House News

In a Word, the sixteenth installment of the intergenerational collaboration series FRKWYS, brings together postminimalist composer Daniel Lentz with vocalist and sound artist Ian William Craig for an album that embraces erosion and the fertility of the loam left behind. A document of shared transformation, Lentz's elegant piano figures and Craig's trembling tenor are wilted, warbled, and looped through manipulated tape machines in a real time composition that evokes a strange warmth and layered beauty.

A “Fact of Being” was lucky happy to invite you to Iasos dimension and presents 3 epic ambient/new-age releases from a remarkable artist. Iasos is a Music Creator, specializing in celestial, heavenly, inter-dimensional music. He is also one of the original founders of “New Age” music has named “the Duke Ellington of New Age and the “Creator of New Age” by the New York Times. His albums often in lists like “the list of 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.” by Pitchfork, “The 20 best new age albums“ by Facmag, to name just a few. Since 1968 Iasos has remained focused and dedicated to his original intention – composing and recording his music, giving seminars, and doing multi-media concerts around the world. His music has been used by NASA, LAZARIS, ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, LASERIUM, and HEWLETT PACKARD, as well as by numerous hospitals, health clinics, therapists, mental health clinics, and surgeons throughout the world. Despite this, we found that some of Iasos’s masterpieces are criminally rare and hard to get on physical formats. In 2019 during discussions with Iasos, we have chosen 3 albums for the first part of the reissues of Iasos’s music on the Fact of Being on vinyl and audio CD. May this music be an OASIS for your Soul. In 1975 Iasos, published his first work “Inter-Dimensional Music” which during the years became an absolute classic of a new age and ambient music. This is probably a first “new age” album ever released. In addition, a year after in 1976 Steven Halpern, with his well-known masterpiece “Spectrum-Suite” cemented the existence of style. Being unique, the music lays at the crossroads of ambient, new age, psychedelic, prog, and space music. Recommended for fans of Peter Davison, Popol Vuh, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Steven Halpern, and Michael Stearns’ early works. Now, after 45 years since first publishing the album available again on limited CD and VINYL in original artwork. Reviews: “It is NOT the typical sounds of the average new age music found throughout the ’80s, it is a trippy, exotic psych sound having roots in ’60s West Coast experimental music. A cornerstone of new age music by real new agers. “l find lasos’ inter-dimensional music needing new words to describe it. I feel as though I were entering a new world — a new and very profoundly beautiful world. –Buckminster Fuller “What’s most remarkable about Inter-Dimensional Music is how immaculately conceived it appears, less a stepping stone than a lodestone magnetizing the entirety of future new age sonic aesthetics. Even its creator, eccentric Greek bohemian Iasos, seemed caught off guard by it, admitting surprise when in 1967 he began hearing a new, nebulous form of music in his head, which he referred to as “paradise music”. Less than a decade later — on May 17, 1975 to be exact — he manifested this vision into a 45-minute suite of smeared synthetic textures, strings, piano, percussion, flute, and field recordings, dusted in heavenly FX and backwards tape. It’s an astoundingly ahistorical invention, crystalizing the essence of a style no one else had even imagined, much less attempted. The only remotely comparable form it shares a lineage with is some sort of outsider spiritual exotica but little in that world feels this hazy, immaterial, and limitless. The sides are diffuse and disorienting, evaporating into hypnagogic wisps of perfumed breeze or quiet creeks of frogs. Even so, Iasos distinctly intended Inter-Dimensional Music for focused enjoyment rather than background ambience because he believed his music could connect listeners to “heavenly realms of existence” — and heaven must be heard to be entered.” – Factmag (the list of 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time.)

In 1978 Iasos has returned with a new album consist of 2 long peaceful compositions “The Angels of Comfort “ and “Angel Play”. These pieces are extremely soothing, heavenly, loving, and peaceful, and it captures the energies of love – on a galactic scale. It functions as a universal healing comforting presence. This genre of music could be termed “classical New Age music”. The philosopher Alan Watts has said, “Iasos is doing the classical music of the New Age.” This album is a “vibrational environment” of soothing loving angelic feelings – very nurturing and comforting. The music can be used for creating a sacred space, for meditating, body-work, visualization, hospice work, emotional healing, and for tuning into angels. It is well suited for relaxing the mind, body and spirit. When Iasos first released this album, it immediately became an underground classic, due to its universal appeal. It was the one of first albums that created a new music genre now known as “New Age” music. In addition, it still is one of the most cherished pieces of music worldwide. The Psychology Department at Plymouth State College had this music receive the highest rating, by quite a margin, for being “most like the heavenly music” heard by people who had had a near-death experience. “Angelic Music” was released on vinyl only once in 1989 on Brazilian label Estúdio Eldorado. This is a first LP reissue and additional CD reissue. Comes with original artwork – Painting “Star Dancer” by Gilbert Williams.

After a decade of a break, in 2001 Iasos returned with a new, first in a new millennium, album – “Realms of Light”. Here you will hear 8 masterpieces of heavenly music that takes you to other-worldly realms just filled with Love and Light. This album continues where “Elixir” 1983 left off! Journey into heavenly celestial realms with a master of inter-dimensional music. Ecstatic planes of existence filled with love, light, color, fragrance, and sacredness. Unearthly sparkling beauty. There are a few guest musicians who beautify the album: Joie Favier from Cybervixen, legendary violinist Steven Kindler who was one of the forerunners in playing multi-string electric violin, and another new-age music legend Sophia Roberts. To summarize, this album is intensely full of heavenly feelings that will make your heart glow.

Imperfect Stranger is the pseudonym of Glasgow based soundtrack composer and producer Kenny Inglis. “Everything Wrong is Right” is his debut solo album for Castles in Space.
Born in 1975, Kenny didn't listen to much music, unless it was the opening credits to a TV show or a film score that had caught his ear. "I loved the pre-title music on a lot of those 80's U.S. TV shows. From the family orientated stuff like The A-Team, to darker dramas such as The Equalizer. My mother would let me stay up to watch the opening sequence of the latter then send me to bed because the story would be too heavy for a kid. That left me with this hanging sense of ambiguity as to what would happen in that hour after the titles came up.”
Exposure to a work colleague’s tiny project studio in a kitchen cupboard was a lightbulb moment for him and the experience of utilising music technology as a way of writing and producing entire tracks stirred a wave of determination to chase a career in music using the opportunities that technology could offer. Kenny figured the best way to move forward was to start a small project studio and learn his craft as a recording engineer. "It was a bit of a shock to the system. I literally had no idea how to work any of the equipment. Kenny focused on learning as much about the craft as he could whilst winging his way through recording and mixing everyone from the likes of singer/songwriters to bands, to voiceovers artists and anything in between. "Eventually, I stopped writing the music I thought people would want to hear, and started writing the music I wanted to make. I didn't come from a music loving background, but I was always obsessed by the way music and film would interact - how music brings this atmosphere and tone to even the most mundane visual stuff. I wanted to capture that. I wanted to grab some of that ambiguity I felt from the TV shows of my childhood and make it into a project of some sort". That project was Spylab. A dark, downtempo project with a cinematic edge. The initial demo consisted of three tracks, with the melancholic 'This Utopia' leading the playlist.
"At the time you did demos on normal cassette tapes. I remember having this endless battle with the bias control to try and get the best sound I could on these little tapes. Ten went in the post one Monday morning, and the following Monday there were three offers from three different labels. Studio K7 were interested in a singles deal, as was Flying Rhino in London. But then there was an offer from a Chicago based label by the name of Guidance Recordings. They wanted an album, and were offering a $15,000 advance. It wasn't a difficult decision to make"
Writing and recording Spylab 'This Utopia' began in 1999. The album took a whole year to produce. The album was to catch the attention of Mary Anne Hobbs at Radio One. At the time Mary Anne was presenting The Breezeblock - a late Sunday night show with an eclectic playlist of alternative electronic music. Picking out the album's title track 'This Utopia', Mary Anne would go on to play it no less than 8 weeks in a row. A request for Spylab to DJ on the show was to follow. "I had never DJ'd before. I think I had a week to figure out how to do that and put a playlist together. I'm not entirely sure how I pulled that off.” In March 2001 the Spylab album was finally released to a hoard of excellent reviews. A North American live tour would follow. From the launch party in Los Angeles, to a sell out show at SXSW in Austin. "I then started a new project under the name Cinephile. It had some of the core elements of the Spylab sound but it was deeper, more cinematic.” Kenny received news that a track from the previous project Spylab had been requested by HBO for the first episode of a new TV drama called Six Feet Under. This was to become a major turning point in Kenny's career. The Spylab track 'Celluloid Hypnotic' dropped during a poignant party scene of the first Six Feet Under episode. Within a couple of days Kenny was getting requests for music from other music supervisors. "It was a chain reaction. The Six Feet Under sync was like the tip of an iceberg. One day I called CBS in America and they put me on to the CSI music supervisor and I managed to get on a call with him. I sent the Cinephile stuff out and within a few months I got this fax through from CBS - a quote request for one of the tracks for a potential use on CSI. It changed my life."
The tone and style of Kenny's music sat perfectly with the CSI score requirements. So much so he found himself part of a pool of incidental writers who worked on all three aspects of the franchise - CSI, CSI: NY, and CSI: Miami. This would continue until 2013, when the last of the series would come to an end.
"I was juggling a bunch of stuff for those ten years. Writing material for CSI, whilst releasing new Cinephile stuff and playing live. As Cinephile continued to gather pace, one of the tracks from Kenny's efforts on CSI was chosen for the Hollywood trailer for the Samuel L. Jackson film 'Lakeview Terrace'. Further trailers would follow, from Gangster Squad to Dead Man Down, Spike Lee's Undisputed Truth, to Fifty Shades Freed.
At the same time, Kenny picked up his first factual commissions in the UK, and this too would be the beginning of a regular run of fully scoring factuals and documentaries. By 2021, six of these had won BAFTAs. He also would find himself soundtracking adverts for the likes of Nike, Audi, and American AirlinesIn early 2020, Kenny made a return to focusing on his own music under the pseudonym Imperfect Stranger. A tweet from Colin Morrison from Castles In Space regarding a charity compilation album 'The Isolation Tapes' caught his eye. Kenny had made a start on his debut album as Imperfect Stranger and submitted the track 'Hymn To The Sun' (which would become the lead track on the album). Further discussions ensued, and the album found a home on CiS. "I had been doing TV and film stuff for almost ten years. It paid the bills and was as close to a 'real job' as I'd had, but I yearned to get back to writing for myself, so doing an album for Castles in Space was a joy.
“The music I write is like a diary. There's an authentic narrative to everything i do. I don't write tracks for the sake of writing. I write tracks to diarise and process the stuff that I've lived through, and the experiences that have come along with the passing years. That's what makes me tick. It's a very public and vulnerable way of expressing myself. If people want to know the real me, all they have to do is listen."

J-Walk returns this summer with a new Vinyl LP Mediterranean Winds.

A deep set of Vangelis-inspired sounds plunging the listener into waters deep whilst leaving crumpled anoraks behind, before forging the sound into the soulful vibrations of the J-Walk world we love!

‘Demos/sketches/interludes from the hinterland between records. Drum machines and single take vocal sketches tied together with downtime synth experiments and recordings of local disappearing areas.’ True as it is, Jabu’s strap-line is a somewhat understated take on what also proved to be a transformative experience for them. The follow-up record to their 2020 sophomore LP ‘Sweet Company’ (and the ensuing ‘Versions’), ‘Boiling Wells’ weaves a smudged, group -mind spell. Originally released earlier this year without fanfare as a digital-only release, it now receives the proper release attention it deserves, issued in a neatly packaged vinyl edition of 300 copies. Dreamlike, woozy, raw and in dub, the album documents a blossoming process, and encapsulates a fragment in time - holed up in the country, soaking up the atmosphere in collective isolation, creatively embracing the limitations of a small recording set-up, and finding a new way to work as a band. “My mum had gone away so we’d decided to take the mixing desk and a couple of drum machines out to her house and set it up in the front room. We did it a couple of times to get the bulk of the tunes on 'Boiling Wells' done, one in summer and one boozy one around Christmas. I think we all immediately enjoyed working that way, sat around all together, more of an immediate thing. Jas started to play a lot more guitar, her and Al would write lyrics on the fly or be programming a drum beat in or something. We were all switching around and getting ideas down really quickly, not worrying too much if they were good or not. The music was limited by the stuff we had there, I didn’t bring a big desk so we only had six channels or so, and everything was basically just recorded in as a stereo take so we were more or less stuck with it after we’d laid it down - which was nice too. I don’t think we would’ve changed them anyway; it was the sound of the room and of us doing it together in the moment that was really important.” There has always been a collaborative heart to Jabu, though its nature has shifted and morphed over time. In their earliest incarnation, in after-school jams, Alex Rendall would rap over Amos Childs’ beats, but by the time they began releasing music in 2012, Al had found his singing voice – a sweet, soulful counterpoint to Amos’ increasingly dub-wise, experimental backing. Both are founder members of Bristol’s Young Echo, a collective of friends and musicians first operating loosely together on radio shows, artistic collaborations and events, and later on, running a record label. As expansive as their original remit was, Young Echo has steadily evolved since featuring in The Wire’s 2013 cover feature on Bristol’s new school of post-dubstep bass music. Of late, Seb (aka Vessel) has been working with violinist Rakhi Singh on string arrangements for Jabu, and the upcoming residency at Bermondsey’s MOT will showcase relative newcomers Birthmark and Intel Mercenary alongside the regular crew. Jabu’s debut album proper, ‘Sleep Heavy’, arrived in 2017 courtesy of Blackest Ever Black. A sublime, focused meditation on grief and loss written largely by Amos and Al, it marked the debut of Jasmine Butt (aka Guest), adding a further layer of vocal texture to their palette. ‘Sweet Company’, their first album written as a trio (released via their own do you have peace? label), drifted into lighter, more ethereal introspection. Featuring guest appearances by Sunun and Daniela Dyson, remixes by Equiknoxx’s Time Cow and Young Echo ‘s Ossia teased out the inherent pop and dub sensibilities respectively. Recent times have also seen remixes by kindred spirits Seekers International and Jay Glass Dubs, and a collaboration with the renowned T.S. Eliot Prize-winning dub Poet and musician Roger Robinson on a pair of plaintive, aching 7” singles. Jabu’s broad raft of inspirations can be experienced first -hand on their monthly NTS Radio show ‘Music 4 Lovers’, co -hosted by long-time friend and soul afficionado Andy Payback. A celebration of the endless tapestry of interrelated musical connections, it runs parallel to Jabu’s own reinterpretation of their influences. For ‘Boiling Wells’, Amos remembers a diet of “A.R. Kane, Cocteau Twins, DJ Screw, Southern/Memphis rap mixtapes, early 90’s jungle, Karen Dalton, Sybille Baier, Vashti Bunyan, Svitlana Nianio, a lot of soul, Armand Hammer & Alchemist, Grouper, Bobby Caldwell. Jazz was a constant, Japanese, Polish, Latin, American…”. And from those diverse strands, something new and singular has formed, to line up alongside them. ‘Boiling Wells (Demos ‘19-’22)’ is released by UK newcomer Six of Swords in a limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, pressed on black vinyl housed in full colour 270 gsm matt varnish sleeve and black paper inner, with full download coupon

Das Debüt von Jazz-Ausnahmetalent Jamael Dean ab 8.11. auf Stones Throw Records. Gerade einmal 20 Jahre ist er alt. Schon mit 15 hat er an Kamasi Washingtons "Heaven And Earth" Album mitgewirkt und tourte als Teil des Thundercat Trios. Black Space Tapes wurde koproduziert, kompiliert und sequenziert von Carlos Niño, weltweit gefeierter Produzent, Komponist, Arrangeur und DJ.

Root Strata boss Jefre Cantu-Ledesma returns to Mexican Summer with a gorgeous, dusk-lit new LP

Some records aren’t as simple as they seem. Most are capsules of beauty and creative vision, or sublime objects of expression which occupy the abstract realms. But the rare few are also discrete philosophies, realised in sound - a truth brought to the forefront by Mexican Summer veteran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s, latest venture, Tracing Back The Radiance.

A radical departure from pop drenched melodies which have defined his recent efforts, its experimental forms offer a dynamic rethinking of the terms and possibilities of discourse and collaboration - a vast ambient landscape of abstraction, texture, and tone, beneath which lingers a veiled vision, addressing the challenges of our increasingly disassociated age. A slow, delicate meditation - open space punctuated by the restrained harmonics of vibraphone, processing, flute, pedal steel, synthesizer, piano, organ, and voice, Tracing Back The Radiance grew from a few simple piano lines, a need for change, and an evolving process which fell somewhere between conversation, singular vision, and a wild game of exquisite corpse - Cantu-Ledesma acting as contributor, servant, and guiding force to the emerging album’s all-star cast of voices - John Also Bennett, Marilu Donavan, Chuck Johnson, Gregg Kowalsky, Mary Lattimore, David Moore, Meara O'Reilly, Jonathan Sielaff, Roger Tellier Craig, and Christopher Tignor, each responding and intervening from various corners of North America.

With nods to historic high-water marks in ambient and electroacoustic music, as well Italian minimalist pioneers like Gusto Pio, Lino Capra Vaccina, and Francesco Messina + Raul Lovisoni, Cantu-Ledesma delves forward with one of his most ambitious, elegant, and exciting endeavors of his career, retaining every bit of the ease and openness in musical language which has guided him across the decades. A beautiful, immersive, melancholic, and contemplative balm for the troubled times in which it was made.

Previously issued on three rare cassetteonly editions, Joanna Brouk’s 1980 sophomore album The Space Between has finally been given spacious LP quarters. The side-long title track, performed by Brouk’s Mills College instructor and sometime-lover Bill Maraldo is among the deepest and most distinctive pieces in the new age canon, while side B’s three cuts expand the theme in hypnotic new directions.

Jon Hopkins 2nd album 'Contact Note' on standard double black vinyl. Divided in three distinct movements, 'Contact Note' slowly evolves into a deep, compelling musical experience concluding with the stunning third part where Jon masters to perfection his skills as a classically trained musician, to give his most abstract work delicate impressionist touches. Classical piano contrasts with drifting atmospheres and twisted rhythms on the dark, edgy and gripping 'Black And Red' - to culminate with the waving synths and sumptuous vocals of the blissful 'Luna Moth', the perfect end of a glorious sonic adventure.

The Bug and Ghost Dubs relentlessly probe and atomize original material culled from Kevin Richard Martin's critically acclaimed 'Sub Zero' album. ("Monolithic and unforgiving, even by the Bug’s standards, representing his most suffocating take on ambient dub yet." Pitchfork)

Remixed to punish sound systems and freeze up the dance, both Fiedler and Martin trade fresh, contrasting blows, after their recent IMPLOSION face off album on PRESSURE last year. (Dub/Reggae album of the year, 2025, in 'The Wire')

The resulting 4 remixes are every bit as hypnotic and persuasive as you would hope for from productions fresh out the soundlabs of Michael Fiedler aka GHOST DUBS and Kevin Richard Martin under his dancefloor destroying Bug alias. Both producers intensify the desolate mood of the originals but introduce demolition inducing beats which provide the literally irresistible momentum. Echoes of the originals are respected and heard throughout, but the extra gear shifts pay off brilliantly.

Guaranteed to push serious air, and test the most powerful of sub woofers, these 4 remixes vary from heavy to superheavyweight. i.e. GHOST DUBS outputs a deliriously stoned headnod with his zonal refix of 'When I'm Gone', which miraculously sounds both subtley mysterious, but monolithically huge, whilst The Bug prowls ice cold, on the noirish, narcotic, instrumental hip hop of 'Too Human', which sounds like prime Mobb Deep mixed by Rhythm & Sound' at 16 bpm.

Essential remixes of an already very special album, the original atmosphere is not only captured expertly, it is categorically amplified. LARGE.

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh’s Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.

Atmosphere and gravity lean into each other. They are simultaneously expansive, and anchoring. They hold us, and lend a sense of perspective. They provide a stability and a knowingness which is essential in the absolute, and yet we can't help but find ourselves gazing upward, outward and reaching towards that which sits outside those things and ways we know. Selene is a record about that this lingering desire for that which sits beyond. It is work that seeks new perspectives snatched from familiar vistas, and it meditates on that sense of anchor and perspective. The work is also a speculative hymn to the visions of the celestial zones that spill ever outward. These visions, once merely what we could perceive with the naked eye are now so much more. Our minds eye is fed in equal parts by radio telecopy, filmic dreams and fiction renders of a place most of us will never know first-hand. This recording ties into a linage that reaches back, while stretching forward. It is just one story of so many, told across places, across cultures, across generations. It sits in the in-between of before and after, and in that moment invites us to situate ourselves and lean into it.

‘Cull Portal’ was an idea that came to life during Sydney’s 2nd lockdown in 2021 when the world was in limbo and time felt like it was standing still.
It’s an exploration of modal harmony and improvisation, extrapolated over the course of the eight tracks. Woozing analog synths, grand piano, live drums and Jeremy Rose’s tenor sax set the tone for this fusion spiritual jazz/ electronic release. Cull Portal definitely nod’s its head to the past while intrinsically pushes the genre forward at the same time.
“I set myself the task of writing something as economical as possible that slowly unfolds into larger, more complex structures. The seed idea started as a solo piano piece, which later formed as ‘Cull pt II’ and from a two chord modal vamp. The rest of the album grew organically from there.
The live instrumentation you hear on this album was recorded remote during lockdown and is a true testament to the abilities of the performers, especially Jeremy Rose who brought so much life to the parts.
I was fortunate enough to record the original Yamaha CS-80 (The synth made famous in the cult classic Bladerunner score by Vangelis) down at MESS in Melbourne for the album, once the borders re-opened and we were allowed to travel again.”

a time patterned is Lara Somogyi’s second full-length work: an electroacoustic harp record that maps personal transformation through rhythm, resilience and resonance. Built from loops, pedal textures and electronics, virtuosic arpeggios, stacked tape machines, ambient processing, contemporary extended harp techniques, sweeping symphonic language, and field recordings.

In Celtic mythology, Clota was the patron Goddess of the River Clyde. "Almost all the rivers of Scotland were abodes of goddesses, but about many of them there are no surviving stories. The goddess of the Clyde was ‘the purifying one’.. " Donald MacKenzie 'Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend' (1917) Following the warmly received 'An Garradh', and 'Tarbolton Bachelors Club', Steven Anderson (Letters From Mouse) returns to Subexotic with another emotionally inquisitive, fascinating psycho-geographical work. Although very little is known about the goddess Clota, Anderson intuitively understands the River Clyde provides a rich landscape to explore her legacy. Dominating its environment, and steeped in ancient and modern historical significance, 'Clota' simultaneously reflects on what is, and what has been. Through deft application of modular synthesis, Anderson's trademark ability to weave extraordinary musical dialogues with time and place, conjures new life into this long-forgotten deity.

Behind Ljudbilden and Boelja you'll find the melodic ambient veterans Kristofer
Strom and Markus Clemmedson. They've been following parallell musical paths
since at least 20 years and are now finally releasing their official collaboration
project with Malmo Inre. Embers is an improvisational meeting where they
explore the borderland between electronic and acoustic instrumental music.

In partnership with Ebb Software and Kepler Interactive, we’re happy to present the haunting soundtrack to Scorn on vinyl.

14 tracks mastered specially for vinyl will be pressed to heavyweight black discs, and housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve. Artwork is by Ebb Software.

To complement the visceral, nightmarish Giger- and Beksiński-inspired art design, Scorn’s composers created an ambient soundtrack that blurs the line between sound design and music. Brian Williams, aka Lustmord, is often credited for creating the dark ambient genre, and has arranged two whole-side suites of his cues for Scorn. His pieces slowly unfurl in a broodily meditative way, emanating with emptiness and loss. AdisKutkut contributed under the alias Aethek, delivering oppressive, sci-fi-industrial tracks filled with deep synth pads, twisted harmonics, and metallic sounds triggering cavernous reverbs.

Like a winding system of trails and paths cutting through a digital forest-scape, M. Sage's Paradise Crick is shaped by time. Full of wonder and charm, designed patiently and from a rich, curious mulch of synthesized and acoustic sound, the versatile American artist and magic realist's new suite of music is an imaginary destination and a pastoral fantasy that envisions the natural and fabricated worlds as one. Matthew Sage is a musician, intermedia artist, recording engineer and producer, publisher, teacher, partner, and parent. Assembling a sprawling and idiosyncratic catalog of experimental studio music between Colorado and Chicago since the early 2010s, recent highlights include The Wind of Things (Geographic North, 2021), an ensemble-recorded expression of bow-splashed nostalgia, and the four seasonal albums of Fuubutsushi, the improvisatory ambient jazz quartet he formed with friends from afar in 2020. Sage renders projects with nuanced velocity and a completist sensibility _ when it's finished, it's done _ which is what makes Paradise Crick, his debut for RVNG Intl., a compelling outlier. Sage first staked his tent in Crick's conceptual campground five years ago from his home studio in Chicago (he's since returned to Colorado, home to the mountains and prairies often personified in his work). He had just read Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, a kaleidoscopic reflection of pastoral America's shifting identity by way of magical fishing sojourns. Inspired by that feeling, of getting lost but finding oneself in through the outdoors, he amassed over seventy demos documenting a fictional soundtrack for camping. Pull up to this park, and the sign might read, "Welcome to Paradise Crick. Fire Danger Is Low." The sequence, pruned down to thirteen tracks, courses the dewy mornings, afternoon hikes, and firelit nights of a weekend expedition. While Sage is not a filmmaker, he views the method of making this album as a similar form of world-building via structure, narrative, formal elements, and editorial refinement. Contrasted with his collaborative craft, here he is a sole auteur reclined in total autonomy, able to improvise scenes and implement special effects at will. A parallel precedent for such unchecked imagination in the M. Sage canon is A Singular Continent, his 2014 album that tilted its compass to a faraway land. Where Continent built its world layering samples as composition, Paradise Crick deploys a balance of accessible song structures with experimental instrumentation and sound design. Speckled with harmonica, autoharp, chimes, penny whistle, voice, hand percussion, and other mysteries, Crick's texture is treated as a sensorial adventure; the swamps gurgle, the lakes glisten, and the valleys breathe in robust HD. The rhythms are loose and buoyant, bursting with a few `kick and snare' moments shaped by Sage's lifelong love for drumming and headphone prone electronic music. Crick bumps more than most anything he's done before; crackling static pulses and lush vibrations reveal an intrinsic groove, a hidden beat map. In the landscapes of Paradise Crick, science and magic co-exist, 5k boulders and midi frogs share the frame with real-life memories of Midwest camping trips and the desire to feel extra human in a digitized space. Sage strived for "nature in the holodeck" but couldn't help leaving fingerprints in the simulation, and it's these traces of spirit and character that give Paradise Crick its strange allure. The album's bubbling sense of play, melody, and timbre takes cues from left-field electronic lineage; synth pioneers like Tomita and Raymond Scott up through the more expressive pop tendencies of Woo, Stereolab and the Cocteau Twins, and into contemporary composers like Sam Prekop. The album's vocabulary is uncomplicated; the gestures are sweet and inviting, intended to lull the listener. As much as Sage continues to be an experimentalist by nature in his work, with Paradise Crick, he spins a narrative. Not necessarily a concept album, but rather an invitation to take off for a weekend. That's the modus operandi down here in the Crick, we stretch out. M. Sage's Paradise Crick will be released May 26, 2023 in LP, CD, and digital editions. A portion of the proceeds from this release will benefit Earthjustice, the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization.

A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether.
Marlene Ribeiro’s first albumunder her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop.

This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca across a series of releases on labels such as Tesla Tapes and Zamzam and a long period as a member of audial iconoclasts and Rocket mainstays GNOD, not to mention collaborations with the like of Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore.

Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford.
It’s genesis came via a visit to Marlene’s maternal grandmother Emilia, whose influence as well as the sounds of her kitchen in Portugal.
can be heard on the album’s first track ‘Quatro Palavras’.

“Emilia ended up getting excited about me being able to record things there and then and - total news to me - told me she used to sing a lot when she was younger to the point of getting offered studio time but refusing it as she was fearful of what that could imply in those times” relates Marlene “From that point I planned to include her in this record as sort of the chance she never had of getting her voice out there.”

Elsewhere, a disarmingly catchy and irresistible grace is married to
a utilitarian approach to sound and texture. The ritualistic “Sangue De Lua de Lobo” (first released on a Sofia records compilation Songs Of The Lunar Eclipse) contains random objects from Marlene’s then-garden in Ireland, whereas on the drifting, beatific ‘Forever’ the percussion tracks are constructed from the sounds of pots and pans in her own Salford kitchen.

Yet at all times her fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the
loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is
very much Marlene’s alone.

“It’s all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection and hopefulness” is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Sol
is also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her roots
and looking out to new celestial horizons.

Mattias Petersson debuts on the Swiss label Hallow Ground with »Triangular Progressions,« a suite in nine parts written entirely in the SuperCollider environment using additive synthesis. The starting point for the evocative piece is a magic number triangle that Petersson invented during his early composition studies and which has been an obsession of the artist for over twenty years, previously forming the foundation of many other of his works. By exploring the harmonic progressions found hiding within the triangle, »Triangular Progressions« at once emits a sense of introspective calm that fosters deep listening and evokes a whole spectrum of emotions, mediating between the abstract and the visceral.

The Stockholm-based Petersson, also known under the moniker Codespira1 and for his long-term collaboration with violinist George Kentros as There Are No More Four Seasons, has been active as a composer of computer music as well as an artist in the realms of live coding and modular synthesis for over two decades. Originally trained as a classical pianist, he also holds a diploma in electro-acoustic composition from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where he currently works as an associate professor. Besides his activities as a musician and teacher, Petersson is pursuing a PhD in composition at the Luleå University of Technology. Researching modular systems comprising both human and non-human modules, he is part of the GEMM))) Gesture Embodiment and Machines in Music cluster.

»Triangular Progressions« can be considered a perfect synthesis of Petersson’s academic interests and aesthetic ideas, combining a mathematical approach with artistic rigour. The magic number triangle highlights the beauty of symmetrical properties. By exploring its idiosyncrasies, the composer manages to translate them into engaging sounds. The lush melodies and harmonies of the music at times call to mind the intimate organ and drone works by label mates Kali Malone and Maria W Horn while also maintaining a unique signature sound. The addition of pure sinusoidal waves enables a deep listening exploration of the counterpoint between melodic and harmonic rhythms, chord structures and spectral harmonies that Petersson extrapolates from those magic numbers.

Marjaa: The Battle of the Hotels” is a concept album born of the idea of merging singer & songwriter Mayssa Jallad’s two vocations: music and urban research/architectural history. Written in collaboration with producer Fadi Tabbal, the music builds upon Tabbal’s spatial approach to sound and Jallad’s research on Beirut’s Hotel District. The album is a reference to Jallad’s Historic Preservation master's thesis, in which she detailed the history of the “Battle of the Hotels”, a 5-months battle that took place in Beirut at the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War, from October 22nd, 1975 to March 29th, 1976. Jallad saw architecture as a main protagonist of the battle, as she discovered it was the first high rise urban battle in the world. The close of the battle resulted in the 15-year Green Line, an urban rift which split Beirut into “East and West”, restricting movement and communication and creating a violent divide that still resonates today. The album comprises two parts. Part A: Dahaliz, is a stroll in the city, where Jallad tries (and fails) to follow an old map. Musician Youmna Saba is a companion in this journey of remembering the once winding corridors (“Dahaliz”) of the city, destroyed by new developments since the 1960s. Empty skyscrapers propel her onto a past filled with the violence of snipers, and a present filled with the glamorous injustice of empty luxury real estate endorsed by powerful warlords-turned-politicians. In Part B: Maaraka, Jallad inhabits the building of the Battle of the Hotels, as its events unfold. She calls the fighting militias the Blues and Reds, respectively the Lebanese Front (Christian Nationalists) and the Lebanese National Movement (Pro-Palestinian leftists), leveling the playing field, and drawing a map of the battle through songwriting. Sary Moussa produces the conclusion of the battle in “Holiday Inn (March 21 to 29)”, which ends with the ultimate severance of the city of Beirut. The music caters to post-war youth who have never been taught this difficult history. Once we consider the “Battle of the Hotels” as our common heritage, it provides an opportunity to teach the value of civil peace. It is also a call to protest for the renewal, rather than the recycling of the political class that has once destroyed the country and holds us, to this day, hostage of its violence. Limited edition of 300 copies. 140gsm vinyl pressed at Microforum (Canada).

Death Waltz Originals is proud to be the home for Academy Award winning composer Michael Giacchino's debut non-soundtrack album. A masterfully constructed concept album titled Travelogue Volume 1.

TRAVELOGUE VOL 1 by Michael Giacchino and his Nouvelle Modernica Orchestra takes the listener into a journey of both space and time, unlike anything they have heard before.

The record follows a space traveller seeking solace on a planet that isn’t as broken and lost as her own distant world, upon discovering earth the story unfolds throughout its 11 captivating tracks. To say more would be to spoil the journey and interpretation of the listener as the story is told.

The songs have a beautiful, timeless, hazy feeling that transports the listener to their own imagination. Musically, it’s indebted to the easy listening wonders of such legendary musicians as Martin Denny and Lex Baxter (both of whom pioneered the lounge music of the 50's & 60's). While Michael continues the tradition of using driving jazz infused rhythms, he updates this timeless sound with synths, samples & a full string orchestra bringing it into 2020 and making it his own. His melodies (as always) are incredible, weaving in and out of tracks with a boundless fluidity, and the record is so much fun you’ll find yourself listening to it again the minute the needle hits the run-out groove of side 4.

The cover artwork by Henry Abrams compliments the music perfectly, its effortless beauty is something to get lost in as you listen, truly wondrous.

Sit back and let Michael Giacchino and his Nouvelle Modernica Orchestra transport you to a place both familiar and strange as you let the sounds of yesteryear take you into the future.

**LIMITED 500 UK COPIES ON BLACK VINYL** VINYL ONLY RELEASE for RSD: Rival Consoles, UK producer Ryan Lee West, shares his original score for MindsEye, the highly anticipated narrative-driven game from Build A Rocket Boy, the studio led by visionary game director Leslie Benzies. The industrial techno score doesn’t just accompany the game, it’s embedded in the code of the world they have created together. The full score sees its debut on vinyl for the first time as a limited-edition Record Store Day 2026 release.

Set in Redrock, a sprawling desert metropolis ruled by surveillance and automation, MindsEye follows Jacob Diaz, an ex-soldier haunted by fractured memories. As his personal mission escalates, he’s forced to navigate a world shaped by rogue AI, militarized tech, and a fragile grip on control, all while confronting the truth about his past. "In MindsEye, sound is a critical storytelling layer, from ambient detail to emotional drive, every element is designed to shape how players feel inside the world," said Craig Conner, audio director at Build A Rocket Boy. "Rival Consoles’ tracks brought something truly special to that vision. Ryan’s music adds a distinct emotional charge and texture that elevates key moments. It doesn’t just accompany the game, it sharpens its edge, deepens its atmosphere, and perfectly complements the world we’ve built." The score was produced over the span of three years in his London studio, and contains some of West’s most ambitious and heaviest compositions to date.

To coincide with today’s release of the game, the 10-track score is now available to stream in its entirety. MindsEye follows West’s previous scoring work, including bespoke music for 2019’s Black Mirror episode Striking Vipers, featuring ‘I Love This, I Love You’, 2022’s Netflix feature doc El Caso Figo about the legendary football player Luís Figo, and Alexander Whitley’s contemporary dance production Overflow, which was released as a studio album with the same name in 2021. The most recent Rival Consoles album, Landscape from Memory, was released in July 2025 to critical and fan acclaim. A world tour continues into mid-2026.

MMODEMM teamed up with PH17 for a new release – a split tape with tracks from Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig. Side A by MMODEMM side B by PH17. In order to purchase the digital B-side of this tape, please visit PH17's Bandcamp.

Includes unlimited streaming of MMODEMM I PH17 (Split Tape, A-Side) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Musique Infinie is the collaborative project of Manuel Oberholzer a.k.a. Feldermelder and Noémi Büchi.Their album »Earth«, released through the Hallow Ground label, is based on a spontaneously composed live score for Alexander Dovzhenko’s groundbreaking 1930 silent movie »Zemlya« (»Earth«) created for the 24th edition of the VIDEOEX festival for experimental film.

Frequently cited as a masterpiece of early 20th century filmmaking, the movie deals with the collectivisation of Ukraine’s agriculture. The Swiss duo complemented it with atmospherically rich electronic soundscapes that are both deeply immersive and highly evocative. As a stand-alone music release, the two-piece »Earth« album captures the essence of Büchi and Oberholzer’s collaboration that is marked by mutual trust and musical versatility that puts them in a state of »togetherness trance,« as they call it.

Oberholzer has been highly productive as a composer, musician, sound designer, and installation artist in recent years, releasing a slew of solo albums as well as a variety of collaboration records with artists such as Sara Oswald and Julian Sartorius. Büchi has recently debuted as a solo composer and sound artist working with electroacoustic techniques to create a »symphonic maximalism for the end of the world,« as she dubs it.

Both are prolific and versatile artists with a penchant for working conceptually, however their collaboration as Musique Infinie is an improvisational and thus by design an intuitive one.

Their sessions start with an exchange on emotions and thoughts rather than theoretical questions or aesthetic debates. When they get to work—often for several hours—they rarely talk.

They approached »Earth« the same way, improvising freely together and using only a few select samples from the film’s original score in the process. Their open-ended approach is marked by an aesthetic ambivalence that perfectly corresponds with the movie’s own inherent contradictions.

Dovzhenko approached his socio-political subject with poetic imagery and philosophical rigour, juxtaposing notions of traditionality with the depiction of modernity.

Büchi and Oberholzer accordingly work with motives that at o ce seem anthemic and elegiac, working with sounds and musical motives that evoke a sense of familiarity in one moment before transforming into something futuristic and uncanny in the next. Their score for »Zemlya« is not to be understood as a mere interpretation of the movie, but rather a re-narration or even re-negotiation of its aesthetic and emotional qualities under their very own terms. »Earth« is an album that concisely depicts what is at the core of the duo’s musical partnership

Nils Frahm has unexpectedly confirmed details of a new collection of solo piano music, his first album since 2022’s three-hour Music For Animals. Day will be released by LEITER on March 1st, 2024, and it will be available on limited edition vinyl as well as via all digital platforms. Recorded in the summer of 2022 in complete solitude and away from his studio at Berlin’s famed Funkhaus complex, it is preceded by a single, ‘Butter Notes’, out on January 19.

Day may come as a surprise to those who, over the last decade, have watched Frahm shift slowly away from the piano compositions with which he first made his name in favour of a nonetheless still-distinctive approach that’s considerably more instrumentally complex and intricately arranged. In addition, in 2021, having spent the early part of the pandemic arranging his archives, he released the 80 minute, 23-track Old Friends New Friends, a compilation of previously unreleased piano music intended to enable him to ”start over” with a clean slate. Judging from the extended, ambient nature of Music For Animals, it proved a successful gambit, but Frahm has never been able to resist returning to his first love, and those who enjoyed earlier acclaimed albums like The Bells, Felt and Screws will once again revel in Day’s familiar, personal style.

Day, which contains six tracks, three over the six-minute mark, is the first in a pair of albums Frahm has lined up for 2024. In keeping with their nature, however, he won’t be making a song and dance about the release. Instead, he’ll resume his ongoing world tour, which has already included fifteen sold-out dates at Berlin’s Funkhaus as well as a show at Athen’s Acropolis. It will continue with shows all over the world, among them several sold-out dates at London’s Barbican in July 2024, where he previously curated a weekend of music, film and art, Possibly Colliding, in 2016.

The album is best enjoyed in the manner in which it was recorded, in the intimacy of a peaceful, cosy room. There are muffled pedal creaks on the cyclical, quietly jazzy ‘You Name It’ and, during the palliative ripples of ‘Butter Notes’’ arpeggios, the sound of dogs barking in the streets outside. The compassionate, hesitant ‘Tuesdays’ and emotionally ambiguous ‘Towards Zero’ linger with the poignant persistence of Harold Budd’s earliest work, while ‘Hands On’ is a sometimes brighter, airier tune that sets its own, deliberate pace, and, as he has on occasions before, ‘Changes’ sees Frahm employing elements of his instrument’s construction in a ‘prepared piano’ fashion.

Characterised by its confidential mood, Day confirms that, while Frahm is arguably now best known for elaborate, celebratory concerts calling upon an arsenal of pianos, organs, keyboards, synths, even a glass harmonica, he’s still a prolific master of affecting simplicity, tenderness and romance.