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Exael Debuts On Huerco S' West Mineral Ltd With 'collex', A Deep, Impressionistic Album Of Ambient Soundscaping Recorded Between Chicago And Berlin, Following An Excellent Split Ep With Likeminded Producer, Ryan Fall A.k.a. Uon, As Well As A Number Of Compilation Appearances With Allergy Season/discwoman, Physical Therapy And Carpet Group Recordings, The Latter Of Whom Coincidentally Issued Exael's Self-titled 2017 Album Under The Naemi Alias.
Crafted Over The Two Years Since Their First Album, 'collex' Finds Exael Mining A Finer And More Elusive Variant Of Ambient Music, Connecting Dots Between Classic Vapor-trail Dub And Hyper-Modern Inversions You'd More Readily Associate With 0pn Or Kara-lis Coverdale. With A Richly Refractive, Iridescent Quality, It Marks The Inward/outward Distance Travelled Between Concrète And Electronic Textures And Spatial Parameters, Manipulating Notions Of Stasis And Kinesis With An
Unfathomable, Gaseous Quality That Also Reminds Us Of Classic Vladislav Delay And Robert Henke's Site-specific Work.
From The Milky Plumes Of 'into Deep', Thru The Scudding Subaquatic Electro-dub Of 'split', To The Bristling Gunk Of 'choeo3' And The Wanda Group-like Subsidence Of 'cart', To The Lushly Fractious Flux Of 'glass In Plastic (with Arad Acid)' And 'anc Alt', Exael Maintains A Cool Head Despite The
Disorienting G-force And Upended Context, Elaborating A Form Of Simulacra That Uncannily Reflects The Real World's Realigned Ideas About Gender, Mental Health, And Emotional Wealth.Offering A Modernist Re-vision Of Classic Chain Reaction And Early 00's Dub Inversions, It's An Uncanny Reminder Of A Relatively Recent Era In Electronic Music That Seems Far Out Of Reach In The Present Climate, A Perfect Accompaniment To That Brilliant Pendant Album That Kicked This Fine Label
Off Earlier This Year.

The latest entry in An’archives’ ‘Free Wind Mood’ series, Ki is a trio that pits long-time collaborators Tamio Shiraishi (saxophone, voice) and Takahashi Michiko aka Mico (drums, voice, vocoder, melodica, piano, percussion) against drummer, percussionist and vocalist Fritz Welch. They each bring a wealth of experience, from Shiraishi’s early moves in the Japanese underground of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s – he was a founding member of Fushitsusha, and played with Taco and Machinegun Tango – to his legendary, late-night solo New York subway performances; he and Mico also spent some time playing with No Neck Blues Band, while Welch, currently based in Glasgow, has a long history taking in stints with Peeesseye, Lambs Gamble and FvRTvR.

Tearful Face Of My Cute Love (Is Begging To Me), named after a yakuza song, is Ki’s first LP, after CD-Rs on Chocolate Monk (Ki No Sei, 2009) and Unverified (Stops Dropping, 2010). Documenting two live performances from 2008, it’s a startling, wild freedom chase, each piece stretching languorously across one side of the vinyl, giving the trio maximum space to thunder their way through space and time. Their West Nile 2008 show, on side one, opens with a battery of drums, fierce and livid, before Shiraishi’s unmistakable and remarkable whinnying, high-zone tone slithers into earshot. The stage is set, the battle moves forward, yet there’s remarkable simpatico between the three players, with Mico and Welch volleying guttural vocal exhortations at each other. When it does offer respite – see the sudden swoop into near- silence at around 12:30– everything’s still tense; who knows what’s around the corner?

For all its fury, though, Tearful Face Of My Cute Love... is full of oddly lyrical moments, too – see the sweet melody that winds out, with gentle melancholy, near the very end of the West Nile performance. This lyricism also haunts the second side of the album, a performance from Glassland, Brooklyn, which seems more focused on the intersection of incidents, from clattering cymbals to ghostly swarms of sax scream, to dive-bombing spirals of vocoder. There’s an appealing sense of audio verité here, as though you’re in the room with the performers, shaken and stirred by every movement, lost in the interlocking maze they’re weaving in real time. It’s a bracing, thrilling document of very immediate, human music – of three bodies moving through the world, sounding their environment.


[a] a1 Tearful face of my cute love [is begging to me] (Side A)
[b] b1 Tearful face of my cute love [is begging to me] (Side B)

“The unique and magical sound of Los Siquicos Litoraleños (The Psychics of El Litoral), fermented in the rural north of Argentina, land of gauchos (Argentine cowboys), mate tea, chamamé folk music and Psilocybe Cubensis. In this remote region, cut off from the fashions of the city, Los Siquicos were able to nurture their obsessions, hone their craft, and develop a singular style that takes the traditional chamamé folk music of rural Argentina, then throws it in a blender with Latin-American cumbia and chicha, the tropicalia of Os Mutantes and Tom Ze, the free music of Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, The Residents, UFO conspiracies, radical philosophy, and a strong dose of the absurd. Out in the hinterlands, they fully embraced the spirit and ethic of DIY punk, gaining a reputation for wild, open air shows on the backs of flatbed trucks, or from makeshift set-ups in village squares and at local fêtes and fairs, where confused locals half recognise the twisted sound of a chamamé beamed in from another planet.

Hive Mind Records are delighted to help bring Medianos Éxitos Subtropicales Vol. 2: El Relincho Del Tiempo (Medium Subtropical Hits Vol. 2: The Neigh of Time) out into the world. The album features a number of brand new songs alongside tracks chosen from Los Siquicos' extensive archive of home recordings. El Relincho Del Tiempo contains the soupy dub-cumbia of Para Ser Un Gran Hombre, the fantasy radio-hit La Danza Del Brontosaurio, and the shamanic ecstasy of Los Ninos Del Brasil or Dostoyevski En El Minimercado.
Los Siquicos Litoraleños invite you to take a leap into their world in which the sounds of the future and the past blur into one, where the music of the whole planet is digested and spat out in new shapes, where the noise is joyful.“

Repress 2017 Anniversary Reiissue of this Oizo Cult Classic EP Tracks

Brian Leeds a.k.a. Huerco S' West Mineral label present a groggy Midwestern ambient doozy with Chat, the first collaborative release by Pontiac Streator and Ulla Straus
Pontiac Streator previously appeared as a guest on the first West Mineral LTD release, Pendant's Make Me Know You Sweet, while Ulla Straus is perhaps best known for her part on the cultishly adored bblisss compilation tape which introduced Huerco S.'s Pendant alias to the world at large.
Their first album together is a bedroom-crafted confection where drowsy blues and raga smudge with lounging exotica themes in a blunted style to properly heavy-lidded effect.
Chat was recorded on July 5th in Pilsen, Chicago on Ulla's bed after a long week spent dancing with friends, staying up all night typing in chatrooms, and hate-watching Fox news. The results channel that experience into four lop-sided creations that feel satisfyingly burned out and immersive, like the murmur of zonked chat between close friends.
In four parts; Chat One thru Chat Four, the record unfurls with a muggy mid-fi tension between its illusive fidelities, kindling a smoky atmosphere that colours listening spaces with seductive smells
and a muggy, keening tension that recalls the minutes before sundown
This balmy feel of the surreal comes out in a sylvan patina of sweetened cicadas and curling pads urged along by a stream of wooden drums, variously recalling Spencer Clark on some kind of
Aguirre soundtrack mission in the tropics, a heatsick Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement piece, or, in the dream-pop drift of the last part, like Leven Signs smudged by Muslimgauze.
Coolly serving to expand West Mineral LTD's remit after that spellbinding Pendant album and a 12" of ectoplasmic dubs from uon, the flux of arid/fluid textures and para-dimensional fidelities in
Chat feels somehow calming yet fraught with a somnambulant appeal that's dangerously easy to

First single in three years from Belfast’s Robocobra Quartet.

For fans of Black Country, New Road, Black Midi, Squid, Fugazi, Dry Cleaning.

“Fugazi meets Mingus.” - Drowned in Sound
“Exploratory pioneers.” - BBC Radio 3 Late Junction
“A cunning marriage of jazz, spoken word and punk” - The Quietus

Improvisation and experimentation is at the core of Robocobra Quartet's DNA, almost intentionally at odds with their roots as a post-punk band. Including members with no musical training alongside
European music conservatoire innovators, the result is a groove-driven but cerebral blast, invoking the likes of Fugazi, Talking Heads and contemporaries such as Squid and Black Country, New Road.

The eclectic free nature of their live shows allows them to channel-hop from moments of joy and playfulness to periods of intense fury, creating a unique sound that has earned them invitations to Montreux Jazz Festival, Latitude and as far out as the Inversia Festival in the polar north of Russia.

Extensive live UK and Europe dates and album launch tour to be announced.

"Beat scientist Soreab signs our second release at the peak of his rhythmic experimentation. Four swirling, hyperactive, sketchy tracks dedicated to overturning the classic hierarchies of beats.

Folding the solidity of grooves and sound palettes coming from dance floor music to the hypnotism of techno scenarios and seasoning everything with an exquisite sense of sound design- capable of opening up into melodies without losing his ruthless intensity."

Silver Vinyl Repress


Huerco S' West Mineral Label Follow Pendant's Sublime Make Me Know You Sweet Album With Uon's Wholly Absorbing Study In Brownian Motion And Isolation Tank Ambience. It's The 2nd Release From The Enigmatic Project Whose Debut 12's In 2017 Was Among The Year's Finest.
On This Extended Player, Uon Poetically Describes Three Different Behaviours Of Water And Its Amorphous States Through A Gently Elemental Push-and-pull Of Forces Best Considered In The Vein Of Basic Channel, Wolfgang Voigt's Gas Or The Shimmering Convections Of Ross 154. Beautifully Elusive But Crucially Watermarked With A Sense Of Originality In Personalized Style, Solaris Opens With The 17 Minute Title Cut - A Seemingly Infinite Journey Through Swells Of Diffracted Chords And Silty Filters, Simultaneously Connoting Sensations Of Opiated Amniotic Safety And Oceanic Infinity.
Where The A-side Feels Like Floating In A Lush Mass, The Bass-heavy Articulation Of His B-side's J May Well Urge Listeners Onto The 'floor With The Same, Inexorable Traction Of Classic Vainqueur Records, And In A Way Smartly Reflects Uon's Mutable Dj Style, Before The Aqueous Qualities Of His Final Track Bus Soothes To A Deeper Blue State Of Loved-up Introspection Which, Like Solaris, Could Have Have Easily Taken Up A Side To Itself.
Bliss.

Repress in soon!!

Morning Trip & Yoga Records are proud to finally reveal one of the ultimate lost masterworks of new age music: Alice Damon’s Windsong. Gently propelled by Damon's haunting breath-of-life vocal winds reminiscent of Joan La Barbara underscored by field recordings and Damon's fretless bass sound calling to mind mid-70 Joni Mitchell, Windsong is traveling music, for the roads or for the skies. Instantly moving, it conjures vistas both romantically familiar and cosmically mysterious — waterfalls and wind, the voice of the earth, as heard through heavenly prisms.

Damon attended college in Massachusetts, where she formed and fronted the all-female garage band called The Moppets in the late 60s. The band began to garner national attention, but Damon moved instead to the wilds of northern Vermont to homestead and raise a family. In 1981 or thereabouts she was able to gain use of an early Sony digital home recorder, and created her masterwork, Windsong.

But Damon waited until 1990 to release a packaged version of this album, now titled "Windsong II", and sent samples to regional distributors like Vermont’s fabled Silo-Alcazar, where a copy of the album was first discovered, but little evidence exists of a proper commercial release. Alice Damon passed on in 2011 and remained essentially unknown until the landmark I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America 1950-1990 first revealed her genius to a wider audience two years later. Now, just in time for the recording's 40th anniversary, Alice Damon's Windsong may at last be heard as one of the most singular, moving and profound examples of new age music's psychedelic essence. Morning Trip & Yoga
Records proudly present Windsong.

Swedens sound art, noise and experimental main-stayer Carl Michael von Hausswolff with a two part sound piece from installations at Pierogi Gallery (Brooklyn), Museo Rufino Tamayo (Mexico City) and ZKM (Karlsruhe). Mainly recorded between 2001-03 this is a trademark, and maybe traditional, sonic landscape from the Nordic region of Europe's sonic art movement post 2000. Harsh, but always elegant. Consistent and with little traces of our current society.

This is the debut album by Funeral Parade Of Roses. It takes the form of a suite of four ominous, cinematic soundscapes suffused with foreboding and unease. In each track, dread-laden industrial atmospherics are punctuated by scorching bursts of rhythm, pantomiming an ongoing struggle between loss and liberation.

The presentation of this body of sound work is also conceived as a collaboration between the artist and designer / illustrator Priscilla Genet, whose artwork is featured both on the full color printed insert sleeve and the accompanying zine.

The zine itself is a booklet of stream of consciousness verse that explores a highly personal meditation on negation, the anarchic, and utopian eschatology.

10th anniversary reissue of this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album, recorded in a single inspired studio session & originally released in 2012 on Editions Mego.

From the original Editions Mego press release:

“For anyone who still associates Oren Ambarchi exclusively with the clipped, bass-heavy tones of solo electric guitar works such as Suspension, this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album-length piece might seem to come out of nowhere. However, listeners who have followed the breadth of his work for the last few years (solo and in projects with collaborators from Jim O’Rourke to Stephen O’Malley and Keith Rowe to Keiji Haino) will have noted how Ambarchi has allowed increasingly clear traces of his enthusiasms as a music listener (for classic rock, minimal techno and 70’s fusion, among other areas) to surface in his performances and recordings, all the time filtering them through his signature long-form structures and psychoacoustic sonics.

Recorded in a single inspired studio session, Sagittarian Domain displaces Ambarchi’s trademark guitar sound from the centre of the mix, its presence felt only as an occasional ghostly reverberated shimmer. Endlessly pulsating guitar and bass lines sit alongside electronic percussion and thundering motorik drumming (familiar from his work with Keiji Haino) at the core of the piece, locking into a voodoo groove like Faust covering a 70’s cop show theme. The work is founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre. Cut-up and phase-shifted strings enter around the half-way mark like an abstracted memory of the eastern-tinged fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s classic Visions of the Emerald Beyond, before returning for an extended, stark yet affecting come-down coda, equal parts Gavin Bryars and Purple Rain.

While Sagittarian Domain contains traces of a diversity of influences, it mines all of them to uncover something that is clearly an extension of Ambarchi’s own investigations up to this point, exhibiting the same care for micro-detail and surrender to the physicality of sound that are present in all of his work, extending them in new ways to repetition, pulse and rhythm”.

TEN WALLS RELEASING A LIVE ALBUM 'SYMPHONY' PERFORMED WITH FULL ORCHESTRA

A celebrated Lithuanian producer and performer Ten Walls (Marijus Adomaitis) is about to put the first live album to his discography. Featuring the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra and a handful of distinguished collaborators, the album 'Symphony' comes in double vinyl.

The wildly successful live performance recorded and pressed on the vinyl took place in the summer of 2019. Almost a hundred musicians participated in the event, including piano virtuoso Petras Geniušas, hugely popular Lithuanian singer Daddy Was A Milkman, Swedish singer and producer Jonatan Bäckelie and the Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra, conducted by its founder and multi-award winner maestro Gintaras Rinkevičius.

'Symphony' is a unique opportunity to experience the signature Ten Walls sound with that extra dimension that only full symphonic orchestra is able to create. It adds a certain depth to the tracks that are on the lyrical side of the emotional spectrum, while dance bangers become even more powerful with string and brass sections giving it an additional punch.

Being a classically trained musician himself, Marijus has long dreamed of performing his music with the orchestra. It took several years for the idea to mature, during which his work received global recognition, his work being covered by world-class musicians.

Credits:

Written and produced by: Marijus 'Ten Walls' Adomaitis
Arrangement by: Jievaras Jasinskis, Marijus Adomaitis
Mixing and mastering by: Marijus Adomaitis
Performers:
Conductor: Gintaras Rinkevičius
The Lithuanian State Symphony Orchestra
Vocalists: Daddy Was A Milkman ( C5, C6 ), Jonatan Bäckelie ( A4, B4 )
Bass guitar: Domas Aleksa ( A3 )
Synthesizer / drum machine: Ten Walls
Piano: Petras Geniušas
Bass guitar and synthesizer: Julius Valančauskas
Electric drums: Jonas Gliaudelis

Third offering from DMV vocalist "Davon" Dreamcast from his Lost Tapes Vol. 2 Album, experimenting with a bit of auto-tune to modernize and come full circle to current radio play moods. Production by DJSYLO, Will Colella, and CoolWater.

The artist name of Inre Kretsen Grupp (translates to ‘Inner Circle Group’) was conceived as a humorous homage towards the curious lingo of private press loners & multi-instrumentalists padding out their image with fantasy band members. For Martin Blomberg, the man behind the name, it was also the mental safe zone of someone breaking out into a solo career after decades of playing in bands. Through the social melting pot of the now defunct Wildlife record shop operating out of Malmö, Martin was introduced to the Fasaan Records crew, who released his debut solo EP Dorisk Ordning in 2019. Bonding over mutual goals in music and ergonomic footwear for men, Martin would soon join the label as co-conspirator. This full length album grew out of the live-sets Martin devised around that first EP. Sifting through these after a number of concerts, he brought them back to the studio for an arduous process of finding the right sound. With a kind of gritty and minimalistic new wave in mind, he has gone out of his way to find the right balance without falling for tropes and clichés. But however far he steers the controls for the leftfield, there is always a pop sensibility to his productions. Emerging through ambient textures and echoes, opening track “Arpa” sprawls out over a curious soundscape, dragging a rusty guitar loop around mysterious samples and dazed synth pads. The following “Buffo” is an entirely different story, kicking off with a dry motorik rhythm and haunting arpeggios that sets the stage for some epic chords. The same kind of epic pop chords that will resurface later on title track “Raoul”. The recipe for kosmische repetitions continues on with “Habo” but sets off on a more wobbly path, landing in a sinisterly funky bassline and brooding gothic synthwork. Its closest relative is found later on in “Svit” - which also seems to have been conjured in the same dark universe as Joel Graham’s rediscovered masterpiece “Night”. While the drum machines are hard at work throughout, it’s on “Vyn” where the drum beat truly gets to speak - and it does - in a crunchy, head-nodding late 80’s New Beat fashion banging with reverb and pierced with staccato synth stabs of the pseudo-Jamaican variety. Most tracks here chugs away on a steady groove, coupled with firm yet dreamy melodies. One can sense the lingering scent of the Factory Records catalogue imbued in the machinery of the album, yet there is also a crisp Nordic ambiance that demands its rightful space here. Perhaps it’s the presence of fellow label runner Ivar “Golden Ivy” Lantz providing his stark trademark violin as guest musician on “Bonum”, or simply the cold temperatures of Sweden coupled with cheap and badly insulated recording spaces in the industrial areas of Malmö. Whatever the case, get ready for some cold waves ahead.

Since launching a decade ago, the label has increasingly focused
it's attention away from generic club sounds and last year's releases include Sigha's IDM-tinged alias Faugust, as well as left-of-centre
EP's from Portrait and AVL.

Joining them for the label's first release of 2020 is innovative Japanese producer 'Masaki Uchida' who displays his prowess as a sound designer and multi-instrumentalist across six tracks. Uchida rips apart a variety of contemporary and classic electronic styles, reassembling them into a uniquely beautiful new whole.

Often walking the line between extremes, the release features both moments of chaos and times of complete silence, exemplary of not only Uchida's bold approach to the song writing process but also
his unquestionable talent as a sound designer and engineer.

The great wealth of multifaceted skills is Ralph Heidel's core identity, evident in the attempt to classify his music into a genre. Drone Jazz, Organic Glitch, Neo Classic, Jazztronica, all these terms apply when we read about his music. He began his career as a saxophonist and by now has also become a highly requested composer and arranger for a wide variety of productions. The 28-year-old musician was signed by Mathias Modica (Gomma, ToyTonics) for the Kryptox label, while he was still studying at the Musikhochschule München. Heidel released his debut album"Moments of Resonance" (2019) with his eight-piece ensemble Homo Ludens, followed by his EP "Relief" (2021). This grandiose prelude received applause on an international level. BBC6 presenter Mary Anne Hobbs, decided right away to exclusively feature Ralph Heidel on her radio show.

Tristan Disco was an ephemeral Japanese project led by Takayuki Shiraishi (BGM, MLD) focused on making dubbish Post-Punk.
In 1982 they elaborate a no-wave full of unrehearsed breaks and cavernous vocals. Boundless dark jamming sessions through shades, effects and reverbs always submerged by a tense nervous bassline.

On the B side Krikor delivers a hard-hitting Industrial reconstruction of "Social Dance" perfect to shatter your brain.
Retakes from the mysterious ambient artist Civilistjävel! are more brooding.
Introspection and faded horizons are the main purposes here but a glimpse of hope still glow.

Tape

Alexandre Bazin's second album for Cassauna is a compelling minimal/experimental/electronic album consisting of one piece separated into several movements for the purpose of stronger narrative and aesthetic coherence. The album explores the concept of percussion and resonance through the spectrum of electronic frequencies and densities with a plunge into the sound.

Percussion-Resonance makes use of a new alphabet, a simple vocabulary in order to create innovative and personal music, with a clear and emotional subject. Structured architectural sequences give way to the experimental. Different climaxes punctuate the work in order to keep grabbing the listener’s attention.The record title tackles the theme of musique concrète developed by French composer Pierre Schaeffer as well a nod to Bernard Parmegiani’s De Natura Sonorum

Alexandre Bazin is a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales better known as the GRM, for which he writes documentaries about music for Radio France.

He is passionate about experimental music and more specifically the electronic music created by Bernard Parmegiani, Iannis Xenakis, Pan Sonic, Fennesz, Alva Noto and Ryoji Ikeda. His music is distributed by Important Records / Cassauna, Umor Rex Records and played at the Moogfest festival in the USA.

Tape

Atsuko Hatano is a contemporay classical Viola player who works with electronics to add textures and layers to her sound. Located in Tokyo, Japan, she is a commanding instrumentalist and composer who constructs innovative compositions with strings and layered electronics.
Cells #5 is an orchestral collection and sequel to her previous album Cells #2 which will also be released on cassette via Imprec’s Cassauna label. Cells #5 required three years to complete and the work features the artist’s signature methodology where the instrumental performances are gradually enveloped by multiple layers of a string orchestration.
When not playing solo Atsuko is extremely active recording, collaborating and playing live with Jim O’ Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi, Mocky, Midori Hirano and many more acts.

Atsuko Hatano: Violin, Viola, Cello, Contrabass, Piano (track 1), Xylophone, Oscillator and Chorus

Guest Musicians:
Eiko Ishibashi: Piano, Marimba, Vibraphone
Yuko Ikoma: Accordion
Natsumi Kudo: Horn and flugelhorn
Icchie: Trumpet, Flugelhorn, Piccolo Trumpet
Tatsuhisa Yamamoto: Snare Drum

Composed and Mixed by Atsuko Hatano. Mastered by Jim O’Rourke. Cover by Saskia Griepink.

Quindi Records returns once more to the swooning romanticism of Cabaret du Ciel, the long-running project from Andrea Desidera and Gian Luigi Morosin. After the contemporary material which made up long-player The Breath Of Infinity, Raintears heads back into the group's archives and focuses on a limited cassette release from 1991.

Originally released on Morosin's own Ionisation Tapes, Raintears is described as heralding a new phase for Cabaret du Ciel following their earlier Solarisation and Weather Colours cassettes. This revised, expanded version of the release opens with 'Raintears (Piano Version)', which originally came out on an Ionisation compilation entitled Imago Sonora 1. Truly evoking the spirit of the track and its meaning, it was recorded on a rainy Sunday afternoon when Desidera's friend and trained pianist Francesco Martignon heard the original melody for 'Raintears' and proceeded to improvise on the theme, with Desidera and Morosin embellishinbg Martignon's exquisite playing with subtle touches of synth and sampling. In its fragile, tape-worn repose, the piece is loaded with the delicate ambience a rainy Sunday afternoon implies - calm, melancholic and wistful.

'A New Day' is a piece cast in light and shade, contrasting two core melodic phrases expressed through synth and guitar, with a light touch of speech sampling adding to the cinematic poise of the track. 'Time Of The Twins' originally appeared as a single track on the cassette release, but here it's framed as two distinct parts which meet in the middle. The first half is patient, gliding ambience rich in the harmonic interplay and winding narratives which typifies Cabaret du Ciel overall. The second half opens up like a flower looking for the sun, all pronounced keys pirouetting across the fundamental chord progression established in the first chapter.

'A Delvaux Postcard', previously titled 'East Roads', takes on a spectral, spacious form as it passes by slow, rhythmic pulses and freewheeling synths, momentarily joined by scattered shards of sampled voice layered and filtered in a manner which reminded Morosin of Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux. The EP closes with the original version of 'Raintears' (billed here as 'Raintears II'), a plaintive and disarmingly beautiful ambient piece centered on Desidera's light and poignant playing. As Morosin himself describes, "Andrea is in a full state of grace, touching the listener through his fingers with the notes into their deepest emotions. The first time I listened to the basic version, I was just speechless."

Tape

Lucia H. Chung is a Taiwanese experimental artist based in London. She performs and releases music under the alias 'en creux'.

Under this alias, Lucia is interested in the underlying structures of what we call noise and is examining the effects of human interventions into its complex web of tones. Repetition and chance operations are fundamental to Lucia‘s music. It is not built on the dionysian maximalism and symbolic harshness of lots of noise artists; catharsis is not reached via an explosion of sound, but via concentration on sound phenomena and small changes, which, not unlike some minimal disco night your usual mind-altering drone ritual, sucks you in more with every tiny alteration. This music is as intense as it is sensitive.

„The Liberated Mind“, in Lucia‘s own words, „is a sort of split release between two no-input configurations“. For „Wyldside“, she tuned two different feedback mixers with identical routings as close possible, as much as tuning is possible at all on these highly volatile instruments. „The two channels naturally phased in and out from each other. I guess the process was actually akin to Steve Reich's tape techniques on Come Out and It's Gonna Rain. The whole release extrapolated from that point onwards...“ Finding and replicating similar routings/settings on no input mixing desks is the nightmare of every control freak and a task doomed to failure, but in letting go and embracing these failures, patterns emerge. And thanks to Lucia‘s careful work, these patterns become hypnotic as she carves out the essence of each feedback loop, or, as she puts it: „Actually, I did remember the setting for the final track „Earthrise“, but for whatever reasons, I just cannot reproduce the sounds and it's forever lost (at least for this point in time, maybe when the conditions are primed again for the machine, the same sounds will emerge again...). I guess that's really the essences of improvised NIMB setup. Every single sound was the effect of the previous iteration and the cause of the next iteration... (Wait... isn't it just like a Blockchain? Ha!)“

A collection of no-input studio sessions improvised with Mackie 1202-VLZ Pro, TAPCO MIX260FX, MXR Phase 90 and Electro-Harmonix Bad Stone Phase Shifter. All tracks recorded live, no overdubs. Recorded in London in February 2020. Mastered by causeandcondition

Lucia also works as independent curator, producer and broadcaster at Happened. Check out Lucia‘s other albums on Hard Return, Falt and SM-LL.

Thirty minutes of dark Ambient, drone and experimentation by Kastil owner of Soul Notes. The album is seven tracks in length and contains ambient, experimental, and noise music recorded through modular synthesizers and FX pedal. Limited edition of 70 copies with special golden packaging, smell of luck and two tacks. Black tape with golden case.

Tape

If Texturalis was a real word it might have something to do with the density or porosity of organic compounds.

In the case of Machinefabriek's Texturalis, the word fits the sounds on this album. Sounds indeed, not songs. Anyone familiar with Machinefabriek knows his interest in anything crackling, fizzling and buzzing. For Texturalis, Machinefabriek choose to work on just that; not to be bothered with creating elaborate compositions, but to focus on creating intriguing textures. This resulted in 18 two-minute vignettes. Each of these could be a glimpse of a continuous sound environment.

Artist-turned-writer-turned-DJ-turned-producer-turned-chef Kiki Kudo, following up releases on Good Morning Tapes, Workshop and Incienso with two kitchen wave rollers for TTT.

Die in Warschau lebende Cellistin und Komponistin Resina (Karolina Rec) kehrt mit ihrem ersten Album seit drei Jahren zurück, einem kühnen und brillant expansiven Album, das sich mit Themen wie Sprache, Stimme und der Unberechenbarkeit der Natur auseinandersetzt.

Aufgenommen von Resina und Michal Kupicz, mit zusätzlicher Mix- und Produktionsarbeit von Daniel Rejmer (Ben Frost, Björk, Foals, Girls Names), ist 'Speechless' flüssig und muskulös, mit breiter Dynamik und einem dunklen und beeindruckend dramatischen Gewicht.

Kali Malone and Maria W. Horn's XKatedral label deliver an incredible album of empyrean chimes and subterranean drones from out-musick duo Tongue Depressor. It’s an in-depth exploration of tuned percussion and just intoned drone that comes highly recommended if you’re into the work of Tony Conrad, C.C. Hennix, John Cage, Philip Corner and Michael Ranta - or if you’re into church bells, gamelan, or Popol Vuh's earliest meditations. Floored.

With a mesmerising grasp of rhythmelodic delicacy and skin-shivering microtonal tunings, ‘Burnish’ makes for a memorable introduction, where needed, to the remarkably attuned intuitions of Tongue Depressor, aka Zach Rowden (aluminium bowls, organ) and Henry Birdsey (orchestral bells, lap steel guitar). Recording and performing together since 2017, with some 20 tape and LP releases to their name, the New Haven, Connecticut pairing are one-take artists whose familiarity with each other’s style results in a such a closely shared musical system or language that it effectively blurs distinctions between improvisation and composition. On ‘Burnish’ they explore aspects of a chiming sublime and its phantasmic, doomier inverse with utterly compelling results.

Both pieces of ‘Burnish’ were recorded in 2019 and feel like long rituals, played with a patience and rigour that effortlessly seduces to their sounds’ liminal, tip-of-tongue appeal. Typically laid to 1⁄4” tape on a reel-to-reel machine, the results create absorbing landscapes from their struck objects and sonorous resonances; rendering haptic gestures with an air-bending magic rooted in millennia of microtonal practice, done to instantly gratifying effect that only becomes enhanced with durational immersion.

The A-side’s ‘Graver’s Block’ spellbinds with its suspenseful lattice of lissom timbral cadence and plasmic rhythmic diffractions hinting at Michael Ranta’s eastern fixations played in Harry Bertoia’s Sonambient barn. It trades strings for bells, with Birdsey on an orchestral set and Rowden playing hand-cast aluminium bowls. They were influenced by change ringing, a style of bell ringing usually found in British churches that uses a set of tuned bells played in often non-repeating mathematical sequences, but repurposed here to take on a completely new form that conjures the spirit of Gamelan as chimes rattle and phase past scraped metallic clangs.

Side B’s ‘Monocline’ however locks into a treacly thick, just intoned drone of molten metal ooze recalling KTL via Tony Conrad and C.C. Hennix’s shark-eyed focus, layering organ and lap steel in an attempt to reference both 20th century minimalism and American folk music. They nail it too, slipping into a sacred mode that harmonises with Popol Vuh's "In den Gärten Pharaos" - all light-headed organ nausea and tense, wavering tones that seem to mimic ancient incantations.

Together, these two long pieces are the audio equivalent of lighting a thurible and suspending yourself in holy devotion. Just masterful business.

Gábor Lázár’s “Boundary Object” is a collection of eight real-time recorded, unedited tracks made in Budapest and Prague between 2020 and 2022 using a self-designed compositional interface. It's Gábor Lázár’s second album for Planet Mu following “Source” in 2020. The title comes from the idea of a Boundary object as a flexible concept of sociology and computation of how collaborations could happen between groups of people who have different kinds of backgrounds and different levels of knowledge. A Boundary object could be anything which translates between these groups to make a collaboration happen. Boundary objects are plastic, interpreted differently across communities but with enough common identity across social words and contexts to maintain integrity. This is a neat summary of how Gábor’s approach and working process led to his music on this album. Prismatic, flexible, and functioning on different levels of interpretation. On “Boundary Object”, the shiny surfaces and uniformity of “Source” have collapsed inward, leaving intact the recognisable pulse and frames of his music. While each individual track has a non-linear structure, the album as a whole has a strong narrative. Passages that start out Trance-like and familiar warp and weft into different shapes as if Gábor is examining the music like a 3d object, pulling at the edges, breaking and rebuilding what he examines, turning expectations inside-out. “Boundary Object” is intense, full-spectrum and a lot of fun.

Faitiche presents Beispiel (German for "example", also suggests playing together), a joint project by Frank Bretschneider and Jan Jelinek. Muster is their first album.

Free electronic music, the result of spontaneous improvisations.

“Meaning” is a concept that is overused in connection with music. Muster does not call for the same kind of air quotes. With its title, German for patterns/exemplars, Beispiel’s album frees itself from the ballast of teleological semantics. There is no overarching theme, no preparation, no reading list, no reason for this music. Just two facts: Frank Bretschneider and Jan Jelinek have known each other a long time and appreciate each other’s work; and they share a love of modular synthesizers and of experimental set-ups designed to capture surprise.

Bretschneider and Jelinek got together for their first joint session in 2016 and the years that followed brought more such meetings at Jelinek’s studio for open-ended musical dialog – at irregular intervals and with no clear objective. The improvisations were recorded in two stereo tracks: one track for Bretschneider’s audio, one for Jelinek’s. After each session, the recordings were processed separately, the options essentially limited to cutting and altering the frequency range. The nine pieces for Muster were selected from the resulting material.

This approach reflects an ideal: music is when you play your first note without knowing what the third or fourth will sound like. When your 290th note still sees you leaving the beaten track, and when curiosity grows as the piece unfolds. Duping is part of Beispiel’s practice. Improvisation is about disagreement. It’s a matter of addressing the right issues. What’s happening here? What’s mine, what’s yours? Are “why” and “where next” legitimate questions?

Muster is an exemplary work. Nine suggestions for what can be. Nine ideas for possibilities of listening.

Arno Raffeiner

Continuing its exploration of improvised music as a haunting ritual at the confines of the Martian territories of noise, drone and ambient, FOUDRE!, the supergroup composed of Frédéric D. Oberland (Oiseaux-Tempête, Le Réveil des Tropiques, FareWell Poetry), Romain Barbot (Saåad), Paul Régimbeau (Mondkopf, Extreme Precautions, Autrenoir) and Grégory Buffier (Autrenoir, Mätisse) invites us to take part in its Future Sabbath. Fifth album of the group, this project stems from a desire to probe the invisible forces that live within us, through a ceremony that brings together occult sciences, forgotten landscapes and the fever of the unconscious. Created around the recording of one of their live shows at Instants Chavirés (Montreuil, France), overdubbed by the band then produced by their dedicated sound engineer Camille Jamain, it is also an invitation to a dance, a secret dance, embodied by a powerful breath of life, an electronic discharge against the temptation of a toxic cynicism.

Gathering regularly since their debut in 2015, FOUDRE! brings together electronic and acoustic instruments, merging incarnate and disembodied souls, past and snippets of a post-apocalyptic future. After the ghostly and hovering EARTH (2017) then the wild and telluric KAMI神 (2018), Future Sabbath travels even further into the tangle of genres and textures, offering a luxuriant palette of moods and emotions. Passing through the tracks with evocative titles, mystical symbols and spiritual signs set this Sabbath of machine sorcerers ablaze.

Following two duo releases on Le Cabanon Records (Crypto Tropic & Othello Aubern), French composer and producer Nebulo (Thomas Pujols) now presents his album Parallaxes, the second installment of our Albe series.

Parallaxes was written for the most part in the spring of 2018. Acting as a prequel to the EP Ascii Snake released in June 2019 on Conditional, it is a consequence of Zellige, released three years earlier on Phinery. These records are collections of polyrhythms and ritornellos of dramatic efficiency as much as they are an exploration of electronic tones. The phrase “music written for synthesizers” makes a lot of sense here.

This new chapter takes a final step in confirming an aesthetic turning point in Nebulo’s career, in which his polyphonic style, entirely concentrated on synthesised timbres (Parallaxes’ only sound sources), reaches maturity.

By blowing life into these coarse and glittering materials, Nebulo reveals with great ease both their emotional potential and their profound tranquility. The composer expresses himself within the slightest shades and accents of the inner life of his constructions, with that global sense that is the art of melody, thus satisfying both fans of sonic spontaneity and those more attuned to an art of nuances. Thus, the sounds are sculpted, twisted, deconstructed and recomposed to form rhythms and melodies that are free in each of their movements.

Having already begun to work on the friction between harmony and dissonance on his previous releases, Thomas Pujols takes things a step further with Parallaxes. Here, he takes to microtonality and other scales of pitch that escape the norms of equal temperament. The repetitions and motifs he uses balance the soundscape by facilitating the reading of melodic variations that do not fit within our usual patterns. These two seemingly contradictory directions maintain a sensation of blurriness as to the chain of events, as well as to the vanishing point towards which each composition reaches. Thus, repeated listenings of the record will necessarily entail a new angle of approach each time, allowing the listener to access the sonic picture in its entirety, and ultimately make the image clear.

The question of multiplicity is precisely the central theme of this work, wherein every change of position regarding one same object, one same point of attraction, results in the birth of a new entity. As we move from track to track, each layer of sound is often the mirror of another, near or far. In their construction, in their existence, their interactions and sometimes even in their absence, the sounds weave a subterfuge that we must dispel in order to truly explore it. Nebulo draws a narrative pattern designed to disorientate, both a mirage and a tangible phenomenon, that changes in the midst of our perception.