Suche:nois

Aaron Dilloway kehrt mit ,No Skill Comedy Mind Reading" zu Dais Records zurück - seinem ersten echten Album in voller Länge seit 2017, einer Sammlung von typisch verstörendem, absurdem Material. Geprägt von seinen typischen Verzerrungen und Verformungen - von Feedback umhüllte Fundstücke, Feldaufnahmen und Gesangsimprovisationen - versammelt ,No Skill" fast ein Jahrzehnt ausgewählter Soloarbeiten und wirkt dennoch ganz und gar zeitgemäß: ein sprunghaftes Produkt der Unbeständigkeit, zugleich hart und humorvoll. Nur wenige zeitgenössische Experimental-Künstler des letzten Vierteljahrhunderts sind so produktiv und verehrt wie Dilloway, ein Pionier der amerikanischen Noise-Szene im Mittleren Westen, ehemaliges Mitglied von Wolf Eyes und Gründer des in Oberlin ansässigen Labels und Plattenladens Hanson Records. Doch trotz seines immensen Gesamtwerks hat er nur zwei richtige Solo-LPs veröffentlicht, neben einer regelmäßigeren Produktion von Kassettenveröffentlichungen und Kollaborationsprojekten. Mit ,No Skill" vollendet er nun eine vieldeutige Albumtrilogie, die mit seinem wegweisenden Werk ,Modern Jester" aus dem Jahr 2012 begann. ,Ich habe fast das Gefühl, dass sie irgendwie Teil eines Ganzen sind. Alle drei Alben versuchen, in den schlimmstmöglichen Situationen Humor zu finden. Je nachdem, wer zuhört und wie die jeweilige Einstellung ist, könnten sie als lustig oder einfach nur als grauenhafte, schreckliche Alben empfunden werden." Halb im Ernst fährt Dilloway fort: ,Für mich ist dieses hier das Ergebnis von, na ja, verkorksten Sachen: psychische Erkrankungen, Medikamente, Scheidung, komischer Scheiß. Das Eintauchen in seltsame Dinge fasziniert mich immer auf die eine oder andere Weise." Neben den bereits erwähnten Einflüssen aus der menschlichen Erfahrung greift ,No Skill" auf verschiedene technische und ästhetische Kuriositäten zurück: das methodische Sounddesign von Alvin Lucier, Andy Milligans Low-Budget-Kult-Horrorfilm ,The Weirdo" aus dem Jahr 1989 und die pop-exzentrische Art des Filmkomponisten Hugo Montenegro. Dilloway stieß bei einer Lagerraumversteigerung auf dessen skurrile Habseligkeiten, darunter Notizen zu den frühen elektronischen Experimenten des Komponisten. Einige der beunruhigendsten Momente des Albums, wie das Lachen, das ,Bring Me The Head Of The Unknown Comic" heimsucht - klanglich eine Anspielung auf die Avantgarde-Größen Nurse with Wound und thematisch auf den Komiker aus den 1970er Jahren mit der Papiertüte über dem Kopf -, lassen sich auf den Einfluss dieses wahrhaft ungewöhnlichen Fundes zurückführen. ,No Skill" knüpft zudem an Dilloways jüngste künstlerische Ausflüge an: seine Umsetzung von John Cages 88-Band-Loop ,Rozart Mix"; die Originalmusik für ,The Absence of Milk In The Mouths of the Lost"; Gemeinschaftsalben mit Lucrecia Dalt (Lucy & Aaron) sowie Kim Gordon & Bill Nace (Body/Dilloway/Head). Während er an diesen und anderen Projekten arbeitete, legte er in Gedanken einen Ordner für sein nächstes Dais-Album an und sammelte Aufnahmen, die zu einer ziemlich vagen Vision passten. ,Dieses Album hat mich irgendwie völlig in Beschlag genommen, seit ich ,The Gag File` 2017 fertiggestellt habe. Zuerst dachte ich, es würde eher ein Pop-Album werden, aber dann hat mir das Lucrecia-Projekt diese Idee irgendwie aus dem Kopf getrieben. Es begann, eher wie meine Live-Sets zu fließen." Er entschied sich für eine Abfolge, die den Hörer ein wenig im Ungewissen lässt - ob erschrocken, amüsiert oder verwirrt; der Effekt soll absichtlich den Eindruck erwecken, dass etwas kaputt ist. Das Album beginnt mit schrillen Kreischen, bevor es in Drone-Passagen eintaucht, die durch zwei aneinander geriebene nepalesische Sarangi-Bögen entstehen, begleitet vom ersten Auftauchen seiner ogerartigen stimmlichen Präsenz. Anschließend werden mehrere Minuten von weißem Rauschen verschluckt (,Forced Auctioneer"). Dilloway verweist auf The Weirdos seltsamen Einsatz ausgedehnter Übergänge mit schwarzem Raum und seine lebenslange Liebe zum Bandrauschen. Er bekam Kassetten von älteren Kindern und hörte diese Geräusche als Teil der Songs, nur um später zu erfahren, dass es sich um klangliche Artefakte handelte, die von Generationen des Kopierens auf Kassette übrig geblieben waren. ,Ich stehe total auf die Idee, all diese Schichten aufzubauen und sie in etwas anderes zu verwandeln. Wenn ich zum Beispiel live spiele, kann es rauer zugehen als bei meiner aufgenommenen Musik, und dafür wollte ich genau dieses Gefühl einfangen - dass diese Ausbrüche laut sind, aber ein bisschen gedämpfter. Dieser totale Rauschklang, fast so, als wärst du unter Wasser." Dilloway sammelt Tonpoesie-Platten, und obwohl er seine eigene Arbeit nicht gerne in dieses Genre einordnet, spricht die Absurdität dieses Handwerks - die Verwendung von phonetischen Lauten und nonverbalen Geräuschen als Ersatz für traditionelle semantische Bedeutung - durch sein Werk. Auf ,Possession Audition Tape" liest er verschiedene Passagen aus einem Buch vor, das von einer französischen religiösen Gruppe aus dem 18. Jahrhundert handelt, die zu öffentlichen Unruhen neigte, und schneidet diese digital auseinander, wodurch er im Mix seine eigenen, echoartigen Stotterausbrüche erzeugt. ,No Skill Comedy Mind Reading" endet mit einem Stück aus Synthesizer und Orgel-Rhythmusmaschine, das auf Musik basiert, die er für den Film ,Supporting Actor" von Pieter Schoolwerth und Phil Vanderhyden komponiert hat - in dem ein Avatar von Dilloway in ein Portal gezogen wird. Dort trifft er in einem fantastischen Club auf posthumane Wesen. Die Szene, die sich irgendwie auf Audio übertragen lässt, versetzt das Set in einen passend verwirrenden Traumzustand. Ein Star der Noise-Musik, ein moderner Hofnarr, der aus dem Unbekannten berichtet.

Für ihre zweite LP ,Iconoclast HaHa" greift das Vierer-Ensemble Aluminum aus San Francisco den Shoegaze, Big Beat und Alt-Pop ihres Debüts ,Fully Beat" (Felte, 2024) auf und heizt die Stimmung richtig ein. Im Gegensatz zu früheren, selbst aufgenommenen Alben besteht das Album aus einer Reihe mitreißender Studioaufnahmen der gesamten Band , die alle während einer inspirierten Woche mit Toningenieur Jack Shirley im Atomic Garden Studio in Oakland aufgenommen, abgemischt und gemastert wurden. Die Leadsänger und Songwriter Marc Leyda und Ryann Gonsalves schaffen weiterhin die Balance zwischen poppiger Eingängigkeit und experimenteller Unbekümmertheit, während sie diese Songs mit Spontaneität, Unmittelbarkeit und Post-Punk-Hartnäckigkeit erfüllen. ,Wir wollten, dass dieses Album gitarrenlastiger wird", bemerkt Leyda, ,deshalb haben wir über Marshall-Stacks aufgenommen, um ihm ein schwereres Feeling zu verleihen und einen schnelleren, punkigeren Sound zu erzielen, der bei Live-Auftritten gewaltig und mitreißend wirkt." Thematisch nennt Gonsalves als große Inspiration ,die Frustration, in einem gesellschaftlichen System zu leben, das dich zum Scheitern verurteilt, in dem du immer ,nicht genug` oder ,zu viel` bist, und all die Wut, Erschöpfung und den Druck, dich anzupassen." Im Rückblick auf das Zusammenspiel von Stimmung, Botschaft und Strudel auf ,Iconoclast HaHa" erläutert Leyda anhand seiner ultimativen künstlerischen Frage: ,Wenn es sich so anfühlt, als würde die Welt in Richtung Untergang kippen, machst du einfach weiter und versuchst, etwas Kraftvolles und Sinnvolles zu schaffen - denn was bleibt dir sonst übrig?"

„Nowawes2“ marks the second chapter for the label, staying true to its sound without repeating itself. Poul Verner delivers another limited hand-stamped two-tracker built around warm analog textures, organic grooves and understated depth. No unnecessary tricks, no oversized moments. Just two carefully crafted cuts that unfold in their own time. The A-side, „Choose Your Future“, settles into a deep 120 BPM groove, drifting through layers of dub delays, tape noise, subtle pads and restrained chords. Equal parts dub techno and deep house, it leaves plenty of space for atmosphere to do the talking. Flip it over and „Choose Life“ raises the tempo to 130 BPM without sacrificing its hypnotic flow. Stretching across 12 minutes, it builds patiently without ever rushing its destination. More drive, more momentum, yet the same sense of space. Dreamlike, immersive and made for those moments when the dancefloor locks into a rhythm of its own. „Nowawes2“ continues to explore the space between laid back house and organic techno with patience, restraint and an unmistakably analog character. Built for long blends, late hours and selectors who know that the most subtle records often leave the deepest impression.

IROIRO ist eine aufstrebende Rockband aus Seattle um die ehemaligen IQU-Mitglieder Michiko Swiggs und Kento Oiwa. Auf ihrem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum verbinden sie instrumentalen Psychedelic Rock mit Noise-, Krautrock- und experimentellen Einflüssen und entwickeln aus improvisierten Jams einen kraftvollen, dynamischen Sound. Die sechs Stücke steigern sich von hypnotischen Grooves zu ausufernden Klanglandschaften voller verzerrter Gitarren, treibender Rhythmen und ausgedehnter Spannungsbögen. Entstanden aus den gemeinsamen Sessions von Swiggs, Oiwa, Schlagzeuger Justin Schwartz und Bassist James Drage, präsentiert ,IROIRO" eine kreative und energiegeladene Neuinterpretation moderner Rockmusik.

IROIRO ist eine aufstrebende Rockband aus Seattle um die ehemaligen IQU-Mitglieder Michiko Swiggs und Kento Oiwa. Auf ihrem selbstbetitelten Debütalbum verbinden sie instrumentalen Psychedelic Rock mit Noise-, Krautrock- und experimentellen Einflüssen und entwickeln aus improvisierten Jams einen kraftvollen, dynamischen Sound. Die sechs Stücke steigern sich von hypnotischen Grooves zu ausufernden Klanglandschaften voller verzerrter Gitarren, treibender Rhythmen und ausgedehnter Spannungsbögen. Entstanden aus den gemeinsamen Sessions von Swiggs, Oiwa, Schlagzeuger Justin Schwartz und Bassist James Drage, präsentiert ,IROIRO" eine kreative und energiegeladene Neuinterpretation moderner Rockmusik.

This is the sound of dream Texas, the cinematic Texas conjured in film and 20th century literary and art myth… big dark blueing horizons swallowing the infinite distance, a lonely poetry of sound, but also a stock taker of the iconoclastic, psychedelic, art rebel side of Texas… the cracked rock music side of Texas, the avant-garde in concrete cracks, the recklessly used, mind expanding drugs Texas, the dripping eastern swamps, the Houston house parties with the sounds of records blasting down the block and becoming musique concrète in the hot summer night.

Chrome Chasm’s debut album Interpreter is ambient, minimal in feel, maximal in texture, beautifully disorienting, vastly spacious— until it isn’t. It's a naturalistic shapeshifter, taking majestic form in the aforementioned elements and then dissolving back to raw genetic material to form anew. Spiritual jazz overtones, pedal steel moans and buzzing, noisy ambient visions are upended by grey-folded psychedelic unveilings. Interpreter’s three expansive tracks present a most detailed performance by its three deft musicians and the outcome often feels like a gorgeous collage in real-time.

Chrome Chasm was formed in 2024 by three of Houston’s brightest underground stars: Mlee Marie (Hearts Of Animals) on alto saxophone, flute and voice (whose long-form experimental sax performances helped inspire the formation of the band), Will Adams (Lower Dens/ Ka-Nives) on pedal steel, synth, percussion and voice, and Tom Carter on guitar. Carter has been casting a long shadow over Texas psychedelia and American underground music for over 3 decades, most notably with the Houston based Charalambides, a powerful creative force of the pre-new weird America era of experimental and avant psychedelic music, and most notably since with his solo guitar magnum opus Long Time Underground (which was deemed among the best experimental albums of 2015 by Pitchfork).

Interpreter’s opening track “The Star,” recorded almost completely live in one room and one take, is a 16-minute manifesto on ‘Dream Noir.’ An astute scholar of cross-genre connectivity and the through-lines of kosmische and spiritual-leaning sonic realms can hear echoes of Cluster, the skronk and beauty of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and the architectural ambient flow of Harold Budd and Philip Glass in the tidal lapping of distorted guitar, mantra-like saxophone and pedal steel flow. From its deconstructed, pastoral opening moments to its proto-electronic center that crests into a bombastic polytonal climax, Chrome Chasm never neglect narrative arc for experimentation and avant technique. In fact, as a group, they effortlessly control, open, fill and contract space in abeyance to emotional vibration. “The Star,” and indeed the album as a whole, feels more like a communion or extended poem, in direct communication with the listener, than it does a ‘captured experience.’

Across the three longform tracks of Interpreter, Chrome Chasm conducts a masterclass in fusing real time performance energy with an abstract, cut-up master’s reimagining of the literal. They demand the listener meet their music with dream logic and then, like the best dream peddlers, they present a labyrinth to fall into and experience, a place where explanation and conclusion become obsolete, and engagement and immersion become sublime.

What happens when bassweight electronic beats meet the abstract world of one of the most uncompromising MCs on this planet?

Get ready for a special listening experience as Abu Ama and Sensational take you deep into a world of heavy bass, fractured rhythms, strange frequencies and completely unpredictable flows.

Abu Ama is known for his unique production style, combining Dub, Ambient and Industrial soundscapes with Middle Eastern sound structures. His productions create vast, atmospheric spaces where bass pressure and subtle details constantly collide. Over the years, he has developed his signature sound through releases on forward-thinking labels such as Bokeh Versions and Accidental Meetings. With Ringing In Your Ear, Abu Ama presents some of his most adventurous and forward-thinking productions to date.

On the microphone, we are proud to present a true underground legend straight outta NYC: Sensational.

Born Colin Julius Bobb in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, Sensational became one of the most distinctive and unpredictable voices to emerge from New York’s experimental hip-hop underground. Originally performing under the name Torture, he was already connected to the Jungle Brothers in the early 1990s before developing the completely unique style that would become synonymous with Sensational.

In 1997, he released his debut album Loaded With Power on the influential Word Sound label. Built from dusty beats, unusual samples and lo-fi textures, the record established Sensational as an artist who seemed to operate completely outside the established rules of Hip Hop.

Over the following decades, he continued to explore the space between underground rap, experimental electronics, noise and abstract music. His long list of collaborators included artists such as Spectre, Kouhei Matsunaga, Kid 606, Cardopusher, Handsome Boy Modeling School and many others. His work with Kouhei Matsunaga was even remixed by Autechre.

Sensational was never interested in fitting into a particular scene. His rhymes were surreal, his flows unpredictable and his approach completely his own. For more than three decades, he remained a true outsider — a cult figure whose music connected underground Hip Hop with some of the strangest and most adventurous corners of experimental music.

After Abu Ama and Sensational’s heavy 2023 single International Rokkaz left us wanting more, the two decided to take things much further. What started as a single collaboration evolved into a full length soundclash.

We were already incredibly hyped about this collaboration from the moment we heard it. But while we were preparing for the release of the single MOZZ, the terrible news reached us: Sensational had passed away.

The news hit hard. It is still difficult to believe that we will never hear a new Sensational verse again.

What makes Ringing In Your Ear even more special is that it captures Sensational doing what he did best — completely free, completely unpredictable and completely himself.

We dedicate this record to Colin Julius Bobb aka Sensational, in loving memory of an extraordinary artist, MC and true underground original.

Rest in power, Sensational.

Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electro-acoustic and synth-based audio as accompaniment.

After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nikolais became the first owner of Robert Moog's synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York in late 1964. Relying heavily on the Moog and later the Synclavier synth/sampler, these 21 tracks document Nikolais' highly-prescient compositions across the mid 1960s through to the late 1980s - existing not only as extensions of his other-worldly choreographic productions, but standalone pieces of foundational mid-century American electronic and experimental music.

"Born in Southington, Connecticut in 1910, Nikolais’s early years and early career were in acting, music and puppetry. It was not until the late 1930s that he began his work as dancer/choreographer in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was commissioned by the Avery Memorial Theatre, a part of the Wadsworth Atheneum, to create an evening-length work to the music of Ernst Krenek. Previously his work and study as a pianist-organist found him accompanying silent films. This sort of accompaniment required from the musician not only a playing skill but also a versatility in improvisation, matching movement to sound, and evoking mood to situation.

Nik was drawn initially to dance by his involvement with the percussion scores used by the illustrious early twentieth century German dancer Mary Wigman. In trying to learn more about percussion, he was lured into dance class and thus his career began. His development of music and dance occurred simultaneously. His introduction to the twelve-tone technique opened his mind to the expanding areas of atonal music, and his dealing with music as sound per se. In 1948, after being appointed director of the Henry Street Playhouse in New York, Nikolais formed the Playhouse Dance Company, later known as the Nikolais Dance Theater, and began his aesthetic orientation toward dance as a study of motion. By the 1950s, he had ceased creating literal dances and began his explorations and eventual milieu as an abstractionist.

Sound became an important part of his abstract theatre. For his first dances, which involved his new thinking of dance as both a visual and kinetic art, he used live percussion scores in which he directed his dancers to play instruments of all nature. There was a combination of children’s toy instruments as well as harsh and resonant automobile brake drums, and other pitched auto parts which he also used to accompany classes. Once he installed his own tape recording machines, he quickly used the limited range these instruments provided in a new way, slowing and increasing speed and reversing sound. He also made the sounds adhere to the choreographic structure (not the other way around), thereby giving the dance its independence from the musical phrasing. But the real need remained: the search for new sound. Nik made a sound library, recording noises and percussion and vocal sounds, which the French aptly called musique concrète. Needless to say, he became a master at splicing bits and pieces.

From 1956 to 1962 Nikolais composed eleven major scores for his theatre pieces using such techniques. In 1963, James Seawright, who at the time was assisting Nik in his productions and also working at the Columbia-Princeton Center for Electronic Music, recorded a sound bank for the production Imago (1963). With this material, Nikolais created his first synthesizer score. Imago won the Paris Grand Prix in 1968 and launched the Nikolais Dance Theatre towards its national and primarily international acclaim.

During the same period, Seawright came to Nik and told him of a young man who had invented and constructed a simplified synthesizer and insisted that Nik visit the electronic fair currently being held in New York. Nik did so and met Robert Moog. He was completely taken by the new machine and after making some suggestions to Moog, (which Moog made), Nik bought the inventor’s first machine with the aid of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Moog himself was astonished by what his machine could produce for Nik. This machine was later acquired by the Museum of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor as the first Moog synthesizer. The Synclavier was Nik’s next source of sound and since the mid-1970s remained the major instrument in the Nikolais soundroom.

Alwin Nikolais has been honored and awarded throughout the world. He has received the French Legion of Honor, the Kennedy Center Honors, National Medal of the Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, as well as Mellon, Ford, and Rockefeller grants. He has been a recipient of NEA grants since 1966, been awarded five honorary doctorates, all for his remarkable achievements in Dance Theater. His genius has influenced several generations of artists."
—Murray Louis

2026 Repress.

In honor of the January full moon, 2016.

Supported by Alan Backdrop, Claudio PRC, Ness, Svreca, Antonio de Angelis, Arnaud le Texier, Exium, Kwartz, Takaaki Itoh, The Noisemaker, Unam Zetineb, Vilix, Oscar Mulero, Eric Cloutier, Conrad van Orton, Acronym, Felix Lorusso, Jose Pouj, Nihad Tule, Nobody Home, Brando Lupi, Brendon Moeller (Echologist), Francois X, Gianluca Meloni, Artefakt, Iori, Rasmus Hedlund, Reggy van Oers, Retina.IT, Stefan Vincent, Antonio Ruscito, Sam Kdc and more.

Presenting ‘Nothing Is Lost’, A.Morgan continues his journey through high pressure, pummeling techno, this time on SIDE B. Proving the degree of his effect as well as his stylistic versatility, Morgan pulls different influences from afar to craft a record that pushes forward with a nod to the past through three powerful cuts and a remix by Yant. The EP starts with ‘Sucker Love’, appropriately named for its commanding rhythmic section while bleeding almost into house music with a hypnotic vocal loop. The track oscillates between stabs of cold dissonance and an extraverted flare, creating a natural intrigue throughout its progression. The follow up is Yant’s remix, a hyper-focused take on ‘Sucker Love’ with significant weight in the low end. Thundering percussion widens the dimension of the track, flicking through a brutal synth sequence over slithering hi-hats and claps. Yant reaffirms his understanding of uncompromising club music with this remix, creating a tunneling track fit for a concentrated peak-time set. Highlighting the B-side, A.Morgan takes back control of the record with the ‘Cloudfall’. Undulating the bass of the track, Morgan sneaks in a lurking melody that detunes throughout his arrangement, creating increasingly destabilized moments to pack intrigue in the cut. White noise whips around the production to create a storm of ambiance over a violently binary lead, underlining the undeniable effect of minimalism in techno. The EP concludes with the title track ‘Nothing Is Lost’, combining instructive percussion, biting chords, and cold vocals - as is Morgan’s custom. Here, the British artist brings a harmonic quality with the synth work that comes and satisfyingly completes the project. The embrace of the chord selection immerses the listener over a highly tuned rhythm, pushing ‘Nothing is Lost’ into a state of euphoria for the conclusion. Words by Noah Hocker

Bringing mutant verve and a deadly swing to the bassweight discipline, Lyeform lands on Sneaker Social Club in resonantly rude form. Strong doses of UKG, wormhole techno and dubstep course through the veins of this muscular four-deep drop, but the London-based producer's metabolism strips the strands down to an atomic level and rebuilds the dance in his own design.

There's a dense and dank mood hovering over 'Drift Into Dread,' shaped out by rugged, noisy percussion steering towards mind-melting immersion. Rather than resting in technoid repetition, the landscape keeps shifting as dislocated rhythmic phrases slide in and out of earshot, led by the disembodied toasting of a mysterious MC.

'Vintage Gilly' has a much starker sound palette, all crackling drums sparking static interference into negative space with subs so low you might mistake them for heart murmurs. All the better to savour the subtleties as they tease into the mix, not least the understated lead lines loping lazily on the threshold.

The 2-step swagger is unmistakable on 'Godkiller' as it comes bowling into earshot, but there's not a whiff of garage revivalism in earshot as we channel hop between metallic feedback interference and needlepoint noise snaking around the minimalist framework of the beat.

'Glass Eater' closes the record out on another skippy stepper, but here Lyeform makes room for cavernous dub techno chords, overdriven bass harmonics and teeth-grinding noise. It's a final maverick swerve from an artist carving out a formidable impression via micro-level textural exploration within the context of dark and deadly soundsystem tackle.

Faitiche presents the debut solo album by cellist, sound artist, and composer Topu Lyo: “quiet scenes from tokyo” brings together sixteen miniatures for solo cello and tape echo that oscillate between abstracts drones and rhythmic pizzicato sketches – all recorded at Topu’s Tokyo apartment. The constant traffic noise from a nearby highway has become an accompanying soundtrack for his compositions and can be heard on the recordings. Topu’s playing is marked by a distinctive idiom oriented more towards abstract electronic studio effects than classical technique.

The artist spoke to Jan Jelinek about his work:

JJ: A solo cello album may seem like an odd fit for a label that has to date released only music that is electronic in the broadest sense. But I think “quiet scenes from tokyo” complements the Faitiche repertoire exceptionally well. Its sixteen miniatures showcase the cello in all its complexity: the bowed passages sometimes recall a tape feedback drone; the pizzicato playing conjures up the percussion recordings of Moondog; and the abstract textures might be mistaken for the product of a granular sampler rather than rapid finger work on the cello. I’m constantly surprised by just how rich and varied this album is – without ever losing the charm of its sketch-like quality. Could you say a few words about the making of your album – first of all, from a rather technical perspective: what production tools did you use, and why?

TL: My production tools were very sparse. Just a solo cello and my Roland 301 Space Echo, which I only used at the end, running everything through it during mixing, tape only. After years of working with electronics, pedals, and synthesizers, moving to Tokyo pushed me toward minimizing my setup. But my aesthetics shifted too, toward simplicity. I wanted to strip everything back to just the acoustic cello and see how far I could push it — replicating some of my favorite electronic effects through extended technique: slow portamento, LFOs, filters, detune, noise. I’d also been listening to a cassette of ocean sounds for years. When I moved to Tokyo I was horrified to find myself living directly across from a freeway. Eventually the freeway started sounding almost identical to the ocean — and that ended up playing a prominent part in the recording.

JJ: That’s super interesting: mimicking electronic production as a compositional idea for the cello! You say the sound of the freeway is crucial to the album: I, too, tend to interpret steady traffic noise as a positive soundscape – do we hear the freeway on the album? I can also hear other field recordings, for example on “a street car with announcements”. Can you say a bit about how these field recordings influence your playing?

TL: Yes, you can hear the freeway on the album! The freeway is most prominent in “old trees in lonely spring”, “yuyake koyake”, and “the moon” (you can clearly hear individual cars). When I first began recording I had my balcony door shut tightly, but after a while I began leaning into the highway sound and slowly opening the door little by little to control the amount of noise. “streetcar with announcements” was a moment I was recording and a car passed by making announcements in the background. I loved how it sounded! Same thing with “yuyake koyake”, and later I realized that every day at 5pm the same song plays to mark sunset, telling children it’s time to go home. Having this bedrock of sound puts less pressure on me to put music on top or to play more notes.

JJ: It’s astonishing how much this differs from what I’d imagined: I’d been picturing peaceful landscape recordings, but had never thought of a freeway. Which goes to show how open to interpretation traffic noises are. So the room by the freeway had a major influence on the album – how are you going to perform it live?

TL: The contrast between the freeway and the beautiful landscape in my head couldn’t have been starker. I too was imagining a beautiful landscape in which to create the album, but somehow it still worked out. I've been going back and forth a lot on live shows and I think the most honest way is to have it the most stripped down. I was thinking of using traffic samples etc., but I think the duet really comes from the background sounds from every unique venue/environment. So as it stands, I’ll just be doing acoustic solo cello.

21 Bum Salute is the fifth album from Sydney experimental psych-noise-pop duo Party Dozen. The work of Kirsty Tickle (saxophone, vocals) and Jonathan Boulet (drums, loops, production), 21 Bum Salute finds the critically-acclaimed, semi-improvised duo feeling liberated - from their peers, their worries, and what the nell they're supposed to sound like now.

Emerging in 2017 from the warehouses of the Sydney experimental noise-rock scene, Party Dozen arrive at the release of their fifth album, 21 Bum Salute, in peak form. Over the course of four, increasingly perverse albums of psych-tinged rock peppered with pop noise and bursts of doom in equal measure, they've transformed from gleeful noise-makers producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville, NSW, to globe-hopping, critically-adored favourites - producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville.

As well as tours with Amyl and the Sniffers, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Tropical F*ckstorm, Algiers and more, Party Dozen had Nick Cave appear on 2022 single Macca The Mutt', collabed with New York rapper billy woods, performed an incendiary live set on KEXP, signed international deals, firstly with Temporary Residence LTD (Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky,
Along the way Party Dozen self-released their first two albums, The Living Man (2017) and Pray For Party Dozen (2020), struck a chord internationally with album The Real Work (2022), which sent them on tours of Europe, North America, Japan, China and New Zealand, while fourth LP, Crime in Australia (2024), an ode to Aussie noir that leaned beyond rock into moodier moments, repeated it.

Party Dozen recorded, mixed and mastered 21 Bum Salute completely themselves, over a three month span. Inspired by spooky "old recordings" as well as the primal impulses of acts like ESG and Bikini Kill, 21 Bum Salute - named after a peculiar, larrikin ritual in Australia's arid Northern Territory - condenses consecutive years of jam sessions, loops and improvisations into just over half an hour's worth of fizzing, strutting, striking sonics from the fringes.

21 Bum Salute is the fifth album from Sydney experimental psych-noise-pop duo Party Dozen. The work of Kirsty Tickle (saxophone, vocals) and Jonathan Boulet (drums, loops, production), 21 Bum Salute finds the critically-acclaimed, semi-improvised duo feeling liberated - from their peers, their worries, and what the nell they're supposed to sound like now.

Emerging in 2017 from the warehouses of the Sydney experimental noise-rock scene, Party Dozen arrive at the release of their fifth album, 21 Bum Salute, in peak form. Over the course of four, increasingly perverse albums of psych-tinged rock peppered with pop noise and bursts of doom in equal measure, they've transformed from gleeful noise-makers producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville, NSW, to globe-hopping, critically-adored favourites - producing DIY albums from a tiny room in Marrickville.

As well as tours with Amyl and the Sniffers, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Tropical F*ckstorm, Algiers and more, Party Dozen had Nick Cave appear on 2022 single Macca The Mutt', collabed with New York rapper billy woods, performed an incendiary live set on KEXP, signed international deals, firstly with Temporary Residence LTD (Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky,
Along the way Party Dozen self-released their first two albums, The Living Man (2017) and Pray For Party Dozen (2020), struck a chord internationally with album The Real Work (2022), which sent them on tours of Europe, North America, Japan, China and New Zealand, while fourth LP, Crime in Australia (2024), an ode to Aussie noir that leaned beyond rock into moodier moments, repeated it.

Party Dozen recorded, mixed and mastered 21 Bum Salute completely themselves, over a three month span. Inspired by spooky "old recordings" as well as the primal impulses of acts like ESG and Bikini Kill, 21 Bum Salute - named after a peculiar, larrikin ritual in Australia's arid Northern Territory - condenses consecutive years of jam sessions, loops and improvisations into just over half an hour's worth of fizzing, strutting, striking sonics from the fringes.

For 3+ years Razor-N-Tape has held their quarterly A Joyful Noise event in the Sound Room at Public Records. Conceived as a hearkening back to an early 2000s era of NYC nightlife, it is a club night that includes both DJs and live music. Led by JKriv as musical director and bassist, the live band is a collective of luminary NYC talent including singer Brandon Markell Holmes, guitarist Peter Matson, flutist/singer Domenica and percussionist Olatunji Ojore (Underground System), trumpeter Carter Yasutake (Midnight Magic), keyboardist Jason Lindner (Now Vs. Now/David Bowie), and saxophonist Stuart Bogie (Antibalas/Arcade Fire). Merging club sensibilities with jazz, funk and afrobeat pedigree, the A Joyful Noise repertoire includes live-interpreted renditions of J’s music and remixes, features by Razor-N-Tape artists, and original works. This album is a document of this special event, capturing all the live energy, moments of dazzling ensemble interplay, and features by artists Adi Oasis, Toribio and Corece.

,Settle Down City" war 2006 das Debütalbum von Young Widows und markierte den Neubeginn der Musiker nach dem Ende der Hardcore-Band Breather Resist. Die Gruppe aus Louisville entwickelte darauf ihren charakteristischen Stil aus Post-Hardcore, Noise Rock und düsterem Post-Punk, geprägt von schweren, basslastigen Grooves, kantigen Gitarren und einer intensiven, oft beklemmenden Atmosphäre. Einflüsse von Bands wie Fugazi, Hoover, The Jesus Lizard und den Melvins sind deutlich hörbar, werden jedoch zu einem eigenständigen Sound verarbeitet. Im Zentrum stehen das kreative Gitarrenspiel von Sänger Evan Patterson sowie das kraftvolle Zusammenspiel der Rhythmussektion mit Nick Thieneman und dem damaligen Schlagzeuger Geoff Paton. Die Songs verbinden rohe Energie mit ungewöhnlichen Songstrukturen und legten den Grundstein für die spätere Entwicklung der Band zu einer der wichtigsten Noise-Rock-Formationen ihrer Generation. Zum 20-jährigen Jubiläum erscheint ,Settle Down City - Anniversary Edition" in einer umfassend überarbeiteten Fassung. Das Album wurde von James Plotkin neu remastert, mit restauriertem Original-Artwork versehen und um den bislang unveröffentlichten Bonus-Track ,White Water" erweitert, der bereits während der ursprünglichen Aufnahmesessions entstand. Die limitierte Neuauflage auf opak-gelbem Vinyl bietet damit die definitive Version eines Albums, das den Beginn der inzwischen zwei Jahrzehnte andauernden Karriere von Young Widows dokumentiert.

Rubbermaidxxx is a recent music performance project by the Irish artist Anna McCarthy, rather than simply the title of one autonomous artwork. Rubbermaidxxx is a character or unstable identity, an emancipatory underdog with a heart for daredevilry. The project sits naturally within McCarthy’s larger practice, which moves between drawing, assemblage, happenings and collective actions.

Clad in a black balaclava and fetish climbing wear, she abseils from buildings before entering the stage. For the first performance in New York City, she was invited by Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio to perform at his club Francis Kite Club in Alphabet City, NYC and since has continued to make a name for herself hanging off façades, singing, dancing and mopping the floor together with her performance collaborators Miss Philip a.k.a. Philip Errico and Michael Tapper at Pianos NYC, Kottbusser Tor and Genezarethkirche Berlin or the Villa Stuck Museum in Munich.

The album was produced in Munich and New York in 2025 in collaboration with her brother Nick McCarthy (Franz Ferdinand) and Anton Kaun (Rumpeln). What started as a quick improv turned into a high-energy 4-hour session of the siblings playing manic ball with beats, bass, guitars and vocals resulting in what laid the basis to this album. In the weeks following, Anna McCarthy, who is known for her cut-up production style, reminiscent of albums such as White Noise or Flying Lotus, continued to develop the vocals, performance and music by mixing in an amalgam of field recordings with her narrative spoken word, including sounds of protests, dollar stores or ice-cream trucks, as well as collaborating with the noise artist Rumpeln for the last two tracks of the album.

McCarthy is also known as the lyricist and singer of What Are People For? (debut 2022 on Alien Transistor) with its dystopic dance music candy-cane shows and equally humorously critical tongue-in-cheek bangers such as Bring back the Dirt, Drones or Partytime. Anna McCarthy's spoken word, social urgency and enthusiasm to experiment across mediums is comparable to other contemporaries such as Moor Mother, Miho Hatori, Gonjasufi, Tricky, or Cibo Matto.

The name itself is telling. Rubbermaidxxx evokes elasticity, artificiality, domestic labour and the commercial world of cleaning and garbage. It suggests a body capable of stretching, absorbing filth and cleaning up after society – only to revolt against the role it has been assigned.

Rubbermaidxxx is a master of deception, juggling fact and fiction as a reflection of our times – a diamond thief, a protester, or even responsible for the Louvre heist? This album invites the listener and viewer in, playfully dismantling hierarchies and power structures as she goes through a hopeful amalgam of dance, protest & love songs.

MIO: Memories in Orbit is one of 2026 best games so far. With a synthwave-induced melody, blissful choir voices echoing the main theme of the game, buzzing electronic noises and a hint of groovy patterns, this track captures the very essence of the game. Reminiscent of other iconic OST like Power Glove’s Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon and Ben Prunty’s FTL: Faster Than Light.

A quiet intensity permeates Chantal Michelle’s music, like a veiled flame. Even at its most spare and delicate, an undulating tension unsettles the ear through wavering microtonal interference and uncanny spatial juxtaposition. She takes seriously the mandate of the composer to foster new relationships between various types of sounds, bringing together disparate field recordings, instrumental stems, and the sounds of circuitry in unheard configurations. Resolution is elusive, in its place a sense of oblong cyclicality and prickly uncertainty. When the veil is pulled back, we find more depth, more complexity, and more mystery.

Unit of Heart, Michelle’s second album of 2026, presents two interrelated pieces that highlight diverging compositional modes. Here she brings in two key collaborators: Patrick Shiroishi, who contributes flutes and saxophones throughout, and poet Funto Omojola, whose words and voice bookend the title composition. Both compositions unfold gradually, but where the album’s a-side “Sudden Oceans” presents a minimal tonal palette focused entirely on the subtle grain of wind instruments, “Unit of Heart” proceeds linearly, moving through passages of synthesizer, environmental recordings, and full-cheeked wails of saxophone. Both encourage a state of focused listening as the scope of the music deepens and widens.

“Sudden Oceans” allows the listener to hover in rippling currents of air, breath overlapping breath in a shimmering patchwork. All flutes and saxophones on the piece are played by Shiroishi, which are molded by Michelle into a pattern that resembles the flow of tidal waters, surging and receding moment to moment as the tonal density increases. Expansive and recursive, it reflects both the restorative awe and eerie disquiet of encountering the sublime. The first and last sounds we hear are the gentle rush of unmediated breath as Shiroishi connects and disconnects from his flute.

Michelle’s skill at presenting the familiar as preternatural comes to the fore on “Unit of Heart, ” one of her most ambitious works. Omojola’s voice begins with a melody that could be a lullaby, but as it’s bounced around the stereo field it takes on a haunted quality. Their poem, reprinted on the LP’s inner sleeve, hints at a similar type of transformation: “I mean this is where our mouth turns saliva into spears only a throat can recognize. ” Pads of downy synthesizer billow and are subsumed by a discordant ringing. The climactic section features atonal electronics and field recordings, first of water and then the evening call of insects, processed in such a way to transform them into pulsating bursts of noise. What we think we know about the world, what is elemental, can change with even the slightest adjustment of the lens.

Frisch aus den Höllen von ,Misterio Lounge 3000" (2024, lumpy/Inscrutable Records), bewegt sich die berüchtigte Gruppe aus Mexiko-Stadt weiterhin zwischen kosmischer Elektronik der 70er,minimalistischem Elektro-Punk und dem Erbe des Techno-Pop aus dem Mexiko-Stadt der 80er. "The frogs went to sleep this afternoon; they started dreaming". Und hinter all dem verbirgt sich ein tiefgreifender Impuls der Metamorphose, der keinen Raum für Ruhe lässt und ein ,Ambystoma mexicanum" erweckt, frei von jeglicher Fußball- und Kommunalpolitik-Werbung, damit es uns von seinen Träumen erzählen kann. Es ist auf eine Reihe automatisierter Wahrnehmungen gestoßen, gefolgt von gepunkteten Linien, die auf den ersten Blick wie unverbundene Bildausschnitte wirken, in denen sich jedoch in jedem Einzelnen eine Vielzahl von Geschichten offenbart. 13 Songs, 33 U/min

Ohio’s 156/Silence return with From a Distance, their crushing new full-length and first release for Pure Noise Records, arriving September 4. Produced by Josh Schroeder (King 810, Lorna Shore, The Plot In You), the album expands on the breakout success of People Watching with a darker, more cinematic approach that balances punishing heaviness, eerie atmosphere, and emotional depth. Featuring guest appearances from Mike Hranica (The Devil Wears Prada) and Alex Reade (Make Them Suffer), From a Distance pulls influence from horror, prestige television, and retro game soundtracks while moving seamlessly between hard rock, experimental textures, and the band’s chaotic mathcore roots. Atmospheric, unpredictable, and unbound by genre, From a Distance pushes 156/Silence further into their own lane while cementing them as one of heavy music’s most fearless rising acts.

DIVA AS TECHNOLOGY
Arca announces the details of her highly anticipated new studio album, XXXXX, arriving via XL Recordings. Five years after the twice GRAMMY-nominated KiCk i and subsequent KICK pentalogy, the Venezuelan-born musician, producer, vocalist, and visual artist returns with her first full-length album since concluding one of the most ambitious chapters in contemporary music.

If the KICK era expanded Arca's universe outward, XXXXX turns inward and fractures it apart. Across 16 tracks, the album excavates vastly different emotional landscapes to deliver a body of work that is darker, more aggressive, more experimental, and unwilling to settle into fixed form. Initially conceived as a mixtape before revealing itself as an album, XXXXX embraces contradiction as a core methodology. In the spirit of her previous mixtapes @@@@@ (2020)—released as a 62-minute single—and &&&&& (2013), XXXXX thrives on raw exploration and instinct. It arrives as a deliberate interruption of expectation.

“It seems playful, also mischievous, to interrupt that autopilot,” says Arca.

The album's striking artwork depicts Arca as a biomechanical entity, accompanied by two owls—symbols of protection and the underworld in Greek mythology. Like the music itself, the imagery inhabits a space between worlds where transformation is both terrifying and liberatory. Suspended between posthuman augmentation and raw emotion, XXXXX exposes the mainframe. It is a record born from uncertainty, contradiction, instinct, and surrender—a becoming-machine that continues Arca's lifelong project of redefining what it means to be human both in, and against, the machine.

For Arca, rebirth has never been a metaphor, but a practice. She continues to exist in multiple states simultaneously, collapsing boundaries between human and machine, high and low culture, and experimental noise and pop music. Following her first-ever painting exhibition at London’s ICA earlier this year, XXXXX arrives as the latest transmission from a continuously evolving creative process. Over the last year, Arca has remained prolific: unveiling the double-sided single "Puta" / "Sola"; remixing tracks for Addison Rae, Robyn, and Hikaru Utada; collaborating with Tokischa on “Chama”; and contributing production to Madonna’s CONFESSIONS II. She walked the runways and made appearances at major international fashion weeks, while also composing the original motion picture soundtrack for Stillz’s film, Barrio Triste.

Now, after years of transformation beneath the surface, her next musical evolution reveals itself.

Named after the tendency to impose familiar likenesses, such as faces, on random - usually inanimate - objects, Pareidolia is Jake Muir's way of interpreting the consonances between so-called “ambient” music and extreme heavy metal. Extracting the headiest, most atmospheric sections from hundreds of death metal and black metal tracks, Muir plays the role of both DJ and electroacoustic composer, concocting a lysergic elixir of fractal distortions and prolonged, decelerated riffs that slowly evaporates into iridescent vapor. If there's any trace of the original sources left, Muir makes sure that residue is subtly bewildering, like clouds in the sky that form imposing, larger than life images, or trampled bracken that falls into the shape of “trve kvlt” insignia.

The idea for the album materialized when Muir was working on 2022's Talisman, his collaborative album with multi-instrumentalist Evan Caminiti. Processing guitar for the first time, Muir began to unpack his long relationship with rock music and its Escher-like maze of sub-genres, from the tech metal he obsessed over as a teenager to Loop and Main's drone-y, textured variants. Scraping the internet for unconventional contemporary metal albums, he stumbled across music that seemed to hover between different realms, merging its frenetic, noisy sections with psychedelic interludes that harmonize with classic industrial and avant-garde music, material like :zoviet*france:, Nocturnal Emissions and Z'EV.

Trentemøller's new untitled album explodes with the force of a supernova before dissolving into swooning vocals. Across 10 songs, maximalist guitar-noise blowouts collide with some of the most bruising shoegaze you'll hear this year. "The noisy got noisier, the dreamy got dreamier," says Trentemøller. "I was ruthless this time."
Opener "Swerve", recorded with Vienna-based singer Sakura, crashes into searing walls of sound - a stark contrast to 2024's haunting Dreamweaver. The album's radically intuitive energy persists on the anthemic "Visceral" and the industrial fuzz of "Your Love Walks Alone", featuring Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes. "Coyote" deconstructs synths into feedback and brutal guitars, while "To Mist" and "Halved" (featuring Midwife) offer nocturnal respite - nugaze ambience reduced to fractals of fragile beauty. For the first time in Trentemøller's history, vocals appear on every track - contributors include Sakura, German-British singer Anika, Midwife, Tan Cologne, Sune Rose Wagner, Jonas Bjerre of Mew, and Danish singer-songwriter Emma Acs, among others. "I knew early on exactly who I wanted. We never met in the studio; everything was exchanged remotely. I'm pretty shy, and it gave the vocalists the privacy to really open up," he explains. Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and mixer - Trentemøller did it all himself. "I don't follow trends or think in algorithms." The reward: playing the album live, start to finish, for the very first time on the upcoming live tour.

Trentemøller's new untitled album explodes with the force of a supernova before dissolving into swooning vocals. Across 10 songs, maximalist guitar-noise blowouts collide with some of the most bruising shoegaze you'll hear this year. "The noisy got noisier, the dreamy got dreamier," says Trentemøller. "I was ruthless this time."
Opener "Swerve", recorded with Vienna-based singer Sakura, crashes into searing walls of sound - a stark contrast to 2024's haunting Dreamweaver. The album's radically intuitive energy persists on the anthemic "Visceral" and the industrial fuzz of "Your Love Walks Alone", featuring Sune Rose Wagner of the Raveonettes. "Coyote" deconstructs synths into feedback and brutal guitars, while "To Mist" and "Halved" (featuring Midwife) offer nocturnal respite - nugaze ambience reduced to fractals of fragile beauty. For the first time in Trentemøller's history, vocals appear on every track - contributors include Sakura, German-British singer Anika, Midwife, Tan Cologne, Sune Rose Wagner, Jonas Bjerre of Mew, and Danish singer-songwriter Emma Acs, among others. "I knew early on exactly who I wanted. We never met in the studio; everything was exchanged remotely. I'm pretty shy, and it gave the vocalists the privacy to really open up," he explains. Songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and mixer - Trentemøller did it all himself. "I don't follow trends or think in algorithms." The reward: playing the album live, start to finish, for the very first time on the upcoming live tour.

Portuguese experimental musician António Feiteira returns to Perf with Amuleto Apotropaico’s sophomore album. Língua Espúria (Spurious Tongue) withdraws from the guitar-and-drums interplay that anchored the self-titled debut, moving toward fully electronic arrangements of concrète mechanics. What was once shaped through shared physical gesture now condenses into a singular current: a hermetic pulse carving its own labyrinth through the pandemonium.

The album draws inspiration from Milford Graves's visionary mapping of the body's secret rhythms into function generators. Amuleto Apotropaico has engineered a system that emulates Feiteira's own improvisational drumming language such that muscle memory becomes stochastic digital precision.

Língua Espúria opens with 'Abafador'. A track relishing in burnt afterimages as it patiently leads the listener into Amuleto Apotropaico’s new sound world. Its insistent double-tapped rhythm splinters into four cascading versions of itself, a pulse folding & refolding until it becomes its own perforated haze.

'Carpideira' follows as an algorithmic lamentation set in motion by shimmering temporal reversals: motion-captures of cyclic grief. The track persistently builds until only a few pure tones remainder.

The album's most pared-down moment is 'Espinha de Vidro'. It is the clearest statement of the system underlying Língua Espúria. Here, Feiteira's rhythmic concern is laid bare, every detail exposed in a distilled form, its melodic thread emerging with equal exactness.

'Apotropia III' begins as a subtle hinge in the catalogue, its brutalist‑liturgical atmosphere recast in a divined, techgnostic register. A narrative, gestural drift threads through the piece that connects it to Feiteira’s 'Killswitch Counterpoint', which appeared on his Eastern Nurseries release Performing the Heimlich on an Ouroboros. Shared samples cross-feed his parallel projects, letting them momentarily run on the same signal path. Stuttering percussion, flickers of glitched air & a brooding bass melodic line fill out the margins before the track finally shears off into harsh, serrated noise.

ORUMA is a trio formed by Ola Rzepka (drums, zither, percussion), Artur Rumiński (electric guitar) and Mat Barski (electric guitar). At its foundation is the musical dialogue previously developed by Rumiński and Barski as a guitar duo and documented on the albums “On the Margin” and “At the Junction”. Their encounter with Ola Rzepka during Kraków’s Kakofonie series opened this music to a new sense of dynamics, pulse and
collective form.
ORUMA’s music exists at the intersection of free improvisation, noise, experimental postrock and post-kraut repetition. It avoids the conventional division between soloist and accompaniment. Instead, two electric guitars and drums gradually abandon their individual roles to form a single, constantly shifting sound organism — moving from silence, open space and isolated gestures towards dense masses of sound.
The trio’s debut album consists of five pieces: “Satellites”, “Stranger”, “This Mountain Is Alive”, “A Rough Plan For Nostalgia” and “Hyperborea”. Together, they form a coherent journey: from distant signals and the first moment of contact, through friction and increasing physical intensity, to an expansive fourteen-minute finale.


Ola Rzepka
Drummer, pianist, composer and performer. She graduated from the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where she studied at the Faculty of Composition, Interpretation, Education and Jazz. She was also a scholarship student at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen, studying piano and percussion. She teaches piano improvisation at the Wojciech Kilar State Music School Complex in Katowice and runs her own music lessons and workshops. As a composer, she collaborates with acclaimed theatre directors in Poland, Germany and Switzerland. Her musical collaborators have included Raphael Rogiński and Antoni “Ziut” Gralak. She has performed her original music at numerous avant-garde, popular, jazz, improvised and contemporary music festivals across Poland and Europe. In Jazz Forum magazine’s 2024 Jazz Top critics’ poll, she was named among Poland’s leading drummers.

Artur Rumiński
Guitarist and member of bands including Furia, Thaw and ARRM. He also composes and improvises under his own name and performs in the experimental duo Marmur, which he co-founded with Macio Moretti. He has released several solo albums on labels including Antenna Non Grata, Gusstaff Records, Zoharum and Szara Reneta.

Mat Barski
Guitarist associated with the Kraków and Tricity music scenes. His projects include the duo Ekotonika, the Rumiński / Barski duo. He has released albums through Gusstaff Records and Antenna Non Grata. Alongside music, he works in motion design and visual postproduction. He is a member of the Kraków-based Skład Solny Association, where he coorganises concerts and exhibitions.

,Orua, Maldiçao (2016-2026)" feiert das zehnjährige Bestehen der brasilianischen Band Orua und versammelt 20 Songs aus unterschiedlichen Schaffensphasen. Angeführt vom Gitarristen und Produzenten Lê Almeida verbindet die Band Lo-Fi-Indie-Rock, Psychedelia, Noise, Krautrock, Afrobeat und brasilianische Rhythmen zu einem hypnotischen, experimentellen Sound. Die Aufnahmen entstanden über viele Jahre hinweg an verschiedenen Orten und spiegeln die kreative Entwicklung der Gruppe wider. Bekannt für ihre energiegeladenen Improvisationen und tranceartigen Grooves, bewegen sich Orua zwischen atmosphärischer Psychedelia und verzerrtem Rock'n'Roll. Ihr internationaler Bekanntheitsgrad wuchs durch die Zusammenarbeit mit Doug Martsch von Built to Spill, mit denen Mitglieder der Band tourten und später auch am Album ,When the Wind Forgets Your Name" mitwirkten. Die Retrospektive zeigt eindrucksvoll, warum Orua zu den spannendsten experimentellen Rockbands Brasiliens zählt.

Originally created in 1987 as an image album for a luxury Sanyo air-conditioner, Get at the Wave stands as one of the most surprising and enduring works of Japanese ambient music. Recorded using synthesizers and natural field recordings, the album was designed to transport listeners far from the heat and noise of urban life — into open water, gentle wind, and unhurried space. Takashi Kokubo's mastery as an acoustic environment designer is present in every texture, blending electronic composition with an almost physical sense of atmosphere and place. Intimate, expansive, and quietly radical, Get at the Wave is an essential document of kankyō ongaku - and one that sounds more necessary than ever. The remaster and artwork of this vinyl edition were made by the artist. Takashi Kokubo (born 1956) is one of Japan's most influential ambient composers and acoustic environment designers. A pioneer of kankyō ongaku since the mid-1980s, his sound design work has reached virtually every corner of Japanese daily life - from the national mobile phone earthquake alert to the sign tone for iD e-money and the melody call tone for NTT DoCoMo. In 2020, he was included in the Grammy-nominated compilation Kankyo Ongaku (Best Historical Album), cementing his place as a foundational figure in environmental music worldwide.

Luis Reich and Max Wurden's Reverence traverses superb ambient and electroacoustic territory with sustained tones, radio interference, fragmented speech and plenty of harmonies that shift almost imperceptibly. 'Sono' opens wide with drones meeting distant brass, before 'Lens' marries brooding bass pulses with floating brass top notes that pass by like half-remembered thoughts. The title track strips everything back to a sparse, suspended core and 'Horfunk' brings damaged broadcast noise to a textured soundscape. 'Studio Blue' closes out slowly and patiently with plenty of sonic decay. A subtly dramatic record.

FELT wade deeper into the murky waters of contemporary Scandinavian electroacoustic music following the recent reissue of Johan Wieth’s Health & Safety project on sub-label LEFT and established gems from the likes of Civilistjävel!

Gintė Preisaitė, a Lithuanian artist and graduate of Copenhagen’s Rhythmic Music Conservatory, reveals her first solo release under her own name, following a collaborative effort with Toshimaru Nakamura in 2025 and a number of cassettes as “Baraboro”. The deliberately genre-blurring sound Preisaitė deploys works with composed pop vignettes, sustained drones, FX manipulations and guttural bursts of noise. Sparse piano movements, sample-laden psychedelia and moments of big beat/trip-hop rhythms gel with crowd noise, close mic’d intimacy and experimental percussion with a focus on instrumental timbres and extended techniques.

With a background in composing for large ensembles, Preisaitė's multi-instrumental approach is evident across the eight tracks, moments of dense concrète-style sound collages anchored by the human voice never being far away. She laments on fantasy, absurdity and relationships as a cast of players contribute string, brass, accordion, and guitar parts. Passages move from delicate acoustic folk motifs through to wide-eyed, cut-and-paste glitch electronics and spectral melodic riffs, making the album an unorthodox and welcome addition to Denmark's current world-class music scene.

2026 Repress

***
He strode towards a long drink.
Running in the gutter,
scanning patterns.
Skin staring, stirring unbelief.
Scarred metal faces
on the iron streets,
spitting blood.
***

Early support by: Luke Slater, Tommy Four Seven, Dave Clarke, Marcel Dettmann, Chris Liebing, Ben Klock, Oscar Mulero, Speedy J, Len Faki, Shifted, Psyk, Pfirter, Objekt, James Ruskin, Sigha, Myler, Stanislav Tolkachev, Rebekah, Par Grindvik, Max M, Gary Beck, Dave Tarrida, Kike Pravda, Samuli Kemppi, Happa, DVS1, Joseph Capriati, Juho Kusti, Cassegrain, Kwartz, Clouds, Pacou, Octave, Stranger, Ansome, Black Asteroid, Hector Oaks, DJ Hyperactive, Christian Wunsch, Endlec, Kriz, Paula Temple, Exium, AnD, Joe Farr, Martyn Hare, Eomac, Dimi Angelis, Norman Nodge, Xhin, Dax J, Wire, Drvg Cvltvre, Sawf, Jamie Bissmire, Paul Mac, Inigo Kennedy, D. Carbone, J. Tijn, CTRLS, The Noisemaker, Jeroen Search, Dustin Zahn, Svreca, Unbalance, Truncate, Jeff Derringer, Jonas Kopp, Developer, 3.14..

*repress*

The prolific Lord Of The Isles (aka Scotland's Neil McDonald) has had a string of stunning 12's over the past few years on labels such as Permanent Vacation, Unthank, Shevchenko, Mule and of course his four track 'Year Of The City EP' on Phonica, which was widely acclaimed upon its release in 2012.

This time LOTI presents two long-form tracks, each a mini-masterpiece in itself. The 10 minute plus 'Greane' bursts into life after an intro of kicks and white noise hi-hats. It continues to slowly build, with pitch-bent synth lines and a pulsing bass-line making way for a melacholic shift in mood. Truly original stuff!

On the flip, a swirl of synthetic strings introduces 'Gigha', in a manner that brings to mind Rhythm
Is Rhythm's legendary 'Kao-Tic Harmony', before the drums and infectious acid-line join in. Over the 8 minutes they continue to interweave and play off each other to dazzling effect.

Artwork by Jack Featherstone, the designer of a number of sleeves for Border Community (including the highly praised campaign behind James Holden's 'The Inheritors', its singles and live visuals), Electric Minds, Warm and of course, Phonica.

Lex Walton (née Alex) is an American songwriter, actress, prose poet, and filmmaker whose work is unflinchingly confessional, and whose live performances are filled with ecstatic masochism and flailing. In addition to her catalog of a dozen or so mostly home-recorded albums, EPs, and singles, she has recorded collaborations with Devi McCallion (Black Dresses, Girls Rituals), Geese, and Ezra Furman, written the pop music manifesto The Sound Rocker's Prayer, and starred in Louise Weard's five-hour epic film Castration Movie Anthology II: The Best Of Both Worlds.


ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER is Lex’s unwavering, iconoclastic Sub Pop debut. Some of the tracks already have fans and the music press heated up, so we’ll let the critics do the talking! PASTE: “Walton’s wiggly, anxious power pop wades through pages of dead links and forum threads to get to its incendiary hooks... anachronistic collage of Edwardian portrait artists, country greats, and noise rock heroes… a roadside altar… with its lo-fi hissing and tongue-twisting one-liners.” The Quietus: "For fans of early Jonathan Richman, NYC gutter punks Dollhouse, or staring at the fluorescent lights of the Walgreens ceiling on your third day withdrawing from psych meds, barely able to parse the words ‘Medicaid coverage has lapsed’ as a pharmacist misgenders you. And also, later Jonathan Richman."


ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER was written by Lex Walton, produced by Lex and Dan Boeckner, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Ben Greenberg at Thump and Circular Ruin in Williamsburg, with assistant engineer Alice Cohen. ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER features appearances from Boeckner (Wolf Parade, Handsome Furs), Emerson Borakove, Alice Cohen, Brendan Dunphy, Emily Green (Geese), Greenberg (Uniform, The Men), Scotty Malcolm, Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire), and Sam Revaz (Geese).