Ambient / Minimal / Drone

Steve Reich remains one of the most important figures in 20th century music. Though he studied at the prestigious arts institutions Julliard and Mills College, by the mid- 1960s Reich set about dismantling the very orthodoxy that he had been trained in. Forming a new musical language based on repetitive processes, Reich became established as part of the so-called 'Big Four' of New York minimalists (along with La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Philip Glass). Reich's influence can easily be seen today in both the classical world and contemporary pop music. 'Four Organs' is the ultimate minimalist composition. Performed by Reich, Glass, Art Murphy and Steve Chambers, four identical Farfisa organs strike a single chord and gradually lengthen each note to produce polyrhythms between the players. Anchored by Jon Gibson's stoicallysteady pulse on maracas, the piece deconstructs its opening burst to a sustained mass of sound -- stretching the tones to create (in Reich's words) 'slow-motion music.' Inspired by Reich's early training on drums, 'Phase Patterns' treats the keyboards like tuned percussion instruments: a basic rhythm pattern is played in unison and almost imperceptibly increases tempo to move out-of-sync. Each progressive cycle emphasizes unique figures that are not generated by an individual alone, but rather emerge from the communal expression of the group. Originally released on Shandar in 1971, Four Organs / Phase Patterns is one of most highly regarded avant-garde recordings in the past 45 years. This first-time vinyl reissue features cover photography by artist Michael Snow and is recommended for fans of Neu!, Glenn Branca and Tim Hecker.

Glenn Branca's first full-length album The Ascension is a colossal achievement. After touring much of 1980 with an all-star band featuring four guitarists (Branca, fellow composers Ned Sublette and David Rosenbloom, and future Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo) with Jeffrey Glenn on bass and Stephan Wischerth on drums, Branca took his war-torn group into a studio in Hell's Kitchen to record five incendiary compositions. Originally released in 1981 on 99 Records, The Ascension effectively tears down the genre-ghettos between 20th century avant-garde and ecstatic rock 'n' roll.

On "The Spectacular Commodity," chiming, shimmering tones unfold into sinister drone-territory à la Tony Conrad, while abrasive guitars and repetitive beats retain the raw primitivism of No Wave. The title track attains a densely packed, larger-than-life sound and (as author Marc Masters says best) "never stops climbing skyward."

With artist Robert Longo's stark front cover that depicts Branca battling an unidentified man, The Ascension is a must-have record not only for fans of early Swans and Sonic Youth, but also of Steve Reich or Slint's Tweez.

Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

“Something for everyone”

Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

“Something for everyone”

Experiments In Psychoacoustics, Timbre & Minimalism: 2011-2021

Late Music and Disciples are pleased to present the first and second volumes in an archival series of selected electronic and acoustic works by Sarah Davachi, all previously unreleased in the vinyl format. Featuring (way) back catalogue material from various CDs, cassettes, and EPs; singles and original film scores; as well as miscellaneous live and studio recordings.

“Something for everyone”

Jeff Parker, who is familiar with activities such as Tortoise and Chicago Underground Quartet, announces the latest work from the sanctuary of US contemporary jazz . It is an album composed of solo guitar works including interpretations of "Ugly Beauty" and "My Ideal" by Celonias Monk and 6 original songs, and it is a home in Altadena, California in June 2021. A gem of improvisational minimal ambient work recorded by Graeme Gibson in the studio over a two-day period!

After a two-decade interlude, Jim O’Rourke’s Moikai returns with Spectral Evolution, a major new work by Rafael Toral. Making his name in the mid-1990s with influential guitar drone platters like "Sound Mind Sound Body" and "Wave Field" (both reissued by Drag City in recent years), Toral has never been one to rest on his laurels repeating his past glories. In the early years of the 21st century, Toral laid the guitar aside, along with the focus on extended tones that had defined much of his music until that point. He began his ‘Space Program’, a thirteen-year investigation of the performance possibilities of an ever-expanding set of custom electronic instruments, played with a fluid phrasing and rhythmic flexibility inspired by jazz. Dedicated to honing his skills on these idiosyncratic instruments, Toral has performed with them extensively both solo and in many collaborations, including in his Space Quartet, where his mini-amplifier feedback integrates seamlessly into the frontline of a classic post-free jazz quartet rounded out with saxophone, double bass, and drums. Since 2017, Toral’s work has been entering a new phase, often still centred around the arsenal of self-built instruments developed in the Space Program, but with a renewed interest in the long tones and almost static textures of his earlier work; he has also, after more than a decade, returned to the electric guitar. Spectral Evolution is undoubtedly Toral’s most sophisticated work to date, bringing together seemingly incompatible threads from his entire career into a powerful new synthesis, both wildly experimental and emotionally affecting. The record begins with a brief ‘Intro’ that sets the stage for the unique sound world explored throughout the remainder of its duration: over sparkling clean guitar figures, Toral stages a duet between two streams of modulated feedback, seeming less electronic than like mutant takes on a muted trumpet and an ocarina. This segues seamlessly into the stunning ‘Changes’, where a dense array of Space instruments solo with wild abandon over a thick carpet of slowly moving chords, growing increasingly chaotic over the course of eight minutes yet always fastened to the lush harmonic foundation. On these and many other moments on the record, Toral manages the almost miraculous feat of having his self-built electronic instruments (which in the past he had seen as ‘inadequate to play any music based on the Western system’) play in tune. In an unexpected sidestep away from any of his previous work, the chord changes that underpin many of the episodes on Spectral Evolution are derived from classic jazz harmony, including takes on the archetypal Gershwin ‘Rhythm changes’ and Ellington-Strayhorn’s ‘Take the “A” Train’, albeit slowed to such an extent that each chord becomes a kind of environment in its own right. Threading together twelve distinct episodes into a flowing whole, "Spectral Evolution" alternates moments of airy instrumental interplay with dense sonic mass, breaking up the pieces based on chord changes with ambient ‘Spaces’. At points reduced to almost a whisper, at other moments Toral’s electronics wail, squelch, and squeak like David Tudor’s live-electronic rainforest. Similarly, his use of the guitar encompasses an enormous dynamic and textural range, from chiming chords to expansive drones, from crystal clarity to fuzzy grit: on the beautiful ‘Your Goodbye’, his filtered, distorted soloing recalls Loren Connors in its emotive depth and wandering melodic sensibility. The product of three years of experimentation and recording, and synthesizing the insights of more than thirty years of musical research, "Spectral Evolution" is the quintessential album of guitar music from Rafael Toral.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

In 1987, RAFAEL TORAL began making his own compositions and solo recordings. 30 years later, these recordings sound remarkably prescient and perfectly timeless—almost fresher today than when they were first released. Rafael has spent the time since then developing his conceptions, with continued explorations in the many records that have followed. On the 30th anniversary of his start, Drag City is reissuing Sound Mind Sound Body and Wave Field, his first two long out-of-print albums, on vinyl for the first time. Sound Mind Sound Body was partly inspired by exploring some of the working principles of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, extrapolated by Rafael via a unique signal path leading out of his guitar. He paid notice to the massive impact of discreet gestures, creating slow-moving tones and spacious orchestral resonances, drifting and droning with glacial majesty, hardly recognizable as guitar much of the time. The first of these pieces were recorded in 1987, and in 1994, they were released on Portugal’s AnAnAnA, with material evolved in the years between, producing a remarkable equilibrium over an hour’s listening. Further evidence of the necessity for gradual development exists in subsequent reissues: for the 1998 Moikai reissue, “AE 1” was recorded, and for this edition, “AER 7 E” was rerecorded and the material for “AE 2” was recorded for the first time ever—all from original processes as noted, and none of which will cause the listener to notice a change in the otherworldly atmosphere.

A sequel to last year's sublime 'Spectral Evolution', 'Traveling Light' is a suite of weightless, uncannily beautiful jazz standards, transformed into orchestral drones and electronic chirps by Toral and his virtual band. It's flawless material that draws a clear line from Billie Holiday through Clara Rockmore, Fripp & Eno and Alvin Lucier to MBV and Gastr del Sol and beyond. Unmissable gear, from one of the scene's unassailable legends. Culture never emerges from a vacuum. It accumulates and evolves, building on what occurred before and gleaning influence from what happened nearby; the more cultural threads converge, the more complex, nuanced and developed the resulting braids become. Toral acknowledged this fact quite brazenly on last year's 'Spectral Evolution', bringing over a decade of impenetrable off-world experimentation to a halt and shoving his bare hands into the creative soil that inspired iconic tomes like 1995's 'Loveless'-inspired masterpiece 'Wave Field' and the meditative Éliane Radigue-cum-Rhys Chatham 'Violence of Discovery And Calm of Acceptance'. Taking a dip in the pool of concepts that eddy underneath rock music's labyrinth of caverns, he referenced Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, turning vintage progressions into idiosyncratic contemporary gestures. And on 'Traveling Light' that basic theme is expanded again; here, Toral takes six recognizable early 20th century standards and applies a very similar treatment, augmenting them with additional "canonical jazz sounds" from clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro. Playing guitar and bass with his self-built ensemble of electronic devices (that includes a modified theremin), Toral lets his influences float even closer to the surface here, picking out familiar jazz and exotica flourishes, early electronic echoes and organ-esque polyphonic sustained tones that stretch across hundreds of years of musical history. On opener 'Easy Living', a Ralph Rainger composition from 1937 that's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others, the original chord sequence is slackened by Toral's sustained guitar tones and sine waves, but not blurred completely into impressions. This time around we're treated to more tangible shapes: Toral's cheeky, expertly rendered riffs, horizontal exotica-inspired rhythmelodic chimes, intimate woodwind breaths that pull us back to the '30s and squealing pitches that can't help but remind us of Clara Rockmore's Robert Moog-produced milestone 'The Art of the Theremin'. It feels like being chucked in the American cultural petri dish while new organisms mutate around you - everything's recognisable somehow but novel, peculiar. Lovingly valve saturated strums, bent by Toral's whammy, introduce 'Body and Soul' (a 1930 standard that's best known for being recorded by Frank Sinatra) before they're met by alien chirps from his arsenal of generators. But it's the willowy harmonies that buoy this one, echoing the haunted choral drones that prop up centuries of European sacred music. Toral's very specific with his references; when Amado's tenor moans whisper around the dense polyphonic hums, there's a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring influence of African American spirituals and gospel on folk, blues, jazz, country, rock 'n roll and R&B. The album's most affecting segment comes at the conclusion though, with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'God Bless the Child', easily two of the most conspicuous compositions of the era. On both, Toral hovers between clarity and abstraction, overlaying bone-dry fingerpicked improvisations on the former that scrape over Chicago's musical timeline, from "hot jazz" to post-rock, and finishing the album with Fennesz-like distortions that crack and dissolve into Saleiro's levitational flute tones. It's astonishing stuff, honestly - maybe not as immediately startling as 'Spectral Evolution', but refined, polished and concentrated in every way. You're unlikely to find a more moving set this year, that's for sure.

Totality! It can only be good news. The second convergence of Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas, years removed from the first, misses no steps and posits low-key revolutions in gravity for everyone instead. LPs divide inevitably into two halves; here, the first side could be typed ‘space’ and the second side ‘time’. With loads of totally principled playing in the communal feel, both sides blur the edges warmly.

Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.

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.

"Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music -- an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places! -- though the casual listener could hardly know that from an examination of the LP jacket. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS -- and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early '90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O'Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from -- like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno's ambient pieces -- but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape! And who was it? Was the band called Plux Quba? The record? The label? These sorts of mysteries are at the heart of records that require close listening and re-listening. As it was absorbed, it grew to be an influence on the Köln sound -- Mouse On Mars, Lithops, and Heemann's many and varied projects -- as well as O'Rourke, Fennesz and many others. Music and sound of this nature have for many years been made available by bands like Autechre, labels like Mille Plateaux -- but for the first ten years of its existence, Plux Quba was rarely heard. O'Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It's been almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which is way too long considering that we live in an era where it is necessary to have an LP of this on hand for your contemporary listening distractions. And so, Drag City has stepped in to reissue the Moikai reissue of Nuno Canavarro's classic Plux Quba."

A shining star in Mika Vainio’s dense microcosm returns to vinyl - and for our money it’s the most transcendent record in his revered catalogue, unfurling through an hour of disarmingly melodic romance and astral projection that never fails to bring a tear to our eye. First presented on CD in 2005 under Vainio’s Ø alias, ‘Kantamoinen’ became something of a sleeper gem, cultishly adored for its concerted embrace of extended melody and narrative tone within an ambient context, which made it stand out from his preceding decade of ascetic noise brutalism and minimal techno. Our first encounter, back at our Pelicanneck shop, left us utterly smitten with its soundtrack-like qualities, eventually prompting us to issue it on vinyl for the first time via our Editions label in 2016. Sadly, Mika passed the following year, which only made the material more precious as a lone, curious artefact in his deeply influential body of work. It now returns in this new edition, ready to flip preconceptions with a new generation of listeners through its exquisite carousel of tear-jerking soundscpaes where the artist’s most intimate, distinctive spirits endure. Dedicated to Mika’s grandma, Laina Vainio (1913-1991), and adorned with a cover image of her garden in Artjärvi, Finland, the 16-part 2LP is the closest you’ll get to a type of nostalgia in Mika’s catalogue. Whilst recorded 1999-2004 at an early crest of his game-changing work with Pan Sonic, the album clearly manifests a quieter space for Mika to emote far more nuanced feels, from the wide-eyed vastness of ‘Galaxy’ to a breathtaking ‘Sound Picture’, transitioning from Hans-Ulrich Obrist’s snippet of Oskar Sala into icy bliss, and the rosy warmth of a ‘Summerland’ clearly dedicated to his nan’s garden. The rest is better defined as ephemeral snapshots adding up to a broader picture, like a mind’s eye filling gaps in the memory from illusive vapours and sensations, generating all-time gems in the steepled choral synth voice of ‘In Wind’, or a sense of magic realism in the swaying organ of ‘Antenna-ant’, with the blooz folk wheeze of closer ‘To Home’ that could feasibly score the most haunting moments of a Bela Tarr flick.

Noise titan Anthony Di Franco (Ramleh, JFK) returns to his perennially influential and long dormant AX project for the first time since 1997's 'Astronomy', pitching into pure, beat-less feedback/amp-worship on a crushing and expansive new album of manacled, atonal guitar + synth + FX slowly edged into oblivion. Big boned, highly recommended listening FFO Kevin Drumm, Stephen O’Malley, Kevin Richard Martin, Mika Vainio, E.A.R. Di Franco was just 21 when he started the AX project in 1993. He'd been a member of Matthew Bower's influential noise rock band Skullflower since he was 16 and was their full-time bassist by that point, playing on classic sides like 'IIIrd Gatekeeper' and 'Obsidian Shaking Codex' before being tapped by Gary Mundy to join Ramleh. The idea for AX was to create music without drums that was just as heavy as the extreme noise and sludgy rock that surrounded Di Franco at the time. And so, using a cheap 4-track, an arsenal of guitars and a few synths and effects to strip out the rhythm and focus solely on the weight of the sound, the project produced three albums - 'AX II', 'Nova Feedback' and 'Astronomy' - records that have remained cult touchstones for dedicated drone fanatics ever since. One year since the mighty, psyched-out return of Ramleh with ‘Hyper Vigilance’, Di Franco appears clearly gassed on a new energy in ‘Vulcanalia’, wherein he revives the alias with the benefit of lessons learned since that last album three decades ago. For the duration, he touches scorched grass in his most elemental guise, sustaining combustible harmonic overtones and biting-point distortion thickened with re-thought production techniques, from mic placements to amp sorcery and FX, factored by obsessive, extramusical cues from Roman mythology and religion. The results live up to his intention - to plunge users in the midst of the lushest tempest - in order to overwhelm himself and us. Nothing exceeds quite like excess, and this one delivers in glacial spades. Numbed drones grow in shivering intensity to a vision-blurring electromagnetic stormfield on ‘Elagebal’, culminating in a keeling, blackened wave that never breaks, whereas ‘Jupiter Best and Greatest’ allows for more harmonic colour in the sustained density of his synths and axe, rising and dashing souls on distant noumenal, isolationist shores. ‘Aedes Saturnus’ evokes a necessary lull in the storm, dialling everything down to a sort of still water depth and dread that builds from below, boiling waters that turn to caustic treacle one the 12 minute titular closing, set to immure the senses in a style of doom wrangling that hears the influence of his Ramleh and Skullflower works which also fed into E.A.R., SoMa, and Kevin Richard Martin, returning home to roost.

Robert Haigh made his trilogy of piano solo albums (‘Notes and Crossings’, ‘Anonymous Lights’, and ‘Strange and Secret Things’) during 2009-2011 and ‘The Silence of Ghosts’ in 2015 for Siren Records. The tracks for each of these releases were carefully selected with consideration for the flow and development of the project. Inevitably, for various reasons, some tracks did not fit a particular album and they have remained unreleased regardless of their quality. 

The original plan of the “Tempus Fugit” release was, as the subtitle suggests, to collect and assemble rare and unreleased tracks into an album. However, in the process of his compiling the tracks, Robert noticed that the project was developing into an album that had a flow and narrative of its own. Considering the structure and progression of the album, Robert carefully curated ten pieces from his recording archives (including three tracks left over from the Unseen Worlds period) and arranged them to make the best sequence selection.

As a result, “Tempus Fugit” has grown into a unique album with its own sense of flow, though none of the tracks were recorded with the aim of making this particular album. “Tempus Fugit” will be a parting gift to those who have followed his works while at the same time, a useful selection as “young person's guide to Robert Haigh” to those who have yet to open the door of his music. 

The album opens with ’Slow Water.’ A distant and plaintive piano melody evolves with ghostly harmonies through a reverb soaked landscape. ’The Wind Blows Black’ is an improvisation on a theme where discordant piano figures tumble over fragile descending chords. ‘Sub Rosa’ and ‘Broken Bones’ are Haigh at his most melodic, conjuring up the feel of tracks such as ‘Clear Water’ and ‘Portrait with Shadow’.’ In A Space’ slightly predates the first Siren release and wouldn’t be out of place on an early Budd and Eno album. The album closes with the ghostly ‘Tesselate Air’, a slow-moving ambient trip across a misty and shadowy terrain, slowly fading to silence. And the silence is significant as Robert is insistent that there will be no more releases after this.

Written and produced by Robert Haigh. Mastered by Denis Blackham at Skye Mastering. Sleeve artwork by Robert Haigh. Additional design by Saul Haigh.
 

Organum ‘RAVEN’ CD, which was released by Siren Records in 2018 was the last piece that Jackman released under the name Organum. He changed the name Organum to Organum Electronics in 2019 and has released five volumes of the albums on Siren Records since then. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is a development of the quiet nature of earlier Organum works and Jackman decided to release the album under his own name because of a very personal essence. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ is composed of low-key church organ drones, airy tanpura sounds, occasional church bell chimes and chirping birds. It is the most minimal, the most quiet and the most powerful composition Jackman has ever created. The drones continue uninterrupted and you may feel little change in partial listening, but you’ll appreciate the increasing internal dynamic energy that Jackman infused with mindful listening. ‘SEKIHI OIDORI’ means ‘Stone Tomb Old Bird’ in English translation but the piece is neither an elegy nor a lamentation.

Robert Haigh, long known as Omni Trio, is a veteran electronic and “ambient drum and bass” innovator. Strange and Secret Things, however, is solo piano. Now, when someone sits down at the piano and plays slowly and pensively, it is easy (and usually lazy) to immediately draw comparisons with Erik Satie, and “Revenant (Prelude)” and “Secret Codes (Prelude)” are in fact reminiscent. A nod, perhaps. Otherwise, Haigh’s seventeen miniatures are hardly strange and if they possess some secret, he seems more than willing to share it with us. He plays a crisp and clear piano, deliberate and intimate. 

On this final entry to a trilogy, voltage is mainly used to run the recording equipment, with the rare wisp of a whit of a scent of electronics—a dragonfly following him “Across the River,” a shimmer quietly underlining “Dark House,” synthesizer arabesques decorating “Piano with Generative Tones” and what sounds like a violin (but could be a female soprano) sampled and played backward on the closing “Requiem.” Whether circular or linear, these tuneful, minimal melodies are truly precious pieces, black-and-white snapshots only just beginning to yellow and curl at the edges. 

Housed in the sturdy, handmade mini-LP packaging which has become the distinguished and distinguishing hallmark of Siren, Andrew Chalk’s Faraway Press’ Japanese sister label. 

Robert Haigh continues on in his post-Omni Trio musical world, releasing a type of contemporary classical/ambient music that is piano-based and bridges the worlds of Aphex Twin (in the Richard James’ quieter moments), Max Richter, Eno and Chilly Gonzales. These, as with the instrumental pieces on recent-enough Haigh album, the gorgeous Darkling Streams, feel all at once like demo-versions and finished pieces; the writer sitting down at the keys and shaking loose a few ideas. Stopping to find them as close to fully formed as they’ll ever be – art that’s never finished, simply discarded. 

These pieces hint as nostalgia and quiet moments of contemplation, they, once again, feel like they’ve come from the school of film composition – more so than from any techno/drum’n’bass world (where Haigh, of course, has operated so successfully). 

These are soft sketches. We listen in, almost eavesdropping, catching just the bit in the middle – longer intros or outros could change any one of these pieces into an album-length work, but these snapshots still seem correctly bound together. 

It’s quietly powerful stuff. 

Shadowy musical figures, breathing spaces within the notes, the slightest feeling of unease trickling in and around these moments that – mostly – frame up a type of tranquillity, create a calm, a balm, a day-spa soundtrack with depth, warmth and intrigue. 

Once again Haigh has offered up the very best from his soul for the wee small hours, for those moments after first waking or to guide you as you slip off into a strange and wonderful dreamland. 

'Persistent Repetition Of Phrases' success comes from the attention it pays to the function of 'the loop', not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it's as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby's labyrinth of faulty remembrances, pointing their way towards the peculiarities dictating the manner by which the mind stores and attempts to recover information.

Deeply resonant spiritual music transmitted via piano, organ, and harmonium by beloved composer and Ethiopian Orthodox nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru.

Church of Kidane Mehret collects all the musical work from Emahoy’s 1972 private press album of the same name, alongside two additional unreleased piano recordings, exploring Emahoy’s take on “Ethiopian Church Music.”

Recording herself in churches throughout Jerusalem, Emahoy engages directly with the Ethiopian Orthodox musical liturgy. For the first time, we hear Emahoy on harmonium and massive, droning pipe organ, alongside some of her most moving piano work.

“Ave Maria” is one of our favorite pieces Emahoy ever recorded, her chiming piano reverberating against ancient stone walls. Her familiar melodic lines take on new resonance when played through the harmonium on “Spring Ode - Meskerem.” Two towering organ performances comprise the B Side, combining Emahoy’s classical European training with her lifelong study of Ethiopian religious music.

Nowhere is Emahoy’s unique combination of influences more apparent than on “Essay on Mahlet,” a meditative slow burner in which Emahoy interprets the free verse of the Orthodox liturgy note for note on the piano. This revelatory piece, alongside the dramatic piano composition “The Storm,” comes from another self-released album, 1963’s Der Sang Des Meeres. Only 50 copies were ever produced (and no cover). One of the only known copies was saved from the trash and shared with Mississippi by a fellow nun at Emahoy’s monastery when we visited for Emahoy’s funeral in March of 2023.

We are proud to work with the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation to bring you these rare spiritual recordings in what would have been the artist’s 102nd year.

Available in black and clear vinyl editions. Old-school tip-on jacket with metallic silver foil stamping along with a 12-page booklet featuring extensive liner notes from scholar and pianist Thomas Feng.

"Después de llover” is about musical conversations between two people who have only recently met; they come from very different places, do not speak the same languages, and perhaps have little in common other than the resonance of their instruments. This encounter leads them to explore an imaginary world where they share sounds to build a place where they can go and play with the moisture of the plants growing in the water, listen to the pudus playing with the herons, rest on the floripondios, and perhaps stay there waiting for the rain to return. These pieces were recorded on a summer day in 2025 in Indrė’s home with kanklės, txompe, and violin. ------- “ Después de llover ” son conversaciones sonoras de dos personas que se conocen desde hace poco tiempo, vienen de lugares muy diferentes, no hablan las mismas lenguas y tal vez no tienen tanto en común más que la resonancia de sus instrumentos. Este encuentro les lleva a explorar un mundo imaginario donde comparten sonidos para construir un lugar donde poder ir a jugar con la humedad de las plantas que crecen en el agua, ir a escuchar a los pudus jugar con las garzas, ir a descansar sobre los floripondios y tal vez quedarse ahí a esperar a que regrese la lluvia. Estas piezas fueron grabadas en el verano de 2025 en la casa de Indre con kanklės, txompe y violín.

On White Morning, Fumio Miyashita distils his healing‑ambient language into two near‑half‑hour reveries: soft synths and gentle acoustic colours held in a discovered stillness that treats music as a space for rest, focus and quiet presence. White Morning, recorded in 1989 at Biwa Studio, captures Fumio Miyashita at the point where his music becomes less a sequence of notes and more a sustained state of being. Active through the late 1980s and early 1990s as a composer, arranger and multi‑instrumentalist, Miyashita carved out a singular niche between healing music, environmental sound and meditative ambient. While many contemporaries busied themselves mapping forests, cities and weather systems in tone, Miyashita turned inward. His pieces were designed explicitly for the body as much as the ear: music for rest, focus, presence, created to support breathing, posture and attention rather than to decorate a room. White Morning distils that vision into its purest form. The album consists of two extended works, 目覚め (See The Light) and 朝の祈り (Morning Prayer), each close to twenty‑five minutes in length. Built from soft synthesizer layers and delicate acoustic textures, they move with a slowness that feels less composed than discovered, as if Miyashita had patiently tuned himself to a particular inner frequency and simply stayed there. Harmonic changes are subtle, almost subliminal; motifs appear and dissolve without insisting on themselves. This is music that refuses to impose – no sharp edges, no dramatic arcs, just a gentle continuity of tone that invites the listener to sink, breathe and notice. In 目覚め (See The Light), bright but gauzy synth overtones suggest the first wash of morning illumination, a cautious opening of the eyes. Underneath, quieter figures pulse with the regularity of a resting heartbeat. The piece doesn’t build toward a climax; instead, it slightly increases its luminosity over time, like a room gradually filling with daylight. 朝の祈り (Morning Prayer) feels even more interior. Here, acoustic colours – faint chimes, possible string or flute traces – thread through the electronic bed, offering points of focus within the ongoing drone. The atmosphere is devotional without belonging to a specific faith: a sense of quietly held intention, of gratitude or petition expressed in sustained tone rather than in words. Originally released on CD in 1991, White Morning circulated quietly among devotees of kankyo ongaku and Japanese new age, passed hand to hand and mentioned in hushed tones alongside favourites by Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa or Klaus Wiese. Unlike many environmental records designed explicitly around place – gardens, galleries, corporate lobbies – Miyashita’s work seems to address the interior “room” of the listener: the nervous system, the breath, the mind’s tendency to wander. That inward focus gives White Morning a particular intimacy. Even at low volume, you sense it re‑tuning the background; at higher levels, it can feel like stepping into a bath of sound. For its third release, Ambient Sans turns to this quietly beloved cornerstone of Japanese ambient, finally bringing White Morning to vinyl after decades of digital and CD‑only existence. The format shift underscores the album’s status as more than functional audio. As a physical object – a record you handle, place on a turntable, flip between sides of dawn and prayer – it becomes a ritual artefact, a tool for framing time at the beginning of a day or at any moment when the listener needs to withdraw without closing off. Essential for anyone drawn to Yoshimura’s environmental lightness, Ashikawa’s meditative depth or Wiese’s healing drones, White Morning stands as one of Miyashita’s most resonant offerings: music that stays, gently, until you’re ready to carry its stillness back into the rest of your life.