Ambient / Minimal / Drone

“Eye Of Delirious” is a long-awaited debut Muscut release of Chillera’s band bass player Ganna Bryzhata — an Odesa-based artist. An ambient LP is a Smoothy Flow Sub Nautical journey that features elements of an industrial dub of Glowing Sirens of the Black sea. REVIEWS: Ganna Bryzhata’s ethereal, shape-shifting electroacoustic experiments feel equally conducive to beatific calm and deep melancholy. Some artists require a certain measure of distance to thrive. That’s the case for Ukraine’s Ganna Bryzhata, aka Bryozone. She’s best known as the bassist of Chillera, a trio of dub aficionados who developed a gently psychedelic style of space rock in their adopted hometown of Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea. The three once considered moving to Kyiv but ultimately decided that life in the capital wasn’t for them: “It’s great to come for a while, to feel the active movement, but it sucks up the energy,” they told an interviewer in 2019. “You need to be more self-organized to live there. We are still not able to bring this chaos to order.” You can hear that refusal to adapt to the rhythms of the big city in their instrumentals, in which Afrobeat basslines and surf licks churn as blithely as the tide, unconcerned with anything beyond maintaining the breezy vibe. A similar sense of willful isolation characterizes Bryozone. Bryzhata’s solo music is a world away from Chillera’s, trading their warm blues riffs and wah-wah twang for ethereal loops and icy, atonal drones. But both projects share a timeless quality. Chillera’s records sound like they’ve spent decades gathering mold in some beachside community thrift store; Bryozone’s output might conceivably have been rescued from the flooded basement of a mid-century tape-music studio. Perhaps even more than Chillera, Bryozone is bubble music, promising an insular journey into inner space. Bryozone’s music has changed considerably since her first two EPs, 2013’s ACID FROG DAY and Ifrit. Where those records remained tethered to familiar strains of lo-fi techno and ambient dub, Eye of Delirious, her debut LP, leaves such recognizable terrain in the rear-view mirror. Across 10 varied tracks, Bryzhata explores a series of mysterious, shape-shifting visions that feel conjured out of thin air—not so much the products of silicon and circuits as the phantasmal afterimages of lysergic dreams. The sea’s rhythms hold sway over the opening tracks. “Smoothly Flow” channels tidal rhythms into a swirl of watery synths and foghorn drones—loops upon loops upon loops, submerged in a thick, grainy paste of tape hiss. It’s eerie and emotionally blank, equally conducive to beatific calm and deep melancholy. “Sub Nautica” pairs a plodding 4/4 pulse and muted dub bass with rolling waves of synth; the influence of dub—a music of ocean currents and cultural exchange—speaks, perhaps, to Odesa’s historic identity as a mercantile city. “Ghost Tribe” and “Liminal Tribe” spin hand percussion through eerie tape effects, turning pitter-pat rhythms into insect chirps and alien soundscapes; they evoke the work of Jan Jelinek, Andrew Pekler, and Muscut label head Nikolaienko, who similarly have reexamined vintage ethnographic phonography through an experimental electroacoustic lens. Some of these tracks aren’t “songs” at all—more like tricks of the light captured on foggy deadstock film. “Sequence One” arrays dissonant chirps and chimes into slippery arpeggios, somewhere between a circus carousel and a flickering asphalt mirage; “Glowing Sirens” and “Ambiency,” imbued with the otherworldly timbres of Sarah Davachi’s Vergers, suggest Aeolian harps, or long metal wires strung across a cavernous tunnel. The closing suite ventures furthest into the penumbra. The title track recalls the haunting expanses of Seefeel at their bleakest; “Fateful Torment” and “Ground Floor” are full of clomping footsteps and ominous electrical buzz, steeped in the doleful, otherworldly frequencies of mid-century explorers like Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Pauline Oliveros, and Else Marie Pade. These are the most difficult pieces on Eye of Delirious, but they might also be the most rewarding. Bryzhata’s coldly keening frequencies luxuriate in their desolate surroundings, making ghostly tendrils of feedback feel sumptuous. Resolute in their isolation, they offer an alluring glimpse of oblivion, a hand-delivered invitation to disappear. - Pitchfork, By Philip Sherburne From Odesa, sound artist Ganna Bryzhata evokes the hazy ambience of the "Black Sea Paris" The Muscut label, celebrating its 11th anniversary, describes its music of interest as ‘pseudo-archaeology’. On their website, you can see a fabricated photograph showing the uncovering of a cassette tape during excavation. Their releases focus as much on the music as the quality of the sound itself – how the equipment and methodology influence its texture and timbre, what are the side effects of the medium, and what the impact of analogue instrumentation would be. Looking at the catalog, you’ll find input on meditative structures, hunting loops, or specific archaic sounds. Nikolaienko uses a tape player and an old reel-to-reel recorder balancing musique concrète, loops, and pulsating motifs. Nikolaev makes mesmerizing synth passages, whereas Eyot Tapes incorporates cassette loops, spring reverbs, tape delays, and a modular synthesizer. As a result, they create hazy compositions packed with delay effects and reverbs, often based on swirling loops. Bryozone, the project of Odesa-based sound artist Ganna Bryzhata, follows a similar path. Until now, she released two EPs in 2016 but also plays bass guitar, creating psychedelic dub trips in the trio Chillera. Eye of Delirious offer transcends haunting and dreamlike landscapes to provide a peculiar tale. By its atmosphere, it’s difficult to disconnect it from Odesa, a sunny resort known as the Black Sea Paris or the ‘city of dreams’ as Charles King wrote. Bryzhata has recorded a heterogeneous album that sometimes draws a little on the ephemeral atmosphere created by William Basinski or Philip Jeck in their looping pieces. Her hazy ambient strands in ‘Smoothy Flow’ are reminiscent of the feeling of decay present in the music of the two mentioned composers, leaning towards monotonous impressionistic waves, as in ‘Ambiency’. In ‘Glowing Sirens’, the glitchy melody transforms into metallic ambient and creates a ghostly sound, mimicking something vaguely identifiable. ‘Sequence One’ reminds me of a stuttering record, a looped piece, an artifact that brings back memories. However, she does not fall into the obvious cliché of a hazy, indistinct, and impressionistic aesthetic – the neatly arranged compositions assemble into a diverse mosaic. She breaks ambient, dreamlike tracks with underlined beats. There is a moment of cracking the impressionistic suspension in the style of Deadbeat’s or Sun Araw’s dub synth beats, as in the pulsating trance of ‘Sub Nautica’. Sometimes it veers towards rhythmic, quasi-tribal forms as in ‘Ghost of Tribe’. Fortunately Bryozone is not singing and not going in a dream-pop direction – this is a non-obvious, evocative, in a way visual, and narrative soundtrack to the journey to the Black Sea coast. Or elsewhere in the middle of hot summer, as this album with scraps of rhythm, melodies, and hazy vision of sunny afterimages catch with a very impressive and suggestive story. - The Quietus, by Jakub Knera Ukraine’s Muscut keep ‘em coming with Odesa artist Bryozone’s bittersweet, subaquatic ambient fantasies for fans of Spencer Clark, Jürgen Müller, Pataphysical ‘Eye of Delirious’ is the debut album by Ganna Bryzhata aka Bryozone, who hails from the historic Black Sea port city of Odesa, and also plays bass in the band Chillera when they’re not making this type of beautifully detuned dream-food. Following in the glistening wake of work by Pavel Milyakov, Stanislav Tolkachev and Nikolajev on Muscut, the album arrives with no mention or implication that Europe’s most tragic war in a century is occurring in the background, as Bryozone proceeds to project 40 minutes of transportive music as elegantly alien as jellyfish. The 10 tracks are defined by a taste for curdled silicon and and elusive ambient contouring that lends the lushest, disorienting listen. Slipping in head first with the silty early AFXian pads of ’Smoothy Flow’ the set vacillates strains of dub techno and impressionistic ambient in an effortlessly enchanting flow from he sliding pitches of ‘Sequence One’ and the seductive harmonies of ‘Glowing Sirens’, to limn Atlantean creatures with Spencer Clark-like animism in ‘Ghost Tribe’. They tease beautifully buoyant ambience into more quizzical, queasy space on ‘Ambience’, and the likes of ‘Liminal Tribe and ’Sub Nautical’ recalls Cru Servers weirdo club slosh, before it shores up in a submerged ‘Ground Floor’ like an imaginary soundtrack to Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’. - Boomkat A dubby, subaquatic journey into the Black Sea. Share Bryozone has not been chilling in Chillera. The Ukrainian artist is a bass player in the band, who create wonderfully breezy music in spite of their hard work ethic. The trio was formed in Odessa and takes inspiration from surf rock and lo-fi indie, channelling the experience and lifestyle of a smaller port city. They've put out two EPs on the renowned Muscut label and organised a festival to bring attention to Ukraine's south. The sea is a core part of Chillera's identity, as it is for Bryozone. On Eye Of Delirious, the artist's first solo venture in seven years, she nearly perfects a specific type of aquatic beat previously heard on Ifrit, her ambient techno and dub EP from 2016 that carried over Chillera's beachy vibes. Listening to "Ghost Tribe" on Eye Of Delirious, a visual association pops up from my memory—a moment in an Armenian cartoon where a mermaid stares into the camera with her wide eyes. It's creepy, psychedelic, and captivating. On this track, beats bubble and Bryozone evokes an underwater civilisation where this kind of character could live. With "Liminal Tribe," she makes this realm even richer with rolling, spaced-out beats that create a whole universe of creatures. It's as if she's painting a landscape. Her synths roll like waves on "Sub Nautica" and cut like frigid, winter seawater on "Sequence One." She uses field recordings—or, rather, sea recordings—to add ambience, but it's her supple rhythms that are visionary. The album's simplest track, "Ambiency," digs a deep valley to enjoy the peaks of more adventurous tracks. I wish there was more of this contrast on the title track and "Fateful Torment," which stumble into the LP's climax with weighty, post-apocalyptic drums. On "Smoothy Flow" and "Ground Floor," Bryozone uses a decaying filter, like a dying gramophone, that ties the LP to the rest of Muscut's releases and nods to the label's archival work. Eye Of Delirious is a dynamic portrait of life under the sea and it's worth diving into. - Resident Advisor

“Eye Of Delirious” is a long-awaited debut Muscut release of Chillera’s band bass player Ganna Bryzhata — an Odesa-based artist. An ambient LP is a Smoothy Flow Sub Nautical journey that features elements of an industrial dub of Glowing Sirens of the Black sea. REVIEWS: Ganna Bryzhata’s ethereal, shape-shifting electroacoustic experiments feel equally conducive to beatific calm and deep melancholy. Some artists require a certain measure of distance to thrive. That’s the case for Ukraine’s Ganna Bryzhata, aka Bryozone. She’s best known as the bassist of Chillera, a trio of dub aficionados who developed a gently psychedelic style of space rock in their adopted hometown of Odesa, a port city on the Black Sea. The three once considered moving to Kyiv but ultimately decided that life in the capital wasn’t for them: “It’s great to come for a while, to feel the active movement, but it sucks up the energy,” they told an interviewer in 2019. “You need to be more self-organized to live there. We are still not able to bring this chaos to order.” You can hear that refusal to adapt to the rhythms of the big city in their instrumentals, in which Afrobeat basslines and surf licks churn as blithely as the tide, unconcerned with anything beyond maintaining the breezy vibe. A similar sense of willful isolation characterizes Bryozone. Bryzhata’s solo music is a world away from Chillera’s, trading their warm blues riffs and wah-wah twang for ethereal loops and icy, atonal drones. But both projects share a timeless quality. Chillera’s records sound like they’ve spent decades gathering mold in some beachside community thrift store; Bryozone’s output might conceivably have been rescued from the flooded basement of a mid-century tape-music studio. Perhaps even more than Chillera, Bryozone is bubble music, promising an insular journey into inner space. Bryozone’s music has changed considerably since her first two EPs, 2013’s ACID FROG DAY and Ifrit. Where those records remained tethered to familiar strains of lo-fi techno and ambient dub, Eye of Delirious, her debut LP, leaves such recognizable terrain in the rear-view mirror. Across 10 varied tracks, Bryzhata explores a series of mysterious, shape-shifting visions that feel conjured out of thin air—not so much the products of silicon and circuits as the phantasmal afterimages of lysergic dreams. The sea’s rhythms hold sway over the opening tracks. “Smoothly Flow” channels tidal rhythms into a swirl of watery synths and foghorn drones—loops upon loops upon loops, submerged in a thick, grainy paste of tape hiss. It’s eerie and emotionally blank, equally conducive to beatific calm and deep melancholy. “Sub Nautica” pairs a plodding 4/4 pulse and muted dub bass with rolling waves of synth; the influence of dub—a music of ocean currents and cultural exchange—speaks, perhaps, to Odesa’s historic identity as a mercantile city. “Ghost Tribe” and “Liminal Tribe” spin hand percussion through eerie tape effects, turning pitter-pat rhythms into insect chirps and alien soundscapes; they evoke the work of Jan Jelinek, Andrew Pekler, and Muscut label head Nikolaienko, who similarly have reexamined vintage ethnographic phonography through an experimental electroacoustic lens. Some of these tracks aren’t “songs” at all—more like tricks of the light captured on foggy deadstock film. “Sequence One” arrays dissonant chirps and chimes into slippery arpeggios, somewhere between a circus carousel and a flickering asphalt mirage; “Glowing Sirens” and “Ambiency,” imbued with the otherworldly timbres of Sarah Davachi’s Vergers, suggest Aeolian harps, or long metal wires strung across a cavernous tunnel. The closing suite ventures furthest into the penumbra. The title track recalls the haunting expanses of Seefeel at their bleakest; “Fateful Torment” and “Ground Floor” are full of clomping footsteps and ominous electrical buzz, steeped in the doleful, otherworldly frequencies of mid-century explorers like Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Pauline Oliveros, and Else Marie Pade. These are the most difficult pieces on Eye of Delirious, but they might also be the most rewarding. Bryzhata’s coldly keening frequencies luxuriate in their desolate surroundings, making ghostly tendrils of feedback feel sumptuous. Resolute in their isolation, they offer an alluring glimpse of oblivion, a hand-delivered invitation to disappear. - Pitchfork, By Philip Sherburne From Odesa, sound artist Ganna Bryzhata evokes the hazy ambience of the "Black Sea Paris" The Muscut label, celebrating its 11th anniversary, describes its music of interest as ‘pseudo-archaeology’. On their website, you can see a fabricated photograph showing the uncovering of a cassette tape during excavation. Their releases focus as much on the music as the quality of the sound itself – how the equipment and methodology influence its texture and timbre, what are the side effects of the medium, and what the impact of analogue instrumentation would be. Looking at the catalog, you’ll find input on meditative structures, hunting loops, or specific archaic sounds. Nikolaienko uses a tape player and an old reel-to-reel recorder balancing musique concrète, loops, and pulsating motifs. Nikolaev makes mesmerizing synth passages, whereas Eyot Tapes incorporates cassette loops, spring reverbs, tape delays, and a modular synthesizer. As a result, they create hazy compositions packed with delay effects and reverbs, often based on swirling loops. Bryozone, the project of Odesa-based sound artist Ganna Bryzhata, follows a similar path. Until now, she released two EPs in 2016 but also plays bass guitar, creating psychedelic dub trips in the trio Chillera. Eye of Delirious offer transcends haunting and dreamlike landscapes to provide a peculiar tale. By its atmosphere, it’s difficult to disconnect it from Odesa, a sunny resort known as the Black Sea Paris or the ‘city of dreams’ as Charles King wrote. Bryzhata has recorded a heterogeneous album that sometimes draws a little on the ephemeral atmosphere created by William Basinski or Philip Jeck in their looping pieces. Her hazy ambient strands in ‘Smoothy Flow’ are reminiscent of the feeling of decay present in the music of the two mentioned composers, leaning towards monotonous impressionistic waves, as in ‘Ambiency’. In ‘Glowing Sirens’, the glitchy melody transforms into metallic ambient and creates a ghostly sound, mimicking something vaguely identifiable. ‘Sequence One’ reminds me of a stuttering record, a looped piece, an artifact that brings back memories. However, she does not fall into the obvious cliché of a hazy, indistinct, and impressionistic aesthetic – the neatly arranged compositions assemble into a diverse mosaic. She breaks ambient, dreamlike tracks with underlined beats. There is a moment of cracking the impressionistic suspension in the style of Deadbeat’s or Sun Araw’s dub synth beats, as in the pulsating trance of ‘Sub Nautica’. Sometimes it veers towards rhythmic, quasi-tribal forms as in ‘Ghost of Tribe’. Fortunately Bryozone is not singing and not going in a dream-pop direction – this is a non-obvious, evocative, in a way visual, and narrative soundtrack to the journey to the Black Sea coast. Or elsewhere in the middle of hot summer, as this album with scraps of rhythm, melodies, and hazy vision of sunny afterimages catch with a very impressive and suggestive story. - The Quietus, by Jakub Knera Ukraine’s Muscut keep ‘em coming with Odesa artist Bryozone’s bittersweet, subaquatic ambient fantasies for fans of Spencer Clark, Jürgen Müller, Pataphysical ‘Eye of Delirious’ is the debut album by Ganna Bryzhata aka Bryozone, who hails from the historic Black Sea port city of Odesa, and also plays bass in the band Chillera when they’re not making this type of beautifully detuned dream-food. Following in the glistening wake of work by Pavel Milyakov, Stanislav Tolkachev and Nikolajev on Muscut, the album arrives with no mention or implication that Europe’s most tragic war in a century is occurring in the background, as Bryozone proceeds to project 40 minutes of transportive music as elegantly alien as jellyfish. The 10 tracks are defined by a taste for curdled silicon and and elusive ambient contouring that lends the lushest, disorienting listen. Slipping in head first with the silty early AFXian pads of ’Smoothy Flow’ the set vacillates strains of dub techno and impressionistic ambient in an effortlessly enchanting flow from he sliding pitches of ‘Sequence One’ and the seductive harmonies of ‘Glowing Sirens’, to limn Atlantean creatures with Spencer Clark-like animism in ‘Ghost Tribe’. They tease beautifully buoyant ambience into more quizzical, queasy space on ‘Ambience’, and the likes of ‘Liminal Tribe and ’Sub Nautical’ recalls Cru Servers weirdo club slosh, before it shores up in a submerged ‘Ground Floor’ like an imaginary soundtrack to Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’. - Boomkat A dubby, subaquatic journey into the Black Sea. Share Bryozone has not been chilling in Chillera. The Ukrainian artist is a bass player in the band, who create wonderfully breezy music in spite of their hard work ethic. The trio was formed in Odessa and takes inspiration from surf rock and lo-fi indie, channelling the experience and lifestyle of a smaller port city. They've put out two EPs on the renowned Muscut label and organised a festival to bring attention to Ukraine's south. The sea is a core part of Chillera's identity, as it is for Bryozone. On Eye Of Delirious, the artist's first solo venture in seven years, she nearly perfects a specific type of aquatic beat previously heard on Ifrit, her ambient techno and dub EP from 2016 that carried over Chillera's beachy vibes. Listening to "Ghost Tribe" on Eye Of Delirious, a visual association pops up from my memory—a moment in an Armenian cartoon where a mermaid stares into the camera with her wide eyes. It's creepy, psychedelic, and captivating. On this track, beats bubble and Bryozone evokes an underwater civilisation where this kind of character could live. With "Liminal Tribe," she makes this realm even richer with rolling, spaced-out beats that create a whole universe of creatures. It's as if she's painting a landscape. Her synths roll like waves on "Sub Nautica" and cut like frigid, winter seawater on "Sequence One." She uses field recordings—or, rather, sea recordings—to add ambience, but it's her supple rhythms that are visionary. The album's simplest track, "Ambiency," digs a deep valley to enjoy the peaks of more adventurous tracks. I wish there was more of this contrast on the title track and "Fateful Torment," which stumble into the LP's climax with weighty, post-apocalyptic drums. On "Smoothy Flow" and "Ground Floor," Bryozone uses a decaying filter, like a dying gramophone, that ties the LP to the rest of Muscut's releases and nods to the label's archival work. Eye Of Delirious is a dynamic portrait of life under the sea and it's worth diving into. - Resident Advisor

As an avid believer that some songs shine only under the right circumstances Balduin doesn't shy away from weaving repetitive loops with patterns of ambience just to let some hands-up moments unfold every now and then. He doesn't like to think in categories. This approach is also reflected in his diverse musical productions. By reinterpreting genre-specific elements, discovering unheard soundscapes and with a good portion of nostalgia, he sculpts little stories that vibe on dancefloors and in living rooms alike. Following multiple appearances on labels like QC Records, Kompakt or his own GLYK imprint – DJ Balduin lands on KANN with a full lengths worth of downtempo, ambient and extasy inspired house cuts. Concrete Mimosa rolls out with 11 tracks to shine in full effect.

Properly stunning fever-dreamweaving on this new one from Zaumne, occupying an elevated space at the intersection of flickering dub-pop and ASMR soundscaping. If you’re into anything from HTRK to Malibu, Félicia Atkinson to Voice Actor, consider it a major life enhancement. For his Sferic debut, Zaumne enlists YL Hooi - a constant source of inspiration for many of us here, as well as Metoronori and the muted sax of Patrick Shiroishi. Loosely inspired by Baudelaire’s ‘Flowers of Evil’ (soft spoken extracts of which appear throughout), the album is a sort of exercise in escapism and sensual wandering. Throughout ‘Parfum’, faded pop is fleshed out with surreal elegance: all flickering neon and half-heard whispers suggestive of blurred late night fantasies; liminal, abstract, and highly evocative. Sounds hang in the air like incense, caressing the senses with an intentionality that's missing from so much landfill ambient. On opening track 'Voyageur’ he sets the scene with pastoral field recordings, dragging a pitched voice and elongated pads through a rhythmic throb that reduces dub techno to a faint knock. There are echoes of music from the fringes of the afterhours club scene too: Andrew Pekler's obscure imaginary landscapes, Jake Muir's druggy bathhouse vapours, DJ Lostboi’s balmy introspection. But despite a shared bleary–eyed aesthetic, Zaumne’s sound is more explicit and well defined, and with it brings a more acute emotional pull. When YL Hooi appears on 'Sorcières', her voice; drenched in reverb but absolutely crystalline, takes proceedings to a whole other level, reminding us of Natalie Beridze’s perennially overlooked ‘The Wrestler’ from her 2003 album for Thomas Brinkmann’s Max Ernst label; a sort of echo chamber dub perfectly re-imagined as dreampop. A whispered French vocal introduces us to 'Éther', a smoked cloud of looping synths and twinkling bells, and on 'Nymphes’ a wash of pads, wind chimes and waves lapping at the shore somehow manages to swerve all the associated schmaltz you’d imagine and instead gives us the same tingling sensation we had when we first heard Art of Noise’s ‘In Visible Silence’ at dusk, on a beach in the south of France, what seems like forever ago. There's a ritualistic quality to Zaumne’s music too, as if he's burning rare gums and mosses over smoldering coals in a remote Carpathian clearing. Hikari Okuyama, aka Metoronori, brings her pointed surrealism to 'Ombres', adding a softly spoken wonder to Olszewski's chimes, while Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and composer Patrick Shiroishi contributes horn curliques to 'Prairie', ushering us towards the same sonic space inhabited by Bohren und der Club of Gore and Julee Cruise.

An astonishing debut album of ambient rap that stretches saturated 808 kicks over dissociated AutoTuned vocals and glyding, amniotic bass. Every track is rolled out in regular, fast, and slurred versions, slanted and enchanted to enhance a sense of sensual, blunted delirium that comes highly recommended if yr into Future, Young Thug, Lee Gamble’s new one, Lil B, Iceboy Violet, DJ Screw. It was only a matter of time before rap and ambient merged into a full syrup, something that’s been on the cards since Lil B appeared in 2010 on DIY label Weird Forest (home to Emeralds, Hair Police and Yellow Swans) with a truly eccentric braindump of stream-of-consciousness raps laced over totally anomalous ambient pads. Iceboy Violet took it further with 'Drown To Float' in 2020, granulating the edges of tracks from Lil Durk, Thugger and Gunna, and now Yungwebster propels the sound further into the blissed abyss, and in the process provides the Sferic label with its most essential release since Space Afrika’s ‘Somewhere Decent To Live’ album in 2018. Yungwebster’s debut sweeps up tracks recorded over the last couple of years, taking the signature crawl of Southern rap that guided cloud rap's first steps (look up Viper and thank us later), and dissolving it with Ambient froth, lean-hued ATL melancholy and YouTube/TikTok micro-clique self-expression. Yungwebster is here joined by Cali producers astarii, Tavo and 6rantt, Rxmer from the Netherlands, Alabama's Sasmochi, Chicago's Dielauryn, Smooks, Cominalone, Star, local rappers Agxny and Tnotsobad, and NY producers Kacie Free and Sonofadm, all of whom contribute to the album's waved atmosphere. Each track is deployed at diff speeds, often melting into a slowed-down redux, giving a nod to DJ Screw and acknowledging the Houston original's overwhelming influence on contemporary ambient-experimental styles. He speeds things up on 'Stay FOCUSSSS', paying attention to Florida's quicker pulse, heard in music from artists like Ski Mask the Slump God and Smokepurpp, before he fades into a regular-speed coda. Through each track, Webster works like a musicologist, presenting a wide-angled view of rap that's both nostalgic and forward facing. When he references Future's most inward material (think the soul-piercing 'Monster' finale 'Codeine Crazy'), he inevitably juxtaposes those feels with euphoric risers and psychedelic pads. On 'pull it to the side' he raps over asymmetrically Eno-esque waves and delicate, skeletal 808 Mafia-inspired rhythms. Even the commanding power of Imogen Heap (not only was she sampled on Lil B and Clams Casino's 'I'm God', but Lil B's The Pack bandmate Young L made an entire album from her voice in 2011 with 'As I Float') is referenced on the record's closer 'Coraline'. Circled by ethereal chorals, Yungwebster sings to the heavens, leaving trilling hi-hats to whirr into the clouds. Real mesmerising gear, a proper AOTY contender.

As well as releasing post-classical music as Goldmund stretching back nearly two decades, American composer Keith Kenniff also uses the alias Helios to create ambient electronica. ‘Espera’ is Kenniff’s twelfth such album, and introduces a more panoramic and dynamic iteration of Helios, the woozy, hazy compositions taking on the structures and grandeur of post-rock in places.

"Minami-kaze α Wave (Southerly wind alpha wave)“ is a very rare ‘vocal piece’ that Henry Kawahara has produced, and released under the name HMD (H Music Deperception) in 1993. The song is a vocal version of the cyber-occult exotic instrumental piece "Nanpu“ included in the compilation “Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm: The Essential Henry Kawahara” [EM1197TCD/DLP]. This track is a rare example that proves he had also a genius for producing ‘pops’ in the general sense of the word, and which seems to have challenged head-on the pop songs produced by Haruomi Hosono or Tetsuya Komuro in the 80s-90s. 

The Henry Kawahara project on EM Records was developed only with the enthusiasm of proving Kawahara's existence if he is to be erased as nothing in the current art context, and we have confirmed that there are a lot of supporters all over the world for our opinion when we released "Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm" (several articles and interviews have been given). This single is a 'prescription' for the sequel, tentatively titled "Cybernetic Defiance and Orgasm 2: Other Sides of Henry Kawahara," which is currently in the process of being prepared. This 7” is a limited one-off release, not included in the compilation.

Yoshi Wada and EM Records presents the first-ever, world-premiere release of Earth Horns With Electronic Drone, recorded live in 1974. Combining four of Wada's self-made "pipehorns" (made from plumbing materials, over three meters in length), with an electronic drone tuned to the electrical current of the performance space, this is a lost masterpiece of early minimalism, placing Wada rightfully in the pantheon with La Monte Young, Phill Niblock, Maryanne Amacher and Alvin Lucier. Recorded live in Syracuse, New York, this recording captures the room-filling complex overtones generated by the ever-shifting interplay of the breathing horns and the constant electronic drone. This is a music of ritual hypnotic power, its heavy low-end mass and sense of change within constancy engendering a meditative transcendency. Earth Horns With Electronic Drone is the fourth and ultimate release in Em Records' Yoshi Wada series, a must for all fans of minimalism, heavy drones, ritual, mystery and world-shaking transcendence. From an original performance of almost three hours, the CD features a 77-minute excerpt. The full performance is also available as a 3LP set (162 minutes). From Earth horns to beyond the firmament: prepare to be elevated! Pipehorns constructed by Yoshi Wada; electronic equipment designed by Liz Phillips and Yoshi Wada; Electronics: Liz Phillips; Pipehorn Players: Jim Burton, Garrett List, Barbara Stewart and Yoshi Wada. 96khz/24bit digitally remastered, including a booklet with text in Japanese & English, and a reproduction circa-1975 Fluxus poster by George Maciunas.

The long-awaited reissue of Wada's 1985 LP Off The Wall, recorded in Berlin and originally released on the esteemed FMP-subsidiary SAJ label. A minimalist yet majestic monsterpiece ("massive," as Tom Johnson declares in his perceptive liner notes), Off The Wall features Wada and Wayne Hankin on bagpipes, Marilyn Bogerd on adapted organ, and percussionist Andreas Schmidt-Neri. The original album consisted of two side-long pieces recorded on successive days by Jost Geber, who captured the power and dynamics of the quartet without losing the meditative delicacy of the bagpipes and the intricacy of their interplay with the homemade organ (constructed by Wada), resulting in a slowly-evolving mosaic of combination tones and overtones. Simultaneously static yet changing, rooted and ethereal, homespun and alien, ancient and very modern, the music is created entirely with acoustic instruments but has "electronic" textures at times, yet is very warm and human, always pulsing, shifting and mutating. Em Records is pleased indeed to release Off The Wall for the first time ever on CD, with the bonus track "Die Konsonanten Pfeifen," a slightly earlier recording with Wada and Hankin on bagpipes and Kevin Newhoff on percussion, originally released as a cassette.

“YIAN” (燕), means swallow in Chinese, and is part of “Siew Yian,” the name given to Chua by her parents to preserve her connection with her Chinese heritage. Just as the migratory songbird lives between places, so did Chua, the artist living in the in-between of the English, Malaysian and Chinese cultures that make up her heritage. In the absence of Mandarin as a mother tongue, music became a way to express the parts of herself that couldn’t be described in words; “YIAN” emerged as a way to heal.

A deeply introspective and fully realized vessel of creative expression (Chua self-produced and engineered eight of the ten tracks), “YIAN” emerges as less an album than a worldview, a commitment to learning and uncovering one’s own selfhood honed over Chua’s lifelong reconciliation with her own personal history and identity.

Sacramento, CA duo Blank Gloss’s third album, Cornered, is an exquisite statement of pop ambient starkness, an album that oscillates between lush beauty and spare melancholy. It follows from their 2021 debut for Kompakt, Melt, an album that saw Morgan Fox (piano, synths) and Patrick Hills (guitar) aligned, loosely, with the cosmic pastorale of the ‘ambient Americana’ movement. Cornered feels like a significant step forward, though – by peeling back the layers of their music, they’ve revealed both its restful core and its solemn gravitas. It is unendingly lovely, but with something disquieting at its centre. Cornered was recorded quickly, over two days in December 2020. There’s nothing rushed or haphazard about the album, though; everything has its place, with each sonic element contributing profoundly to these nine miniature dioramas. It signals change, quietly but perceptibly, through the way the duo sculpts their material, building out of loose improvisations that morphed into songs. While there was no plan in mind when Blank Gloss settled into the studio, Fox recalls that “right away we realised that things were sounding and feeling a bit different than any of the sessions we had previously.” That difference can be heard in the increased amount of space Blank Gloss gift to their sound sources. Some of the most moving moments on Cornered come when Fox and Hills strip everything back – see, for example, “Crossing”, which sets pensive piano across a shyly humming drone and quiet arcs of guitar, recalling the driftworks of Roger Eno. Curiously, the album’s distinctive shape and mood develops, at least in part, from a change in instrumentation, with Hills using a MIDI pick-up on his guitar. “This resulted in making things happen a lot quicker,” Fox says. “It also helped create what I think is a bit more sombre, dark feeling to some of the songs.” Elsewhere, on songs like “Salt”, the piano tussles with flecks of guitar, single tones sent out to mingle with the stars, like Morricone at 16 RPM, while Cornered’s centrepiece, the eleven-minute “No Appetite”, lets long arcs of electronic texture breathe and sigh, tangling together in a cat’s cradle of bliss. Throughout, it feels as though the music is blossoming as you hear it, like watching time-lapse footage of flora in bloom. But perhaps the most seductive thing about Cornered is the sense you get, listening, that the music was something unexpected, a visitation. “It almost felt like we weren’t dictating where the music went and how it sounded,” Fox agrees. “We were just there in a room together in December and these sounds were happening, and we were lucky enough to be recording the process.”

Alva Noto’s award winning score for the 2022 German documentary film This Stolen Country of Mine directed by German filmmaker Marc Wiese features nineteen compositions to be released on NOTON in July 2023. The documentary film explores the question of a state’s sovereignty in the face of foreign powers. The film portrays Ecuadorian resistance fighters and journalists who oppose the sell-off of an extensive part of the country’s resources to Chinese investors. Alva Noto’s music subtly accompanies the struggle of a mountain village, immersing us into the film’s narrative and pathos. Across nineteen compositions, the music exposes and holds back when the images and statements of the protagonists speak for themselves, reflecting the dark shadows and the glares of hope of communal resistance. The documentary was the recipient of the German Documentary Film Music Award 2022.

RAMZi is returning home with these eight sonic quests, reanimating the dormant FATi Records, Phoebé’s own label. Feu Follets (Fire Sprites) are fireflies, flickering balls of light dancing in the dark shadows, found in fields, forests, chaparral, and scrublands, the many different landscapes of RAMZi’s whimsical adventures.

A refracted audiobook soundtracking the bathing culture of the Ottoman Baths in Budapest, cut-up from Dalia Neis’ metaphysical thriller ‘The Swarm’ ( The Elephants Press, 2023). theelephants.net/ephemera/the-swarm This is the fourth iteration of their Trans-Danubian odyssey, beginning in Dali Muru & The Polyphonic Swarm’s LP, before drifting into book form, radio show, and now audiobook. This audiobook is an updated, revised version of the original NTS show broadcasted in January 2022.

Rod Modell presents "Lanterns" - an epic journey through an evolving sonic landscape propelled by the churning momentum of reverb-soaked percussion. Red Lantern is an ode to the eerie red glow that once beckoned sailors to the port of Amsterdam - on one side, the gentle thud of a bass drum rolls beneath haunting yet uplifting pads whilst on the reverse, bubbling bass underpins echoes of a shoreline that shifts in and out of focus. Blue Lantern merges dub techno and ambient experimentation, showcasing Modell's impressive talents in sound design and the diverse influences that span his 25-year career as a musician. Warm, thunderous kicks rumble beneath restrained hints of percussion, creating an immersive soundscape allowing for music and space to envelop the listener, with the result both enticing and unsettling in equal measures. Words by Martin Gould.

2021年に〈Companion〉より登場したオーストラリア・メルボルン出身のインディ・ポップ/エクスペリメンタル・アーティスト、Kae Tama KitzlerによるプロジェクトKiTAがオランダ・アムステルダムの先鋭的レーベルであり、Maoupa MazzocchettiやSmersh、Zaliva-Dといった面々をそのカタログに擁する〈Knekelhuis〉からデビュー・アルバム『Ceramic』を発表。夢見心地で瑞々しい空気と温かくも儚げな幻想に揺れ、遠く未来へと眼差すチルアウト・アンビエント/エレクトロニクスを全3曲収録。気持ちいいいです。Wouter Brandenburgによるマスタリング仕様と盤質も万全となっています。

Out of time, alone sometimes, wide awake, thinking, I must have been here before? In a dream, or vision of a memory, and it’s hard sometimes, but I wrote this for you to ease. Something to carry with you on and on, seasons change, but the bite of Scorpio remains…. ‘So let it go, don’t be a cell to yourself.’ ‘Scorpio’ and its dubby anagram, ‘Ether,’ are brought to you by hoodie x james K. Made together, from across the ocean, this 10″ comes in the balm of heat, just before the fall. _____________________________________________ hoodie is Naemi and Shy: Naemi is a Berlin-based artist whose work encompasses a broad range of sonic aesthetics and philosophies of musical composition by way of a handful of aliases. They are most known for their work as exael, which seeks to examine the digital fragmentation of identity of contemporary life by way of alchemical reconfigurations of genre and composition. Their focus in the past few years has slowly shifted more into the vein of classic songwriting, implementing more organic instrumentation and vocals, via collaborations such as Hoodie and Baby Bong, as well as material released under their own name. Special Guest DJ/Shy "if you know, you know” 3XL cowboy, party rockin' head knockin', cyberdub hi-fi, bass n sci-fi, fast/slow, outer rim/inner edge. Michigan born, Berlin based. Resident DJ at kwia. Parties Past Present and Future: Headbangers Ball, luckY lottO, spin cycle, Dance Tutorial and Vague Music. aka Caveman LSD, fka uon, aka DJ paradise, as xphresh w/ Ben Bondy, hoodie w/ Naemi, sofa w/ Ulla. Part of cypher & thru on Appendix.Files, Critical Amnesia & Ghostride The Drift on xpq? A version of James K was born. Comprised of bones, reactive metals and a larynx with freckled eyes that catalyzes that mix, she can now see through all the schemes. This is the truth. When she chews gum, it's not clear which one of her personas does it. Since their first release in 2013, describing them separately is grunt work as they switch places, cosplay each other and would most likely lull you into a lonesome dream. Together, they know how to produce, sound, film and edit. Thus, they are brought to the table, performing and DJing in clubs and theaters, along composers and children alike. They release on Incienso, AD 93, PAN, among others, and continue to operate her label She Rocks! K provides shows for NTS, has collaborated with artists such as Yves Tumor, Beta Librae, Drew McDowall, crimeboys, and slayed her band SETH twice. She produces music that makes temporary haven for indomitable lyrics – and these are in constant flux. You can check what they are here: [917 908-1173]. It's only a part of her fairly detailed world. A world that she abandons and then builds upon.

Caterina Barbieri is an Italian composer who explores themes related to machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through a focus on minimalism.

Following 2017’s acclaimed 2LP “Patterns of Consciousness”, “Ecstatic Computation” is the new full-length LP by Caterina Barbieri. The album revolves around the creative use of complex sequencing techniques and pattern-based operations to explore the artefacts of human perception and memory processes by ultimately inducing a sense of ecstasy and contemplation. Computation is turned from being a formal, automatic writing technique into a creative, psychedelic practice to generate temporal hallucinations. A state of trance and wonder where the perception of time is distorted and challenged.

Equally nervous and ecstatic, the fast permutation of patterns can create a state where time stands still whilst simultaneously being in motion. Is this propulsive music moving forward or backward? As long as the perception of the present is constantly enhanced and refreshed in an endless sense of loss, re-discovery and the search for self-orientation this question lies mute aside the thrilling and perplexing moment of the matter at hand.

NOTON is pleased to announce the release of Subterraneans, a collaborative EP featuring Alva Noto, Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore and William Basinski’s cover of David Bowie’s homonymous song. Recorded in 1975, Subterraneans is the closing song of David Bowie’s 1977 album Low. The composition was initially intended for the soundtrack to the 1976 science fiction drama film The Man Who Fell to Earth. This song has a personal meaning to me. It was partly recorded in West Berlin at the Hansa Studio. According to Bowie, “Subterraneans” refers to the people who remained in East Berlin and lived in East Germany after the wall was built. In 1977 I was twelve years old and among the “Subterraneans” the song evoked. It still resonates within me, forty-five years after its original release.” – Carsten Nicolai A tribute of the three artists to Bowie’s work, the EP features an instrumental version and an edit by Alva Noto on electronics with Depeche Mode’s Martin L. Gore on the vocal and William Basinski on the saxophone.
 Composed by David Bowie Cover art designed by Carsten Nicolai Mastering by Bo @ Calyx

Celebrating 25 years since its release, ‘Time Was GIGANTIC… When we were kids’, the seminal 1998 album by The Durutti Column is released on vinyl for the first time, and reissued on CD. The band and lead member Vini Reilly were one of the first signings to Antony Wilson’s Factory Records, and ‘Time Was GIGANTIC…’ was the final Factory Records release for The Durutti Column and the last release for the label before it closed. Formats are double heavyweight vinyl and digipak CD. Both formats are re-mastered and feature 5 bonus tracks: It’s Your Life, Babe - Kiss of Def - In the City - New Order Tribute - Drinking Song (version) . The new edition features extensive liner notes by Factory Records and band expert James Nice, and the original artwork has been revisited by the original designers 8VO (Mark Holt and Hamish Muir).The band (and in particular the guitar playing of Vini) has developed a cult following over the past 40 years with fans of the band including Brian Eno, John Frusciante (who called Vini “the best guitarist in the world”, The Avalanches, The Chromatics, Jonny Marr and John Cooper Clarke to name a few.

Artwork by Eyrie Alzate Additional Artwork by Alexandra Ragg Mastered by Joseph Buchan

Music From Memory are excited to present 'hyphea', a new album by Montreal based artist Phoebé Guillemot aka RAMZi. Featuring ten mind-melting tracks ‘hyphae’ is RAMZi’s latest sonic quest and is based around sketches she originally made as a score for a documentary about mushrooms called 'Fun Fungi' (directed by Frederic Lavoie). Recorded between November 2021 and May 2022, writing 'hyphea' began as an attempt to transcend boredom and frustrations imposed by severe restrictions during the pandemic. For Phoebé the album was a way to reconnect with her alter ego RAMZi; who's energy brought her back to uniquely mystical feelings and hope for future magical adventures. RAMZi is a wild spirit from the forest and refers to a parallel autonomous world that keeps evolving. In Phoebé’s own words: “The music remains as a doorway to that world. It has never been about me, I always see that entity bigger than myself. The process of writing 'hyphea' was rather intuitive. I don’t think about styles of music before producing tracks. Those are more like an adventure in itself, each one set in a different ecosystem.”

Demdike Stare reunite with guitarist Jon Collin for a new album of concréte dreamweaving performed on tape, pedals and a homemade Swedish nyckelharpa - a type of keyed fiddle. More psychedelic than either of the trio's previous records, 'Minerals' drops the blues to dive headfirst into the smudged folk wellspring, touching on the pastoral ambience of Andrew Chalk via Loren Connors’ immersive drift and Tongue Depressor's subterranean drone expeditions. With the trio all hailing from the Pennine moorlands just above the manc sprawl, Jon Collin & Demdike Stare’s shared musical expression understandably reflects a parallax purview that follows leylines between lusher nooks of the inner city and windswept, barren landscapes. Never ones to play it straight, the Swedish Nyckelharpa - a sort of hybrid viola/hurdy gurdy - is deployed deep into a mix of oblique soundscaping, seeping into a swirl of field recordings, screwed spoken word and phosphorescent drones pinging with tape delay. Split into two distinct sides, the album opens with a scrape of wood and metal that introduces us to the nyckelharpa. Scratching its surface and strings, Collin reveals its peculiar tonality, while Demdike cut through its dissonant textures. Like ancient campfire rituals recorded to decaying 1/4" tape, the music on ‘Minerals’ feels as if it's in dialog with the past, shuttled into the present by abstract processes. By the side’s third act, resonant gongs billow around pitched wails that eventually collapse into silence. The second side is more spirited, opening with a thumbed kalimba cut through reverberant strings that recall Arthur Russell's iconic echo-drenched recordings. Through elaborate concréte techniques, Collin's ancient fiddle dissolves into a ferric gloop that’s slowly pulled apart like toffee, taking it to a place where you can no longer really tell what you’re listening to or how it was made. In fact, unlike pretty much everything we’ve heard from Demdike before, the material here feels mechanical rather than electronic, making for one of the most impactful, unusual releases in the vast sprawl of their catalogue thus far.