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Encompassing elements of experimental techno, ambient, dub and jazz; sonic scientist Pie Eye Collective - the solo project of Bristol-born, London-based Matthew Gordon - returns with second album ‘Tangential City’, an instrumental exposition of how people experience different lives in the same city.

Pie Eye Collective’s voice remains clear in this new record, while hinting at exciting new developments in an ongoing exploration of rhythm and frequency. With a quasi-scientific, research based approach to music making, Pie Eye Collective creates an organic collage of evocative sounds, which could be filed alongside records by Theo Parrish, Lorraine James or Space Afrika. Personally influenced by mathematics, graphs, geometry, and calculus; his genre-melding music draws equally from jazz and soul music, both ancient, contemporary, and futuristic. Time signatures, sometimes hard to pin down, only lead to a more hypnotic sense of being afloat in a sea of harmonics and strangely familiar musical memories. Melodic and full of spatial movement, momentary pulses, and interjection; it is music that wants you to free yourself completely and wash over you.

One person has a different experience of living in a city to that of another. Barred by accessibility, wealth, race, gender, nationality; parts of the city are opened or closed to the individual with or without their knowledge. Impressions can either diverge and deviate so much that they could be describing entirely separate places, or be so similar they could be living the same life. Multiply this by the several million people that live next to each other and a wildly fractured vision appears. A multiverse of possible experiences. Can the paths of these separate existences be unlocked and traversed? 'Tangential City' is the point of intersection.

‘Pie’s Eyes’ is the fourth and most recent addition to the growing Pie Eye Collective + Hector Plimmer songbook (the first and second appeared on Hector’s second album ‘Next To Nothing’, the third arrived on PEC’s debut ‘Salvation’). “Our creative process is very natural, spontaneous and fluid”, says Gordon. “When we write together we bounce around the studio playing with synthesizers, drum machines and bits of percussion. This track is like the playful, unbounded, collaborative dance we do.”

Albert van Abbe & Jochem Paap join forces for General Audio. Recorded at Willem Twee studios in Den Bosch, General Audio explores a unique and esoteric approach to sound creation. Using test and measure equipment from the 1950’s, originally designed for the maintenance of various audio and radio transmitters, van Abbe and Paap create otherworldly walls of sound and dense rhythmic abstractions with an early form of synthesis. Rudimentary signals are combined and processed before being committed to tape via mic’s set up to capture the Willem Twee studio’s unique acoustics. The equipment itself predates the invention of the analog, modular synthesizers developed in the 70’s that are now commonplace in many studios. The record opens with 220Lock-in, a gently undulating drone composition. Effervescent at the top end and fathoms deep at the bottom, it shifts ominously with ring modulated tones that build and then give way to thick washes of white noise. A single synth flourish provides a surprising final moment. The record continues with WZ-1Wobbel Zusatz, a low-sunk percussive piece with an off-kilter rhythm and wet spring reverb doing the bulk of the sonic heavy lifting. Deep in the mix, delicate shifts in pitch and tone deliver a kind of arcane musicality, and as the recording approaches its final moments the piece descends into an exhilarating chaos, with sonic components falling slowly by the wayside. Pegelmesser riffs on a similar reverb characteristic, but this time a driven, arp-like lead propels the work forward. Crisp shifts in colour and distortion arrive unexpectedly, providing a curious musical sensation once more – and harsher moments of feedback break up the recording in its later stages. On Rel 3L 212c LC-pi the pair strip things back, with more present percussive components and subtle distortion lines, before Wandel ups the ante with a corrosive dirge broken up by sporadic submerged synth hits. The penultimate recording SR 250 Boxcar Averager shows off impressive pitch modulation, resulting in a variety of intriguing sensations. Cinematic and remarkably visual, it charts a strange and affecting course, the synth lead underpinned by a repetitive percussive motif and all manner of sends delivering fascinating details. Nim Bin closes the record and once more van Abbe and Paap invite that subtle musicality into the recording. A tight VCO modulation drives the piece while various percussive synth strikes provide a kind of rhythmic component, though they remain untethered to any time signature – a neat conclusion to an intriguing and exploratory record.

Record Store Day 2021 Release.

Inaugurating the “Albe” series a collection of LP’s to be released on Le Cabanon Records; Fantomes is the first album by Horla. Fantomes is a musical isthmus, a frontier seldom travelled, a sonic corridor wherein animated bodies, sounds and dreams, instrumental and woody murmurs roam. Composed over the course of two years spent in Madagascar, the writing of this record bore witness to the insolent profusion and phantasmagorical incarnations of tropical wildlife, to strange rituals, animism and other mysterious relationships to the vegetal and its sensitive phenomena.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Live Hubris, documenting the hypnotic and electrifying live performance of Oren Ambarchi’s 2016 LP Hubris by a fifteen-strong band at London’s Café Oto. Over three days in May 2019, Oto toasted Oren Ambarchi at 50/Black Truffle at 10 with Ambarchi and a large group of close friends and collaborators in a series of performances that interspersed existing projects with new collective endeavours, culminating with this: fourteen members of the extended Black Truffle family together on stage, joined by one special virtual guest, to translate the intricately studio-constructed layers of Hubris into a muscular live band workout.

Operating with only the bare minimum of pre-gig preparation after the planned afternoon rehearsal had to be wrapped up prematurely due to noise complaints, the gargantuan group lurches into motion with a 21-minute rendition of ‘Hubris Part 1’, powered by the pulsating electronics of Konrad Sprenger (the ‘ringmaster’ at the ensemble’s core) and no less than seven electric guitars spinning a web of intricately interlocking palm-muted polyrhythms. The layers of closely related but metrically distinct lines create ripples of shifting accents, flickering changes in emphasis that ricochet along the endless central pulse. Gradually building in density, this motorik continuum becomes the backdrop for the haunting tones of Eiko Ishibashi’s processed flute and an extended feature from long-distance guest Jim O’Rourke on guitar synth.

After the brief interlude of the second part, where Albert Marcoeur-esque guitar arpeggios accompany a halting attempt at phone conversation, the full ensemble gears up for the epic side-long rendition of ‘Hubris Part 3’. Now joined by the astonishing triple drum line-up of Joe Talia, Will Guthrie and Andreas Werliin, the layered pulse of the opening piece becomes a burning funk-fusion groove. Beginning on a medium simmer, the ensemble initially stick to its pulsating one-note mantra, over which Ambarchi unfurls a beautiful example of his signature shimmering Leslie-toned guitar harmonics, eventually joined by Ishibashi’s flute and some brooding, distorted dissonance from Julia Reidy’s guitar. Building steadily for the first nine minutes, the heat then rises dramatically with a first, gloriously loose chord change: with the all drummers now rolling and tumbling like a twice-cloned Jack DeJohnette circa 1970, Mats Gustafsson enters on baritone, his tortured roars and shrieks driving the band to peaks of insane intensity. Finally, the exhausted ensemble drops out, leaving only the jagged, skittering fuzz of Ambarchi’s guitar, brought to an abrupt conclusion at the command of crys cole. Arriving on hot pink vinyl with artwork by Lasse Marhaug and an extensive selection of live photos by Ivan Weiss and Fabio Lugaro, Live Hubris brings this ambitious and outrageous evening of music to the safety of the home stereo.

The 11-track album titled “Needledrop” provides a suite of both uplifting and easy- listening moments,
refined and understated individually yet cohesively crafted with the honest musicianship and inarguable
credentials that we know of production duo Session Victim.
The German pair of Hauke Freer and Matthias Reiling are no strangers to releasing quality long-format
albums and while rising through a discerning community of DJ’s have previously
released three consecutive albums on taste- maker label Delusions of Grandeur
culminating in 2017’s “Listen To Your Heart"

A download code is included.

Tomas Barfod, Tomas Hoffding and Jeppe Kjellberg aka WhoMadeWho have paved an illustrious career spanning numerous singles and two acclaimed full length albums. They have certainly been one of the few acts in the past decade to successfully redefine the term “crossover” in music thanks to their genre hopping creative tact. Now, WhoMadeWho team up with Kompakt to bring you this very special release. Following a long tour and still riding on success of their last full length "The Plot"(2009), in early 2010 the Copenhagen trio isolated themselves in several rooms of an semi-built hotel near the harbour of their hometown. The days at the hotel quickly evolved into a musical pendant of a tour-de-chambre, with ideas being kicked back and forth between the band members working in separate rooms. During the writing process, two musical directions occurred and instead of trying to merge the two, the band decided to record two albums. First up is what we have here - the mini album "Knee Deep”, while the full length is set for release later this year. This eight track mini album clearly shows the band's love for electronic music in conjunction with 60’s inspired psychedelic vocal productions. The band has deliberately chosen to save the more melodic and radio friendly songs for "the second album" though it’s obvious that the single “Every Minute Alone” is one of the most brooding and greatest songs we’ve heard from them. As drummer and electronic handyman Tomas Barfod puts it, the mini album came from the desire to create "a focused listening album that draws on a more abstract musical starting point.” Even from the very first minute of the opening track, “There's An Answer", it becomes obvious that WhoMadeWho are painting with a darker pallet than on previous records. With an intense use of bass clarinet and a forward driving beat, the song reflects certainty and insecurity in search of answers: "There's an answer to it / There must be an answer to it." These themes of turmoil and searching are also present on the first single, "Every Minute Alone": "Every hour of doubt / Trying to figure it out / Should I call you up?"

Following two duo releases on Le Cabanon Records (Crypto Tropic & Othello Aubern), French composer and producer Nebulo (Thomas Pujols) now presents his album Parallaxes, the second installment of our Albe series. Parallaxes was written for the most part in the spring of 2018. Acting as a prequel to the EP Ascii Snake released in June 2019 on Conditional, it is a consequence of Zellige, released three years earlier on Phinery. These records are collections of polyrhythms and ritornellos of dramatic efficiency as much as they are an exploration of electronic tones. The phrase “music written for synthesizers” makes a lot of sense here.

avigating vibrant influences of Latin-jazz, Tropicália and joyful grooves; multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, singer and producer Inês Loubet presents her utterly gorgeous debut album ‘Senga’. The album covers Inês’ experiences over the past five years, originating in Portugal, travelling through Brazil, before finding home in London.

Previously, Inês co-wrote and performed on Caravela’s album 'Orla' on None More Records, which was praised by the likes of Gilles Peterson and The Line of Best Fit. Her music has been played on Jazz FM, BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 3, NTS and Soho Radio. A relentless live performer, she’s played alongside Brazilian legends Gilberto Gil & João Bosco, graced the stage of The Royal Albert Hall, Union Chapel, and O2 Shepherds Bush, around UK and international tours.

The album explores a range of profound themes including nature, travel, grief, unconditional love, separation, family dynamics, and the nuanced experience of womanhood in contemporary society. Dedications to the music, philosophy and revolutionary history of samba (‘Sambo Mesmo Sem’), everyday observations of joy (‘Guri’), and motivating generational change for the better (‘Sab Sabim’); glide across romantic harmonies and the Brazilian rhythms at the melodic heart of the album.

“I started writing whilst living in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in February 2020”, says Inês. “I was shy and hadn't written fully composed tracks before then. During lockdown I received support from The Arts Council’s Dycp, started making demos, gained confidence and started playing them live”. In October 2022 Inês was presented with the Drake YoLanda award and went to Giant Wafer studio in Wales for three days, before recording the final vocals at her home studio and mixing and mastering in Porto, Portugal.

Inês is joined on the album by a band of close friends. Percussionist and long-time collaborator Jansen Santana from Salvador da Bahia brings the soul of the drums, the tambor. “I always have the Bahia drums present in my mind when I write a new composition. I studied Latin percussion at University and then lived in Salvador absorbing all that heritage and knowledge”. Playing four different stringed instruments on the album, Greg Sanders is a long-time friend and collaborator from London “I met him in a samba band in 2015 and he was the first person I ever showed my songs to and played with”. The band is completed by Ruta Sipola on flute, Jake Burgess on tenor sax, Peu Meurray who recorded a lot of the percussion and lead vocals, and bassist Julio de Castro from Sao Paulo. “I was blown away by his bass playing, his swing and creativity, his ton of experience and professionalism but also his voice - he's an amazing singer and I believe that adds a lot to the magic”.

Inês concludes, “Last year, I had a show in London and I asked everyone in the audience to write down what they felt when they listened to the music. These are some of the things they wrote: wholesome, refreshing, lifted, moving, joyful, happy, nostalgic, warmth, force, goosebumps, emotional, togetherness, transported, rooted”. ‘Senga’ captures all of these feelings and more in a memorable first impression from a highly talented musician.

Albert Alan Owen was born in Wales in 1948 to parents of Welsh and Latvian heritage. His family later moved to Zimbabwe, where his father took up a teaching position. There, Owen was deeply influenced by local music and culture, while also exploring American RnB and jazz. It was during this period that he became acutely aware of the harsh inequalities under British colonial rule, which instilled in him a lifelong aversion to discrimination and racism.

In 1967, Owen returned to Europe to pursue his studies and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He went on to spend time in Paris, studying composition with the eminent Nadia Boulanger and piano under Jacques Février, a favorite pianist of Ravel’s and Poulenc’s. Owen's focus shifted almost entirely to composition, and the acquisition of a Fender Rhodes electric piano marked the beginning of a divorce from his classical Western training. This transition allowed him to merge his passion for African and African-American music with the impressionistic styles of Ravel and Debussy while exploring the innovative realm of electroacoustic composition. These formative experiences framed Owen’s career as a composer and educator at the Royal Academy of Music and London’s Working Men’s College. He eventually returned to Wales, where he continues to reside. In 1979, 29-year-old Albert Alan Owen released “Keyboards & Strings”, a light magical chamber music masterpiece. Transcending the formal conventions of its era, “Keyboard & Strings” is an acoustic and electric piano piece, where the violin is met by synths and electronics.

As is often the case in Albert Alan Owen’s most intimate works, there is a sense of ethereal beauty that emerges from the music, akin to the emotional state one might experience while contemplating a Félix Vallotton landscape or the unfathomable mystery of dawn’s first light. Quiet, profound, and immersive, “Keyboard & Strings” stands out as an electronic-age tone poem, a rare gem that transcends time and place.

Rob St John's Surface Tension LP was made over the course of a year spent walking, recording and photographing the Lea Valley in East London. An electric-pastoral shimmer of field recordings, analogue synths, fingerpicked guitars, tape loops, tube organs and submerged rhythms, the record was originally released as two limited book/CD editions (which both sold out swiftly), and is now reissued on vinyl for the first time. We'll be releasing Surface Tension on Friday 14th May 2021. Limited to 300 copies, each uniquely pressed on 12" eco-mix vinyl.
Rob is a musician, artist and writer based in rural Lancashire. In 2014 he was commissioned by Benjamin Fenton from the Thames21 Love the Lea charity to create a project documenting pollution, life and biodiversity through the Lea Valley's changing environment.
Rob – who plays in kosmiche folk-rock band Modern Studies, has a string of critically-acclaimed solo releases, has installed artworks at Tate Modern, The Barbican and The Victoria and Albert Museum and had his work profiled on BBC Radio 3, 4 and 6 Music – used a variety of innovative sound and visual art techniques drawing from the local environment to create Surface Tension.
Radio play from Lauren Laverne (bbc 6 Music), Gideon Coe (bbc 6 Music) and Stuart Maconie (bbc 6 Music)

Welcome to “Industrie & Zärtlichkeit", the raw, quirky yet emotional debut album from Moon! Although the Berlin-based duo is revered for dancefloor bangers such as “Ze power", Johannes Albert and Johannes Paluka (better known as Iron Curtis) have put much effort into making this album a true listening experience without sacrificing their roots in House Music. “Industrie & Zärtlichkeit” (which translates into “Industry & Tenderness") effortlessly achieves what is claimed in its title, namely a fusion of seemingly disparate elements: the rough and the smooth, dirty beats and soothing harmonies, bizarre sounds and comforting chords. The title track is a fine example of this perfectly-dosed blend with its detuned strings that glide over a crisp electro beat and an infectious melody which would make Kraftwerk proud.

Mirage, like its title suggests, feels like a sonic optical illusion — each piece containing sounds and techniques bent and processed to make them seem overexposed; the overly felt-y piano on Clarion, Daniel Thorne’s saxophone on Medela, the single note voice of Lisa Morgenstern splitting into different chords on Empyrean. It is detectable but also easily missed, like the double piano on Kenotaph that could be perceived as one, but is actually two pianos in two different rooms, separate countries even — one is digital while the other is acoustic.

"I use music as a medium to talk to other people", Sun Ra once revealed. The Düsseldorfer Stefan Schwander would agree with this statement by the avant-garde jazz great, though he would not necessarily sign his name to it. He also speaks to people through music. Yet he also likes to let music talk to music. Since 2008, as Harmonious Thelonious, on numerous EPs and two albums, he blends the reduced patterns and structures of American minimalist music with African, Latin American and Caribbean rhythms.

For his new work "Santos", which he sees as an LP with a unified concept, he embarked on a mental journey to the north of the African continent and became entranced by Moroccan trance music. The resulting pieces are light, with traces of pop, interweaving the atmospheres of the Master Musicians Of Joujouka and Gnawa music with the driving force of techno. This time Schwander invited a handful of guest musicians to serve as sound sources. The Berliner Ghazi Barakat, former bass player of Stereo Total and man behind the psychedelic experimental project Pharoah Chromium, contributed modified sounds from his Moroccan flute. A second guest musician is the Cologne-based composer Volker Zander, who has long played double bass and electric bass with Calexico. For songs like "Mountains" or "Belloumi" he played a melody on the Turkish Tambur, lending an oriental flair to the vital rhythms of the tracks. The intricate rhythmic patterns also incorporate instruments such as banjo, mandolin and Afro-Cuban drums, played by the percussionist Stefan Suhr, who studied Afro-Cuban ritual drumming in Cuba. Schwander's electronic sequencing blurs these organic sources and brings them into a fluid dialogue with his electronic ideas. For a piece like "Rendez-vous of the Dead", for example, Harmonious Thelonious projected himself out of the studio onto the Djemaa el Fna square in Marrakech. Here, every evening after sunset, local musicians meet and play themselves into a frenzy on distorted mandolins. Harmonious Thelonious translates this dream into a quaking dance monster whose home might be a techno club with an experimental sonic approach. Of course, most of the pieces of "Santos" are heavily danceable, although this time Harmonious Thelonious' tracks roll a little slower than previously. Their rugged beauty has also given way to a very smooth sound. His music, however, has lost none of its complexity. The many voices speak together, propelling each other toward something that traverses traditional genre boundaries, creating a playful trance.

The cover of "Santos" underscores this: It is a collage designed by the artist himself, depicting his notion of an all-star band. Everyone must decipher for themselves exactly who is to be found there. Here, once again, the pictures are not direct portrayals, but veiled references to an emotional state hidden far beyond the visual realm. Just like the music of Thelonious Harmonious, which uses various layers tell countless stories.

Since its opening in spring 2021, Jubg, a still young Cologne gallery for contemporary art, has specialized in the broad field of artists and collaborations working along artistic interfaces, especially those between visual art and experimental and/or electronic music. For example, Jubg has already hosted exhibitions by Markus Oehlen, Kim Gordon, Wolfgang Voigt, Matthias and Aksel "Superpitcher" Schaufler, Sven-Åke Johansson, and Emil Schult. Albert Oehlen, who is a kind of mentor and supporter of the gallery, was also a guest at Albertusstraße this summer, where he presented the exhibition D-i-e Orpheusmaschine together with Michael Wertmüller, Thomas Stammer and the poet Rainald Goetz.

It is only logical that the gallery now expands its sphere of activity to include its own label, on which music appears that comes from similar contexts as the artists listed above already suggest.

As catalog number 1, Jubg is now releasing the official soundtrack to "The Painter" from 2021. The film, German title "Der Maler", is a mixture of feature film and documentary and a collaboration between German director Oliver Hirschbiegel, best known for his Oscar-nominated film "Downfall", and Albert Oehlen, with whom Hirschbiegel has a long friendship, as they both once studied together at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste in Hamburg.

The docu-fiction shows Oehlen struggling with a painting and pondering the meaning of his work. Oehlen is played by German actor and musician Ben Becker, accompanied by the off-screen voice of Charlotte Rampling. In the film, Becker makes a painting that Oehlen himself creates step by step behind the camera, while the actor improvises the process in front of the camera.

The wonderful music for this film comes from no less than two outstanding personalities whose individual biographies and musical signatures could hardly be better suited to this project. On the A-side it is Gudrun Gut, icon not only of the German electronic music scene since at least the 90's, singer, composer, DJ, label owner (Monika Enterprise) and of course founding member of the legendary 80's New Wave band Malaria. On the B-side it’s the world famous and award winning US avant-garde trumpeter and improvisational musician Nathan "Nate" Wooley, who has played with Fred Frith and John Zorn among others.

Gudrun Gut's tracks bear such beautiful titles as "Bewegung", "Küste" or "Weinen" and she once again pulls out all the stops of her great skills and decades of experience as a producer of the most diverse electronic music genres. These are unusual and much more experimental musical paintings that she creates here than on her recent solo works. Edgy, angular, raw and unpolished, yet always elegant and clever, she subverts the male artist madness depicted extensively in the film in her own unique way.

Nathan Wooley answers with the instrument he has been familiar with since childhood, the trumpet, with which he is able to create a ravishingly virtuosic noise. His pieces are more like sketches, often only 90 seconds or a few minutes long, but in all their abstractness underpin the narrative of the film almost perfectly.

Super deep n’ rolling ambient junglist mutations from hyped cloakroom attendent Florian T M Zeisig and mysterious XPQ? operator Pvas, uniting under the NUG moniker for a highly atmospheric session beamed directly from that short-lived, elusive sweetspot in the mid 90’s when Omni Trio and DJ Crystl collided with Mo Wax’s Some Scientific Abstract Type Shit! and Gescom’s Disengage, all red lights dappling thru a dense fog of smoke.

Rinsed out under the timeless influence of “bong & sterni” - who sound like a legendary Berlin ambient duo, but are just weed and beer - Zeisig and Pvas collide in midair for a stereo-swirled recollection taking us back to 1995 - that Autechre radio show on Kiss FM, peak Mo Wax, Kodwo Eshun’s ‘club trax’ column, just before everything went fully tasteful. Throwing links to more contemporary refractions found on various J. Albert workouts as much as Skee Mask’s most vapourised breaks, the NUG sound keeps toes and heads off the ‘floor with a rugged but lush suite of rave suspension systems making critical use of negative space and recoiling dub dynamics.

One for the early hours of the club, ‘Not Many People Here yet’ gives acres of room to bounce off the walls, while the ruder ‘Filthy Club’ sounds like the backroom heard from ceramic tiled bogs, and you’re already healthily zonked for the zombie float of ‘Is Under The Blanket.’ The radiant pads and swingeing breaks of ‘Morpheus’ dial up Skee Mask’s most pendulous rave visions, and ‘Napping Under God’ rolls out on 9 minutes of webbed breakbeat for the locked-in steppers, with Florian’s ambient texturing fully coming into effect on the blurry-eyed flex of ‘Lite.’

Uncanny just how well this one nails the sound - top marks and full reccomendations for anyone looking for that liminal, junglist special sauce.

Over the past decade, Egyptian-born, Barcelona-based DJ and techno producer Raxon, known to friends and family as Ahmed Raxon, has popped out a steady stream of twelve-inch singles, precision-tooled, for labels like Cocoon, Drumcode, Diynamic, Truesoul, and Ellum Audio. An alumni of Kompakt’s Speicher series – check the insistent, vibrating pulses of “The Ancient” and “Dark Light” on 2019’s Speicher 107 – with Sound Of Mind, Raxon has produced a long-awaited debut album that’s ready and aching both for the dancefloor and the boudoir, traversing the heat of the club and the warmth of the home.

“The idea of an album has always floated around in my head for the past few years,” Raxon confirms, “but it was never the right moment in my mind.” Instead, he’s been insistently pursuing his vision of deep, elegant techno, taking him from early DJ gigs in Dubai, including the legendary audio tonic night, then relocating to Europe on the recommendation of Herman Cattaneo, all the while allowing his experiences to inform and transmute his producer’s thumbprint. He’s an architect by training (though he gave architecture up for electronic music), which might explain why Raxon productions are so sturdy and well-designed; but remember also that architecture is a field filled with brave experimentation, something Raxon definitely draws on throughout Sound Of Mind.

Like many albums from the past twelve months, Raxon’s debut developed partly thanks to the unique social situation the planet has found itself caught within. “In the beginning of 2020 I started working on a few tracks with the album in mind,” he recalls, “with no idea of what’s to come in the next few months. As catastrophic as the situation was/is, I found myself in the studio; in a way the lockdown gave me that creative freedom in the studio, [to] try to tell my story through sound.” And indeed, there is something in the way of ‘life writing’ about Sound Of Mind, particularly in the way Raxon’s productions pay subtle homage, perhaps, to his formative listening experiences in the late nineties.

It’s no retro trip, but there’s plenty of variety here, and a few moments that’ll tickle the collective memory – see the prowling pulsations of the opening “Majestic”, the alien breakbeat action of “Vice” and “Journey Mode”, where the interstellar tones feel like Foul Play or Steve Gurley, the leaking gas and woozy keys that make “Droid Solo” so subtly destabilising, or the strobelight drones that sputter and flare throughout “El Multiverse”, where dappled organ tones fight it out with interdimensional transmissions, all sucked into the vortex of a late-night techno mantra. Beautifully sculpted, Sound Of Mind feels consummate, an elegant set that pulls Raxon’s vision into its sharpest focus. Alive with possibilities, it’s a fever dream of creativity.

Sealed copy!

For nearly a decade now, Italian born artist Antonio Marini has been going through a sonic adventure known as Healing Force Project. Drawing inspiration from “Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe” by the sax player Albert Ayler, Antonio uses musical experimentation to break down traditional patterns. The creative process becomes a tool to “dismantle modern life boundaries and find a spiritual remedy in the music itself “. His work is extremely hard to pin down as it embraces a diverse spectrum of genres: dabbling into the electric period of Miles Davis and the avant-garde jazz of Anthony Braxton, adding a dash of groovy 70’s funk and slowed down echoes in the style of Lee Scratch Perry. Most important is also Antonio’s passion for electronics, traceable in the distorted sounds and hypnotic rhythms that reference to artists such as The Black Dog and Autechre. HFP has released with several cutting edge labels among which Firecracker Recording, Lifeforms, Tending The Void, Eclipse Music, Amenthia Recordings and Acido Records. Along his journey he played festivals such as the Italian landmark of experimentalism and sustainability, Terraforma, Berlin Atonal, Modulo Fest and as a supporting act @Argo16 for Sun Ra Arkestra.

Between Christmas 2000 and New Year 2001 producers Ekkehard Ehlers and Stephan Mathieu recorded an album of warm, soft, delicately crackling electronic music in the space of that week. It was christened with the ambivalent title "Heroin" and was released on CD via the label Brombron in 2001 and later in 2003 re-issued on Kit Clayton's Orthlorng Musork on double-LP with remixes the pair had commissioned as expansions. 17 years later Heroin sees its first vinyl release to include all 13 tracks from the original CD track-list on this LP + 12“ set. The centerpiece "Herz" finally receives its long deserved vinyl treatment (side C, at 45rpm) and on the flip side Thomas Brinkmann contributes a mirror in a magnificent remix of that very piece on side D. Ehlers and Mathieu were both highly prolific solo artists during the period 2000-2004, and in just two years after the initial release of "Heroin" each had produced over half a dozen new solo recordings: among them the serial masterpiece Ehlers' "Plays" (Cornelius Cardew, Hurbert Fichte, John Cassavetes, Albert Ayler, Robert Johnson) released as 5 stunning LPs in a series on Staubgold, while Mathieu's 'Full Swing Edits' spread over five 10" records plus his album 'FrequencyLib' on Mille Plateaux, 'Die Entdeckung des Wetters' on Lucky Kitchen and ‘The Sad Mac’ on Atsushi Sasaki’s Headz label were greeted to critical acclaim. Both artists were expanding their conceptual sonic approaches in the glow of developing laptop technologies which would to these times in 2020 seem quite primitive, but these two in that period used the state-of-the-art to aid and abet their conceptual visions, while at times the duo used unorthodox experimentation - yet always had a distinctively melodic and musical form at its heart and soul. Ehlers can be seen as a conceptualist, as a meta-musician who interrogates the mediums and methods of sound production - reflecting on the conditions and possibilities of improvisation (e.g. "Plays Albert Ayler") and exploits ideas of mutation and distortion of popular aesthetics played out within a ghostly form of divine pop beauty in his project März. Mathieu, originally a drummer and co-founder of what has come to be known as the Berlin 'Echtzeitmusik' scene. His approach could be similarly described as working a critical analyst and researcher: Subtly and precisely working in the realm of processing as a method of intervening in melodious/harmonic analog sound sources. Ehlers and Mathieu may not think too much about their singular productions and publications outcomes, but instead concentrate on the process and musical personality that characterizes their gesture- style itself stays in the background - and they usher a music from small minimal sound sources coaching a patient music of slow intervention - much like a refraction of light than a concrete painting or a blurred photograph - beatus accident. And indeed, "Heroin" is an album that embraces the happy accident being made up of reduced, often very catchy and very direct micro hooks which seem laser-guided into a space accepting obvious melodic beauty in what feels like an observation of musics unfolding and revealing it's DNA, embed with for a kind of yearning for innocence and naiveté - as if Satie were on the jukebox in "The Crying of Lot 49". Not to say the music is "reduced", but rather: 'restricted' and born from acceptance of limitations, and the artists allowing the sounds to just "be.." with some incremental degrees of coercion. The album not only sounds like that of 2 producers who are both dreamers and scientists, but that Ehlers and Mathieu chose to work with these means in a dialogue together to reduce pop music to its musical/tonal core, it is not Pop music anymore, rather a ghostly pointilistic itteration of song. "Heroin" is located at this transition, around that point at which tracks, that were or could have become pop compositions, irrevocably slip into a static harmonic nirvana. We are invited to follow the arch of Heroin in a slow-motion morphine musical haze. Heroin sounded timeless when originally released and proof is that it remains so, one wishes that Ehlers and Mathieu would convene again for a week, a month or an entire year to continue this process of slow rumination, picking affectionately over the sounds they both love - and then maybe when everything is condensed, evaporated they would write more songs with those sonic refractive elements that remain.

On his fourth album proper, Now Here No Where, Danish producer Kölsch (aka Rune Reilly Kölsch) is charting new terrain. Fans of his ‘years trilogy’ – 1977, 1983 and 1989, released on Kompakt over the past decade – were privy to a kind of sonic diary, an autobiography, tracking the artist’s early years through three albums of superior, meticulously rendered techno. Calling in collaborators where needed – most notably, the strings of Gregor Schwellenbach – there was still something deeply personal going down, not quite hermetic, but internally focused; the albums proved not only Kölsch’s mastery of his chosen form, but also his capacity to make techno personal, individual, and to trace histories of the self through music. But on Now Here No Where, Kölsch finds his feet firmly planted in the present. Reflecting on his new album, he notes, “It is fascinating to write about memories and feelings that have had years to manifest and develop, but how would I approach current emotions?” It’s a good question: our past coheres through the narratives we build around memories, but the moment we’re in, the newness of the now-ness, is harder to navigate; this story is as yet untold. For Kölsch, this makes Nowhere Now Here “an album about life in the year 2020.

A download code is included. It’s been over 10 years since the release of Gui Boratto’s breakthrough full length debut 'Chromophobia'. As to what its title suggests, he shook up the techno game with a contrast of lushly coloured minimal grooves and melody, whilst many will recall that the album included the highlight single “Beautiful Life” which became a dance floor anthem for that era. Four albums in and countless EPs and remixes under his belt, the Brazilian producer's unique savoir-faire in carving out a functional album out of diversely routed singles and features is back at it on his fifth studio LP, 'Pentagram'. Here Gui Boratto lays down a nuanced 12-track narrative that reinvigorates his signature sound into a refreshingly different perspective that feels all too familiar – including the return of “Beautiful Life” vocalist (and Gui Boratto’s wife) Luciana Villanova on the single "Overload".

In late 2021 the Jubg gallery (run by Magazine's Jens-Uwe Beyer alongside Albert Oehlen and Alexander Warhus) showed the German brothers Schaufler. Matthias, a painter, and Aksel, a musician and DJ (Superpitcher), came up with an exhibition soundtrack that was released back then as one half of an ultra rare drawing / vinyl combination only. (https://jubg.space/editions)

Subsequently, the music caught Barnt's and Crato's ears. The bittersweet pulsating ode to being an artist, sprawling and boundless, complete with voices from the sky, seemed perfect for our label. We are happy to announce that the regular release of schaufler vs schaufler part 1 & 2 will indeed come out on Magazine now.

„Gut malen kann jeder Depp.“

Balmat co-founders Philip Sherburne and Albert Salinas have been fans of Shy Layers' lilting, Balearic pop for years, so when Shy Layers' JD Walsh asked us to listen to a set of demos he was working up with fellow Atlanta multi-instrumentalist Jeff Crompton, we jumped at the chance. And once we heard their work in progress, the decision was almost immediate: We have to release this. Together, Walsh and Crompton are Anagrams, and their debut album together, Blue Voices, might initially seem like a departure from Balmat's habitually electronic terrain. It's not ambient music, but it's also not not ambient music, at least to listeners in the right frame of mind. The two musicians, who met when Walsh moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta in 2016 and began collaborating a few years later, see the music in similarly ambiguous terms. "I like it because it's not jazz," jokes Crompton, a veteran and credentialed jazz player. "And JD likes it because it's jazz." Crompton is a musician (and former high-school band teacher) with deep roots in Georgia's improvised and experimental music scenes; his credits include shows with Eugene Chadbourne, a guest appearance with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and a collaboration with Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel's 12-hour drone performance at Knoxville's Big Ears. On Blue Voices he plays alto and tenor saxophone, clarinet, electric piano, and organ. Walsh has been releasing music as Shy Layers since 2015, when he started self-releasing on Bandcamp; the following year, Germany's Growing Bin packaged his first two EPs as a self-titled album, and in 2018, Tim Sweeney's Beats in Space label put out Shy Layers' sophomore album, Midnight Marker. Where those records channeled Walsh's playful harmonic instincts into wistful songwriting with tropical overtones, on Blue Voices he lets his experimental tendencies take the lead. Playing acoustic and electric guitars, electric lap steel, bass, Moog Matriarch, modular synth, and programmed drums, he concentrates his energies on richly textural layers and abstract assemblages of tone color. Across the album's 11 tracks, there are faint echoes of familiar touchstones: the atmospheric twang of Daniel Lanois' pedal steel on Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks; the mercurial modal runs of Ethio-jazz; the late-summer calm of Fuubutsushi; the versatility of players and composers like Patrick Shiroishi and Sam Gendel, who are asking similar questions about where jazz ends and some other, nameless territory begins. Mostly, though, what Blue Voices captures is the quixotic sound of two restless musical imaginations making it up as they go along, two voices discovering a shared language in a hitherto unexplored shade of blue.

Martin Kohlstedt zählt zu den herausragenden Komponisten, Pianisten und Produzenten für instrumentale Musik und Electronica. Seine bisherigen Alben «Tag», «Nacht», «Strom», «Ströme», «Flur» und «Feld» und deren Begleiter in Form von Reworks erhielten internationale Anerkennung, begleitet von Konzertreisen auf der ganzen Welt. Sowohl live, als auch auf seinen Aufnahmen setzt Martin Kohlstedt Standards darin, wie cutting edge Electronica Produktionen mit analogen und akustischen Mindsets aus klassischem Klavier, Ambient, Field Recordings und Score Design zusammenkommen können. Kohlstedt schafft es für die Einflüsse aus so unterschiedlichen Welten intuitiv eine gemeinsame Form zu finden und daraus einen lebendigen Körper zu bilden. Als spektakuläre Festivalshow, als introspektives Klavierkonzert, multidimensionaler Filmsoundtrack oder immersives Albumerlebnis.

Balmat is a new label with a cloudy outline. Jointly shepherded by Philip Sherburne and Albert Salinas, two friends living in Cardedeu, Catalonia, and on the Balearic island of Menorca, Balmat grew out of Lapsus Radio, a weekly show on Spain’s Radio 3. Balmat’s mission is simple: to foster new ideas, expand upon personal obsessions, and put enveloping sounds out into the world. “Balmat” means “empty” or “void” in Catalan. But quite apart from any negative connotations, we prefer to think of it in terms of possibility: a space waiting to be filled. Balmat’s first release comes from Luke Sanger, a Norwich, UK-based artist whose two decades of electronic music making have encompassed a range of tools and techniques, from MaxMSP to modular synthesis. Along the way he has built an extensive catalog encompassing ambient atmospheres, abstract soundscaping, and more. With Languid Gongue, he puts multiple approaches into play. Experiments in microtonal composition balance out pieces in standard tunings, while esoteric electronic machines merge with familiar acoustic treatments and microphone techniques. The result is a constellation of his signature sounds: freeform new-age fantasia; spring-loaded toytronic arpeggios; quartz-driven braindance clockworks. Drifting between consonant, almost lyrical compositions and shape-shifting textural sketches, the album drifts with the nonchalance of a sky-high cirrus cloud, and it glows as if illuminated from within. When we heard the material, we knew that it was the perfect choice to launch the label. To us, it sounds like a roadmap for points unknown.

On the leafy cover for their third album, All The Unknown, Grandbrothers invite the spectator to peer through the thick foliage of a hawthorn bush, seemingly powered by a similar sense of curiosity that informed their exploratory new record. Ditching the restrictions of their former setup, with their new record the Turkish-German / Swiss duo took a leap into the dense unknown—and landed on their feet.

The album maps out a wide-open soundworld of compositional possibilities for pianist Erol Sarp and producer / electronic engineer Lukas Vogel, who have been putting their modern and unique electronic spin on prepared piano since first forming in 2012. Forgoing the need to play every single note live, this new album sees the pair juxtapose the old and new once again, venturing further into the electronic cosmos armed with a grand piano, self-built computer-controlled mechanics, and a new sense of latitude.

Hinter Deathprod verbirgt sich der norwegische Musiker Helge Sten, seines Zeichens Ex-Mitglied bei Motorpsycho und Supersilent. Neben seinem Pseudonym Deathprod nahm Sten auch unter dem Namen Audio Virus als auch unter seinem eigentlichen Namen zahlreiche Alben auf. Zudem kollaborierte er mit Biosphere, Arve Henriksen, John Hegre, Lasse Marhaug, Sidsel Endresen, Christian Wallumrod, Nils Petter Molvær sowie mit seiner Frau Susanna Wallumrod, als Sängerin vor allem unter dem Namen Susanna bekannt. "Occulting Disk", das erste neue Album von Deathprod seit fünfzehn Jahren, ist ein antifaschistisches Ritual. Aufgenommen in Oslo, Reykjavik, Berlin, Köln und Los Angeles zwischen 2012 und 2019, ist es das erste Deathprod-Album seit "Morals And Dogma" aus dem Jahr 2004.Aus den "Occulting Disks" Liner Notes:"I remember driving over a mountain with my mother, she was in the passenger seat and we were being mauled and cuddled and battered and fried by sound; together. We were together experiencing something previously unimaginable, and we were facing the same direction, and we were moving through space and time knowing that a geographic destination some way ahead would bring an end. And the sound surrounded us, and for once our mutual silence was loaded with good. Because we were in the presence of each other, and we knew so much about how we had failed each other (it wasn't a mystery any more), and we knew how we had maimed others when we worried too much about ourselves, how we had contributed to the faults of others simply by focusing in instead of out. Our mutual silences were laden with what that could only be called love. I used to hear love in music until I learned to hear love in sound." - Will Oldham

Bonobo will release his new album ‘Fragments' via Ninja Tune on January 14th, 2022. Fragments is the most emotionally intense record that he - aka Simon Green - has ever had to make. It’s no surprise that it’s also his masterpiece. The album features Jamila Woods, Joji, Kadhja Bonet, Jordan Rakei, O’Flynn and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Born first out of fragments of ideas and experimentation, the album ultimately was fused together in a burst of creativity fuelled by both collaboration and Green’s escape into the wild. The artwork for ‘Fragments" is by Neil Krug who returns after creating the art for 2017’s 'Migration’. Krug has also made a visualiser for ’Rosewood”.

One of the biggest names in dance music, Green’s career includes 3 Grammy nominations and playing to over 2 million people for the tour supporting his 2017 album Migration. Migration was a top ten album in multiple countries, top five at home in the UK and a Billboard dance album number one in the US. He’s also a favourite mainstage performer at the world’s greatest music festivals. As part of the tour announced today Bonobo will play three dates at the legendary Royal Albert Hall in London in addition to dates in Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham.

Fragments is a series of 12 sonic affirmations, featuring some of the hardest and most hip-shaking grooves that Green has ever created. The ballads are perfectly placed throughout; they capture a world in flux and glow with hope. Coaxing the ideas out initially took some hard work. The constantly-touring Green creates best while on the move; the global shutdown forced him to stand still.

It includes a download code. When Kompakt came across Amsterdam-based Harm Coolen and Merijn Schotte Albers aka Weval back in 2014, we were blown away when we heard their slow-burning, darkly emotive tracks. No doubt about it: this is Weval's most powerful and organic material yet - which means a lot, considering the amount of skill already on display in their small, but weighty portfolio.

Unprecedented submolecular laser class 4 electro session, recorded in Physics Dept, Freie Univeristät Berlin, in 2005. The modern photon concept was originated by the work of Albert Einstein at the beginning of XX century, when he elaborated the relativity theory, in 1905. To celebrate the centenary (2005) of that singular event, the AEM - "Casa dell'energia" of Milan - organized the presentation of a dedicated installation and a live performance by the artistic collective Alterazioni Video. To develop this photonic work, they went to the physics laboratory of the Freie Universität in Berlin. Together with Giovanni De Donà, then researcher Markus Gühr (now director at Potsdam University after his experience at Stanford) carried out his research using a class 4 laser. There are various types of lasers and class 4 is one of the most powerful. Certainly not a free sale item. The class 4 is able not only to pierce the retina, but also to break the bond that holds the oxygen molecules together, thus generating flashes of light and powerful micro-couplings with interesting rhythmic flaps. The session involved a certain risk, the atmosphere was naturally electrified, and under the supervision of Markus it was possible to trigger the laser through a drum machine in order to control these bursts and use them as rhythmic units. Improvising a unique session of electro to all effects properly sub molecular, minimal electronic sounds interacted with the rhythms of the matter stimulated by the laser while producing light phenomena. The Waterlaser track in particular was created by concentrating the laser focus on a water surface, and documents the background sound given by the splitting of the molecules of the liquid. This experimentation on the border of art and science goes beyond the reductionism given by the programmed structures of the explosions, and highlights the obscure aspect of indeterminacy revealed by uncontrollable explosions, out of the rhythmic grid and out of every possible control. This took place because of a physical principle that we could touch with our hands, which brought science closer to the aesthetics of magical realism, as we could experience with our eyes and ears: Gdd- Markus, what's going on? There are explosions that I didn't program, that create these syncopated rhythms, as if someone was improvising on the sequence... And it's not me...- MG- It's ... (sneering) a matter of “sympathy”, “vibratory sympathy”. Sometimes, some molecules follows the ones that blows, with no particular apparent reason...- This true Berliner experimental session was recorded with room microphones, and the balance was all in all positive: no one injured, a professional digital camera burned for daring to linger too long in framing the focus of the explosion of molecules. and a recording that is now presented in this record 15 years later. The B side features Chris Mitchell with Bass influenced kinematic interpretation using parts from the session. The recording of the next Milanese public session was lost in the black hole of the RAI archives.

Bonobo will release his new album ‘Fragments' via Ninja Tune on January 14th, 2022. Fragments is the most emotionally intense record that he - aka Simon Green - has ever had to make. It’s no surprise that it’s also his masterpiece. The album features Jamila Woods, Joji, Kadhja Bonet, Jordan Rakei, O’Flynn and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. Born first out of fragments of ideas and experimentation, the album ultimately was fused together in a burst of creativity fuelled by both collaboration and Green’s escape into the wild. The artwork for ‘Fragments" is by Neil Krug who returns after creating the art for 2017’s 'Migration’. Krug has also made a visualiser for ’Rosewood”.

One of the biggest names in dance music, Green’s career includes 3 Grammy nominations and playing to over 2 million people for the tour supporting his 2017 album Migration. Migration was a top ten album in multiple countries, top five at home in the UK and a Billboard dance album number one in the US. He’s also a favourite mainstage performer at the world’s greatest music festivals. As part of the tour announced today Bonobo will play three dates at the legendary Royal Albert Hall in London in addition to dates in Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham.

Fragments is a series of 12 sonic affirmations, featuring some of the hardest and most hip-shaking grooves that Green has ever created. The ballads are perfectly placed throughout; they capture a world in flux and glow with hope. Coaxing the ideas out initially took some hard work. The constantly-touring Green creates best while on the move; the global shutdown forced him to stand still.

Im Zentrum von Grandbrothers Musik stand schon immer die Verbindung von Altem und Neuem. Auf ihrem vierten Album "Late Reflections", welches am 14. April auf City Slang erscheint, stellen sie nun ihr Schaffen in Verbindung zu einer Institution, die ihrer eigenen Musik sieben Jahrhunderte vorausgeht: der Kölner Dom.

Das ikonische Monument gotischer Architektur, UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe und Deutschlands meistbesuchte Sehenswürdigkeit, diente als Aufnahmestudio für das neue Album des deutsch-schweizerischen Duos. Das Ergebnis ist ein Album mit einem präzisen Sinn für Geschichte und Architektur, ein Album, das die räumlichen Eigenschaften dieses prachtvollen Baus zum Teil seiner hypnotischen Komposition selbst werden lässt und in Klang überführt. Für ein Konzeptalbum ist "Late Reflections" eindringlich und immersiv, und es stellt ebenso viele Fragen, wie es Antworten gibt: Was bedeutet es für Musik, mit Architektur und Raum zu interagieren? Wie klingt eigentlich eine Kirche, die seit Jahrhunderten wegen ihrer Opulenz verehrt wird? Was kann zeitgenössische Kunst aus 700 Jahren Geschichte ziehen? Und wie können Musiker ihren eigenen kompositorischen Ansatz nach mehr als einem Jahrzehnt frisch und unverbraucht halten? Von Beginn an haben Grandbrothers Musiktraditionen in Frage gestellt. So gelang es dem vor mehr als einem Jahrzehnt in Düsseldorf gegründeten Klavierduo mit seiner vielschichtigen Musik immer wieder, die Grenzen zwischen Ambient, Minimal und Electronica zu verschieben. Das Ergebnis klingt immer anders, doch immer geprägt durch die außergewöhnliche Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem deutsch-türkischen Pianisten Erol Sarp und dem Schweizer Elektroniker und Software-Entwickler Lukas Vogel. Auf bisher drei Alben – Dilation (2015), Open (2017) und All The Unknown (2021) – zog das Duo seine besondere Inspiration aus einer konzeptuellen Beschränkung: Jeder Klang, jede Note stammt von nur einem einzigen Instrument – dem Konzertflügel.

Compilation focussing on the late Patrick Stas. The 80's wave / synth legend behind Paul K, Gheneral Thî et les fourmis & Albert et Guido

With his new album, Year Of The Living Dead, Vienna-born and LA-based producer John Tejada finds a blissful extended moment of balance between the new and the familiar. Anyone who’s followed his career to date, which has included four previous albums for Kompakt, outings for storied labels like Plug Research, Playhouse and Cocoon, and numerous remixes and collaborations – most recently, his Wajatta duo with actor and musician Reggie Watts – will immediately sense the warmth and eloquence that Tejada brings to his gilded, pliant techno and electro hybrids. But there’s more here, too; an explorer’s glimmer in the producer’s eye, as he gets to grips with new ways of working and being, while offering a reflective opening for the listener, something echoed in artwork by graphic designer and ‘contemplative artist’ David Grey. “The album was started using tools I was unfamiliar with, which became an interesting exploratory process,” Tejada says. “Staying away from the obvious and having to re-learn simple things was a fun challenge.” You can hear these new creative pulsions pushing the eight tracks on Year Of The Living Dead ever-forward; the album has an unique cast, and though there are trace elements of the genres Tejada has indulged previously, he’s never quite put them together this way before. There’s the dubwise glitter sprinkled across the moody opener “The Haunting Of Earth”, the kind caresses found amongst the deftly woven textures of “Sheltered”, and the churchy melancholy, all hymnal and golden, of “Echoes Of Life”. Year Of The Living Dead also speaks obliquely to its moment, though Tejada works this implicitly, allowing the strange circumstances of 2020 to cast their inevitable shadow without being obvious or didactic. “The production process began right before lockdown and continued through what felt like a very serious time for all of us,” he recalls. “Not being able to see or touch our loved ones made me feel we are all like ghosts. We can observe from a distance but cannot really be there. We are isolated and alone.” And yet, Year Of The Living Dead’s tenderness offers an out for that anxiety and loneliness, its intimate immensities gifting the album a redemptive and compassionate core. Compact and glistening, Year Of The Living Dead sculpts unassuming beauty.

On 17th March Beat Machine Records present ‘Drifted Entities (Vol. 2)’ – the second instalment in a pair from the mind of genius abstract sound painter Antonio Marini, AKA Healing Force Project. Whereas ‘Vol. 1’ had a dubwise expanse between the primordial space-grooves, here Marini jettisons the former’s amorphous flow, upping the tempo and intensity in an abstract yet funky style. Bearing the hallmarks of a true musician and a scientist, here he splices and assembles myriad sources, effortlessly blurring the lines between jazz funk, jungle and broken beat, making complex ideas work with formidable fluidity. Spring-heeled basslines meet brass, piano, rhodes, and FX, which bob and weave around the detailed framework of beats; the elements dancing freely and independently, but also interlocking and rotating like cogs. At points the album brings to mind Chris Cunningham and Aphex Twin’s strange automaton ‘Monkey Drummer’ video, and at others it recalls the latter’s ‘Drukqs’, only more 70s and wigged out. This is not so much ‘Bug In A Bass Bin’, more a hundred alien critters jumping all over Billy Cobham’s kit. Using ‘Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe’ by Albert Ayler as an inspirational foundation, Marini believes that via study, experimentation, and the breaking down of traditional patterns, a remedy begins to radiate through sound. Delving into his world is to embark on his spiritual and musical mission, opening a door to the cosmos, encountering a fathomless presence that simply exists, continuously, whether anyone is listening or not, like a sonic Schrödinger's cat.

For nearly a decade now, Italian born artist Antonio Marini has been going through a sonic adventure known as Healing Force Project. Drawing inspiration from “Music Is The Healing Force of the Universe” by the sax player Albert Ayler, Antonio uses musical experimentation to break down traditional patterns. The creative process becomes a tool to “dismantle modern life boundaries and find a spiritual remedy in the music itself “. His work is extremely hard to pin down as it embraces a diverse spectrum of genres: dabbling into the electric period of Miles Davis and the avant-garde jazz of Anthony Braxton, adding a dash of groovy 70’s funk and slowed down echoes in the style of Lee Scratch Perry. Most important is also Antonio’s passion for electronics, traceable in the distorted sounds and hypnotic rhythms that reference to artists such as The Black Dog and Autechre

For over two decades Bjørke has cut his own path, as a solo artist and enthusiastic collaborator. Bjørke’s Copenhagen home may be one of Europe’s great cultural hubs, and he’s certainly added a paragraph or two to that story, but his music is distinctly international. Even a cursory listen exposes an impressive, ever-evolving career. However, few expected him to initiate the collaborative ambient / neo-classical project Kasper Bjørke Quartet. In 2018 The Fifty Eleven Project was released on Kompakt Records, a deeply personal record that musically documents Bjørkes encounter with, and triumph over, cancer. The album topped many critics' lists, and was included among The Guardian’s Best Contemporary Albums of the year.

Mother, which will be released on October 28th, represents a quantum leap forward. Literally, when you consider the terrestrial shifts that informed it. Six compositions explore what the evolution of our planet sounds like. While Holst may have gotten there first, Mother singularly focuses on the orb where we reside, from its formation, to its likely conclusion. Other artists have tackled song cycles that parallel a day, a year, or even a lifetime. Mother spans a timeframe from 4.5 billion years ago up to humankind’s impending demise. It hints at how that may be sooner than we think, as well as the earth’s resilience, and the promise of another chapter.

Additional gravity comes courtesy of evocative choir arrangements - - and marimba recorded at the Copenhagen Opera House. “Formation” condenses 20 million years of runaway accretion into 20 minutes. It is sublimely padded by feature artist Sofie Birch’s gentle synths. “Abiogenesis” intimates a different type of emergence: the first life to inhabit our nascent planet. The entire cosmos is condensed into the layered vocals of Philip|Schneider. Birch returns on “Miocene,” which signals the divergence of proto-humans from primates not with foreboding, but rather cascaded notes and swells adumbrating a pure and curious being, revealing nothing of what the Catch-22 of knowledge will bring. That’s addressed in the diptych of “Anthropocene” and “Tipping Points,” respectively marking the dawn and foreshadowing the probable downfall of homosapians, through wondrous advancements and their climate damaging byproducts. It’s tempting to think the album’s finale, “Requiem,” implies only a dark conclusion, owing to its sparkling verrillon’s coronach, and the return of Philip|Schneider’s empyrean vocals, but its juxtaposition with revolving, enigmatic piano chords infers the earth will enter its next act.

Mother is a staggering achievement, encouraging contemplative thought. The album is released October 28th on Kompakt Records, both digitally and on limited edition double vinyl. The atwork is designed by multidisciplinary artist Trevor Jackson.

“Biarrezgaur” (not tomorrow, today) is a blissful and misty set of guitar tones entangled with effects and reverberation. Dreamy and reflective proto-blues-folk sketches that suggest a sense of matured serenity that only comes with years of practice. Spontaneous, gentle and free-flowing in equal parts, Biarrezgaur is a perfect autumnal recipe for those looking in the direction of Six Organs of Admittance, Loren Connors with Alan Licht, or even Robbie Basho or Albert Gimenez if you listen to the closing track Itzulera.

Bidai (Trip) is the new collaborative project between two emblematic figures of the rich Basque musical heritage, Xabi Strubell & Mikel Vega. It took more than 30 years for their paths to cross, but we are very pleased they finally did in 2022. Entirely improvised with two guitars and effects, it was recorded at Bonberenea, the independent and self-funded cultural hub housed in an abandoned warehouse in Tolosa (in the valley of the river Oria).

Xabi is a writer, poet and musician from Hondarribia, a fishing village on the border with France. He started his career as a member of Dut, the seminal Post Hardcore band that any Basque kid growing in the 90’s and interested in feedback and distorted guitars will sorely remember, still a cult these days. He formed Zura in 2005, a solo mature project focusing on acoustic guitar.

Mikel is an accomplished musician and all-around cultural activist from Bilbao. Has collaborated in numerous projects (Conteiner, Killerkume, Loan, Orbain Unit) and more recently with Miguel A. Garcia (also a member of Dopelganger, Heg008) and Joseba Agirrezabalaga (Lepok, Urpa i Musell beginning of 2023). Limited edition of 300 black vinyl LP’s housed in a coloured matt laminated cover designed between Xabi Strubell, Mikel Vega & Mikel Acosta.