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Anton Klint has been on our radar for a good 10 years now with killer releases as Tiedye on Italians Do It Better, and under his own name on Public Possession, 2MR and Hivern Discs just to mention a few. Since 2016 he’s also been running the label Tryck & Ton together with his old Tiedye sparring partner Edvin Edvinsson. We’re psyched to have him onboard and we hope you are to!

Berlin producer Robot Koch is back for his third full length release, “The Other Side”.

Although Robot Koch has an international reputation as being “One of Europe's finest producers of the beat generation“ (Low End Theory), he is much more than just a beatmaker… “(Post)-dubstep infused Electronic Hip Hop“ is far too constrained a label to understand what this producer is all about. Instead of following the sound of his previous albums “Death Star Droid” (“Essential listening” – Bobby Friction BBC) and “Songs For Trees and Cyborgs“ (“Music for a modern age that has rarely sounded so good” – Boomkat), Koch takes the genre defying ingredients from these previous records to another level. There still are some of those “Galactic ten ton beats and space age melodies“ (Dazed and Confused) that made the previous albums staple drops in the playlists of Mary Anne Hobbs, Starkey, Daedelus and Gaslamp Killer to name a few, but there is a new dimension to Koch's production and songwriting that didn’t show on his previous records.

The cinematic vibe of tracks like “Nitesky”, the quirky and moody feel of “Bugs” and the electricity of “Tapedeck” show how Koch more than ever manages to create intimate and timeless pieces of music that are soulful, deep, mysterious and that will appeal to fans of cutting edge Electronica and modern pop music alike. This is the most personal record of Robot Koch to date. Instead of going for big name features Koch teamed up with lesser know artists like Kansas based vocal talent John LaMonica, long time friend and theatre composer Nielson and mexican singer/songwriter Graciela Maria to find the right voices for his compositions. John LaMonica infuses his whimsical and heartfelt melodies that breathe an air of darkness and nostalgia with Koch's fresh and forward thinking instrumentals to create something that fans of Radiohead, The XX and Jamie Lidell should not sleep on.

After the release of the John Robinson collaboration album (“Robot Robinson” – Project Mooncircle) earlier this year, it seems surprising how extensive Robert’s output is, but don’t be mistaken, this album is a longer term project than just releasing the songs Koch made in the last year. Some of the songs found on “The Other Side” were made seven years ago.

The 2014 debut solo collection by French wind-walker Baptiste Martin aka Les Halles remains a masterpiece of soft light and subdued yearning, woven from grainy panpipe samples, tape hiss, and spectral delay. Recorded late at night in a tiny room in Montpellier, Invisible Cities quivers like a candle by the sea, its fragile illumination flickering against an expanse of sky, silence, and sorrow. The pieces feel both ancient and immediate, glimpsing currents behind the veil, at the threshold of presence and absence. The track titles evoke similarly transient states of echo, memory, and negative mirrors. This is music of solitude and devotion, of empty streets and unremembered dreams, fleetingly captured via the eternal alchemy of FX pedals and a 4-track. (Britt Brown)

All tracks recorded by Baptiste Martin, in Montpellier (France), in late 2013. This collection of tracks is named after Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

It all started with waiting music for the city of Ghent information telephone line. City composer Fulco Ottervanger (Cruise Lento) envisioned a music in which waiting time would serve as an invitation to stillness and presence. Long-term friend and producer Lieven Van Pée (Vectrex) turned out to be the ideal companion.

However, the music was never used, yet it had not missed its magical effect. The two gentlemen were now determined to make a full ambient album in which silence would play a leading role, both intuitive as well as elaborated down to the smallest unit of time... An additional approach was to make music to lull their newborn sons to sleep. With melodies simple, sounds sweet and silences deep.

Inspiration came from Haruomi Hosono's 1984 obscure classic Watering a flower, Eric Satie's Vexations and how could it be otherwise, John Cage's 3'44. What these progressive yet universal compositions have in common is a refinement of repetition and both a soothing and stimulating character. As a listener you can't help but dive into the silence and experience an certain sweetness. The ideal record to rest to, to wake up to and enter a wider field.

Diapason Rex is the second LP by Oakland-based producer Brogan Bentley on Leaving Records. Picking up right where Bentley’s 2014 LP The Snake left off, Diapason Rex’s songs evoke the geography and spiritual energy of the west coast while showcasing the producer’s growing confidence in both carefully crafted dance productions and expansive sonic arrangements. Bentley states, “It’s been brewing for a long, long time and it holds so much information. This is the crowning burst of harmonious song for me, my opus, my cosmic regal song.”

Haunting, swelling album-opener “Ecstasy” sets the record’s tone, where a bed of meditative pads are confronted by a driving breakbeat, heavy layers of soulful vocals and hard-edged synths. Almost defying categorization, the sound of Diapason Rex is bracingly personal. Bentley states, “I’m so particular in so many aspects, and I’m so certain of what I want things to sound like, that I’ll go after it with everything I’ve got. Between the two places of pure experimentation and total intention, is where this album was born from… I really feel like every single song is a crystal.”

Club-ready tracks like the stuttering, sample-slicing “Work” and the elegant yet pained “Phantom” highlight Diapason Rex’s production value. Bentley’s attention to sonic detail is deep-seated; according to the producer, “For me, music is my teacher, and specifically bass.… This stuff is really supposed to acclimate the energy centers in your body.

Diapason Rex is thematically heavy, with late album cut “The Keeper” occupying a special place for Bentley. He states, “’The next day I found out that my friend had gotten hit and killed by a drunk driver. I think it was my friend showing me stuff from the other side about where we go… I sat with this piece of music for a year and a half, writing and producing it. I recorded that the day after my grandma died - I can hear the tears in my eyes from when I was recording those vocals. . It’s stuff like that. For that song to have such a connection to the afterlife, I couldn’t have imagined that going into it. I wasn’t thinking, ‘I’m going to make this song that describes being guided into some eternal space by some all-knowing hand,’ but that’s kind of what comes through when I hear this stuff now, because I’m just a human. We’re stuck down here on this mortal plane, but through music, something spiritual and sacred and timeless is transmitted.”

Three killers heralding the next phase of this dazzling expression of a dream Dakar-Berlin nexus. All instrumental - though the opener has snatches of singing - with the vocal versions held back for the new album, out in the autumn.The music just gets deadlier and deadlier - harder-boiled and deeper; more focused, confident and dub wise. Evoking the ancient cultural legacy of the griots, “Walo Walo” is also the name of the Sabar rhythm underlying the opener, which features Ibou Mbaye's percussive synth-work, Mangone Ndiaye Dieng's kit-drumming, and Bada Seck's rigorous jolts of lower-pitched Thiol drum. The “Groove” version is tough as nails; well and truly gnarly. A tribute to the Baye Fall leader, Ndiguel Groove is a sparse, mellow interpretation of the most traditional cut on the album, showcasing Assane Ndoye Cisse’s insinuating guitar lines, Laye Lo’s super-elasticated snare-drumming, and Bada Seck playing the Khine drums associated with the Baye Fall.

Berlin producer Robot Koch is back for his third full length release, “The Other Side”.

Although Robot Koch has an international reputation as being “One of Europe's finest producers of the beat generation“ (Low End Theory), he is much more than just a beatmaker… “(Post)-dubstep infused Electronic Hip Hop“ is far too constrained a label to understand what this producer is all about. Instead of following the sound of his previous albums “Death Star Droid” (“Essential listening” – Bobby Friction BBC) and “Songs For Trees and Cyborgs“ (“Music for a modern age that has rarely sounded so good” – Boomkat), Koch takes the genre defying ingredients from these previous records to another level. There still are some of those “Galactic ten ton beats and space age melodies“ (Dazed and Confused) that made the previous albums staple drops in the playlists of Mary Anne Hobbs, Starkey, Daedelus and Gaslamp Killer to name a few, but there is a new dimension to Koch's production and songwriting that didn’t show on his previous records.

The cinematic vibe of tracks like “Nitesky”, the quirky and moody feel of “Bugs” and the electricity of “Tapedeck” show how Koch more than ever manages to create intimate and timeless pieces of music that are soulful, deep, mysterious and that will appeal to fans of cutting edge Electronica and modern pop music alike. This is the most personal record of Robot Koch to date. Instead of going for big name features Koch teamed up with lesser know artists like Kansas based vocal talent John LaMonica, long time friend and theatre composer Nielson and mexican singer/songwriter Graciela Maria to find the right voices for his compositions. John LaMonica infuses his whimsical and heartfelt melodies that breathe an air of darkness and nostalgia with Koch's fresh and forward thinking instrumentals to create something that fans of Radiohead, The XX and Jamie Lidell should not sleep on.

After the release of the John Robinson collaboration album (“Robot Robinson” – Project Mooncircle) earlier this year, it seems surprising how extensive Robert’s output is, but don’t be mistaken, this album is a longer term project than just releasing the songs Koch made in the last year. Some of the songs found on “The Other Side” were made seven years ago.

Cutting edge innovators Rashad Becker and Mark Fell re-work material from Sote’s extraordinary ‘Parallel Persia’ album alongside a killer non-album track by Ata Ebtekar aka Sote himself. Highly recommended if yr into the complex tunings and arrhythmic geometry of Dariush Dolat-Shahi, Autechre, Xenakis. Last year’s ‘Paralell Persia’ album took the trajectory of his preceding ‘Hardcore Sounds From Tehran’ (2016) and ‘Sacred Horror In Design’ (2017) to thrilling new heights for Diagonal. Turning traditional instrumental music inside-out with computers and modular synths, he arrived at a thrilling mix of sound that stood out as one of the year’s most original and striking releases.

First striking us with his exhilarating ‘Yakka’ EP, Bambi OFS has continued to surprise us with his musical output ever since. (…) The Belgium-based producer is carving out an almost unique take on dance music with a heavy debt of gratitude to the endless rhythms and percussion-centric styles of Gamelan, and other styles of music native to Indonesia and further afield (…) the revised ‘Kwon-9’ EP goes for the jugular and ties together the percussion-heavy originals on vinyl alongside phenomenal remixes from Don’t DJ, Georgia, Icon Template and Broken English Club.” Inverted Audio Super excited to bring this killer release on vinyl with a brand new remaster and remixes by Broken English Club, Georgia, Don’t DJ and Icon Template! Meshing together industrial mirages and ethnofictional mindscapes, Bambi OFS provides Antibody with a new suite of polyrythmic spins. Extending on his first ep Yakka, Kwon-9 blurs the line between the synthetic and the organic while pushing the Brussels-based producer’s interest in uneven grooves and mixed meters into sharper detail. Mirrored by the puzzling archaic-futuristic alphabet featured on the cover, this new set of trax softly draws the listener in an elusive and multi-faceted experience. Bambi OFS is Cédric Dambrain, composer, electronic musician and virtual instruments designer based in Brussels, Belgium. Dambrain’s approach to music is motivated by an exploration of perception thresholds, psychoacoustics, and the physiological impact of sound. This diversity of themes is matched by a wide range of productions which include electroacoustic computer music, compositions for ensembles, noise, sound installations and, more recently, club- oriented polyrythmic explorations. Dambrain has also been composing extensively for performance artists and music theatre.

Lotus Wash drops his debut album on LBD Sounds, bringing a whole load of fresh material which came out from his experience as a session musician, and performing his experimental live sets around the Czech Republic. He connects the dots between classically trained musician and modular synth-head, working in Prague's DIY shop and creative community Noise Kitchen. The album spans across 6 original tracks of pure analogue bliss and live ideas, alongside three remixes from his closest allies, local producers Oliver Torr, Vision of 1994, and Hrtl.

The Field Theory was created during a period of deep fascination with quantum physics, with the tracks being conceptually and aesthetically inspired by some of its phenomena. Acoustically, it's mostly a slow and dark affair, with Lotus Wash only letting the light in very briefly when the sun is young (Magnetic Moment), keeping the shutter firmly closed for the rest of the record. His music does not rely on banging beats to drive it, instead letting intense grooves do the job from deep underground, just like on earth-shattering album opener Vacuum Fluctuation. He masters his craft of building atmosphere, a skill learnt during multiple collaborations with various Czech theatres. Of course, he lets the steam out occasionally, and always with devastating effect (Higgs Field, Casimir Force), but mostly choses to keep it capped, humming and hissing. When the sky clears, he opts for a minimalistic and hypnotic approach, only to disturb this peace with a killer bassline in one of the album's highlights – Spooky Action in A Distance – later re-imagined and re-electrified by Oliver Torr. Standard Model is anything but your standard techno, while Hrtl's remix of Magic Moment flirts with techno too, but on a dubbier and brighter side. Bringing the album to a close is Vision of 1994's downtempo take on the same track, finally letting you breathe out.

Omochi’s debut single, Devil is an amorphous urban lysergic bass-pop expulsion. A motorbike ride through late night Tokyo, headlights and neon ooze across wind battered eyeballs. A sudden lurch takes the ramp up to the overpass, revealing the electrified vista. With a dime bag of psychoactive tweaks and bleeps, a foraging bassline - a Billy Cobham on K. Dial-ups cry out to connect, once the signal catches, it's moved out of view, as the organ mourns the hint of dawn on the horizon.

A Happy Moment: percussive spasm, bass once again lurches, unfolding. Omochi’s lyrical push-me-pull-you phased out vocal, the drum machine falls down the stairs, while church organ goes secular, concentrating on the notes outside - mind your pews and Qs.

Omochi, (honorific “O” before mochi - show some fucking respect) in daily parlance is actually a rice cake, a dense glutinous product suited to many recipes, be they sweet or savoury. Stick one under the grill, watch it burst open, wrap it in crisp seaweed and dip it in soya - a healthy snack, and a staple around Japanese New Year. Like everything, Omochi also has its dark side - each year it kills off a small section of the aged community, the gluey bolus a hard act to swallow - the unwary can quickly choke to death.

So maybe Omochi's music is best to sample in small chunks initially? Could be too much for the uninitiated? A 7” might be a safer initial taste of what Omochi is going to do to your brain - there's an album on the way - could be time to stock up on soft furnishings.

Omochi is in fact Tadaki Matsunaga, of early 2000s Tokyo three piece Femini Flyers. The Feminis were Tadaki (bass), Sachie (vocals) and Koji (drums). Their 7” single “Like You See” / “Masterbed” was an early Ethbo release - the most requested track from Japan Blues’ Boiler Room Collections video, since it was first aired, way back in 2014. Since that recording, Tadaki has built, and been working in, his home studio. Devil and Happy Moment are a hint of the album that Omochi has ready. Grill-ready - wanna bite?

Mastered by Kuratani, pressed at the only independent record pressing plant in Japan: Toyo Kasei. Housed in psychoactive sleeve and label artwork by Mishumaro Nakamura.

With airpay support from Ben UFO, On The Wire (BBC),
Do!! You!!! (NTS) and Japan Blues (NTS).

A key player in the New York scene and boss of her own Dusk & Haze label, it was Francis Harris’ Kingdoms that initially released Sophie Saze’s standout two-part album, and that is where this forward looking package of highly original remixes lands. First up is German artist Roman Flügel, who’s responsible for a myriad of musical aliases and just as many different sounds. Here he is in experimental electronic mode and reworks ‘Cure’ into an elongated groove with twisted synth lines layering up over the shimmer, shadowy beats. It’s a ghoulish track with a creepy atmosphere. Swede Anthony Linell makes tripped out, heady techno on Northern Electronics, always with a stylish aesthetic. That continues here as he reimagines ‘Aliens’ as an absorbing cosmic soundtrack. Supple, rubbery drums bubble down low while broad pads and astral motifs colour the airways above and sink you into a state of trance. New York beat maker and Blueberry Records boss FaltyDL then steps up with a remix of ‘Self’. It is a typically off-kilter groove that seems to float on post-jungle drums while distant synth details make for a dreamy atmosphere. Closing out this killer package is Saze’s original track ‘Dreams’, an intense techno cut where coarse textures peel off the industrial clatter of the drums.

After one year of high energy industrial and punk-leaning music, Kess Kill presents something slightly more contemplative: the vinyl debut of the Swedish act Grand Mal X. The Solna based duo started in 2010 and was first known from the cassette scene, which was also where we stumbled across their work.

Sam Kerridge launches a major rethink of his style with the high-velocity tempos and razor-toothed bite of The Silence Between Us.Toiling somewhere between Ueno Masaaki’s Vortices for Raster-Noton, the pitching pelt of La Peste for Hangars Liquides, and the machine convulsions of Somatic Responses, he goes balls-to-the-wall with the breakneck momentum of Possession/Control, harnessing reverse-edited kicks, helter-skelter EBM bass and spectrographic noise ghouls in a surge of searing rave energy.Flipside, those knotty, strobing pulses keen thru empty stomach inversions and bursts of tangled EBM synths on Ascension, which is effectively a snappier edit of the A-side, whilst Radical Possibilities of Pleasure sounds like a field recording from a french hardtek invaded by dildo dibble in choppers and riot gear railing lasers against any unlucky dancers.

Borka's new 7" is a double single which features two tracks, taken from his new Places EP.
The A side features Todra, a track that builds up slowly, but before one knows it, it becomes a full-on neck breaker. The samples transport us to rocky Moroccan gorges, but do so with a killer hip-hop mood that bring to mind early Dimlite stuff.
On the B side we have Svetac, a track that swirls around a distinctively engaging folk sample, which immediately drops us on an island in the middle of the Adriatic sea. But Borka and his collaborator nikson manage to build a space portal around it that constantly flips between images of careless summer evenings and interstellar voyages.
"Memories in the corner of my mind Flashbacks, I was laughin' all the time"

The package includes a download code for the full 8-track Places EP.

The team at Diskotopia are extremely proud to present London via Tbilisi producer Sseq's debut self-titled LP. Sseq has been honing his craft over the past several years releasing music as part of the Body Thrills duo as well as DJing and playing live at Georgian clubs and festivals before making his move to the UK. Here on his stunning self-titled debut LP, Sseq materializes twelve abstracted and microcosmic jewels of interdimensional techno alchemy. The compositions bend and weave, flutter and spiral across synthetic textures and abstract rhythmic expressions that at once beguile and inspire. Sseq's sound is like an interstellar interpretation of what a sentient Buchla synth might dream of in zero gravity. Riyl Actress, Beatrice Dillon, Patten, Drexciya, Pole, and Björk-era Mark Bell productions. Sseq's debut LP was mastered by Dominic Clare at Declared Sound and will be available as a limited-edition cassette.

Diskotopia is ecstatic to launch our 11th year with a bombastic new LP from label co-founder Bd1982. Initiation Insight follows 2021's seminal Distance Vision LP - which garnered inclusion in Bandcamp's Best Electronic Music, JunoDaily's Best New Albums, and coverage in The Wire, RA, and Louder Than War - surveying the previously-plotted sonic ley lines and expanding upon them in drastically robust and kaleidoscopic directions.

Musically, the tracks across Initiation Insight have been composed with an ear towards ritualistic structures, with the album's themes touching upon spirituality, hermetic philosophy, dreams, and human evolution in the face of impending natural destruction.

On this release, Bd1982 favors stylistically nomadic production and a drive for emotion over genre constraints to explore further depths of songwriting and structures not yet heard in his previous material. Tribal-informed industrial and molten-electro styles coalesce with both future-facing and ancient-rooted textures – spread across an underlying current of soundsystem-savvy sonics.

Initiation Insight proves to be another major step in the evolution of Bd1982's sound, a caustic yet covalent natural mutation that will appeal to fans of Killing Joke, My Bloody Valentine, PJ Harvey, Cabaret Voltaire, Samhain, and Tricky alike.

Mastered by Dominic Clare at Declared Sound.
Available as a limited-edition cassette.

Limited to 100 Cassettes Fairground of Tears’ ‘Execution’ is a 10 track EP of heavy, noisy techno, containing 5 original tracks and 5 remixes from Melania., Phin, Pre Silent, Antechamber and Tomohiko Sagae. Conceptually, the release explores the multi-perspectival facets of the serial killer phenomenon, both the victim and the killer, but also the role of the voyeur, which in this instance, the listener becomes. Fairground Of Tears is a London based producer, resident DJ at Noise Orchestra and the founder and curator of the London event series, Exiled. credits Mastered by Joe Farr Artwork by Hila Angelica Mazzocco.

Cairo’s Dijit follows that smoked out, killer debut album for Youth with the first release on newly minted Cairo/London based label diy. Recommended if yr into Jabu, Andy Stott, Tricky, Zuli or ManonMars.

“Berceuse Heroique is very proud to announce that one of our biggest heroes is going to be our next release for this year. Pinch, one of the seminal members of the Bristol scene, is kickstarting a trilogy of 12"s that we call "an ode to sound system culture", trying to invoke the long lost spirits of pure, heavyweight, hardcore hedonism that stems from a lot of sub genres of British dance music culture. Border Control fuses the industrial aesthetics of Birmingham techno and the jungle techno pressure of the early 90's and in the end it sounds like a fight anthem against Brexit. Fortune Teller will test any soundsystem with that Dillinja-esque bassline and Loose Cables could easily be the younger brother of one of Pinch's most underrated tunes, The Attack Of The Killer Robot Spiders. Pinch runs the voodoo down one more time and he sounds pissed off and more fresh than ever.”

Runar Magnusson is an Icelandic/Danish sound artist and musician, currently based in Austria. With a masters degree in Electronic Music Composition from The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark, he is inspired by the sounds of nature, noise, and meditation. Magnusson specialises in atmospheric disturbances through minimalist compositions. A sly humour cuts through the dark hues of his works.

Magnusson writes: "The two works which make up "Inside Out of Chaos" are somewhat related. They were made at the same time and share the same source materials somewhat – a pool of sounds I had been experimenting with for a couple of years. Two separate projects created the opportunities for me to realise them in these finished forms.

At the beginning of 2020 I was invited to participate in an acousmatic concert series at the Traktorfabrikken in Vienna. Curated by Austrian composer Christian Tschinkel and performed on his Akusmonautikum sound system this particular event, titled Kill & Kaoss, was the last in the series. I named my piece after the event and dedicated it to Tschinkel´s Akusmonautikum system. Without my knowing, I had witnessed this system in action half a year earlier at a concert at the Hermann Nitsch Museum in Mistelbach, with Hermann Nitch playing the organ and Tschinkel operating the sound system – a profoundly enjoyable performance. I was very happy when I connected the dots soon after the invitation to participate. I intended my work for Kill & Kaoss to be a way to greet the new lunar year of the rat – a year which held many surprises… The event took place on 22nd of February 2020 at Traktorfabrikken, Vienna.

"Inside Out (for Trattner)" was composed for Austrian artist Josef Trattner. It was the soundtrack for a film that was a part of his exhibition "Inside Out" at the Kiesler Foundation in Vienna, 2020. I assisted with the installation of the exhibition, itself a filmed action that evolved into the movie of which this is the score. The installation was a very hard physical process that left me bloody and blistered. It was also a fascinating, trance-inducing experience. Mining with ones bare hands, digging out this huge structure and creating a womblike cave, a tunnel system, a playground, a hideaway while experiencing ever-increasing pain in the fingers and hands. The exhibition ran from 27 February 2020 until 23 December 2020.

I consider this release as the final part of a trilogy I refer to as "the three sisters of sorrow". These three releases are an insight into my state of mind at the time – a mental collapse, somewhat triggered by a move to a new country, the death of my friend Jóhann Jóhannsson and the loss of my father a year later. Between 2018 and 2021 I had the trilogy almost ready but had not been able to finish them. I sought professional help to lift me up from the deep and was diagnosed with Adhd, which explained many things in my life. Only after the darkness had lifted could I see that these three releases were connected. They depicted both the mental state I had been in – an incapacitating downward spiral, a crushing chaos – and also my search for the light, a way out of the maze and my path up to the surface."

Runar Magnusson, Vienna, 13 November 2023

Marvellous showcase of new wave UK techno talent. This is what's really going on ... stacked CD!

"While playing Dear Ghod you will encounter themes of death, selfishness, erotic obsession, and predation. Your character may be injured, victimised, trapped, or killed. Your character will murder and victimise people of all sorts, possibly including children, animals, loved ones, marginalised people, or themselves. Characters might engage in self-harm or drug abuse. Illness, debilitation, and body horror may come into play. Your character may have their memories altered, they will certainly forget important things. Some of this will emerge from the prompts, some will emerge from the choices you make."https://objectstore.true.nl/rushhourrecords:files/styles/cover_large/storage-api-public/a4201530673_10.jpg?itok=D-TjV12g

Killer EP. Next-level Shackleton.

Taking off from Beaugars Seck’s foundational sabar drum rhythms — recorded by Sam in Dakar in February 2020 — Shackleton has constructed a trio of intricately layered, luminous, enchanted, epic excursions. The second is more dazzled and meandering, with jellied bass, insectile detail, and discombobulated jabbering; the third is more liquid, fleet of foot, and psychedelic, with a grooving b-line and funky keyboard stabs, scrambled eastern strings and hypnotic vocalese.

The harmonium in The Overwhelming Yes sounds like Nico blowing in chillily from up the desert shore. The overall mood is wondrous, twinkling with light, onwards-and-upwards; an uncanny, dubwise mix of the ancient and the futuristic. Mark Ernestus’ Version is stripped, trepidatious, mystical, and stranger still, with just a snatch of the original melody, extra distortion and delay, and crystal-clear drum sound.

Twenty minutes of startlingly original music, with Shackleton the maestro at the top of his game, and a characteristically evilous dub by Mark Ernestus. Mastered by Rashad Becker; handsomely sleeved.

Sick to the nth. Love 4 Ever.

With 'The Sentimental Swordsman' Farron slips into the role of his ambient moniker Quiem, telling the emotive story of a man who has lost everyone dear to him and seeking to find inward peace, appreciation, a feeling of security, and his capacity for love.

At the beginning of this narration, The Sentimental Swordsman wanders around with no orientation, feels empty and shows his vulnerable side in 'Strayed And Aimless'. A solitary life with a focus on himself and his modest requirements.

But just one mysterious encounter can change it all. 'You Looked So Pretty On My Balcony' describes the presentiment of lightness and a gentle breeze received through the presence of the new acquaintance.

The Sentimental Swordsman still feels insecure on his journey, but he is not alone anymore and he can somehow feel a warm and buoyant glow in his breast. 'Your Singular Courage' underlines the good intentions, harmony and trust slowly building up between them.

From now on, fights are taken side by side, individual crises are resolved with the mutual support of each other and risks are taken together. A new team has been formed that seems to be unbeatable. This intimate relationship is presented by the vibe of 'My Tiny Engine'.

They are lightheartedly taking steps into an auspicious future together and enjoying each others company. But the enemy doesn't sleep. It slowly grows. Evil bubbles up, it comes silently and attacks sneakily. 'On My Mother's Birthday' describes the wounds resulting from a craven ambush that leaves nothing but pain and pure emptiness. Snatched from this new life. Unwonted silence. Feelings of guilt. Fears of loss. A 'Trauma And Its Clutches'.

For the second output of e s p e r p e n t o, Francesco Baudazzi evokes his enigmatic and esoteric side project Violet Poison after being part of the first Various Artists release as Red Lodge. Esper002. includes 5 original tracks plus a stomper Remix by the Liber Null founder Unhuman. Each track recalls the pleasure and disorientation resulted in perceiving the ruthlessness of the sea and its stillness right after. Retro-futuristic and cinematic elements, wistful melodies and mutant beats emerge from the marine environment tied to Violet Poison homeland. It is not without reason that the Ep title is inspired by “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798), a tale about a sea voyage with no return because of the uncontrollable power of nature and the misfortunes caused by the killing of an Albatros. The poem’s atmosphere too is connected with the eerie depictions and the deforming imagery of e s p e r p e n t o.

It’s been more than a year since our last release on Suction Records, and we’re excited to be back with the introduction of a new artist to the label’s roster. In fact, this split 12” serves as an introduction to both Useless Idea, and Seven Nights Alone, two aliases from the same Italian artist and producer, Cesare Bignotti. The split also serves as a taster for two forthcoming Suction Records full-length LPs, coming soon from both aliases. Useless Idea, with previous under-the-radar cassette album releases on WéMè Records (2018’s “Acid Hologram”) and Eves Music (2020’s “Xa Peh”), has been quietly recording his own brand of inventive, playful, and melodic IDM/braindance for more than 20 years. We’ve been slowly compiling Useless Idea’s debut vinyl full-length for several years now, and the resulting “Glitch In The Colors” will be released later this year on 2LP vinyl, covering the span of his 20+ years of recording. From “Glitch…” we’ve included standout cut “Mello Tron” alongside two tracks that are exclusive to this split 12”. Seven Nights Alone is a more recent alias, and outside of 1 track released on a compilation, this marks the new alias’ debut release. There is an undeniable Boards Of Canada influence here, but this is a unique and sophisticated take on BOC’s woozy and melancholy electronica. Both “Soft Where” (a menacing, futuristic instrumental hip hop killer) and “Walkman” (like a BoC “Campfire Headphase” outtake but on an optimistic tip) are taken from Seven Nights Alone’s debut 2LP vinyl full-length “Another Place”, to be released on Suction Records in 2023, alongside a 3rd track that’s exclusive to this split 12”. Vinyl is limited to 200 copies, and comes with a Bandcamp download card.

Limited edition of 300 copies of Natureboy Flako's all new 4-track EP "Besito".

Dario Rojo Guerra aka Natureboy Flako is set to release a unique musical room shaker. Picking up the energy of productions such as “Kuku” from his debut album, these four new banging tracks invite to dance and have fun while bouncing them out loud. The title track “Besito” is carrying a sincere message of love with an unmistaken production quality, also found on his previous release entitled “Theme For A Dream” which explores the boundaries of music, science and spirituality. His rather unpredictable but inspiring output will be continued with a full length album of library-like songs & soundscapes which is set to be released before summer also. But for now level up the energy and enjoy singing along to “Besito”.

“WOW I’m happy you are still making such incredible heat! I actually lost my fucking mind as well as the rest of the club.” - Gaslamp Killer

Subtle killer grooves derived from Friedman’s outernational percussions & musics infected works.

Following on from his 2022 debut release on American Dreams Records, 'Choreographies of Decay', J. Doursou offers a critical reflection in 'The Deafening Veil' of the West's warped relationship with war in other regions.
The Deafening Veil has early support with reviews confirmed with Mojo Magazine, Headphone Commute (single premiere), A Closer Listen, and Noise Narrative. A writer from Quietus is also pitching to editorial with a review TBC. Doursou began the creative process of the album when Russia invaded Ukraine. The album's lead single, 'song for Elena', is a tribute to Doursou's close friend from Ukraine. The rest of the album critiques the silence that surrounds war in other regions.

Musical legends from opposite sides of the world come together on Hell Yeah's next EP as Japan's Calm and Finnish musician Jimi Tenor collaborate on big city takes. It features two new singles as well as remixes from the celebrated tapes and Belfast's best-kept secret, The Vendetta Suite.

This most satisfying of eps came together when the psychedelic space-jazz-funk king and noted musician, composer and producer Jimi Tenor was in tour in Japan. Label head Marco arranged for him to head into Calm's studio in Kawasaki, Tokyo, and real magic happened.

'Big City Takes' is gloriously lush, with serene chords, delicate flutes and organic percussion. Tenor's airy vocal brings the soul as an intimate and late-night groove emerges to melt your heart.

Then come two remixes from tapes. The first is powered by dusty old-school drum breaks. They're doused in subtle euphoria with a nimble bassline down low, while the second one is stripped right back to a pulsing rhythm and killer phased bass. Spread chords bring sunrise feelings to this most colourful of grooves.

On the flip side, Calm offers a version of 'Time & Space' that is nearly eight minutes of exquisitely blissed-out downtempo. Chords ripple like waves, flutes flutter like birds and the whole thing is filled with the joys of a new spring day. The remix comes from The Vendetta Suite, a label regular and under-the-radar talent who is defining his native Northern Irish scene with his fresh fusion sounds. His version brings a new age ambiance to post-rave Balearic comedown. It's one that douses you in life-affirming synths as drums gently persuade you to sway along.

On behalf of re:discovery records, it is with great excitement that we announce the joint compilation from Facil and Prototype 909 called 'Excerpts from 1993-1995.

As most know, Prototype 909 was a legendary acid techno act from New York that toured the circuit as one of the premier rave acts from America during the 1990s.

Facil was a side small duo project that only made one album and a few appearances on a handful of compilations. The A-side features two Facil tracks. 'Tree Frog' has an amazingly robotic ambient dub electro sound. A killer track that will have dancefloor patrons staring at each other with blank wtf faces. '700x7' completes the A-side with ambient dub gem. Floaty and airy melodics balance out a devastating 808 drum beat.

This is ambient dub in the truest example. The b-side then offers two spacey trance beauties with 'Transit' & 'Planet S' from Prototype 909. The EP finishes with more space junk ambient dub with 'Same Place' by Facil.

Overall, a great look into the window of early to mid-1990s New York ambient dub.

Over the last decade, M. Geddes Gengras has released an enormous catalog of wide-ranging, synth-focused music in both solo and collaborative settings. He has participated in influential experimental groups like Sun Araw, Pocahaunted, Robedoor, and Akron/Family. Expressed, I Noticed Silence, Gengras’s third release on Hausu Mountain, exemplifies Gengras’s penchant for constant self-reinvention and genre-defiant exploration within a catalog whose every release carries his essence as a composer and synthesist while surging forward into new ideas and territories. With Gengras’s slowly unfurling ambient landscapes and his signature approach to rhythms animated by cyclical basslines and the layering of high-definition synth voices, Expressed, I Noticed Silence builds on the precedents set by his recent output while digging deeper into melodic sculpting and lush harmonic architectures than ever before. The presence of Gengras’s brother Cyrus Gengras (who has worked with artists like Kevin Morby, Amen Dunes, and Jessica Pratt) on electric guitar, casting off glistening lead melodies and webs of clean-toned arpeggios, cements the connection to the delay-drenched guitar work of precedents like Manuel Göttsching and Robert Fripp. The album’s zoned atmospheres and slow-building tiers of synth call to mind the interplanetary explorations of astral electronic music composers like Klaus Schulze, Michael Stearns, and John Serrie. More than anything in Gengras’s recent catalog, Expressed, I Noticed Silence continues along the arc of more modern post-kosmiche contemporaries including Emeralds, Bitchin Bajas, and Hausu Mountain label-mate Pulse Emitter. The album testifies to M. Geddes Gengras’s skill not only as a sculptor of tone and texture, but as a storyteller in the medium of electronic music — using the tools at his disposal to conjure complex moods and emotional spaces that lay out vistas looking across zones that approach the distant horizon.

AmiciMiei is very proud to announce the release of 42'37'' composed by Wladimir Schall 42’37’’ is forty-two minutes and thirty-seven seconds long Track 7 is named Sept 42’37’’ is filled with sounds and silences Track 4 is named Quatre 42’37’’ is an imaginary musical seascape where time floats One can listen to 42’37’’ for 34’22’’ or any other length

Spells is the debut release by Los Angeles based multi-instrumentalist and composer Nailah Hunter on Leaving Records. Each of the EP’s six tracks represent a spell, a unique sonic place forged by imagination and incantation. Ambient in nature, each spell highlights Hunter’s skills as a composer. “It really started off with me just wanting to kind of reclaim the way that I thought about creating music and then also performing it,” Hunter says. “I was like, okay. I need to get back to the basics of why I like to create and what it does for me … so I set out to make spells, in the sense that each layer is one of the steps in incantation... It became about purpose... the procedure and the ritual, so that when it came to performing it, I wasn’t able to get into my head about it because I was just carrying out these steps. Each track is its own incantation, its own spell, its own world.” Colorful atmospheres permeate Spells, each track offering tranquil, reflective setting. Hunter explains, “Another thing that I always wanted to focus on and through making this project have sort of been able to name is that, I like to create places, songs as locations ...whether there are field recordings [involved] or not.”

Opening track “Soil” is accompanied by a poem: “a seed is sown, a song from silence.” Its beautiful harp and angelic voices establish the album’s mode of beautiful stillness. This is followed by “Ruins,” a tranquil soundscape abetted by insect field recordings and a slightly warped, heaven-bound trajectory, described by Hunter as a love spell. “Another thing that’s really important to me about my relationship with music is synesthesia. It’s all very palette based... For the song “Ruins,” it comes on like magenta and clementine.” On the colors present in the single “White Flower, Dark Hill,” Hunter describes “the idea of the purples and navies of the night sky and the way that shadows appear under full moonlight, the different shades of moonlight, and how it always brings out the color white.” Each track’s nuanced production and big, emotional sounds do carry a charged energy, colorful and magnetic. The shifting phases and sustained drones of “Enter” mimic the feeling of approaching and walking through a rift into a fantastical world. The listener is advanced into album highlight “Quiet Light,” which Hunter states captures, “that feeling of being like golden light in a cold still pool of water, this very specific image and feeling that I just love so much.”

Spells is a powerful opening statement that uses this musician's innate artistic gifts to promote healing and self awareness. Of the album’s inspirations, she adds, “definitely rune magick and just the idea of creating places of rest … sonic places of rest, places to ponder and consider your feelings. Me making music, it’s always been about healing for me and making myself feel better. If other people listen to it and also feel better, then that is delightful.”

After a long time in the works, Mothball Record is proud to present a lost album from legendary Italian wave band: Ruins. Hailing from Venice, Ruins are one of the pioneering artists of the Italian new wave scene beginning in the late seventies: an explosion of new and exciting art, music and film. The tracks on “New Record” were taken from the self-distributed, tape only release from 1983 “Side Roads”. This album was timed directly before their most well-known releases in contemporary times, the “Fire / Crime” 12” and the eponymous 4 track EP on Black Square. Taken from the original master tapes and selected by Ruins themselves, the album should be listened as a whole to gain the full experience, but immediate ‘must-hear’ tracks are “I Don’t Know”, “I Love You” and “Last Night DJ Killed My Wife” featuring early use of Roland TB303. At times unsettling, beautiful, violent, harmonious, these songs will finally get the audience and exposure they deserve 35 years later.

Invasive psychoacoustic acid killer from EVOL for the sympathetic freaks at Sweden’s iDEAL.
Continuing a pursuit of altered states induced by pure frequency manipulation, ‘Purple Melters’ is the fourth work in a series that started with ‘Proper Headshrinker’ (Editions Mego, 2013), a series which will also see a release on Diagonal later this year.
Essentially, it’s acid house without the house, drilling down to the 303’s micro phase variations and psychedelic sleight-of-mind conjuring a sense of movement from ostensibly static phrases.
Granted, you have to be a bit of a sadist to enjoy this, but really only in the same sense as a proper hardcore hooligan who gets their rocks off jackin’ in man-made synthetics to amplified music while gobbling illicit chemicals from a Dutch laboratory supplemented by synthetic hormone-infused energy fizz.

Into his 25th year as a DJ, Aardvarck comes with his second full length album for Eat Concrete Records. Much in the vein of his Bloom series, but in an album context with songs and lush internoodley bits.. currently on rotation from Thom York.. TIP!
With 'Choice', Aardvarck has created one of his finest selections to date. The 22 tracks go in all directions Aardvarck is known for: from bass-heavy dub to lush soundscapes, broken beats and soul vocals. After a few introducing words by Gaslamp Killer, the beautiful 'Lucky Shot' features vocals by Alexandra. The following cinematic and hypnotising ambient-like pieces are sometimes reminiscent of Boards of Canada and the Aardvarck classic ‘Find the Cow’. From then onward we are treated with songs similar to some of the recent 'Bloom' releases, displaying a taste for heavy bass, beats and dub samples. Yet 'Choice' has more to offer than dj-food alone; the album flows like a mix and keeps a light and fresh vibe along the way with lots of sketches and interludes. Aardvarck also offers some definite classics with 'Heal' and 'Find the Cow Almost', featuring guest vocals on both tracks. Timeless.

Inquiring after the ephemeral experiences of sound phenomena, Shelter Press presents Translucents , its first collaboration with American artist and composer Byron Westbrook. Comprising a single, 41 minute work divided into a series of interconnected vignettes that explore sonority’s relationship to time and memory, Translucents represents arguably the most definitive statement to date by one of the most singular voices working in the contemporary landscape of electroacoustic music. First emerging within New York’s rigorous context of experimental music over the course of the last decade and a half and now based in Los Angeles, Byron Westbrook has woven progressively intricate tapestries of sonority that bridge the worlds of sound art, installation, avant-garde electronic music, and synthesis. Working thoughtfully at an almost glacial pace - allowing the meaning and relationships within his sonic material to evolve and emerge over long durations before a piece reaches its final form - Westbrook’s practice is centred in the creation of hyper-specific sound environments that pursue a questioning or deconstruction of presumed or imposed understanding, subsequently appearing across a series of highly acclaimed full-lengths on imprints like Root Strata, Hands In The Dark, Umor Rex, and Ash International, as well as being staged at the Walker Art Center, ICA London, Moca Los Angeles, MoMA PS1, MaerzMusik, Rewire and Akousma Festivals among numerous other venues. Translucents , Westbrook’s first release with Shelter Press, was begun in 2016 at Elektronmusikstudion (ems) in Stockholm, Sweden, on Buchla 200 and Serge modular synthesiser systems. Those initial recordings, in conjunction with a broad palette of field recordings, were then edited and composed into the resulting 41 minute piece over the course of the following seven years before being completed in 2023 at Black Hole immersive audio studio in Los Angeles. Similar to Thomas Mann’s 1924 novel, The Magic Mountain , Translucents is rooted in the experiential phenomena of time; more specifically the cohabitation of multiple temporalities within a single piece. Partially drawing upon an encounter with the works of the artist Blinky Palermo, during which Westbrook observed the retinal ghost of one painting transpose itself over another - imposing itself outside of its own time and presumed perimeters of experience - like his environmental and context-based installation work, Translucents stages sound as a sculptural form, setting up theatrical situations, played out as a series of interconnected vignettes that are designed to provoke unique and wholly subjective experiences through the act of listening. Incorporating complex harmonic relationships, durational tones, a heady cast of rhythmical elements, and the bristling textures of electronics and unprocessed environmental recording drawn from the natural and industrial world, Translucents is a gesture of structural virtuosity; knots of tense, sonic density unfurled before being released as trace phenomena into spacious, pastoral plains of near silence, microscopic detail, and floating ambiences. As each counterpoint of contrast indicates its own experience and representation of time - provoking an imagism that borders on synesthesia - Westbrook threads a striking balance between psychoacoustic phenomena and a reorientation of relational sound: what is perceived physically vs observationally. Conceptually rich and deeply engaging on creative terms, while remarkable beautiful and captivating, Byron Westbrook’s Translucents is a singular statement of contemporary electroacoustic practice, issued by Shelter press on CD, accompanied by a 16 pages booklet comprising a suite of photographs and an essay by the composer

The enigmatic French producer KafkaCtrl is responsible for 'The Lost Intruder', the new release from Madrid's beloved electro label Distrito 91. The EP is composed by five analogue bombs, perfectly structured in a synthetic storytelling that opens with the instrumental 'Hidden Light', followed by 'Cell Echoes' and its electro discharge of haunting synth lines. These are followed by 'Tokyo Combat' and 'Morphing Blood', which strike the perfect balance between depth and intensity, while the closure is reserved for the superb 4x4 electro performance that is 'It Escaped'. A dark tale in the form of killer vinyl to give you goosebumps while dancing.

REINHOLD FRIEDL (piano) meets RADIAN member MARTIN SIEWERT (guitar, electronics): Three spontaneous sonic explorations - subtle and explosive ! With over a dozen releases on Karlrecords, and a total output of more than 100 albums in general, Reinhold Friedl doesn’t need much of an introduction to anyone interested in contemporary music / avantgarde: his ensemble zeitkratzer is as respected as it is feared for its radical approach on music, and it seems redundant to mention all collaborators and projects. Friedl is known for his unique piano sound, his advanced techniques, and his musical intensity paired with precise exuberant sound constructions and consistent compositional thinking. He cooperated with musicans from P hil Niblock to L ou Reed , Mario Bertoncini ( Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza ) to Whitehouse, Laurie Anderson to R ashad Becker and works as guest professor at various universities across Europe. The “multi-talented renaissance man” (as Naut Human turned it) is also known as a specialist for Iannis Xenakis, and curates the Perihel series on Karlrecords. „Lichtung“ is the collaboration of Friedl and no other than Vienna-based Martin Siewert, himself a highly prolific and reputated innovative guitar player and producer in groups like Radian or Trapist. Martin Siewert played with the who is who in experimental and improvised music and celebrated his strong musical identity in international collaborations with Otomo Yoshihide to Oren Ambarchi, Meg Stuart to Christian Fennesz, Sainkho Namtchylak to The Necks. Siewerts guitar play at the intersection of acoustic / electronic generated sounds is unique, evoking echoes of krautrock and musique concrete to electronic jazz and avantgarde. “Lichtung” was recorded in Vienna: Several studio meetings condensed to three intense tracks, a statement and musical adventure between noise and silence, subtle and explosive! Two musicians, who couldn’t be more diverse, here – in every sense – they act in concert

The Black Dog's highly regarded album, Radio Scarecrow, is now remastered and re-issued on Dust Science, 15 years after its original release on Soma Records.

Two years of constant development culminated in a masterpiece that flows delightfully and hits hard. Marking a true progression from the band's previous album, Silenced, the trio are keen to note:

"The beats are faster and the bass is much heavier - so much so, that it was making us ill, working with the low frequencies for hours on end. We could only do 3 hours at a time on some parts."

Tracks like Floods v3.9 and Beep are a testament to this. With throbbing basslines strong enough to make an impact on the Richter scale, these tracks are best played out on big sound systems.

Radio Scarecrow unfolds gracefully, barely skipping a beat between tracks. The act have created an album that demands to be listened to in its entirety. With elements blending between tracks (the same kick drum being used to very different means in Short Wave Lies and Siiiipher for example) and with constant references to conspiracy theories and the supernatural, The Black Dog present more than a collection of tracks. Influenced heavily by their interest in Magick, Numbers Stations and Electronic Voice Phenomenon (evp), the act have hidden examples of these within their work.

"These transmissions and recordings (and people's interpretations of them) had a strong influence on many of the final concepts and compositions, to the point where we've been embedding coded messages and curses deep inside the tracks".

Sound artist and designer Mattia Onori steps into the spotlight, illuminating the expanse with his debut solo album, “Tra Vento E Oscurità” (“Between Wind and Darkness”) on Naarm’s Southern Lights. “Tra Vento E Oscurità” guides us through the interplay of sound and silence, inviting listeners on an odyssey that pushes the boundaries of music’s significance in the contemporary world and marking a moment of full-circle for Onori: A harmonious balance between experimentation and sound art, deeply rooted in an expansive understanding of sound engineering.

Kasra V’s Hyperdelic EP, his first release on Radiant Records, showcases the producer’s attentive ear for textural and rhythmic play. His last EP from 2018, Akasa, was a collection of dreamy, break-driven pieces, and a more ambient collaboration with Dopplereffekt; timbre and meticulously tuned sonics were also in focus then, but we now hear a reduction of form, and with it, a saturation of style. “Voice note to self” kicks off the EP with a boom-bap drum loop. The rhythm continues as percussive elements are added and removed, adhering to the groove and its growing complexity. A warm bassline chugs along, pitched vocals mumble into the static, and an ascendant pad begins to give the track a gorgeous depth: a horizon. Following is a remix of the same track by Byron B. Yeates and Roza Terenzi, adapting certain samples from Kasra V’s production and looping them up to a brisk 142 BPM. As can be expected from these two, the kick’s punchy 4/4 structure is buttressed by crisp percussion and clever, unexpected rhythms. On the B-side, “Vesper” takes us back to downtempo. Bumping on at around 80 BPM, Kasra V builds upon a drum-machine loop with processed percussion samples: a snare-roll one could hear in a jungle track, chopped claps panning across the break, and so on. And the slow, warm gurgle of an 808 comes in just at the point of fracture, holding it all together. “Night Prime” extends the EP’s principle of a drum loop serving as the skeleton – with greater drama, somehow. Like in “Voice note to self”, we hear vocal samples, but here they swerve in and out of clarity; we break into unexpected moments of silence, and the loop restarts; 3 minutes in, a huge, minor piano chord breaks upon the track like dusk. “Warm up great” closes the EP with the blend of left-field groove and dissonance one might associate with Future Sound of London or early work of The Chemical Brothers. The textures and tunings of each sample are so dense, so delicious, Kasra V lets us savour them for the last 20 seconds of the EP, lost in the reverb of a singly struck piano key

Digitalis's Brad E. Rose (aka The North Sea, Charlatan etc) debuts on Room40 with his most rapturous collection yet - six tracks of bewitching, blissed-out synth drones that bear up to comparison with AFX's "Selected Ambient Works II", Steve Roach's "Structures From Silence" or Brian Eno's "Apollo".

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Brad E. Rose has been quietly churning out music for decades at this point, working under so many different monikers and in so many different outfits it's been hard to keep track. Apart from heading up the beloved but now defunct Digitalis imprint, Rose also runs The Jewel Garden, where they've been releasing mostly their own private press-style material since 2020. "Annular Silhouettes" is Rose's first non-Jewel Garden solo drop in ages, and sounds like a subtle summation of their recent loose musical threads. Written in "the depths of 2020", the material is Rose's attempt at creating a love-letter to the place where they grew up, created in the house where their grandparents lived for over two decades, only a few minutes walk from their childhood home.

Tulsa is a complicated city with often uneasy politics, but Rose's view is holistic, empathic and sensitive - their memorial is melancholy and sometimes even cold, but never lacking hope. The album is split into six separate pieces that play together as a whole, all made in the same style with the same instrumentation. It's more of a continuing thought than an assembly of different tracks; Rose acknowledges that they enjoy the feeling of not completely knowing what they're doing, and letting their subconscious thoughts guide the creative process. Certainly that gives the music a level of spiritual kinship with Aphex's seminal "Selected Ambient Works II", which was allegedly partly written in lucid dream states. Rose's compositions are nowhere near as dark, but strike a similarly ambivalent mood that feels nostalgic, but not completely rooted in the past.

"Annular Silhouettes" sounds like an elongated take on Brian Eno's "Apollo" classic 'An Ending (Ascent)', and Rose uses the soft-focus synth tones to represent the sun rising and setting across Tulsa's wide, flat plains. It's hard not to be moved.

LA’s Taylor E. Burch ov DVA Damas and Tropic of Cancer drops a cache of nuggets for Downwards, posing a killer mix of droll post-punk vocals and stripped dub/R&B/art-pop somewhere between Lolina, Gwen Stefani and The Slits. Mad original, bass-heavy ohrwurm fire!

Over a decade since her debut 10” with DVA Damas, and following a superb stint on Pessimist’s Stigma project in ’21, ‘The Best of Taylor E. Burch’ (though none of this matereial has even been released before) reveals her prowling swag from unexpected angles across nine distinctively succinct bullets bolstered by Elon Katz’s vocal production. Laid-back but tightly coiled, they slant from the clear echoes of Inga Copeland/Lolina on its intro, to cattier art-pop minimalism on ‘I’ve Never Felt Better In My Life’, her vocals layered and sparingly pronged with compelling effects around her wiry guitars and flashes of the gnash and bump that made her work with main vehicle DVA Damas (beside Joe Cocherell) so vital.

The lilting, purring punky dubs of ‘I Wanna Be Your Girl’ and ‘Time Differences’ illuminate a softer side delivered with a wry swagger, from the eyrie, clipped dembow Tears For Fears cover ‘Head over Heels’ to potent highlight ‘F*ck You Up’, while ‘We’re All The X’ and ‘’Time Is On My Side’ make us think of a slanted Juliana Hatfield, and we can’t help but recall that ace Fay record (‘Din’, Time No Place, 2012) in the brittle but heavy af ‘Na Na Na Na Na (Reprise).’

One of the most enjoyable, rinsable tapes of the year, full marks, plus.