Beats News

Piezo lands on Wisdom Teeth with a four track EP of head-turning club bangers. Through recent releases on Idle Hands, Stabudown, Version and - most essentially - his own label Ansia, Piezo has been developing a sound that marries dancefloor heft and precision sound design with qualities more rarely found in dance music: fun, humour, eccentricity. His music is functional yet full of quirks, aligning him with fellow club curveballers like Joe, Untold and Pangaea. Steady Can’t Steady Can’t Stay is the producer’s most accomplished and varied body of work to date, spanning humid, loopy house (‘Waco’), melodic crystalline half-step (‘A Touch Of’), cartoony UK techno (‘Steady Can’t Steady’), and pillowy downtempo (‘Ambra’).

pigbabys introspektiver Schlafzimmer-Folk vereint Instrumente wie Saxophon, Klavier, Geige und Swarsangam mit Soundfetzen aus Internet-Ephemera und Field Recordings zu einer dissonanten, halluzinogenen Welt. Inspiriert von den rauen Wahrheiten experimenteller Singer-Songwriter wie Daniel Johnston und Jim O'Rourke, dem Mandolinenspiel seines Großvaters und den Thin Lizzy-Platten seiner Mutter, kreiert der irische Künstler auf seiner Debüt-EP ein surreales Bild aus digitalem Chaos, Sehnsucht und Einsamkeit, das die Aufmerksamkeit von Joe Thornalley (Vegyn) erregte, der sie kurzerhand auf PLZ Make It Ruins veröffentlicht. Limitierte Auflage auf neon-pinkfarbenem Vinyl.

The prolific On The Corner Records are proud to present "Trans-Neptunia", the mind bending debut LP from Planet Battagon, exploring new dimensions in left-field experimentation, cosmic sampling and ancient drum machines.

Port Sulphur : In contrast to the methodology deployed on the first album,
'Speed Of Life' features no collaborations or vocals, the instrumental
pieces were recorded by Douglas MacIntyre, Paul Turnbull and Samuel
Joseph Smith (at the later's Green Door studios in Glasgow)
The album was constructed using 'automatic' writing and recording techniques
based on an reimagined soundtrack for Andrei Tarkovsky's film, 'Nostalghia'.
Photographer Gavin Fraser and film director Grant McPhee were very much part
of the 'Speed Of Life' team.Speed Of Life features 10 tracks, all of which were cut
live before being reconstructed by editing, in much the same way that Can and
Harmonia shaped their music.

Just when one thought one knew what to expect from POW! they surprise everyone with a vigorous and rabid album’s worth of moody cybernetic punk that’s frankly their best yet. Their fourth album is oil-dipped in a rainbowed slick of dread, yet the songs are buoyed by tight tunes that seem to have a lot of fun among the ruins of the future, perhaps with an eye to a less gloomy horizon? Melissa Blue’s sharp elbowed synths jostle with Byron Blum’s zap gun guitar in an ominous fog of oscillations, and yet somehow it gets the toe a-tapping. The band got darker and more catchy at the same time, for which some credit is due to the excellent drumming of Cameron Allen and the fantastically future savvy production by Byron Blum and Tomas Dolas. Lots of sticky punk heart resin-layered in a futuristic-scanning bionic bop.

Last year’s Pools having taken up a sizable chunk of Castle Face’s cold dark hearts, the label was delighted to hear that LA post-industrial trio Prettiest Eyes have a new gang of crowd-stirrers. None too early, either; once one’s become accustomed to their clanging synthetic orbit, it’s hard to find other tunes that truly scratch the same itch. Volume 3 bursts at the seams with chrome-dipped timbres and surprise sharp edges, alien klaxon-calls and wailing dissonance offsetting the ziplock’d grease of their insistent drum and bass grooves. Prettiest Eyes are one of the most exciting live bands going on right now, and Volume 3 catches them in fine fettle.

First proper album for the duo of Giovanni Donadini and Matteo Castro. After a couple of tapes and a split with Exoteric Continent the italian duo have finally find their shape, removing all the instrumentation and focusing only on the possibility of the 4 tracks recorder. Body Text offer 2 long tracks made only by tape loops, playing with speeds and pauses the duo play a mix of mechanism and Field recordings, tails of beats and degraded tempos creates minimal and sinister compositions.

RIYL: Portishead, Thom Yorke, BEAK>, SUUNS, TR/ST, Radiohead. Solo project of Robert Toher who was the creator of ERAAS. Covered by Quietus,Pitchfork, NME, Stereogum, Earmilk, The 405, Clash, BBC Radio, Clash and more.... Public Memory is a mixture of damaged and dubbed-out percussion, unfurling synths and sparse sampling - all strung together by producer Robert Toher's spectral tenor. The project's sophomore LP, Demolition follows 2017's Veil of Counsel EP and 2016's Wuthering Drum LP with cinematic fortitude. While Public Memory's prominent krautrock and trip-hop rhythms are represented here, Demolition explores a greater range of tempos and an expanse of alien emotions with layers of electronic drums, live drums, Korg synths and samples from nature. Themes of rebirth and reflection imbue the album's atmosphere, rich in tape delay, spring reverb, and textures that conjure a sci fi and supernatural narrative. Opener "The Line" sets the album in motion with a driving energy and introspective unease, as if estranged from the world it was created in. A meditation on impending collapse, "Red Rainbow" begins with an arpeggiated melody that hints at a sense of dread. Like the darkness of night descends, the track unfolds with haunting atmospherics and howling synths, finishing with an unexpected climax that ominously builds until at last it falls apart, quickly, softly, without incident. The slowtempoed "Aegis" reflects on the banal reality of love lost, with shuffling rhythms, lingering inflections and a growling synth at its core. Toher's adept use of space and tension articulates the world of Demolition as eerie, emotive, and above all, narcotic. Each track is an existential procession. "Turning out the lights on your illusion," Toher sings to close the album, accepting that change is an inescapable condition of being.

*Text by Philip Sherburne: In the beginning, there was just a box of tapes and “Fate’s Gentle Hand.”

It was the autumn of 2010, and an anonymous figure known only as the Head Technician, an employee of Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services (“Magnetically aligning ferrous particles since 1970”), found himself at an auction in the village of Coldred, pop. 110. He was on the hunt for tobacco pipes when he chanced across a trio of boxes listed in the auction catalog, which described their contents only as “archived magnetic recordings.” The sole bidder, he won the lot, and upon receipt of his purchase took possession of an unspecified number of mouldering cassettes and ¼" reel-to-reel tapes. The collection contained no identifying information save for a single phrase scrawled on each box: “Black Mill Sessions.” And so, armed with razors, eyedroppers, and a bevy of solid-state circuitry, the Head Technician sat down at his machines and got to work

Out 26th April, "Atlantic Oscillations" marks the return of world-renowned British producer Quantic ahead of the release of his most cohesive and intricate album to date. Bringing together new players and concepts with a dance orientated sound that has enchanted fans and tastemakers across the world for nearly two decades.

As the first Quantic release under his main solo moniker since 2014's critically acclaimed 'Magnetica', "Atlantic Oscillations" embodies a disco vibrancy taken directly from sweaty dance nights in Brooklyn's small disco and dance clubs, "I've had the chance to see some great DJs and got into the disco edit and some incredible dance songs. NYC summers are great for outdoor parties and I wanted to make something which was long and had a real journey for these kind of parties", Holland explains "it was primarily my wish to make a bad disco tune". The finished product is a track shimmering with the warmth of a New York City summer and the energy of a party equipped with a well-stocked free bar.

Portland, Oregon-based musician Graham Jonson started early: playing piano as a toddler, finding the music of J Dilla in fifth grade, and self-releasing singles by age 16. First appearing under the name quickly, quickly in 2017, his project’s profile has since grown fervently with fans in the beats-oriented corners of SoundCloud, YouTube, and Reddit. Some of his early tracks tally north of 10 million plays on Spotify. The figure isn’t meant to flex as much as it is to point out that Jonson’s work has resonated without the traditional industry levers; he is a wunderkind DIY internet success story, but, by his own assessment at the present age of 20, he’s only now getting serious. With The Long and Short of It, his Ghostly International debut, Jonson reinvents his project as a full-fledged

Vienna has a storied history as a ground zero for new music. Radian, who call Vienna home, embodies the city"s spirit of innovation. Martin Brandlmayr (drums, electronics), Martin Siewert (guitar, electronics) and John Norman (bass) are stalwarts of the European contemporary music community. Distorted Rooms presents a dazzling new elevation of Radian"s employment and manipulation of microtones with a new emphasis on abstracted guitar motifs, often employing a more loop-based or electronic approach to the guitar"s sonics. Radian"s visionary approach to composition speaks to a lifetime of working in forward-thinking music. The trio expertly hone in on sounds often removed from the sheen of the recording process and mine them for unique, rich textural sound palettes which they then meticulously arrange. Distorted Rooms creative process began with multi-stage recording of often the smallest sounds, from pick-scrapes to an amplifier"s latent hiss. These slivers of sound are then restructured and processed through a variety of techniques that transform them drastically. Radian have always been interested in sounds that might be considered byproducts and maximizing their creative and aural potential. More minor gestures like switching a pedal on and off or toggling the guitar"s pickup are mic"d and spun into textures that crackle and froth to fascinating effect. Radian"s angular, expansive music delights in tension and contradiction, sound and silence, improvisation and composition. The trio employs a singular and wholly unique sense of microtonality. While their creation process is complex, the resulting music is emotionally affecting, creating an aura of suspense and at times unease. Brandlmayr, Siewert, and Norman share an unconventional, wildly imaginative approach to sound.

Following the deluxe vinyl release of David Sylvian’s solo albums, Brilliant Trees, Alchemy – An Index of Possibilities, Gone To Earth and Secrets of the Beehive this February, 29th March will see the release of the cult classic, 1991 album, Rain Tree Crow. Featuring David Sylvian, Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri and Mick Karn, Rain Tree Crow also features contributions from Bill Nelson, Phil Palmer and Michael Brook. The majority of the material on the album grew out of group improvisations. There were no pre-rehearsals; the improvisation took place in the recording studio and much of the finished work contains original elements of those initial performances. Rain Tree Crow is pressed on 180gram vinyl and contains a download card.

René Huthwelker’s solo performances emphasize minimalistic repetitions that are created foremost by analogue-synthetic spheres. "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII" is Huthwelker‘s solo debut in which he presents an insightful exploration of polyrhythmic networks, based primarly on the analogue synthesis of the Buchla system.

Features 14 re-imaginations of songs from the sophomore album Blood released in 2018.
With Blood Remixed, Mike Milosh's resilient yet purposefully understated take on R&B stretches beyond the confines of any genre with the remixes, giving listeners the opportunity to hear Blood from a new perspective.
Remixers include:
Moon Boots, Mano Le Tough, Jeff Samuel, Tensnake, Jacques Greene, Mansionair, Little Dragon, Washed Out

Futuro Antico, the mesmerizing collaboration of Riccardo Sinigaglia with Walter Maioli and Gabin Dabirè evoked in its name the uncanniness of simultaneously witnessing past and future. Ambient Music, Riccardo Sinigaglia’s first solo work – recorded in Dec. 1984 and originally out on cassette from ADN Tapes in 1985 — ultimately delivers on that idea, embodying different irreconcilable time frames not just in name.

From our vantage point, the sounds of the two performances --“Watertube” and “Ringspiel”-- appear as though they arrive to us from a past which we have great difficulty in recognizing and imagining ourselves coming from while simultaneously working as a projection of a future that is both our contemporaneity yet also surpasses it. It’s this ability that Riccardo Sinigaglia’s work has of being both rooted in its context while instantaneously capable of transcending our own that makes him one of the key figures of that explosion of beauty and creativity that defines the peculiar iteration of radical minimalism that characterized the experimental and avant-garde music scene in Italy, particularly the Milanese one with its rich countercultural scenes crossing over into the long reverberating academic legacy of the Studio di Fonologia Musicale RAI di Milano during a hyperactive decade starting in the late 1970s. An aggressively conquered freedom which resulted in works of an incredible gracefulness aimed towards a future at a moment when both grace and the future had seemingly begun their slow obliteration under the blows of powerful destructive forces.

“Watertube” starts as a synth and magnetic-tape based ambient soundscape that slowly adds what appears to be a prepared piano which eventually competes for audibility with a phrase that evokes the titular watertube, treated, looped and stacked as it phase-shifts producing a busy polyrhythm that asynchronously gurgles and bubbles, approaching but never breaking into chaos. It’s some strange version of Eno’s oblique discreetness ostensibly being overwhelmed by the perversity of a Stevereichian shape-shifting pattern but the moment the former is about to be overwhelmed the composition begins a slow recession back towards the system it originated from.

“Ringspiel” is a more playful yet warped affair, a complex ecology rather than a simple economy of sounds. Opening with a whimsical melody seemingly played on a prepared toy piano this gives way to a tape loop punctuated throughout the rest of the piece by individual sounds whose origins remain uncertain. These produce scattered melodies that underscore an electronic based minimalism with a synthetic heart that nonetheless showcases a pulsating, wet, fibrous core that beats with organic life. It ends not in the opening whimsy but in fragmenting percussive shards of sounds. While it might superficially appear deceitfully familiar and comforting and evoke recognizable pleasures this is neither your father’s ambient nor your mom’s minimalism. And it sure as hell ain’t your older brother’s lame substanceless new age noodling. There’s a dark heart to Sinigaglia’s record – listened to today we are conscious that the future “Watertube” and “Ringspiel” pointed towards never arrived and yet we are aware of nonetheless inhabiting it. That is ultimately the tragedy and the thrill of these compositions. We are told that the future’s been annulled due to a degenerative process that began precisely around the time in which this music was first recorded. And yet. As time folded in on itself and we were made to inhabit the futureless predicament of an eternal present these recordings act as relics from the last possible instance where a future could still stand to be imagined. A little sliver of opportunity. Look into it. It just might give you a peek into tomorrow. The time is out of joint.

Peter Sarram/Rome, March 2019

Freedom To Spend’s first catalog wide deep dive into an artist’s career focuses on four albums from Rimarimba, beginning with 1983’s Below The Horizon, followed by 1984’s On Dry Land, 1985’s In The Woods, and finally, the once-imagined, now-realized assembly of 1988’s Light Metabolism Number Prague.

Somewhere out there around the turn of the 1980s, to the left of the post-punk crew, to the right of the minimalists, and surfacing with a friendlier face than the dour industrialists of the time – there existed, seemingly unbidden, an entire, networked, tape-trading community; a community that crossed continents and oceans, that relied on the postal service to do its bidding; a community full of humble visionaries and lost, misunderstood, or just plain ignored home steeped genius.

Exploring that thicket of weirdness in the UK wild, you’d likely stumble across labels like Cordelia, Hamster, and Unlikely; compilations like the should-be-legendary Obscure Independent Classics series, or the Real Time cassettes; and inexplicable one-offs like The Deep Freeze Mice, Jody & The Creams, R. Stevie Moore, Leven Signs, Jung Analysts, and Rimarimba.

Rimarimba was the project of Robert Cox, based in Felixstowe, on the seaside in Suffolk, UK. Rimarimba was not Cox’s first entry into the world of recorded music, but was the first time he explored, most perceptively, the parameters of a particular musical mode: onewhere minimalism is removed from its “highart” mantle, Cox inveigling its practices in amongst the do-it-yourself creativity of a burgeoning and beguiling underground, letting the music breathe – and most importantly, letting it play, gifting it with imagination.

Freedom To Spend’s first catalog wide deep dive into an artist’s career focuses on four albums from Rimarimba, beginning with 1983’s Below The Horizon, followed by 1984’s On Dry Land, 1985’s In The Woods, and finally, the once-imagined, now-realized assembly of 1988’s Light Metabolism Number Prague.

Somewhere out there around the turn of the 1980s, to the left of the post-punk crew, to the right of the minimalists, and surfacing with a friendlier face than the dour industrialists of the time – there existed, seemingly unbidden, an entire, networked, tape-trading community; a community that crossed continents and oceans, that relied on the postal service to do its bidding; a community full of humble visionaries and lost, misunderstood, or just plain ignored home steeped genius.

Exploring that thicket of weirdness in the UK wild, you’d likely stumble across labels like Cordelia, Hamster, and Unlikely; compilations like the should-be-legendary Obscure Independent Classics series, or the Real Time cassettes; and inexplicable one-offs like The Deep Freeze Mice, Jody & The Creams, R. Stevie Moore, Leven Signs, Jung Analysts, and Rimarimba.

"Captain Rip Hayman is a traveller: on the seas, across the lands, and in the realm of music. He has been around the world 51 times to date. Like the proverbial cat, Rip has lived many lives and beaten death more than most. Rip’s playlist here is a mix of his compositions and music gathered in his travels. The sounds of the world are all music to the Captain’s ears." - Charlie Morrow, December 2018

Dreams of India & China is the first retrospective LP of artist and sailor, Rip Hayman. Recorded from 1975-1986, the two side-long works were collaged from a dozen hours of tape recordings (which laid dormant for over 30 years). It ebbs as the tides; pulsing from one location to the next in a faint stupor, Dreams turns to be an autobiographical sound map.

Audio capsules of Hayman's installation performances, private experiments, and every ethnographic voyage in between are charted. Outdoor recordings canopy over indoor recordings, thatching surreality. Tonal quilts lap over "Dreamwaves" on the first side: an all-night sleep concert hosted by Rip as the sandman. Whispers of recounted dreams, birds and trees, organ waves. The second side traverses more saturated memories: bicycle spokes ripping against half-speed piano, bleeding cymbal dances over saxophone gusts, the tumbling of Rip's body affixed with bells and metal.

Hayman was a collaborator in New Wilderness Foundation, Ear Magazine, and The Land (a parcel in upstate New York to where John Cage, John Lennon, David Tudor, etc. would escape the city in the 1970s). He is the owner of the oldest bar in NYC, The Ear Inn. Focusing on nautical inventions and intentions these days, Rip has veered away from composition; hopefully that will change. For now, let us enjoy the sea-faring sound journeys of his past. Dreams of India & China charters a beautiful confusion – come aboard and push off into his waters.

Sean McCann, February 2019

Pixel Prison is a deeply introspective album that explores the themes of societal division and the struggle for unity. Rising Tide combines the best elements of Roots Reggae, Jazz, Rhythm & Blues and adds deep meditative Dub into their music. Incorporating sounds from across the musical landscape and rooted with hard-hitting conscious lyrics, the band has tapped into another deep well of inspiration for their sophomore release!

“We’re excited to share ‘Pixel Prison’ with our global following,” says Rising Tide founder Marcus Urani. “This album is a reflection of our commitment to using music as a tool for positive change, and we hope our fans will join us on this journey.”

Roberto Crippa is an italian sound-artist based in London and here is his third album. The refined work of Abscent is a deep dive into a dense and gloomy mixture of boulder rhytms, distressing atmospheres and sinister clangors. Although it could be easily ascribed to the industrial genre as well to more sleepy, nebulous and crumpled drifts of (post)techno realms, there’s something strongly personal and idiosyncratic that flows as decisive detail through the furrows of this record. Human warmth envelopes the sound matter like a shroud, machines spread organic fragances to settle a hyper-realistic soundtrack for the confusing and dark times we’re living in.

Two years on from the critically acclaimed Stellular, Rose Elinor Dougall returns with her third solo album A New Illusion.

With a noticeable shift in dynamic A New Illusion sees Dougall looks into the abyss – the millennial-burnout, Brexit-apocalypse, those impossible disappointments of growing up in the 21st century Britain – singing quietly with piano, with guitar, and with a gentle fuck-it attitude.
“I just wanted to sit at the piano and play, I wanted to return to something essential,” Dougall explains. “There’s something comforting and solid about that instinctive relationship with music, with playing and singing.”

With that essential instinct, Dougall is aligning herself with the tradition of Sandy Denny, Bridget St John, Anne Briggs – English women who sang with proud fragility. “There’s something essential and earthy about them,” says Dougall. “there’s something more bloody about the way they sing.” It’s evocative of the English sweet-sharpness of Kirsty MacColl too – in the dreamy jangling pop lifted up by clear folk vocals and a minor-key melody.

Lead single First Sign – online today – took shape during a trip to a remote part of Andalusia. “I was trying to cut loose from a situation, and this song is about vainly attempting to shake oneself free.” Sonically Dougall wanted to reflect the “sparseness and silence of the place in the sound of the track. I was looking for a loose, hazy feeling to the music to sit with the imagery of the song. I wanted it to sound like the end of summer.”

Two years on from the critically acclaimed Stellular, Rose Elinor Dougall returns with her third solo album A New Illusion.

With a noticeable shift in dynamic A New Illusion sees Dougall looks into the abyss – the millennial-burnout, Brexit-apocalypse, those impossible disappointments of growing up in the 21st century Britain – singing quietly with piano, with guitar, and with a gentle fuck-it attitude.
“I just wanted to sit at the piano and play, I wanted to return to something essential,” Dougall explains. “There’s something comforting and solid about that instinctive relationship with music, with playing and singing.”

With that essential instinct, Dougall is aligning herself with the tradition of Sandy Denny, Bridget St John, Anne Briggs – English women who sang with proud fragility. “There’s something essential and earthy about them,” says Dougall. “there’s something more bloody about the way they sing.” It’s evocative of the English sweet-sharpness of Kirsty MacColl too – in the dreamy jangling pop lifted up by clear folk vocals and a minor-key melody.

Lead single First Sign – online today – took shape during a trip to a remote part of Andalusia. “I was trying to cut loose from a situation, and this song is about vainly attempting to shake oneself free.” Sonically Dougall wanted to reflect the “sparseness and silence of the place in the sound of the track. I was looking for a loose, hazy feeling to the music to sit with the imagery of the song. I wanted it to sound like the end of summer.”

Astroneer is Rutger Zuydervelt's first foray into video game soundtracks. The sci-fi adventure was developed by American indie company System Era. In the game, the music plays continuously and is reactive to the player's actions. This soundtrack album presents the musical themes as edited tracks. As can be expected, Astroneer 's tracks are playful, and amongst Rutger's most accessible work. Like the game, its score is spacious, simple (which does not mean simplistic) and engaging. Astroneer will be self published in an edition of 200 cds, and as download.

Note: tracks 17-26 are not on the cd, but included with the download

Trailblazing Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is joined by revered electronic musician Taylor Deupree on this live recording, documenting their collaboration at St John-at-Hackney Church in 2014 – part of Thirty Three Thirty Three’s flagship concert series ‘St John Sessions’. The two musicians develop a kinetic understanding over the recording, entering a sparse musical dialogue – flourishes of prepared piano give way to bursts of noise and sculpted synths. Totally improvised, the performance follows their collaborations on record – as a duo on 2013's Disappearance, and in a trio with Illuha on 2014's Perpetual. Ryuichi Sakamoto has had an extraordinary career, from his founding of revolutionary electronic trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, to his remarkable film scores – notably Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence and the soundtrack for Oscar-winning film, The Revenant. Taylor Deupree, meanwhile, spent his career devoted to his label, 12k, and an intricate form of ambient minimalism. Originally released in 2015 – Thirty Three Thirty Three’s inaugural record – the album has been remastered by Deupree and features new artwork and a superior gatefold sleeve housing two 180-gram heavyweight records alongside 24" photographic print.

Jude Woodhead AKA Saint Jude is a born and bred South London based producer who first approached songwriting after being diagnosed with Tinnitus which prevented him from pursuing his DJ career. While his previous works found space between genres, with elements of indie, ambient pop, hip-hop, Uk garage and noise, his debut self-produced album 'Signal' - out in November 2022 - rejects the limitations of genres altogether while anchoring his music firmly in the sounds of his native South London.
Conceptualized during the lockdown in 2020, ‘Signal’ is a self-portrait about coming of age during a time of political crisis and social change. Enlisting the help of past collaborators and friends (Aga Ujma, Low Loudly - Sarah from Drug Store Romeos - Louis Culture, Trim, HALINA and Zeke Ultra), Jude uses a wide range of voices to communicate different perspectives on his subject matter.

Loaded with tension and anchored by bold textural and stylistic contrasts, Sam Slater’s third solo full-length finds the British sound artist, composer, and engineer grappling with his creative contradictions head-on.

Having spent a life time in bands and producing records, Sam transitioned somewhat by accident through his work with Johan Johansson into working as a composer on high profile projects such as his collaboration with Hildur Guðnadóttir on the Grammy Award-winning Joker and Chernobyl, and with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Mstyslav Chernov on the soundtrack to the lauded 2000 Meters to Andriivka. Having a vast set of interests and influences is an asset when helping realise a directors vision for a soundtrack, but one's own musical voice can end up being constrained. In Lunng, Slater has gone back to his wildly divergent range of influences and rather than shy away from the extremes, he's used them to create a singular vision.

Take the opening track “Heatsick”: Slater imagines an extravagant fusion of 2000s drone metal and vintage British brass, welding ear-splitting overdriven drones and blown-out choral vocals to stirring trombone swells from veteran player Hilary Jeffery. On paper, it’s hard to imagine—but Slater’s intentionality conducts these polarizing elements into a surreal blur of sonic extremes, with the guitars’ relative harshness softened by Jeffery’s eerily nostalgic colliery echoes.

His last solo album, I do not wish to be known as a Vandal (Bedroom Community, 2022), showcased this breadth by assembling a team of collaborators including Sam Dunscombe and Yair Elazar Glotman. On this record he’s linking up with acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Maria W. Horn, idiosyncratic sax virtuoso Bendik Giske, versatile percussionist Adam Betts, and the aforementioned Jeffery, Slater ushers these players toward a lattice of calculated confutations.

Working to explore the tension between the divergent practices of his collaborators—Lunng was meant to be challenging. On “Praya”, Giske’s familiar overblown horn phrases are almost vaporized, vanishing among Slater’s weightless synths and Horn’s chillingly hoarse vocals. There are traces of Horn’s Funeral Folk project, but Slater shifts the emphasis, letting her voice brush past the other elements like a hallucination.

Slater’s use of extremes isn’t just in the micro; dynamics drive the album’s overall flow. “Praya” sets the stage for the record’s heaviest, most prickly moment: “Passengers”. Here, Horn’s voice cracks, rasps, and gurgles over serrated synths and Betts’ ritualistic drums. Slater turns an industrial symphony into a folk opera—dark, dramatic, and strangely beautiful—etched with Giske’s fluttering phrases.

But the mood soon shifts. Slater careens toward chaos, unleashing double-time rhythms and piercing textures familiar to anyone with a soft spot for classic black metal. These grotesque incongruities are deliberate; Slater surveys years of musical conflict and leans in, using dissent as fuel to build kinetic energy.

The weight of sentimentality bears down on “Black Metal Rewind (Night Drive Astra, 2006)”, melting teenage memories into hypnagogic ambience—shoegaze dreams whirled with angelic choral delusions. On “Death by Nostalgia, 1688”, he ventures further into polarizing territory, distorting AutoTuned voices with cryptic strings and medieval tonalities, unsettling any stable sense of past or present.

In this record Slater focuses on pure energy, color, and mood. Lunng distills years of listening into a bracing brew—boiling each sound down to its essence, then serving it with unflinching intent.

John Twells, 2025

The debut album from London's Sam Willis, one half of Kompakt's visionary electronic duo WALLS, sees the light of day on CD - with a bonus disc of remixes and exclusive versions from an eclectic collection of like-minded individuals.
*Walls, who have released two critically acclaimed and adored albums on Kompakt, have created quite a reputation in house/techno circles in recent years, and Sam's solo work builds on that, resulting in an expansive and uplifting album that stands up next to classic artists in the field of electronic music while bearing comparison with contemporaries such as Blondes, Four Tet and Nathan Fake.
1. Hello Wendy | 2. Weird Science | 3. Foxglissandro | 4. Frozen/ Cirrus | 5. 140 Miles Away | 6. Seven Down Six Across
7. Winterval | 8. Twirled With Your Slight Fingers

CD2:
1. Hello Wendy (Drums Off Chaos) | 2. Weird Science (Wesley Matsell) | 3. Foxglissandro (Pictish Trail) | 4. Frozen/Cirrus (Harald Bjork) | 5. Seven Down Six Across (Not Waving) | 6. Stranger Aeons - Sam Willis bonus track | 7. Foxglissandro (Kate Wax) | 8. Hello Wendy (Ramesses) | 9. Weird Science (live cassette version) | 10. Foxglissandro (Refleksie)
11. Frozen/Cirrus (Ghosting Season)

On Interior, Swiss composer Samuel Reinhard excavates intricate resonances at the periphery of our attention. Across four movements, Reinhard follows a process whereby he layers and loops fragments of piano improvisations. Yet Interior complicates its own systematicity by using samples that are not only recognizable as piano notes, but as live recordings of a piano being played. Reinhard composes from traces both analog and digital: we can hear static hiss and clicks, but also the soft trace of a finger pressing a key or the shuffle of a body shifting position.
Interior asks us to think about where we are, and how close we are willing to look, feel, and listen. Over the course of the four movements sounds return, familiar but transformed. What sounds like repetition is something more like accumulation, a thickening of space. Whether regarded at intimate range or from a distance, these compositions reveal more the longer we linger in the presence of each.

During the last few years, I’ve found myself more and more attracted to sounds that are somehow connected to slow, intentional musical gestures. This slowing down of the musical gesture makes it possible for me to pause, to observe and listen to the richness, the details and nuances of the timbres. It also reveals the relationships between sounds in space and time. This kind of listening from a closer perspective also amplifies the connection between timbre and frequency making it possible to investigate even the smallest differences in the intervals. EEEOOOSSS is the encounter between three instruments, each one tuned according to a different tuning system. This meeting was conceived and designed over a period of years but only once took place in the Church of S. Giusto, Volterra, Italy, during the night of the 12th of August, 2018, in the nave, the transepts and the choir.

Each of the three temperaments embodies specific characteristics, amplified by the instrument assigned to play it. The dark (almost pure and “spaceless”) tone produced by the e-bow on the strings of the guitar gives voice to the clear tones of the Pythagorean Tuning. The air resonating into the clarinet produces the frequencies of a system derived from the tuning of the ancient Greek flute. As a conclusion, I recorded on the cello one of the scales obtained from the exact relations observed in the partial harmonics of the second octave. Each of these three sounds possesses, in fact, a very different balance between inharmonic and harmonic qualities, from the almost pure sound of the e-bowed electric guitar to that of the most inharmonic, horse-hair bowed cello. Thus electric guitar, clarinet and cello are treated as raw material, modelled in their form (primarily through filters and envelope constraints), but without changing their individual distinctive timbral character. The real shaping factor, is, in fact, the architectural space, which added multiple reflections to these materials during the live session, amplifying asymmetric partials, dilating some of the frequencies and interweaving these three scale systems one into the other.

Temporarily structured into the domain of software, the gestures acted upon by these sounds are complete in itself. Repetition is illusory, it appears only on the surface. These three meditations are also an occasion to investigate the boundaries between the abstract dimension of electronic music and the living body of a concert.

Sandro Mussida / Firenze, 5 Aprile 2019

A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE COVER
After working on these pieces for a while I began to associate the sounds with the colour pink. Eos, for Homer, is the rosy-fingered goddess of dawn, whose light during this special moment transforms gradually before our eyes into many tonalities of oranges and blues. Since the three instruments and tuning systems interweave with each other in the acoustic space, similarly the idea of taking this relationship into the realm of the visible appealed to me, thus the three different materials are overlapped one on the other creating a sort of interaction with the light.

Alessandra Novaga, electric guitar samples (e-bow); tuning: twelve true fifths (*Renold I)
Edgardo Barlassina, bass clarinet; tuning: hypodorian aulos
Sandro Mussida, cello; tuning: just intonation (*II partials)

The trio Susana Santos Silva / Torbjörn Zetterberg / Hampus Lindwall emerged in 2015 with their first album If Nothing Else (Clean Feed CF348) which was received with critical acclaim. The unique conceptual approach to composition & improvisation rooted in both free jazz and contemporary classical music was described as “guaranteed a unique listening experience” (JazzIn), “It is art!” (Gapplegate Music Review) and “unique sound and style” (New York City Jazz Record). On their new album “Hi, who are you?” (Matière Mémoire MATME004LP) they have taken the musical creation a step further by adding live electronics for real time sound treatment. Different techniques from experimental electronic music is juxtaposed with simple use of electric guitar effects to obtain tight and highly emotional sound.

Susana Santos Silva - trumpet
Torbjörn Zetterberg - double bass, and electric noise on track 5 and 10
Hampus Lindwall - pipe organ and live electronics

Boundary-pushing artist and producer sara sara returns with captivating second album Orgone, out on 5th July via One Little Indian Records. Her brooding new single, the first taken from the album, ‘Blood Brothers’, swells with a foreboding intensity, co-produced with Liam Howe of labelmates Sneaker Pimps (who has worked on albums by Nülifer Yanya, FKA Twigs, Tom Vek, Lana Del Rey etc).
The Matthew Herbert collaborator released her debut album Amor Fati to acclaim from The Fader, The Guardian, The 405 and more – as experimental as it is versatile, taking in elements of industrial electronica, trip-hop, r’n’b and breaks. Sarah, is a French singer, songwriter, electronic musician and record producer. Born in Fourmies, Nord, she began her music career in 2014. Following the success of her self-released David Bowie cover, ‘Heroes’, Sarasara moved to the UK to work on her first extended play in collaboration with Matthew Herbert.

c 3. Universe [Mit Tricia Mcteague]
[d] 4. Dreamcatcher [Mit Jhyve]

[f] 6. Avalanche [Mit Schwarz]
[g] 7. Das Goldene Tor [Mit Yalda Abbas]
[h] 8. Berlin Tehran [Miniatur]
[i] 9. In Between [Mit Jan Blomqvist]
[j] 10. Morgenstund [Mit Nena]

[l] 12. Lichtjahre [Mit Giorgio Moroder]
[m] 13. New Day [Mit Schwarz]
[n] 14. Morgenstern [Ausschnitt] [Mit Tangerime Dream]
[o] 15. Love [Mit Rebecca Ferguson]



[c] 3. Universe [Mit Tricia Mcteague]
[d] 4. Dreamcatcher [Mit Jhyve]

[f] 6. Avalanche [Mit Schwarz]
[g] 7. Das Goldene Tor [Mit Yalda Abbas]
[h] 8. Berlin Tehran [Miniatur]
[i] 9. In Between [Mit Jan Blomqvist]
[j] 10. Morgenstund [Mit Nena]

[l] 12. Lichtjahre [Mit Giorgio Moroder]
[m] 13. New Day [Mit Schwarz]
[n] 14. Morgenstern [Ausschnitt] [Mit Tangerime Dream]
[o] 15. Love [Mit Rebecca Ferguson]