Beats News

Figūras is a project of the artist Kaspars Groševs , Based in Latvia Kaspars is an Artist, Musician , Gallerist and Activist. He works in many mediums and has been creating in this way for many years . This record LP is a collection of early works by him , previously released on small editions of cassette tapes and now made available to buy in this small collection pressed and selected for vinyl by Kaspars Groševs & Michael Holland .

Two tracks feature other artists , Buer & Andromalius is a project with Gatis Ziema and Andrei Jastrebinski! Untitled (Feat Vivienne Griffin) features the multimedia artist Vivienne Griffin.

Covers are all hand-painted and handmade by Kaspars Groševs and are unique artworks made on recycled covers . Limited to 300 copies only .

For our first release of 2025, Incienso is excited to present “GNOSIS”, the debut album from San Francisco-based musician Raven. Dripping in warped synthesizer tones and flickering drum patterns, “GNOSIS” is a bold and new exploration into Raven’s timeless and immersive world

“Machine Against Rage” is the first release on OAOE - a new experimental music series on Wodawater.

Real and cloned voice becomes intertwined with physical space forming a call and response chain of a spatial imaginary emerging from a certain passage from Philip K. Dick. The machine never stops and enfolds the listener with affective feedback tones, subtle rhythms, disjointed impacts and noise. The record is result of a collaboration between the label’s founder Miko Szatko, also known as the techno producer and performer TRSSX and co-founder of EXIT Glasgow, and Verena Lercher, a Berlin-based media artist and resident at spæs - lab for spatial aesthetics in sound in Berlin. All recorded at Funkhaus Berlin between 2023-24, the six compositions originate from various feedback spatialisations and turntable movements amplified by an IKO, the 20-membrane speaker-instrument developed by spæs lab’s co-founder Gerriet Krishna Sharma and the IEM in Graz.

Barker's debutalbum Utility (on Berghain's Ostgut Ton label) was something of a sensation in the world of electronic music when it was released. Utility made numerous Best of 2019 year's end lists, including Pitchfork (8,2 review), The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor (Recommends) and others. It also earned title of Mixmag's Album of The Year 2019. Now its finally time for the follow-up Stochastic Drift on Smalltown Supersound. And where Barker on Utility was "using ambient materials to remake techno" as Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne wrote, he takes this approach even further here creating - as the title suggests - a dreamy stochastic drift and beautiful freeform float.

Barker's debutalbum Utility (on Berghain's Ostgut Ton label) was something of a sensation in the world of electronic music when it was released. Utility made numerous Best of 2019 year's end lists, including Pitchfork (8,2 review), The Quietus, DJ Mag, Resident Advisor (Recommends) and others. It also earned title of Mixmag's Album of The Year 2019. Now its finally time for the follow-up Stochastic Drift on Smalltown Supersound. And where Barker on Utility was "using ambient materials to remake techno" as Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne wrote, he takes this approach even further here creating - as the title suggests - a dreamy stochastic drift and beautiful freeform float.

Listening to Unknown Path's Pathfinder for the first time is a claustrophobic experience. It's as if the tracks had been recorded to tape and left to decompose for 10 or so years, then dug up and re-recorded. A thick layer of grunge and an overall murky feel sets the tone for Path 0.1 and continues throughout the EP. Paths 0.2 and 0.3 add a more upbeat feel to proceedings, as the beats get scattered around like they were in a pinball machine. Path 0.4 finishes off the experience by bringing the tempo back down, while all the time keeping the uneasy atmospherics that make this EP a unique and rewarding listen.

* Sounds like a mix of Thom Yorke, Burial, Nils Frahm, all swirled together in a colorful yet creamy mix;

* A blend of Emikas neoclassical descending melodies, signature breathy, female vocals, icey pianos, heavy sub-bass vibrations and layered Hazy beats.

* Sat between her life in moving-boxes, wedged between them surrounding her upright piano in an unfurnished empty-sounding room in her in-laws house. Haze was made with voice-memo recordings of her piano and voice on her phone, edited and mixed on her laptop in headphones. Little loops in Ableton, lyrics, sadness and melodies, just like Emika’s real-life in boxes.

* Emika is set to launch a new event series, inspired by her memories of early Dubstep in the legendary Black Swan venue in Bristol (now closed) she saw her friend Mala play, with one table-lamp, it was all about this new sound, and meditating on the bass-weight. Something she plans to continue in her Haze Nights, where each guest will be gifted a little Haze Light with their ticket.

Unbridled introvert scooter crushers

NEW LP PRESSING on Opaque Yellow Wax

Released in September 1978, a mere two months before YMO’s debut, Cochin Moon is a clear precursor to the groundbreaking synth and sequencer-dominated sounds that would come to define the iconic trio. Huge tip!

Credited to Hosono and Pop Art legend Tadanori Yokoo (who created the cover art), Cochin Moon is a fictional soundtrack to a journey into unknown worlds, inspired by Hosono and Yokoo’s trip to India.

The unbelievably prolific Haruomi Hosono is one of the major architects of modern Japanese pop music. With his encyclopedic knowledge of music and boundless curiosity for new sounds, Hosono is the auteur of his own idiosyncratic musical world, putting his unmistakable stamp on hundreds of recordings as an artist, session player, songwriter and producer. Born and raised in central Tokyo, his adolescent obsession with American pop culture informed his early forays into country music, which he would revisit later in his career. Hosono made his professional debut in 1969 as a member of Apryl Fool, whose heavy psychedelia was somewhat at odds with his influences, which leaned towards the rootsy sounds of Moby Grape and Buffalo Springfield. The latter was one of the main inspirations for his next group, Happy End, whose unique blend of West Coast sounds with Japanese lyrics proved to be highly influential over the course of three albums. After the band’s amicable break up in 1973, Hosono began his solo career with Hosono House, an intimate slice of Japanese Americana recorded inside a rented house with recording gear squeezed into its tiny bedroom. Hosono’s solo career would take many twists and turns from this point forward, with forays into exotica, electronic, ambient, and techno, culminating in the massive success of techno pop group Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO).

Released in September 1978, a mere two months before YMO’s debut, Cochin Moon is a clear precursor to the groundbreaking synth and sequencer-dominated sounds that would come to define the iconic trio. Credited to Hosono and Pop Art legend Tadanori Yokoo (who created the cover art), Cochin Moon is a fictional soundtrack to a journey into unknown worlds, inspired by Hosono and Yokoo’s trip to India. Initially the album was to be a kind of ethnographic musical document, using found sounds and field recordings made by Hosono himself. Instead, after Yokoo introduced Hosono to the sounds of Kraftwerk and krautrock during the trip, Cochin Moon became something much stranger. Created almost entirely on synthesizers and sequencers with the help of future YMO collaborators Ryuichi Sakamoto and Hideki Matsutake, the music on the album is the perfect encapsulation of Hosono’s concept of “sightseeing music,” transporting the listener to an exotic place that may or may not exist. This highly sought-after album sees its first-ever official release outside of Japan.

Ameel Brecht returns with ‘EXODUS’, the third installment in his series on the theme of sleep and focuses on the bounding realities of sleep and awakening.

Sleep as a boundless, recurring valley. A place of wandering where you disappear among wild grasses and hungry dreams. Wake-up equals exodus: a bittersweet goodbye to half-remembered, distant worlds.

Ben Lukas Boysens neues Album, Alta Ripa, bedeutet eine seismische Verschiebung in seiner künstlerischen Reise. Es greift die grundlegenden Impulse seiner Jugend auf, die inmitten der ruhigen Schönheit des ländlichen Deutschlands geprägt wurden - eine bukolische Kulisse, in der seine kreative Palette aufblühte. Doch erst sein Umzug nach Berlin in den frühen 2000er Jahren elektrisierte seinen Sound und ließ ihn mit der pulsierenden Energie der Stadt und den vielfältigen kulturellen Einflüssen verschmelzen. Alta Ripa fängt diese transformative Erfahrung ein, indem es die introspektiven Melodien seiner ländlichen Anfänge mit den kühnen, experimentellen Klängen der pulsierenden elektronischen Musikszene Berlins vermischt. Dieses Album ist ein Zeugnis von Boysens Entwicklung und zeigt, wie geografische Verschiebungen den künstlerischen Ausdruck tiefgreifend prägen können.

Julek ploski’s ‘Give up Channel’ is on mappa. It’s the follow-up to the Poland-based FL Studio demon’s ‘Hotel *’, released via Orange Milk in 2023.

It’s an album that wrestles against a shadow self. It’s about shelter from the hailstorm of unwanted memories and guilt pangs and serrated blades of thought. It’s about clinging on to some semblance of hope, knuckles taut and teeth gritted.

The fragmented drift of opener ‘Naysayer’ flows forward like an anxious daydream, pad eddies and piano plinks anchored by Trapaholics drops and bursts of guaracha drums. It’s a mess of mind: the bleakness of ‘Truth’ is punctuated by gun cocking and bullet spray and sudden jester-like blasts of unhinged, schizo-whimsical melody. An internal war without a clear winner.

Shame snakes through this music like venom through an emaciated body. Blue screenlight in a dark bedroom, pulsating temples, lockjaw. ‘Titanic’ hits like the thrashing resistance of a being built for love grappling against the scalding vengefulness it’s forced to contend with, the song’s abstracted rave synths giving way to warped voices and spiralling derangement. ‘Hollywood’ is a scarred battleground, the martial bludgeoning of a tightly wound hardstyle stomp blistering and shredding a delicate piano-and-string arrangement.

This music is about deep solitude, a meditation on simmering, slow-marinating hatred. But it’s ultimately about prevailing. It doesn’t revel in negativity, it roils and twists and writhes against it. Dots of light in oppressive darkness. Clarity and purpose against chaos and filth. It’s a struggle worth waging.










h I Was #AllAlone Movements V - VIII
[i] Economy [Movements I - IV]

Freivogel / Sinclaire with their debut Untitled consisting of three live recordings made using only a concert flute and an Octatrack M1. The recordings are live taken from improvised sessions and have been left unedited.

Shifting between playful and austere, the simple goal for these sessions was honest improvisation; comfortable in both its limits and potentials. Placing classical instrument performance and extended playing techniques alongside heavy sonic processing and cavernous acoustics, they are in some ways uninfluenced by genre, governed only by a drive to find moments of clarity amidst chaos.

Recorded in single takes using a simplified setup of the flute – played into a microphone and wired through an Octatrack – every sound heard in the recordings comes in one way or another from the flute as a single sound source, manipulated and looped on the fly with additional live improvisation over the top.

The result is a timeless capsule of heady drones, offbeat electronics, and mischievous flutes, captured during a time when the world stood still. Scuzzy at times, glistening at others, and ever-optimistic in the pursuit of something new.

Adam Sinclaire is a flautist who has worked with artists such as Billy Bultheel and Ziúr, recorded for labels including PAN and Purple Tape Pedigree, and performed for institutions including KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Schinkel Pavillon, and Martin-Gropius-Bau. His practice focuses on using extended playing techniques to explore the limits of the C flute.

Marco Freivogel is a producer and composer who has released an extensive discography on labels including Mannequin Records and Veyl, and collaborated with artists including dBridge, Mare Nero and Mathew Jonson, remixing artists as diverse as Hercules & Love Affair, Shackleton and Yappa. His Prequel Tapes project sits between utopian and claustrophobic, tracing harsh industrial atmospheres and levitational ambient from a lifelong obsession with sonic extremes. Marco currently works on compositions for film and television, alongside his own releases and collaborations. The EP will be released on 14 February 2025 as limited vinyl and digital via Midnight Shift. Art direction by Mauro Ventura.

All record profits from this release will go to 3ezwa.de, providing financial and legal support to those facing repression for their commitment to the Palestinian cause.

Los ingenieros oníricos se sirven de los artefactos para poder manipular su conciencia y diseñar mundos oníricos por los que viajar. De origen incierto, los artefactos se encuentran dispersos entre planos y han intentado ser rediseñados en nuestro mundo mediante el uso de frecuencias, convirtiéndose en elementos de estudio plenamente funcionales para el ingeniero onírico del plano físico. La correcta correlación de uso entre artefactos permite al onironauta saltar entre los diferentes estados de la experiencia para la formación de universos.

El artefacto ​Onirógeno ​es capaz de inducir al sueño. Sirve de puerta de enlace al mundo onírico y está presente en un estado de semi-consciencia. Dicho artefacto esférico, de naturaleza cromada, reproduce de manera cíclica el proceso de encendido de la máquina de sueños por un operador en un espacio ilusorio. El ingeniero sucumbe a un estado aletargado que permite el vínculo con otros artefactos al ser testigo de una de estas reproducciones.

El artefacto ​Hipnagogia ​es capaz de provocar alucinaciones visuales de intensidad creciente. Permite formar protomundos inconexos. Es un artefacto propio del plano semi-consciente. Debido a lo efímero de los protomundos formados, el ingeniero es incapaz de controlarlos y dotarlos de sentido.

El artefacto ​Efialtes ​es uno de los más inestables y volátiles. Este ente del plano semiconsciente provoca la incapacidad transitoria para realizar movimientos voluntarios durante la transición entre el sueño y la vigilia. Permite al ingeniero crear un canal al plano transitorio. Su presencia o interacción puede darse en los primeros o últimos estadíos. Está muy presente en el mundo semi-consciente y puede ser atraído por el uso de otros artefactos. Emite un zumbido muy característico cuando interacciona.

El artefacto ​Proyector,​ ​toroide derivado de Efialtes, solo presente en el plano transitorio. Crea un canal y permite al ingeniero ingresar, precediendo a la separación física, y materializar la consciencia en el nuevo plano.

Extracorpóreo ​es un derivado del artefacto Proyector, presente en el plano transitorio y con influencia en el plano físico. Permite a la conciencia materializada del ingeniero comunicarse con los impulsos básicos motrices y órdenes cerebrales del plano físico, traduciendo los diferentes protocolos implicados.

El artefacto ​Vacío ​es un espacio unidimensional que interconecta el plano transitorio con el plano onírico.

El artefacto ​Arquitecto,​ presente en el plano onírico, forma y diseña espacios acorde con las órdenes del ingeniero onírico en el caso de que el canal de comunicación sea lo suficientemente consciente. Es una pequeña recreación esférica del universo elevado a infinito en forma de fractal.

El artefacto ​Escultor,​ de hormigón y presente en el plano onírico, crea las diferentes imágenes e inteligencias que habitan el mundo onírico en construcción. Aunque puede ser controlado, a menudo actúa con un mayor libre albedrío, creando imágenes recurrentes.

El artefacto ​Programador,​ de código en cascada y presente en el plano onírico, es la inteligencia encargada de dotar a los mundos oníricos de acontecimientos.

El artefacto ​Devoramundos ​es el artefacto más inestable conocido y con mayor rango de influencia entre planos. Destruye el mundo creado como un agujero negro engulle todo a su paso.

El artefacto ​Cordón​, de plata y presente en todos los planos, sirve como nexo entre el cuerpo físico y la consciencia materializada. A menudo, debido al influjo de otro artefacto, o a la inestabilidad en el canal creado por correlación, es capaz de obligar a la regresión, clausurando el canal de comunicación. Existe un artefacto Cordón que une cada una de las conciencias proyectadas con sus correspondientes cuerpos así como del cuerpo físico. Se desconoce que ocurre en caso de fisión.

El artefacto ​Regreso,​ presente en el plano transitorio-semiconsciente permite al ingeniero recuperar la consciencia y restablecer sus signos vitales.

After spending much of the last years focusing on the evolution of his own instrument, the drummophone, the release of ZERO,999… reveals a new paradigm in La Foresta's work and career.

In this album he collects fragments of live performances and site-specific installations conducted over the last decade, with and without the drummophone — reimagining and repurposing them as compositional elements that he has interwoven with recent studio recordings and collaborations to form eleven viscerally powerful pieces of overwhelming rhythmic and textural density.

La Foresta weaves together these captured moments in time, while employing combinatory strategies inspired by Italo Calvino's tarot stories in "Il castello dei destini incrociati," forging relationships and connections between recordings from the collaborators and his own. In approaching accompanying and augmenting these recordings, Riccardo, in the role of percussionist and composer explores the tension between his personal and academic focus on rhythmic structures and his fascination with repurposing the drum as a durational instrument.

Contributions from collaborators include the synthetic textures of Valerio Tricoli, Anthony Pateras, Aleksandra Słiż, and Renato Grieco, the vocalizations of Antonina Nowacka and Sara Persico, and the guitar experimentations of Ale Hop and Stefano Pilia, bringing together a distributed ensemble of musicians pulling apart the orthodoxies of their own instruments and techniques. Through the interaction of these elements, La Foresta imagines a causal network that binds, integrates and informs fragmented contexts, performers and performances, exploiting new possibilities of the drummophone.


ZERO,999… is conceived as a suite where sound and time are communicated simultaneously at different orders of scale, a single strike of a drum is a drone if slowed down one thousand times, an hour-long drone is a brief tick in the clock of geological time. A seemingly static object, such as the number 1, can both be defined by its fixedness, and as a process in which eternally approaching (0,999...) is the same as arriving.











k 11: EyeContact (Nereo`s) feat. Stefano Pilia

TAFKAMP returns with the third and final full-length cassette tape album in the INDRUKKEN trilogy - taking you on a journey through some of the more melancholic work of the versatile producer.

Limited edition tape run!

New full-length LP from Toronto producer, DJ and recording artist Tony Price on his Maximum Exposure label. Tony Price is a multi-time Juno and Polaris Prize nominated producer, having worked on a wide variety of records on labels like 4AD, DFA, Slumberland and more. Host of “The Maximum Exposure Power Hour” on NTS Radio

“Requiem For The Ontario Science Centre” is Tony’s ninth full-length LP since 2017, following a series of acclaimed records on labels like L.I.E.S. Records and Telephone Explosion which received coverage and reviews from established outlets like Pitchfork and Resident Advisor. “Requiem For The Ontario Science Centre” pays homage to the beloved 1960’s Canadian landmark and renowned brutalist architectural marvel, which was abruptly closed in the summer of 2024.

The album features longtime collaborator and Caribou touring band member Colin Fisher on Saxophone. The music is Rich with kaleidoscopic saxophone loops, surrealist sound collages, and retro-futuristic synthesizer mirages and will surely resonate with fans of Boards of Canada, Terry Riley and Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice”

Oversized custom cut LP jackets (13” / 33.02 cm width)
Silkscreened with bespoke iridescent citrus green ink by Mark Rice
Short story by Natalia Zuluaga

Flexi 7”:
steaming mescaline (extended mix by bad lsd trips)
Citrus green metallic foil stamp
Pressed in full stereo
Edition of 150

I.

bad lsd trips is the collaborative duo of makers doris dana and domingo castillo flores. Respectively the two have fostered practices that have sprawled out through various approaches and, whether in the lanes of the musical or the contemporary arts, the phenomenology of the social and inclusive prevails. On ultrafest, this motif continues through the psychedelia of its eight time-defying recordings, welcoming the listener into an open temporal architecture of the stereo field as a signifier of environment. It is worth noting that the group began collaborating in Miami, Florida with longer form improvisations recorded to a stereo cassette deck. In these recordings, the paved geographical sprawl and oceanic view permeated the approach to amassing long swaths of sound material. Listening back on that work at the time of this writing, each track feels as though one is walking into an active space, arriving to an event already in full swing and finding your place inside of it. On ultrafest (this album) something different occurs. The space and events are built around you as you move through the record.

II.

The name of the album is ultrafest, which should effectively provoke your mind's eye the imagery of young people dancing, salivating, grinding, and imbibing chemical compounds to the perversely formalized musical genres of “Electronic Dance Music” and latter-era Dubstep often heard in European Uber rides and energy drink commercials. A far distance from the icy and machinic reverie of Techno’s finest rave eras or the notable historical contributions of Miami’s cerebral producers to IDM’s global output, ultrafest is a libidinal catharsis as festival scaled to a multinational corporation of hedonistic excess. The festival has been a hallmark of Miami cultural industry production and optical enticement for tourism, purportedly bringing in nearly a billion dollars in revenue to the city since 2012. Scores of documentation exist wherein this decadent escapism leaves the concertgoer, usually in some neon garment on a near nude body potentially adorned with fluffy faux fur leg warmers, facing a comedown from the combination of volume, sun, dehydration, and methylenedioxy-methylamphetamine. This MDMA experience characterizes an aspect of the way bad lsd trips employs vocals and pitch on this album. The detached, high octaved longing of a high pitched vocal is decoupled from its typical auditory body of song. High-pass clicks and pops touch the (h)air on the back of the neck, promising goosebumps and teasing towards euphoric rushes of dopamine, yet also exist decoupled from the body of song. As the dopamine depletes and the sun imposes itself, Miami’s downtown of skeleton real estate is your company as you meander towards your parked vehicle to rest your fatigued senses, elevated heart rate, and quench the need for air conditioning on your skin. The immediacy of bombastic social immersion to architectural alienation palpable here.

III...

- Nick Klein

Terra Utopia returns to Emotional Response with a second long-from EP / mini-LP, 10 more tracks that span the ethereal sounds of ambient, atmospheric beats and liquid drum and bass.

Originally intended as a one-off project from French producer Benoit B, Terra Utopia 1 was recorded in 2 weeks while sojourned in an Athens’ Spring. A personal dedication to a specific sound he loved.

Since the original release, a debut LP under his own name followed, before Benoit embarked on his new club orientated project Blu:sh, releasing a series of acclaimed EPs for the likes of esteemed Kalahari Oyster Club and Roza Terenzi’s Step Ball Chain label.

However, the incredibly positive feedback of the first Terra Utopia recordings led to reappraisal and return to the name and here again, a second set of 10 tracks (8 vinyl and 2 digital bonus).

Once more recorded as short pieces – cut loud for DJ play – they interconnect to feelings of intangible expanses, that embracing summer, the warmth, a latent stillness of the azure sea and sky. This invitation, a narrative forever calling, of long days, calm nights, the infinite astral plain in minds eye.

The ambience has progressed, beats crackle and snap, tracks visualise an individuality, names are anointed, with the collaboration with singer dvdv on Shadows Of Memories, a floating, mesmeric highpoint, a dreaming siren.

No fears, the children of the heat embark.

Ear World, out February 24th on Brooklyn-based record label 29 Speedway, is a collection of sound collage works by experimental cellist Dorothy Carlos. Her debut album ranges from song-like to abstract, incorporating site-specific sound installation work originally premiered in both 16-channel and quadraphonic formats. Voice and cello are reconstructed through glitch techniques to take on a digital form that is flirtatious and fleeting. Carlos is an experimental cellist active in Chicago and New York. Her work utilizes extended techniques and digital manipulation, merging free improvisation and computer music. She is interested in digital techniques as an opportunity to construct imaginary realities and capture a sense of intimacy.

Solo performances have been presented internationally by Experimental Sound Studio Chicago, Big Ears Festival, default, Center for New Music and Associated Technologies (CNMAT) at UC Berkeley, Chicago Jazz String Summit, and Bemis Center. Her work has been featured in The Wire, New York Times, and The Quietus and released digitally with D.O.T. Audio Arts and American Dreams. Dorothy holds a Bachelor’s degree from NYU where she studied classical cello and anthropology and an MFA in sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tracks 2-4 “My Ideal is Windy” quadraphonic installation commissioned by Experimental Sound Studio and the Chicago Park District.

Track 8 “Alter, alter” 16-channel installation premiered at the Chicago Laboratory for Electro-Acoustic Theater (CLEAT).

Collector, seeker and storyteller Charles Bals brings his curatorial finesse to Hamburg"s Bureau B with "Ambientale", a journey into otherworldly sounds from the years 1983 - 2000.

Drifting effortlessly between digital exoticism, mellow fusion, new age groove and library electronics, the pieces range from largely obscure to utterly un-google-able, and coalesce into a stunning soundtrack to tranquil seas, desert sand and starlit skies.

Cinematic & enigmatic, "Ambientale" is a stranger you"ve only just met but can"t stop thinking about.

Chris Ryan Williams (trumpet & electronics) and Lester St. Louis (cello & electronics) work together as HxH (H by H). Their skills have seen them move smoothly across various situations, constantly carving out new terrain and working in new configurations of musicians at a rapid pace. While worth reading, their biographies capture only a part of their complex rhizome.

HxH started about three years ago. The project is a direct response to all their activity with others and more importantly all their future leaning sonic desires. Their debut album STARK PHENOMENA is both their first studio recording and their first physical release. The album is appropriately set to be released by KMRU on his growing label OFNOT. It’s an ideal introduction to their sound world and their approach.

HxH describe their music as “electroacoustic,” but until recently the presence of Black musicians in this field has been greatly overlooked and largely ignored, making this phrase only partially appropriate. What HxH do really is to always be unpredictable. Every gig is a new soundscape. Sometimes you might hear echoes of Autechre or Robert Hood but then the sound-field will open up into a new terrain all their own. Chris and Lester bring together techniques from across the sound spectrum of electronic music and also draw on their deep backgrounds in Jazz, Improvisation, Classical and Noise scenes to create a sound that is true to them. After all, these two have worked with the likes of Bennie Maupin and the music of Black Fluxus artist Ben Patterson. Their rhizome is deep.

One of the ways that their unique approach manifests is in their merging of both acoustic instruments and electronic instruments in real time. This is something few have managed to do – but their spontaneous leanings work in both complex and accessible ways because of their deep understanding of landscape crafting. You can hear this clearly on the track “Pyrex Vision.” Their approach makes it tempting to compare their music to Sun Ra jamming with Laurel Halo – a comparison that would be only partly accurate.

Chris and Lester note that the sounds on STARK PHENOMENA are “imbued with such hopeful, gracious care; one that is far flung from obsessive carefulness or fuck the world carelessness, but more a caring embrace without the fuzziness of nostalgia.”

They note that when they began working together, they would “always come back to speaking on our concepts of an architecture of the expanse,” noting that their live sets often take on the joyfully noisy task of “dreaming big.” For HxH it was essential that STARK PHENOMENA have a quality that is “almost sculptural.” They consider the album “an object to be viewed from all sides.” This kind of thinking has resulted in them directly engaging with numerous sculptors and artists including Torkwase Dyson. Shape wise HxH’s sound fields work in a parallel to Dyson’s black architectural works.

They also note that the opening cut “BEACH” (the opening and longest track from the album) was “written weeks after our first gig in a studio session donated to us by our dear friend jaimie branch.” And that Pyrex Vision “was continually being edited months after sending our ‘final mixes’ to KMRU.” Their sound sources and samples come from studio sessions, live gigs, durational installations, 3am improvised downloads and more.

KMRU notes: "I think there is an in-between layer on this record. I was first caught by the Pyrex Vision track which organically flows between monologue, subtle field recording, and instrumentation. It's such a beautiful track, evoking deep emotion through simplicity. STARK PHENOMENA effortlessly glides in between imaginative mosaics of sounds — free yet complex — unlocking memories within its layers."

Nach seinem letzten Album Singularity und der kürzlich erschienenen Piano Versions EP - nicht zu vergessen die Meditations-Stücke aus dem Jahr 2020 - beschreitet Jon mit Music For Psychedelic Therapy, wie der Titel schon vermuten lässt, klanglich und philosophisch einen neuen Weg. MFPT umfasst Jons Reisen durch geografische und kosmologische Spektren und ist eine unnachahmliche und allumfassende Reise an und für sich. Jon Hopkins erklärt: "Like everyone, I went through a lot of intensely heavy stuff in the last year. Somehow this music flowed through me in that time. I honestly have no idea where it came from - the whole creation process happened in something of a trance. I felt driven by a force way beyond myself and it was unforgettable…."

Format: 140G schwarze 2LP im Gatefold Sleeve inklusive Downloadkarte

Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Matthew Halsall announces landmark new album "An Ever Changing View", an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall"s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences.

Das Album "12" von Komponisten-Legende, Produzent und Pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto ist eine Sammlung von 12 Kompositionen für Synthesizer und Piano. Die Stücke hat der Grammy-, Oscar- und Golden Globe-Gewinner aus musikalischen Skizzen ausgewählt, die er während seines zweieinhalbjährigen Kampfes gegen den Krebs wie ein Tontagebuch aufgenommen hat. Jedes Stück ist eine intime Momentaufnahme aus dieser schweren Periode seines Lebens und trägt als Titel das jeweilige Entstehungsdatum. "12" ist das erste Solo-Album des mit seinen elektronisch-akustischen Genre-Überschreitungen weltweit stilprägenden Komponisten seit dem 2017 erschienenen Album "async".Über das Album sagt Ryuichi Sakamoto:"Nachdem ich nach einer großen Operation endlich in meine neue vorübergehende Unterkunft 'heimgekommen' war, griff ich zum Synthesizer. Ich hatte nicht die Absicht, etwas zu komponieren; ich wollte einfach nur von Klängen überflutet werden. Wahrscheinlich werde ich diese Art von 'Tagebuch' auch weiterhin führen."

Lucien Kimono fully composed the original soundtrack for Season 2 of Amours Solitaires, which aired on Arte and France TV in November.

Initially a popular Instagram account before becoming a French Euphoria-style drama, the series follows the romantic wanderings of its young protagonists. From ultra-modern synthetic arpeggios to warm, nostalgic Rhodes melodies, 18 tracks map out their joys, sorrows, and orgasms.

Some Songs Of A Dumb World

'The light at sunset is mysteriously pinkish.'

After Trip Trap, TRIP's sub-label GALAXIID releases the debut album by the Species Of Fishes duo. The record, originally released by the Dutch experimental label Korm Plastics in 1994, has influenced two generations of post-Soviet musicians. 'Some Songs of a Dumb World' is like a quest that you can either take up or appreciate as a mosaic of different music styles.

Igor Kolyadny and Vitaly Stern initially worked separately but later shared ideas during home sessions to build their own psychedelic world. They used a large number of cassette samples, including the voices of physicists, paranormal researchers, astronomers, and wildlife TV show hosts, combining them with pulsating rhythms inspired by various electronic music genres. The result, as the duo
described it in an Inverted Audio interview, is 'a sort of alienated, extraterrestrial, studying view on the sound component of human activity.'

For the very first time, the tracks from the debut album by Species Of Fishes are now available on vinyl. The double LP reissue with the refreshed version of the original artwork includes the original tracks, mixed between 1993 and 1994, but re-edited and remastered by Igor Kolyadny in 2021. Two tracks were released on the lesser-known follow-up 'Songs of a Dumb World Part 2', while "Salmon Hunting/Kaluga-Mars" is being released for the first time.

Portland-based ambient architect and far afield sound technician Graintable, aka James Cooke returns with his debut outing on Music To Watch Seeds Grow By and his fourth in the R$N stable; 'Blue Flax'. Following his acclaimed and sold out cassette releases 'Herons', 'Universal Ash' and ‘The Rain In The Trees’ on Ransom Note Records, this new collection sees Cooke delving deeper into the intersection of natural processes and liminal organic electronics.

'Blue Flax', the resilient flowering plant celebrated for its delicate blue blooms and medicinal applications, is native to the Pacific Northwest - the region Cooke calls home. This plant has long grown on the ancestral lands of the Wasco, Klickitat, Warm Springs, Cayuse, and Umatilla tribes. Its connection to this landscape underscores the album’s themes, weaving together ten intricate ambient pieces that reflect the plant's dual nature of part healer, part object of wonder. Recorded during the transitional hours of dawn and dusk in his Portland studio, Cooke’s soundscapes capture both the meditative aspects of watching plants grow and the gradual transformation of organic matter into usable forms. The centrepiece of the album Cerulian FIelds, reminds of the early morning light, those inspiring hours before the rest of the world wakes and the first shoots break through the soil into the new dawn. It’s a beautiful crystallisation of what is Cooke’s most comprehensive collection of meditative compositions to date.

For fans of: Steve Roach, Alessandro Cortini, Suzanne Ciani, Davis Galvin

Early support including: Courtesy, Laurent Garnier, Massimiliano Pagliara, DJ Harvey, Domenic Capello

- Also available on black vinyl - First ever official reissue - Produced in full cooperation with Hiroshi Yoshimura's estate - Liner notes by contemporary music writer and professor Junichi Konuma - Remastered from original sources by John Baldwin - First time on vinyl, cassette, and streaming - 2xLP vinyl housed in gatefold jacket - Discs cut at 45 rpm for optimal sound quality // Following their 2024 reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura's classic album, Surround, Temporal Drift proudly presents the first-ever reissue of FLORA, Yoshimura's underappreciated ambient classic. FLORA was originally recorded and completed in 1987, and remained unreleased until 2006, nearly three years after Yoshimura's passing in 2003. The album is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to his acclaimed 1986 works GREEN and SURROUND, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Yoshimura's other recorded works include Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and Pier & Loft (1983), commissioned as accompaniment to a contemporary fashion show.

- Also available on black vinyl - First ever official reissue - Produced in full cooperation with Hiroshi Yoshimura's estate - Liner notes by contemporary music writer and professor Junichi Konuma - Remastered from original sources by John Baldwin - First time on vinyl, cassette, and streaming - 2xLP vinyl housed in gatefold jacket - Discs cut at 45 rpm for optimal sound quality // Following their 2024 reissue of Hiroshi Yoshimura's classic album, Surround, Temporal Drift proudly presents the first-ever reissue of FLORA, Yoshimura's underappreciated ambient classic. FLORA was originally recorded and completed in 1987, and remained unreleased until 2006, nearly three years after Yoshimura's passing in 2003. The album is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to his acclaimed 1986 works GREEN and SURROUND, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Yoshimura's other recorded works include Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and Pier & Loft (1983), commissioned as accompaniment to a contemporary fashion show.

Yearly compilation series RADAR KEROXEN return with its fifth volume of themed based albums showcasing the talents and misfortunes of carefully selected musical projects based or connected with the Canary Islands.
With its first volume released in 2020 aiming to introduce and divulge adventurous Island based music, the Keroxen imprint now presents Vol.5 with a collection of tracks born out of an in-situ collective performance at the Keroxen Festival iconic venue - a massive disused gasoline tank near the harbour of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The Radar Drone Ensemble, as it was named for that night only, took advantage of the tank’s natural reverb to perform an improvised piece exploring the cavernous resonance corners inherent to the locale. The four artists then took a few months to compose a 9 track LP inspired by the site’s peculiar sound.
Gonçalo F. Cardoso kicks opens up the proceedings with two broody new tracks, in a style not heard since his 2015 album A Study of 21st Century Drone Acoustics. Doomed and menacing atmospherics brush shoulders with creepy and ethereal chants creating the perfect opening for this drone themed edition of Radar Keroxen. Eduardo Briganty (also from MINIATURa) follows with two equally deranged feedback based compositions letting his guitar riffs and distortions roam free. Afgan aka Mladen Kurajica (from GAF, Lagoss and Tupperwear) takes things further to an Angus MacLise inspired drone collage of mystic percussions, field recordings and electronic modular storms. Resonance aka Javier Perez wraps up the journey with his now trademark soothing synth compositions full of warm tones and blissful melodies.
The album comes, as always, wrapped into a dizzying post-tropical collage artwork by Pura Marquez.

2025 Repress

"Hydroplane reinstate their formidable 1997 debut of sublime guitar atmospherics, fragile lyricism and droning incidentals with an overdue vinyl and digital reissue.

An offshoot of the now-féted The Cat’s Miaow, the trio formed after drummer Cameron Smith decamped to London, charting new territory with tape loops, manipulated samples and a borrowed Jupiter 4 in the wake of Endtroducing. Adopting a handle that Dean Wareham once considered calling Luna, Hydroplane intended to only ever release Excerpts From Forthcoming LP, a single-sided 7” sonic collage, before imploding in mystery. Their label however insisted they deliver their taunted album. From the comfort of a Brunswick flat, they continued to record soaring melodies and restrained song structures to 4-track, sculpting dramatic Radiophonic Workshop cues weighted in reverb and near-perfect dream pop lead by Kerrie Bolton’s empyrean vocals.

Bored of industry expectation and largely ignored by local audiences, the reluctant performers followed the way of The Cannanes and formed meaningful overseas alliances by mail and phone, securing releases on Michigan outpost Drive-In and Broadcast launching pad Wurlitzer Jukebox. Championed by John Peel with twenty spins on his converted Radio One slot and even polling in Festive Fifty of 1997, the humble three-piece still walked to their neighbourhood shops undetected.

T?t 41 is the latest record by modular synthesist and Berghain resident JakoJako (Sibel Koçer), marking her album debut for Mute.

Recorded during a trip to Vietnam and bookended by field recordings from T?t Lunar New Year celebrations, the album is illuminated by references to Koçer's heritage. The melodic palette breaks away from traditional Western scales, drawing instead from the tonal intricacies of the Vietnamese language, inspired by overheard conversations. The album and track titles further honour the vibrant T?t festivities, shrines, and landmarks she encountered during her travels.

This album is, in many ways, a distillation of ideas she has been exploring for years. Tapping into a deep understanding of machine-based music, crafted with a minimalist setup consisting of a Eurorack and Waldorf Iridium Core, T?t 41 reflects on notions of rebirth, and the pursuit of a sonic core. From this simplicity emerge some of her most expansive, unworldly compositions to date.

T?t 41 is available on vinyl in a limited run of just 500 copies worldwide.

Despite the title sounding like an archive collection, 1994 is actually the debut album from OKRAA. It has an emphasis on live performance and makes for a gorgeously immersive and even evolving listen from the aways excellent A Strangely Isolated Place label. All four pieces are over with minutes but they are worthy of their playing time for the way so much unfolds in such engaging fashion. Synths are cold and innocent on 'Ola De Luz' while 'Heartless' is more textural, dark, heavy in its mood. The title track is another heavy and introspective one while 'Plasma' has a more optimistic feel that lifts the spirts.

Om Unit’s ‘Acid Dub Studies’ series continues to unfold. This latest instalment of the project comes in the form of 10 brand new remixes which form the second volume of ‘Acid Dub Versions’, featuring remixes from Yushh (Pressure Dome/Wisdom Teeth), Hodge (Houndstooth / Livity Sound), Double O (Rupture), Amy Kisnorbo (Pineapple), Tapes (Jahtari / Good Morning Tapes) V.I.V.E.K (System), Versa (System / ZamZam), Frenk Dublin (Echo Ltd. / Dub Communication), Surgeon’s Girl (Inside Out / Livity Sound) and Nadia Struiwigh (Nous’Klaer Audio / Central Processing Unit)

The eclectic ‘Acid Dub Versions II’ LP comprises of the smouldering cerebral scapes of Yushh’s take on ‘Camo’ as well as Hodge’s own pounding club version. Double O transforms the classic ‘Tempo’ rhythm into a kind of future-retro rave stepper, and Amy Kisnorbo walks the ‘Strange Brew’ track into a eased-back but confident new territory.

The dub aspects are also enforced and re-shaped by prolific legend ‘Tapes’ who turns the ‘Tempo’ back towards it’s more dancehall roots, V.I.V.E.K takes the Bristol Theme in to 140 territory featuring System Sound’s in-house MC Dego Ranks. Bristol’s own enigmatic dubwise adventurer Versa turns ‘Valium Tempo’ into something akin to a Cosmic Bridge release, paying homage to the classic tropes of the ‘UK Bass’ sound and Rotterdam’s Frenk Dublin turns in a seriously deep basic channel-esque dub tech take on ‘Ghosts’

The album is finished with 2 ambient cuts featuring the beautiful chaos of Surgeon’s Girl’s remix of ‘Tapped’ and the Dusky brooding reflective tones of Nadia Struiwigh’s version of ‘Electroacidspringwater’.

‘Acid Dub Versions II’ serves as a logical progression to Om Unit’s best-selling series of well-respected works, allowing for community input on a concept which has of late been travelling far and wide via Om Unit’s live shows and continued DJ support.

'the fun years', comprised of multi-instrumentalists Ben Recht and Isaac Sparks, have been making music together since the turn of the century, producing intriguing interrogations of ambient, drone, post-rock, and turntablism. Originally released in 2008 on the now-defunct Barge Recordings, 'baby it’s cold inside' is perhaps the high watermark of their discography. Equally concerned with microtonal nuance and harmonic intensity, it is both a product of its time and something well past it. The chief protagonist is surely the turntable, deployed to create woolly, evocative loops from unidentifiable source material that recall, at times, the work of Philip Jeck or Jan Jelinek—churning, roiling, hissing, atrophied textures further articulated with nuanced processing and buoyed by baritone guitar drones and anti-riffing.

The title of opener "my lowville" feels like a wink to the famed slowcore duo, with spare post-rock motifs hovering in a dusty ether, slowly consumed by distorted washes of rich, harmonic sound. One of the most satisfying aspects of the album is that despite the recumbent nature of most of their sound design choices and compositional proclivities, Recht and Sparks are loath to sit still. "auto show of the dead" is a serpentine piano/guitar exploration full of subtle detail, preceding the immaculately titled "fucking milwaukee’s been hesher forever," in which the tactile delights of clicks+cuts are liberated from the laboratory and allowed to slum it in the world of tape gunk and '90s plate reverb. Later, "re: we’re again buried under" presents an inky black ambience that feels truly expansive and almost overwhelming, and closer “The Surge is Working” tears apart an anthemic shoegaze dirge at the seams, leaving only billowing filtered noise and negative space in its wake.

Presented here with a brilliant remaster by LUPO, 'baby it’s cold Inside should be considered alongside records like Belong’s October Language and Polmo Polpo’s Like Hearts Swelling—an arresting early aughts ambient marvel that warrants ongoing investigation.

A new full-length from THE ORB following last year's acclaimed album MOONBUILDING 2703 AD.

An expertly crafted ambient experience from two pioneers at the height of their creativity

180g standard vinyl version comes with download code of the full album

Being pioneers with a new album created in no more than 6 months, THE ORB are bound to be exposed to fan expectations running high, while quizzical questions about little fluffy clouds and the good old times take over. It's especially jarring as the duo of accomplished soundsmiths Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann has become known for its genre-bending curiosity and surprising sonic detours, exploring experimental soundscapes as well as club-friendly beats.



The funny thing is, though, that whatever the context, you know a track from THE ORB when you hear it. Case in point: COW / CHILL OUT, WORLD!, their latest full-length offering - a masterful ambient album that branches out in many directions, but unmistakably sounds like THE ORB in either ear (and probably to your third ear, too).



"The idea was simply to make an ambient album", Dr Paterson explains, "we didn't look back and study earlier recordings, but wanted a more spontaneous approach, a focus on THE ORB today, our vibe in 2016."



In contrast to their much-acclaimed previous full-length MOONBUILDING 2703 AD (KOMPAKT 330 CD 124) - which took years to prepare and finetune -, the new album was produced over the course of only five sessions in six months, directly following the like-minded ALPINE EP (KOMPAKT 339): "it got so spontaneous that a track like 9 ELMS OVER RIVER ENO (CHANNEL 9) consisted only of material collected at North Carolina's Moogfest in May - second-hand records from local stores, field recordings, live samples from gigs that we liked, and of course an excursion to the Eno River, which actually exists. This geographic intimacy and the spontaneity are among the top reasons why we love this album so much."


Herr Fehlmann sees the duo's relentless gigging schedule as a formative influence on the new album: "the countless performances we've played in the last years - probably up to 300 - have brought us closer as a musical unit. The spice of our concerts is improvisation - a fertile process that we've brought to the studio, where we operate with very simple rules of engagement (in this case "ambient") and go wherever the flow takes us." It's an approach that one might expect from traditional acoustic instrumentation, not necessarily an electronic set-up, but for THE ORB it works wonders: "we're quite happy and also a little bit proud that we've reached this level of unscripted levity with purely electronic means. We're finessing ourselves, sort of, always looking for the next sonic surprise that leaves us rubbing our eyes about how the heck we got there."


Once more, THE ORB's trademark playfulness is on full display on COW / CHILL OUT, WORLD!, and it doesn't limit itself to the multi-layered sampling and psychedelic sound composites that the duo has become known for - you'll find it in the album title as well. The simple invitation (or order) to chill out (relax Calm the eff down) is converted into an acronym - and the cow that you might expect to find on a Pink Floyd cover or with iconic UK chill-out/dance pranksters The KLF. It's not so much an obscure trope coming full circle as a perfect example for THE ORB's multitimbral approach to sound and meaning - a compelling, immersive journey to diverse places and impressions.



Each track title is a conceptual work in its own right, playing with multiple references, some of which remain highly personal and mysterious. But the greatest feat of THE ORB's latest outing might just be how all this semantic doodling never gets in the way of the actual listening, at all times directly relating the artists' sonic vitality and cheerful nosiness. Chill out world! and treat yourself to an outstanding new ambient experience from THE ORB.

Marina Herlop is often described as a pianist, a lingering remnant of her classical training. But what strikes the listener on Herlop’s breakout track miu is the intricate trickery of her voice, tracing rhythmical clusters around the subtlest of musical beds, in a technique inspired by Carnatic music of Southern India.

miu, the opening track of Herlop’s new studio album Pripyat, was among the first songs that the young Catalan artist made on a computer, after two albums – 2016’s Nanook and 2018’s Babasha – that brought spectral elegance to the sound of piano and voice. This spirit of adventure continues into Pripyat, Herlop’s first full album produced on a computer, and her most intensely emotional work to date.

Listening to Pripyat you can feel the emotional toil and creative endeavour that went into the record. Fans of Nanook and Babasha will recognise the combination of melancholic piano and elegant vocal lines that is found on Pripyat tracks like abans abans. But Pripyat has a far fuller, almost chaotic sound when compared to Herlop’s previous work, with the addition of electronic drums, electric bass lines and a wealth of sublime production effects.