Suche:surface

After following Luke Blair's work for approaching two decades from his 2007 debut as Lukid on Actress' Werk Discs, we're humbled to present a new album on Death Is Not The End. Following relatively hot on the heels of 2023's Tilt (his first in 11 years, not counting his work with Jackson Bailey under the Rezzett guise) Underloop brings Blair's innate knack for building loops and sound structures further to the surface, while allowing his ear for emotional expression to be dialled up a notch. Those fortunate enough to be familiar with Lukid's work as a DJ will be aware of how distinct his ability is to seamlessly disappear into loop-based abstraction and back again seemingly without blinking, and often Underloop feels much like a collection of the sludgey interludes and foggy sketches that underpin his sets. Blending apparently ramshackle melodies and textures and pulling them together into an undeniable whole, Blair's tendency for pairing the simple and the indescribable with an understated vigour is fully on show here.

Written and produced by Luke Blair. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.

2026 Repress

White Marble Vinyl


Dutch electronic music trio, Noisia, have announced the release of their long awaited new album, 'Outer Edges' on their own label, Vision. The 18 track album is their first in six years, and the band's second in total.
With a peerless reputation and countless awards under their belts, Noisia have transcended their genre and grown into a phenomenon in their own right. Drum & Bass is at the core of Noisia's sound, but Nik, Martijn, and Thijs's visceral brand has always ventured further.

"It's called Outer Edges because it's us exploring the outer edges of what Noisia, the three of us together, is. It's about the idea that all the songs are little islands that we take to their individual edge... They're all like expeditions to far sides. That doesn't mean that it's everything; it's just that every song, if it goes in a certain direction, we've taken it all the way there. There's no real concessions, we haven't been super DJ- or radio-friendly at all and we've done no collaborations or hardly any vocals on the album." - Noisia

Rhiza Semar presents its fourth chapter with Yildizlara, a four-track odyssey shaped from shadow, rhythm, and elemental texture. Crafted as both visceral tools and introspective journeys, the record navigates between ominous density and luminous release, guided by a deep awareness of space, myth, and matter. As an artist, Hitam paves the way for a new sound emerging from his burrows to build bridges between electronic subgenres while shaping a landscape unmistakably his own. Orb Weaver opens the cycle with jagged IDM rhythms that coil and release like threads of a web pulled taut. Originally composed for the graduation project of fashion designer Tim van der Plas, who's collection was inspired on climbing out of depression, its atmosphere is dark and ceremonial, with textures scraping against silence until catharsis emerges from the tension. A confrontation between inner turmoil and release. On Vanishing of the Anasazi, cavernous reverbs carry traces of lost structures, percussion echoing as if across ruins. A relentless drive holds the ghost of ritual processions, summoning a spectral energy that feels at once monumental and hollowed-out. The track suspends itself between presence and absence, architecture and collapse, leaving the listener in a space where echoes become the only surviving form of memory. Mesh Grip plunges downward into subterranean force. A thundering groove rumbles like minerals being unearthed, goblin-like figures at work in hidden shafts, chiseling away at stone in endless rhythm. From this pressure, a sudden swell of melancholy pads rises, reframing the heaviness with emotional resonance as if the whispers of angelic guardians seep into the caverns, transforming extraction into elegy. What begins as pure drive of endurance evolves into an introspective meditation. Closing the release, Yildizlara unfolds as an epic ascent. Layered rhythms rush forward with urgency, intricate yet propulsive, while chopped vocals bring back a sensual human element, scattering like signals across the night sky. Animalistic atmospheres dart through the mix as spectral cries and furtive movements, adding a primal dimension to the drive. What begins as erratic and untamed slowly converges into warmth and ultimate catharsis: a cosmic tale inscribed in sound, both intimate and monumental, familiar yet born of hidden memory. Yildizlara is both innovative and ancestral; a release where turbulence becomes ritual, and where rhythmic complexity unearths fragments of hidden memory. Beneath its dark and erratic surfaces lies a strange familiarity, like echoes of a primal past resurfacing through sound, reminding us of worlds once known but long concealed. Words by A. Veyra

2025 Repress

Quickly following March’s The Fool - our label debut - Sa Pa reveals his new album Ambeesh on Short Span.

Coming five years after In A Landscape, and nearly a decade since his debut Fuubutsushi, Ambeesh pulls together a previously hidden body of work.

Written between 2014-2019 and long held in reserve awaiting the right moment for release, the album has often been grouped conceptually as a follow up to his FORUM debut. There’s a strong through line connecting the unique language and liveliness of ambient, layered field recordings, and dub techno found in those earlier records, as well as the seamless skydive through pressure formations found in the Enter Sa Pa production mix, which hinted at several of these tracks.

These pieces have taken time to surface and fully catch the light, but there’s still little else that compares. It’s a cache of some of his deepest and most texturally thrilling music, some of which have been rattling around in our ears and minds and conversation for years and have now found the right home and time. Forward thinking and singular in its combination of atmosphere; Ambeesh can press on the body at the right volume, and moves in thrust and riposte with the listener’s circadian rhythms. Sa Pa continues to dissolve the border between club-informed experimentation and intimate headphone listening.

Ambeesh also marks the artist’s return to Australia and the beginning of a new phase.

Mastered by Miles. Digital release of Lexanconical mastered by CGB @ Dubplates & Mastering.

Art from The Designers Republic.

Islaja presents her new album ”Angel Tape”, her debut release on the new Helsinki-based label Other Power. Drawing inspiration from childhood epiphanies while listening to an alleged recording of angels singing, Islaja has crafted an album that stands out as a major work in her expansive and celebrated catalogue, which includes previous releases on labels such as Ecstatic Peace!, Fonal and Svart.


Islaja, aka Finnish artist Merja Kokkonen, describes her new album as a “counterwork” to her most recent albums, where the mode of composing was more song-based. This time around, she goes more in the direction of vast fields of sound where the human voice is a key ingredient of music that breaks free of strict stylistic guidelines and traditional song forms. Rough around the edges, atonal and otherworldly, "Angel Tape” is the result of a lifetime of inspiration from something beyond the immediate realm of our experience, an attempt to catch the elusive essence of musical otherness.


”As a child, I listened to the ’angel tape’ my mother played, and I never thought that the human voices I heard on it were angels singing. Instead, all the aural debris lying just beneath the surface caught my attention as I thought it was mysterious and something from a different world than ours, and so that was probably what was referred to as the ’angels’ so miraculously caught on tape”, Kokkonen explains. ”I think this was one thing that led me on this lifelong quest to find new sounds and forms in music.”



The tape she is referring to, a mid-80s church recording, was passed around in religious circles. Each time the tape was copied, it became slightly more distorted. It was believed that this recording of religious music had accidentally captured for the first time the voices of actual angels singing. The tape was rumoured to have originated in Kansas City and to have made its way to Finland.


Whereas Islaja has often thought of albums as being collections of recent songs presented together, ”Angel Tape” has a strong sense of conceptual coherence. The music comes from a place. That doesn’t mean that one must take a single path from one place to the next, as close listenings of the album reveal layers upon layers of not only sound but also of mood and meaning. From the human voice in its barest form, to the rising dense walls of sound moving and reshaping, ”Angel Tape” is a captivating album that unveils new contours with each repeated listening.

Focusing on bringing people some fresh air from the island that we produced with its own unique character. Our artists provide an escape to somewhere full of energy to drag you back from the so-called chaotic world. There are plenty of spaces, it’s a sharing for everyone!

As you may know, Koh is a word in Thai that means ‘island’. We want to represent the sound of our characterized island and tell the story through it. For this collection, we want to present the island under the ground which represents the different perspective of life reflecting our music scene in reality.

We gave the word “Clockmaker” as a hint to the artists.
It’s a simple, even mundane concept—something easily overlooked and not immediately eye-catching. It also suggests waiting, as it often takes time for people to return to the shop. But time itself holds meaning, and the clockmaker always has something hidden beneath the surface.

With that in mind, “The Photo Sticker Machine” and “Chucheewa” present their first original track: “Galactic Love.”

Alongside it are five vibrant remixes by artists we deeply admire—from Mogwaa (Korea) and Retromigration (Germany) to three incredible talents from Thailand’s local scene: Kova O’ Sarin, Chalo, and Saranmy.

Abacus - The Relics E.P. - A Deep-House Masterpiece from 1994 Re-Released Somewhere around 1993 or '94, a quietly profound landmark in deep house emerged: The Relics E.P. by Austin Bascom, better known as Abacus, originally released on Chicago's Prescription Records (catalogue #006). With four tracks spanning roughly 26 minutes, this record has since gained cult status among DJs, collectors, and aficionados of the deeper, more soulful yet futuristic side of house music. Abacus crafted a quintessential deep-house journey: warm grooves, lush textures, scorched sub-bass, and a deeply introspective futuristic atmosphere. Bascom produced a record that never chased trends, but instead quietly built a lasting legacy. This record remained rare and highly sought after. In an era when house music was splintering into countless directions - even reaching the pop charts - The Relics E.P. planted its flag firmly in the underground, soulful terrain. Collectors and DJs continue to cite it as essential deep house, often describing it as ''one of the finest deep-house records of all time.'' Its scarcity and enduring emotional pull have only strengthened its legend. Decades on, The Relics E.P. continues to surface in DJ mixes and playlists, and as a touchstone for producers seeking that timeless balance of groove and emotion. Now, three Decades later, Clone Classic Cuts is proud to present a fully remastered edition of The Relics E.P., including previously unreleased material from the same recording sessions. Pressed on 140-gram virgin black vinyl, this edition restores and elevates a true cornerstone of deep-house history.

Yesterday it started to rain…

The smell of damp tarmac rising up through open windows, a smell which is uniquely evocative for us all depending on our individual histories: a suburban pavement, a school playground, a basketball court.
The rain cut through a band of low pressure that had been lying over the city for days, pinging rhythmically off metal, causing rolling tyres to hiss and spit.

The music that soundtracked this meteorological shift was the debut full length from Rain Text (Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga), simply titled III. Scattered throughout the nameless eight tracks there are moments of low-end pressure relieved by the fizz and clatter of metallic rhythms; there is static, there is discord, there is release.

The individuals comprising Rain Text have a long history of manipulating sounds for evocative ends, Giuseppe Ielasi has been making music as one half of Bellows for many years, each album stretching and destroying their sound in beautiful increments. He has also released reliably inspirational music either solo or in collaboration for the likes of Editions Mego, Shelter Press and Faitiche. His sensitive ears are also in high demand as a mastering engineer. It is worth perusing the 800+ releases he has technical credits for on Discogs: from classics of the avant-garde to the freshest faces of the Swedish underground, the chances are some of your favourite albums are included.

Giovanni Civitenga helms the SKYAPNEA long-running NTS show. Joining him, you can enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of deep listening through shows that flit between the industrial and the devotional, a space that is fully explored on III.

The album was recorded quickly over three fertile days in Ielasi’s studio in Monza, but of course results like this can only be achieved at such a pace by spending a lifetime obsessing over the mechanics and possibilities of sound.

Those who are enamoured by the rain—who are returned by it to the surfaces, smells and sounds of a lost and idealised youth; who feel themselves restored—are known as ‘pluviophiles’. Their response to rain may well have a biological explanation: when rain hits tarmac negative ions are released into the air, which are thought to result in feelings of wellbeing and positivity. All the more reason, then, to return to the vivid ecosystem that Rain Text has so carefully cultivated for III."

Words by The Dengie Hundred – August 2024

The music of the duo Parajekt is created on electronic instruments. Drum machines, samplers, modular synths, and effects devices all culminate in a tape recorder, whose limitations invite them to work with great musical and sonic precision.
The resulting pieces serve as the first layer and as a sound score, which is then overwritten, mixed, and refined with dub techniques in a subsequent step.
Elements inspired by electronic beat music, musique concrete, and noise merge in a musical performance that brings the studio action onto the stage and places it front and center.

Infinity Gradient ist eine einstündige Komposition in sieben Sätzen für Pfeifenorgel und 100 Lautsprecher in 1-Bit-Audio. Aufgenommen wurde das Werk in der Royal Festival Hall in London, wo Organist James McVinnie 2024 als Artist-in-Residence tätig war. Die Lautsprecherinstallation - bestehend aus vier Subwoofern, 24 mittelgroßen und 72 kleinen Lautsprechern - bildet eine visuelle und klangliche Einheit mit der imposanten Orgel des Saals. Komponiert von Tristan Perich, verbindet das Werk die klangliche Direktheit seiner 1-Bit-Elektronik mit der archaischen Kraft der Orgel. Beide Instrumente basieren auf einem binären Prinzip: Ton oder Stille. Diese strukturelle Gemeinsamkeit schafft eine emotionale Tiefe, die trotz technischer Komplexität unmittelbar berührt. McVinnie, bekannt für seine genreübergreifenden Kollaborationen mit Künstlern wie Philip Glass und Squarepusher, initiierte das Projekt nach dem Hören von Perichs "Surface Image". Die Orgel der Royal Festival Hall - ein visionäres Instrument der 1950er Jahre - bietet mit ihren 7.866 Pfeifen eine ideale Bühne für dieses außergewöhnliche Werk.

Japanese black metal legends Sigh formed in 1989/1990. The genre-classic debut ‘Scorn Defeat’ followed on Euronymous’ Deathlike Silence Productions in 1993 & with each subsequent release, Sigh grew to become one of the country’s greatest & most revered metal exports. With a journey through the strange & the psychedelic, incorporating a whole eclectic mix of genre styles & experimentation throughout their career, Sigh has remained a vital creative force in the avantgarde field whilst maintaining their old school roots, as witnessed with the stellar 2022 album, ‘Shiki’. 2025 also saw Sigh reimagining their ‘Hangman’s Hymn’ album for a release on Peaceville as part of the band’s 35th anniversary celebrations, in the shape of ‘I Saw The World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV’.

Maintaining the core trio of Mirai Kawashima, Shinichi Ishikawa & Satoshi Fujinami & on the back of the epic & darkly symphonic opus ‘Infidel Art’ (1995), Sigh adopted a more boundary-defying approach to their writing, whilst still keeping the dark foundations & traits of the band’s fundamental sound. The result was ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ which surfaced in 1997 & draped in Eastern & horror-based atmospherics, the band also embraced elements outside of metal with what was their most experimental offering to date; utilising instruments such as the saxophone as well as acoustic passages & notoriously drawing comparisons to the moods of bands such as The Beatles at times, featuring catchy hooks & structures in line with the rock music genre, but masterfully woven into Sigh’s unique blackened metal tapestry.

Continuing with Peaceville’s re-issues of Sigh’s classic early ( & until now, hard to find) works, this edition of ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ contains a new master created by Patrick Engel at Temple of Disharmony, featuring a new transfer from the original DAT source.

The release also includes a new interview with main-man Mirai Kawashima conducted by Dayal Patterson of Cult Never Dies, delving into the history & inspirations behind ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’.

This edition of ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ is presented on black vinyl.

Japanese black metal legends Sigh formed in 1989/1990. The genre-classic debut ‘Scorn Defeat’ followed on Euronymous’ Deathlike Silence Productions in 1993 & with each subsequent release, Sigh grew to become one of the country’s greatest & most revered metal exports. With a journey through the strange & the psychedelic, incorporating a whole eclectic mix of genre styles & experimentation throughout their career, Sigh has remained a vital creative force in the avantgarde field whilst maintaining their old school roots, as witnessed with the stellar 2022 album, ‘Shiki’. 2025 also saw Sigh reimagining their ‘Hangman’s Hymn’ album for a release on Peaceville as part of the band’s 35th anniversary celebrations, in the shape of ‘I Saw The World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV’.

Maintaining the core trio of Mirai Kawashima, Shinichi Ishikawa & Satoshi Fujinami & on the back of the epic & darkly symphonic opus ‘Infidel Art’ (1995), Sigh adopted a more boundary-defying approach to their writing, whilst still keeping the dark foundations & traits of the band’s fundamental sound. The result was ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ which surfaced in 1997 & draped in Eastern & horror-based atmospherics, the band also embraced elements outside of metal with what was their most experimental offering to date; utilising instruments such as the saxophone as well as acoustic passages & notoriously drawing comparisons to the moods of bands such as The Beatles at times, featuring catchy hooks & structures in line with the rock music genre, but masterfully woven into Sigh’s unique blackened metal tapestry.

Continuing with Peaceville’s re-issues of Sigh’s classic early ( & until now, hard to find) works, this edition of ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ contains a new master created by Patrick Engel at Temple of Disharmony, featuring a new transfer from the original DAT source.

The release also includes a new interview with main-man Mirai Kawashima conducted by Dayal Patterson of Cult Never Dies, delving into the history & inspirations behind ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’.

This edition of ‘Ghastly Funeral Theatre’ is presented on black vinyl.

“There's a clarity here that feels hard-won. Honing ideas first explored with his Organic Music series, Tiago Sousa unlocks the final puzzle pieces on Sustained Tones Vol 1. This music is enchanted, the way each layer moves in conjunction with the others: complex structures that feel less constructed than discovered, like stumbling upon ancient mechanisms still whirring beneath the earth. "Readily Reliance" opens as an effervescent sea, waves gilded in neon creating an enveloping sense of eternal motion. Bright organ timbres throw silhouettes and cast Sousa as the deft puppeteer keeping everything moving with an effortless precision. These evolving shapes suspend listeners somewhere between the physical and the cosmic, held in place by nothing but intention and sound.

Drones build rippling foundations in other places, using slower tempos to construct immersive, off-kilter sound worlds where minimalism becomes emotive, almost poignant. The fluctuating tones have a gossamer sheen, creating this interesting sonic dichotomy: a solid surface with fragile rotations beneath. It's music that commands attention; it is so much more than simply aural furniture. Sousa writes these beautiful sequences that are all interconnected, intricate sonic architecture that pulls us further into some kind of unknowable ether.

On the piano pieces, "Smooth Flow Into It" and "Swirling Mist and Thin Dust," Sousa shines sunlight through all the cracks. Washes of melody are effervescent, clouds clearing to reveal the day has not gone. Not yet. Positioned in the middle of Sustained Tones Vol 1, these pieces ground the album in something transcendent yet still earthen: moments of breath inside all that cosmic drift. Darkness finds its way through on "Restlessness," where Sousa smears sinuous electronics into a ghostly sonic mesh that seeps through the skin. It feels like a slow inhale, time suspended long enough to take note of where we are and how we feel before moving forward. Expressive, almost sparkling synth arrangements return to send us back into reality on closer "Becoming a Landscape." Its title hints at larger concepts at play throughout this album, where lines between our physical beings and the wider environment are blurred. The tones that echo throughout these six pieces mirror the echoes inside our bodies, from heartbeats and voices to something quieter, something much smaller and more elemental. By immersing us inside these mesmerising, beautiful soundscapes, Sousa immerses us within ourselves.’’

Brad Rose, 2025

Limited to 250 copies !

The Deadheads had never had much luck with spaceships. Their first mission had ended in a catastrophic engine failure, leaving them adrift in deep space for weeks. This time, their craft was hardly more reassuring. A hodgepodge of outdated technology and shoddy repairs made it more of a floating death trap than a reliable cruiser. As they began their descent toward the strange planet, the hull creaked and rattled, sending a wave of dread through the crew.

"Hold on," Matt's voice crackled over the intercom, without much conviction, as if he himself doubted they would make it out alive. Outside, a thick, grayish atmosphere swirled ominously, while the planet's gravity became far stronger than anticipated.

“Fuck, we’re gonna burn at the entrance!” M yelled, his hands flailing on the console as sparks flew from the control panel. The ship’s sensors were completely jammed, and the navigation system flickered intermittently, like a dying light. Below, the planet’s surface was a tangle of lava rivers and jagged rock formations, the kind of place no sane person would ever land. But the Deadheads had never pretended to be. They lived in a state of constant emergency.

As the descent intensified, the alarms blared. On the bridge, the screens lit up with red warnings and flashing messages: "SYSTEM ERROR," "UNSTABLE TRAJECTORY," "SUIVITY SYSTEM COMPROMISED." The lines of code scrolled by too quickly to be read, while a mechanical voice repeated relentlessly: "Imminent impact. Structural integrity at twenty percent."

The once pristine shell of the vessel began to disintegrate, with shards of metal breaking away and disappearing into the atmosphere.

With a final, piercing screech, the ship crashed onto the planet's surface, sending up a cloud of dust and debris. The crew was violently thrown from their seats, stunned but barely alive. They struggled to their feet amidst the wreckage, the ship reduced to a charred shell around them.

"Well," M said, wiping the dirt off his suit with a grimace, "at least the air is breathable." Matt scanned the hostile expanse stretching before them and smiled slightly. "Perfect. Let's hope we have better luck with the planet than with our ships."

With that, the Deadheads gathered their equipment and headed into the unknown, while the remains of their ship slowly sank into the unstable soil of the planet.

Known for their exhilarating live-to-record albums such as last year's critically acclaimed Wood Blues and Giant Beauty, سماع Sama'a (Audition) is the first of two releases that will surface after أحمدAhmed’s first studio recording sessions at North London’s The Fish Factory in early 2025.

Since 2014, Ahmed أحمد have excavated and re-imagined the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, in an ever ongoing search for future music. Over a decade on, the group were given the opportunity to set up in the studio for the first time and, with the aid of meticulous engineer Benedic Lamdin, سماع Sama'a (Audition) is the quartet's most detailed work to date.

Fastidious fans may recognise the album's tracklisting as that of Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s Jazz Sahara. After his success collaborating with the pianists Thelonious Monk and Randy Weston, Jazz Sahara was the first record Abdul-Malik made as a leader and was released in 1958. It used the flame of late Fifties jazz to light the wick of North African folk music and acted as a reminder of the Arabic origins of jazz, creating a distinct, unique sound that was far beyond its time. In Malik’s Jazz Sahara, there is no piano. The ongoing work of each member of [Ahmed] then is to think differently, to wonder how the music will work and to take a risk on trying it out - an extraordinarily compelling feat of imagination. Using group improvisation strategies and recording in single takes, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) tackled the full suite of Jazz Sahara in just one session, with ‘Ya Annas [Oh, People’] and ‘Isma'a [Listen’] being previously unrecorded. 'Farah 'Alaiyna’, also released on 2019’s Super Majnoon, sounds unrecognisable - the slow, heady stomp and repeated phrasing of 2019’s embryonic [Ahmed] having been blast furnaced and sped up four-fold. The result is four kaleidoscopic, relative miniatures that move, unfold and re-imagine at a very different scale and proportion than [Ahmed]’s previous records. It’s a dizzying, euphoric music and an extraordinary record of a group moving through space-time like no other.




[b] Isma'a [Listen]
[c] El Haris [Anxious]
[d] Farah 'Alaiyna [Joy Upon Us]


[b] b1 Isma'a [Listen]
[c] c1 El Haris [Anxious]
[d] d1 Farah 'Alaiyna [Joy Upon Us]


[b] b1 | Isma'a [Listen]
[c] c1 | El Haris [Anxious]
[d] d1 | Farah 'Alaiyna [Joy Upon Us]

Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands is an autobiographical record, comprised of four songs that Hoff refers to as ambient media. Each track is composed from sources drawn from his own involuntary aural landscape, specifically musical earworms and tinnitus frequencies.

Neither sound nor a daydream, the earworm (or stuck song) emblematizes music as a commercial form—immediate, ubiquitous, and persistent. Likewise, tinnitus is inaudible and unscrupulous, manifesting across a spectrum of frequencies at will. The cognitive swirling of these phenomena provides an ambivalent, internal soundtrack that scores a person’s movement through the world.

Those suffering from tinnitus or those who have grown accustomed to the “Tinnitus Effect” in movies will likely recognize the buzzing pitches on the record, but will likely not recognize the songs. Distorted and distilled, Shadows Lifted from Invisible Hands features altered versions of four commercial pop songs: Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” and Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.”

Having been haunted by these songs on and off for years, Hoff tweaks the tracks, transposing and recomposing them for orchestral instrumentation. Speaking back to these involuntary echoes, these tracks go to great lengths to obfuscate their sources; to be sure not to simply re-introduce each earworm, as though they were samples. Otherwise, what’s the point? No one needs another stream.

Besides, earworms are not music, although we perceive them as such. They are non-cochlear and exist as an affective force that is neither subjective nor objective, which is to say they are an invasive—and alien—phenomenon. Like tinnitus, they are aggravated by economic, social, and environmental forces as well as emotional states, mental health, and aging. Hoff doesn’t underplay his own struggles with mental health in discussing the record—noting a long history of depression and its acuteness over the last few years, which serve as the backdrop to the composition of this record.

Scratch any pop song hard enough and you’ll find sadness underneath it. Subdermal, the songs on this record evoke a type of ephemeral weariness and despair. By recasting the original songs through their shadowy doubles, Hoff provides a window into the dark core of pop music. At the center of which lies capitalism’s desperate attempt to replicate itself through a cheap high built on echoing refrains. Just below the surface the listener finds a hangover of shadows dancing through the mind.

The song titles on Van Halen's aptly titled Fair Warning don't lie. The likes of "Unchained," "Mean Street," "Push Comes to Shove," "One Foot Out the Door," and more indicate the mood the band channels on its double-platinum 1981 record — the nastiest, darkest, and fiercest album of the group's storied career. For the fourth time in four years, Van Halen throws down the gauntlet to all challengers and emerges victorious.


Sourced from the original analog tapes, pressed on MoFi SuperVinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing, and strictly limited to 5,000 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's UltraDisc One-Step 180g 45RPM 2LP set plays with unfettered clarity, dynamics, and immediacy. Benefitting from superb groove definition, an ultra-low noise floor, and dead-quiet surfaces, this vinyl edition captures what went down in the studio with tremendous realism and involving presence.

Taking a more controlled approach in the studio and still completing everything in less than two weeks, Van Halen and producer Ted Templeman relied on studio amplifiers to direct the sound. Further diverging from the live-on-the-floor approach of its earlier albums, the ensemble also employed overdubs to great effect. The result: Dense, stacked architecture that underlines the hard-hitting tenor of the songs — and which comes alive like never before on this reference edition that looks as good as it sounds.

The premium packaging and gorgeous presentation befit the reissue's select status. Housed in a deluxe slipcase, it features special foil-stamped jackets and faithful-to-the-original graphics that illuminate the splendor of the recording. Aurally and visually, it is made for listeners who want to immerse themselves in everything involved with the album, including the iconic cover art adopted from William Kurelek's haunting painting, "The Maze."

Isolated frames from Kurelek's childhood-inspired work — including a man bashing his head into a brick wall, a guy pinning down an adversary as he delivers bare-fist blows to his face and others watch with apparent glee, a boy tied down on a conveyer belt and being sent through the equivalent of a meat saw — adorn the front and back covers. The sunnier visual disposition of Van Halen's prior efforts gives way to something sinister and tortured, traits reflective of the music within. The band members, too, are visually depicted not in glamorous shots but in a serious black-and-white portrait in which the quartet is clad in black leather jackets.

Tough, aggressive, stark: Fair Warning comes on like a series of bare-knuckled punches to the solar plexus and boasts lyrical narratives to match. Though not a concept record, the concise album revolves around themes of roughing it on the streets and struggling to survive amid dim prospects. Singer David Lee Roth reportedly penned many of the initial lyrics after traveling to Haiti and observing extreme poverty. The characters and situations populating Fair Warning reflect hardscrabble existence, last-chance desperation, and underlying danger.

Witness the crazies, poor folks, and hunters of “Mean Street”; the former prom queen turned pornographic actress on “Dirty Movies”; the menace and vice of “Sinners Swing!”; the streetwise hustle of “Unchained”; the isolation and alienation of “Push Comes to Shove”; the desire for escape on “One Foot Out the Door”: A carefree California beach party Fair Warning is not.

Having said he felt angry and frustrated during the sessions, guitarist Eddie Van Halen uses the forceful arrangements as a playground for his seemingly unlimited arsenal. Supported by a crack rhythm section and a hyped-up Roth, he performs with an almost impossible combination of punk-like intensity, technical finesse, lyrical fluidity, and unbridled emotion. The virtuoso was increasingly butting heads with Templeton and seeking a freedom in the studio he believed denied him.

No wonder he plays like a bat out of hell. Listen to the rapid-fire manner in which he slaps the high and low E strings on the 12th fret of his instrument on “Mean Street,” instilling the tune with funk flair and metal-spiked sharpness. For the pouty strut of “Dirty Movies,” Eddie Van Halen contributes slide guitar magic made possible after he sawed off the lower portion of a Gibson SG so he could reach further down the fretboard.

Related intensity, urgency, and daredevil momentum punctuate the surging “Sinner’s Swing!” A heavily flanged, delicately melodic introduction frames the attitudinal “Hear About It Later,” among the most creative arrangements of Van Halen’s career. And do riffs come any bigger or magnetic than those on the high-wire kick of “Unchained”? As for the out-of-left-field “Sunday in the Park,” an instrumental composed on an Electro-Harmonix micro-synthesizer: Who but Eddie Van Halen to supply creep factor in such an ingenious way?

Despite selling fewer quantities than Van Halen’s prior efforts, Fair Warning remains for many diehards the record that epitomizes all of the band’s immense strengths —Roth’s manic energy and tongue-wagging humor, Alex Van Halen’s rhythmic heartbeat-in-your-chest bombast, and Michael Anthony’s lucid bass lines included. Arriving when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and new-wave movements were taking flight, it signaled a shot across the bow from a band determined to stay a step ahead and provide proof nobody could touch what it delivered.

More than four decades later, Fair Warning still sounds that alarm.

Agathe Plaisance, a self-taught visual artist and musician, creates a universe where the softness of folk origins gradually metamorphoses, giving way to sonic explorations that push the door open to other worlds. Her light-and-dark electronic pop plunges us into her inner world, with deeply intimate lyrics about illness, addiction, the relationship with oneself and with others. The Lynchian atmosphere created by the synth layers surround an ethereal voice, echoing the work of artists such as Cat Power and Mazzy Star. Through a live performance of continuous tension, the woman in the making explores herself and seeks to transcend her pain in order to reinvent herself. With this new album, Agathe Plaisance delivers an intense and introspective work, born from a period of deep depression. She explores with honesty her anger, losses, fears, and addictions, while also casting a clear-eyed gaze on those of others. Despite the darkness that runs through the record, glimpses of hope, love, and light begin to surface, offering a path toward healing. Deep Rest is more than just a title - it's a metaphor, a play of shadow and light at the heart of the project. The artist transforms pain into a tool for reinvention. Her folk beginnings gradually give way to more electronic and experimental sounds - a shift that mirrors her personal rebirth.

Following the acclaimed reissue of Sa Discossa earlier this year, Jo Tongo's third solo album Those Flowers returns to the spotlight.

Originally released just a year and a half after Sa Discossa, this 1982 gem came out on the small Context label and, in Tongo's own words, the two records are "like twins." Recorded with many of the same musicians, Those Flowers continues the vibrant fusion of disco-funk and reggae - this time dedicating one side to each, leaning slightly more into his Western influences.

But there's more than groove beneath the surface. Tracks like "People Need Peace" and "We Human Beings" channel his enduring themes of resistance, identity, and freedom. The synthesizer at the beginning of the song mimics the ominous drone of warplanes, and lyrics speak directly to global struggles - reminders that his music is both deeply personal and powerfully political. "I paid for these ideals in my career," Tongo reflects, alluding to the personal costs of his outspoken stance against colonialism and injustice.

Still, Those Flowers carries joy at its heart. Songs like "Ain't No Man Like A Real Friend" celebrate trust and loyalty, while the title track offers a tender ode to love and kindness - "picking flowers from the soul," as Tongo puts it. These songs reveal the inner world of a man who has always viewed music as a mirror of life.

This reissue marks the second installment in the African Edge series from The Outer Edge label. Fully restored and remastered, Those Flowers is now set to bloom again - another vital chapter in the legacy of Jo Tongo.

Babau is the pantropical project of Artetetra founders Matteo Pennesi and Luigi Monteanni in which a fascination with exotica, world music 2.0 and field recordings meets the compositional and improvisational techniques of computer music. Their latest work, the album »Stock Fantasy Zone«, was recently released on Discrepant and they have been nominated Shape artists 2023. The duo has participated in various Italian and non-Italian festivals such as Fusion, Club to Club, Nextones, Outernational Days, Camp Cosmic and Saturnalia.

»Flatland Explorations« is an ever-growing collection of completely improvised attempts at mapping the surface and irregular shapes of Babau's sonic flatland by means of audio manipulations and digital sorceries. Joining live recordings with studio material and field recordings, the duo crafts its unique sound made of granular illusions, midi extravaganza, wind instruments' acrobacies, and vocal calembours. The results have been remarkably described as 'the sound of a continent moving, ethnicities, animals, plants and mineral included.

Out of the stack, the flatland has no boundaries.

Emerging through waves of reverberation and haze, ‘Deep Star’ unfolds as a submerged odyssey through Coma World’s distinct terrain of leftfield dub and psychedelia. The duo of Maxwell Hallett (Betamax) and Pete Bennie craft a sound that moves between meditative underwater drift and sharp, rhythmic pressure.

Each piece develops like a current, where bass resonance and percussive detail create an undertow of motion that guides the record’s flow. Beneath the murk, subtle shifts in tone and momentum reveal the album’s depth: flickers of tension and release that mirror the shifting light below the surface.

‘Deep Star’ captures Coma World at a point of lucid refinement, translating improvisation into form without losing its raw edge. Immersive and alive with motion, it’s a record that invites listening as descent—sound as gravity, pulling you deeper the longer you stay.

One of the founding figures of Amsterdam's underground Techno culture Dimi Angelis has been shaping the scene in the late 90s, throwing warehouse raves living up to the underground standards. Until today his approach remains unchanged: uncompromising, opinionated, and never aimed at easy pleasing.
Drawing from decades of crate-digging and an encyclopedic knowledge of Techno's evolution, Dimi crafts sets that feel familiar a reveal unexpected depths on closer listening.
These tracks follow that same philosophy as they are straightforward and honest on the surface, but wrapped in something appropriately unexpected.

What We Do When in Silence is the trio of Nicola Ratti, Alessandra Novaga and Enrico Malatesta.

Imagine a series of small movements in an empty space. Imagine their shadows on the floor, there’s a natural light sliding in from the 3 windows on your right side. There’s no silence here. There are people outside waiting for others, waiting for the people since what we do is not visible, since we do it when in silence and there is no silence here. Synthesizer, piano, whistling, electric guitar and percussions.

Nicola Ratti is a versatile musician and sound designer who has long been active across diverse experimental fields. His sound production creates systems shaped by repetition and expansion, with a particular focus on building environments that resonate with the spaces and architectures we inhabit, and on balancing the emotional and perceptual orientations to which we are accustomed.

Alessandra Novaga is a guitarist who has been exploring, for years, the possible territories her instrument can lead her to. She has crossed through the most classical worlds, reaching into intangible abstractions without setting boundaries between the two. Sound, meanings, encounters, and narratives are the elements that guide her path.

Enrico Malatesta is a percussionist and independent researcher working within experimental contexts that intersect music, performance, and territorial investigation. His practice explores the relationship between sound, space, and movement, and the vitality of materials, with a particular focus on surfaces, listening modes, and the articulation of multiple layers of information through an ecological and sustainable approach to percussion instruments.

Straight out of the local mud of the city of Antwerp comes dancing this next Souvenirs from Imaginary Cities slab of free-flowing bits of electronic wonder : Schönen Abend by Simon B. Just in time to ease you out of this endless winter and right into springtime. Like the previous hit by Purple Uncle, this flower takes some time to bloom and fill up your head and body with it's ear wormy fragrance.

It's hazy and cinematic, makes you think of Italian electronic pioneers and their library magic, Patrick Cowley's School Daze and Haruomi Hosono in some kind of gothic manner. It's quite stripped and lush at the same time, rhythms like minimal mechanics make you fly above the river and land just outside reality. It's a nice place where soft jazz tingles right around the dark corner, and that particular mix of exotica and melancholia — the trademark of this port city's best electronic auteurs is definitely in the air. The river still shines, but she’s deeply poisoned. The old town has lost every bit of fresh air but keeps on digging for old gold. This bitter pill is served with delicacy and lightness, the wound is dressed up seductively — feet in the mud, head in the air. Stuff is sensuous, with quiet places reminding of the good side of those times when the big wheel stopped turning ever so madly. A strange quietness whistles through the leaves. Some things take time to unfold. In or out of C.

Four years in the making, this is the solo debut LP of Simon B, a longtime contributor to Antwerp's improvised music scene (Groovecats Deluxe, Wij Blij Trio ). Primarily a double bass player, he also has a deep-felt passion for offbeat electronica and the rainbowy side of American minimalism, which takes front here. The smoky voice on the last track belongs to Nina-Joy Thielemans, Nina-Joy is part of Particals, a trio working with live electronics and field recordings, releasing an lp on Ultra Eczema later this year. Furthermore, you can hear the tenor and soprano saxophone of Adia Van Heerentals on 4 tracks, deepening out Simon's naturally flowing compositions and playing around with his melodies. You may know her from Bodem and her strong presence in the Belgian jazz scene lately.

Simon's electroacoustic experiments — using a clarinet and some outboard effects — were important tools in finding the very specific colour of this record. There's this airy character, like wind blowing through old layers of bricks and over the river, anchored with a deep sense of bass, gathering ages of dust and memories in these eight elegantly wobbling tracks, forming a perfect whole that’s really coming together in one deep listening from A to Z.

The centrepiece is perhaps Come to Me, instrumental and reprise with vocals, but no fillers on this one. Every part of the mystery is needed to come to its end and back again. It's a record that works in the morning, to open up a day and in the quiet corners of the night, with it's sleazy quirkiness, smiling towards you from the right corner of the eye. A perfect compagnon for your long-form wandering habits, light reflections on a wet surface obsessions, coffee slurping in the morning and the forgotten art of beachcombing. Quite essential these days, witnessing a world going apeshit.

End of 2023, changes surfaced in and around me. In the middle of it, I decided to pack a bag, turn off my phone and leave for Los Angeles. I found this tiny house on Airbnb that had a studio in the back. I spent 95% of my time there, figuring out what was happening inside of me while writing demo after demo. When I came back to France a couple of months later, everything had changed, my old life was gone.



The year that followed was full of new experiences, feelings, habits and occasional songs. I went back to my parents’, rented a 22m2 apartment in Paris for 6 months, travelled to the other side of the world, ran a lot, started therapy, had sex, missed, chased and eventually held.


One thing that never left was the music. I’m so grateful for what it has brought and keeps bringing into my life every day.



Archwood is the playlist of these past 2 years of my life. It’s the name of the street where I stayed in LA. Archwood is a chapter I’m finally able to share and it feels very, very good.

Slip is Paul Abbott’s response to his 3 day residency at OTO in 2023. It’s a continued exploration of the acoustic-digital hybrid drum setup Abbott has been developing for some time, which involves drum kit and synthetic sounds combined closely—through an entanglement of limbs and cables—in an intimate but strange relationship with each other.

Paul Abbott hasn’t had any formal musical training, but has a long history of making music, having collaborated for years with Seymour Wright, Pat Thomas, Michael Speers, Cara Tolmie, Anne Gillis and many others. Eventually, led by a profound suspicion of what is fixed or limited, Abbott began finding other ways to organise sound - or what he calls ‘material’:

“I wanted a way to 'persuade' or guide the possibility of something happening - my activity or the events of an algorithmic composition - for example, but without certainty or formalism. It felt to me, during playing, that certain ideas had a particular sort of shape, but more than the form of a line. I began to write alongside (before/after) playing the drums, and ‘characters’ began to enter the scene as a more wobbly, and therefore appropriate option to notation. Working with these characters allowed me to simultaneously approach body, imagination, language and music: without dividing things up or separating these aspects from each other. It allowed me to leave things messy and entangled, whilst trying to deal with form and specificity: wanting to have some things feel or respond differently to other things at other times.”

In approaching his residency, Abbott developed a fixed cast of characters - crystal, lleaf, reiy.F, reiy.C, strike, nee, qosel, sphu and aahn. They each communicate using different kinds of movement and drum kit/s, and Abbott choreographed them as ‘dances’ based on different feelings, or outlines of behaviours suggestive of ways of moving (body, drums, sounds). He then arranged these characters into ‘compositions’: one for each performance day, with each composition featuring multi-layered activity - options for behaviours, ways to move around the rooms, play drums, develop synthetic sounds, change the lights or re-distribute the sound in the space.

After the performances, Abbott took home 9 hours of recordings split into up to 28 multitrack channels for each day, and re-organised his cast once more into a performance for 2LP, CD and digital. It’s an enormous amount of work - but Abbott is activated by the process. For him, the pleasure of unstable edges, possibilities, slippages, is the vital attraction. Like all living organisms, Abbott’s characters have malleability and responsivity. They stimulate a bundle of possible behaviours, a tendency to act a certain way, a temperament, a boundary of respective limits or affordances.

It’s an affective way of working, inclusive of Roscoe Mitchell, Sun Ra, Nathaniel Mackey and Milford Graves. In ‘Pulseology’(2022), Milford Graves reminds us, ‘Breath varies, so cardiac rhythm never has that (metronomic) tempo. It’s always changing. All the alignments of the heart are determined based on the needs of the cells, specifically tissues and organs. The heart knows if it needs to speed up.’ In Slip, to slip, in a heartbeat, is to descend not into the grid of the even metre accorded to the heartbeat, but into a play of mutability and modality. To change is the condition of the heart.

Born from a profound devotion to the piano and a reverence for the organic flow of life, byt’ surprises listeners by presenting "paths of sand", a remarkable creation by Amsterdam-based composer xico, offering sound and soul to those willing to listen beyond the surface.

Through the magic of experimentation, xico captured the fleeting beauty of the muse of improvisation, as described by Nachmakovich, transforming the ephemeral into something lasting. Performances recorded on the same old piano during the 2023 Kaalstaart Festival in the Netherlands have since evolved into a fully realized work. A journey of nearly three years of dedicated silence that began with Telva’s intuitive recognition of xico’s voice, starting with an invitation to her radio show and blossoming into a captivating fascination with what unfolded. This process led to the art of shaping the selected live recordings into a collector’s item, now materialized as a limited edition of 200 pressed vinyl copies, forever remaining as an artistic memento.

Perfectly attuned to the energy of the autumn equinox, paths of sand unfolds as an intimate reflection of music’s ability to hold what cannot be held, to speak what cannot besaid, and to embody what can never be described.

xico is a sound artist and improviser from Ibiza whose work explores the merging point between disruptive and post-natural soundscapes, crafting immersive sonic environments through compositions that unfold like ecosystems.

Encouraged by an understanding of chance as nature’s and awareness' most accessible voice, he focuses on creating generative live-sets with varying degrees of unpredictability. For him, subordinating human intention to nature’s order is a conscious choice, and making art through this lens becomes a statement and a spiritual practice. With his distinctive touch, his compositions resonate with the world in unexpected and profound ways, offering experiences you may never have heard before.

Berlin’s ZentaSkai returns to his Mask Records with the ‘Billie’ EP, collaborating with Palawan, Jeremy Reinhard, and Thomas Grün for release on vinyl only, 2nd November 2025. He kicks off with the solo cut 'A1', which is quick, sophisticated, raw House with a funky clip to the beats that diffuses heat in the grainy sustained pads. It brings serene emotional release through stylish hypnosis and gorgeous vocals that blend seamlessly into the mix. Next, ZentaSkai collaborates with the mysterious Palawan, as he did on one track of his 2023 album The Architecture Of The Mind, on 'A2.' This one suspends you in backlit synth glows while rounded drums and funky claps tap out the supple rhythm. Cautious hope comes from the quiet chord stabs and soft focus melodies in what is a masterclass in deep Techno minimalism. 'B1' reunites ZentaSkai with Cologne's Jeremy Reinhard following previous cuts on that same 2023 album. Reinhard has long been a pillar of his local Berlin scene as a resident DJ, but also the wider underground with his own label Lekker Record. Their track taps into dub depths but ups the pace and allows radiant synths to piece the surface next to muttered spoken word that keep it intimate and perfectly seductive for body and mind. Last of all is a collab with Austrian Thomas Grün, who has been shaping deep and Tech House with his immaculate grooves for decades. Their 'B2' brings US garage snares to buoyant drums and douses them in layers of fuzzy synth warmth. It's meditative yet direct with an ever-rising sense of hope that makes it all the more indelible. ZentaSkai (aka No Mad Ronin, Matt Nowak, and MASK) is a German DJ and producer active since 1997. Based out of his studio in Berlin, ZentaSkai runs the Zaijenroots label and, since 2017, the Mask sub-label, which houses his stunning 2023 ‘Architecture of the Mind’ LP as well as his Cuddling Monsters project with Laura Merino Allue, who has been significantly involved in the label's work since 2023. - with other credits including a release on Jerome Sydenham’s Ibadan Records and support from the likes of Richie Hawtin, Joseph Capriati, Marcel Dettmann, Luke Slater, Laurent Garnier, DVS1, Ben Sims, and Radio Slave.

Iptamenos Discos kündigt Houdini an, die neue EP der Labelgründer Local Suicide. Die Platte enthält drei ihrer dunkelsten und kraftvollsten Originaltracks bis heute, ergänzt durch markante Neubearbeitungen des französischen Electroclash-Pioniers David Carretta und der aufstrebenden griechischen EBM-Kraft Alpha Sect. Die Houdini EP entstand im Berliner Studio von Local Suicide während zahlloser nächtlicher Sessions mit Skelesys in derselben kreativen Phase, die auch ihren gemeinsamen Hit Moustache, die Surface Of The Sun EP und Faster Faster auf Curses’ Next Wave Acid Punx-Compilation hervorbrachte. Das Ergebnis ist ihr bisher düsterstes Material, das ihren Technodisco-Sound in noch härteres Terrain führt - mit hypnotischen Basslines, industriellen Texturen und analogen Vintage-Synths. Damit zählt es zu den mutigsten Releases im Katalog von Iptamenos Discos. Die EP eröffnet mit Obsessions, einem Track zwischen Darkwave und Techno, aufgebaut auf einer brutalen Bassline, analogen Synths und eindringlichen, mantraartigen Vocals. Die wiederholte Zeile „Obsessions, they come and go“ spiegelt den unerbittlichen Sog des Stücks wider und unterstreicht seine klaustrophobische, sich ständig wiederholende Energie. Submission, eine Zusammenarbeit mit Langzeitkollaborateur Skelesys, steht dem in nichts nach: ein düsterer Low-End-Sound, verzerrte, stark bearbeitete Vocals und der Sprechgesang „Resistance, no submission“ durchziehen den Track wie eine Trotz-Erklärung, die Spannung in Kraft verwandelt. Der Titeltrack Houdini ist etwas zugänglicher, behält aber die gleiche schattige Atmosphäre. Unheimliche Orgelmelodien und der Text „The great Houdini, the big escape“ beschwören Transformation und Befreiung herauf, zollen dem legendären Illusionisten Tribut und verleihen der Nummer eine theatralische Note. Der französische Kult-DJ und Produzent David Carretta interpretiert Obsessions neu mit seiner unverkennbaren retro-futuristischen Handschrift. Seit den 1990ern bekannt für die Fusion von industrieller Präzision mit Italo-inspirierten Synths, hellt er den Track mit glitzernden Disco-Melodien und einer erhebenden Stimmung auf – eine Version, die sich bewusst vom dunklen Original absetzt und sofort für die Tanzfläche taugt. Der in Straßburg ansässige Alpha Sect, das Projekt des griechischen Künstlers George McCall, führt Submission in kompromisslose Dimensionen. Verwurzelt in Electro und Body Music mit Punk-Einflüssen, beginnt sein Remix als wuchtiger EBM-Stomper und entwickelt sich zu einem clubtauglichen Track, der Intensität mit Katharsis in Balance bringt.

Talk Show is a new duo collaboration featuring Steph Richards on trumpets and resonating surfaces and Qasim Naqvi on drums, almglocken bells and modular synthesizer. Having worked together on other projects for almost two decades, Miss America, released by We Jazz Records, marks their first, pure duo collaboration - a space to engage with a sonic language they"ve been cultivating together for years. The album was recorded live, with Qasim crafting real-time electronics and drum set work, and Steph using trumpets and resonating percussion to summon sympathetic vibrations and otherworldly sounds through timpani, snare and water. The trumpet sounds electronically processed, though every sound is acoustic. Both artists wanted to retain the live nature of their process, so what you hear is virtually untouched.

For our ninth offering we have ventured out of our small but fertile swamp in search of another source of magick. Meandering across boggy pastures new, we crossed paths with Steevio, who sat hovering serenely in the fern covered shade of a nearby valley. Instantly recognising the singular vision of this fabled artist, we hastily gathered our nets and cast them under Steevio’s branches, capturing four beautiful offerings as they wriggled towards us. Upon the return to our mulch, it became clear that we could not contain Steevio’s creations, so willful was their vitality. It was therefore all we could do to release them back to the universal dance from whence they came.

The dance germinates with the writhing polyrhythmic ‘Apricity’. Hearing the crunch of frost laden grass beneath our webbed toes, we look above us to search for the sun. Angular beams of light escape over the horizon, as the warmth of Steevio’s machines coalesce. A glistening hi hat breaks through the membrane to bind his creation and anchor its ever shifting arms.

‘Octopus’ glides gracefully through a sun-dappled kelp forest. Sub frequencies rumble up from the shadowy darkness below, rippling along the fronds as they ascend. As the ocean begins to churn, a wriggling melodic tentacle parts the foliage, gleaming with primordial energy. Its joyful visit to the surface realm leaves us with a brief yet powerful reminder of the mystery beneath.

The glow of the midwinter sun warms our bones on ‘Apricity (Sunrise Mix)’. Percussive elements bubble out of the depths, forming intricate cascading patterns as they grow over the perfectly formed kicks. The moog filter tames the brew with Steevio’s intuitive restraint , until he releases its mighty power upon the gleeful forest dwellers, to their rapturous gratitude.

With ‘Adref’ we return home. The sedate tempo provides oceanic space for a melody which inhales and exhales over a familiar landscape of perfectly tuned percussion. With each breath the melody seems to increase its reach, until it’s buried deep within our bones, its memory resonating on long after it’s gone.

Steevio’s music reflects the universal moments where seemingly chaotic and disparate elements are suddenly revealed to be perfectly harmonious. Of course examples of this are always universally present in nature, and have been eternally, but we have to be reminded to appreciate them. In the same way that a wave deposits a perfect line of shells on a beach, dew freezes on grass, or individual strands of mycelial hyphae bind together to form incredible patterns, Steevio’s music is likewise; effortlessly considered. For us, it has more in common with the unrelenting flow of a river than it does with dance music. It is psychedelic music in the same sense that nature is intuitively psychedelic; without ever leaning into any tried tropes of what is culturally considered ‘psychedelic’ music.

It's not often where I sign a whole release off the back of a demo folder sent to me but when Radicall sent me some tunes he'd made on the Polyend Tracker, I was well impressed by the quality of the tunes & knew I had to have some for the label.

I narrowed it down to my favourite four and thankfully, they were all available for signing and ready for release, probably one of the most seamless releases I've worked on since I started Future Retro London a few years back!

Big thanks to Radicall for his wicked tunes!

After a longer break berliner frank mueller and london based ulrich schnauss have surfaced from their studio labyrinth to present the beroshima longplayer "polyphonication".

After a longer break berliner frank mueller and london based ulrich schnauss have surfaced from their studio labyrinth to present the beroshima longplayer "polyphonication".

What began as a nostalgic nod to Camden Market’s bootleg culture has become the next chapter of in the Running Back Mastermix series. At once deeply personal and openly communal, it shows how a lifetime of production can be condensed into 90 minutes without losing its edge — proof that the mixtape, even in 2025, still has stories left to tell.
What followed was a patient excavation. Old DATs were pulled out of storage, forgotten files surfaced from hard drives, and new material was written to sit alongside them.
Together, these fragments revealed a body of work stretching back more than 25 years — tracks that moved across the spectrum of house and techno but shared a common thread of character and atmosphere.
In May of this year, the archive finally found its form. Recorded live on three decks using Serato, the resulting mix brings together 24 tracks: unreleased material from the past and brand new productions, all stitched together into a continuous narrative. It’s equal parts retrospective and statement of intent — less a museum piece than a living document.

Asa Moto hail from Ghent, Belgium — a city where concrete collides with cathedrals. Their music obeys the same law: rhythm wired into noise, melody bent out of shape. No genres. No safe zones.

They’ve taken this across Europe and beyond: festivals like Dour, Best Kept Secret, and Boiler Room Bangkok; clubs that shape the underground including Panorama Bar, Opium, Lux, XOYO. Sacred halls turned into dancefloors, basements stretched to capacity. Wherever they land, Asa Moto rewire the room.

Resident Advisor and the BBC were listening from the start. Altın Gün brought Asa Moto in to produce the critically acclaimed Yol (2021) — the band’s first collaboration with outsiders. Remixes for Polo & Pan, Chloé Thévenin and others spread the same edge further out — each a glimpse of their method, a vision in motion.

All signals run through Studio Martino in Ghent — their own control room for recordings, remixes, transmissions. The records surface on DEEWEE, the label founded by Stephen and David Dewaele of Soulwax/2manydjs — the only one reckless enough to carry them. The next, DEEWEE082 — Music For Disk Jockeys Pt. 1, continues the line — four tracks as proof that Asa Moto refuse limits, because the world refused them first.

Léo Dupleix return to Black Truffle with Round Sky, following the enchanting Resonant Trees (BT119). The composer here performs on analogue synthesizer, harpsichord and spinet as one member of Asterales, a group that brings together four important figures in the international community of musicians working with just intonation: Dupleix, Jon Heilbron (double bass), Rebecca Lane (quarter-tone flute) and Frederik Rasten (guitars). The quartet perform three recent pieces by Dupleix, each of which is like a different view on the same landscape of unruffled calm, where the unique harmonic events made possible by just intonation flicker across melodies and harmonies like light on the surface of water.

The first side is dedicated to ‘Poème d’air’, composed while Dupleix was immersed in the music of 14thcentury ars nova composer-poet Guillaume de Machaut. A sustained study of the ‘sonic possibilities of low-pitched sounds in just intonation’, it begins with a long, rumbling pitch from Heilbron’s bass, soon joined by the organ-like tones of the composer on synthesizer. The piece is made up of cycling sequences of chords, each of which is repeated for several minutes before the music either freezes on a single harmony or silently pauses before the next episode begins. These structures are initially dominated by the bass and synthesizer, with Lane’s pure vibrato-less flute tone and Rasten picked harmonics adding flashes of colour. As the piece develops, flute and guitar become more prominent and the bass climbs to higher registers. The development culminates in a stunning episode around fifteen minutes in where the texture thins out, casting a spotlight on a melodic figure exploiting the uncanny sound of Lane’s quarter-tone flute.

On the second side we are treated to two briefer pieces, closer to the sound of Resonant Trees as they return harpsichord and spinet to the foreground. ‘Ghosts’ centres on a harpsichord melody that slowly expands as it repeats, growing from a haunting six-note cell to a flowing succession of notes whose shape become increasingly difficult to perceive. Alongside this melodic development, an increasingly lush accompaniment grows, with long tones from bass, flute, e-bowed guitar and synthesizer holding notes picked out the harpsichord melody in a swaying harmonic cloud. Dupleix notes that the concluding ‘Round Sky’ was written in the countryside in spring, a circumstance that seems far from irrelevant to the impression the piece makes when its euphonous spinet arpeggios emerge from a gentle synthesizer drone like a flower from a bud. Performed as a duo with Rasten, with both instrumentalists also singing, this title piece exemplifies what makes Dupleix’s music so unique: grounded in a rigorous application of just intonation principles yet as open as Harold Budd or Andrew Chalk to an uncomplicated, intuitive experience of beauty.

"Released in 1968, “Il medico della mutua” (The Doctor of the Mutual Insurance) is one of the sharpest and most bittersweet comedies in Italian cinema. The film stars Alberto Sordi as Dr. Guido Tersilli, an unscrupulous Roman physician who climbs the professional ladder by exploiting the public healthcare system with ruthless irony. Directed by Luigi Zampa, the film offers a lucid and sarcastic portrait of Italy during the economic boom — a country racing toward modernity, yet flaunting all its moral contradictions.
Giving musical voice to this social satire is Piero Piccioni, one of the undisputed masters of Italian film music. His score for “Il medico della mutua” perfectly captures his elegant and sophisticated style: smooth jazz, orchestral groove, and an ironic touch that mirrors the double nature of the protagonist — respectable on the surface, opportunistic at heart."

Difficult as it may be to imagine, there was a time when Sun City Girls did not exist. Prior to the Bishop brothers teaming up with drummer/shaman Charlie Gocher to form SCG's classic trio lineup, there were various ad-hoc assemblages of local Phoenix-area freaks and weirdos – groups which existed only long enough to play a single gig, open mic or house party before disbanding without a trace. Hatched from this milieu was Paris 1942, a short-lived band formed by guitarist Jesse Srogoncik that included Alan Bishop, Richard Bishop and former Velvet Underground drummer Maureen Tucker.

Paris 1942 would play only four shows in as many months, but between April and August of 1982, the band would gather several times a week in Tucker's living room, where the group feverishly wrote and rehearsed with a kind of quotidian discipline. While P42 didn't release anything during their brief tenure, a 7" EP and LP (both self-titled) surreptitiously surfaced on the Majora label in the mid to late '90s. Until now, those two titles – as well as an appearance on Placebo's Amuck comp in late '82 – would be the only documented evidence that this improbable, serendipitous and magnificent band ever existed.

While those expecting P42's music to sound like a tantalizing combination of Sun City Girls' iconoclastic hoodoo havoc and the Velvets' primal drug-chug certainly won't be disappointed, Paris 1942 more often than not transcends even these nearly impossible expectations. Srogoncik's songs, in particular, are a revelation, displaying as much in common with the exuberant raunch of The Gun Club and the chapbook punk of Peter Laughner as they do any of the more obvious touchstones.

The group's foresight to document and capture this meeting of musical minds – a meeting as unlikely as it was short-lived – provides a missing link between the Velvets and the Voidoids, between the Dead Boys and the Dead C, between ESP-Disk' and DNA. Far more than a historical curiosity, Paris 1942 provides a fresh perspective on an embryonic and sadly vanishing US underground. It is music that blinks at the past and anticipates a thousand possible futures.

– James Toth (excerpt from the liner notes)