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Released by VDE/Gallo, a long-established label based near Lausanne, Switzerland, this album features traditional pieces of Japanese court music known as Gagaku. It includes ancient instrumental and dance compositions such as “Etenraku” and “Soshima,” performed with traditional gagaku instruments like the shō, hichiriki, and ryūteki. The performances are by Ono Gagaku Kaï, one of Japan’s oldest private gagaku ensembles, founded in 1887 by Yoshimichi Ono, chief priest of Ono Terusaki Shrine in Tokyo. The group has also released albums through the French label Ocora.

The genesis of "Nosthaigia" is as fascinating as the music itself. Onra spent several years living in Thailand, immersing himself in the vibrant culture and scouring local record shops for rare gems. The result is a collection of Thai songs from various genres, all sourced on 7 inches. These short instrumentals serve as time capsules, transporting listeners to a bygone era filled with nostalgia and longing. Produced entirely on the MPC1000 in 2017 and revisited in 2020, "Nosthaigia" is a testament to the power of serendipity and artistic evolution. What began as a casual exploration of unfamiliar musical territory blossomed into a deeply personal and meaningful project for Onra. Amidst a series of unfortunate life events, he found solace and inspiration in the beats he had crafted years prior. Each track on "Nosthaigia" is a reflection of his journey, a sonic expression of longing and introspection. Onra describes the process of creating the album as a cathartic release, a way of letting go of old memories and embracing the present. Despite the somber undertones, there is a quiet beauty to "Nosthaigia" that is impossible to ignore. Onra's vintage production skills breathe life into each track, infusing them with warmth and depth. From the haunting melodies of "Until The End" to the hypnotic rhythms of "Close Your Eyes And Remember" every moment feels poignant. Onra's decision to "remove all the bangers" from the album speaks volumes about his artistic integrity and dedication to authenticity. "Nosthaigia" is not about flashy beats or catchy hooks; it's about raw emotion and genuine expression. It's a reminder that music has the power to heal, to uplift, and to connect us to something greater than ourselves. In the end, "Nosthaigia" is more than just an album; it's a testament to the human experience. It's a reminder that even in our darkest moments, there is beauty to be found, if only we're willing to listen.

Sounds created for no reason. Sounds that come and go, and disappear into the air like a scent, as soon as they materialize. Atonal phrases that hold the meaning of words that existed before the advent of language. The wonders of a vortex pulsing with life. Just as a new discovery is actually a new way of looking to see what has always been there, OOIOO, seemingly from the core of their being, created a world of sound made up of parts well known that is strikingly precise and intensely original. After a six year hiatus, OOIOO has created a new album that goes back to the roots of being a four-piece band. The music shows the full spectrum of the unique sound they have crafted throughout the years, which can only be described as “OOIOO”.

It might come as a surprise that nijimusi was recorded mainly using a conventional rock ensemble of two guitars, bass, and drums. OOIOO viewed their instruments simply as “objects that make sounds”, and took a primitive and basic approach to creating the music. The drum tones fluctuate powerfully through the air, while sounding as if they are being observed under a microscope. Bass notes and electronic bursts are so dense that they sound like they’ve been vacuum-sealed. The arrangement of the tones seem to be almost ancient, transcending the notion of a musical ensemble, suggesting the connectivity and oneness that is inherent in all living creatures.

Founded in 1995 by legendary percussionist/guitarist/vocalist YoshimiO, OOIOO’s members came together as musicians who move freely between the audible and inaudible, rhythm and non-rhythm, noise and silence. The music they create is a collection of moments and essences of their favorite sounds, captured as they were created before returning into the ether. In 2016, drummer MISHINA joined the band, allowing more freedom in their rhythmic approach and overall sound. Just as each cell in the body consists of a microcosm of its own, the vibrations of each of the members resonate together to create a new life form, a process reflected in nijimusi.

nijimusi can be considered music, but is also a work of art that stimulates the sense of touch and smell, while being atmospheric and ethereal at the same time. If music is an art form based on the sense of hearing and the concept of time, this album may be deviating from the conventional definition of music. The work is a reflection of the sounds resonating from OOIOO while as they were completely present in the moment. The sounds are like the cries emanating from a creature called OOIOO, proof that it is a living, breathing being. Experience the sounds of OOIOO that can only be heard in the here and now. 

OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.

While previous OOIOO albums have been largely studio creations, Gamel is the most accurate portrayal of the band’s overwhelming, forceful live presence they have released yet. Yoshimi leads her minimalistic rhythm ensemble by making quick, impulsive shifts in tone and attack, the group acting as one mind under her expert instruction. While the gamelan elements will be brand new to many listeners, the band offsets the bizarre with familiar, at times even nostalgic and childlike, melodies. Gamel is euphoric, bursting at the seams with an exhilarating frenzy that is universal yet uniquely their own. OOIOO’s music is reflected in the ear of the beholder, with each listener taking away something different.

Yoshimi began her music career in 1986 playing drums in UFO or Die with vocalist Eye, and later joined him in the revolutionary noise-pop group Boredoms. Her explosive drum performances captivated audiences and even inspired Wayne Coyne to name a now-famous Flaming Lips album in her honor. While the band’s tours of the United States are infrequent, they are as The New York Times has stated, transcendent. 

Imagine a feather floating from outer space and landing on earth. What's going on? Which bird did this feather come from? That's what OOIOO's (pronounced oh-oh-eye-oh-oh) music is like? so colorful and shiny that you can't even see what is happening.

OOIOO's Gold and Green reveals the group's hard-to-categorize and refreshing avant-garde rock music, which adeptly incorporates elements of punk and more traditional tribal music. Their rhythms are unique and the organic interplay with the vocals is compelling. The music is complex and challenging and playful and childlike. Previously released only in Japan, Gold and Green includes guest appearances including Seiichi Yamamoto (Boredoms), Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto), and Sean Lennon. The album packaging, designed by Yoshimi, is a beautiful miniature gatefold album jacked filled with drawings and photographs by Yoshimi and other artists.

OOIOO began as a fictitious band for a photo shoot for Switch magazine in 1996. An all-female four-piece ensemble started by Yoshimi, the Boredoms' drummer, the band quickly gained attention by being the opening act for Sonic Youth in 1997. On Gold and Green, Yoshimi shows off her musical imagination and virtuosity with her songwriting, as well as by playing the guitar, flute, and trumpet, singing, and adding a number of percussion elements. Yoshimi is joined in OOIOO by the striking Kayano on guitar and vocals, the petite and powerful Maki on bass, and the amazing Yoshico on drums.

OOIOO toured the United States in 2004 for the first time in over five years in support of their recent release, Kila Kila Kila. Their soldout tour performances were notable for their unique exuberance and captivating stage presence. Starting off with a vocals-only polyrhythmic song, the band struck a chord like no other. They will be recording a new album for release in the fall of 2006. 

Meaning ‘Hi’ in Uruguayan slang, Opa are a South American jazz-funk phenomenon. Fusing Uruguay’s native Candombe rhythms with North American jazz and pop music, Opa’s space-age synthesizers, boisterous grooves and compositional magic expressed a distinctive Afro-Uruguayan voice within the global jazz vernacular: a voice which remains as vital and unique today as when it was recorded, almost half a century ago. Having migrated to New York from Montevideo in the early seventies, Opa were heard playing in a nightclub by renowned producer and label owner Larry Rosen. At Holly Place Studios between July and August 1975, Rosen oversaw Opa’s first recordings using a four track TEAC 3340. The album would become home to some of Opa’s hardest hitting funk jams, with moments of songwriting wonderment and soulful pop and rock progressions combining with the jazz-funk fusion Opa would become known for. Mysteriously (for reasons unknown to the band), Opa’s debut was shelved and remained so until the mid-1990s. But the Back Home recordings were used as demos, gaining Opa a record deal with Milestone Records and the subsequent release of two cult-favourite albums: Goldenwings (1976) and Magic Time (1977). Opa would also collaborate with North American titans including bassist Ron Carter, producer Creed Taylor and Brazilian icons Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Hermeto Pascoal and Milton Nascimento. In more recent years Opa’s music has found new audiences after being sampled by Captain Murphy (aka Flying Lotus) and Madlib. For fans of Azymuth, Weather Report, Cortex and The Headhunters.

Opéra Mort - collaborators of the late, great Ghédalia Tazartès in Reines D’Angleterre - float their first new suite of roving, hallucinatory electro-acoustic works in 4 years on a return to Brittany’s Editions Gravats label. Èlg & Jo Tanz’s hard-to-classify project Opéra Mort has been in operation since early moves on Jo Tanz’s tanzprocess label paved the way for a 2010 split release with the legendary Smegma, a cult pair of Reines D’Angleterre sides with august outsider Ghédalia Tazartès, and beguiling works for Luke Younger’s Alter label. On their new album ‘Le Présent’ they typically keep everything ambiguously out-of-reach and etheric in forms comparable to experimental ambient musick, electro-acoustic minimalism, and outsider psych-folk, never fully tilting to any of them, preferring a style of shapeshifting that works beautifully well on the back of calm, shut eyelids. Through a process of improvisation, active listening, and highly attuned intuition, Opéra Mort proceed to induce hypnotic states of mind that encourage the imagination to wander, following a labyrinthine breadcrumb trail of sonic artefacts and fine timbral detail. Their reticence to supply any explicit cues works to the benefit of suspending the listener’s disbelief, reserving the right to surprise and colour the mind with reeling tapestries of phantasmic, fathomless apparitions. ‘Le Monde’ first splashes on the senses with piquant arps and bass drones coaxed into a lush lather that’s pregnant with theatric dread, threaded with alien whispers on ‘Secrets’, and spangled with spring reverb in the eerily naif creep of ‘L’humanite entiere’. Their organic, fractally shifting collage of tape loops and synths in ‘Oeufs’ feels as though we’re combed backwards below the waves on a dreamlike shoreline, where they metamorphose into discordant, howling rave hoovers and caterwaul with ‘La nouvelle fin du mode’, and the deliquescent lounge music ooze of ‘Damien Schultz’, leaving us with no firm grasp of what the hell we’ve just been listening too, but totally enthralled nonetheless.

Presenting our second look at the music of Roger Doyle and Operating Theatre, a little known proto synth-pop act and experimental theatre group that he led, what you have here is a remastered and repackaged collection of two very different sides of this project. In reverse chronological order the second disc contains music from the United Dairies release of 1979 – ‘Rapid Eye Movements’. Experimental tape work heavily influenced by the French school of music concretists and recorded at various points during the 70s in Finland, Holland and Ireland, although it is most certainly a Roger Doyle solo record the label ran by Nurses With Wounds John Fothergill decided to release it under the group name for reasons now lost to the fog of time. After this a volte-face towards a more accessible sound, coming via his friendship with future Hollywood actress Olwen Fouéré and her connection to the theatre. It also featured the vocals of a young Spanish immigrant Elena López- bucking the 80’s trend by moving to, rather than, from Dublin. With Fouéré adding the theatrical element to the group (an almost essential part of any early 80s synth act) alongside pulsing synths, brass, a vocoder and the electro acoustic production talents of Doyle himself, it was the first time a Fairlight sampler was used in an Irish studio setting and gives a prescient but alternative take on the new wave sound that came to dominate the charts soon after. Doyle’s work on the newly released Fairlight sampler had brought him to the attention of U2’s Bono who had seen a feature about his sampling experimentations and reached out to him for piano lessons. This led to a deal on the bands embryonic Mother records for what Doyle calls his first “popular song” - Queen of No Heart - which alongside “Spring is Coming” made up the backbone of the EP which was released some years later (1986) on the Mother Records label. Established by U2 in 1984 and initially intended to launch Irish bands, many of the acts – including this one – were subsequently unhappy about the label’s haphazard approach to releases and lack of promotion. The record was released as a die cut 7 inch with the two main tracks and a 12 inch EP with additional tracks – ‘Part of My Make-Up’ / ‘Atlantean’ / ‘Satanasa’. The Mother experience was for Doyle and the rest of the group a frustrating one with no promotional plan and no tour. After that Operating Theatre as a quasi pop project ‘just kind of fizzled out’ says Doyle. Doyle, the musical maverick at the heart of the act, continues to produce to this day and has released 30 albums. A frequent collaborator we round out the record with a remix from another Irish outsider - Morgan Buckley of the Wino Boys.

Originally released on September 30, 1991, Orbital's eponymous debut album became known as "The Green Album" to distinguish it from their second album (known as "The Brown Album") The Green Album includes the seminal 'Belfast' and a live version of 'Chime', the landmark dance track that launched their career in 1990

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s latest album, “Ventre Unique”, is a dynamic exploration that seamlessly blends folk, krautrock, post-punk, and African rhythms, delivering an emotionally charged yet exuberant listening experience. Helmed by Geneva-based Vincent Bertholet, the orchestra’s ever-evolving lineup and distinctive sound pay homage to both African music traditions and avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp, while pushing the boundaries of contemporary music.

Recorded over ten days in the outskirts of Paris at Studio Midilive, the album features an eclectic international cast of 12 musicians. The result is a beautifully organic sound that balances Bertholet’s simple, loop-based compositions with intricate arrangements of marimba, horns, strings, and angular guitars.

Ventre Unique is the group’s sixth album and follows their acclaimed 2021 release, “We’re Ok But We’re Lost Anyway”. While their previous work captured the disarray of the world during the pandemic, “Ventre Unique” reflects on shared human experiences, inviting listeners to find common ground through music.

Kind Regards is the second duo release from guitarist Oren Ambarchi and drummer Eric Thielemans, out via AD 93 on the 21st February 2025.

The record captures an expansive performance in Poitiers, France in November 2023. First working together in an unpredictable trio with minimalist legend and eccentric extraordinaire Charlemagne Palestine, Ambarchi and Thielemans quickly established a remarkable musical chemistry that led to an ongoing series of duo concerts, including the performance documented on their LP Double Consciousness (Matière Mémorie, 2023).

Kind Regards finds the duo refining their shared language while continuing to take risks, allowing the music’s gravitational pull to lead them from meditative calm to unexpectedly expressive passages of melodic invention and rhythmic drive. Recorded in sparkling fidelity and carefully mixed by Ambarchi’s longtime collaborator Joe Talia, the LP contains a single unbroken performance, stretching out for over 45 minutes. Guitar and drums weave together into a symbiotic whole that nevertheless affords us ample opportunity to marvel at the highly personal approaches these two musicians have developed to their chosen instruments through decades of diverse collaboration and prolific performance.

The set begins with Thielemans’ hypnotic tom patterns, around which Ambarchi’s wavering, shimmering guitar tones—achieved with the help of the rotating speaker of a Leslie cabinet—flurry and swirl. Thielemans’ drums play subtle tricks with time and perception, adding and dropping beats within repeated patterns to create an effect at once rhythmically insistent and liquified. Growing at first into a rapidly pulsing texture of brushed drums and flickering harmonics, the music builds momentum into an irregular groove over which Ambarchi’s guitar is transformed into haunting, monumental electric organ chords, strikingly recalling the Wurlitzer work of Alice Coltrane, before settling into a section of gentle portamento melody embedded into the tactile clicks and clangs of Thielemans’ percussion.
When Thielemans adopts a more traditional jazz approach to the kit in some of the set’s second half, the results are stunning, demonstrating a feel for shifting accents and sensibility to the touch of the stick on the drum or cymbal that recalls greats like Jack De Johnette or Billy Hart (one of Thielemans’ mentors). And when Ambarchi turns up the heat, he does so in an unexpected and delightful way, letting loose a swarm of jittering delayed tones straight out of Henry Kaiser’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life, with a more active use of the guitar’s fretboard than his usual approach to the instrument allows. As the performance draws to a close after a climactic episode of distorted harmonic groans and crashing cymbals that manages to be at once thunderous and carefully attuned to detail, it is clearer than ever that, for these two serial collaborators, this is a very special pairing.

Kind Regards shows us the kind of magic that can happen when two masters who have dedicated decades to reimagining their instruments simply begin to play, following the music wherever it goes. 

Praised by The Wire as “mystical, expansive and serene.” Oren Ambarchi—renowned Australian experimentalist, head of the influential imprint Black Truffle, and long-time collaborator with Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, and Keiji Haino—joins forces with Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten, known for releases on Edition Wandelweiser, Sofa, and Meenna, for this striking 2025 collaboration. Released on the adventurous Belgian label VIERNULVIER (home to Claire Rousay, Hieroglyphic Being, and Miaux), the album offers a newly composed score to Eduard Grečner’s 1967 Slovak cult film Dragon’s Return. Recorded live at the Videodroom Festival during Film Fest Ghent in 2024, where the score was premiered alongside the screening, the performance captures a singular moment of improvisation between sound and image. Interweaving 12-string guitar, voice, flutes, percussion, and shells, Ambarchi and Rasten conjure a soundworld at once folkloric and contemplative, suffused with the aura of ritual prayer. The result is a breathtaking evocation of a forgotten myth reborn in the present.

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.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages. The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.

For anyone who still associates Oren Ambarchi exclusively with the clipped, bass-heavy tones of solo electric guitar works such as Suspension, this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album-length piece might seem to come out of nowhere. However, listeners who have followed the breadth of his work for the last few years (solo and in projects with collaborators from Jim O’Rourke to Stephen O’Malley and Keith Rowe to Keiji Haino) will have noted how Ambarchi has allowed increasingly clear traces of his enthusiasms as a music listener (for classic rock, minimal techno and 70’s fusion, among other areas) to surface in his performances and recordings, all the time filtering them through his signature long-form structures and psychoacoustic sonics. Recorded in a single inspired studio session, Sagittarian Domain displaces Ambarchi’s trademark guitar sound from the centre of the mix, its presence felt only as an occasional ghostly reverberated shimmer. Endlessly pulsating guitar and bass lines sit alongside electronic percussion and thundering motorik drumming (familiar from his work with Keiji Haino) at the core of the piece, locking into a voodoo groove like Faust covering a 70’s cop show theme. The work is founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre. Cut-up and phase-shifted strings enter around the half-way mark like an abstracted memory of the eastern-tinged fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s classic Visions of the Emerald Beyond, before returning for an extended, stark yet affecting come-down coda, equal parts Gavin Bryars and Purple Rain. While Sagittarian Domain contains traces of a diversity of influences, it mines all of them to uncover something that is clearly an extension of Ambarchi’s own investigations up to this point, exhibiting the same care for micro-detail and surrender to the physicality of sound that are present in all of his work, extending them in new ways to repetition, pulse and rhythm Francis Plagne

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.

An utterly unique guitar/bass/drums triad: the guitar sounds like anything but a guitar; bass and drums simultaneously insistent and relaxed. Telephathic group-think opens a window to fresh fields of fusion: funk-jazz heads, polyrhythmic skeletons, ambient pastorals, post-kraut drones and shimmering soundtrack reveries. A music of sustained tension and deep atmosphere, marked by subtle, shifting dynamics playing out in an open sound field.

Quickly following on from last year's 'Ghosted II', the third Reichian kraut-jazz session from Oren Ambarchi and his long-time collaborators loosens the screws a little, inviting in Americana, dream pop and blues influences and zeroing in on the tiny details.

Ambarchi, bassist Johan Berthling and percussionist Andreas Werliin are familiar with each other at this stage to fully let rip. 'Ghosted III' is their third recorded set in four years, and although they're still led by the jazz-taught instincts that guided their subtle, minimalist-inspired folk-jazz-rock debut, they've unclenched their muscles and let rip this time around. There's a new-found, liberating slackness to opener (and lead single) 'Yek', where Ambarchi daubs his chiming guitar notes over Werliin's jerky rhythms and Berthling's unraveled bassline. Catching the desert dust at first, it hardens into a Tangerine Dream-cum-Philip Glass nu-new age shimmer before it comes to a close. And 'Do' pulls back the bluster even further, reducing Weliin's drums to a faint patter, and filling the gaps with Ambarchi's cosmic pad-like guitars. After the 'TNT'-era Tortoise in dub Leslie-powered euphoria of 'Seh', the trio get back into the groove with 'Chahar', pulling Ambarchi's fictile notes into an orbit of ratcheting drums and repeating bass plucks that concludes with a splatter of xenharmonic guitar tones.

They venture into Americana territory on the long, plodding 'Panj', padding the low end with Ambarchi's swirling organ-esque tones that transform into concertina-ing zaps, and the best is saved for last - 'Shesh' is a dream-pop/post-rock melter that's among the best tracks Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin have recorded, falling somewhere between Labradford and Talk Talk. Gorgeous.

Tim Zha aka Organ Tapes makes a hyperjump to DJ Python's Worldwide Unlimited label with an emotionally slushed set of singer-songwriter pearls spiked with his own idiosyncratic production moves. An investigation into avant pop, it sounds like a DIY inversion filtered thru the autotuned hypersonix of Ecco2K, Yves Tumor or Palmistry. For over a decade now, Organ Tapes has been masterminding his own obsessively-curated and unique style, attempting to reconcile not just his interests in pop and experimental modes, but also his identity as a British-Chinese artist who's spent his life between Shanghai and London. Through production work for Triad God and releases for Tobago Tracks, Genome6.66Mbp and Berlin’s much loved Creamcake, he’s developed a style that’s pretty much inimitable, with autotuned vocals informed by a long-term love of dancehall, afrobeats and Soundcloud rap, and songs that slip into folk and country, with a compositional mindset that’s unmistakably non-Western. "Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao" (sing the song that no one cares about) expands on the misty landscapes of 2019's TT-released "Hunger In Me Living”, but while that album retained a wisp of R&B and a vague whiff of ambient, this new one feels firmly grounded in a bedroom pop aesthetic, allowing beams of sunlight to crack through his usually dense, textured clouds. Weft around guitar and vox, Organ Tapes bends the form by employing muffled field recordings, squashed drums and dreamy synths, assembling his tracks with the sort of diaristic warmth you’d expect to find on a claire rousay record. Zha positions himself a few feet away from indie and emo, instead channeling more sparkling influences like TV themes and advertising jingles. His earworm compositions drip with familiar-but-alien riffs, with hooky choruses rendered personal and heartfelt through low-key, lo-fi production smarts. In different hands, it might have all sounded overly exuberant, but anchored by Zha’s muted voice and shaved arpeggios, it's touching and indelible. There’s no cynicism here - the songs work because they come from a genuine place. Just listen to 'Heaven can wait' and tell us you ain't feeling it.

Zither Suite is the fifth OPE album. It was recorded in my apartment in Kortedala, just outside of Gothenburg. No neighbours were harmed in the recording process. The title track opens with a bitter sweet bass melody that I first recorded some 10 years ago, but it's been fermenting ever since and finally reached maturity. The zither that gave name to the record (and the first track) was a find from the local charity shop. While it's not featured on every track of the album it's a crucial part of the feel of the album as a whole. It's the rug that ties the room together.

The tracks on this album are all original compositions with the exception of Jämtland which is based on an old Swedish folk melody, reported to have been played by musicians in Jämtland as early as the late 1700s. The county of Jämtland is forever claiming a tounge in cheek sort of independence from the Swedish governing body (in spirit rather than in actual policies) and Jämtlandssången is it's unofficial national anthem.

-Gustav Horneij

In fact, Organisation was the first iteration of Kraftwerk and if the band had managed to overrule its record label, RCA, Tone Float would have been credited as such. But given that the album was to be released only in the United Kingdom, the label opted for the more Anglicized name, "Organisation". Tone Float is the only album produced under this name and is a seminal example of the genre. Audiences in West Germany were fortunate enough to watch and listen to the whole album, played live for German television station, EDF, and it is this broadcast featured here.

Orgōne is a pillar of West Coast soul music, maintaining an unmissable touring presence for more than a decade. The group’s arresting intensity, impeccable playing style, and undeniable, irresistible chemistry have earned them the reputation as one of the tightest bands of the modern era. Fresh off of doubling as the studio band for discodelic sensation Say She She and circling the globe as the live band for their wildly successful world tour, Orgōne is back in California and coming in hot with Chimera, a fire-breathing spectacle of psychedelic Afro-soul. Produced by Sergio Rios (Neal Francis, Say She She), Chimera is an electrifying, dream-like odyssey, tripping through the hazy swamps of New Orleans, weaving textures of entrancing voodoo soul, thrumming Afro-funk, and stoney psych-rock. In Chimera, the heavy-hitting new LP from Orgōne, out February 9th, 2024 on 3 Palm Records, the Los Angeles-based outfit carves tough, gritty, infectious grooves into heady dance rhythms. Taking its name from a mythical beast with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, Chimera conjures a state that is at once trance-like and heart-poundingly exciting. The album offers a spellbinding mix of cathartic instrumentals, dub voyages, and soulful vocal performances by Jamie Allensworth, Terin Ector, and Congolese musical alchemist Mermans “Mofaya” Mosengo. Known for their gripping instrumentals and incendiary live show, the band is firing on all cylinders and the earned confidence of this time-tested, cult-favorite crew is on display throughout Chimera. Describing the process of producing and engineering this psych-funk showcase, guitarist and Orgōne co-founder Sergio Rios says, “The album really took form organically. It’s raw and dark with a hopeful thread throughout that’s highlighted by the incredible soul singers we work with. There's a looseness to most of the cuts, giving the album the feeling of a shadowy dream.” With Chimera, the band has tapped into a deeper version of themselves. The sounds are fresh yet classic, the grooves are ferocious and infectious, and the vocal performances are captivating. The album opens like a heady puff of smoke in the face with “Hallowed Dreams,” drawing the listener into a state where reality blurs and the music takes control. The focus track, “Zum Zum,” is a hooky Afro-funk dance floor heater that synchronizes your heart rate to its propulsive percussion, the hypnotic rhythm building into a raucous, psychedelic climax. Mermans “Mofaya” Mosengo sings in his native Lingala, jabbing and weaving around the rhythm section’s chugging force with his gruff and soulful voice. On the raw and rousing “Tula Muisi (Dance Like Them),” a tapestry of Afrobeat and heavy psych-rock bolsters Mosengo’s call for unity and respect, which translates to “Hear the music, and dance like them.” On “Lies & Games,” Terin Ector brings yearning soul vocals to this righteous lament of the rocky road to redemption over grimy rhythm guitar, spaced-out synths, breakbeat-worthy drums, and haunting Wailers-inspired backing vocals. “Parasols” is a jaunty, head-bobbing slab of greasy New Orleans funk, and a heartfelt nod to Josie-era Meters and the unmistakable early 70s-era production of Allen Toussaint. The instrumental serves up a punchy, slightly tipsy rhythm that sways with sweetly melodic gospel-tinged organ. Drawing on multicultural influences of Afrobeat, Southern soul, psych-rock, and raw funk, Chimera bridges the darkest reaches of psychedelia to the highest peaks of joyful dance music. With easy SoCal swagger, deep New Orleans roots, and a profound reverence for the sounds of the African diaspora, Orgōne creates a unique, transporting experience that feels untethered to any single place or time. Relentlessly vibey and immersive from start to finish, Orgōne’s newest LP feels like a sustained hypnagogic hallucination — the place between waking and sleep where reality is fluid and anything feels possible. From its inception, Orgōne has always been a chimera — a multifaceted creation and the physical manifestation of impossible quixotic dreams. Chimera will delight fans of early Orgōne while showcasing the band’s effortless and endless ability to shape-shift. It’s an electrifying, mesmerizing record sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener rapt. For fans of Altun Gun, Khruangbin, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Witch, Goat & Monophonics.

Moonshadows, named for a glossy beachfront Malibu bar where members of the Orgone crew DJed Saturday night sets, is the band's homage to yacht rock, sweater funk, and late night cruises on the Pacific Coast Highway. The genre-bending full-length album evokes neon and moonlight shimmering on ocean waves, undulating rhythms, martinis, and luxury convertibles. There’s nothing lightweight about this collection, however. All the hallmark elements of Orgone production—gritty, deep, authentic sounds and heavy beats—permeate this ten-song LP. For this album, Orgone pulled from its deep bench of talent to feature vocal performances and co-writing by Adryon de León, Woolfy, Masauko Chipembere, Terin Ector, Jamie Allensworth, and more. Moonshadows is a heady mix of lush vocals, classic drum tones, and late-70s vibes best served chilled in the late-night hours and made to keep you grooving through your second wind and into the hazy sunrise.

Composer Ori Barel rolls up the playful aestheticism of ‘90s electronica, taught pointillism of Rock in Opposition, dada collage of Krautrock, and the heavy lushness of Jack Nitzsche arrangements into a seamless sci-fi fantasia.