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Returning to Thrill Jockey, claire rousay completes her long-in-the-making ambient Americana trilogy, cutting cinematic, processed drones with diaristic environmental recordings and fuzzy home recordings with hi-fi granulations.

In 2020, rousay released 'a heavenly touch', following it just a year later with 'a softer focus', her breakthrough record and still the high point in her canon. Now she concludes the trilogy with a more considered threequel, a record that follows the general outline of its predecessors but refines it at every turn. And the process of recording it was important for rousay, who'd swerved towards pop with 2024's 'sentiment'. With that in mind, 'a little death' is a return to what rousay describes as her "core solo practice," blending live instrumentation with sounds recorded from her life outside the studio.

If you've heard its predecessors, the record won't surprise you aesthetically, but it's tighter and more confident in the way it presents itself. rousay's blend of tape recordings, processed drones and found sounds is more subtle this time around, and significantly more nuanced. When she uses tape, it's with purpose - listen to how the crumbling guitar riffs fall off the chorus of crickets on 'night one', or the layers of strings interact on the hauntingly beautiful 'conditional love'. She's back.

When words trail off at the beginning of claire rousay’s “everything perfect is already here,” ornate instrumentation is waiting to fill a void left by the breakdown of language. Yet it becomes clear as we trace rousay’s collaged sonic pathway that breakdown, of meaning and also of melody, is also a place to rest. everything perfect… is made up of two extended compositions that cycle between familiarity and unknowing. There are seemingly infinite ways to feel in response to these pieces of music, which shift tone across their languid duration, earnest like a familiar song but unbound from the emotional didacticisms of lyrical voice and pop form. rousay builds a fluid landscape around the acoustic contributions of Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics and violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), whose respective melodies weave gently in and out, sometimes steady, sometimes aching, sometimes receding altogether in deference to less overtly musical sounds. That is, percussive texture in the form of unvarnished samples and field recordings: the rattle and rustle and the stops and starts of life unfurling, voices sharing memories nearly out of reach, doors closing, wind against a microphone. Everything comes from somewhere in particular, possessing the veneer of the diaristic, but sound’s provenance is secondary here and so these details become tangled and fused. On this release I hear such details not as individual ornaments or stories but the collective architecture of the greater composition. It’s an architecture that is not quite formed and thus full of openings out to the world unfolding. “The world unfolding,” that’s a kind way of saying change, movement, loss, transformation. Things rousay here indexes, not without shards of desire or pain, still somehow what I hear is coarse peace in the in-between. These two pieces sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Where am I now? What is different outside of me? What is different inside of me? Um. I think. everything is perfect is already here, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways. The music guides a certain experience of the world around. In claire’s music there is this marriage—not just a pairing or juxtaposition but an interrelationship, an eventual confusion—of song/texture, narrative/abstraction, figure/ground. Everything comes from somewhere in particular but not just the voices, the field recordings, the what is being said or meant, what matters is “the where you are now.” There are so many ways of anchoring oneself in the present, some have to do with fantasy or storytelling and some with accepting what is. These two compositions find peace between these modes. They sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Their mode of feeling is inquisitive. Where am I now? What has changed outside of me? What has changed inside of me? The music, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways.

claire rousay is a singular artist, known for challenging conventions in experimental and ambient music forms. rousay masterfully incorporates textural found sounds, sumptuous drones and candid field recordings into music that celebrates the beauty in life’s banalities. Her music is curatorial and granular in detail, deftly shaped into emotionally affecting pieces. sentiment is a meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex. The album’s narrative arc is guided by delicate musical gestures and artistic vulnerability, audaciously synthesizing disparate and unexpected influences. rousay crafted the songs in various homes, bedrooms, hotels, and other private places, the feeling of time and energy spent alone radiating from each passage. The album is a collection of heart-rending, incisive pop songs that explore universal feelings with subtlety and remarkable vision. rousay’s vocals and guitar take center stage on sentiment. Her intimate, diaristic lyrics contrast with her mechanical-inflected vocal effects, emphasizing a powerful desire for connection, a deep yearning and a lingering sense of separation. The spare guitar playing and laconic tempo both drive the songs and exude a sense of resignation. Her delicate mastery of nuance draws on her explorative musical past that she, with sincerity and admiration, seamlessly interweaves into her adventurous textures and distinctive compositions. “I want to belong to the worlds and communities I look up to. Same as someone using a Fender guitar or dressing like Kurt Cobain. Emulate your heroes,” says rousay. From a sprawling math-rock duo, to an array of emo-inflected rock outfits to a hired hand in evangelical worship bands, rousay worked as a percussionist for over a decade before shifting her focus to the solo collage work she’s known for. sentiment folds those experiences into her compositions. rousay explains, “As the drummer in an evangelical rock band, it’s your job, with the singers, to manipulate the crowd. You start building on the drums and you know it’s one bigger chorus and then we’re out and you can see the tears, people just start crying. I still feel a version of that when playing my own shows now.” The album balances the poetic soul of her influences with a documentarian heart, rousay capturing moments of her life while living alone in houses across the country, learning to play guitar, and reconnecting with pop music. “I have been on a quest to communicate my feelings and ideas as clearly as possible lately. Pop seemed like the way to do that this time,” says rousay. The confessional nature of sampled fragments of conversation give her pieces a specificity and sense of intimacy that is both immediate and curious. rousay’s innate ability to conjure pure feeling from sound derives from her delightful embrace of pop forms, the vulnerability found in field recordings, minimalistic arrangements and innovative sound choices. The resulting songs of sentiment are as anthemic as they are breathtakingly personal. sentiment is blissfully, achingly melancholic, and an undeniably sensual listening experience.

claire rousay's 'sentiment' gets the remix treatment from Maral, more eaze, Patrick Shiroishi, M Sage, Andrew Weathers, AMULETS and Gretchen Korsmo.

Texas-based mainstay Andrew Weathers is first up, his rework glues all the vocals on the entire 'sentiment' album into a robotic gurgle - it's the most off-track version of the set and immediately stands out. Maral's take on 'ily2' is more restrained, adding a beat and neatly psychedelic back half, while sound artist Gretchen Korsmo turns 'asking for it' into a whisper of the original as if she's turned it inside out, leaving rousay's vocals to harmonize with her tempered drones. AMULETS' rework of 'head' sounds more in-line with the 'sentiment' mood; the Portland-based A/V artist swells rousay's fizzing emo-folk into tape-fucked shoegaze, and it works very well.

The second album of Clan Caiman (Japanese name: Caiman), a quintet led by Emilio Alo, a musician representing Argentine New Newsick, has appeared. High-humidity indoor tribal music played with hypnotic sounds and primitive pulsations under more thorough restraint.

Clan Caiman, a five-member band formed by Argentine multi-instrumentalist writer Emilio Alo with the concept of "imagining the music played by a fictional tribe." His debut album "Clan Caimán" (2018) was widely heard by Hiramazu, VIDEOTAPEMUSIC, Tortoise, Tommy Guerrero, Martin Denny and others. In this second work, "Asoma (Rises in English)", Aro's creative musical instrument , which is a remodeled Kalimba, becomes the cornerstone of the ensemble and gives off an unknown ethnicity, but it has a high musicianship. The evolution (deepening) in the direction of can be heard in the arrangements and performances of the Argentine performers who have more restraint than the previous work. As Alo himself explains, "There are no vocals, cymbals, or fanfares," the eight songs have a metroethnicity sensation after abandoning the climax of the chord progression and the flashy arrangements that attract attention. The sound field is filled with suspicious warmth and hypnosis. The binding design that traps the high humidity air is again Sebastian Duran and Ian Kornfeld.

The second album of Clan Caiman (Japanese name: Caiman), a quintet led by Emilio Alo, a musician representing Argentine New Newsick, has appeared. High-humidity indoor tribal music played with hypnotic sounds and primitive pulsations under more thorough restraint.

Clan Caiman, a five-member band formed by Argentine multi-instrumentalist writer Emilio Alo with the concept of "imagining the music played by a fictional tribe." His debut album "Clan Caimán" (2018) was widely heard by Hiramazu, VIDEOTAPEMUSIC, Tortoise, Tommy Guerrero, Martin Denny and others. In this second work, "Asoma (Rises in English)", Aro's creative musical instrument , which is a remodeled Kalimba, becomes the cornerstone of the ensemble and gives off an unknown ethnicity, but it has a high musicianship. The evolution (deepening) in the direction of can be heard in the arrangements and performances of the Argentine performers who have more restraint than the previous work. As Alo himself explains, "There are no vocals, cymbals, or fanfares," the eight songs have a metroethnicity sensation after abandoning the climax of the chord progression and the flashy arrangements that attract attention. The sound field is filled with suspicious warmth and hypnosis. The binding design that traps the high humidity air is again Sebastian Duran and Ian Kornfeld.

The music of Clan Caimán is primitive and hypnotic. It is located in the pre-rock era and from there, it proposes a different evolution path for music from the 1950s to present day. Like a different musical development in a parallel timeline. Gamelan, Hawaiian music, surf, exotica, rainforest or aquatic; these elements make up the palette which constructs a mystic and profound music that seeks ancestral connection.

Formed in 2016 by musician, composer and producer Emilio Haro looking to create music generated by group dynamics, Clan Caimán differs from his past two solo albums (“Panorámico” in 2007 and “Estrambótico” in 2012, both on Radiaciones Armónicas) in that these were studio work and not meant to be played live.

The quintet's enigmatic sound is built upon the kalimbafón, an instrument created by Haro using several kalimbas, Diego Voloschin's wild and hypnotic percussion (no cymbals, no snare), Gonzalo Cordoba's lap steel and baritone guitar, Facundo Gomez's psychedelic guitar tones and Claudio Iuliano's dry and percussive bass sound.

This debut album contains eight anachronistic and oddly familiar compositions that range from introspection to trance, tracing their own sonic landscape.

If you're a fan of Hiramazu, VIDEOTAPEMUSIC, Tortoise, Tommy Guerrero, Martin Denny, or Balearic jungle, you're definitely a narcissus! Argentine talent Emilio Alo's new work is a fantastic, mellow and minimalistic exotic tribal music in the name of the band. Released worldwide from M Records.

The solo works "Panorámico" (2007) and "Estrambótico" (2012) released by Emilio Alo, a multi-instrumentalist writer who does not need explanation for Argentine music fans, are a new generation after the acoustic group. It was a complete studio work under the influence of folklore revival. However, it is extremely important that the key man of the scene dared to form a band here. The debut album of this suspicious band name , which is named after the South American crocodile, is a concept of music that flows in an unexplored region, imagining the music played by a fictitious tribe. Alo's own instrument called Kalimbaphone (the name is also the best!), Which is a remodeled Kalimba, is set as the core, and the band groove, which is mellow and fantastically played with loose waves, is quite hypnotic. Addictive. It's a waste to be monopolized only by Argentine music fans, and there is no doubt that fans of Hiramazu and VIDEOTAPEMUSIC will definitely be addicted to this fantasy music!

Clan Caimán, led by composer Emilio Haro, is a group from Argentina, but their timeless, organic music transcends nationality. “Pica-Pau” (woodpecker), their third album, is their most abstract and minimal to date, but this is not a cold abstraction nor an austere minimalism; the music here, with its focus on rhythm and texture, is warm and hypnotic, seeming to have existed forever despite the fact that it was recorded in 2023-24. As on their previous albums, all with EM Records, the music is driven by the kalimabafon, Haro’s self-made tuned percussion instrument. The kalimbafon’s patterns weave through waves of reverb-drenched lap steel and guitar, as bass undertow and sans-cymbal percussion allow the music to flow inexorably forward, like a broad, timeless river. The compositions here have a feeling of being immersed in deep night, surrounded by life, away from the enclosed isolation of the urban environment. As with previous albums, the compositions are instrumental, the exception being the final song, a vocal version of the opening track, sung in a language invented by Haro.

Clan Caimán, led by composer Emilio Haro, is a group from Argentina, but their timeless, organic music transcends nationality. “Pica-Pau” (woodpecker), their third album, is their most abstract and minimal to date, but this is not a cold abstraction nor an austere minimalism; the music here, with its focus on rhythm and texture, is warm and hypnotic, seeming to have existed forever despite the fact that it was recorded in 2023-24. As on their previous albums, all with EM Records, the music is driven by the kalimabafon, Haro’s self-made tuned percussion instrument. The kalimbafon’s patterns weave through waves of reverb-drenched lap steel and guitar, as bass undertow and sans-cymbal percussion allow the music to flow inexorably forward, like a broad, timeless river. The compositions here have a feeling of being immersed in deep night, surrounded by life, away from the enclosed isolation of the urban environment. As with previous albums, the compositions are instrumental, the exception being the final song, a vocal version of the opening track, sung in a language invented by Haro.

A new LP collection of incredible performances by the virtuosa of theremin, Clara Rockmore, accompanied by her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano. Recorded in 1975 and never before released on vinyl, this compendium features stellar performances of compositions by Bach, Chopin, Schubert, Gershwin and more, and even features a cello ensemble on a few songs! Some of the finest examples of Clara Rockmore’s unrivaled art - rich with bittersweet moments of air, electricity, human grace and emotional composition all merging into some new thing that is transcendent of time and genre. 160 gram vinyl comes in old school tip-on jacket and includes an 8-page booklet of interviews, photos, and insights with Clara Rockmore, Nadia Reisenberg, Robert Moog, and more.

Official reissue of the 1977 album of Clara Rockmore’s stunning theremin performances of various classical compositions, accompanied by her sister Nadia Reisenberg on piano. Includes gorgeous interpretations of pieces by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Ravel and more. An all time classic classical album, finally back in print. Rockmore was a violin child prodigy with training at the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersberg. A refugee of the Russian Revolution, she arrived in New York with her family in 1921, and soon after met Professor Lev Sergeyevich Termen, inventor of the remarkable theremin, one of the first electronic instruments in existence. Rockmore stunned crowds by playing music both highly technical and emotionally intense, all without ever touching her instrument. Her work represented the cutting edge of electronic music, inspiring a generation of innovators (including Bob Moog, who co-produced this record). On her custom built theremin, Rockmore channeled deep human emotion through an electronic device for the first time.

"Pulso is about sexual desire, my desire. Me as the subject, not only the object of it. I sing my pleasure and daydreams, because it's my body and my imagination, so I know what I like to feel." Sonically inspired by reggaeton, a genre that is personally nostalgic and reminiscent of times spent at parties listening to the imported genre as a teenager in her home country, Spain. Clara! works with producers who don’t usually dabble in the genre - SKY H1, Pearson Sound and Low Jack - in order to mix their own, unique universes with it.

Claudio PRC’s upcoming ambient album is a sonic journey through ethereal landscapes and intimate atmospheres. Drawing inspiration from the waves and their movement, “Unda” (in Sardinian native tongue “wave”) evokes a sense of calmness and introspection. Throughout the whole piece, Claudio PRC creates a blend of meticulously crafted organic and synthetic elements that seamlessly integrates together, showcasing his versatility as an artist and his commitment to exploring all facets of electronic music. With its textured layers, this work offers a soothing and reflective musical experience, inviting the listener to escape into a world of contemplation and meditation.

Written, composed and produced by Claudio Porceddu, between Sardinia and Berlin, 2021-2022. Original performed at Up To Date Festival, Białystok, Poland, September 2022. Mixed and mastered at Artefacts Mastering. Artwork by Liam Costar. Design by Basstation. Video directed by Diego Vicinanza. Special thanks to Blazej Malinowski, Fabio Caria, Eliana Patanè, Ario, Pierre Nesi aka Owl and Jong-min Lee.

A note from Cleared Our approach to making records has always involved an exchange of individually created sounds, which are joined together through live improvisation, studio recording, and the use of diagrammatic visual scores. Over the last several years, we have been interested in expanding very small fragments of these discreet pieces of audio into long-form compositions. This process has resulted in a new approach to how we build tracks from the ground up. In this particular workflow, one of us is largely responsible for supplying the main cache of sounds, and the other is responsible for the processing and sequencing of those sounds. As we developed this kind of working relationship, the nature of the material has ventured into a palette that is more electronic. This is perhaps a result of the "collage" aspect of how the audio is arranged inside of a digital environment, as well as our continued discovery and use of new digital processing tools. We are constantly attempting to extract as much as possible out of an initial collection of audio, which typically includes field recordings, synthesis experiments, bits of acoustic instrumentation, and found sounds. In many instances the original sounds are manipulated far beyond their recognizable characteristics, which creates new and unexpected results. We also share a great personal interest in utilizing sounds with different levels of fidelity, as we both enjoy the unique traits inherent in various recording formats. The artifacts and destructive compression of antiquated digital recorders, and the pristine qualities of modern studio technology both contain, in different ways, our own intimate relationships to such devices and spaces. We believe this is reflective of how we associate and remember sound, which is through the peripherals of its delivery. In the context of Cleared, this interest is pursued to further the poetic and gestural features of our music, and to create records that are infused with visual imagery, memory, and the physical environments in which we find inspiration. Lustres is the most detailed and refined output of our studio practice using this method of exchanging sound material. The four tracks present a mood that, for us, is indicative of a kind of rolling celestial atmosphere. Simultaneously, there exists both a subterranean and starlit quality about the music. To us, it is not unlike the imagined terrain of a distant meteor or orbiting asteroid, alternating between the extremes of light and temperature as its path is slowly carved in a dark vacuum. It is music for contemplation and quiet reflection, as these are the states of listening we have come to greatly appreciate in our personal lives, and as the space in which we are most happy to have our music experienced. Lustres is a document being released as we near 15 years of the Cleared collaboration, and we hope it offers listeners a chapter of our story that, while rooted in our past material, advances the core discipline of what we have always pursued as our central theme: Patience.

Beyond The Willow Tree is a hauntingly beautiful anthology of folk songs chronicling the experience of a young black man growing up in the segregated south. A balanced mix of covers and originals, Cleveland Francis’ body of work seamlessly blends deep, soulful vocals with the stripped down acoustic instrumentation of folk. In the late 60’s Francis coined the term “soulfolk”, playing his genre bending music across college campuses and coffee shops while earning a medical degree at William & Mary. These songs serve as a missing link between soul and folk music, suppressed by the harsh political landscape of a music industry heavily influenced by racial stereotypes. “If you were black, you played blues or soul music … I wanted to play folk music,” Cleveland professed. Included in this double LP set is Cleveland Francis’ entire 1970 self released album Follow Me, featuring the original artwork and liner notes printed inside the gatefold. The second LP takes you Beyond The Willow Tree with unreleased demos recorded in 1968 along with one 45 only single recorded in 1970. “These recordings are a look into my soul through a long and lonely journey to understand feelings of my childhood, poverty, racial segregation, bigotry, war, love and hope. It represents my attempt to express and come to terms with all that I have seen and felt as a Black man growing up in America.” – Cleveland Francis

Unhinged, damaged art-punk from San Diego's mid-'90s Gravity scene. Gathered here are Clikatat Ikatowi’s three albums—Orchestrated And Conducted By..., River Of Souls, and a first time vinyl pressing for their 1993 demo, all remixed and remastered from the original analog tapes. The accompanying 24-page book pairs Tony Rettman’s colorful essay with dozens of period photos and flyers, an in-depth history of a city and scene that defined the shape of noise to come.

cLOUDDEAD's debut album, compiling six 10" EPs that appeared between 2000-2001, is aurally dense and obscured. A sprawling mass of miniature beat-suites and Dadaist lyrics, this strange and beautiful 3xLP would influence a myriad of sub-genres (cloud rap, hauntology, lo-fi hip-hop, etc.) in the two decades since its initial release. Only the three members of cLOUDDEAD – Why?, Odd Nosdam and Doseone – can speak to the group's origins, but in the context of underground hip-hop towards the end of the 20th century, their arrival makes perfect sense. Cincinnati had a vital scene; home to Scribble Jam, an annual confluence of MCs, DJs, B-boys and graffiti artists. While the trio soon relocated to the Bay Area where they co-founded the Anticon collective, their Midwestern roots – in ramshackle basements of off-campus hovels, as the "cerberus of Southern Ohio" – would remain the atomic heart of their early recordings. As Chris Martins writes in the liner notes, "The only reason we know their names today is because of how loudly and curiously they aired their insularity. They rewrote the entire world as they knew it through their own fucked perspective, and when those mysterious 10-inches started popping up in record shops, it wasn't just a puzzle to investigate: there seemed to be a whole cosmology hidden in those grooves." Each side of the album represents one of those elusive 10-inches, each embodying a universe unto itself. Opening salvo "Apt. A" and "And All You Can Do Is Laugh" are perhaps most emblematic of the cLOUDDEAD experience. Why? and Dose create a new language through boundless non-sequiturs, sing-song non-choruses and call-and-response hooks, while Nosdam's dexterous production shifts from crackling ambience of Flying Saucer Attack to tight Ohio Players drum breaks and oblique film samples. Taken all together, cLOUDDEAD is an original interpretation of hip-hop in the surreal Y2K glow – a bizarre meeting point between William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and MF DOOM's Operation: Doomsday. All it took was a Dr. Sample SP-202, Tascam cassette eight-track and cheap RadioShack mic. There's truly nothing like it.

Based in the Brazilian capital of São Paulo, the TORMENTA collective has long offered an alternative vision of the city's rich and colorful musical heritage. Operating as an ongoing series of DIY parties, creative agency and record label, TORMENTA has welcomed challenging sounds into São Paulo and released music from a cross section of Brazilian artists, including Fkoff1963, 177th & Digestivo. Their musical output is unrestrained: pop edits and unhinged hard dance rubs against errated heavy metal and lifted ambient drone. Anything's possible, as long as there's a social conscience and a middle finger to expectation. In 2019, TORMENTA put together a short film for the online edition of Nyege Nyege Festival. Since the crew is made up of obsessive horror movie fans, the direction was clear. "O Som do Labirinto" (The Labyrinth's Sound), is a terrifying and psychedelic audiovisual experience that's centered around a journalist attempting to examine a series of mysterious gatherings. Casting a side-eye to VICE's notorious series of fish out of water documentaries, the film drags its protagonist to hell through a series of grueling mental trials, all accompanied by TORMENTA's bloody toolbox of tortuous sounds. This full-length soundtrack finds the collective exposing their deep horror movie knowledge and finally flexing their film score muscle. The crew's ragged club DNA is still present, but mainlined into a Frankenstein's monster of John Carpenter synths, haunted piano loops and gruesome Lustmord-esque dark ambient drones. Alada's 'Running' straps a familiar hoover bass to bloodcurdling low-end rumbles and sparse, propulsive kicks; MTMA's 'O Pesadelo' sounds like broken clocks and music boxes at the "Evil Dead" cabin; 177th's 'Together' is a nightmarish beatless rave anthem that's like Lorenzo Senni on a bad trip; and Bruxax's 'Scream' is a full-on sludge metal freak-out that could sit alongside a Rob Zombie movie. The "O Som Do Labirinto OST" is Brazilian experimental club music in corpse paint holding a jack-o-lantern and weilding a bloody knife. Be afraid.

Originally recorded and released in 1977 on Sky Records, the first collaborative album by Brian Eno and Cluster was the first ambient record produced in Germany, and is considered the seminal, defining work of the genre. Brian Eno was certainly instrumental in creating and popularizing the concept of "ambient music" -- but it was not his invention alone. The German musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (Cluster) were brothers in spirit. As so often in music, the idea of ambient was in the air -- both Eno and Cluster experimenting with the form in the 1970s, rendering any debate as to who influenced who redundant. What is certain, is that Brian Eno attended a Cluster concert in Hamburg in 1975, strategically positioning himself in the front row. Sure enough, he was invited on stage to jam with the band and, after the show, the participants arranged to meet up again. They did so two years later at the Old Weserhof in Forst, the domicile of the German duo. Eno and Cluster spent three weeks in Conny Plank's studio, resulting in two albums: Cluster & Eno and After The Heat (1978). In the liner notes, Asmus Tietchens (who also plays on the record along with Can's Holger Czukay) writes: "Clearly, all three musicians inspired each other during their three weeks together without any clash of personalities. Nevertheless, some tracks sound more like Cluster, some more like Eno. So it made perfect sense to collect the tracks with a Cluster flavor on Cluster & Eno." The importance of this record can never be overstated, nor can its elegance of diverse forms be matched. From Indian sitar and tamboura, to synth warbles and airy tributes to Western groove, it is a rare glimpse at what happens when masters meet.

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Cluster was the pioneering German duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. Formed on the cusp of the 1970s, they were a part of West Germany's nascent Kosmische Musik scene. The group would use restrained improvisational techniques similar to Gruppo Nuova Consonanza, working with both electric and acoustic instruments (organ, guitar, tone generators, cello, etc.) to create a singular sound that Julian Cope called "a huge beating heart, planet-sized and awesome." Originally released in 1972 on Brain, Cluster II features six pieces of atmospheric, proto-ambient drones – a step up from Cluster's 1971 self-titled debut, which had all untitled songs. On "Im Suden," hypnotic bass pulsations and repetitive guitar patterns flow serenely, while side two opener "Live In Der Fabrik" dives deep into Roedelius and Moebius' foreboding industrial soundscapes and synergistic textural interplay. As Roedelius told Uncut magazine in 2022, "This feels like a breakthrough? Well, we were just getting more into it, and getting more experienced at being able to elaborate it. Conny (Plank) was working with us again – as well as being a multi-talented artist, he was a very experienced sound master and great human being. He contributed as a fellow musician, adding sounds with his mixing table such as reverb, delay and other effects enriching the whole pieces so that they finally became somehow unique." It's no surprise that when Neu! guitarist Michael Rother first heard Cluster II, he suggested a collaboration with the band – resulting in the supergroup Harmonia who would make their first album together the following year.

Coastlines is the self-titled long player from the new Japanese production unit of DJ and producer Masanori Ikeda and solo artist, session musician and Cro-Magnon keyboard player Takumi Kaneko.

Masanori and Takumi have been part of the Japanese dance music scene for years and Coastlines was born out of their working together on soundtracks for video projects. The pair wanted to make laid-back listening music for now, laying Takumi’s playful keys over Masanori’s widescreen balearic jazz-fusion to conjure beautiful and breathtaking “coastlines”.

A couple of two-track 7"s put out in late 2018 and early 2019 on Japanese house music label Flower Records soon sold out. Those four tracks were expanded to a full album of music, “a joyous, relaxing, summery soundtrack for everyone’s after hours wind down” that was released just in time for summer. It certainly soundtracked many a Be With BBQ in 2019.

The album opens in the horizontal with the sophisticated, cocktails-by-the-pool groove of “Sunset Reflection”. A lush, beatless wonder. Their re-imagining of Ralph MacDonald’s “East Dry River” removes all the original’s bells and whistles (quite literally) and re-gears it with a subtle balearic chug. The result is a percussive gem.

“Coastline” is a beach-jazz noodle. “Drifting Ice” is as chilled and glacial as its title would suggest, yet Masanori’s head-nod slo-mo house beats throb not far below the surface. “My Fire” is another soft killer, all swelling, swirling organ over muted kicks and snares. An elegant boom-bap.

A pair of insistent tunes of the deeply balearic variety raise the tempo, but not by too much of course. On “Woods And My Guitar” a half-heard vocal refrain breathes life into the synthetic xylophone and guitar. Deft piano-work turns “Half Moon Shadow” into lounge-house for the sophisticated beach bum. A classy duo.

The self-assured re-work of Azymuth’s “Last Summer In Rio” is arguably the album’s centrepiece. Ten minutes of casually propulsive slapped bass, steel pans and slick 80s soul beats. Cue the steel drum interlude of “Maracas Bay” before album closer “Down Town” transitions us on with a shuffling, string-hinted hit of ethereal, euphoric piano bliss. Gentle disco for the new decade.

As former Test Pressing scribe Dr. Rob observed on his ever-reliable Ban Ban Ton Ton blog, the Coastlines fusion is very much in conversation with their 80s counterparts, both at home and along the coastlines of different continents. So among the nods to revered Japanese artists like Hiroshi Sato, Sakamoto and Casiopea, there are also hints of Marcos Valle and Mtume, of the aforementioned Azymuth. “The production though is very much now, not then. Not retro, just proper”. We couldn’t put it better ourselves.

Coastlines was originally a CD release only available in Japan, with HMV putting out a super-limited vinyl version a few months later for Japanese Record Store Day. But this music is just too good, so when Be With was asked via Ken Hidaka to take care of a vinyl version for the whole world it wasn’t a tough decision.

Mastered by Simon Francis and cut by Pete Norman, this magnificent double LP has been pressed by the good people at Record Industry.

The artist made a strong debut with the "Coastlines EP" released in the summer of 2018, followed by the "Coastlines EP2" in January 2019 and their first album "Coastlines" in the summer of the same year. Released on the prestigious Be With Records label in the UK, they quickly gained attention in the worldwide chillout Balearic scene and elsewhere, and will release their latest full-length album "Coastlines2" now.

Coastlines' latest album, "Coastlines 2," is finally released, and while maintaining the same concept as the first album, it spins a more precise and beautifully polished magic hour.