Techno News

Are you ready for seconds? Feed LA are back once again with their sophomore full-length album, "More Feed’.

With each release, Feed LA lifts away from familiar forms, offering listeners both inventive improvisations and unexpected harmonic textures. Based in Berlin, the band weaves freely across experimental jazz, punchy funk, and low rock treadings. Sidestepping neat categories and market gridlines, the group leans into the joy of jazz music—rich in wandering detours and pivoting surprises. Feed LA's tracks unfurl before our ears, inviting listeners to the intricate conversations between players, where every murmur, pause, and sudden spark waits to be discovered.

They describe their style as "Free Pop”, a blend of jazz, funk, and pop instrumentation, with a touch of vocal accompaniment.

Get a second helping of Feed LA's unique musical sounds with their newest album, "More Feed,” now available on black vinyl LP and compact disc. Only on Mighty Eye Records!

A collection of Elvis Presley covers recorded by the duet David Fenech & Pierre Bastien. The idea of "Suspicious Moon" started at a party around the topic of blue color. David Fenech had chosen to play "Blue Moon" and Pierre Bastien asked to join in. It was a very enjoyable party and then they recorded the song and decided to plan an album exclusively based on covers of the King. Not that we were absolute fans of Elvis... but as a starting point to go somewhere else. And this is what we reached: in many aspects a premiere for the two musicians. Pierre focuses on (prepared) trumpet for the very first time, while David is heard extensively as a vocalist and is more than ever responsible for all arrangements and textures. Playing other people's material is also a premiere for both of them. 11 tracks around very well known standards. Like familiar places that are changed when seen in a different light. Please enjoy. "Our choice of the Elvis Presley song book for this record may seem strange to many. It seems strange to me as well. Not that I dislike the original music, but before our sessions it had never been a direct source of inspiration. Paradoxically, this distance gave me freedom and flowing ideas. I hear similar qualities in David's parts too. We hope that our relaxed attitude and its positive outcome will be reflected in this album" - Pierre Bastien "The strange thing about these recordings is that the creative process was so fluid and natural_ that it seems that through playing other people's music, we almost reveal something of ourselves. As if these tracks were our creation, as if they were our own children!" - David Fenech

Features new collaborations with Laraaji, Janie Cowan, Masayoshi Fujita, Qasim Naqvi, Brad Weber, Hanna Benn, and PRINTtEXT. A coproduction of Anchorage Museum, National Geographic Society, and Temporary Residence Ltd. What does the Earth sound like? In Stations, the 10th volume in the Field Works series, producer Stuart Hyatt approaches that question with a team of scientists working on the EarthScope experiment. Using sophisticated ground recording
devices, Field Works has created a new type of music in which human voices sing along with the actual voice of the Earth. Stations features an all-star ensemble of vocalists and instrumentalists, including Hanna Benn, Janie Cowan, Masayoshi Fujita, Stuart Hyatt, Laraaji, Qasim Naqvi, and Brad Weber. The deluxe vinyl edition includes a bonus digital album of peer reviews by Deantoni Parks, Green-House, Olga Wojciechowska, Afrodeutsche, Nathan Fake, Ben Chatwin, Sophia Loizou, Amulets, Penelope Trappes, and Alva Noto. Stations was commissioned by The Anchorage Museum and The National Geographic Society. “For those interested in the intersection between field recordings and music, this is a must-have.” A Closer Listen // “A beguiling and quietly astonishing piece of work.”

The audiovisual-collage project 'Section 10_Traces by Filax Stael' was founded in 2013 from the artistic collaboration between Filax Stael (the pseudonym of artist/musician/graphic designer Bas Mantel) with old friend Okko Perekki

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points announces new
single, ‘Someone Close’, released on vinyl alongside
three other new tracks he’s shared this year.
 ‘Grammar’, ‘Vocoder’ and ‘Problems’ were met with
widespread praise, including a Best New Track from
Pitchfork and a glowing review from Resident Advisor,
describing Shepherd as “one of electronic music’s
undisputed MVPs.”
 ‘Someone Close’ changes track completely, something
Shepherd has done effortlessly across his career,
capping off a run of releases that have showcased the
many strings to his bow yet still hold together
seamlessly.
 Over 2022, Floating Points has played festivals across
the globe, including Coachella (US), Portola (US),
Field Day (UK), Sonar (PT), Le Bon Air (FR) and Pitch
Music & Arts (AU).
 For fans of Aphex Twin, DJ Koze, Four Tet, Caribou,
Jamie xx.
 12” black 140g vinyl in a black paper inner sleeve
housed in a black 3mm spined outer sleeve. Artwork
by Hamill Industries.
 Press - Reviews & features in The Guardian, Pitchfork,
NME, Billboard, The FADER, Clash.
 Radio - 6 Music B-List, Craig Charles, Mary Anne Hobbs,
Lauren Laverne, Chris Hawkins, Nemone, The Huey
Show, Tom Ravenscroft, Radio 1 Benji B.
 Club Promotion - DJ support from Peggy Gou, Four Tet,
Bicep, Disclosure, Ben UFO, Bonobo, Overmono, Chloe
Robinson, Call Super, TEED, Joe Goddard.

The Flower-Corsano Duo, the world’s best and only drums / Japan banjo duo return to VHF for their first album since 2009’s monumental The Four Aims. Mick Flower (Vibracathedral Orchestra) and Chris Corsano (frequently seen with Bill Orcutt, Joe McPhee, and other luminaries) work an area that’s not really jazz, not really anything—a stream of endlessly mutating free sound, a unique mind-merge between Corsano’s nimble drums and percussion and Flower’s amplified Japan banjo (also known as a Shahi Baaja, a type of electric Indian zither with both fretted / keyed and drone strings).

Flower cuts a highly original line, playing neither “leads” nor making drone-music. Less amplified here than on the more “heavy” The Four Aims, the strings ring out with distinct clarity in short snippets of melody and a canvas of pleasing electric sound. Corsano’s bag is to charm out a flow of thoughtful percussion engagement, rolling around on his kit, continually varying his attack and approach in conversational free-jazz style. The Halcyon is a precious addition to a tiny discography, a fortunate event even in today’s world of small press overabundance. Thanks guys!

Fluence is the brainchild and first release of sound artist / provocateur Pascal Comelade. Recorded in Montpellier, France in 1974-1975, the project consists of exploratory electronic pieces in the Fripp & Eno vernacular with a Kosmische tinge.

"A Few Reasons To Stay / A Few Reasons To Split," a title inspired by Swiss conceptual artist Urs Lüthi, features Comelade's kaleidoscopic arpeggios and Richard Pinhas' howling guitar, which variously resembles a dreamlike cello and ghostly human moans.

"Barcelona Tango's" off-kilter exotica with pocket trumpet and looping drum beats foreshadows Comelade's later work, which would create a stir in some avant-garde circles for his use of unorthodox instruments (plastic saxophone, toy piano, etc.).

On the side-long "Schizo," Comelade's electric organ with probing, Terry Riley-esque swooshes collides with Gabriel Ibanez's thick, reedy buzz – together forming a truly magical soundscape. These incendiary performances ably join the ranks of other dreamily cosmic, impressionistic guitar-and-synth masterworks like No Pussyfooting and The Serpent (In Quicksilver) as well as Conny Veit's work with Popol Vuh.

Originally released in 1975, Fluence offers a remarkable emotional and textural range – richly experimental and deeply progressive – that sounds at once timeless and strikingly contemporary.

Berlin-based composer and vocalist FRANKIE, also known as Franziska Aigner, and Dominican-American producer Kelman Duran meet at the Twelve Apostles Church, in the Berlin district of Schöneberg, sometime in 2022, at the beginning of the spring season. They were each asked to engage the space’s solemnity, and its reverence, through distinct performances. Their chance encounter, abounding with mutual curiosity towards each other’s practices, smoothened the path for a years-long collaboration, culminating in McArthur, their first joint album. Following a period of exchanging musical fragments and prompts at a distance, Aigner and Duran come together in Athens, and later in Los Angeles, to prepare the stuff and material for the album, slowly developing a body of work informed by shared hauntings, and a commitment towards the disjointed and the residual. Aigner describes her process as writing “into the negative space” of Duran’s beats—filling in, if not invigorating, their thudding and inflections, but without rearranging the integrity of the whole. The result is an album where time and geography are made elastic, and where sonic improvisations become a site for quiet, and cryptic, articulations of intimacy.

GLOK is the electronic solo project from Andy Bell of shoegaze legends RIDE (formerly of Oasis/ Beady Eye/Hurricane #1). His debut album under the moniker, Dissident, was originally released last year on a limited edition cassette by Bytes, an offshoot of Ransom Note Records. That sold out in 24 hours, and was followed by a vinyl pressing of 500 copies, on transparent green vinyl, sold via Bandcamp and two online shops.

However, with that edition now sold out pretty much on word of mouth, due to popular demand, Dissident is being repressed and is this time being made available to a wider audience via a partnership between Bytes and Republic of Music/K7.

The name GLOK is a misspelling of the German word for Bell. The German connection fits well as there is a strong Krautrock influence in the music, especially on the title track, ‘Dissident’, an epic clocking in just shy of the 20-minute mark, which blends synthwave, minimalism, trance, Detroit techno and John Carpenter soundtracks, with Andy even dropping in some killer John Squire-esque guitar licks.

The album was supported by Andrew Weatherall, Justin Robertson, Tom Ravenscroft at BBC 6 Music, The Times, Electronic Sound, Clash, DJ Mag, ChainDLK, Stamp the Wax and Groove.

Dissident Remixed will follow on June 26, 2020, featuring reworkings from Andrew Weatherall, Jay Glass Dubs, Maps, Richard Sen, Minotaur Shock, C.A.R., Timothy Clerkin and Andy himself.

Tape / Cassette
Brand new 70 mins blast from the Hair & Treasure crew pressed a double dung casing for your listening (dis)pleasure.

Recorded between 2017 - 2019 into Uncle Eddie's VHS player, magik happens inside the Archers boudoir.'

In the band’s own words:

‘’A clumsy wife with a tricky nose wants to feel deserving of her husband and a former male beauty pageant winner wants his out-of-place arm implants revised or removed.

Rating 6.2 “

Recorded at the height of the global pandemic, and at a time when remote communication was becoming increasingly prevalent, "Choreological Exchanges" is part of Hastings Of Malawi's continuing investigations into the medium of communication itself. Prior to telephony becoming digital, all phone calls were routed through mechanical telephone exchanges, and the majority of the sounds on side one are the sounds of these exchanges and some of the voices of the engineers who worked with them.

Hastings Of Malawi make strange records and this one is no exception although it has a more linear narrative structure in opposition to what critics have described as their Dadaist approach. Their records certainly resist genre classification and do not really fall into the category of music. Hastings Of Malawi have themselves described previous records as films without light, radio plays and as poems. This one is a dance - a dance that takes place within the chain, or pipe, that is brain - mouth - telephone - telephone exchange - telephone - ear - brain.

"It is a dance record but not in the way that these are usually understood. An invitation to dance appears twelve minutes in on the first side. It is a dance within the wires, movement around noise used as a sculptural material rather than unwanted signals and a joyful exploration of sonic materiality. The second side begins with the voice of a telephone engineer, who states that in the top floor switch room of the exchange is the only vestige of human control. Is this top floor switch room the human brain? The sounds on this side, float between the mechanical telephone exchange and the body where the messages are created and interpreted - it is an exploration of the relationship between thought and the material devices in which telephone sound is propagated and transformed. Side two ends with a long list of randomly generated words created by digital voice synthesis." - HOM

London-based experimentalist Luke Younger (a.k.a HELM) returns to PAN with ‘Olympic Mess’.
Where his previous effort, 2014’s ‘The Hollow Organ,’ dealt in dense, distressed sonics, ‘Olympic Mess’ is Younger responding to a period spent engaged with loop-based industrial music, dub techno, and balearic disco. These musical references, all of which can induce hypnotic states and feelings of euphoria, inform ten evocative aural landscapes which unfurl over the course of an hour and act almost as a counterpoint to the turmoil that spawned them.
Crafted using an array of heavily processed samples, found sound and electroacoustics, personal conflict manifests in “I Exist In A Fog” and “Outerzone 2015,” where visceral noise disintegrates into veiled, ambient strata. The disquieting crescendos of “The Evening In Reverse” and “Fluid Cloak” offer no such relief, while the title track and “Don’t Lick The Jacket” are mineral, multilayered abstractions twisting around a brittle pulse.

One of the most prolific composers of contemporary music in The Netherlands, Henk Badings was born in Indonesia in 1907, the son of an East Indies Company army officer, and orphaned at an early age. Back in Holland, Badings worked as a mining engineer and palaeontologist, but abandoned this career to devote his life to music, making an impact in 1930 with the performance of his first cello concerto. The composer of various symphonies that made use of unusual music scales and uncommon harmonic structures, Badings began experimenting with electronic music in the 1950s, composing the first side of the Electronic Music LP in 1952 for a performance at the Gravesano Music Festival, using 12 oscillators and a violin, the second side in 1958 for a ballet performed by the Hannover Opera Ballet; recorded at Philips’ studio in Eindhoven, it utilizes various sound generators, the final track featuring Dick Raaijmakers, a composer and electronic music specialist then employed by Philips in the field of electro-acoustics.

Inaugurating the “Albe” series— a collection of LP’s to be released on Le Cabanon Records— Fantômes is the first album by Horla.

Fantômes is a musical isthmus, a frontier seldom travelled, a sonic corridor wherein animated bodies, sounds and dreams, instrumental and woody murmurs roam.

Composed over the course of two years spent in Madagascar, the writing of this record bore witness to the insolent profusion and phantasmagorical incarnations of tropical wildlife, to strange rituals, animism and other mysterious relationships to the vegetal and its sensitive phenomena. Horla breathed in the various poetics of these space-times, circumscribed them into an empty shell, to then bring them into music as one brings a subject into painting in order to reveal its drama and imperishable nature, unburdened by anecdotes and the inertia of daily life.

Thus, of these worlds of passage, of cycle and permeability, the ambiguities of rhythm and time, of harmony and tone reveal themselves. Permeated by vast geographical wanderings, the sonic colours evoked in this album never truly take root in one particular place, except perhaps in the ever subtle evocation of a nature of sounds, not without links to the sounds of Nature. These colours arise from the fusion of synthetic and instrumental timbres, with physically modelled synthesis sometimes growing indistinguishable from microphonic recordings of acoustic instruments, who in their turn resemble certain sounds of more traditional forms of synthesis (FM, granular). These resonant bodies interact and entwine, dwindle and steal away amidst relative temporalities, wherein the rhythmic grids, akin to plants, grow entangled.

Of these sonic idealities there remains an anchor in concreteness that awakens the mnemonic power of hearing, materialized by outdoor sound recordings: spaces where bamboos creak in the wind, where wet stones swept up by the sea and the arid echo of the ryad appear on the horizon. It is by searching for templates amidst the jungle’s polymorphous and yet unified spectacle that the composer makes use of stochastic strategies in order to characterize, direct, variate and develop his materials (rhythms, scales, envelopes) in the pre-compositional phase. These musical objects are then refined by means of a meticulous process of editing and writing, creating a tension between determinism and chance akin to the complex order incomprehensible to mankind, who when faced with the immense heterogeneity of a tropical jungle, calls it chaos. With Fantômes, Horla reveals a poetic of spaces moved by their dependence upon a multiplicity of folds and entanglements, inviting the listener to endlessly renew their way of listening; from the minute to the global, from noise to sound, from the separation of timbres to their fusion. Within this space and it’s temporal flow, we bear witness to the birth of a mythifying music from an un-seizable and yet familiar elsewhere.

The stunning orchestral soundtrack is written by three-time academy award winning composer and conductor Howard Shore. Shore’s score credits span over 90 films, most notably for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies. A long-term collaborator with writer and director David Cronenberg, Crimes of the Future marks Shore’s 16th feature film collaboration with him since 1979.
Set in a not-so-distant future, Crimes of the Future depicts humankind learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings and, as humans alter their biological makeup - some naturally, some surgically - the body itself becomes art. With his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux, No Time to Die, The French Dispatch), celebrity performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen, A History of Violence, Eastern Promises), publicly showcases the metamorphosis of his organs in avant-garde performances. Timlin (Kristen Stewart, Spencer, Twilight), an investigator from the National Organ Registry, obsessively tracks their movements, which is when a mysterious group is revealed… Their mission – to use Saul’s notoriety to shed light on the next phase of human evolution.

Itchy-O is an experiential performance ensemble that has mesmerized audiences across the U.S. and beyond since 2009. The beating heart of this fifty-plus-strong performance troupe is a batterie of percussionists accompanied by an orchestral arsenal of avant-instrumentation. Weaving a synergistic spell, the ensemble dismantles assumptions of traditional performance models to break down the barriers between audience and performer, administering a bombast of ceremonial chaos; baptizing the audience—body, mind, and collective spirit—in an elaborate, pan-sensorial ocean of music, mystery, and transcendental spectacle.
Itchy-O has shared the stage with legends such as David Byrne & St. Vincent, while luminaries like JG Thirwell and Dan Deacon have opened for the humbled brigade. Over the years, they have energized crowds as the opening act for a slew of iconic artists including DEVO, Beats Antique, and Wooden Wisdom (Elijah Wood). Their unforgettable private engagements include a legendary performance at Maynard Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards while delighting festival audiences at Riot Fest, Biennial of the Americas, the Underground Music Showcase, and Tasmania’s world-renowned Dark MOFO with enveloping processionals, pop-up performances, and staged spectacles.
In 2024, itchy-O debuted Söm Sâptâlahn, a sold-out collaboration with the Fiske Planetarium. Named for an epic set of custom-crafted gongs cast from six hundred pounds of reclaimed brass at the School of Mines and tuned to a bespoke seven-tone scale, this project birthed this latest double album. Accessible, mysterious, and meditative, it is a bold addition to the itchy-O catalogue, sure to appeal to connoisseurs of the experimental, the contemplative, and the avant-garde.

In an era of uncertainty and introspection, frustrations will inevitably arise. Yet there may also be the potential for change. It’s possible that the warping of time and the journey into one’s own headspace that come with altered circumstances allow a moment to render the inner voice in the service of something transformative and pure. Indeed, Lorena Quintanilla - better known up until this point as one half of Mexican duo ‘Lorelle Meets The Obsolete’ - has undergone just this kind of trajectory in her solo reinvention as J. Zunz ‘Hibiscus’, her second under this name after 2017’s ‘Silente’, is the result of a metamorphic process whereby the minimal is rendered maximal and the personal fused with the political. “It is hard to describe any record as they keep unfolding to me in time” says Lorena. “Now it is almost a year since I recorded it. What I know is that I wrote the album during a personal crisis inside and a political crisis outside. After being profoundly hurt by a person I trusted but also by the structures outside of me. I wrote it during sleepless nights filled with overwhelming thoughts and feelings.” The initial vision for the J. Zunz project was for Lorena to strip her approach down to the basics - “I remember I was reading a biography of John Cage and that book detonated something in me. The author was referring to the influence of Buddhism and meditation, and modern artists like Sonia Delaunay, Lucio Fontana, Julio Le Parc, Duchamp, futirism. I was very charged with ideas.” “Lorelle is a collaboration, so every individual idea is transformed into something else. And I love that, but somehow I felt that I needed another outlet. I just needed simplicity.” Yet the strikingly confident and singular ‘Hibiscus’ marks a move on sonically from earlier comfort zones in her work, into minimal electronics, hypnotic repetition and compelling trance states, arriving at a soundworld in which cyclical synth patterns, eerie ambient textures and cathartic vocal exhortations coalesce into a beguiling atmosphere of otherworldly intensity. Although some might hear echoes amongst these songs of the like of Angelo Badalementi’s ghostly raptures, the bleak epiphanies of Nico’s ‘Marble Index’ or Fifty Foot Hose’s spare sci-fi psychedelia, both the approach and the resulting tapestry here are Lorena’s and hers alone. Yet ‘Hibscus’ more than anything else is a process of alchemy - turning a less-is-more approach into a formidable psychic assault, and undergoing an artistic transmutation that renders compelling and uplifting work from trying times. “I didn’t want these songs to sound vulnerable.” Lorena reflects.”I wanted the songs to be everything I wasn’t at that moment: strong and fearless.”

Since his earliest projects nearly two decades ago, Polish composer Michal Jacaszek has kept some proximity to film music. Initially, his output simply felt cinematic by nature; densely detailed electroacoustic textures on releases like Lo-Fi Stories (2004), Treny (2008) and Glimmer (2011) evoked dimly-lit worlds within themselves, vignettes of the imagination. Over time his interest in sound design and collaboration would manifest actual film projects and commissions, some of which have earned him awards. Jacaszek’s practice — an amalgamation of ambient, classical, and musique concrete — deploys field recordings, acoustic samples, poetry, and baroque instrumentation to paint pictures, oftentimes melancholic, nostalgic, tragic. His 2020 album, Music For Films, marks the naturally-occurring intersection of his identities as a solo artist and a film score artist. The collection is now sequenced and released as a single autonomic movement.

“I didn’t write to particular scenes,” says Jacaszek, recalling the process of envisioning music for Rainer Sarnet’s 2017 black-andwhite fantasy drama November. “He asked me to create a bunch of pieces for a dark fairytale-like movie about love in old Estonian pagan times — full of dark magic, strange beliefs, poverty, grit, and natural beauty.” That versatile purpose from the onset affords the material particular pliability in the album format; the pieces work on their own. Two tracks originated from the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants; another was first used in 2008 project Golgota wrocławska. Context removed, they fuse seamlessly; ten years time between some recordings, erased.

A visceral dynamism emerges here with a relatively restricted palette of sounds. Music moves in measured steps, inconspicuous yet holding attention. Opener “The Zone” is curious and brittle, crawling on keys and a foundational bass thump as strings seep beneath in a raspy hush. Centerpiece “Dance” folds into an ominous and molasses-slow trot through minor chords, spacious percussion, and static, all under the spell of a mournful violin lead. Windswept vocals haunt “Liina” from a distance, while they sink deeply into orchestral closer “November Late.” Jacaszek’s work is that of an auteur; he has signatures that he uses faithfully and with much aplomb. Listeners can expect subtle gesture and baroque grandeur on Music For Films: soaring melodies cloaked in reverberation, delicate piano ruminations, and textural craftwork capable of creating and disrupting motifs, smothering and enchanting minds.

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.

Cintura Interna is João Hã’s new release for Sucata Tapes, a work shaped by accident, drift, and unlikely connections. Its guiding notion comes from “Música Careca” (Bald Music) — a strange term apparently used by Jean Dubuffet to describe his own sound experiments. Dubuffet wasn’t a musician, but he was bald; the phrase lingers as an apt description for music that is naïve without innocence: amateur bruitism, soft sound, raw and direct, where intention is left exposed to errancy.
The piece itself came together without project or plan, eventually forming what Hã calls an “accidental Frankenstein” — or perhaps Frankenoise. Built from recordings made more than 15 years ago on cassette and obsolete equipment, mixed with more recent material, Cintura Interna bridges time and decay, refusing diaristic or documentary framing.
As an unexpected detour, the release also includes a version of the garage classic Louie Louie.

Joe Rainey is a Pow Wow singer. On his debut album Niineta he demonstrates his command of the Pow Wow style, descending from Indigenous singing that's been heard across the waters of what is now called Minnesota for centuries. Depending on the song, his voice can celebrate or console, welcome or intimidate, wake you up or lull your babies to sleep. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We're still here. We were here before you were, and we never left. On Niineta, Rainey finds himself in between cultures, collaborating with producer Andrew Broder, who brought his turntablist sensibility to the project. The two of them met backstage at Justin Vernon's hometown Eaux Claires music festival before crossing paths more through the 37d03d collective, and both contributed to the last Bon Iver album before partnering up. "At first I didn't know what I could add," Broder says. "I came to understand everything is rooted in the drum-even the songs on our record that have no drum." Each song started with Broder's beats, the two of them experimenting with various sounds and tempos before orchestrating and recontextualizing the ancient sounds in strange, new in-between places, also pulling from Rainey's vast sample folder of pow wow recordings, layering in slices of his life. Niineta is a short version of the Ojibwe term meaning, "just me," and Rainey is using the term only in the sense that he's taking sole responsibility for the music. He is protective of Pow Wow culture-once outlawed by the US government and maintained in secret-while trying to figure out where he fits and how he can be creative with it. "These are my creations, but they're pow wow songs, and our language is sacred," he says. Rainey suggests conceptualizing the album as him working the door at a Pow Wow after party. "If I'm answering that door, I want to say, hey, yeah, come on in. But there's fucking tons of us in here. It ain't just me."

Free-thinking Nova Scotia composer, musician and visual artist Jay Crocker (aka JOYFULTALK) channels Minimalism, Japanese environmental music, Maghrebian rhythmic modes and other numinous folkways to create his most focused, vibrant work to date. Based on a monumental, kaleidoscopic graphic score, A Separation Of Being is translated from two-dimensional page to trans-dimensional aural life using an array of homemade instruments, crowned with a majestic string arrangement written by Crocker and performed by Polaris and Juno winner Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Destroyer). Visual scores often provoke ideas of openness, interpretation, improv and fluidity. JOYFULTALK's third album, and second for Constellation, is an altogether different beast. This three-part suite is airtight; interlocking arcs of polyrhythmic deep groove and new minimalism roll out in spellbinding propulsion, the music gathering its warmth from the strings and its peculiarities from Crocker's bespoke instrumentation and analog clockworks. The separation of being here is not division or rupture, but buoyant freedom through conduction of circulatory energies, marked by flowing melodic rondos of gyrating strings and sonic pointillism. A Separation Of Being is a systems music feast for the heart and mind. And lest we forget the eyes: Crocker began developing 'The Planetary Music System', his particular methodology for visualized composition, in 2012. The score for A Separation Of Being is the pinnacle of his system to date. Impressive in scale and scope, this stunning 5'x10' mural (acquired by Nova Scotia's provincial Art Bank in 2019) features geometric multi-directional cycles of brightly-coloured, finely-detailed sound notation. Album packaging on CD and audiophile 180g LP features details on the outer jacket cover art, and a reproduction of the full score on the inside gatefold, and as an exquisite 12"x24" pull-out art print, respectively. Both the intricate graphic score and the superterrestrial music distinguish and elevate Crocker as a composer/producer/performer who's been integrating sonic, artistic and sculptural practices into unique installation, environmental and recorded works for the past 15 years. A Separation Of Being is the sound of one of Canada's most compelling and iconoclastic contemporary musical minds sublimated into a career-defining record of mesmeric coherence and clarity

Early Japan TechNoise at its best, recorded in 1984.
For fans of early Esplendor Geometrico and alike.

The clear vinyl version is only available in the limited 99 copies boxset "artefAKTs from the Early Japanese Experimental Noise Music Scene

Markus Mattern, a.k.a. Kapillarkraft, lands on Slow Process with ‘Transdermal Patches’, a left-field exploration of vintage electronica.

Mattern, a Bavarian experimental electronic musician and professional drummer, builds this album around a plethora of interesting rhythmic elements. Aquatic timbres ebb and flow around almost-beats from analog drum boxes and Moog synthesizers.

Channeling inspiration from the likes of Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Morton Subotnik and even early hip hop and electro-funk, some of it could be described as left-field electro, while some is just outright off the wall. An ever-present Roland Space Echo assists in the creation of rattling rhythm patterns and pitch dives, two of the album’s prominent sonic signatures. Atonal droplets and washes of simulated industrial noise yield an abiding sense of foreboding and tension, sitting in contrast to a few brief harmonious moments.

It may not be one for the clubs exactly, but it’s a deftly shaped piece of work, brimming with inventive sounds.

Released November 28th on limited edition “pharmaceutical” boxed cassette and digital formats.

The album was created in two versions - a limited "color in color", of which 100 numbered pieces were produced, and a classic version with black wax, of which 200 pieces were produced.

After 10 years, Kixnare returns to U Know Me Records with his fourth original album. "Asteria" is a step towards even more experimental and abstract corners of electronic music. Each of the seven songs on the album reveals a fascination with completely different musical areas - from dark ambient ("Plaga"), through oriental ("Mystic Journeyman") / dubbing downtempo ("Impass") to stronger acid ("Mutacja") and techno ( "Omnis"). What connects everything is a constant atmosphere of anxiety - a reflection of the times we live in. Despite a completely different musical climate, "Asteria" refers in its character to Kixnare's last album "Rotations" from 2014, continuing the concept of inter-genre collage. All this comes together in the weekly radio show "Rotations", in which Kixnare presents his recommendations from the world of underground and experimental electronics on Radio Kraków.

"Asteria" is an album consisting of seven songs - almost 38 minutes of an amazing journey, the sound of which was worked on by the legendary Stefan Betke from Berlin (mastering author). The cover is the work of the flawless Animisiewasz.

In August 2020, following some typical delays at the plant, Fourth Dimension Records released the limited edition 2LP (and now sold out) set of Kleistwahr's This World Is Not My Home and Over Your Heads Forever albums, originally released by the same label in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Packaged together in a single sleeve with printed inners reproducing all the artwork found on the original CDs, the 2LP was always designed to represent the first volume in a series of them. This next volume gathers everything on the next two albums, Down But Defiant Yet and Acceptance is Not Respect, both also initially released on CD in, respectively, 2017 and 2018, and presented in the exact same way. 2017's long sold out at source album, Down But Defiant Yet, collects four lengthy cuts which catch Gary Mundy (also known for Ramleh, Breathless and Broken Flag Records) furrowing his distinct and recognisable take on a kinda contemporary psychedelia with dystopian leanings. Each piece nods towards the fug generated by certain ‘krautrock’ groups whilst retaining threads of those uncompromising power-noise surges he built his reputation on, this is music guaranteed to take you to new spaces before forcing you to nervously look over your shoulder. 2018's Acceptance is Not Respect collects two lengthy pieces themselves broken down into seven parts often tempered to the point restraint assumes new, often disturbed (and disturbing) psychedelic or even filmic, properties, this music arrives like a spitting and foaming scream into the insanity of the void and the myriad challenges and questions it inexorably keeps hurling at us. Whereas Ramleh captures the sound of at least two people dealing as best they know how with the constantly rising rivers of shit around us, Kleistwahr is akin to one man having scaled a great height poking out of an infinite chasm and wondering why he bothered. This is uneasy listening sometimes renderedvirtually elegiac by dint of a prowess rarely found in such realms. Of this, Gary himself quite prophetically, in light of how events have shaped the world since said, “I was trying to make the music more spiritual sounding this time as the album is about belief. The first half is about personal and political belief and the second half about religious belief. I was wondering about whether in the 21st Century, you can seriously get anyone to completely change their beliefs and [am] asking is there anything you believe that you would be willing to die for, and the difference between the way that most beliefs have been accepted/tolerated and [are] supposedly respected in recent times in [the UK]. Now our society is starting to break down, it becomes clear that that acceptance tends not to actually be the same thing as respect at all.”

Yuko Kureyama returns to TAL with the album Heart Fresh, her first ever full length release under her Kopy moniker. All tracks for the album were recorded in Tokyo in June 2023 at the famous live house Ochiai Soup. For the recordings of the ten tracks, Ochiai Soup was swiftly converted into a recording studio as the intimate atmosphere of the club and its perfect room acoustics gave Kopy the chance to record her music like in a live situation.

Amazingly Kopy‘s instrumentation on Heart Fresh consists only of a Jomox x Base 09 rhythm machine and an Elektron Digitakt mini sampler. In the hands of Kopy this fairly basic and common gear creates an unmistakeably intuitive and original approach to drum programming, which is recognizably her very own.

Due to extensive live playing in the past two years, Kopy has garnered a lot of admiration for her consistently unpredictable and fearless club performances and has easily become one of the most exciting and inventive live acts from the ever vibrating electronic music scene in Japan.

However, Heart Fresh seems even more focused, urgent and ambitious than its predecessors, the Paredo EP (TAL12 including a remix by Lena Willikens), the Eternal EP (TAL 24 featuring a remix by Elena Colombi) and the split album Super Mild (TAL15). Nothing on Heart Fresh is subdued. The entire production is resonating with its peculiar frequencies, it is wonderfully evocative, open hearted, full of life and intelligence.

The album opens with Night Sarkas with quirky snare rolls played against slashing, nervy chunks of melody. Samples of organ and chimes evoke an rollercoaster spinning out of tune and synch. Hole Hole is a beat driven and melody free short story for bass drum, snare and hi hat with constantly changing bpm‘s. Tir Tone marks the arrival of annunciatory rhythm patterns and a lovely sprinkling of distorted synths. The album's final track Moonlight Pool is the perfect closer for an album of taut, free wheeling figurations of meter and tone, a nod to classical ambient music as well as to contemporary more experimental digressions.

However, the album’s most startling and unexpected moments come when Kopy follows her futuristic inclinations and matches them with dissonant excoriations that shuttle the mind into a completely different place where all kinds of different activities seem to follow their own individual compasses. Imagine to walk down the noisy streets in Tokyo and you hear all kinds of different sounds infiltrating your ears independently from different sources and directions. In that sense Heart Fresh is the most appropriate soundtrack we can imagine for the contemporary era.

Introducing a new project by Discrepant label boss Gonçalo F. Cardoso (Gonzo, Visions Congo, Papillon, Prophetas) and Tenerife electronic stalwarts Tupperwear (Mladen Kurajica and Dani Tupper).

Diving deep into various phantom island mythologies (the elusive St. Brendan’s island being a recurring motif) Lagoss borrow from the exotica playbook of ideas and twist it inside out into a bubbling melting pot of sounds, shapes and patterns that eventually confuse, wonder and (occasionally) scare the inattentive listener.

Built like a schizophrenic booklet of moods, with 30+ vignettes describing the various habitats and moods of the local (imaginary) archipelago, LAGOSS VOL1 offers grand visions of brave new old worlds, independent from the obvious, atypical lines of thought. There’s no such thing as a break from mother nature here, fauna and flora take it all, a constant buzz of local predators, big and small, preying on everyone and anyone, constantly - humans are just temporary guests here.

A nautical almanac of remote notions from a forsaken land, built and rebuilt upon layer and layer of green and blue death - forget Martin Denny, no armchair xylophone grooves here.

Spiritual keyboard improvisations performed by Laraaji and recorded in a Brooklyn Church by Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, The War On Drugs, Mary Lattimore).

Sun Piano finds Laraaji fulfilling a lifelong ambition to return to his first instrument, learnt whilst growing up in 1950s New Jersey. A departure from his FX-soaked cosmic zither jams, these elegant miniatures nevertheless reveal enough personality and inner light
to be clearly identifiable as ‘Laraaji Music’.

This release is the latest step in something of a late career renaissance for the New York City based musician and mystic. He first came to public attention in the late 70s via his entry in the legendary Brian Eno-produced Ambient series of albums, Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance.

In the last few years his music has been re-discovered by a whole new generation of fans via reissues from the likes of the Numero Group, Light In The Attic and Leaving Records; new collaborations with underground musicians Dallas Acid and Sun Araw; a revitalised live
presence that has seen him share concert stages worldwide with the likes of Solange and Jonathan Wilson; and a wide amount of media coverage: from discussing his love of orange clothes in Vogue, to
demonstrating the benefits of transcendental music on BBC4 or performing a coveted NPR tiny desk concert. This latest musical side step introduces a new chapter to the story of a much-loved cult icon.

The first release in a trilogy tracked at the same session. Look out for companion LP Moon Piano, an extended EP of piano/autoharp duets, and complete piano sessions anthology CD coming soon.

With her distinct sound treatment and signature improvised performances, Liliane Chlela has been pushing forward the boundaries of ‘Experimental and Electronic Music’ in Lebanon and the Middle East/West Asia and North Africa for over a decade both as a solo artist and via her various local and international collective projects. One of the most versatile female producers/musicians in the Middle East/West Asia and North Africa, Chlela constructs a characteristic sound both as a composer/producer and as a live musician. She further explores the connections between improvisation and sound treatment by approaching numerous musical genres with her signature techniques. Relentless and heavy dark electronic beats mingle with anger and anguish on Liliane Chlela’s album “Safala”. The Lebanese producer and hybrid DJ tapped into her personal memories to bring forth a sonic concoction anchored in the inherited oral epistemologies of her ancestors. Memories intertwine with Beirut, using incantations inherited from Chlela’s grandmother as building blocks to build an eight track album. From warding off the evil eye to protest sounds from the past year of events in Lebanon, the album haunts the listener to invoke a striking elegy on terror and anger, while inducing a rollercoaster of sonic eruptions.

Mexico city based, Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti debut LP, Pies Sobre la Tierra (Feet On The Ground), on experimental label Unheard of Hope (Peter Zummo, Military Genius). Reconciling Mabe’s steps throughout her musical past, the debut LP features pop and experimentation that reflects her time working amongst the improvisation scene in Mexico City. Mabe Fratti’s sensibility is the triumph of experimentation over technical dominion of an instrument. The experimentation of sound with feelings, with existence itself, with an open heart, letting herself to be transformed by what she lives and hears. This is what has led Mabe Fratti from Guatemala to Mexico City. From the creation of pop songs to free improvisation, from the academy to noise, from collaborations in ensembles and duos to the profound personal journey that is reflected in her solo works. That’s why Mabe’s music converts us to sensible sounding boards: through a hypnotic and captivating performance, Mabe sews contemporary elements like shoe gaze and dream pop with ancestral influences that go from Gregorian chants to Sephardi music, transforming them in ingredients of a potent sonic ritual that causes a profound emotional impact. After collaborating with various artists, Mabe wanted to return to her solo works with the desire to create an album as a whole, not just a collection of tracks. Pies Sobre la Tierra was recorded in Fratti’s room with a Komplete Audio 6 and a MXL 4000 microphone during the first five months of 2019. She used her cello and vocals as protagonists in the instrumentation. Parallel to this, she used synthesizers, field recordings and she outsourced noise with the help of collaborators Concepcion Huerta and Mito del Desierto. Lyrically, she was inspired mostly but not entirely by Murphy by Samuel Beckett. The reason why the album is called Pies Sobre la Tierra (Feet on the ground) is because Mabe wants to refer to the conciliation of the space that we consider mental with the “physical” and “real”. However, even though there’s a sensation of separation, there’s also a unity to which we’re bound to observe through a lens and operate on it through assumptions and intentions.

The debut EP from producer Manu Dia. The Spanish producer has previously released remixes for San Holo, DROELOE, and Robotaki but this is his first complete body of work.
Surface is about coming to terms with the ebb and flow of life and, ultimately, jumping off the edge and pursuing a passion. There comes a point in each of our lives when we face a choice and must point ourselves towards an end goal or destination - whatever it may be. Surface is a reflection of this decision - and the journey that ensues - with every piece serving as a stepping stone on the path.

Ground Groove, the third full-length release from the LA-based, Iranian-American producer and DJ, Maral, begins with an invocation: the sprawling, achingly heavy Feedback Jam opens the floodgates of history. Conventional (linear) spacetime collapses, crushed beneath the track’s lumbering 4/4 heartbeat and successive waves of distortion. As each wave recedes, samples trickle forward in the mix — seeking, perhaps, to fill the void. Voices and instruments rise and fall in uncanny reverse. Overlapping, implied melodies flicker into focus, then flit away. Feedback Jam is at once an initiation ritual, and a thesis statement for the record that follows.

Drawing upon a vast personal archive of Iranian folk, classical, and pop recordings (some sourced from mixtapes made by her parents in the eighties/nineties), Maral presents, on Ground Groove, a further refinement of the signature “folk club” sound she developed as a live DJ— a sound she would later codify on Mahur Club (2019) and Push (2020). By collecting, dissecting, and re/presenting sonic fragments from Iran, Maral practices a kind of dance-floor ethnomusicology. The subject of her inquiry: Iranian


culture and contexts, throughout history and in the present. But, crucially, this inquiry is instantiated within and throughout the body of the listener, whether this listener is dancing in the club, or riding the train, nodding along with headphones on.

Maral speaks of being in collaboration with her samples, treating each as a distinct bandmate, often consulting with an artist’s catalog (or even a single recording) as one would a trusted creative partner. In so-doing, Maral claims to seek to transcend the self. In this regard, her output neatly triangulates contemporary dance and heavy music with much of the traditional religious music that she samples. Broadly speaking, each of these idioms addresses a desire —shared by audience and performer alike—to transcend the self through volume, repetition, and movement.

Having, in her youth, studied the Setar under Nader Majd (the founder of Virginia’s Center for Persian Classical Music), Maral cycled through various genres (ex: punk, emo, dub) in her adolescence and early twenties, all the while expanding her knowledge of, and appreciation for, Iran’s diverse musical traditions during regular summer trips to Tehran. In college, Maral taught herself to make beats with a ripped copy of Ableton (which remains her DAW of choice), eventually transitioning to playing and hosting various club nights. Forever abiding by an autodidactic, DIY impulse to create art and foster community, Maral relocated to Los Angeles in 2013, where she quickly immersed herself in the city’s numerous overlapping music scenes.

Collaboration (beyond sampling) has proven an important component of her process, with notable spoken word contributions from the likes of Lee Scratch Perry and Penny Rimbaud, as well as a 2021 Panda Bear collab track (On Your Way), which the Animal Collective founder co-produced. Maral is equally attentive to the visual components of her records (album art, music videos, etc.), drawing upon the work of peers and friends for inspiration.

Indeed, the genesis of Ground Groove can be traced back to an audio-visual collaboration between Maral and the artist Brenna Murphy, originally commissioned for the 2021 Rewire Festival — a project that would eventually serve as the album’s foundation. Tracks eight through eleven on Ground Groove comprise Maral’s half of this installation, with tracks one through seven composed afterwards, inspired by the fruits of Maral and Murphy’s collaboration. Murphy’s visuals will be released alongside Ground Groove as a visual accompaniment. Additionally, Murphy designed the album’s art, directed the video for the lead single (the aforementioned Feedback Jam), and is featured on track six, Shy Night.

Composed largely on Ableton, Ground Groove features more frequent and more prominent live recordings from Maral (guitar, bass, and vocals) than either Push or Mahar Club. The cult favorite Roland MC-909 groovebox rears its head on Mari’s Groove. Mixed by Trayer Tryon (Hundred Waters) and mastered by Daddy Kev, the attention to sonic quality on Ground Groove constitutes another significant step in Maral’s development as a studio artist.

Ground Groove’s eleven tracks are “grooves” in the obvious sense, in that they are each driven by a persistent, propulsive rhythm, but the album’s title may just as well suggest the glacial passage of time—the scope of human history, in which individual voices, like streams, carve paths (impossibly) through earth and stone, winding their way to the vast sea of the present.

Manchester musicians Marconi Union return with their new album,
Signals, set for release via Just Music Signals is the latest addition to Marconi Union's highly acclaimed discography. Despite having released twelve albums in the last eighteen years they continue to
experiment and push boundaries. 'In some respects Signals is a more traditional songwriting album than anything we've done before, but it draws on the same techniques we've used on our previous albums' After their previous album, the largely beat-less Dead Air, one might think that Marconi Union would be primarily influenced by synth players or guitarists. However, it turns out that Signals was actually informed by the bands' admiration of a number of different drummers
and this played a significant part in helping shape its sound. 'We were quite inspired by various players like Jaki Liebezeit, Clive Deamer and Tony Allen and tried to imagine what our music would sound like with them playing on it.' Signals combines synthetic textures with organic sound, and merges the familiar with the unknown, transporting the listener deep into their imagination. The one-word title is both mysterious and evocative, suggesting a multitude of images that range from high- tech electronic messaging to ghostly abandoned radio stations and even that most basic level of human expression, body language. It Is both ironic and yet somehow so right, that a group so regularly described as 'enigmatic' should make an album that alludes to communication. Although, long-term fans will be relieved to note that Marconi Union decline to enlighten us on what all this means.