Ambient / Minimal / Drone

Kunsthaus Bregenz presents Wish You Were Gay, a major exhibition by Anne Imhof that gathers new sculpture, painting, sound and six video works never before shown. The show reflects on the artist’s formative years while extending themes that have defined her practice from the beginning.

Imhof revisits early recordings from 2001–03, a period when her life and work overlapped to the point of being inseparable. Using handheld camcorders – then a new technology that allowed the screen to flip – she performed directly to the lens, testing gestures, movements, and songs with guitars, amps, and her close circle of friends and collaborators. These raw documents, urgent and improvised, form the foundation of her later explorations of presence, absence, chance, and fate.

Across the exhibition, Imhof transforms this material into a language of repetition, doubling, and variation, situating the body as a central medium. Figures slow into moments of suspended tension, or erupt with sudden force, echoing her distinctive performance works. Biographical in tone and steeped in the realities of queer community and chosen family, Wish You Were Gay is both intimate and expansive, drawing threads from past to present in a charged meditation on life, art, and endurance.

Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux. Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone. This work is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). The piece evolves with the oscillator changing pitch and dictating an ornate pattern over the course of the performance. Side two is an example of one of the sets of frequencies sustained in the Dream House, the composite sound environments conceived by Young and Zazeela. The composer suggests listening while seated – to experience how the sound interacts with the room and other perceptions of its arrangement – as well as while walking. As Young states, "The frequency ratios are monitored continuously as lissajous patterns on the oscilloscopes and, in spite of the great stability of the oscillators, the phase relationships of the sine waves gradually drift which causes their amplitudes to add and subtract algebraically. Not only does the sound become a bit louder and softer, but at very loud levels, one actually begins to have a sensation that parts of the body are somehow locked in sync with the sine waves and slowly drifting with them in space and time."

The next installment of MFM's popular multi-artist compilation Virtual Dreams: 'Virtual Dreams - Ambient Explorations In The House And Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999'. As with Part One, released in 2020, 'Virtual Dreams II' shines a light on house and techno-adjacent music that helped redefine the definition of ambient music during the 1990s.

The focus of Part One heavily fell on music from techno and house producers in Europe, eagerly exploring new soundtracks for chill-out rooms and re-imagining the potential future of club culture from new perspectives. For Part Two, we narrow the lens to focus on a unique time and place, namely Japan between 1993-1999. Despite missing out on the 'Acid House Fever', club culture was beginning to take shape in Japan during the early '90s. In contrast to the rest of the world, where ambient techno / IDM emerged as a by-product or response to the scene, 'listening techno', as it is known in Japan, was a central pillar of the culture right from the start.

'Virtual Dreams II' aims to shine a light on this unique moment in time where the thread of ambient music weaved its way through the music of an emerging club culture. This period saw the birth of many great Japanese techno labels such as Sublime Records, Transonic Records, Syzygy Records, Frogman Records, and Form@ Records, following in the late '90s. 'Virtual Dreams II' features ambient, chill-out, and intelligent techno from these leading labels alongside other lesser-known but equally influential imprints, as well as ambient deviations from Japanese house producers. Much of the music featured has only ever been released on CD.

'Virtual Dreams II' is compiled by Eiji Taniguchi and Jamie Tiller, who have worked closely together on previous Music From Memory releases such as 'Heisei No Oto' and 'Dream Dolphin - Gaia'. It is also the final project Jamie Tiller worked on before his tragic passing in 2023. Jamie had been researching, planning, and compiling this version of Virtual Dreams even before the first chapter was released, believing that there were many great tracks in Japan that fit the concept of the series. Knowing how much love and energy he put into compiling it gives it an extra special place in our hearts.

Compiled by Jamie Tiller and Eiji Taniguchi with artwork by Kenta Senekt, design by Steele Bonus and liner notes by Itaru W. Mita,

Music From Memory is delighted to announce a new album from Son Of Chi entitled ’We Carry Eden’, an immersive long-form composition in two parts that seamlessly blends a collage of spoken word, field recordings and drones with elements of dub, jazz, fourth world and ambient music.

Son Of Chi is the latest project of Rotterdam-based multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Hanyo van Oosterom. Van Oosterom’s prolific career spans multiple decades and genres; among countless projects he has been involved in, he is known for founding the Dutch ambient collective CHI in the early eighties, and in recent years for his prolific collaboration with CHI co-founder Jacobus Derwort as Chi Factory. Following Derwort’s passing in 2019, van Oosterom decided to close the CHI circle with the birth of Son Of Chi.

Sonically, the world of ‘We Carry Eden’ is fully immersive; it ripples with depth and shimmers in detail. Motifs, ideas and fragments, arise and disappear like passing thoughts, drawing the listener deeper and deeper inwards. For those familiar with Oosterom’s work as Chi Factory, the depth and meditative nature of the work will come as no surprise; however it is Oosterom’s skill with grooves that shines equally bright here; his infectiously dubby basslines and percussion rise up from the ether, grounding the listener to the earth. ‘We Carry Eden’ at times invokes the fourth world landscapes of Jon Hassell, (with whom Oosterom has collaborated) but as a whole, it remains the unique work of an artist fully in tune with their vision.

Thematically, storytelling traditions lie at the heart of ‘We Carry Eden’, with van Oosterom’s long-time collaborator Omar Ka playing a central role. Ka, who hails from the West African nomadic Fulani tradition of storytelling, responds to the collage of field recordings and sounds collected by Oosterom. His voice is woven throughout ‘We Carry Eden’, creating a narrative that binds the multiple sound sources of the album together.

As with much of van Oosterom’s musical output, inspiration is drawn from the Greek Island of Patmos and the wisdom and prophecies of the Native American Hopi Tribe. Since his work with CHI in the early eighties, van Oosterom has often incorporated quotes from Hopi Elders into his music. Gods, spirits, animals and humans, all existing in one unchangeable relationship tied to nature; ‘We Carry Eden’ is rooted in this philosophy, serving as a peaceful message of beauty, harmony and respect for the wisdom of the Elders and ancient traditions.

‘We Carry Eden’ will be released on LP and digitally on May 16th 2025. Sleeve art and design by Michael Willis.

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

Four pieces by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, a pioneer of “holy minimalism.” The album centers around a never-before-released rendition of “Silentium,” the second movement of Pärt’s most famous concerto, Tabula Rasa, performed by Boston-based chamber orchestra A Far Cry. The group plays “Silentium” at nearly half the speed of the best-known version, released on ECM in 1984. The piece, known for its healing properties for the dying and often used in palliative care facilities (one patient famously called it “angel music”), is breathtaking at half speed, seemingly stilling time itself.

The album compiles some of the most stunning renditions of Pärt’s music ever recorded. “Vater Unser (Arr. for trombone & string ensemble)” is somehow warm and austere at once. A miniature epic. Pianist Marcel Worm’s solo version of “Variationen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka” is as beautiful as anything we’ve ever heard. “Fratres for Strings and Percussion” is one of Arvo Pärt’s most celebrated works. The Hungarian State Opera Orchestra’s version is iconic, filled with emotional playing right on the verge of overly romantic, but never tipping over.

Pärt’s approach to both music and life is as sparse as the compositions he creates. He once said, “I have nothing to say… Music says what I need to say. And it is dangerous to say anything, because if I’ve said it already in words there might be nothing left for my music.” Silentium continues Mississippi Records’ fascination with this great contemporary composer. 

Mike Majkowski makes his debut on Hands in the Dark Records with Invisible, a selection of six moody and mysterious pieces produced between 2019 and 2025.

The prolific Australian double bassist and music maker has been involved in a diverse array of contemporary and experimental music since the early 2000s. This time, the Berlin-based artist is venturing deeper into downtempo, meditative and hypnotic minimal electronic realms.

While time and space are constraints, they also define our identities, creating inexplicable bonds with others flowing through shared moments and shared places. The state of being invisible obliterates these confines, allowing one to return to their pure essence. In this setting, Majkowski’s compositions display a discreet and profoundly emotional language characterised by vulnerability, darkness and confusion, while also embodying hope, soothing and resilience. A dim light, transcending love, space, memory and time.

Following the announcement of his comeback album Syro, Aphex Twin achieved a full-fledged return with two EPs and a revival project under the AFX moniker. This 2018 release features the lead track “T69 Collapse,” which explodes with near-frenetic hyper-speed beats and searing melodies, shocking the world alongside hallucinatory visuals by artist Weirdcore. Throughout the entire album, the complexity of the soundscapes and the precision of the rhythms reach unprecedented levels, where chaos and sensuality, violence and beauty coexist in a delicate balance. This definitive work proves Aphex Twin is a “genius in the making” and further carves out the future of IDM!

funcionário delights in the freedom of creating freeform music for the first time in his career. On “horizonte”, he loosens the reins, his sound follows a wavy, organic structure rather than a rigid, formal one. If it feels freer and more colourful, that’s because it truly is.

Eight years ago, when we first encountered his work, he was composing soundtracks for imaginary video games and crafting sonic landscapes that felt like destinations for sci-fi anime characters. With “Cavalcante” (2022), he broke away from that past. It marked a turning point, he was ready to explore a “fourth world” in both sound and concept. The feedback was overwhelming.

Three years later, “horizonte” marks another evolution. He sends us music regularly, but this album stood out immediately. It felt right: more synth-driven, more open to improvisation. As he put it: “It’s like using oil pastels for the first time and discovering new possibilities. In a way, I’ve found new ways of creating using the same colours.”

Listening to "horizonte" is like waking up from a dream. Again and again. The opening track, “nascer”, suggests a new dawn, but it’s in “pássaros” that the vision fully takes flight: less processed, more raw, yet still detailed and expansive.

Finding new ways with the same colours has been his quiet mission all along. What’s new here aren't the tools, but the feeling. The movement. The invitation to travel with him. You can hear - and feel - his sense of wonder. Every sound radiates joy. Every moment sparks a new thought. The music moves quickly, but breathes slowly.

Tracks like “renascer” and “o caminho do regresso” echo the spirit of late-70s/early-80s Vangelis, in deep reverence. And just as you approach the end, “fantasma” arrives - a stunning closer, reminiscent of Eno’s “An Ending”. By then, it’s clear: the “fourth world” is behind him. funcionário has moved on. To where? We’re about to discover.

"Technically speaking, the word “funcionário” translates to “office worker” or “civil servant,” but in everyday language, it’s not exactly a term of endearment. More often than not, funcionários are viewed as overly rigid clock-watchers, and certainly wouldn’t be celebrated as a reliable source of imagination. Given that, the word makes for an unusual artist moniker, but that didn’t stop Pedro Tavares from adopting it anyways. His new album horizonte is a decidedly low-key affair, yet there’s nothing cold or bureaucratic about it. Primarily dealing in homespun ambient and wavering soundscapes that sound like they’ve been set adrift hundreds of kilometers from the nearest shoreline, the LP peaks with the glimmering tones of “o caminho da estrela,” a song that calmly glides into Fourth World territory and invites everyone in earshot to take a soak in its gentle waters." Shawn Reynaldo at First Floor

With Michaela Melián's LP music for a while, a-Musik is releasing the first album by the visual artist, co-founder of F.S.K., and solo musician since Monaco, which appeared on Monika Enterprise in 2013. While her last releases, Electric Ladyland (2016), Music from a Frontier Town (2018), and Tania (2022) were created as part of exhibitions and sound installations, music for a while is Melián's fourth autonomous LP, characterized on the one hand by her unmistakable dreamlike sound along the interfaces between dark chamber music, solemn ambient techno, and cinematic sound art.

As with her previous albums, there is also a wonderful avant-pop cover version—this time of the track “My Other Voice” (1979) by the Sparks. On the other hand, music for while, whose cover is adorned with Melián's photographs of the clouds above her new home of Marseille, spreads a comparatively ominous mood – one that is nevertheless appropriate given the circumstances in 2025 – thanks in part to the sedate, almost ticking drum sounds of co-producer Felix Raethel. Once again, the multi-instrumentalist, supported by Ruth May on violin and Elen Harutyunyan on viola, weaves her recordings of various string instruments — cello, guitar, bass, and zither — into fascinating, lurching, looping, and almost hypnotic soundscapes, but atonal synthesizer sounds in tracks such as “traverse benjamin” and “märchenwald” open up the music to electroacoustic and experimental music. The concluding cover version of Irving Berlin's “they say it's wonderful” (1946) rounds off one of this year's most impressive releases in an incomparably groovy and melancholic way.

Puerto Rico–born and Kansas City–based experimental artist Mister Water Wet returns with his latest release on Soda Gong, delivering a water-borne ambient dub/collage work of remarkable depth. Weaving traces of the past with the breath of the present, the album unfolds as a profoundly intimate and resonant soundscape—an extraordinary document of post-Dubient experimentalism. Featuring an ensemble of illustrious guests including more eaze, Memotone, Ben Bondy, Tom Skinner, and K. Freund, the record layers self-made samples and electronics with strings, piano, and woodwinds, while faint noise and scraped textures drift like submerged echoes. Each piece progresses by subtly shifting temporal strata, letting listeners hear what is gone and what still lingers, capturing fleeting moments with delicacy and inscribing a fragile beauty that moves between memory and reality. A meditative experimental masterpiece suffused with quiet sorrow and lingering afterglow. Limited to 300 copies.

After previous sonic impressions of Unguja and Borneo, Gonçalo F. Cardoso continues his meditative travelogue on island life with Impressões de Várias Ilhas, released via Discrepant. This third chapter draws from time spent across three archipelagos in Macaronesia—Azores, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands—melding field recordings with synthesis to explore the hazy border between real experience and remembered sensation.

Cardoso’s diaristic approach captures the resonance of water caves, black beaches, lagoons, and small-town life, processed into impressionistic vignettes that feel both intimate and unreal. These aren’t grand postcard statements but subtle, atmospheric sketches—never lapsing into sonic tourism but instead conjuring fleeting, liminal states.

From the gentle waves and echoing tones of ‘Bufadeiros de São Vicente’—not far removed from Beaches & Canyons-era Black Dice—to the eerie ambience of ‘Noite em Rabo de Peixe’ and the musique concrète-leaning unease of ‘Rãs em Xoxo’, Cardoso moves between warmth, strangeness and nostalgia. The closing ‘Salinas de Pedra Lume’ becomes a quiet epic, full of cracked recordings and spectral tones—less a travel document than a haunted reflection on place, memory and disappearance.

"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is one of those rare albums where a composer provides clear evidence that he or she is in that special class of artistic genius where true originality is possible. I'm not suggesting that this is Aphex Twin's best album, as best work was yet to come; nor am I suggesting that this is one of the greatest electronic albums of all time. Perhaps it is, but the key is its influence. "SAW" is practically synonymous with that early Warp Records sound (although SAW wasn't actually released on Warp). The album is one of the sacred texts of the Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) movement and on this disc, you can hear the ideas that helped make electronic music what it is today. "SAW" dates back to a time when Aphex Twin was using a lot of analogue gear and the tracks have a nice warmth to them. Many of the sounds on this album will already be familiar to most listeners since they entered the canon of electronic sounds long ago. The cool thing is, this album is where so much began.

Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinct sensibilities for something hypnotic and tangibly inviting. What started as a love letter to their shared admiration for ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian music evolved into a dynamic and sprawling body of work. These sunny and expansive tunes are as immersive as they are endlessly replayable.

Both Miller and Gold attended Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music together and in the years after graduating, they orbited each other around Chicago’s music communities. “We were showing up for each other as friends and taking an interest in each other's projects, noticing a lot of resonances and similarities working within in our music,” says Gold, who’s collaborated with artists like Makaya McCraven and Jamila Woods and stretched the bounds of jazz and Americana on solo albums Imagined Sky and Midnight Choir. “We had talked so much about eventually working together that it was almost like an ongoing bit at a certain point,” says Miller. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they first had their chance on “Inside Minds,” the breezy lead single on 2023’s Resavoir. While those sessions were remote, two had palpable chemistry.

It wasn’t until Miller left the touring band of the Chicago group Whitney in 2023 that their plans to make music together in person came to fruition. “When I first started Resavoir, I was chasing the desire to produce records and now that I had time to focus exclusively on that, Matt was the first person I called to come to the studio,” says Miller. The two had bonded over an admiration for the Brazilian guitarist Luis Bonfa and songwriter Milton Nascimento, especially the latter’s work with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, so they decided to use nylon string guitar as a starting point for these early sessions. “Canopy,” which opens Horizon, was the earliest track. Kicking off with bright acoustic chords, the song slowly unfurls into a slinking groove, samples, and fluttering leads from soprano saxophonist Tim Bennett.

As these initial experiments proved successful, Gold and Miller felt they could broaden the scope of their vision. “We were initially conceiving of it as this acoustic guitar driven record but eventually we wanted to frame it orchestrally and see how many shades and colors we can bring in around that sound,” says Gold. “Dewy” thrives within this orchestral palette of woozy synths, strings from Macie Stewart, Claire Chenette’s oboe, flautist Wills McKenna, and French horns from Lloyd Billingham. “We discovered that our multi-instrumentalist mentalities—using piano and bass, samplers, drum grooves, guitar ideas all as starting points— nurtured the broad orchestration across this record,” says Miller.

“The LP took about a year with on-and-off sessions,” says Miller. “The songs benefit from letting them ferment for a couple months, coming back to it, and seeing what sort of new flavors have developed.” Co-produced by Miller and Gold (and mixed by Dave Vettraino), Horizon proudly reflects the artists’ vast artistic community and musical network in Chicago and beyond. Along with Gold, Eddie Burns (Clairo), Peter Mannheim (Tony Glausi), and Carter Lang (SZA, Lil Nas X) provide drums and percussion throughout. On the dreamlike single “Diversey Beach,” New York songwriter Mei Semones lends vocals and along with her band members Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, collaborated on a mesmerizingly conversational string arrangement. “We wrote "Diversey Beach" on the coldest day of the year watching a blizzard coming down out of the window, where the sounds of the cars driving by sounded like waves crashing on a beach,” says Miller. “I sent it to Mei Semones, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. She's absolutely incredible and it’s amazing what she did with it.”

Horizon is a testament to the feeling of endless possibilities that come from collaboration. It’s a remarkable synthesis of two artists who share musical community and an artist lineage but have carved their own paths in unique ways. Nowhere is this more evident than “Hazel Canyon,” which boasts Gold’s silky pedal steel and a subtly enveloping arrangement that evokes Erasmo Carlos. “Musically, we're always trying to capture a fleeting moment of infinite expanse, feeling the vastness of things while knowing they'll always change,” says Gold. “This record keeps the light reflecting on the water just a little longer -- our collaborative process running through the backbone of these songs and rippling out in so many beautiful directions..”

This album is a solo album by SINKICHI, the label owner of MATSUNOMI TO SENSO REC. It is a collection of field recordings made during the lockdown of the COVID19, live to 2 track recordings of improvised performances with hardware equipment, and modular synthesizer performances on the holy mountains and spiritual rivers. Please enjoy. SINKICHI A pioneer ambient DJ in Japan who has been playing at many rave parties since the early 90's. He has participated in many bands such as SOFT, AOA, Based on kyoto, and Churashima Navigator.He has also worked as a mastering engineer on vinyl mastering for 17853 Records and Crosspoint label.

Wax’o Paradiso Recordings continues their exploration of antipodean downtempo sounds with WPR005 - The Perfect Harmony EP. Enlisting Guy contact and Solar Suite, who individually are known for more powerful club fodder across the progressive and trance adjacent sides of the genre spectrum, here we see them trading a few BPMs for a spacious, textural sound across four tracks recorded in 2023 in a shared studio in Naarm/Melbourne.

For the fifth release on Grand River’s experimental label, One Instrument; synthesizer maestro Donato Dozzy gifts us with an incredible, psychedelic 38-minute journey.

“Slow Train” has been created using the EMS Synthi AKS, an extraordinary and rare portable modular analog synthesizer, first manufactured in 1972.

'One Instrument Sessions - Donato Dozzy' highlights the artist's most experimental side on what will be his 7th studio album. These tracks are the honest outcome from a long and intimate engagement with the instrument which were produced in his San Felice Circeo studio during an “altered state” night in October 2013.

The resulting music is one of fluid continuity; Dozzy’s most extensive, vigorous and determined application of real-time studio recording to date.

The intensity of both parts of “Slow Train” are comparable to a mindfulness experience in which the listener’s perception of reality slows down enabling every small detail of the sound to become alive and increasingly vivid.

Kramer’s first solo album in five years shifts away from vocals entirely, moving deeper into the minimalist instrumental language that first shaped his work in New York’s experimental downtown scene in the late 1970s. Where his earlier AIR box set pieces combined tape loops, organs, pianos, mellotrons, found sound and soft percussion with his idiosyncratic voice, this new LP pushes decisively toward drone-centred instrumental composition. The record circles back to ideas that have been percolating for decades, drawing on the same spacious internal logic that links composers like Terry Riley, La Monte Young and Gavin Bryars, yet remains unmistakably his own. This is Kramer creating in a space where time is an open field, and each piece unfolds with patient, quietly luminous focus.

Announcing Perseverance Flow, the latest album from acclaimed Chicago-based ensemble Natural Information Society (NIS), release date 2024-10-24. After a trilogy of double LPs by expanded manifestations of the band that began in 2018 with Mandatory Reality & continued through Since Time Is Gravity (a Pitchfork Best Jazz & Experimental Album of the Year selection & Mojo’s #1 Underground Album of 2023), NIS returns to its core formation of Lisa Alvarado on harmonium, Mikel Patrick Avery on drums, Jason Stein on bass clarinet, & composer/multi-instrumentalist Joshua Abrams on guimbri for one continuous 37 minute composition across a single LP. As the rocket boosters on spaceship earth sputter closer to burnout, lower your stylus into a soundfield that grows stronger the deeper you travel into it; a dose of the medicine many of us look to music to deliver awaits you inside.

One of the deep contemplations of this natural information (thanks Bill Callahan) is the wide range of source materials Abrams draws from over the band’s more than 15 year history: Ideas from minimalism, modal jazz & traditional musics are regularly reimagined in these compositions. The 2021 double LP descension (Out of Our Constrictions), with guest soloist Evan Parker, reflected aspects of Abrams’ love of party music, Chicago house, & John Coltrane. *But even veteran travelers with the NIS best brace themselves for the Perseverance Flow.

Speaking to the history & the inspirations behind the album, Abrams offers: “We played the piece for a year in concert before the recording. At Electrical (Audio Studios, Chicago) we went in at 11 & were done in time to pick our kids up from school.” Abrams continues: "In a reference world, I imagine Perseverance Flow like a live extended realization of a Jaylib lost instrumental as remixed by Kevin Shields. Or vice versa. I also think it has sympathies to some of the more rhythmically intricate dance musics out of Chicago & Lisbon.”

The core NIS ensemble heard on Perseverance Flow always address Abrams’ writing with the discipline of orchestra musicians & the creativity of improvisers. But this time around, instead of inviting living legend status musicians Evan or William Parker or Ari Brown as honored guests to solo freely over the composed materials, Abrams’ invited guest collaborator was the medium of the recording studio itself. Situated at the board with engineer Greg Norman, Abrams pushed post production techniques found only sporadically on earlier NIS records deep into the heart of the music, distorting & reshaping instruments to subtly &, at times, aggressively mutate timbre & texture, color & time.

Refracting the band’s signature mesmerizing chains of overlapping rhythmic patterns through the sonic funhouse of dub makes Perseverance Flow the most formally experimental NIS album to date. Now a soundworld fully unique to itself is listening to itself, consoling & humoring itself, & consoling & humoring you. A destruction myth & a creation myth of a soundworld together at once —”energetically nutritious” (October 2025 Issue 500 The Wire) supernatural information society.

“Perseverance Flow is skipping rope in slo-mo. A dance of co-operation to rally guts & humors & keep marching through pouring tears” (Abrams).

Release date 2025-10-24. 1st eremite edition pressed on premium audiophile-quality 140 gram vinyl at Fidelity Record Pressing from Kevin Gray/Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Helge Sten (Deathprod). 1st 300 direct order copies include eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Siwa Studios, Northern New Mexico. CD & EU vinyl edition available from our partner Aguirre Records.

"An outstanding Chicago bassist, Joshua Abrams regularly contributes to a host of bands, drawing on roots from hip-hop to free jazz. He also leads a singular project, Natural Information Society (NIS), a band that stretches across time, origins, technologies and sources, and one which has mutated significantly in its 15-year history, documented on a series of Eremite LP releases. Abrams also plays guembri, the bass lute of the Gnawa people of North Africa, introduced to free jazz circles by Moroccan master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, who in the ’90s stepped outside traditional circles to play with saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Peter Brötzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake, the latter an occasional member of NIS. Recent NIS recordings include two double-LP sets, Since Time Is Gravity, by an 11-member Community Edition and descension (Out of Our Constrictions) by the current core quartet of Abrams, Lisa Alvarado (harmonium), Mikel Patrick Avery (drums) and Jason Stein (bass clarinet), with Evan Parker (soprano) joining them on a single 75-minute piece.

With Perseverance Flow, Abrams, as composer and producer, takes NIS in another direction, composing a piece for the quartet’s distinctive members and instruments, then editing and processing the results into a serene, pulsing, repeating work with regular shifts and time markers, transforming instrumental identities into novel sounds and short modular phrases. There’s a melody that’s regularly an extended and shifting ostinato, there’s another that’s a high-pitched soprano, more minimal still and not readily traceable to an originating sound, though the bass clarinet may be the likeliest contender. These alterations are such that only percussion and guembri are frequently identifiable. Stein’s bass clarinet only becomes strongly evident as itself nine minutes in. A certain repeating jump-start suggests a grand piano’s bass figure or the clicking of an MRI machine, yet this technological dream with its resonating soprano melody remains so fiercely human and fundamentally American that the album forms loose affiliations with music as far flung as Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk” and Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Furies. The submerged instrumental identities contribute to the dream-like state, as if original sonic personalities have gone to sleep, and the results suggest a sustained techno-lullaby, a kind of mechanized bliss, a harbinger, perhaps, of the music currently most needed". --Stuart Broomer, New York City Jazz Record

"Joshua Abrams leads the Natural Information Society quartet into battle, or at least toward it, on the joyfully meandering instrumental album Perseverance Flow. Proceeding in a march of trancelike, intoxicating repetition, Abrams and his bandmates embark on a 35-minute pilgrimage to the place where jazz, contemporary classical, and multinational folk convene, achieving singularity in a state of ritual rhythm." --Pitchfork

"Spacemen 3 used to promote their music as being for the 'fucked up children of the world,' in addition to the more famous part about taking drugs to make music, etc. Natural Information Society could be described in a similar fashion, except they make music for the fucked up adults of the world, the kind who still take drugs and are baffled by their peers bending over backwards to make 'the kids' think they’re cool by slobbering over music clearly made for children. If you count yourselves among the former, the Chicago band’s latest is made for you: sophisticated psychedelia pulsing with rhythmic intensity and rich with droney waves of harmonium. Made up of a single slow-burning, 37-minute long jam, the movement here is subtle yet in its own way aggressive and sharply focused, carefully drawing the listener into the widening gyre at the center of the band’s humane, organic trance." --Mariana Timony, Bandcamp Daily Essential Releases

"The piece, called “Perseverance Flow,” began slowly, with Abrams playing rhythmically on a gimbri—a Sub-Saharan, three-stringed, skin-covered box—in his lap. Alvarado, on hand-pumped harmonium, let the reeds make chords that filled the room. Mikel Patrick Avery, on a drum kit, launched a bass drum’s beat through mists of percussion, and on bass clarinet, Jason Stein made sounds like swells and piercing winds. It was rhythms intersecting rhythms, and the room felt like an ocean, the seas shifting, tide coming in. But then, after an hour that felt like minutes, Alvarado’s chords led us home safe, the sounds calming, the room still vibrating, the chords resolved, the world a different place." --Robert Sullivan, Vogue

Anyone who’s studied meditation or watched a Formula 1 race knows you can travel great distances without going anywhere at all—and enjoy the process of not getting there. There’s pleasure in following a circuit so frequently and so closely that everyday bits of the landscape become landmarks (we always pass that bullet-holed stop sign on this route) and a pang when those landmarks change (they replaced the stop sign!). Natural Information Society’s music operates on similar principles, drawing together the thrum of Moroccan gnawa, the austere profundity of Philip Glass, and the circular structures of John Coltrane at his most spiritual into a sound that doesn’t progress so much as it rotates. Its pleasures come from the steady accumulation of repetitions and all the little tweaks and evolutions and devolutions that composer Joshua Abrams and his band have built into their music.

Perseverance Flow is Natural Information Society’s first non-collaborative record since 2023’s jazz-fractaled Since Time Is Gravity. That album presented a more relaxed version of the group, unfurling its music as though rolling out a dusty Turkish carpet. Perseverance Flow’s tight focus—one theme looped ceaselessly, with modest embellishment, for 35 minutes—feels like a microscopic view of that same rug. The phrase is initially tight and loping: a two-note harmonium riff, a lightly heraldic bass clarinet, Abrams’ clip-clopping guembri, a little one-two drumbeat, all of it held together as tightly as pencils bundled by a rubber band. The group performed the piece live for a year before recording, which gives the album a warm and lived-in feel despite its formal constriction; imagine the Sun Ra Arkestra in big-band mode, playing a single bar over and over until achieving liftoff. Taking equal inspiration from Jamaican dub and Chicago dance music, Abrams edited the one-take performance in post-production, dropping in tonal tweaks and rhythmic inversions with a jeweler’s eye for detail.

In the same way that a diamond’s symmetrical shine is both easy to admire and requires an eyepiece to appreciate in full, Perseverance Flow’s charm is shaped by the tiny variations built into the score. Once the theme is established and allowed to settle, harmonium player Lisa Alvarado flips her pattern, playing a palindrome of the simple rise-and-fall melody. The shift is so smooth it can take a moment to notice it’s happened, and even then you might second-guess the extent of the change. Drummer Mikel Patrick Avery loosens his percussion a few minutes later, playing something that sounds like pebbles sloshing in a plastic bucket. The soft shuffle is soon absorbed—whether actually or just by a kind of aural illusion—into the original pattern. Abrams anchors the sound with his Moroccan guembri, occasionally halting the steady limp of the primary line to tie a fluid knot without losing a step.

While it’s not unusual for repetition to turn a musical phrase inside out, similar to the way a word loses its meaning once you’ve said it a few times, Perseverance Flow’s emotional register stays constant. The phrases gradually begin to lengthen—at one point, Alvarado’s harmonium sounds more like an accordion playing a Cajun song in slow-mo—which gives the piece enough momentum to stay grounded. At no point does it even glance in the direction of chaos; you could probably thread a needle with the sound wave. Around the 19-minute mark, the entire ensemble pulls up together in a way that suggests a vamp, then immediately falls back into the pattern without anyone losing their place. It’s such a weird little thrill that, if you’re properly locked in, it feels like peaking in sync with a 2 a.m. bass drop.

While the instrumentation wouldn’t be out of place at your local roots festival, the dance music influence on Perseverance Flow is undeniable. Abrams’ frequent switches and intertwined notes mimic the braided bass hits and glitchy rhythms of footwork without ever leaving the aesthetic context of gnawa. Little clap-back rhythms pop up occasionally. At one point, something that sounds like a bag of shells being dropped on a snare drum introduces a new back-and-forth to the theme that matches the harmonium and brings the piece’s shuffle closer to something like hip-hop. It’s a canny way of making sure the listener’s body stays tuned in to what could easily become cerebral; you will not nod your head more insistently to a piece of experimental music this year.

Two-thirds of the way through, Avery pounds what sounds like a heavily padded kick drum in double time, just off-beat and distant enough to make it feel like the thump of a poorly insulated club. Abrams picks up the new rhythm and follows it, and for a few moments, the band seems to be playing both the main Perseverance Flow theme and a separate dance song at the same time, though the theoretical line between the two is impossible to find. Eventually, that intervention fades, too, revealing that each of the musicians is off doing their own thing, and despite that, feeling more like an ensemble than ever.

Music like this sometimes gets called “durational,” or likened to the theoretical impermanence of Zeno’s Arrow—an object that appears constant yet is recomposing itself in every moment. It is hard, listening to Perseverance Flow, not to think of the Buddhist notion of becoming, or something like philosopher Henri Bergson’s conception of the élan. Both of which are fair descriptions and logical reactions to a music that seems to do nothing but go in circles with academic confidence. But merry-go-rounds go in circles, too. As do pinwheels. You want durational? Major League Baseball teams play 162 games every season, usually for the same few thousand people. Despite the weight of the intellectual concepts and the elegance of the score, despite the band’s association with the cream of Chicago’s always-rich avant-garde scene, this record is no less approachable than an afternoon Cubs game. Appropriately enough, it gets better with each spin, too. --Sadie Sartini Garner, Pitchfork

Spanish mystic Dídac pipes up a debut spirit quest of uchronic folklore and imaginary ethnography bending Mediterranean - particularly Catalan & Castilian - tradition into new age ambient modernity via subtle subversions of his Catholic upbringing, arriving somewhere between Luis Delgado and Popol Vuh.

"In between the folds of ceremony and commonality lies a perennial spring of musical expression. A statement along the time continuum, or a testament to the resilient resourcefulness embedded in that truth, forms the philosophical approach of this album – the first outing of Dídac.

Studying an extensive archive of instruments, artifacts, and field recordings at the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève—a space steeped in folkloric gesture – Dídac encountered a cosmos of liturgical music and folk song. Anchored in reverance for tradition and transformation alike, this album navigates the old-world Mediterranean lore through a post-modern ambient lens, threading drone, gentle rhythm, electroacoustic textures and the crude tactility of archival material into one woven tapestry.

Under the guidance of Dr. Madeleine Leclair, Dídac was invited to work within one of the world’s most extensive ethno- musicological archives—L’AIMP. In the saturated basements and tape-lined backrooms of the museum, he submerged himself in the sounds of ritual and rural life: wax cylinders from the Eastern Mediterranean, tapes of liturgical hymn, the worn edges of communal song.

In a makeshift studio on the fourth floor of the museum, he sifted through the hours of material he collected, gradually discovering that the archive was no static source – It did not dictate; rather, it served as a companion—offering not answers, but questions. Not a beaten track, but a cluster of sonic clues and riddles. Samples do appear occasionally, tenderly interwoven into the dialogue of the songs. In Dídac’s self-titled debut, the past is not worn as ornament or kitsch; it is listened to and responded to. The museum, its archives, and the visit to Geneva became a foundational culisse of sorts, igniting a myriad of rough cuts and improvisational outtakes.

Dídac, or Diego Ocejo Muñoz, was born in Madrid in 1994 to a family of both Catalan and Castilian origin.Brought up in a religious household, the influence of the Catholic Church innately shaped the social fabric, schooling and daily life. This lingering dominance led the adolescent Diego into a path of rejection of everything sacramental, promptly resorting to subversion in the shape of grafitti, skateboarding and underground music. Only later in life, after a rigorous venture as an acid and electro producer, the Church re-emerged before him in new light, invoking a deep fascination for its mysticism, iconography and choral tradition.

Spain in general and Catalonia in particular, has long served as a crossroads of the eastern–western Mediterranean continuum, with many of its cultures sharing aspects of way of life and ceremony. At the MEG, Diego found himself puzzled with this realization, resulting in a sonic amalgamation that reaches farther away from the rugged mountains of Catalonia than you might perceive at first encounter. The deeply embedded memory of rite and public ceremony, religious hymn and landscape—sieved through the undercurrent of personal re-emergence, forms the emotional topography of this album. The record does not trace this landscape; it inhabits it. Its repetitive mysticism and ambient, wide-eyed gaze could possibly evoke (perhaps redundant) comparisons to artists such as Dimitris Petsetakis, or Popol Vuh’s late 70’s cinema scores.

The delicate lines between the sacred and the secular – between memory and re-invention – serve as a cipher to understanding this album in its entirety. Titles like Malpàs Mines or Pantocrator’s Portal Outro nudge toward a folkloric and devotional bedrock—places where labor and spirituality coexist, where names preserve both dust and veneration. Nevertheless, this is far from mere nostalgia. It is a reclamation — singing alongside the spirits of the past, nurturing what still hums beneath the soil. It is an intimate reflection on tradition, rebellion, adolescence, ceremony and fantasy – a pastoral contemplation on what once was and what is to be."

Deeply tied to the composer’s own life, the narrative of Lacrimosa invites reflection in the face of loss. This sonic work draws inspiration from Alice Coltrane’s spiritual Eternity (1976) as well as the traditional structure of the Requiem, a mass for the dead. One of its sections, the Dies Irae, evokes Judgment Day and concludes with the Lacrimosa (literally, “full of tears”), depicting the weeping of souls in search of salvation.

In Lacrimosa, Low Jack transforms autobiographical elements into a messianic, polyglot form, unfolding across eight movements that chart the storms and serenity of grief. The piece unfolds from dawn to dusk, as the eyes open and then close. An initiatory solar cycle, from which one returns like Dante in his Divine Comedy, transcendent yet grief-stricken by the loss of a guiding presence.

Low Jack crafts one of his most intimate compositions, weaving together musical archetypes and universal narrative structures, drawing from both classical lyrical music and pop standards.

If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated. — Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces. In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds “as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup.” And, as he suggests, “with the addition of city noise from outside the window,” you may hear Surround in a completely new way. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura’s previous works included Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular GREEN (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura’s yin and yang. 12月上旬入荷。遂に満を持して登場。あの『Green』を凌ぐ人気を誇る、長年失われていた吉村弘最高峰のアンビエント・クラシックこと1986年作品『Surround』が〈Light in the Attic〉配給の〈Temporal Drift〉レーベルより待望の公式アナログ再発！日本の環境音楽のパイオニアであり、都市/公共空間のサウンドデザインからサウンドアート、パフォーマンスに至るまで、傑出した仕事を世に残した偉才、吉村弘。その最難関の音盤として君臨してきた幻の一枚が、今回史上初の公式アナログ・リイシュー。ミサワホームから依頼されて録音された作品で、これらは同社の新築居住空間をより充実させるために設計された「アメニティ」として機能することを目的としていた環境音楽作品。吉村自身による当時のライナーノーツに加え、オリジナル・プロデューサーであった塩川博義氏による新規ライナーノーツも同封（日／英）。 MASTERPIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Deep hypnotic ambient techno from Kommune trio George Thompson, Kyle Martin & Jonathan Nash. Recorded live in converted barn, October 2014. Four long-form compositions showcase mastery of TR-808 & dub techniques. Profound minimalist electronic journey.

Music from Memory is delighted to announce the forthcoming release of Oast by Kommune, a double LP of deep, hypnotic ambient techno that captures a fleeting but profound moment in electronic music history. Formed by George Thompson, Kyle Martin and Jonathan Nash, Kommune were active between 2014-2015, emerging organically from the intertwined musical journeys of three close friends living near each other in North London. At the time of Kommune's formation, Nash and Martin had recently completed their debut album as Land Of Light, while Thompson (aka Black Merlin) was putting the finishing touches to his debut album Hipnotik Tradisi and also working with Martin as part of the duo Spectral Empire. Sharing equipment and ideas, Kommune served as a creative outlet for exploring analogue machine music in an improvisational context, with sessions in their North London studios leading to a handful of memorable gigs at venues including Hamburg's legendary Golden Pudel and London's LN-CC.

This fleeting chapter of musical history may well have gone entirely undocumented had it not been for the fortuitous decision to meet up for a recording session in October 2014. Filling a car with their machines, the trio drove to a converted barn in the south of England, proceeded to set up, settle in and hit the record button. Over the course of two days, fuelled by the experiences of recent performances, they immersed themselves in the machines, crafting subtly evolving, long-form compositions with an enchanting balance and flow.

Across the four long-form compositions that make up Oast, the trio summons barely controllable scrapes, acid-like bubbles, and bleeps from their machines, leaning on dub mixing techniques to give the tracks a sense of depth, dynamism and organic ambience. Mastery of the TR-808 drum machine is central, with remarkably nuanced drum programming imparting a hypnotic rhythm to the work, allowing other elements to emerge and unfold at a beautifully measured tempo.

Recorded entirely live and improvised without any overdubs, Oast offers a profound journey into minimalist electronic music while serving as a tribute to friendship, curiosity, and the spirit of experimentation. The album stands as testament to the magic that can occur when talented musicians come together in the right place at the right time, creating something that transcends the sum of its parts. Each member would continue to develop their individual projects following Kommune's dissolution, but Oast remains a unique document of their collaborative chemistry and shared vision for electronic music that bridges the gap between ambient meditation and dancefloor hypnosis.

Oast will be released on LP and digitally on July 25th 2025 via Music From Memory, with sleeve art and design by Michael Willis.

Belgian guitarist Ruben Machtelinckx lives in a world of sound. He interacts with his fellow musicians, deploying the most refined, delicate sort of interplay, as if collectively painting clouds for the ears. Diffuse harmonies, grainy textures, and rhythms that drift like fallen leaves offer a deeply meditative, gorgeously colored environment that the guitarist is helping to shape, but he’s also basking in the tones vibrating and shimmering around him. The music slows down time, forging an environment without boundaries that billows like smoke, constantly reshaping every fragile tone. It’s Machtelinckx’s sweet spot, but as much as he surrenders to the sonic ecosystem, he’s deftly aware of its subtle activity, rigorously participating in its real-time creation and development.

Back in 2019 he explained the motivation for his long-running, open-ended Porous Structures concept, saying, “We’re trying to achieve a state of being. It doesn’t have to go anywhere or have a direction.” At the time he was exploring the idea alongside reedist Joachim Badenhorst, fellow guitarist Bert Cools, and French percussionist Toma Gouband. Some of the music on the group’s 2019 Aspen Edities album was composed beforehand but even the fully improvised pieces featured Badenshort’s reeds and ghostly falsetto voice cutting through this dreamy sound world, nascent melodic strands that seemed to emanate from the collective resonance itself. Five years later Machtelinckx has remade the project, which continues to feature Gouband’s sui generis sonification of organic materials like stones and tree branches. The new quartet is rounded out with a pair of distinctive guitarists, long-time Belgian collaborator Frederik Leroux—Machtelinckx’s partner in the tender duo project Poor Isa—and the Berlin-based Norwegian Fredrik Rasten, a more recent creative partner with whom he also maintains a duo.

“What remains is the choice of acoustic and fragile sounds, comprehensible to the listener but with an undercurrent of tension and complexity,” says Machtelinckx. “What is new is the intertwining of acoustic guitars. The melodic voice is exchanged for yet another stringed instrument, resulting in a group sound in which individuals are barely distinguishable. The classical roles of an ensemble are abandoned: the three guitars weave a web in which the percussion moves freely. The quartet makes use of microtonality and plays a stubborn game of endless, subtle variations.” In some ways this assemblage furthers his earlier statement that the music doesn’t need to go anywhere, and indeed, on first blush the three pieces on this album appear to levitate. Still, when one digs deeper that claim isn’t entirely true. While the music doesn’t usually feature any traditional sense of propulsion, the performances definitely go somewhere.

Theoretically three acoustic guitars are indistinguishable from each other, but each musician has his own personality and style. The stacked guitars create a vertical sort of tension. Each player simultaneously adheres to a collective timbre, but within those limitations they can’t help but express a certain aesthetic essence. While I can’t identify who does what, there’s no missing the thrilling way individual aesthetics peek out in short, elegant flourishes; the humid harmonic churn giving way to poignant snatches of melody, only to dissipate as quickly as they formed. Machtelinckx’s decision to eschew a more conventional melodic voice gives Gouband greater freedom than with the previous line-up, which led to a change in the studio process. “I wanted all the details of the acoustic guitars, and at the same time I wanted Toma to be able to play full force,” Machtelinckx explains, so to preclude potential sound bleed and balance issues, the percussionist played in a separate room from the guitarists, with all of them listening to one another on headphones but without being able to see one other. Instead, the communication all came from listening. “The first Porous Structures album had some compositions of mine to steer the music in a specific direction. With this ensemble I did not feel the necessity to do this. We had a couple of conversations about different directions the music could go, and made some decisions before we started, but that's it.”

The sidelong opening piece “In my earliest memory I see trees'' is a marvel of deceptive stasis, where the music absolutely reflects “a state of being.” As the three guitars float on delicately intertwined arpeggios, single-note runs, and fleeting harmonic clusters, Gouband punctuates, prods, and caresses the action, sometimes inserting the sweet tintinnabulation of chiming cymbals, sometimes accentuating the drifty guitars with rustling friction, and sometimes pulling on the reins with a sudden stuttering tom-tom tattoo. The group does create something far more driving in “Falling forward becomes a walk,” which cleaves to the titular suggestion of gravity fomenting a kind of motion. Gouband is decidedly active and the guitarists toggle to three-way riff-oriented spontaneity—a kind of forceful walking in place. The quartet might not be moving from point to point, but it is sizing things up and pushing against edges. Tuning differences impart dizzying clouds of harmony on “Void of Narration,” the arrival of bowed guitar expanding the palette so that the slow motion entrance of Gouband on a quietly shimmering cymbal initially feels like a halo of the strings.

Astonishingly, this recording was the ensemble’s first ever performance together. “I feel that there can be something magical in a first meeting,” says Machtelinckx. “When you record a first meeting there is a sort of extreme focus and awareness of time, a gentle way of exploring each other and the music, a conscious doubt that I find very interesting.” It would be hard to disagree.

Peter Margasak

Berlin, March 2024