Ambient / Minimal / Drone
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Seven beautiful, melancholic motets and a chanson by Renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert, arranged for instruments by James Weeks, who also composed the interludes. "One of the least expected and most beautiful records we are likely to hear this year." (Clive Bell) Gombert's music was renowned for the complexity of its polyphony, and these realisations, played by leading experimental ensemble Apartment House, emphasise the layered density of the music, while trying to take it as far away as possible from its origins as choral church music. The album is a personal project initiated by label owner Simon Reynell, a long-term fan of early music. Composer James Weeks also straddles the worlds of both early and contemporary music, and his 'media vita' interludes act as resting points between Gombert's intricate pieces. One of the bonus items which comes with the music is a pdf of an extended discussion about the project between Reynell and Weeks in which they discuss different approaches to the performance of early music, the brutal world of 16th century Europe from which the music sprung, and the ethics of promoting the music of a composer who did awful things. You can also read Clive Bell's excellent feature article about the album on another of the bonus items.
A 72-minute realisation of 'Intermission 6' (1953), one of the most open of Feldman's piano works. The piece was realised in October 2024 by Antti Tolvi.
The score consists of a single page with 15 events (chords or single notes) which can be played in any order, and can be performed by one or two pianists. Feldman writes that “The pianist, or pianists, begins with any sound on the page, will hold until barely audible, then proceed to whichever other sound he may choose. Sounds may be repeated.”
Most performances of 'Intermission 6' are between 4 and 10 minutes, but Antti Tolvi extends the piece to a duration more typical of Feldman's later music.
Catherine Lamb works at the boundary between perception and illusion. In Curva Triangulus (2018/21), the American composer takes Bridget Riley's geometric forms as starting point for "warping" Renaissance materials through geometric musical figures. The result is a 41-minute composition for eight instruments where the distinction between melody and harmony dissolves: one generates the other, rather than existing as separate entities. The score demands an exceptional ensemble. Bern's Ensemble Proton has access to extremely rare instruments: the arciorgano (Vicentino's 16th-century microtonal organ), a baroque triple harp (Barberini model), lupophone, contraforte, and clarinet d'amore. These combine with flute, cor anglais, bassoon, violin, and cello in an asymmetrical octet. The absence of piano and presence of the bellows-driven arciorgano subverts the ensemble's traditional balance, with the organ supporting the entire score from below. Lamb imagined a late Renaissance position of musical perception, warped by Riley's triangles and shapes in multidimensional space. Italian composer Zarlino hovers as phantom presence (with echoes of Marc Sabat's Gioseffo Zarlino surfacing), while Rameau's intuition about the sounding body remains just beyond the historical horizon. The baroque triple harp acts as "free flowing agent," articulating the progression of clearer contrapuntal triadic material in the foreground. Ensemble musicians alternate roles as active generators and passive harmonizers, always in relation to one another. In the revised version (completed winter 2020/21), these roles are distributed more evenly, adding timbral and intentional diversity. Richard Haynes introduces clarinet d'amore, while Elise Jacoberger contrasts bassoon and contraforte more distinctly. The ensemble includes Bettina Berger (flute, alto flute), Martin Bliggenstorfer (cor anglais, lupophone), Vera Schnider (triple harp), Coco Schwarz (arciorgano), Maximilian Haft (violin), and Jan-Filip Ťupa (cello). Recorded at Guebwiller Cathedral, France in May 2023 by sound engineer Ingo Schmidt-Lucas, Curva Triangulus is the latest in Lamb's extensive Another Timbre catalog, following parallaxis forma, Prisma Interius VIII, string quartets with JACK Quartet, and earlier works. Dusted Magazine notes the composition possesses "undeniable and immediate beauty" with "leisurely pace allowing room for experiments," offering both deep listening challenges and accessible pleasure.
Apartment House's latest set is a hypnotic rendition of Morton Feldman's towering late-period masterpiece, originally recorded in 1991 by Kronos Quartet and Aki Takahashi and here performed by Mark Knoop (piano), Mira Benjamin & Gordon Mackay (violins), Bridget Carey (viola) and Anton Lukoszevieze (cello). When Morton Feldman wrote "Piano and String Quartet" in 1985, only two years before he died of pancreatic cancer, he had Kronos Quartet and Aki Takahashi in mind, but the piece has been recorded many times since it was released in 1993, and has been endlessly influential, like much of Feldman's work. On this rendition, the dynamic range is tempered with piano and strings fluttering delicately like a whisper over a silence that feels omnipresent. When notes appear from the void, they do so with purpose, hanging like ghosts before slipping away into the aether. Anton Lukoszevieze, leader of Apartment House, explains why he chose to record the piece: "Piano and String Quartet, one of Feldman’s final works, is a seemingly simple work and yet it isn’t. As Philip Guston, a great friend of Feldman, wrote ‘Frustration is one of the great things in art; satisfaction is nothing.’ The length of the work (nearly 80 minutes) and the erasure of musical memory (What did we just hear?) is in fact its identity. Feldman makes simple statements, a piano arpeggio or a sustained string chord, holds these things and examines them over time. Gradually, as the sun’s light moves across a still life through the day, like a drawn out Morandi painting, the work evolves and indeed dissolves in some sense. Using different transformative processes, Feldman illuminates his basic material and achieves the miraculous, an extended work of great beauty and enigmatic wonder. There are ghosts there, tinctures of late Schubert, Brahms and even Janaček, where beauty is a signature of passing time and an ephemeral focus on hearing and disappearing."
Feldman’s late-style aesthetics distilled to their purest form in the chamber work Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello. A quiet labyrinth of abstraction, like an aural equivalent of abstract painting.
Saxophonist, flautist and producer Chip Wickham casts a formidable shadow across the UK jazz landscape. Originally from Brighton, Chip Wickham first came to prominence in the UK breakbeat scene playing with the likes of Nightmares On Wax and Graham Massey. But at heart Chip has always been a jazz musician (he played on Matthew Halsall’s debut album 'Sending My Love' in 2008 beginning a relationship with Gondwana Records that now spans 17 years) and now dividing his time between the UK, Spain and the Middle-East, he has made a name for himself with a series of beautifully crafted solo albums that draw equally on hard swinging spiritual jazz, the classic sounds of 60s British jazz and the more contemporary sounds of artists such as Jazzanova, The Cinematic Orchestra, and Nicola Conte.
'The Eternal Now’ is Chip’s most progressive recording to date and represents a heartfelt ode to submitting oneself to the practice of creating art, and the freedom that’s derived from letting go.
Co-produced by Matthew Halsall, 'The Eternal Now' features two mainstays of the Manchester scene, legendary drummer Luke Flowers of The Cinematic Orchestra and well-loved bass-player Sneaky who played on Mr Scruff’s classic Keep it Unreal. Largely flute-led it’s his most rhythm heavy offering to date taking the listener on an expansive journey that touches on the influences of Lonnie Liston Smith, Sven Wunder, David Axelrod and even library music as Chip pushes his sound into exciting new spaces without ever losing the soulful groove and heartfelt melodies that make his music so loved.
Recording Personnel
Chip Wickham: alto flute, flute, soprano saxophone & tenor saxophone
Peach: vocals
Eoin Grace: trumpet & flugelhorn
George Cooper: Fender Rhodes
Simon ‘Sneaky’ Houghton: double bass
Luke Flowers: drums
Christophe Leroux: cello
Snowboy: congas & percussion
Mohamed Oweda: violin
Lia Wickham: vocals
Gondwana Records
A dream-within-a-dream sequence of chopped & screwed cumbia that occupies a very specific spot on our shelves somewhere between The Caretaker and DJ Screw - Debit’s new album for Modern Love is a history lesson, hallucination and ghost-dance all in one, a vault of lost memories that’s intended neither for the club, nor as furniture music - but for full contemplative immersion.
Desaceleradas is Debit’s love-letter to the sounds of Rebajada - half speed cumbia pioneered by Sonido Dueñez in the early 1990’s and recently featured on a pair of first-time tape reissues. As the legend goes, Dueñez had been playing cumbia at a club in Monterrey when his turntable's motor overheated and slowed down to half-speed, turning the dance into slo-mo delirium which the crowd unexpectedly loved - cumbia rebajada was born.
Over the next few years, Dueñez dubbed a popular series of mixtapes, hawking them at the flea market on the dried-up Santa Catarina riverbed beneath El Puente del papa, the bridge that links downtown Monterrey with Independencia. These woozy archives became the stuff of legend, poetically but subconsciously shadowing DJ Screw's series of epochal cassettes that appeared over the border in Houston - and which have now inspired this latest concept-driven masterstroke from Delia Beatriz, who incidentally grew up in that same bustling city in the north of Mexico.
Beatriz uses Dueñez's first two tapes as the starting point for 'Desaceleradas', entering into a dialogue with time, culture and geography as she recalls the sonic ecosystem that surrounded her decades ago, long before she emigrated to the USA. If 2022's acclaimed 'The Long Count' was an attempt to recover concealed pre-Columbian history in the face of colonisation, 'Desaceleradas' jumps forward, figuring out how memory and shared celebration can resist a more contemporary form of cultural erasure.
In Beatriz's hands, cumbia rebejada is sculpted into a symphony of psychedelic breaths and dreamy gestures as the tapes are re-voiced with her ARP 2600 and re-played on her mother's accordion before being pulverised by her careful granular processes. "The goal was not to sample," she explains, "but to engage in conversation." And from track to track, the slowed down sonics, that follow the lead of scratchy sun-baked wax dragged across cheap hi-fi needles and stretched tape winding over busted heads, make salient connections to electronic music's tangled web of subgenres, from dub reggae in Jamaica to vaporwave and its TikTok-friendly "slowed + reverb" progeny.
On 'La ronda y el sonidero', cumbia's familiar syncopated 2/4 shuffle is ground down until its street corner sway becomes a cloud of ruptures and distortions. She pays respect to Monterrey's tape culture on 'bootlegs', introducing her impressionistic harmonies with crackle, and gives a nod to Monterrey's Cholombianos - groups of cumbia fans who dressed in brightly coloured baggy clothes, slathering their long sideburns with gel - on the wistful 'Cholombia, MTY'. By harnessing her memories and casting Sonido Dueñez's legacy in amber, Beatriz provides a space for listeners to hear history itself: to wander down 'El Puente del papa' and breathe in the atmosphere of Monterrey. It's an archive with a pulse.
An air of ancient ritualism cloaks Modern Love’s midnight meeting between UK producer MOBBS and French-Egyptian spellcaster Susu Laroche, carving out a channel between hexed trip hop and shoegaze that’s one part DJ Screw, one part MBV, operating within a long shadow of influence cast by Curve, Leila, Cocteau Twins, Nearly God.
Clasping chiral energies on their debut collab, MOBBS brings a history spanning shadowy production work for big name artists to the grimly stylised vein of performance art and musick explored by Susu Laroche, an Egyptian-French with strong binds to chthonic contemporary London.
Their maiden sacrifice heightens the senses to blends of monotonic, sandalwood scented incantations and carpet-burned downbeats swept in slurred dub. Songs are subtly variegated in tone to spell out shifting plays of light evoking bedsit antechambers and warehouse innards lit by iPhone candle or extractor hood and emergency light bulbs on their last lumens.
It's music that's as elaborately serrated and blemished as early MBV, but positioned in a vastly different cultural landscape, drawing from hip-hop, drone, psych and basement noise. The pair’s range of cultural obsessions maintains a precarious balance between shadowy histories and an asphyxiating present; all too often, when the past is projected it's thru a mollifying, nostalgic lens, so their critical, prudent hybrid sound is a vital, chilling corrective.
From the bell-ringing, chain-rattle jag of ‘Throne’ thru the sleepwalker drift of ‘Roam’, and concrete plangency of ‘Forest’, the marriage of MOBBS’ illusive textures with Laroche’s feel for analog image and film (as evinced in her art for the likes of Blackhaine and Mica Levi) imprints their sound in gauzy layers that leave fleeting impressions on the mind’s eye. At their heaviest, Laroche’s arcane declarations descend in impressive enactments, undressing the excesses of over-glossed trip hop to reveal and revel in the sound at its starkest, sexiest, for new waves of washed up souls.
Edition of 250. Deluxe edition + insert. For eighteen months, between 1984 and 1985, Patrick Lysaght played flute, strings, and percussion inside the Rainforest Birdhouse at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His audience and collaborators: 150 birds of 42 species.
The result is one of the earliest and most radical documents of interspecies improvisation. Predating the current wave of sound ecology by decades, For The Birds sits comfortably alongside the biophonic research of Bernie Krause, the ornithological field recordings of Jean C. Roché, the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, and the interspecies experiments of Jim Nollman. A missing link unearthed.
Lysaght didn't record the birds. He played with them. On Downstream, the talking drum establishes a backdrop while the birds take the lead. On Mourning Music, a threnody for his father, the birds seemed to be respectfully listening. On Light Sensitive, delicate percussion triggers avian response. Complex clouds of point notes build to rich density, following what the original notes call "the excitement of chance and the probability of experience."
Originally released in 1985 on Frank Records, Santa Fe. Now reissued with mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi
Edition of 300. Includes 8-page booklet. In 1969, while American minimalism was consolidating into its most recognizable forms, Charlemagne Palestine was conducting solitary experiments with oscillators and sine waves that only now reveal their visionary scope. This was the New York of lofts and abandoned industrial spaces, of artists pushing sound toward its physical limits -- a city where the boundaries between music, performance art, and bodily endurance were dissolving. Battling the Invisible unearths two electronic studies from that crucial year, paired with rare 1972 Bösendorfer sessions -- a document that illuminates the passage from pure electronics to the keyboard as an instrument of prolonged ecstasy. "Low Sounds 3" opens the record with fifteen minutes of low frequencies that seem to emerge from the very foundations of the sonic edifice. There is no development in the traditional sense, but a static presence that gradually colonizes the listening space. Think Eliane Radigue's meditative drone work filtered through a raw, almost brutalist sensibility. "Sine Tone Study" on Side B extends this practice for nearly nineteen minutes -- sine waves overlapping, creating beating patterns, zones of interference explored with the patience of an entomologist. The two 1972 Bösendorfer fragments function as bridges toward the Palestine the world knows better -- the strumming ecstasies, the hypnotic accumulation of overtones, the piano as a vehicle for transcendence. Here the physical approach to the keyboard is already evident -- what he would describe as a "battle." This release is part of Alga Marghen's The Golden Research series -- a concept devised by Palestine himself around the idea of "perfect sound." The series focuses exclusively on completely unreleased archival materials, bringing to light legendary recordings that have never been heard before. The LP includes a 8-page interview conducted by Sumner Crane and Rudolph Grey in January 1979 at Palestine's NYC loft, with Arto Lindsay present, later redacted by Alan Licht. The insert is an anastatic reproduction of the original 12-page typescript. Unfiltered, explosive -- Palestine on violence, on the body as battleground, on his Brooklyn childhood. Essential reading.
Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century. The recordings partly reflect repertoires borrowed from Chinese music between the 5th and 9th centuries. The incredible variety of timbres of the instruments greatly amplifies our exotic imagination: the eternal breath of the flutes (ryuteki and hichiriki) creates a sort of suspension of time, together with the hypnotic and hallucinatory atmosphere of the mouth organs (shō). The meditative tone of the string instruments (bika and koto) that punctuate the voids and silences is impressive, as is the enigmatic percussion section, with the tolling of the gong (shōko) and the calibrated beats of the drums (taiko and kakko).
In the late 1980s, Klaus Wiese (Popol Vuh) deepened his connection with Tibetan culture. The result is a series of works solely dedicated to the universal purity of the Singing Bowls. Uranus, perhaps the most rigorous of these, is an intense meditation on the trans-personal sphere of the VI chackra. The music becomes like a single harmonic chant, the reflection of a constant flow of divine light, which transforms the psyche and dilates the secret passages of the heart. In the galaxy of pure sound, the accumulated overtones offer the intrepid listener the access to a prismatic, fluoriscence-rich consciousness. The ego thus becomes the sonorous composer of itself, of the vital circle flooded with beneficial acoustic vibrations. In this sense, Uranus, originally published on tape (Aquamarin Verlag/1988), also marks a parallel with the same research by Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings or Nada Himalaya's Deuter. CD edition co-released with Aquamarin Verlag.
In the late 1980s, Klaus Wiese (Popol Vuh) deepened his connection with Tibetan culture. The result is a series of works solely dedicated to the universal purity of the Singing Bowls. Uranus, perhaps the most rigorous of these, is an intense meditation on the trans-personal sphere of the VI chackra. The music becomes like a single harmonic chant, the reflection of a constant flow of divine light, which transforms the psyche and dilates the secret passages of the heart. In the galaxy of pure sound, the accumulated overtones offer the intrepid listener the access to a prismatic, fluoriscence-rich consciousness. The ego thus becomes the sonorous composer of itself, of the vital circle flooded with beneficial acoustic vibrations. In this sense, Uranus, originally published on tape (Aquamarin Verlag/1988), also marks a parallel with the same research by Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings or Nada Himalaya's Deuter. CD edition co-released with Aquamarin Verlag.
fully remastered from the original tapes** A mysterious sound aurora on the magical paths of the infinite universe of percussion, originally released in 1985 and then almost completley lost. Moon On The Water were a trio of percussionists based in Italy - David Searcy and Jonathan Scully, both American tympani players in the Scala Philarmonic Orchestra, with the legendary Italian jazz drummer Tiziano Tononi, who worked with everyone from Roberto Musci, to Muhal Richard Abrams, Pierre Favre (who later joined the group), Andrew Cyrille, Barre Phillips, and Steve Lacy. Drawing on a diversity of experience, joined collectively by a unified love of rhythm and sound, they assembled a percussion record of the highest order - an unclassifiable work which should be legendary, and leaves you confounded that it’s not.
Within the history of efforts dedicated to percussion, Moon On The Water’s debut stands apart. A singular work, made remarkable by the diversity and range of its sonorities and structures. The scope of its ambition is startling. Utilizing the full intellect, experience, and talent of its creators, it employs field recording against a stunning array of instrumentation - seemingly everything from which rhythm and resonant tone could be drawn. The result renders a remarkable effect. From the delicate pulse of nature, deep resonances and carefully placed tone, intricate structures and tempos as slow as they go, across its movements the album rewrites how composition for percussion should be understood, before giving way to consuming and ecstatic rhythms which reference the Brazilian tradition of Batucada, various trance and ritual traditions of Africa, and drum solos from Free Jazz and Rock. This is as good as percussion records get. A lost marvel - accessible while distinctly avant-garde. The throbbing pulse of creative joy, distilled onto two sides of wax.
Ecstatic elements of Japan ambient minimalism dialogue with contemporary music solutions (Varèse, Ligeti), in the stream of a harmonious fusion of ancient and modern. It’s a propitiatory ceremony of supernatural things that open portals of blissfulness, tribal and shamanic darkness, timeless jungles. Between amazon fires and African safaris, we float in the Asian rivers of meditation, lost in water games, echoes of caves and rocks in the night, synergies of frogs, birds, snakes, marimbas, chimes, gongs, and tubular woods.
The album also includes one of the sickest percussion jam we’ve heard from 1980’s Italy: the mystically-named In the Land of the Boo - Bam. Exploring a wide range of percussions, from mallet instruments to drums, the band tightly builds a hypnotic jam with a strong Mediterranean feeling, maybe partly provided by the «Tullio de Piscopo-esque» drumming pattern. As the song goes by, the vibe gets more and more shamanic, often changing directions before climaxing in an epic final. True uplifting trance music!
- Track 1 presents the soundtrack of the 4.1-channel sound installation "Waterforest," unveiled in Kamimura’s solo exhibition at Hakari Contemporary, Kyoto, in the summer of 2025. Woven from sounds of water and ice, together with the natural environments that surround them, the work gathers voices of landscapes recorded across the world. Tracks 2–6 offer a series of unadorned field recordings selected and finely shaped from "Waterforest." - Exhibition Statement Hakari Contemporary is pleased to present "Waterforest," a solo exhibition by Yoichi Kamimura. Kamimura explores ways of perceiving landscapes through vision and hearing, combining environmental field recordings with visual elements such as drawings, text, and light. He creates sound installations, paintings, video works, and performances that have been presented in Japan as well as internationally. This exhibition focuses on soundscapes constructed mainly from field recordings Kamimura makes around the world during his residencies and travels. Key works include sound installations based on his experience of Shiretoko’s drift ice, Icelandic glaciers, the Amazon rainforest, Iguaçu (the world’s largest waterfall), springs in the Swiss Alps, the Lake Biwa Canal that flows beneath Kyoto, and ocean sounds recorded across the globe on nights that full and new moons occur. Alongside a low-frequency soundscape of flowing water that resonates throughout the space, a forest-like installation of images related to water—captured in the course of Kamimura’s journeys—is also presented. The exhibition is inspired by a sea of clouds Kamimura saw from a boat on the Amazon River. Known as the “Flying River,” this natural phenomenon occurs when large amounts of moisture evaporate from the rainforest, rise into the sky, form enormous clouds, and return as rain, symbolizing the Amazon’s ecological cycle. At the same time, this cycle of ‘water’ and ‘forest’ represents a natural process that effortlessly crosses the many boundaries created by human beings. In recent years, Kamimura has traveled through regions experiencing war and conflict, and has witnessed first-hand the escalation of violence and tensions arising from opposing opinions and emotions. Even when people appear to share an ‘anti-war’ stance, differences in individual backgrounds often lead to subtle divisions that are hard to reconcile. As a metaphor for overcoming such disconnection, Kamimura returns to the image of the majestic “Flying River” he saw in the Amazon. By linking the meanings of ‘water’ and ‘forest’ together in the title Waterforest, he seeks to express not opposition or division but connectivity and circulation, through the universal sensory awareness he has cultivated in different natural environments. Joining the exhibition as guest curator is Seiha Kurosawa, who previously co-organized the 2021 exhibition "Floating Between Tropical and Glacial Zones" with Kamimura—an exhibition that linked field research in the Brazilian Amazon and Shiretoko, Hokkaido, to explore new perspectives regarding the environment. Over several years, Kamimura and Kurosawa have continued a dialogue about emerging ecological thought which is also reflected in this exhibition. We hope you will take this opportunity to experience Kamimura’s latest work, which moves fluidly while aspiring towards a more universal and planetary perspective. - Drawing chiefly upon his field recordings, Yoichi Kamimura experiments with methods that draw upon sight, hearing, and other senses to perceive different scenes. His extensive body of work includes sound installations, paintings, video works, sound performances, and audio works - unveiled in venues both within Japan and abroad. With his field recording practice, Kamimura acts as an observer to the amorphous relationship between humankind and nature. Kamimura composes his sound installations by creating highly-immersive soundscapes, many of which draw upon our own biology to create unique sensory experiences. www.yoichikamimura.com
John McGuire's Double String Trios presents three major late works for two string trios, composed between 2012 and 2021. His musical roots lie in the electronic studios of postwar Cologne, shaped through studies with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Krzysztof Penderecki, and grounded in the traditions of European serialism. Working with synthesizers capable of generating up to 1,800 pulses per second, McGuire developed a beautifully harmonious, crystalline music, shaped by the ear into a world of flowing continuities between one point and the next. Transferred to stringed instruments, that world becomes infinitely more complex-suffused with the richness and impurities of human players and their acoustic technologies. Conceived as two facing string trios in antiphonal dialogue, the music links studio spatial thinking with older split-ensemble traditions, unfolding through Fibonacci proportions, rotating tempi, shifting meters, and continual harmonic transposition.
Winding through cavernous passages of sound, Rod Modell builds a patient, tactile world shaped by low-end pulsations, drifting electronics and finely observed environmental detail. Gurgling currents, rustling textures and crystalline drips move in and out of focus, giving way to heavier sound masses before opening onto unexpectedly calm, almost soothing spaces.
What appears abstract at first gradually reveals a strong emotional pull. Modell’s control of dynamics and pacing allows small shifts in tone and texture to carry real weight, with moments of darkness offset by sudden glimmers of light and stillness. Electronic spirals rise and dissolve, while quieter passages create a sense of suspension, as if time has briefly slowed.
The result is a deeply considered listening experience that rewards attention. Every nuance feels deliberate, each detail contributing to a broader sense of tension, release and atmosphere. Rather than overwhelming, the music draws the listener inward, balancing restraint and drama in a way that feels both immersive and quietly affecting.
Rod Modell returns with Frequencies In The Fog, a deeply immersive work built from minimal structures, patient motion and finely judged restraint. Pads, discreet electronic details and slow, enveloping bass lines form the core, while distant, treated voices and subtle textural creaks surface like echoes caught in mist.
The music unfolds in gentle cycles, where circular movement alternates with moments of liquid stasis and near-silence. Sounds appear and recede without warning, revealing fleeting impressions of place before dissolving again into a shifting haze. There is a sense of suspension throughout — as if the listener is drifting through intangible terrain, guided more by atmosphere than direction.
As with much of Modell’s work, the power lies in the details: the careful balance between density and space, the tension between motion and stillness, and the way each element feels inseparable from the whole. Frequencies In The Fog invites deep listening, rewarding patience with a quietly absorbing journey through blurred environments and half-remembered forms.
*200 copies limited edition* Renowned Italian ambient composer Gigi Masin returns with his latest immersive creation, Imploding in a Blinding Darkness, Pt. 2. This new release deepens the evocative soundscapes and emotional textures that define his groundbreaking work. Blending ethereal melodies with rich ambient layers, Masin invites listeners on an intimate journey into mystery and introspection. The album continues the exploration initiated in the first part, delivering a captivating fusion of warmth and shadow. Each track unfolds like a meditative reflection, gracefully balancing light and darkness through seamlessly crafted synths and organic sounds. Imploding in a Blinding Darkness, Pt. 2 confirms Gigi Masin’s place as a visionary artist in contemporary ambient music, offering a profound listening experience that resonates deeply with both longtime fans and newcomers.
*200 copies limited edition* Italian ambient pioneer Gigi Masin returns with his captivating new album, Implodendo In Una Accecante Oscurità, Pt. 1. The title, which translates to "Imploding in a Blinding Darkness", hints at the immersive sonic journey within—a delicate balance between light and shadow, stillness and movement. This record showcases Masin’s signature blend of ethereal melodies and textures, weaving intricate soundscapes that echo the vastness of inner emotional landscapes. With subtle synths, gentle piano, and mesmerizing atmospheres, it invites listeners to dive deep into a reflective and transformative experience. Recognized for his influence on the ambient and electronic music scenes worldwide, Masin continues to push boundaries, crafting soundtracks that resonate with both intimacy and expansiveness. Implodendo In Una Accecante Oscurità, Pt. 1 is a profound meditation on emotion and space, perfect for introspective moments and immersive listening.
Flora is an album that is listened to perpetually,
Passed on from one listener to another,
And the charm of the sound- and music-loving figure
known as Hiroshi Yoshimura,
Just might come drifting through.
Like the scent of a small flower.
—Junichi Konuma
Announcing the worldwide reissue of Flora, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s underrated work originally recorded and completed in 1987 and first released on CD in 2006, three years after his passing in 2003.
Flora is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s acclaimed 1986 works Green and Surround, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Listening to Flora is like taking a stroll in a park, absorbing the colors and textures of the natural environment—flowers, insects, the swaying of the leaves—as Yoshimura often did at his beloved Edo-era park near his home in Tokyo. As Junichi Konuma describes in his liner notes, Yoshimura’s music “only begins to emerge as it exists at the intersection of passive and active.” Yoshimura's approach to sound and melody invites the listener to hear the intricacies of the music with intent, while simultaneously allowing the aural textures to exist as part of the background of our everyday life.
This reissue marks the first time the album will be available on vinyl (2LP, 45 rpm) and cassette, and includes liner notes written by music scholar Junichi Konuma and remastered audio by Grammy-nominated engineer John Baldwin. Reissue design and layout was handled by Tiffanie Tran.
Meitei’s 2020 album 'Kofū' was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s 'Kwaidan' and 2019’s 'Komachi'.
All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being washed away – not least by the unforgiving sands of time – through wistful compositions that stretched across ambient music, hauntology, and musique concrete.
When it came to finalizing 'Kofū', Meitei found he was left with over 60 fully realized tracks, bursting with ideas that fired in divergent, curious directions. Meitei was content with the 13 tracks he had selected. But when it came time to begin his next album, he found that it had been sitting in front of him all along. He realized his work wasn’t over yet.
Meitei sounds right at home celebrating the past he first reimagined in his previous work. The merriment is palpable in its first two tracks of 'Kofū II' – a loop of cheery whistling amidst the clanking of wood leads into strings, cricket sounds and flutes, all united in bustling harmony.
'Happyaku-yachō' is where it comes into focus. Pitch-shifted vocal samples roam around in the crowded sonic field. “My image of this music is that it expresses the vibrant mood of Edo's merchant culture,” says Meitei, “where old Japanese dwellings were densely packed together in a vast expanse of land.” The affair becomes bittersweet as the track leads into the desolate 'Kaworu', a compositional piece lifted from his 'Komachi' sessions – a final requiem to his late grandmother.
The album is bursting with spectral vignettes of wandering samurais, red lanterns, ninjas, puppet theatres, poets, even a vengeful assassin ('Shurayuki hime', known to Western audiences as ‘Lady Snowblood’).
'Saryō' is as elegant and refined as you would expect. It induces stillness in its repetition, with each synth note a brushstroke. It was inspired by a Sengoku-era tea house he once visited, designed by national icon Sen no Rikyū. Meitei tied it to the reaction he felt while poring over the ink paintings in his grandmother’s house. “The decayed earthen walls and faded tatami mats gave me an emotional impression,” he says. “And the cosmic flow of time drifting in the small room. I decided to put my impression of this into music.”
In 'Akira Kurosawa', an appropriately thunderous track, Meitei finds deep resonance in his vast filmography, which drew equally from Japan’s rich heritage and troubled circumstances post-WWII.
'Kofū II' is not a leftovers album, nor is it a straightforward companion piece. In this album, Meitei has his biggest reckoning with the Japanese identity yet. Over the years, he has attempted to peel back what he believes has defined Japan and its people. After seeking answers with three full-length albums, his fourth poses more questions.
If his first three albums inspired a sense of longing – or, perhaps inevitably, fed an irreparable nostalgia doomed to history – 'Kofū II' compels us to reassess our relationship with the past. By constantly looking back, are we ever afforded a clearer present? After capturing the “lost Japanese mood”, where does that leave its country in the modern world? Meitei offers no immediate answers with 'Kofū II'. It forces you to sit with its disparate moods, to meditate amidst the textured fragments.
'Kofū II' will be released on 180g LP, CD and digital format on December 10, 2021 (LP expected to land January 28, 2022) via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include a 16-page insert with words in Japanese and English from Meitei, printed on premium paper stock with design by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang, and is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan.