s peaceful conclusion in the form of existential piano-ballad Meaningless Thin

La Fraicheur is a name that has been garnering increasing attention across the techno scene for the past decade and now she brings her well-refined, driving techno to Lobster Theremin.

The stuttering bass line and driving percussion of La Fin Du Debut immediately lurs us in while Garbage is a pensive, stripped out roller lined with existential affirmations. The pumping arpeggios of Renouveau open up the flip while the glacial melodies of Freezing close out the record with a welcome jolt to the system.

This record is a masterclass in driving techno which is as hypnotic as it is reflective.

Cult UK producer Iglew returns with his highly anticipated sophomore record after a six year hiatus, finding a perfect home on Facta and K-LONE’s label, Wisdom Teeth. Iglew first burst through during the instrumental grime boom of the mid-‘10s, debuting on Mr Mitch’s Gobstopper imprint with the now-verified classic ‘Urban Myth’ EP. A run of massive edits, remixes, radio rips, plus a feature on legendary label Boxed followed - andthen he went into hiding. Six years on, his follow-up EP expands and consolidates his sound into something truly unique and distinct. His central talents - glacial synth work, timeless melodies, pristine sound design - are all on show here in abundance, but twisted to fit new, refreshed patterns and structures.

‘Caffeine Dream’ is mutant UK techno that offsets distorted bass and glitching synths against warm chords and a noodling melody. ‘Gold’ is cool and stepping, sitting somewhere between early Night Slugs and the refracteddeep house of DJ Python. Title track ‘Light Armour’ is the EP’s understated climax - a lowlit and psychedelic take on modern pop, sounding something like a Charli XCX record A&R’d by the Freerotation crew. To close, ‘Microfunk Lament’ and ‘Hakwsworth Woods’ lean into microhouse and Reich-school minimalism, putting Iglew’s immense knack for melody and soul on full display.

“Some of the most extraordinary songs I’ve heard in years.” Brian Eno

Les Disques du Crepuscule presents The Salt Garden (Landscaped), an album of extended pieces by acclaimed quiet music ensemble Fovea Hex, featuring longform remixes by British songwriter and producer Steven Wilson and Serbian soundscape artist Abul Mogard, as well as a previously unreleased mix by Peter Chilvers.

Formed in 2005 by Irish musician Clodagh Simonds, Fovea Hex have since released 3 albums (Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent, Here Is Where We Used to Sing and The Salt Garden), drawing favourable comparisons with Nico, This Mortal Coil, Ligeti and even Schubert.

The Salt Garden (Landscaped) is pressed on crystal clear vinyl, and comes packaged with a CD version featuring 4 tracks in total. The outer sleeve is printed in white reverse board and features an image taken by Crepuscule designer Joel Van Audenhaege during a recent trip to Greenland. The inner bag offers detailed liner notes as well as an interview with Clodagh.

As well as Steven Wilson and Abul Mogard, other high-profile admirers include film director David Lynch, who invited the group to play at his Cartier Foundation exhibition in Paris in 2007, and Brian Eno, who has described Clodagh’s work as “some of the most extraordinary songs I’ve heard in years.”

The Salt Garden (Landscaped) gathers together 3 long ambient remixes of tracks from the Salt Garden EP trilogy, originally released between 2016 and 2019. The core album is pressed on crystal clear vinyl and showcases ‘Solace’ and ‘Is Lanza Light & Given’, both re-worked by musical polymath Steven Wilson. “I’ve long been a fan of Fovea Hex,” explains Steven, “which for me is some of the most sublimely beautiful music ever recorded. It’s a mix of electronic and acoustic sounds played on instruments ranging from state-of-the-art to ancient and arcane.”

As well as the two tracks reworked by Steven, the bonus CD enclosed with the vinyl album also finds room for ‘We Dream All the Dark Away’, the widely-acclaimed re-interpretation by Abul Mogard of ‘All Those Signs’ from the Salt Garden II EP. By turns haunting and sinister, but always beautiful, the piece features vocals by both Clodagh and Brian Eno, as well as cello by Kate Ellis, and modular synth and effects by mysterious soundscaper Mogard.

An additional special bonus track on the CD is an unreleased remix of lesser -known 2015 digital single ‘By the Glacial Lake’ made by musician Peter Chilvers, best known for his collaborations with Brian Eno, Karl Hyde, Chris Martin and Tim Bowness.

“I feel truly honoured!” says Clodagh Simons, who began her career in cult folk-psyche band Mellow Candle, and since then has guested on albums by Mike Oldfield, Thin Lizzy, Russell Mills, Matmos, Current 93 and Steven Wilson. “It’s been fascinating to witness how these pieces have been so imaginatively and skilfully revisioned in the hands of Steven, Abul and Peter. Each piece has emerged into a completely fresh new light, with a different vibrancy, yet remains grounded in what was there before.”

Long out of print and highly anticipated repress of the Andrew Weatherall ‘anti-produced’ long player. The Twilight Sad’s third full-length, No One Can Ever Know, marked a sonic shift for the band



'No One Can Ever Know' was released across all formats on 6th February 2012 and was the follow-up to 2009's acclaimed break-through 'Forget The Night Ahead'. Already flagged by the widely leaked 'Kill It In The Morning' and forthcoming first single proper, 'Sick', 'No One Can Ever Know' marked a sonic shift for The Twilight Sad. Freshly inspired by a listening diet of Caberet Voltaire, Liars, Magazine, Autechre, Banshees, Fad Gadget, PiL and Can, a synth-heavy sound characterizes 'No One Can Ever Know', a record thematically akin to 'Holy Bible' era Manics, 'Violator'-era Depeche Mode and 'The Downward Spiral' -era Nine Inch Nails.

"We wanted to be a lot more spontaneous, get outside our comfort zone - not to fall back into repeating what we've done previously", explains guitarist Andy MacFarlane. "So we moved to London for a month to record at The Pool and got Andrew Weatherall involved to bounce ideas off and to generally reassure us of the direction we were already progressing in - toward a sparser sound, with a colder, slightly militant feel."

Under the guidance of Weatherall the band experimented with vintage analogue synths - borrowed from Ben Hillier - to work on the core sounds they wanted, finding inspiration too in the distinctive production style of innovators like Martin Hannett and Conny Plank. For the first time the drums were also recorded separately utilising a lot of synthetic effects which allowed for the easy manipulation of the sounds and samples later in the process. Stylistically, the guitars tend to refract John McGeogh (Magazine/ Banshees) or Keith Levene (PiL) rather than the 'wall of sound' approach that defined The Twilight Sad's previous recordings.

Lyrically 'No One Can Ever Know' finds singer James Graham on typically ominous form, delivering lightning bolts of malevolent threat. "I'll find you - don't worry" he promises on forthcoming single, 'Another Bed' - The Twilight Sad's most radical and anthemic moment yet, it's driving disco motorik and glacial keys pushing a dizzy emotional uplift.

London-based record label Wisdom Teeth kicks off 2021 with something close to home: Blush - the playful, dynamic debut LP by label co-founder, Facta. Recorded unusually quickly over a short stint in early 2020, the record is the product of a period of refreshed and unfussy creativity. It’s an innovative and distinctly contemporary album that moves a good few steps beyond the artist’s work to date - loosely rooted in UK dance music but taking added influence from ambient, modern classical, dreampop, Balearic, folk music and beyond. The result is a lush, ornate record populated by aqueous pads, bleeping arps, wandering melodies and sparse broken rhythms; acoustic instruments that play out alongside FM synths, all processed with a pristine UV sheen inherited from modern pop music. The record opens with ‘Sistine (Plucks)’ - a crystalline synth piece with a stumbling, shifting metre revolving around an odd-ended MIDI harp loop, coloured through with washed-out pads and snatches of found sound. This breezy mood follows through to ‘On Deck’, where an FM vibraphone rings out on top of woozy, warping chords and a subby soca groove. Moving forward the record moves cohesively through a range of shifting moods and hues. The machine jazz of ‘Brushes’ is tense and coiled, with nods towards Burnt Friedman, Photek and Eli Keszler. ‘Iso Stream’ sees a rich, colourful sprawl of arpeggiated synths and dissociated vocal chops unspool slowly to form pooling, lowlit melodies. Title track ‘Blush’ is a forlorn Autonomic love song built from clicks-n-cuts - like dBridge & Instra:mental reduced and reinterpreted by SND. Throughout, bold, broad melodies take centre stage, and the tracks build like compositions rather than loops or club tools. There are echoes of the dancefloor - particularly in the slo-mo bruk of ‘Verge’ and the glacial subs underpinning ‘Diving Birds’ (a collaboration with friend and Trilogy Tapes regular Parris) - however the end results find us somewhere far off. ‘Blush’ is the second long-form release to come from Wisdom Teeth following K-LONE’s 2020 debut album, ‘Cape Cira’, which was widely ranked as one the best LPs of 2020.

Composed by Auvinen

Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering, June 2020

Cut by Andreas Kauffelt at Schnitstelle, Berlin, June 2020

Johannes Auvinen has been a one man acid king for over a decade producing a wealth of acid and acid house under the moniker Tin Man. For this new release on Editions Mego he navigates an entirely different zone. Drawing on the history of electronic musik Akkosaari is a transcendental journey far from the sensual frenzy of sweaty acid drenched dancefloors we are accustomed to with his work. Akkosaari lies in the middle of the kosmic komische of Ash Ra Temple's Jenseits, the weightless transcendentalism of Eliane Radigue's Trilogie De Morts and the more glacial output of the Sähkö catalogue. The pace is gentle as the listener is drawn further into a world unlike the one we inhabit, these machines are more second life than one's emulating real life. The fantastic potential for audio induced visions are at play in this adventure in music as mind travel. On Kyläläiset Tanssii a measured pulse acts as a means of navigation before Susi spirals out clouds of sound. By the time we get to Kelluminen we are deeply within an unfamiliar state prior to landing in the heavenly plateau of Akkosaari. Throughout Akkosaari we are bathed in enrapturing and enveloping mists of psychedelic haze which take the listener on a vivid mental journey. This is intoxicating head music unfolding like an astral ascension and like any trip warrants repeat visitation.

Since his 2012 debut as Heathered Pearls, Jakub Alexander has constructed art — music, objects, installations, performances — as a way of re-imagining fragments of his past and mapping ideas for his future. The Polish-born, Michigan-raised, New York-based artist and producer sees imagery and narrative framework as fluid components to his craft. Alexander’s first album, Loyal, mimicked the hypnotic motions of ocean waves at night, offering melodic, loop-based ambient music as a tribute to the tasteful influence of his mother and aunt. The second Heathered Pearls album, Body Complex, found inspiration from comfort, imperfection, and visions of interior architecture, transforming Loyal’s soft textures into driving 4/4 figures, glacial tone drifts, and starry synth plateaus. His 2017 EP, Detroit, MI 1997 - 2001, reflected on a formative era through ephem- eral dance music. The third Heathered Pearls full-length,


Cast, returns to moodier loop formats joined by the distinctly new presence of the spo- ken word. The move mirrors the multitudes of its namesake: collaborators comprise a cast, healing in the bind of a cast, complex emotions and the shadows they cast. Alexander started work on Cast when living in Berlin and in Queens.

“I hit a wall listening to these tracks when they were instrumental.” This is where he diverged from previous modes, deciding to integrate speech. With a healthy distaste for aspects of performance art, he invited strictly non-scripted recordings, a series of anti-performances. This new format adds a surprising human element to music that has previously operated as sea-shapes or infrastructure. These flashes of language, Alexander’s close friends speaking about things, narratively and cerebrally, casually and profoundly, turn the distinctive Heathered Pearls sound into some- thing surprisingly gritty, tangible, and in certain sweeps, cinematic. It is as if the world outside of these compositions bleeds into the music, casting their verbal being from just off the surface, like the album’s cover artwork where the light hits the plexi object but misses the wall.

Alexander sees his covers as naturally unfinished workstations; the gauzed and patinaed copper on Cast continues in this philosophy. This is all to say Cast deals with absence as much a presence. Among the guest storytellers is Alexander’s friend and tourmate Nick Murphy (formerly Chet Faker), who unwinds a series of tender observations on “Basic Needs.” The swirling synthesizer immerses a series of empathies; feeling like an egg yolk, a window’s view, his love for the color yellow, and wanting yellow to love him back.

Amor Satyr makes his debut on Promesses with “Na Viela / Virar DJ”, a double single featuring Brazilian rappers MC Buzzz (Spain-based) and T9 RJ (France-based). For this release the French producer brings what he does the best : hybrid baile funk. “Na Viela” is a cartoonish club banger where Buzzz’ broken voice and T9’ deep breathy hooks melt with Amor Satyr’ epic strings and bassline. Followed by grimy glacial bullet “Virar DJ” where T9’ voices from beyond the grave match with sharp snare and hypnotic synth. The release contains instrumental versions of each song. "Na Viela / Virar DJ" is available on limited edition vinyl (handmade silkscreened cover illustrated by Acacio Ortas).

For the first outing on Dream Dancing, upcoming producer Joe Moan presents two cuts for different moments in the dance.

'Interreality' holds a mixture of glacial atmospheres and a warm flowing undercurrent, gently moving and evolving... The floating dub chords and driving bass line ride along stripped back, hypnotising house rhythms throughout this dreamy tale.

Flip for 'No Control' - A stripped back breaky affair, heavy on the flow... Warped synths, trance inducing tripped out chords, firmly glued together by the rumbling Reese bass.

250 hand numbered copies only.

Close is the debut album from American Dreams Records founder & ONO member Jordan Reyes.
The album is comprised of six songs composed on modular synthesizer working in a rhythmic ambient, electronic realm - songs like ‘Quicksand’ are glacial and melodic while others like ‘Lost Machine’ skew to the kinetic.
On this album, Reyes mused on idea of sobriety, endurance, and being in a state of trance - wading deep in the patch cords of the eurorack synthesizer allowed him to reach a state of non-attachment, similar to running or biking a long distance. This kind of tunnel vision allowed him to perceive himself fading from the day-to-day and exist wholly inside the machine, becoming a more cybernetic organism.

Cosmic dance and spatial atmospherics are at the very centre of Zakmina’s productions, as the Lithuanian producer readies an appetizing EP for Dave Harvey’s Futureboogie, backed with a remix from the always on-point Gnork.

With releases already wetting our ears on Critical Monday, XXX and Roam Recordings, Zakmina spreads his wings across three new cuts. ‘Church Of Madness’ pumps with oodles of new beat drums and soaring synths, anchored by a fat arpeggiated bassline, whilst ‘Déjà vu’ is a first class chugger, its drums as big as 80’s shoulder pads, with glacial keys and breezy vocals comprising the seductive sensations on offer here.

The Balearic synth-pop vibes of ‘Running Amore’ complete the trio of originals from Zakmina, whilst Gnork lays down the lino and tweaks ‘Church Of Madness’ into a solid 808 drum driven ‘Ezoteric Breakdance’ Remix. The Hungarian producer, responsible for some killer releases on Lone’s Magicwire label, Unknown To The Unknown, as well as his own Earth Plates imprint, delivers a futuristic b-boy re-working that’s heady and exhilarating right off the bat.

Steve Von Till has charted an extraordinary musical path over the last several decades, from his main duties as singer and guitarist of the boundary-breaking Neurosis to the psychedelic music of his Harvestman project and the gothic Americana he's released under his own name. But No Wilderness Deep Enough is truly like nothing you've ever heard from him before—an album that's devastatingly beautiful and overwhelming in its scope, reminiscent of the tragic ecstasy of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' recent work as well as the borderless ambient music pioneered by Brian Eno, late composer Jóhann Jóhannsson's glacial compositions, and the electronic mutations of Coil. 

FOR FANS OF : MARK LANEGAN/MICHAEL GIRA/NICK CAVE.

Over the course of recent time, an aching, growing void has developed where our normal way of life has resided. Uncertainty abounds, and Steve Von Till's No Wilderness Deep Enough provides a voice of existential wisdom and experience to offer comfort and perspective in an era of uncharted territory. These six pieces of music shape a hallucinatory landscape of sound that plumbs the depths of the natural world's mysteries and uncertainties—questions that have vexed humanity since the dawn of time asked anew amidst a backdrop that's as haunting as it is holistic.

Von Till’s fifth solo album is a swirling and iridescent blend of ambient, neo-classical, and gothic Americana that swan-dives into the darkness of modern life, with the resulting emergence a sonic document of rural psychedelia that transcends the physical world—towards a greater spiritual acceptance that connects naturalism, spiritualism, and the corporeal form.

With a foundation of simple melancholy piano chord progressions embellished with mellotron, cello, french horn and electronic treatments Von Till's scorched ache spreads across the terrain of No Wilderness Deep Enough like a brushfire, adding a tactile level to his sonic creation as well as an inviting level of friction to the burning beauty painted across the album's framework.

With a foundation of simple melancholy piano chord progressions that came to fruition during jetlagged nights in his wife’s childhood home in Germany, No Wilderness Deep Enough was further embellished with mellotron and electronic treatments in Von Till’s home studio in North Idaho.  Viewing the emerging result as an ambient instrumental album, he consulted friend and engineer Randall Dunn (Marissa Nadler, Earth) about adding live cello and french horn and piano in a proper studio.  After enlisting Brent Arnold on cello and Aaron Korn on french horn, he challenged Von Till to sing over the music and make it his next solo album—which is exactly what happened, with final work being completed at Tucker Martine’s (the Decemberists, Neko Case) Flora Recording and Playback in Portland.

Long-time collaborators, longer-time best friends, lifelong analog appreciators; the German duo Iron Curtis & Johannes Albert join cosmic forces once again for another LP mission 'Moon II', a heartfelt voyage through the sounds, movements, styles and machines that created this music in the first place.
Think late 80s New York, early 90s Sheffield and the perennial sounds of Italo and Detroit, 'Moon II' is a lunar safari that celebrates the deepest foundations of house, techno and electronic soul while resolutely refusing to get nostalgic. Written and recorded during an intense two-and-a-half month session in Berlin last autumn, there's a consistency and tangible narrative running throughout as the pair play inspiration ping-pong over the course of 10 tracks.
A little Drexcyian glacial nod here, a hazy Boards Of Canada wink there. The Other People Place, Kerrier District, Environ Records, the Hacienda, Sub Club, Heaven 17, classic electro… All these ingredients are constantly bubbling in the mix for both Curtis and Albert (as individuals and even more so as a duo) and the end result is an album that works as a proper album should. Peaks, troughs, dreamy departures and all beautiful things in between.
Taking off where their debut collaborative album 'Industrie & Zärtlichkeit' (soon to be retitled 'Moon I') left us three years ago, the opening modem sounds on the intro track 'Canggu Laundry Club' dial us into a special sense of time and space.
It's a space where anything feels possible; Visual-inspired acid lines on 'Tiger Trek', lino-spinning body pops and windmills to the street sounds electro style of 'The Ultimate Seduction', the club-focused, Traxx-style Cutie Schamuthie collaboration 'Hurting', the melancholy plucks and struts of 'Feingold', the provocative, slinky, smoky finale piece 'Nektar'… The list of intergenerational and cross-genre landmarks on this adventurous body of work go and on, each track complementing the last as they fuse to create a bigger collective picture. A picture that's charmed together through the consistent use of key classic studio machines.
They call it Introverted Electronic Body Music, we call it warm, free-spirited and ultimately timeless. Perfect for your sets, your afterhours or your headphones alike; it's time to let Iron Curtis and Johannes Albert take you to the Moon and back… Once again.

The first collaboration between frequent Past Inside the Present contributor Slow Dancing Society (both as an artist and in-house engineer for other PITP releases) and the label's founder zake, present 'Mirrored'; a wonderful meditative exploration of glacial drones, atmospheric hum, and touches of restrained ambient techno.

Mirrored is a quietly powerful, contemplative album with a beautiful stillness at its center. Layered dronescopes are intertwined with murmuring electronic rhythms, hypnotic bass, and the occasional pneumatic beat resulting in a collection of pieces that radiates a glowing warmth.

Coastlines is the self-titled long player from the new Japanese production unit of DJ and producer Masanori Ikeda and solo artist, session musician and Cro-Magnon keyboard player Takumi Kaneko.

Masanori and Takumi have been part of the Japanese dance music scene for years and Coastlines was born out of their working together on soundtracks for video projects. The pair wanted to make laid-back listening music for now, laying Takumi’s playful keys over Masanori’s widescreen balearic jazz-fusion to conjure beautiful and breathtaking “coastlines”.

A couple of two-track 7"s put out in late 2018 and early 2019 on Japanese house music label Flower Records soon sold out. Those four tracks were expanded to a full album of music, “a joyous, relaxing, summery soundtrack for everyone’s after hours wind down” that was released just in time for summer. It soundtracked many a Be With BBQ in 2019.

The album opens in the horizontal with the sophisticated, cocktails-by-the-pool groove of “Sunset Reflection”. A lush, beatless wonder. Their re-imagining of Ralph MacDonald’s “East Dry River” removes all the original’s bells and whistles (quite literally) and re-gears it with a subtle balearic chug. The result is a percussive gem.

“Coastline” is a beach-jazz noodle. “Drifting Ice” is as chilled and glacial as its title would suggest, yet Masanori’s head-nod slo-mo house beats throb not far below the surface. “My Fire” is another soft killer, all swelling, swirling organ over muted kicks and snares. An elegant boom-bap.

A pair of insistent tunes of the deeply balearic variety raise the tempo, but not by too much of course. On “Woods And My Guitar” a half-heard vocal refrain breathes life into the synthetic xylophone and guitar. Deft piano-work turns “Half Moon Shadow” into lounge-house for the sophisticated beach bum. A classy duo.

The self-assured re-work of Azymuth’s “Last Summer In Rio” is arguably the album’s centrepiece. Ten minutes of casually propulsive slapped bass, steel pans and slick 80s soul beats. Cue the steel drum interlude of “Maracas Bay” before album closer “Down Town” transitions us one with a shuffling, string-hinted hit of ethereal, euphoric piano bliss. Gentle disco for the new decade.

As former Test Pressing scribe Dr. Rob observed on his ever-reliable Ban Ban Ton Ton blog, the Coastlines fusion is very much in conversation with their 80s counterparts, both at home and along the coastlines of different continents. So among the nods to revered Japanese artists like Hiroshi Sato, Sakamoto and Casiopea, there are also hints of Marcos Valle and Mtume, of the aforementioned Azymuth. “The production though is very much now, not then. Not retro, just proper”. We couldn’t put it better ourselves.

Coastlines was originally a CD release only available in Japan, with HMV putting out a super-limited vinyl version a few months later for Japanese Record Store Day. But this music is just too good, so when Be With was asked via Ken Hidaka to take care of a vinyl version for the rest of the world it wasn’t a tough decision.

Mastered by Simon Francis and cut by Pete Norman, just 500 copies of this double LP have been pressed by the good people at Record Industry.

On October 4th Erased Tapes present Handfuls of Night — the highly anticipated follow-up to Penguin Cafe’s much applauded 2017 album The Imperfect Sea — inspired by the Antarctic, Arthur Jeffes’ journey following in Scott’s footsteps and our penguin friends that reside there. Using gut-stringed violins, viola, cello, bass, percussion, upright and grand pianos, synthesiser, harmonium and more, Arthur Jeffes and his cohorts have crafted a vivid series of panoramic sonic landscapes, that are as rich in cerebral poignancy as they are in emotional depth.

Bookended by the atmospheric ambient piano pieces ‘Winter Sun’ and ‘Midnight Sun’, the album traverses glacial minimalism with ease, combining their signature contemporary classical panoramas, such as the melancholic yet upbeat lead track ‘At the Top of the Hill, They Stood...’ and the colossal cinematic piece ‘Chapter’, with the crystalline folktronica on ‘Pythagorus on the Line Again’ — a re-visiting and continuation of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra’s 1993 Union Cafe song on the principles of harmonics.

Redshape – Whoever is behind the masked face, he always has something else to say. This guy simply understands sound. And here we get the standard Redshape treatment. A no-nonsense chugger, a cold kinda-subby-but-not baseline, a nod to the break and away we go. We take no prisoners.

Eduardo – Reminiscent of the golden days of Jam and Spoon, gas-masks and fluorescent nights, trance seems to be back in the house. And what can we say but welcome it back into our hearts, minds and onto our floors. And for that we have the mighty Spaniard, Eduardo De La Calle, to show is how it’s done. Trance 2.0.

Undo – Undo trying not to piss off old people even more after Hell and Italo Brutalo? Well, good luck with that one, cause we’re pissed off. Pissed off cause we want to be young again, dancing with the Elephants, having fun. Fuck it, age is only a number, no? Alors on danse!

XDB – The sweet purr, the glacial strings, the subaquatic, the wink to the greats. A chiller on a hazy morning. A gentle awakening.