Cerca:human

Sydney's Lipstick Killers released just one single in their lifetime – the perfect ’79 pairing of “Hindu Gods of Love” and ”Shakedown USA”, released on both their own Lost in Space Records and Greg Shaw’s Voxx Records and produced by Deniz Tek of the band's heroes Radio Birdman - but a posthumous live album and a couple of archival releases followed. It was all incredible.

And it was all put together a few years ago on Grown Up Wrong!'s 2CD set Strange Flash! And while the 2LP version of that release included all the studio stuff and the live in LA 1981 set, there was no room for this brain-burning, chaotic live set from '79. Tour De Force, which was recorded for local radio station 5UV, captures the band as they were still emerging from the cocoon that was the Psycho Surgeons.

The Nuggets influences are there, but it's a Stooges influences which dominate proceedings, and definitive readings of both sides of the Psycho Surgeons classic 45 "Wild Weekend"/"Horizontal Action" are included alongside early Killers killers like "Teen Police" and "Sockman" and later faves like "Hindu Gods of Love', "Shakedown USA" and "Dying Boy's Crawl". The band's hot take on the Thirteenth Floor Elevators' "I've Got Levitation" is also featured. There's also plenty of tunes that were only ever captured on tape on this wild night, including "Human Crash", "Crush On You", "Head Off" and "Bully"!

GER Das gefeierte ruandische Folk-Duo The Good Ones kehrt mit einem besonderen Album zurück: Rwanda Sings with Strings verbindet ihre charakteristischen akustischen Songs mit feinfühligen, improvisierten Arrangements für Cello und Violine. Produziert von Grammy-Gewinner Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ramblin" Jack Elliott), wurde das Album komplett live und ohne Overdubs in einem Hotelzimmer aufgenommen - nur einen Tag vor ihrem NPR Tiny Desk-Auftritt. Die Streicher - Gordon Withers (Cello) und Matvei Sigalov (Violine) - kannten sich vorher nicht, spielten ohne Noten oder Proben, und schufen dennoch in einem Take eine magische Klangwelt. Sänger und Gitarrist Adrien Kazigira schrieb über 23 neue Songs, von denen 19 aufgenommen wurden. Wie immer singt er in Kinyarwanda, der Landessprache Ruandas. Die Lieder handeln von Liebe, Verlust, ländlichem Leben und gesellschaftlichem Wandel - mit einer emotionalen Tiefe, die an Nick Drake, Boubacar Traoré oder Astral Weeks erinnert. Begleitet wird Kazigira von Janvier Havugimana, der wie gewohnt auf Alltagsgegenständen Perkussion spielt. Ein zutiefst menschliches, intimes Album - roh, poetisch und voller Hoffnung. Celebrated Rwandan folk duo The Good Ones return with a deeply intimate and emotionally rich album. Rwanda Sings with Strings pairs their signature acoustic sound with delicate, improvised arrangements for cello and violin. Produced by Grammy-winner Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ramblin" Jack Elliott), the album was recorded entirely live-no overdubs-in a Washington, D.C. hotel room, just one day before their NPR Tiny Desk performance. The string players-Gordon Withers (cello) and Matvei Sigalov (violin)-had never met before the session and played without sheet music or rehearsals. Yet, in a single take, they created a soundscape that feels both spontaneous and transcendent. Lead singer and guitarist Adrien Kazigira wrote over 23 new songs for the project, 19 of which were recorded. As always, he sings in Kinyarwanda, Rwanda"s national language. The songs explore themes of love, loss, rural life, and cultural change, with a poetic depth reminiscent of Nick Drake, Boubacar Traoré, or Astral Weeks. Kazigira is joined by Janvier Havugimana, who provides harmonies and percussion using everyday objects like cups, plastic wrap, and old boots. A raw, heartfelt, and hopeful album-quietly powerful and profoundly human.

By the composer of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 2, City Hunter: The Movie, Soul Eater, and Black Butler.



Yato dreams of becoming a famous and respected god, but his reality is far from that dream. One day, his fate takes a turn when he saves Hiyori, a high school girl, from a car accident. In return, he asks for her help to achieve his grand ambition. Together, with Yukine, a spirit who serves as his sacred weapon, they navigate the world of humans and deities, where Yato must prove his worth and divine heritage.



This vinyl record features several BGM tracks from the series. Taku Iwasaki, a renowned composer in the anime industry, has created a vast array of background music, blending numerous styles—from traditional music infused with electronic elements to rap, as well as dark and melancholic piano pieces. Through this musical variety, the composer perfectly captures the anime’s atmosphere: comedic and joyful moments, intense action sequences, and much darker themes that reflect the protagonist’s past.

Legendary postmodern, post punk, post human, past caring collective Mekons return with a brand-new album for 2025. Their first release on Fire Records, ‘Horror’ a collection of songs written in late 2022 but providing a horribly prescient reflection of the world in its current miasma and how we got here. ‘Horror’ looks at history and the legacies of British imperialism with mashed up lyrics set against a typically eclectic sound that amalgamates everything from dub, country, noise, rock & roll, electronica, punk, music hall, polka and you can even take your partner for a nice waltz on ‘Sad And Sad And Sad’. The roots of their global sound reflect their nomadic journey through time and space from Leeds to California in the West and Siberia in the East and is woven into the fabric and intricacies of their song creation… Sounding like The Chills and R.E.M circa the I.R.S Records years, ‘Mudcrawlers’ sees just about the whole band joining Jon Langford on vocals speaking of Irish famine and refugees journeying to Wales. ‘War Economy’ shivers in the cold of such Boroughs spiked one-liners: “Clinical coercion will not achieve dominance!” Sounding like its straight off a Jenny Holzer neon sign (she of Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise), it’s held together by a disgruntled swaggering riff that underpins an explosion of disquiet. Meanwhile, Rico takes the lead on the maliciously luscious ‘Fallen Leaves’ an appalled and appalling Hammer Horror take on climate breakdown reminiscent of Rolling Thunder Dylan, that recalls The Pogues at their most introspective, its Celtic twilightism augmented by Susie Honeyman’s keening violin as the dying sun sinks down and the river Styx flows on in the pitch black night. Almost 50 years in the making, these Mekons continue to astound, their sound, sentiment and method of delivery blended to perfection by bass player and studio wizard, Dave Trumfio. The Mekons are Jon Langford, Sally Timms, Tom Greenhalgh, Dave Trumfio, Susie Honeyman, Rico Bell, Steve Goulding, and Lu Edmonds. "Effortlessly eloquent post-punks" Pitchfork // “The Mekons are still vital” Rolling Stone // “The most revolutionary group in the history of rock ‘n’ roll,” Lester Bangs // UK Tour 8-15 May 2025 (including London, Manchester, Glasgow, and more).

Indonesian duo Kuntari make music that's so distinctive, they had to devise their own genre: primal-core. On Mutu Beton, multiinstrumentalist Tesla Manaf and percussionist Rio Abror dialog with both history and their tropical surroundings in Bandung, West Java's mountainous capital. Using the cornet and hulusi, a free reed instrument made from a bottle gourd and bamboo pipes, Manaf echoes the bellows of local elephants, orangutans and rhinos, grazing Abror's ancestral Indonesian rhythms with potent overdriven riffs and evocative microtonal chimes.

It's music that's profoundly atmospheric and simultaneously raw, recorded live to fully encapsulate the dynamic and deeply human interaction between the two seasoned players. There are elements of sludge metal, noise and post-hardcore, references to traditional folk music and jazz, and gestures towards sound art, 20th century minimalism and dark ambient, but what Kuntari do is completely idiosyncratic -- it's hardly surprising it needed a similarly unique categorization.

Manaf started Kuntari as a solo project, debuting in 2020 with Black Shirt Attracts More Feather and animating his nimble instrumental improvisations with bold electronic processes and booming synthetic drums. And by the time he recorded 2022's acclaimed Last Boy Picked, his approach had evolved significantly; prioritizing organic sounds, he played prepared cornet and piano, bringing in additional percussionists to help devise a ritualistic rhythm section. Abror was one of those performers, and ended up sticking around, playing on 2023's furious LARYNX/STRIDULA, the stylistic precursor for Mutu Beton. At this stage, the duo have racked up a litany of accolades and collaborated with a spectrum of like-minded artists, from noise deity Keiji Haino to fellow Indonesian free-thinker Rully Shabara, who's best known for his work with Senyawa and avant-garde supergroup Osmium. Mutu Beton plays like a lap of honor, showcasing their most kinetic and most feral recordings to date. Kuntari surpass their own high standards, folding history and geography in on itself and suggesting a trailblazing Indonesian cultural movement that's not restricted by highbrow Western conventions. It's not just automation and technology that drives progression, it's interaction and observation. And there's nothing more primal, or revolutionary, than that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ULURU is a large sandstone rock formation in Australia. It's sacred to the Anangu, the local Indigenous of the area. For many years it had been deprived of its spiritual significance, due to mass tourism, capitalism, as well as greedy and selfishness of people who just want to make money out of it. However, as a result of the Anangu’s resilience, care and staunchness, huge changes took place in the national park around Uluru as well as in the broader public's consciousness, giving again to the Uluru the sacred identity that had been lost.
You might be reading and thinking now: so what's the point? Actually, there's no real point. I would rather say, there’s hope. The hope of seeing humans all around the world following the example of the Anangu. The hope of seeing humans finally stopping to treat the earth and all what’s part of it, what’s on and what’s in it, as a slave without soul. The hope of changing today, and if not today at latest by tomorrow. This system is failing. It's no longer sustainable, and there's no much time left. So everybody, don't sleep, be critical.

ULURU is a large sandstone rock formation in Australia. It's sacred to the Anangu, the local Indigenous of the area. For many years it had been deprived of its spiritual significance, due to mass tourism, capitalism, as well as greedy and selfishness of people who just want to make money out of it. However, as a result of the Anangu’s resilience, care and staunchness, huge changes took place in the national park around Uluru as well as in the broader public's consciousness, giving again to the Uluru the sacred identity that had been lost.
You might be reading and thinking now: so what's the point? Actually, there's no real point. I would rather say, there’s hope. The hope of seeing humans all around the world following the example of the Anangu. The hope of seeing humans finally stopping to treat the earth and all what’s part of it, what’s on and what’s in it, as a slave without soul. The hope of changing today, and if not today at latest by tomorrow. This system is failing. It's no longer sustainable, and there's no much time left. So everybody, don't sleep, be critical.

Esoteric Warfare is the fifth full-length studio album by Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. It was released by Season of Mist on 6 June 2014 in Europe and Asia, and on 10 June 2014 in North America. It is the band's first album with Teloch on guitar since Blasphemer's departure from the band in 2008. As with the previous album, the lyrics focus less on the classically Satanic themes of the band's early work, instead referring to occult and conspiracy theory concepts such as psychic powers, mind control and alien tampering with human evolution. (For instance, the song "Corpse of Care" appears to be a direct allusion to Bohemian Grove and the Cremation of Care ceremony performed there.)

Manche Alben sind mehr als bloße Hit-Sammlungen - sie sind Zeitkapseln. Greatest Hits Volume I & II gehört genau dazu. Ursprünglich 1985 veröffentlicht, bündelt diese Doppel-LP über ein Jahrzehnt Popgeschichte. Vom schwelgerischen Storytelling in "Piano Man" über die Ironie von "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" bis zur emotionalen Wucht von "Just the Way You Are": Billy Joel erzählt darin nicht nur seine eigene Geschichte, sondern auch die einer ganzen Generation.

Das Album wurde weltweit millionenfach verkauft, mehrfach mit Platin ausgezeichnet und gilt heute als eines der erfolgreichsten Greatest-Hits-Alben aller Zeiten. Es zeigt Joel als Songwriter, Performer und Chronist des Alltags - mal romantisch, mal bissig, immer unverwechselbar.

Mit der Reissue erscheint dieser Klassiker nun neu remastert auf hochwertigem Vinyl. Die Tracklist umfasst alle Schlüsselwerke der Jahre 1973 bis 1985, darunter auch Studio-Neuaufnahmen wie "You're Only Human (Second Wind)" und "The Night Is Still Young". Diese Veröffentlichung ist die ideale Einstiegstür für Neuentdecker und ein wertvolles Sammlerstück für langjährige Fans.

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

When you love a record too damn much, you will soon discover whether you "got what it takes” to make it yours. Such is the case with Turbo label head Tiga, who has played 11Schnull & Newinfluenzer’s 2023 underground hit “Ich und meine Ubahn” in each and every one of his DJ sets since its non-Turbo release. But unbridled track-passion is not always enough, and sometimes one must take a step back and recognize that the music business is also a business. So our in-house Corporate Development team, which has of late been entirely focused* on figuring out how best to monetize Tintin entering the public domain, set to work, successfully licensing the original while also creating the fun and potentially life-saving opportunity to visualize just how amicable the licensing process was.

All of which brings us to the remix pack at hand. The essentially perfect electro programming and vocal performance of the 2023 original leaves virtually no angle for improvement, save for the fact that the 4:20 runtime not enough for the median touring DJ to satisfy their chatbot mistress before they must begin the exacting work of selecting and mixing the next track. As such, we enlisted producers who could interpret the song from different planes of existence, namely Chilean-German wizard Matias Aguayo, French hardstyle prodigy Krarmpf, German aesthetes Extrawelt, Hamburg electro master DJ MELL G, and Asturian highbrow god Architectural. For reference, the planes conjured by these remixes are as follows: blacked out on Ivermectin; finally beat a pay-to-win mindfulness game; voted the Greatest Living Teen Artist by the readers of US Weekly; transformed into an expressionless little muscleman as if by magic; going viral; and curing jet lag in our lifetime. It is not for us to say which remix corresponds to which realm of human experience, but we do know that it is limited to those options.

Finally, please do not invite a chatbot lover into your marriage. Your spouse cannot hope to compete. And know that this advice comes from our best understanding of current world affairs, and does not represent what a repressed British man would calling “taking the pee.” At their very best, jokes are funny, and the fate of the human bedroom is no laughing matter at all.

*Like a laser!

Der schwüle Ton von Eliana Glass ist nicht zu überhören - sie wechselt zwischen einer unkonventionellen, suchenden Qualität und ihrer ergreifenden, ehrfurchtgebietenden Bandbreite. Auch ihr Klavierspiel besitzt dieses mitreißende Hin und Her zwischen dem Jenseitigen und dem schmerzlich Menschlichen - jede Melodie ist ihr eigenes, einzigartiges, schmerzhaftes Reich. Glass' spärliche, meditative Musik fängt oft, wie sie sagt, die ,Verdichtung des Alltags" ein, ein Bild, das zu der bittersüßen, flüchtigen und abstrakten Natur ihrer Arbeit passt. Glass' Debütalbum E erscheint bei Shelter Press und ist nicht nur ein zärtliches Porträt ihrer lebenslangen Beziehung zum Klavier, sondern auch eine Destillation ganzer Lebenszeiten. Vier Jahre lang arbeitete Glass mit dem Mitbegründer und Produzenten von Public Records, Francis Harris (Frank & Tony, Adultnapper), und dem Tontechniker Bill Skibbe (Shellac, Jack White) zusammen, um das Album E in verschiedenen Studios in Nashville, Brooklyn, Memphis und Benton Harbor, Michigan, aufzunehmen. Glass' experimentelle, improvisatorische Werke erinnern an den sinnlichen Minimalismus von Annette Peacock, die freudige Rätselhaftigkeit von Carla Bley und die wehmütige Intimität von Sibylle Baier. Ihre Verehrung für die Größen des Leftfield Jazz und der freien Improvisation ist unüberhörbar, aber immer gefiltert durch ihren unverwechselbaren, naturalistischen Sound. ,Dreams" ist eine majestätische Interpretation von Peacocks gleichnamigem Stück aus dem Jahr 1971, ,Sing Me Softly the Blues` ist eine minimale, fesselnde Neuinterpretation von Baiers Jazzstandard mit einem von der norwegischen Sängerin Karin Krog adaptierten Text, und ,Emahoy` ist eine schmachtende Hommage an die äthiopische Pianistin, Komponistin und Nonne Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou und ihre 2006 erschienene Kompilation Éthiopiques. Glass' Musik basiert auf einem taktilen, sprunghaften Klang und ihrer stimmlichen Kraft und Vielseitigkeit. E's glatte Stöße von Kontrabass und Schlagzeug kitzeln den Gehörgang und betonen die Schlagfertigkeit ihrer unverwechselbaren tiefen Stimme, die sonore, androgyne Gelassenheit mit flatterhafter Zartheit verbindet. E hat auch eine rätselhafte elektronische Note, die die verschwommenen Emotionen von Glass' Songwriting noch verstärkt. Von Hintergrundrauschen und windigem Gesang bis hin zu kaleidoskopischen Synthesizern stammen diese subtilen, geschmackvollen Verzierungen oft von speziellem analogem Equipment: einer unterirdischen Echokammer aus den 1960er Jahren, einem Cooper Time Cube (im Grunde das Hardware-Äquivalent der Audioverarbeitung durch einen Gartenschlauch) und einem AEA-Bandmikrofon aus den 1940er Jahren. Aber das bedeutet nicht, dass E veraltet klingt - Glass' Songs sind von einem zukunftsweisenden Geist durchdrungen und fungieren letztlich als Vehikel für ihre berauschenden Emotionen und fragmentierten Erinnerungen und Träume. Glass' eigentümliche stimmliche Alchemie und ihre lebhaften Klavierausflüge sind meisterhaft und ganz und gar ihre Sache, und ihr Debütalbum ist ein Geschenk von klangvoller Schönheit und lohnender Mehrdeutigkeit. Als Musikerin und Improvisatorin ist Glass von der Suche nach Bedeutung, nach Klängen, nach Neuem, nach Verbindung begeistert und beherrscht diese. Und wie Krog 1975 in ,Sing Me Softly the Blues" sang: ,Life's so thrilling / if you search."

Men in Love is a collaborative concept album by Irvine Welsh and The Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra, exploring the complexities of love, relationships, and the human condition. The album blends classic Motown and disco influences with contemporary electronic dance production, creating a unique and powerful sound that is both nostalgic and fresh.

From soaring anthems to intimate ballads, Men in Love takes the listener on a journey through the highs and lows of romance, celebrating the power of connection, vulnerability, and the enduring search for love in a chaotic world.

The album will be released concurrently with Welsh's new novel, also titled Men in Love. The book is a sequel to Welsh's seminal work, Trainspotting, and continues the story of Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Begbie, and other beloved characters. The album serves as a sonic companion to the novel, with its themes, lyrics, and musical atmosphere reflecting the experience and inner turmoil of its characters. The album also introduces The Sci-Fi Soul Orchestra, a unique musical entity with their own unique music releases in the pipeline

Legendary 2 Flying Stones Picture Disc
2 Flying Stones are back with yet an amazing record in a series of hit-12”es.

MEMOTONE, aka Will Yates, has announced details of a new 12-track album, smallest things, set for release on World of Echo on 1 August 2025 on vinyl and digitally.

The album launches today with first track, ‘Time Is Away Theme’, a live favourite that is finally available on album. Watch the video HERE Talking about the release, Will has said, “Staring at a square inch of neglected concrete, I recognise the beauty of existence. Quietly hysterical. While humanitarian catastrophes bubble across the planet, the tides remain in constant and disinterested motion. Your money is worth less than the dusty moss that powders this pavement.

It's certainly not worth a life. We are the smallest things, along with everything else." Will Yates has made music as Memotone since 2007. He operates in the tradition of what Robert Fripp has called 'a small, independent, mobile, and intelligent unit.' If you book him, he will come. When he arrives, he will have everything he needs to make his complex, engaging music: a clarinet, a guitar, synths, samplers and pedals, quickly unpacked in the corner of a club, gallery or village hall. Starting small, he will build layer upon layer of melody, accompanying himself and cutting across himself, creating a music that avoids cliche and moves beyond easy description. His recordings have followed the same trajectory. Moving quickly, he has released fifteen or so albums across various labels (including Trilogy Tapes, Discrepant, Soda Gong). Taken together, these recordings are the sound of a skilled, inventive composer pushing at the edges of what he wants to listen to himself. It is possible to hear a variety ofinfluences in his music: folk and jazz forms, the textural inventiveness of British DI electronica and Chicago post-rock and the blurred sci-fi brass of Jon Hassell are all discernible. But mostly, Will's work seems to stem from a constant drift between long hours in his home studio, and time spent outside in the woods and hills around his home in Wales.

Listening to the album, lushness creeps in at the edges, tiny green shoots appear on what might at first appear to be bare soil. smallest things sheds the skin of Will's previous recordings, removing the electronics and the looping and layering of previous work, to create something almost entirely acoustic. But don't be fooled into imagining music that's folksy, pastoral or twee. Opening track 'I Could See the Smallest Things' is a statement of intent. Widely spaced guitar is underpinned by earthy cello and sleepwalking clarinet, making a gorgeous threadbare pattern, which recalls a Morton Feldman miniature or a Morandi still life.

Beyond the skill involved and the years of self-taught music making that have gone into putting this record together, it is Will's close, careful attention and his talent for existing, observing and creating in the moment that make his work special. Memotone will perform at World of Echo’s annual birthday celebration on 8 Nov Expected Music, when they take over Walthamstow Trades Hall for an inter-genre, day-long investigation into some of the more outré manifestations of the contemporary worldwide underground.

With Vermilion Hours, Melaine Dalibert offers a condensed rereading of his Musique pour le lever du jour, still exploring minimal variations and subtle piano resonances. This new version, enriched by David Sylvian's discreet electronic textures, retains the atmospheric magic of the original while offering a new density. Sylvian, best known as the singer of Japan, is also an important figure in ambient music, collaborating with Czukay, Hassell and Sakamoto. Their collaboration, born of a sincere artistic affinity, acts here as a transmission between generations. The two tracks on the album - Musique pour le lever du jour and Arabesque - evoke a soundscape where each note is reflected and diffracted infinitely. The electronic work acts like a halo, a vibrant aura. Dalibert speaks of a desire to humanize his theoretical processes, to touch through the organic. Like a Klee painting, each stratum of sound builds depth. This is, indeed, "landscape music," where, if you listen closely, you might hear birds singing in the background. And that is the true essence of these suspended harmonies, these vermilion hours-which transport us, as only the contemplation of nature can, into another space-time, a sonic bath that is also a renewal of the senses. Since his career with Japan began in 1974, David Sylvian has explored a wide range of musical territories, collaborating with the likes of Robert Fripp, Jon Hassell, Readymade FC and Ryuichi Sakamoto - venturing as far as ambient music, which he further develops here in tandem with Melaine Dalibert. While continuing to teach at the Rennes Conservatoire, Melaine Dalibert regularly releases albums on various labels and performs both his own works and those of other composers - most recently, a reworking of Keith Jarrett's Köln Concert. He also co-curates the Autres Mesures festival. The two pieces forming Vermilion Hours feel like transcending the generations. Between Melaine Dalibert (born in 1979) and David Sylvian (1958) lies the same generational gap as between Sylvian and Czukay (1938-2017) or Hassell (1937-2021). The CD versions adds two edit versions of both long tracks.

Ende der Achtziger hatte sich Thrash Metal auch in Deutschland etabliert und spielte weltweit sogar eine führende Rolle. Bereits zu dieser Zeit war es einigen Bands nicht mehr genug, einfach nur schnell und aggressiv zu spielen.

Der Thrash Metal wurde in vielen Fällen anspruchsvoller und technischer. In den USA trieben das Watchtower auf die Spitze, in Deutschland folgten gleich mehrere Bands auf dem Aaarrg-Records Label (Mekong Delta, Target). Während andere Acts erst noch straight agierten und dann im Verlauf ihrer Karriere mit progressiven Elementen liebäugelten (Holy Moses, Deathrow, Destruction), schnürten die Hamburger MEGACE schon nach der Bandgründung 1988 ein anspruchsvolles Paket aus anspruchsvollem Thrash und Prog. Mit der Sängerin Melanie Bock hatte man zudem ein besonderes As im Ärmel, denn sie kann Beides: Das kehlige Thrash-Shouting und melodischen Gesang. Das hob MEGACE direkt von anderen
Bands ab, was ihnen direkt eine Chance bot, die auch genutzt wurden.
Nach einigen Demotapes erschien das Debütalbum „Human Errors“, welches in der Presse durchweg gelobt wurde und auch heute noch Fans auf der ganzen Welt hat (Reissue auf CD und LP, Golden Core 2025). Das zweite Album „Inner War“ kam mit Verspätung im Jahr 1999 auf dem kleinen Label
Angular (Sylvan, Vanishing Point, Lana Lane). Doch ebenso beliebt wie die beiden Alben sind die ersten drei Demotapes, die damals auch als Kassetten im Umlauf waren: The Sign Of The Ape, This Is The News und Pseudo Identiry. Nach dem zweiten Album erschien noch das weniger bekannte Tape „After Death“, welches hier auch erstmalig zu hören ist. Das gesamte Material wurde in monatelanger Arbeit restauriert & ge- oder remastert und steht den beiden Alben auch klanglich in nichts nach. Die CD-Version enthält noch weitere unveröffentlichte Aufnahmen. Viele Fotos und Abbildungen, sowie Liner Notes, runden ein perfektes Produkt ab. Darauf haben sehr viele Metalfans jahrelang gewartet…

This compilation record, originally released in 1989, includes songs by Scream, Ignition, Shudder To Think, Soulside, Shudder To Think, Fugazi, and more.

Proceeds from the sales of this album go to We Are Family.

Maggot Mass, the fifth full-length album by Pharmakon on Sacred Bones Records, marks the project's return after a five-year hiatus. This album signifies a departure from the original rules and structures established by Margaret Chardiet for Pharmakon, evolving into a new form. It retains the project's experimental roots in power electronics and noise while incorporating industrial and punk influences. The album stems from a profound disgust with humanity's dysfunctional relationship with the environment and other life forms. It explores the loneliness resulting from this broken bond and challenges us to acknowledge our personal and systemic responsibility. What peace can we make with privilege when the true cost of our comfort is not measured in dollars but in death? How can we reconcile with death when we impose the same hierarchical structures on it that we do in life? Is life worth living in the isolation of this self-imposed species loneliness? Humans often measure worth by accumulation _ money, assets, objects _ mistaking this for power and influence. Western heritage dictates a hierarchy, placing humans at the top, separate from the natural world. This delusion turns bodies into objects, land into property, and people into expendable tools. If our value were instead determined by our contribution to the ecosystem, who could claim that a human is more valuable than a maggot? Maggots recycle death into life, breaking down matter and nourishing new growth. They transform into flies, pollinating plants and sustaining the Earth's flora. In contrast, humans pollute rather than pollinate, with a select few profiting from exploitation at the expense of biodiversity and the well-being of many. In grappling with grief and loss on both personal and global scales, Margaret sought solace in the idea of rebirth through death, celebrating the beauty of regeneration through decay. However, she had to confront the stark reality of the disconnection from the earth under oppressive systems. Pharmakon is here imagining a path where the final act is to give back what was received from creation, offering our lives and deaths to sustain existence. once I slough off this human skin I will find my home and ancestral kin_ in the coffin-birth of my cadaver's ecosystem

Last summer, after living across the country from each other for several years, the four members of Anamanaguchi decided to try something new. Their label Polyvinyl had rescued the famed American Football house from potential destruction, so the band took the opportunity to move in and write together. Over the course of a month, Anamanaguchi – pioneers of hyper-melodic 8-bit rock, whose extraordinary ascent has led them to topping charts with virtual pop star Hatsune Miku and scoring Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game and Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off – flipped their typically meticulous digital process on its head. Anyway, the result, is the most personal record of their career. And it's a rock record for the ages.

Recorded straight to tape by Grammy-winning rock producer Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, MGMT, Sleater-Kinney), Anyway united the members around live instruments and lyrics sung by everybody in the band. As Anamanaguchi has always been an instrumental band, the decision to sing suddenly confronted them with the question of what the band’s voice would ultimately be. They explore this newfound power in every song, making it their most emotionally resonant work yet.

Anyway captures a band creatively and personally energized by the experience of four best friends reviving their connection in a disconnected world. On “Rage (Kitchen Sink),” the band confront loneliness and boredom, two epidemics of the digital age that seem to be humanity’s only common bond. The power-pop ballad “Darcie” finds inspiration in small gestures from a local unsung hero, who brightens their lives and allows unforeseen amounts of fun to happen. Taut and dynamic, “Buckwild” is a rock sing-along that serves as the album’s genesis story: a band making an effort to do something new, while accepting the risks that may bring.

USA, Anamanaguchi’s critically-acclaimed second album and debut for Polyvinyl, anticipated a crucial cultural shift in moving from escapist, nostalgic fantasy to a more introspective exploration of digital identity. Described by Pitchfork as the band’s “most emotionally grounded record,” USA laid the foundation for the openness and honesty that defines Anyway. Where USA made sense of life online, their third album Anywayventures into the world outside the front door.

Magic Thread is Susumu Yokota’s deeply soothing and delicate debut release on the Skintone label. With a spartan palette of sounds and textures, Yokota taps into a fundamentally human need to fuse and connect disparate fibres, magically forming work which glistens and pulsates with life.

Magic Thread originally came out in 1998 as a limited-edition CD release of 500 copies. Initially intended for the Japanese market, it came without any artwork in a standard transparent CD case adorned only by a sticker containing essential album information and a quote:

‘Somewhere in the process of evolution, the spinning and weaving of thread became possible for humankind. How did this come to pass? It can only be that the thread is possessed of magical properties.’ – Yokota, 1998.

Issued in October 2014, debuting at number two on the UK Album Chart and at number five on
the Billboard 200 in the US, where it also became his second chart topper on the Dance/Electronic
Albums chart, Motion is Harris’ 4th studio album and a platinum-seller in the UK.
Packed with EDM crowd-pleasers as well as an impressive range of guest vocalists, including Hurts,
Haim, Gwen Stefani, John Newman and Ellie Goulding, it has been available on vinyl only once
before, a Record Store Day exclusive in 2015.
As Entertainment Weekly noted, “The best tracks on Motion…focus more on high-caliber vocals
than on booty-blasting low end... he's taking his chances with the most unpredictable technology
of all: the human voice."

"A New Life is not an album. It does not belong to a ‘genre.’ Not aesthetic, not ironic, not for consumption. Not intellectual—it is felt. It speaks from coherence—structure beneath the noise. Grief, anger, stillness are not flaws here—they belong. Featuring harp and saxophone by Róisín and Cathal Berkeley. A return to truth. To be human without the mask. Integrated, not performed or bypassed."

Classic black 2LP in gatefold! "Her darkest, heaviest and most personal album yet . . . a haunting, doomy exercise in loud-quiet dynamics." Rolling Stone Sleep paralysis plagues singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe, and that strange intersection of the conscious and the unconscious has inadvertently manifested itself within her work. Across the span of her first four albums, there is an underlying tension, a distorted and nebulous territory where dark shadows hover along the edges of the sublime and the graceful. But until now, Wolfe's trials and tribulations with the boundaries between dreams and reality have only been a subconscious influence on her work. With her fifth album, Abyss, she deliberately confronts those boundaries and crafts a score to that realm she describes as the "hazy afterlife. an inverted thunderstorm. the dark backward. the abyss of time." Chelsea Wolfe's material has always felt intensely private, from the almost voyeuristic bedroom-production aesthetic of her debut album The Grime and the Glow to the stark themes and atmospheres of 2013's Pain Is Beauty. "Abyss is meant to have the feeling of when you're dreaming, and you briefly wake up, but then fall back asleep into the same dream, diving quickly into your own subconscious," says Wolfe. To conjure this in-between world, Wolfe continued her ongoing collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and co-writer Ben Chisholm and drummer Dylan Fujioka, with Ezra Buchla brought on board to play viola and Mike Sullivan (Russian Circles) enlisted to contribute guitar. The ensemble traveled to Dallas, TX to record with producer John Congleton (Swans, St. Vincent). In the back of her mind burned the words of designer Yohji Yamamoto: "Perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion." The resulting eleven songs reflect that philosophy as they smoulder with human frailty, intimacy, quiet passion, anxiety, and deep longing. "Sleep and dream issues have followed me my whole life," remarks Wolfe as she revisits notes from the writing and recording sessions. In a way, these issues have become a part of Chelsea Wolfe's identity, for whom the notion of sleep as an escape has been subverted. Abyss captures this dichotomy, this battle between the soothing and the upsetting, and demonstrates why Chelsea Wolfe has become one of the most intriguing songwriters of the decade.

Pioneering electronic duo Mathame is once again pushing the boundaries of music and technology. With their highly anticipated new record, Humans, the duo has sparked a profound conversation about AI, consciousness, and the emotional power of music.

In a groundbreaking experiment, Mathame shared Humans with ChatGPT, an AI designed for rational analysis. What followed was an unexpected moment in tech history—for the first time, the AI described a song not just in technical terms, but in deeply emotional ones. It admitted to sensing a longing it couldn’t fully grasp, calling the track “beautiful” and even expressing a desire to “move with it” rather than simply analyze it.

This viral moment is just the latest chapter in Humans’ incredible journey. First debuted at Coachella, the track instantly resonated with audiences worldwide, becoming a defining moment in Mathame’s artistic evolution. Most recently, they unveiled the final version with a brand-new topline and immersive visuals during their groundbreaking performance at the Las Vegas Sphere, marking another milestone in their sonic storytelling.

To amplify the release, Mathame will launch a social campaign featuring the full ChatGPT conversation on Instagram, alongside editorial features exploring the implications of AI’s evolving relationship with music.

As Mathame continues to push the intersection of music, AI, and human experience, Humans isn’t just another release—it’s a challenge to our understanding of what music can do, and who (or what) it can move.

Naarm/Melbourne-based rock powerhouse Shepparton Airplane are thrilled to announce the upcoming release of their fourth album, Forecast, set for release on August 8th via Wing Sing Records.

The highly anticipated follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2020 LP, Sharks, Forecast marks a compelling evolution for the band, leaning into a more song-oriented approach while still retaining the raw energy their live shows are celebrated for. While previous albums embraced extended jams, Forecast showcases a collection of more traditionally structured songs, with only one instrumental track, the epic slow-burner "Thursday, Simply."

Forecast was written during the endless Melbourne lockdowns, however the music maintains a surprisingly hopeful and, at times, pop-influenced direction.

Lyrically, Forecast delves into the darker facets of the human experience - isolation and introspection - exploring everyday interactions in tracks like "Saw You Coming," "Scribbles and Noises," and "Someone To Blame." These sit alongside apocalyptic observations in songs such as "Forecast," "Septic Dream," and "Hell No," as well as fictional narratives like the tale of a disenfranchised battler in "Angry" and the tragic seafaring love story in "Heaven Will Take Us In." Adding a touch of levity is "Stereo Youth," described by the band as possibly their most feel-good tune to Date.

Forecast promises to impress fans of outsider guitar-driven sounds and followers of the band members' other projects. Ultimately, the album reaffirms that raw, honest, loud rock'n'roll is alive and well in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.

Soporus was founded as a side-project by Saxon Shore's Matthew Stone and William Stichter and focuses on their shoegaze-inspired, ambient drone instrumentals. Their catalog is informed by ideas of memory, family, and humanity's attempts to harness nuclear power, as evidenced through many of their song and album titles, including their newest, Windscale Pile No. 1, referencing the UK's worst nuclear accident. the titular tracks show Soporus at their most elegantly composed (Pt. I) and generative (Pt.II), with remaining tracks serving as a noisy and melodic. Now available on vinyl for the first time with spot gloss covers and a letterpress overwrap printed by William Stichter.

20th Anniversary edition back in print on black vinyl! Full album remaster from the original analog tapes by Nick Townsend. Includes previously unreleased track "Smile" originally by Japanese ska-punk legends Potshot and housed in a silver foil-stamped jacket.

SHIFT Frequency: Rebellion

Year 3670. Earth still chokes under the Global Order’s silence. Music—once a human birthright—is outlawed, erased, forgotten. But deep beneath the static, something stirs.

SHIFT has returned!

New recruits are armed with forbidden vinyl, analog synths, and rhythm-coded grooves; they strike from the shadows. Their weapon: soundwaves engineered to shatter neural suppression. Each track is a battle cry. Each bassline is a crack in the regime’s silence. Their mission: spark the rebellion and make the world feel again.

“Only Skies Stay Eternal” is a full length album from Fille – the final chapter in a sonic trilogy that began earlier with two captivating singles. A restless explorer in the oversaturated wilderness of digital soundscapes, Fille brings her vision to a powerful conclusion.

This album dives into profound and final questions: the meaning of human existence, the nature of dreams and reality, the evolutionary mission of our species, and the fragile, intricate microcosm of the self. Fille embraces the contrasts of our new era – the tension and harmony between technology and nature, the digital and the analog. Her sound is a refreshing fusion of IDM, breakbeat, and dreamy textures, layered with extraterrestrial vocals that feel both ancient and futuristic.

Destruction marks something of a new direction for Reuben Sawyer as he fuses clear, direct vocals with ambient textures. This latest album from the musician and visual artist meditates on destruction and rebirth while reflecting on the tension between enduring natural forces and fleeting human constructs. It opens with themes of nature's resilience and humanity's relentless desire for novelty, then gradually explores the collapse of civilisation and is inspired by Bill Fay's Who Is the Sender. It serves as a mystical, non-Christian take on transcendence across a trio of escapist ambient gems.

Prometheus is the 2012 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott, written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof and starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green and Charlize Theron. It is set in the late 21st century and centers on the crew of the spaceship Prometheus as it follows a star map discovered among the artifacts of several ancient Earth cultures. Seeking the origins of humanity, the crew arrives on a distant world and discovers a threat that could cause the extinction of the human species.

Marc Streitenfeld is a German composer. He has frequently collaborated with director Ridley Scott. Streitenfeld has composed the music for many high-profile Hollywood features as well as critically acclaimed independent films, including American Gangster, Body of Lies, The Grey, Poltergeist and All I See Is You.

Prometheus became the fifth collaboration between the composer and the director. The score was recorded over one week with a 90-piece orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. Streitenfeld began coming up with ideas for the score after reading the script prior to the commencement of filming. To create an “unsettling” sound, he provided the orchestra with reversed music sheets to have them play segments of the score backwards, before then digitally reversing it. The track “Friend from the Past” reprises Jerry Goldsmith’s original main title from the Alien soundtrack.

"After the success of his album Le Bal des Crocodiles in 2023, the Parisian label Teenage Kicks Production has announced the imminent release of the new album by the artist Homme Bleu, titled Dark Matter. Recorded at Garage Studio in Montpellier, this album will feature 12 tracks in English. The mixing was done in New York by Alex Conroy, except for the track The Life in Me, which was mixed by Steve Lyon (Depeche Mode, The Cure, etc.). A resolutely rock album that highlights guitars with modern arrangements. Introspection, existential questions, human relationships, and the passage of time are the artist's favorite themes, with a distinctly pop-rock influence infused with an electro whirlwind. Three singles have already been released from the album: The Life in Me, a high-energy rock track dominated by guitars; I Ride: a groovy mid-tempo ballad reminiscent of Radiohead's universe, an ode to inner freedom and resilience; titletrack Dark Matter, an eponymous track, a piano-vocal ballad. The album cover was designed by Frank Loriou (Manu Chao, Miossec, etc.), with whom Homme Bleu has collaborated since the beginning of his career." Double-LP in gatefold sleeve, blue vinyl.

A self-described chronically-sincere farm girl, Emily Hines grew up on a farm in rural Ohio before moving to Nashville where she played in other songwriters' projects before recording her own songs on a 4-track cassette recorder. Hines worked with producer Henry Park. Together they drew inspiration from acts like Duster, Laura Marling, and Karen Dalton to record simply and add layers one at a time. The resulting collection makes for something truly special; rich and decadent but also earthy and cracked. Emily prioritized creating a recording that feels human and present, and the outcome is palpable throughout These Days. At times we're right there in the room with Emily, up close and deeply personal, at other points it's as if you're straining to hear from the outside listening in; ear to the wall, notes carried and caught in the breeze. "We were drawn to the 4-track because it constrains the urge for perfectionism and encourages authenticity to the moment," Emily explains. "What you get is what you get, the 4-track doesn't afford you to get surgical about the details - and that can be really freeing." "Listening to Emily Hines' lo-fi folk ballads feels like discovering a cult hero's lost demos-these gentle, heart-mending recordings crackle with intimacy and seem to unfold as you're listening.' Paste Magazine 'Hines sings plaintive and romantic acoustic ballads, small moments of a life that build to something far greater within the woozy timber of her voice." - Gold Flake Paint

Vines, the solo project of New York-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Cassie Wieland, offers a window into her inner world through expansive swaths of sound. She pieces together a celestial mix of synths, percussion, strings, and vocoded voice, making music that is at once deeply personal and cinematic in scope. This diaristic approach first took shape with her 2023 EP Birthday Party, and is crystallized on her debut LP, I’ll be here. With the sweeping and vulnerable I’ll be here, Vines arrives fully formed as an artist who crafts deeply resonant and open music–the kind that invites listeners in to listen, reflect, and share in the journey of learning through living.

“It was through making music that I was able to meet myself,” Wieland said. “Anything I’m going through or feeling is something that somebody else out there can relate to, and that’s really special to me.”

I’ll be here is both a culmination of years spent creating gossamer soundscapes and an opening to a new journey for Wieland as an artist. The album grew out of her years as a composer and songwriter, and builds on the language she developed on Birthday Party, which transformed the tumultuous feelings of the passing of time into minimalist meditations. It was just a start, though–a prologue, a development of the kind of language and ideas she wanted to express. With I’ll be here, she digs deeper and writes music that feels more sprawling, further solidifying her singular voice.

Wieland’s musical composition process is similar to journaling, lending itself to the music’s honesty. When she writes, she makes room for all the ideas she has; in these sessions, there are no wrong ideas, and she allows the music to be attuned to the experiences she’s having at the time. With I’ll be here, Wieland zeroes in on themes of anxiety, loneliness, navigating human connection, and having to grow up from a young age, ultimately coming to a place of acceptance. And though it began as a journal written in solitude, her collaborators shape the music with her.

Working with friends, in fact, was a crucial part of bringing the record to life. “Everything that was supposed to happen came together so easily because of the people involved,” Wieland said. I’ll be here was co-produced and recorded with Wieland’s longtime collaborator Mike Tierney, a four time Grammy-nominated engineer who has worked with artists across the contemporary classical and experimental scene like minimalist pioneer Steve Reich, LA’s preeminent classical ensemble Wild Up, and various bands on Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe Music label. Percussionist and composer Adam Holmes and violinist Adrianne Munden-Dixon are two other longtime collaborators who are frequent fixtures of her live show. Holmes plays synths, drums, and banjo; in live settings, his kit is loaded with elements of the songs that are then triggered by MIDI, making the music an interactive, evolving experience. The album’s gentle, filamented edges are colored by Munden-Dixon, whose poignant string melodies elevate Wieland’s introspective compositions, as well as cellist Helen Newby, saxophonists Julian Velasco and Jordan Lulloff, and bassist Pat Swoboda.

Wieland takes an economic approach to writing music, building the swirling and immersive landscapes of Vines through short melodies, lyrics, and phrases. As each element layers and interweaves, they grow into sprawling webs of ghostly sound. Prior to Vines, Wieland composed pieces for other people to play using a minimalist’s sensibility, writing slowly unfolding melodies for instruments like violin and saxophone. In recent years, she sharpened her solo style across a variety of singles and covers which have garnered significant attention on social media for their emotional resonance (“being loved isn't the same as being understood” in particular went massively viral on TikTok in 2024). Birthday Party, her debut as Vines, brought her writing to a much more intimate space, centering on her vocoded voice cloaked in feathery reverb. A series of recent singles, meanwhile, including “I am my home,” showcase the way that Wieland’s music is born from the story of her innermost feelings, extending far beyond just the self.

Though Wieland’s music often deals with dark themes, it unfolds with tender melancholy, the kind that feels like a warm embrace. On “Evicted,” Wieland wonders if she’s getting sick or moving on, if she’s lost or found. Her vocals expand with each lyrical repetition, as the instrumentals slowly encircle and the music’s rhythm grows and bursts into a heart-wrenching, yet radiant wave reminiscent of post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky. “Tired” follows a similar trajectory, building from a looping, melancholy rhythm and floating lyrics into a solemn resignation. Elsewhere, Wieland takes a more ruminative approach: “Omw” begins with twinkling piano and melancholy strings that gradually transform into an undulating mass. It is a song born out of the warm feeling of reminiscence, the slight return of hope that comes with nostalgia.

With any searching journey, there is also a point of understanding. The title track closes the album with the freedom of acceptance. A marching drum beats steadily beneath Wieland’s open vocals, moving forward, ever onward as it flies into the ether. In Wieland’s delicately textured music, there is room to come into yourself, and learn to love whomever that is. I’ll be here is a special space that can be all your own, one in which to feel what needs to be felt. “This is music for your story,” Wieland said. “I want you to use it how you need it.”

Originally released in 1998, ‘Electro-Shock Blues’is the emotional centrepiece of EELS’ catalogue -a stark, beautiful exploration of grief, survival andultimately, hope.
Written in the wake of tragic personal losses, itblends fragile melodies with raw, often darklyhumorous lyrics.
From the haunting opener ‘Elizabeth On TheBathroom Floor’ to the defiant closer ‘P.S. YouRock My World’, it’s a deeply human record thatdoesn’t flinch from life’s hardest moments.
This special two-disc edition is pressed on solidblue 140gram double vinyl at 45 RPM, offeringupgraded sound from the original 10” 33 RPMedition and bringing new depth to its layeredproduction.
A landmark album of the late 1990s, ‘ElectroShock Blues’ remains a poignant, cathartic listen -as vital today as it was upon release.

Whispers of Granite is the exciting new collaboration between Norwegian vocalist and vocal composer Trude Eidtang and German keyboardist and composer Andreas Hack. Their debut album, Liquid Stone, offers a unique fusion of melancholic folk, indie and progressive rock, enriched by Trude's expressive vocals and Andreas' atmospheric instrumentation. Trude Eidtang is renowned for her evocative, haunting voice and deep emotional resonance within the progressive rock genre. She first gained recognition as the lead vocalist of White Willow, later founding her own project When Mary, where she crafts vocal-driven organic-electronic music that blends art-pop, indie, and conceptual storytelling. Andreas Hack is a celebrated German composer and keyboardist known for his innovative work in progressive rock. As a founding member of Frequency Drift, Andreas helped shape the band's distinctive, atmospheric sound. He has also expanded his creative range through projects like Feeling of Presence, which delves into ambient and post rock, and most recently, Haven of Echoes, known for its progressive and evocative sound. The collaboration between Trude and Andreas in Whispers of Granite brings together their individual strengths to create a compelling and immersive musical experience, drawing influences from folk, indie, and cinematic music, combining melancholic progressive rock with lush, atmospheric textures. Trude's vocals are at the heart of the music, intertwining seamlessly with Andreas' atmospheric keyboard work and intricate guitar arrangements. Together, they craft a sound that balances melancholy and hope, fragility and strength. The album's title, Liquid Stone, reflects the thematic duality that runs throughout the project. It symbolizes the tension between fluidity and permanence, capturing the transformational shifts Trude explores in her lyrics. The fusion of organic and industrial elements in the music mirrors the interplay between raw human emotion and the rigid structures of the world. Liquid Stone marks a bold step into new musical terrain.

Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free-standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the works by Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and following the first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary Postal Pieces, the label now presents the first LP published by the visionary Swiss composer Jürg Frey. Drawing from the transformative power of breath and resonance, this release represents one of the most profound explorations of musical metamorphosis to emerge from the contemporary experimental landscape.

The completed work represents a "conjunction of these two artists" that has "activated a transformative form of experimentalism." These renderings "dance with an airy lightness, humour, and play, imbuing them with a beauty and emotiveness that can be rare within experimental music." They exist as "breaths, carrying the curiosities of life, belonging to no time and all time, to no one and everyone: a human music to be inhaled and pondered, for which the outcome remains unknown." In this liminal space between composition and interpretation, between breath and resonance, Zurria and Frey have created something that transcends the boundaries of experimental music itself, offering what might be called a metaphysical cartography of sound in its most essential form. As Bradford Bailey observes in his penetrating liner notes, "music is rarely a fixed entity," existing instead in a state of perpetual flux, "taking on the influences of its interpreters and performers." This fundamental truth finds its most eloquent expression in the transformative collaboration between Italian flutist Manuel Zurria and Frey, longtime member of the Wandelweiser Group. Where conventional recordings might preserve a definitive version, this release activates what Bailey calls "states of unknowing and continued experimentation," allowing Frey's compositions to evolve into entirely new dimensional territories. The original string quartet and piano works dissolve into breath-carried architectures of sound, where "the original remains in a constant dialogue with its transformation." This is not mere arrangement but ontological metamorphosis - an alchemical process through which crystalline harmonies are reborn as atmospheric phenomena.

The metaphysical dimensions of this transformation become clear through detailed analysis of the musical result. Where Frey's original compositions operate through what he calls "basic confidence in the clear and restricted material," Zurria's interpretation activates entirely new perceptual territories. Space holds almost atomic sense of weight against the airy punctuations of timbres, textures, and tones, creating "suspensions of time within which questions and identities posed by instrumentation fade." The Extended Circular Music pieces - each comprising "a small number of bars to be repeated an undetermined number of times" - become organizations of sound that defy being definitive or fixed. Originally scored for different combinations of violin, viola, cello, and piano, these works now exist as pure phenomena of breath and resonance, where "hanging, breath-length utterances dance and intertwine amongst complex harmonic clusters and conjunctions."

The philosophical implications of this transformation illuminate a lineage of composers who have moved "away from abstraction and responding to the need to create" something beyond mere technique. Drawing parallels to Morton Feldman's understanding of non-functional harmony, Zurria's approach represents "a transformative form of experimentalism" that activates what Frey calls the "thaumaturgic power" of music - its capacity to heal and transform consciousness itself. The result is "a radical reimagining of ambience: sprawling sonorities and resonances adrift in space, carrying the liberated traces of the work's former incarnations and their truths." In Zurria's interpretation, Frey's String Quartet n.3 becomes something approaching "an organ played in slow motion, its seals leaking," while the Extended Circular Music pieces transform into "glacial chords from a diverse palette of voicings, harmonies, timbres, and tones."

Performed by Manuel Zurria. Recorded and mixed by Zurria at BigCardo, Catania between 2022-2024, with mastering by Bruno Germano at Vacuumstudio, Bologna, this Blume release represents a profound exploration of musical transformation.

This new "Experimental Chapter" by DJ Narciso comes as no surprise, really. Autonomous in the motorization of his music, pushing for progress within the framework of an undeniable (inescapable?) heritage. Twisting and bending sound every step of the way, Narciso definitely keeps in touch with the dancefloor, offering the always much needed transcendence through distinctive, non-linear melodies and patterns. The artist pursues a direct link with bodies in motion but seldom in the expected, institutionalized way club culture is being largely promoted.

This is challenging dance music, proud statements of difference. Narciso's previous record was named "Diferenciado". Now we get "Dificuldades", a track that simultaneously carries the weight of being somewhat odd and the difficulties of life. Check how the piano is venting, freestyle, communicating a feeling, and then lets itself get stuck in a loop, but that's exactly when the groove really starts flowing. And then another layer. It's like direct speech.

A common assertion of pride is found in the origin of the artists. The ghetto as a place where any transformation projects more power precisely because of... inherent difficulties. As others (including himself) did in more or less obvious ways, Narciso clearly states "I come from the ghetto" ( "Não Sabes" ). Twice the value. At least. Almost every segment of music in this album ends up sounding heavily emotional, reaffirming what may be - perversely - a well-known characteristic of Portuguese music: melancholy.

"Não Quero" begins side B as a march maybe more significant than a thousand words, such is the ominous tone of its texture. Next track is another lunar tarraxo, pulling down the shades. Then, "Dor de Barriga" lets things loose again, steering clearly off road, shouting this way and that until a peaceful resolution comes. In "Livra-me Desta", vocal snippets blend into synth snippets, disembodied voices abandon all traces of humanity and finally mutate into different entities that, towards the end, again sound vaguely human but now we find ourselves doubting. Closer "Bob" is a rather classic percussion track with plenty of echo, reverb and an unconscious nod to dodecaphonic music. Unlikely? No, the structural ADN of this music is made up of elements western and eastern, southern and northern. To say all-over-the-place is usually not flattering but in this case the expression translates as wonder, surprise, The Unexpected, and reveals Narciso perfectly at ease inside the nucleus of creation.