Ambient / Minimal / Drone

Alpenglühen continues to establish itself as a trusted source for forward-thinking ambient techno with its latest vinyl release, introducing Vanertia, the new collaborative alias from Vand and !nertia. This debut offering fuses the distinctive sonic DNA of both artists into a deeply textured and rhythmically intricate EP. The record draws heavily from the dub techno tradition, with spacious delay lines and submerged chord stabs setting the tone across all tracks. Yet it’s the subtle interplay between syncopated grooves and classic 4x4 pulse that gives the record its driving energy. The percussion is detailed and organic, riding a bed of carefully sculpted low-end that never overwhelms but always supports the movement. The result is a hypnotic, immersive listen that balances club functionality with introspective richness. With Vanertia, Vand and !nertia have laid the groundwork for what promises to be a highly fruitful collaboration.

Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities, a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives.

For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee’s output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well know. 2020’s Yeo​-​Neun, a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by Teum (The Silvery Slit) - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then 나를 (Na-Reul) in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities, encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms.

Like its three aforementioned predecessors, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) belongs to broadening shift in Lee’s approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album’s nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives?

This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind.

Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album’s subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo​-​Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by Teum (The Silvery Slit), and the emotive foregrounding of 나를 (Na-Reul), each of the pieces presented across the two sides of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album’s compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound.

Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee’s Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee’s striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

Previously issued on three rare cassette-only editions, Joanna Brouk’s 1980 sophomore album The Space Between has finally been given spacious LP quarters. The side-long title track, performed by Brouk’s Mills College instructor and sometime-lover Bill Maraldo is among the deepest and most distinctive pieces in the new age canon, while side B’s three cuts expand the theme in hypnotic new directions.

A surprising suite of new material from popular kankyō ongaku vanguard Yutaka Hirose, 'Voices' is a chaotic collage of field recordings, rickety beatbox loops, rough-textured samples and psychedelic synths - ambient it ain't. It's fascinating to hear 'Voices' because when you've not seen much new material emerge from an artist since their classic era, the expectation is that they've simply stopped producing. Hirose is best known for his 1986-released 'Nova' album, a record commissioned by the Misawa Home Corporation for use in their prefab houses and rediscovered online (like Midori Takada's 'Through the Looking Glass' or Hiroshi Yoshimura's 'Green') decades later. WRWTFWW Records already reissued that record, bundling it with almost an hour of extra material, and followed it up with an additional archive of Hirose's '80s recordings, but 'Voices' brings us right into the present. So it shouldn't be too surprising that the album is markedly different from its predecessors. You'll get a good idea of what to expect with the 12-minute opener 'Library', a track that sounds like Hirose is scrubbing through his archive of sounds, layering public transport ambiance with movie samples, off-hand vocal takes, radio chatter, jazz stems and squelchy back-room rhythms. Like Akira Umeda's similarly spannered 'Gueixa', it's a head-melting stream-of-consciousness experience, not really music so much as a vortex of sound. Hirose's four 'The Other Side' tracks are more straightforward balearic techno experiments offset by peculiar environmental recordings, and these are peppered through the album - no doubt to lighten the mood. Elsewhere, Hirose gets into grinding, ritualistic IDM on 'Uprising', and threads brittle beats and acidic synths through a dense fog of bird calls and chat on 'Mixture'. He's been busy.

“A mesmerizing Japanese ambient techno masterpiece that that completely rewires how you perceive music” Electronic Beats A Mountainous Masterpiece. A powerful testament to rave culture’s establishment and the birth of a new scene in Japan emerging in the mid ‘90s. One of Yokota’s most celebrated work that merges Japanese new age and minimal techno. Alex From Tokyo Prat (Japan Vibrations, world famous, Paris) On July 26th Susumu Yokota’s venerated 1994 classic ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is reissued in expanded, deluxe fashion, as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the label that originally presented it. Japan’s Musicmine – specifically it’s electronic subsidiary Sublime – released the album on June 29th 1994, simultaneously with Ken Ishii’s ‘Reference To Difference’, as their inaugural joint offering. ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is an enchanting mix of mystical ambient acid and futurist minimal techno, taking the listeners on a psychedelic pilgrimage, where 303, synths and electronic percussion are scented with reverb, echo and forest recordings. Merging Japanese new age and sparse electronica, the recording is free, organic, and energized – proffering a unique blend of early 90s western styles and the essence of his home country. Yokota originally planned an ambient record, but ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ evolved into a concept work featuring the Roland TB-303, which he recorded live at home alongside a sampler, yielding experimental and innovative results. The long player found its muse in the famed 18th-19th century artist Hokusai’s red rendition of Mt. Fuji, known as ‘Red Fuji’ or ‘Akafuji’. Part of the painter’s renowned ‘Thirty Six Views of Mt. Fuji’ series from the 1830s, ‘Red Fuji’ depicts the iconic sacred mountain aglow in red at dawn, symbolizing spirituality and creativity. With references to Japanese folklore, nature and shrines, tracks like ‘Kinoko’ and ‘Meijijingu’ invite the listener to immerse themselves in the album’s spiritual depths. Yokota’s own homage-to-Hokusai drawing graces the record’s cover, and was inspired by the concept of wa (harmony) – highlighting his diverse skills not only as a musician, but an artist and designer too. ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is a powerful testament to the establishment of rave culture in Japan, which rapidly developed within just two years, from 1992 to 1994. Largely due to praise for the breathtaking originality of the LP, within this burgeoning national techno scene, Yokota rose to prominence as one of its key figures. He then became one of the most renowned artists to emerge from his homeland and enter the global electronic pantheon. He inspired a new wave of Japanese producers and DJs, contributing significantly to the growth of the techno movement in Japan. Yokota was a solitary figure, an artist who expressed his life through the continuous creation of music. For those seeking something different; mystical, soothing, pristinely ergonomic and uniquely Japanese, this record stands as iconic as Mt. Fuji itself. - This triple vinyl Deluxe Edition includes the original album’s eleven tracks alongside five raw and jacking rare gems, available on wax for the first time, which were previously included only in the Japanese 2016 Deluxe Edition CD. There are also two digital-only bonus tracks. One is a live performance by Yokota, titled ‘Live at Shibuya Beam Hall’, which was recorded at Sublime Records’ label launch party, held in September 1994. It was previously only released on the aforementioned 2016 Japanese CD edition. This event, titled ‘Sublime Records Presents New Style of Electronic Ambient Party’ featured performances by Susumu Yokota, Ken Ishii, Yoshihiro Sawasaki, Speedy J and DJ Wada. This ten minute long, rare live recording captures Yokota playing a dynamic, fast paced acid house live jam, using two TB-303s and a drum machine. The other digital only bonus track is an alternative version of ‘H’, which was discovered recently whilst excavating a DAT. The liner notes are written by DJ/producer Alex From Tokyo, who was a good friend of Yokota, and experienced the 90s Tokyo club scene first-hand as an insider. His compilation ‘Japan Vibrations Vol. 1’ captures this golden era, and features music by Prism (Susumu Yokota), Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, Yasuaki Shimizu, Quadra (Hiroshi Watanabe) and more.

Manchester’s Sferic label (Space Afrika, Jake Muir, Bianca Scout, Roméo Poirier++) return with a fire debut from ungoogleable Greco-Canadian anomaly Anastasia Patellis, aka Any, featuring additional instrumentation and co-production from Klein/Lolina cohort LA Timpa. It's a set of "squat pop" experiments that thread nocturnal soundscaping and pop hooks through hallucinated outlines written on harp and broken synth, highly recommended if you’re into Astrid Sonne, Tirzah, Nala Sinephro.

Greco-Canadian artist Any was bedding down in a Cretan squat when the album's title, μέγα ελεός in Greek, boomed from loudspeakers next to a bonfire, courtesy of a midnight Orthodox church sermon. Moving to the sunny, ancient island had provided her with an escape from big city burnout, but she ended staying far longer than expected - years rather than months. It’s this prolonged sense of suspension that provides the album with its wandering spirit, using harp as an emotional core.

Listening to Breton music made on the Celtic harp from artists like Kristen Noguès and Alan Stivell, Any sketched out song outlines that were then tweaked by Lagos-born, Toronto-raised journeyman LA Timpa, who flew out to Crete last summer to put his idiosyncratic stamp on the record. Like the dusty songs on Astrid Sonne's 'Great Doubt, ‘MEGA MERCY' sounds as if its drum line was duped on dictaphone from an old beat tape, then spliced with field recordings and vocals.

Half sung, half spoken, she murmurs around the beat, not exactly over it, adding circuitous, boss-tuned harp twangs when necessary. It's music that's spartan rather than lo-fi; a sort of bare-bones reaction to electroacoustic experimentation and outsider folk. It makes perfect sense that an artist as thematically on-point as LA Timpa is involved - Any's instrumental vamps are roughly pasted around pinprick boom-bap snaps and crunchy foley denouements, eventually cooled into contemplative Nala Sinephro-esque meditations.

Sections bring to mind Tirzah's most psychedelic early excursions, with dry asides set against a slurping, off-axis beatbox loop and distant, barely-audible synths. The record is tied up on 'WEATHER LIKE TIDE', an instrumental callback to the opener, book-ending the album with a melancholy, humid kinda ambient folk, purposefully melting the timeline.

Good Morning Tapes call on grimwig, aka Ali Safi of the Marionette label (Pretty Sneaky, Khôra, Francesco Cavaliere & Tomoko Sauvage++) for a 90 minute exhalation of tripped-out DMT synths and deep, sublimated atmospherics. Aye it’s a good one.

‘The Third Place’ presents a revision of a mix initially cooked up for Marionette’s 10th anniversary session at Cafe Oto and perfectly encapsulates ethereal, transcendent dream-weaving with cherry-picked slices of ambient, 4th world, field recordings and wafts of meditative flute, sitar and snatched conversations, seamlessly slanted to the supine.

Inspirations from Indian classical and kosmische seep into lysergic West Coast sentiments and subby, weightless futurism with a cinematic grasp of sound design that hews to a path that patently aligns with Good Morning Types core interests. Where the label usually deals in more overtly sunny strains of this vibe, however, Grimwig takes us to more dappled territory with passages of post-industrial murk, Malibu-esque silhouettes and slow-pulsing drums elevating the 4th world topography into something much more nuanced - and all the better for it.

Paris-born electronic music pioneer and 1970s GRM alumni Ariel Kalma joins with multinational New York trio Asa Tone (Kaazi, Melati ESP, Tristan Arp) for a series of intergenerational, electro-acoustic studio conversations, exploring elasticity within rhythm and winds… or as one early listener observed “space and time.”

Following a chance encounter at Ariel’s studio in the Australian rainforest during the pandemic, Melati & Kaazi began recording long live takes with Kalma, weaving in bioluminescent synth improvisations from Tristan Arp remotely. Revisited a few years later between the members of Asa Tone’s respective homes in New York & Indonesia, “○” is the document of a significant moment in the lives of all the album’s players; an ode to memory and connection in an era of crisis, illuminated via flickering fragments of steel flute, kantilan, modular synthesizer, xaphoon, tenor sax, EWI, field recordings of the surrounding rainforest, and the human voice.

Recorded, written and produced by Asa Tone & Ariel Kalma.
Ariel Kalma: Western Concert Flute, Xaphoon, Tenor Saxophone, Voice
Melati ESP: EWI, Kantilan, Voice
Kaazi: Hydrasynth, Opsix, Percussion
Tristan Arp: Modular Synthesizer, Moog Sub37, Percussion
Additional percussion on *3 by Miles Myjavec

Mixed by Tristan Arp, Kaazi and Ariel Kalma.
Mastered by Jose Arentes at GRAMA, Porto.
Art Direction & Layout : Melati ESP, Kaazi, Biscuit.
 

The latest title from Good Morning Tapes, the cult-favorite cassette label known for its extremely unique catalog, is a mixtape by New York-based new age archivist Mark Griffey (aka Ultravillage) that draws from his vast collection of US cassettes from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, presenting obscure ambient, minimal, progressive rock, electronic, and new age music. This mixtape features obscure ambient, minimal, progressive rock, electronic, and new age music from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s on cassette from the United States. A wonderful selection of light rhythmic and melodic charms woven together over the course of an hour.

Misha Hollenbach, a Melbourne, Australia-based DJ who has previously released excellent mixtapes on Good Morning Tapes, is part of the fashion, art, and design label/publisher P.A.M., which he co-founded with his wife and creative partner, Shauna Toohey, He is also a member of P.A.M, a fashion, art, and design label/publisher co-founded with his wife and creative partner, Shauna Toohey.

A collection of brand new studio recordings, recorded by Davey Jewell (Peaking Lights/Flaming Lips) and mixed by Carlos Niño (Leaving Records). A magical mixtape of tracks that run the full gamut of ‘Laraaji music’, from blissed-out percussive jams to reflective vocal hymnals to trance-inducing drones. A perfect Laraaji entry-point on his never-ending creative journey through inner light.

Praise for Bring On The Sun:

“Shimmers and glistens and throbs in all the right places.” - The Guardian

“It’s minimalistic and trance-like, made for headphone listening and intimate spaces, but in no way does it fade into the background” - Pitchfork

“Spontaneous yet cohesive; intimate yet spun-out, this is some of Laraaji’s finest work. He is finally getting the recognition for being the singular visionary that he is” - Future Music

“A remarkable, transcendental journey into the clouds” - Electronic Sound

“Some much needed waves of cosmic sunshine for our currently troubled times” - The Wire

“An uplifting transcendence that’s simply a joy to hear” - Prog Magazine

“A sprawling collection, encompassing everything from euphoric zither washes to jazzy beat poetry, without ever losing sight of its mood of sunny positivity” - Uncut

Internationally acclaimed harpist Alina Bzhezhinska and Ibiza-based producer Tulshi announce their collaborative album ‘Whispers of Rain’

The album delves into the architecture of memory and human emotion, using rain as a central metaphor for life’s cycles: the cleansing of loss, the blossoming of renewal and the profound inner strength cultivated in moments of serene introspection. To celebrate the release, Alina will be hosting a listening party at Brilliant Corners, London on Monday 23rd June, followed by an album launch show at The Vortex, London on Monday 7th July. The live performance will feature Tulshi, Tony Kofi & Ni Maxine.

With album singles “Whispers of Rain” and “Across the Sea”, this LP expands on the pair’s seamless fusion of organic and electronic elements. Alina’s expressive harp, deeply rooted in jazz and classical traditions intertwines with Tulshi’s inventive production, drawing from ambient deep tech and dub-inflected electronica.

“Journey Home”, is a poignant meditation on closure and self-discovery. It mirrors the arc of the album, bringing the listener full circle, both thematically and sonically. Reflective and expansive, the track captures the emotional weight of returning to a place that has changed, while questioning if home is truly a destination or a state of being.

Born from a shared creative vision on the tranquil side of Ibiza, ‘Whispers of Rain’ was shaped by the island's natural beauty and a deep connection to the life that surrounds us. After years of travel, both Alina and Tulshi found inspiration here, turning movement into stillness. In 2022 Alina and Tulshi were introduced by a mutual friend, their first session was entirely unplanned, an afternoon of spontaneous improvisation in Tulshi’s home studio in Ibiza. “It was a beautiful sunny day and my three-year-old was playing outside while Alina and I jammed inside,” Tulshi recalls. “Her harp was running through granular effects and large reverbs and the result was “Child’s Play”, you can even hear the children’s voices in the background if you listen closely.”

That improvisational energy became the foundation of the album. Tulshi initially experimented with house beats but ultimately stripped everything back to allow Alina’s harp to lead the way. “I always say as a producer, you have to sit back and let the music tell you what it wants to be,” he explains. Alina adds, “I loved the way Tulshi felt the music, we instantly had a strong creative connection. Our collaboration was built on trust, we each understood how to complement the other’s sound without overpowering it.” Their process was supple, allowing the compositions to evolve organically into a body of work that feels deeply personal, yet universally resonant.

The album’s narrative deepens with tracks like “Nomad’s Nocturne” which introduces darker, restless energy, reflecting themes of displacement and the uncertainty of movement, with Alina’s bold harp clusters and Tulshi’s live tabla guiding the piece. “Whispers of Rain” emerged from a moment of sunlit rain in Ibiza, where Alina and Tulshi found themselves in a state of pure flow, translating the rhythm of falling droplets into sound. “Warm Days, Cold Nights” juxtaposes earthy folk and blues tones with a brooding synth pad, expressing the emotional contrasts of a traveller’s path; “Starling” dissolves the boundaries between harp and synth, creating a soaring, immersive soundscape; “Across the Sea” explores the bittersweet experience of finding a new home while feeling the pull of what’s been left behind. Tulshi’s glitch-infused production mimics the fizz and crackle beneath ocean waves, as Alina’s fluid glissandi mirrors the movement of the tide.

A stunning new cassette release from Yama Yuki—head of Tokyo-based label 〈ato.archives〉, known for reissuing key works by Masami Tada (East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort) and Masahiro Sugaya—now arriving via the esteemed 〈Kankyo Records〉. Blending a uniquely Japanese sensibility toward nature, local spirituality, and the vacant textures of urban space, this ambient gem weaves a delicate yet intricate soundscape. Rooted in the lineage of environmental music, minimalism, and post-New Age ambient, it offers a quiet prayer in sound—an auditory landscape you can almost touch.

2025 repress. "Natural Information Society, like their partners in time Bitchin Bajas, live their days in flow motion. Rhythms come and go, instruments sound as a means to a greater end. Music is the way of their life. Their debut convergence, Automaginary, feels as natural as it does inevitable. Both groups were first heard in 2010, both emerging from solo endeavors that accessed a vastness, more room than a single player might ultimately fill -- a place then for fellow travelers! Joshua Abrams, a questing bassist and improviser by trade, with an extensive discography of solo recordings and collaborations with a wide variety of artists, formed Natural Information Society as a conduit for the live presentation of his guimbri music. Abrams had delved into the sound of the threestringed Gnawan lute on his own, intrigued by the instrument's ability to provide melodic and rhythmic direction with a minimal, hypnotic palette. Known for the drone also are Bitchin Bajas. Cooper Crain of CAVE started the Bajas to explore his fascination with vintage electronics and recording techniques. With Dan Quinlivan on keyboards as well, Bitchin Bajas' discography has explored a range of dynamic approaches, producing various proportions of atmosphere and soundtrack that move from becalmed stasis to synthetic beat-building with a prescient liquidity. Both Natural Information Society and Bitchin Bajas are in pursuit of the unconscious in their musical expression, and through their independent methods, both have ridden the wind to unseen places, using the playing as the carpet that will take them there. A multitude of influences swarm amoebically in their sounds, from the mud of ancient Afro-groove to 20th-century classical austerity, from the clatter of freedom jazz to the 4/4 of kraut and disco and fusion beyond -- and then beyond the music and into the air. Wrapped up in a screen-printed jacket from visual artist Lisa Alvarado, whose aesthetic sense is a touchstone for the vision of Natural Information Society, Automaginary is psychedelic and ambient and jazz -- yet none of it either, the whole being more than the sum of former parts. This is music of unique variance, a remarkably perfect congregation of the two tribes that are Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas."

Bitterviper is the brand-new quartet of Nikos Veliotis (cello), Taku Unami (synthesizer), Sarah Hennies (percussion), and David Grubbs (guitar, piano), four individuals who separately are responsible for some of the most striking and wildly idiosyncratic music of the past couple of decades -- not to mention the duo collaborations between Grubbs and Unami (the albums Comet Meta and Failed Celestial Creatures) and Veliotis and Grubbs (The Harmless Dust). Athens-based Nikos Veliotis set Bitterviper into motion with four overdubbed pieces of dense psychoacoustic marvels on the cello; Grubbs responded with characteristically subtle tracery on piano, guitar, and lap steel; Unami weighed in electronically from Tokyo to mysteriously thicken both the plot and the low end; and Hennies applied her compositional gifts to structure the whole thing with an Occam's Razor approach to percussion. But once you drop the needle on Bitterviper, its origin story becomes ancient history; you're suddenly in the presence of an ensemble that sounds like no other and for whom there are no false steps. It's all fair game when this is how you choose to play; Bitterviper is a salvo of confidence and conviction, and this is only the beginning. David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He was a member of Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, Jan St. Werner, The Red Krayola, and many others. Sarah Hennies is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College. Taku Unami's work is influenced by science fiction, supernatural horror and weird fiction. He's the composer of film scores for directors including Isao Okishima and Takeshi Furusawa, was half (with Toshiya Tsunoda) of the group Wovenland, is one-third of the group Hontatedori, and has collaborated with, among others, Annette Krebs, Radu Malfatti, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Jarrod Fowler, and Graham Lambkin. Nikos Veliotis founded Mohammad with ILIOS and Coti K. (renamed MMMD in 2015). In the 1990s he developed an experimental practice, exploring image and sound, mainly through the cello; he also performed in numerous groups, most notably CRANC (with Angharad and Rhodri Davies) and Looper (with Ingar Zach and Martin Küchen)."

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

Interior” was formed by Daisuke Hinata and Hideki Nonaka, who were alumni of the Berkeley College of Music. Their first album “Interior” was released in 1982 on Haruomi Hosono's label, Yen Records. Their musical style of instrumental synth-pop with an emotional flavor based on “ambient music” and “environmental music” style is one of the most popular styles in the new age music scene in the U.S. Windham Hill Records, one of the leading new age music labels in the U.S., has also taken notice.

Jameszoo (Mitchel van Dinther) returns to Brainfeeder with a wonderfully cinematic album embarking on adventures on the fringes of jazz and contemporary classical. Imbued with the same spirit of adventure and experimental outlook as his previous work on the label, ‘Music for 17 Musicians’ is a new work written for and performed by the renowned Dutch ensemble Asko|Schönberg, percussion group HIIIT and Jameszoo’s own “blind” group: Niels Broos (organ), Petter Eldh (electric bass) and Richard Spaven (drums). Much like in 2019 when he worked with the Grammy-winning Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley to adapt his album ‘Fool’, ‘Music for 17 Musicians’ is a largely acoustic piece diving deeper into and reflecting on the ideas behind his 2022 album ‘Blind’. With 16 musicians and a self-governing disklavier taking center stage this album documents the Dutchman’s foray into contemporary classical music. The title is a nod to Steve Reich’s masterful 1978 album on ECM ‘Music for 18 Musicians’.

“Late in 2022 I was approached by Dutch contemporary music ensemble Asko|Schönberg to ask if I would be interested in writing a new piece for them,” explains Mitchel. “Apart from the fact that I thought this group of fantastic musicians would be a lovely fit for music in the spirit of ‘Blind’, I also always loved the idea of expanding on and continuing a process… being able to show more than one side to a work.”

One of the principal ideas underpinning ‘Blind’ was the notion of active objective listening. “In music and other arts there is a heavy emphasis on the artist,” says Mitchel. “Which composer, which soloist, which performer… and the shifting emphasis between them all colours what we hear. Is it possible to create something that bypasses this?” In reality his explorations only threw up more questions, but this only fuelled van Dinther’s desire to explore further. How is the listener’s perception affected when you try to detach the composer/musician/artist from a work?

Van Dinther started out by working with self-playing robotic instruments to embody the music without the use of human hands. “This created something visually special but was ultimately just a magic trick to fool myself as all these instruments were merely citing what I was giving them as input. There were no autonomous choices being made by these instruments whatsoever, which made me wonder, would it be possible for an instrument to experience some sort of freedom within the context of my music?”

Deciding to focus on a single instrument, van Dinther gave a player piano a pivotal role in his compositions. However, for this concept to work this player piano would need the capacity to make autonomous musical decisions whilst performing (in the way a human improviser or a soloist would do). The player piano is an instrument invented in the late 1800s mainly used for reproducing piano music at home, but there is also a strong tradition in contemporary ensemble

music written for these machines. You can communicate with a modern player piano instructing it what notes to play and when to play them by sending it MIDI information. MIDI is a digital language used for these kinds of musical instructions.

Excited by the possibilities herein, van Dinther contacted a couple of expert friends Hendrik Vincent Koops and Jan van Balen and asked if they wanted to help create this. They opted for making a set of algorithms that could communicate and instruct the player piano through generating custom MIDI. “We created a chain of musical rules per song… rules we thought would be interesting within this context,” explains Mitchel. “We created custom datasets for all of this with the help of fantastic musicians like Kit Downes, Matthew Bourne and Niels Broos. Vincent and Jan decided they wanted to write and script these algorithms mostly by using Markov models and LSTMs. (Markov models and LSTMs are models used in statistical and self learning systems to analyse and generate data). Vincent and Jan ultimately made this dream into a reality!”

When it came to the music written for the rest of the ensemble Mitchel wanted to create something that would showcase some of the specific capabilities of the fantastic musicians. Pieces that would build on the foundation of ‘Blind’ but quoting it freely more so than directly citing it. “I knew I wanted to invite musicians from my own group (Richard

Spaven, Petter Eldh and Niels Broos) and I wanted to extend the percussion section by inviting my friend Frank Wienk from percussion group HIIIT. I sat down with the music and started working on all different parts occasionally helped by my friends and longtime collaborators Niels Broos and Petter Eldh. To help me with the final arrangements I asked Stefan Behrisch with whom I worked on the music that became the 2019 album ‘Melkweg’ with Metropole Orkest and Jules Buckley.”

‘Music for 17 Musicians’ is released on Friday 30th May on vinyl/digital formats via Brainfeeder Records. A strictly limited hand-painted and numbered LP edition (of 200) by Mitchel’s longtime friend Philip Akkerman is available exclusively via Bandcamp/Brainfeeder Store.

At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.

Quite the opposite. The album GAS - DER LANGE MARSCH once again invites us to follow the deep sounding bass drum, to give in to its irresistible pull into a psychedelic world of 1000 promises. In the process, the journey leads us past stations of memories sounding from afar, from "Zauberberg" to "Königsforst" and "Pop", from "Oktember" to "Narkopop" and "Rausch", back and forth, now and forever.

Way. Destination. Loop. Forest loop.

Veritable pioneers of electronic music, iconic act THE ORB returns to Kompakt with the new full-length MOONBUILDING 2703 AD - another major slice of psychedelic synth bliss, obscure loops and deep ambient textures tossed in swinging breakbeats and powerful basslines. Installing a forward momentum rather unusual for a genre-defying project like this, the latest effort from masterminds Alex Paterson and Thomas Fehlmann follows their 2005 album success on Kompakt, the cheekily named "Okie Dokie It's The Orb On Kompakt" (KOMPAKT CD 45), as well as several contributions to our Speicher and Pop Ambient series - but more importantly, it finds the legendary duo at the peak of its creativity, ringing in another essential phase in what can only be called a ground-breaking career.

True to form, the new offering MOONBUILDING 2703 AD features a small track list, but turns each one of its four cuts into a mini epic in its own right. Opener GOD'S MIRRORBALL hits the ground floating, employing a handful of cozy statics to great effect before finally discharging into an intricate mosaic of atmospheric melodic sketches and gripping rhythms. With a hypnotic runtime of more than 14 minutes, it immediately establishes a blueprint for the other album tracks to follow, perfectly illustrating the vast extent of the artists' vision and their impressive skills in luring in listeners - welcome to THE ORB's sonic labyrinth, where nothing is what it seems and the unexpected waits just around the corner.

Likewise, follow-up track MOONSCAPES 2703 BC presents itself as a uniquely versatile affair sitting comfortably between ambient flourishes and beat-driven focus, holding as many twists and turns as a caper movie, but carefully grounding every single one of its cliffhangers in its impeccable flow. With a runtime of approximately 9 minutes, LUNAR CAVES is the shortest jam of the bunch - and also the most ethereal, keeping its rhythmic content to a bare, pulse-like minimum and opting for enticing, freewheeling synth textures instead. Album closer and title cut MOONBUILDING 2703 AD introduces a surprisingly jazzy vibe mingling rather well with the wealth of electronic tricks up its sleeve - even indulging in abrasive bass sweeps and a breathtaking multitude of different rhythm sections constantly switching places. It's a fitting closing act for a full-length as multifaceted as this, as idiosyncratic as possible and as muscling as needed. 

Matching expansive ambience with environmental sound, Chihei Hatakeyama’s new album continues Field Records’ exploration of Japan and the Netherland’s shared approach to water management. As with Sugai Ken’s 2020 album Tone River, a specific project becomes Hatakeyama’s area of focus - in this case the Hachirōgata Lake in Akita Prefecture. Previously the second largest body of water in Japan, the government ordered extensive drainage work of Hachirōgata Lake after the second world war with the help of Dutch engineers Pieter Jansen and Adriaan Volker. After the project was completed in 1977, reclaimed land took up eighty percent of Hachirōgata Lake’s total size. As a result, a new ecosystem was established as plants spread from surrounding areas, bringing with them a wider variety of birds and other wildlife. Hatakeyama’s approach to this unique subject matter took in field recordings from particular locations around the lake - the drainage channels, the Ogata bridge, grassland conservation reserves and other key areas. The aquatic subject matter and sonic material is a natural fit for Hatakeyama’s accomplished sound, which has featured on numerous solo works for labels including Kranky, Room40 and his self-run White Paddy Mountain. From the intimate intricacies of the sampled material to the glacial expanses of droning synthesis and languid guitar, Hatakeyama creates a tangible environment which at once reflects the settings around Hachirōgata Lake, while offering the listener any number of imagined scenes to observe in their mind’s eye.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a new solo album by Eiko Ishibashi, her first for the label, following on from the duo recording Ichida alongside bassist Darin Gray. Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) was produced for the ‘Japan Supernatural’ exhibition at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney focusing on ghost stories and folklore from the Edo period onwards. As with The Dream My Bones Dream (Drag City, 2018), the album is a response to troubling questions about Japanese history, and the influence of the past upon the present, but finds Ishibashi shifting further away from her earlier piano-led songwriting and showing a deepening interest in electronics and audio collaging.

The two sidelong parts of Hyakki Yagyō feature layered synthesisers, acoustic instrumentation, recited verse and field recordings, at times densely mixed but always with a subtle interplay of changing elements. The influence of European and American forerunners as diverse as Alvin Curran, David Behrman and Strafe Für Rebellion can be traced, yet at the same time Ishibashi evokes the flute and string sounds associated with Japanese storytelling, and draws directly on the subversive literary tradition of Kyoka (‘mad poetry’) with a verse by the 15th-century poet Ikkyū Sōjun repeated throughout the album. Revisiting what has gone before, re-thinking what is possible musically, as a way of articulating what else might be possible in the future.

As Ishibashi’s liner notes make clear, the album reflects an attention to persistent dangers, myths and evasions in Japanese culture – as well as the lurking uncertainties that might threaten positive change. This would seem to be manifested in the emerging melodies soon met by dissonance, erratic collisions and near silence, as well as the eerie manipulation of the double-tracked vocals. Ishibashi’s underlying concerns ring true more widely of course. Hyakki Yagyō is a work of multiplicities, and mystery, a landscape where nothing is as it seems at first, and everything is vulnerable to sudden violent interruptions.

The album was produced with regular collaborators Jim O’Rourke (double bass) and Joe Talia (percussion), and features dancer and choreographer Ryuichi Fujimura performing Ikkyū’s satirical tanka. O’Rourke’s immersive mix creates a three-dimensional effect, with Ishibashi’s various sound sources enmeshing and interacting in captivating ways.

Pressed on coloured vinyl and presented in a deluxe package with an inner sleeve featuring an artist portrait and liner notes from Eiko Ishibashi.
Cover and label design by Shuhei Abe.
Back cover design by Lasse Marhaug.
Mixed and mastered by Jim O’Rourke. 

Ston Elaióna is John Also Bennett’s first album for Shelter Press since his 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe. The American born, Athens, Greece, based flautist, synthesist, and composer weaves a strikingly singular electroacoustic excursion for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the golden haze of the early morning hours - bending time at the otherworldly juncture of consciousness and place. Translating from Greek as “in the olive grove”, Ston Elaióna is permeated with the ambiences of the ancient and present world, guided into form by a playfully rigorous approach to sound.

Initially emerging during the mid 2000s as part of Columbus, Ohio’s noise scene, before relocating to NYC around 2010, Bennett’s diverse activities picked up an increasing sense of pace over the following decade - performing and recording as a solo artist (JAB), with the trio Forma and with CV & JAB, his prolific duo with his partner Christina Vantzou, as well as playing in Jon Gibson’s ensemble among many other multifaceted collaborations. However, since 2020 the flautist and electroacoustic composer has existed in a semi nomadic state: drifting between Brooklyn, Brussels, extensive tours, and Greece, where he finally came to rest in Athens last year. Drawing upon a carefully honed attentiveness to the environments and experiences of everyday life, Ston Elaióna is a suite of nine pieces (with an additional track exclusive to physical formats), many of them composed and played live as the early morning sun touched the Parthenon, in full view from Bennett’s studio window in Athens. Bennett’s refinement and restraint, honed over his years adrift, led him to adopt a limited palette focused on his primary instrument, the bass flute, and a Yamaha DX7ii synthesizer tuned to just intonation scales. Alongside a handful of other keyboards, digital oscillators triggered by his flute, and occasional field recordings, this simple palette is reflected by the deeply emotive sense of minimalism that permeates the album’s two sides.

Following two solo albums defined by outward facing temperaments - 2022’s Out there in the middle of nowhere (Poole Music), which used a lap steel guitar and generative oscillators to evoke the surreal landscapes of the South Dakota badlands, and the largely synthetic atmospheres of the 2024 anthology Music For Save Rooms 1 & 2 (Editions Basilic) - the shift in Bennett’s worldly circumstances offered an intuitive return to the calm, inward states of creative exploration that have historically defined JAB’s sound. In parallel, context provided clear sources of inspiration for many of the album’s themes, as well as sources for some of its sounds. The aura of Greece, from the ancient to the present, from its stones and olive groves to its traffic, figures heavily across Στον Ελαιώνα (Ston Elaióna)’s two sides.

The album’s title track and opener “Ston Elaiona” is but one key to opening the album’s multilayered worlds: swells of intertwining of bass flute, oscillators, and DX7ii channel feelings of playful contentment felt by Bennett when “in the olive grove” or in his apartment, reflecting quiet moments spent among the ancient hills of the noisy city that he now calls home. Drawing upon chance encounters within daily life, the flowing synthesizer tones of “Gecko Pads” dance in motions that seem to mimic the movements of a house gecko that appeared on a wall of Bennett’s studio - a quick dash, and then stillness - while “Hailstorm” expands this vision of domestic intimacy, playing the rise and fall of bass flute melodies against the captured sounds of an intense storm outside: a potent sonic metaphor for his intra and extra worlds. As the sharpness and depth of Ston Elaióna comes into focus, playfully threaded amongst its seductive tonal interplay, we encounter Bennett moving across dimensions of time, topical experience, and layers of cultural conjunction. Like “Hailstorm”, “Easter Daydream” incorporates field recording, but here his flute tones are joined by urban ambience and subtle punctuations of melody and rhythm, captured from a day long bell procession at the small church across the street from his apartment during Orthodox Holy Week, seeding the composition with a deep sense of immediacy and place that draw consciousness well beyond the limits of sound.

Moving the narrative possibilities further out into the landscape, “A Handful of Olives” utilizes Bennett’s technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with another instrument - in this case, fluctuating modular synth drones underscoring the glacial melodies of his bass flute. Immersive and meditative, the piece’s title nods to the resilience of a character from a Nikos Kazantzakis novel, who begins a long journey across the countryside with nothing but some wine, a piece of cheese, and a handful of olives. “First Lament” is the oldest work on Ston Elaióna, having been performed live by Bennett, in evolving states, for the past three or four years. A strongly affecting exercise in deep listening, meditation, and sometimes emotional catharsis, like “A Handful of Olives” it utilizes his technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with the flute, extending and overlapping resonances to create tone clusters that hang in the air with an otherworldly effect, echoing Bennett’s heartfelt yet restrained melodies of lament.

Tapping a sense of dualism endemic to Greece, where the ancient world continues to occupy the present day, both “Sacred House” and “Oracle” refer to the building that housed the Oracle of Ancient Dodoni in Epirus, where people have continued to seek guidance or assistance from the gods for thousands of years, in modern times by hanging small notes on the tree within its grounds. Unaccompanied pieces composed and played on Bennett’s just intoned synths, each positions haunting, slow paced melodies - imbued with metaphysical and spiritual weight - as bridges that span the millennia and diverse states of the conscious and unconscious mind. With “Seikilos Epitaph”, Bennett takes his immersion into the subcutaneous depths of Ancient Greece one step further. The piece is a version of the oldest known surviving complete musical composition, found notated in Greek on a stone pillar / stele on the site of an ancient village. Played on his DX7ii, and subtly permeated with field recordings of environmental sounds, his brilliant rendering builds bridges between the present and the distant time Bennett calls forth: another key, equal to the title track, to unlocking the album’s lingering depths.

John Also Bennett’s Ston Elaióna forms an elegantly rigorous world of electroacoustic sonority, bridging the expanse of time with the immediacies of environment and happening in the here and now: a profound sonic mediation on the countless dimensions unlocked by life in Greece.

Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song. Placenta is announced on April 11th, 2024, a date chosen because it is the 1st solar return of Moss Niño (a new being in human form, who Carlos and his partner Annelise are Earth parents of). Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular artistic collaborator with Carlos) he felt total Inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded Carlos Niño & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."