Ambient / Minimal / Drone

French lifeguard and sonic artist Roméo Poirier’s long sold out debut tape finally gets a vinyl reissue. Plage Arrière is a deep sea meditation on a constellation of Greek beaches across three islands. Trumpets, echo-clicks and Harold Budd-esque shimmer piano whirl together on these sand-caked missives, tumbled and re-engineered by their surroundings like seaglass. Plage evokes the sub-aqeaous ambitions of Jürgen Müller, or Jan Jelinek inspecting a coral reef. The album has been remastered for vinyl by Sam Annand of Esk. Building on its original artwork, the vinyl edition features new photography by Roméo himself. Released alongside our friends SWIMS.

Following its release in the winter of 2018, "Landmarks", a collaboration between veteran ambient artists Celer and Forest Management, initially drew quiet accolades and a steadfast listenership that has since swelled to unimagined proportions (~20 Mil. streams), resonating with listeners perhaps now more than ever and cementing its status as an experimental classic. Inspired by Paul Theroux's novel "The Mosquito Coast" and Peter Weir's 1986 film adaptation of that book, "Landmarks" sets out 14 tracks in a "stunning hour of music" (The Quietus) that creates a "general sense of foreboding, critique of romantic retreat into individualism and colonialism" (A Closer Listen). The album is now offered on vinyl for the first time (originally out on cassette tape), newly remastered by Stephan Mathieu to enhance the depth and richness of this oneiric soundscape. Both Americans, Celer (Will Long) resides in Tokyo, Japan and Forest Management (John Daniel) in Chicago, USA. "Landmarks" was born of their months-long collaboration, trading music back and forth and reshaping each other's work using a series of patches, tape looping, and electronic manipulation. As a throughline in each piece we hear their distinct voices and cultural contexts blend to unique, often otherworldly effect, conjuring a dreamlike tension that refuses easy resolution. We are hooked by a mood that captured listeners back in 2018 and continues to hold us today in the context of current events, related disquietudes, and a nostalgic longing for solutions that may be more imaginary than real.

During the early days of Deepchord Records, Detroit's transient and forgotten subculture musically inspired label founders Mike Schommer and Rod Modell in significant ways. The apex of Mike's creative fixation with the city was in 2001 when he recorded the Von Schommer album dc15. To capture the nature of the environment he found so fascinating, Schommer recorded the project at the Crown Motel in Detroit, Michigan. While overlooking the transient life displayed in the motel courtyard, Mike crafted lonely tones from his modular synthesizer and mixed them with his rudimentary DIY electronics. Still, most significantly, he allowed the music to become impregnated by the environment (much like the stains in the permanently soiled carpets of the motel room floor), creating a holistic experience that remains close to his heart almost 25 years later. Initially available as a limited edition preorder cdr to the Hypereal 313 maillist, the album has been remastered and is now available on color vinyl for the first time.

Original photography and treatments on tracks untitled 4 and untitled 10 by Rod Modell. 

Labels Theory Therapy and co:clear come together to release the debut album by Italy-based artist CHANTSSSS. ‘Shyness’ suggests something subtle, intricate and ethereal – but it also demands your attention. Over 10 tracks of spacious, sub-aquatic ambience, CHANTSSSS pulls you deep into his vaporous sound world. The songs themselves, a blend of ambient pop, chamber music and pulsing low end rhythms, feel cloaked in mystery. Layers of reverb and zonked vocals float in the atmosphere, moving between and through one another, mist on mist. It’s not necessarily a quiet record, the low end can shake a room if you turn the volume up, but it does feel extremely intimate – proof that some art speaks loudest in its quietest moments. We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of the Country upon which Theory Therapy and Low End Theorists was founded, and recognise that sovereignty has not been ceded. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

Moon Glyph Records head Steve Rosborough returns as Omni Gardens with a brand new album entitled “Golden Pear”. The fuzzy, warm and buoyant moog timbres of “Moss King” return but “Golden Pear” is a dreamier and more lush affair; incorporating a wider palette including mellotron flutes, vibraphones, marimbas and self-captured field recordings. A tranquil, pop atmosphere permeates the album as the songs flutter between bleary, unhurried tunes, warbly soundscapes and odes to lazy afternoons. Created for relaxed home listening, this is “Golden Pear”.

Oval Angle is the moniker of Geran Knol, a Dutch multidisciplinary visual artist and musician based in Antwerp, Belgium. His instrumental electronic music blends mellow and playful tones, characterized by plucky, offbeat sound design and wavering, askew melodies. Geran’s composition process is akin to a sketch on paper, slowly evolving and mutating as elements are added, subtracted, and altered. His debut LP for Moon Glyph, “Figures of Speech”, utilizes circular, melodic repetition found in minimalist compositions and avant-pop songforms. Like Geran’s visual art, it masterfully captures a sense of child-like wonder and wide-eyed naiveté.

It’s not difficult to find beauty in the sounds of nature – ocean waves, birdsong, rainfall – but it's easy to overlook the charm and wonder of everyday anthropogenic sounds. Equal parts reverent and playful, Normal Sounds is built around field recordings of human-made, non-musical sounds: fridge drones, grocery store beeps, car horns. Lia Kohl alternately hallows and mimics them, offering them to the listener in a new light. Using a textural cloud of cello and synthesizers, with a few notable contributions from wind players Ka Baird and Patrick Shiroishi, Kohl brings out beauty in the world’s inane noise. This interest in the mundane is not new to Kohl. Normal Sounds follows a series of pieces – The Ceiling Reposes, Untitled Radio, Variations on a Topography – which use field recordings of AM/FM radio as centerpieces. Her work hones in on unnoticed or under-documented sounds: the things we tend to tune out or hear passively. Many of the field recordings on Normal Sounds are functional, indicating danger (tornado siren, car alarms), fun (ice cream truck) or change (“the seatbelt sign is on”, “please take your receipt”). Others are simply byproducts of machine function: the drone of a fridge or airplane. While they’re sometimes intended to be heard, they’re not intended to be listened to. For Kohl, her treatment of these sounds acts as a practice of attention, or in her words “a practice of trying to be more alive.” Often this practice takes the form of mimicry: harmonizing the already-present frequencies of a tennis court light with cello harmonics, or cheekily pairing car horns with Shiroishi’s saxophone. Sometimes, she augments the soundscape more dramatically, pulling it in a new direction with melodic cello or arpeggiated synths. It’s occasionally unclear whether a sound comes from her or the world around her. She nestles each field recording into a bed of her own sounds, inviting us to listen to the world through her ears.

Motion Ward’s ambient incubator drop shimmering shoegaze dream-pop and smudged downbeats for lovers of HTRK, A.R. Kane, Perila - issued in a limited CD edition. Pairing Kiwi musician Ike Zwanikken with vocalist Brooklyn Mellar, Hysterical Love Project subtly muddle the foggy memory banks of late ‘80s/early ‘90s shoegaze/dream-pop with prompts from Balearic downbeats and canny compression techniques that lend it a patina of micro-dosed psychedelic sensuality. Perfectly strung out on a late night tip, it flows from the bed-ways lullaby pop and back-combed partials of ‘Miracle-Mouthed’ to the beautifully out-of-reach gauze of ‘Cement’ via delectable highlights of ‘90s trip-pop in the slow-motion acidic lather and forlorn vox of ‘Ionian Sea’, and dreamily headlong wind-tunnel motion of ‘Boyracer’, while ‘Come 2 Me, My Baby’ and ’Sever/Strike’ are unmistakably redolent of HTRK, and likewise the weightless strums of ‘Lavender’ that show they can transfix attention without the beats. Definitely one to watch.

NTS presents European Primitive Guitar, a compilation of instrumental guitar compositions, mapping out European analogues of the American Primitive Guitar movement, spearheaded by John Fahey in the 1950s. European Primitive Guitar spans works directly influenced by and responding to Fahey’s approach to composition, alongside works by artists that arrived at similar conclusions independently. The music is, at once, both starkly traditional and contemporary. This is no more evident than with the opening song on the compilation, Spanish guitarist Albert Giménez’s 1982 composition Conte Xinès. The song draws on numerous idioms of music - flamenco, jazz, ambient music, and guitar soli - within its shimmering arpeggios, culminating as a decidedly Spanish music that has collected the ephemera of the guitar’s travels before returning home. The compilation also explores wider ideas around experimentalism happening in Europe during the time of this anthology. German composer Hans Reichel not only developed new ways of playing the instrument, but also new ways of building guitars - pushing the boundary of what a guitar could be and how it could sound. Ahead of its full release, listen/download material from Maurizio Angeletti (Italy, 1983), Albert Giménez (Spain, 1982) and Peter Finger (Germany, 1974). The physical release is accompanied by an extended essay from The Hum’s Bradford Bailey.

'Teratai Åkande' explores electronic techniques transforming sounds, melodies, and rhythms from balinese gamelan. It's an interaction and synthesis of acoustic and electronic expressions, exploring an imagined territory between two otherwise separate cultural worlds. On 'Teratai Åkande' the Copenhagen-based producer and electronic musician Anton Friisgaard travels new paths, as he explores gamelan music from his own artistic perspective in close collaboration with Balinese musicians, afliated with Ubud’s acclaimed Gamelan scene. After experiencing a concert with the Gamelan ensemble 'Gamelan Salukat' at Roskilde Festival in 2018, Friisgaard became inspired to contact Dewa Alit from the ensemble. With the aim of bringing forth a unique expression through the meeting of two distinct musical traditions, Friisgaard traveled to Ubud, Bali to record, compose and improvise in close collaboration with artists from the esteemed Gamelan scene in Ubud. The result is 'Teratai Åkande', which features Pande Made Gangga Sentana, I Nyoman Suwida, Dewa Badukz, Suryana Putra and Pande Made Gangga of Gamelan Salukat. Anton Friisgaard (fka Hviledag) is an electronic producer and musician based in Copenhagen. Known primarily for his experimental work with tape loops and ambient soundscapes, he’s become an established figure both in the Danish music scene as well as internationally.

Multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Jesse Peterson is the heart and constant thread of the musical project Turn On The Sunlight. 'You Belong' is the fifth in an ongoing series of records that Peterson has made with a community of his close friends and collaborators, including his beloved wife, Mia Doi Todd, bright Orange laughter luminary Laraaji, experimental and folkloric visionary Luis Pérez Ixoneztli, and his frequent partner in rhyme, percussionist and producer Carlos Niño. The sound here is a perfect mixture of folk, ambient, spiritual jazz and peaceful open space improvisational flow. 'You Belong' was made in the Glendale, California, Home Studio of Peterson and Todd during 2021 and 2022. "The sudden shift in expectations and trajectory that I and many people have experienced in the past couple of years allowed me to access certain feelings and memories from the more distant past that might have been less accessible before, which probably accounts for my sudden urge to reach out to Cavana," recounts Peterson of the album's main featured collaborator Cavana Lee. "Making the album was a helpful way of working through these thoughts and feelings because of the high level of expression that the participating musicians brought to it, like I was being led by their example. ‘You Belong’ is the most collaborative of all the Turn On The Sunlight records," Peterson continues, "in that almost every song features different musicians. It grew out of a variety of collaborations in our home studio and incorporates friends recording themselves in other locations throughout the world, so it felt like the circle was growing as the album grew, which was a nice feeling. Cavana's singing is a new element and it was exciting to hear how her voice brought out the heart of the music." At the center of the 4 key pieces that weave this album together is a truly unique symbiosis between Peterson and Cavana Lee (who met in boarding school in 1992). Lee (the daughter of magical jazz, avant-garde singer Jeanne Lee and multi-instrumentalist, composer, band leader, independent record label pioneer Gunter Hampel) remembers what it was like when she heard from Peterson out of the blue about whether she was open to writing and recording to several of his new pieces. "We were in the middle of the pandemic," recalls Lee, who lives in Berlin, "and the music industry had stopped where it was. As a singer, I suddenly had no access to public venues… I had just given up my singing space because that was forbidden in Germany at that time. Just then Jesse reached out and asked if I was interested… I was very slow in recording because I had very low digital skills at the time… I am quite an analog person. I remember the reaction I had when I heard the piece we now call “You Belong", with Laraaji. It was so full of life’s facets and in touch with Nature, I felt inspired to dedicate my voice in this song to the natural spirit of the Universe (at least how I perceive it). Also inspired by the space journeys of Sun Ra and my own father's improvised compositions, I imagine that this is what the wind, the sun, any of the elements that travel through space and the ethers would say to human beings right now. A message full of Love and Connection at a time where things felt really disconnected and disjointed. I needed this message for myself, I suppose. That’s how that track developed," Lee reflects, "it brought me there." 'You Belong' finds Peterson as the catalyst for and caretaker of advanced togetherness where an array of adventurous musicians and creative artists are featured atop and intertwined with his swirling foundations and welcoming arrangements. In addition to everyone mentioned above, “You Belong” has contributions from gyil master SK Kakraba, saxophonist Randal Fisher, trumpeter Sean Okaguchi, guitarist Fabiano Do Nascimento, keyboardist Surya Botofasina, experimentalist Sam Gendel, bassist Ricardo Dias Gomes, bass clarinetist Pablo Calogero, flautist Aisha Mars, pianist Jamael Dean, drummers Andres Renteria and Efa Etoroma Jr., and his close friends from New York, Mike Wexler and Koen Holtkamp. Produced and mixed by Jesse Peterson,'You Belong' is remarkable and diverse, a cohesive album that sings of Universal Family, Caring, Being, and openness. Lee reveals, “‘You Belong’ is a Love declaration from Nature to us. It is a salve. It is a reminder of what we have forgotten. That forgetfulness is causing collective pain. ‘You Belong’ is an invitation to remember." Peterson concurs, “‘You Belong’ affirms that we can all be our whole beings and are all part of the whole of being. Music is a force that moves through us all, and that feeling can be transmitted through our expression, whether we're consciously aware of it or not, we all belong… we are all involved…”

'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' by composer Luka Aron is a suite in four parts, in which a selected acoustic ensemble, consisting of bass clarinet, contrabass, euphonium, foghorn organ, harpsichord, serpent, shō, and trumpet coalesces with analog as well as digital synthesis, into one unified mass of sound. Following 2022’s 'Tinctures', which centered on raw and unadorned chord-zither and pipe organ recordings in just intonation, Luka Aron’s new work expands the landscape manifold. Emerging as his solo debut on Warm Winters Ltd., 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' connects to tropes first developed on Minua’s 'Simulacra' (also released by the Slovak label), to which Aron contributed significantly. An opaque juxtaposition between the steadfastness of electronic sound synthesis and the fragility of the human touch inherent in acoustic instrumentation is a through line in Aron’s work and at its most developed here. By painstakingly tuning sustained tones towards precision upon occupying the same pitch space, the various timbres in 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' are as much canceled out as reinforced, resulting in flux states of spectral fusion. This effect is further achieved through traversing a labyrinthine structure of multiple closely related overtone series, serving as a harmonic framework for the piece’s ever-shifting bedrock. Via the appliance of heavy distortion, a secondary structure (that, in fact, exposes the undertone series) is gradually unveiled: like light rays meeting the surface of water, partially reflecting back to air, and refracting at once, as they pass from one medium to the other. As per the title, numerical relationships are ubiquitous here—and yet, this is not music merely arising from mathematical calculation; instead, it is one shaped by the direct experience of sound phenomena themselves, prior to preconceived ideas or beliefs about their potential symbolic meaning or function. During studies at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm, Aron spent days on end observing the physiology of hearing through minute listening tests, not seldomly resembling a visit to the ear doctor. The specific tone combinations he discovered in this empirical process quite instrumentally “play the ear” and are potent catalysts for reaching states of mind that transcend the mundane, challenging matters of subject-object relations. As such, 'XV XXVII III XXI IX: Variations & Coda' stems from an artistic approach where one’s perception is not only an endpoint but also a beginning—and the composer’s task is to uncover what is already present. On a structural plane, the pieces stem from multi-layered golden mean relationships that permeate all levels of the composition, ranging from the overall arc to the formal and rhythmical aspects of each variation. Every sound event spirals out of the previous one, and the final instant is determined right at the initial stroke before ever unfolding over a total runtime of 38 minutes. Put forth by an almost self-generating system (here, the math does come into play), the time domain is determined with minor algorithmic interventions set beforehand. Gradually, the omnipresent sequence nests in consciousness and instantiates arresting attention in the listener. With Aron operating the Buchla 200 and EMS VCS3 synthesizers, in addition to the SuperCollider and Pure Data coding environments, the cast of musicians includes an array of Stockholm-based artists, such as Mattias Hållsten on shō—a Japanese mouth organ—and Susana Santos Silva on trumpet (both members of the late CC Hennix’ Kamigaku ensemble), just intonation contrabassist Vilhelm Bromander, along with Amina Hocine and her unique self-built foghorn organ. Frequent collaborators Fabian Willmann on bass clarinet and Raphaël Rossé on serpent and euphonium join from the electroacoustic group Minua, which Aron co-founded.

The Diskotopia team is excited to announce the debut EP from the new project rush2theUnknown — a pairing of documentary writer and director Nick Dwyer (who helmed the Red Bull Music Academy's Japanese video game music composer documentary Diggin' in the Carts) and producer & musician Devin Abrams (aka Pacific Heights). rush2theUnknown is a project that was born in provincial New Zealand, developed in the hills of Izu Peninsula, Japan, but forged in the fire of potent teenage memories of the future sounds of jungle and drum ’n’ bass that exploded onto dance floors across the urban centres of New Zealand in the mid 90’s. Two old friends, both who played pivotal roles in the development of New Zealand’s own jungle and drum ’n’ bass scenes in the 1990s, estranged for decades, reunited to begin experimenting in an attempt to recapture the feeling of having their heads overwhelmed by sounds they couldn’t quite comprehend as adolescents. They channeled the energy, spirit, and vibes of (specifically) 1995-to-1997 jungle, where the ever-mutating evolution of the sound intersected with the dawning of drum ’n’ bass to create a utopian future vision before the latter genre changed course and moved increasingly darker. By weaving in the influences that the two artists had accumulated over the decades — most notably from ambient, kankyõ ongaku, new age, minimalism, and some of the deepest research into the history of Japanese video game music ever conducted — the pair aimed to discover new terrain from a specific era of dance music that was never fully explored.

"Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, keyboard player Lonnie Liston Smith moved to New York in 1963 playing with the likes of Dakota Staton, Al Hibbler, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln and Roland Kirk. He made his first recordings with Kirk and in 1968 entered into a mutually rewarding and instructive partnership with Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas. In 1971-2 he toured Europe with saxophonist Gato Barbieri appearing on his 1973 albums “Under Fire” and “Bolivia”. His growing reputation was also burnished by playing Fender Rhodes with Miles Davis electric band.

The second of these Barbieri LPs was released on Bob Thiele’s Flying Dutchman label. Thiele was quick to sign Smith and release Smith’s first album under his own name, “Astral Traveling”. Backed by his Cosmic Echoes band, Smith served up a beautiful spiritual and funky stew on tracks like ‘Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord’, ‘Rejuvenation’, ‘I Mani (Faith)’ and ‘In Search Of Truth’.

Smith went on to record “Expansions” one of the greatest funky jazz albums of all time in 1975 but this debut really paved the way towards that musical milestone."

知られざる奇跡的邂逅が蘇る−−今から遡ること四半世紀前の1998年8月27日、ブライアン・イーノ、CANのホルガー・シューカイ、J・ペーター・シュヴァルムが繰り広げたインプロヴィゼーション・ライヴがこのたび、発掘音源『Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen』としてリリースされる運びとなった。

1990年代といえばブライアン・イーノが「歓迎されないジャズ（Unwelcome Jazz）」と呼んだ「新種の音楽」としての独自のジャズにアプローチしていた時期でもある。その成果は名称を変えて1997年のアルバム『The Drop』にまとめられることになるのだが、翌1998年に彼はまさに自身がアプローチしていたジャズに近しい音楽と運命的な出会いを果たすことになる。それがJ・ペーター・シュヴァルムによるバンド・プロジェクト、スロップ・ショップのデビュー・アルバム『Makrodelia』（1998年）だった。意気投合した両者はコラボレーションを開始し、2000年に伶楽舎とディスクを分担した2枚組『music for 陰陽師』を、2001年にはCANのホルガー・シューカイを含む多数のミュージシャンを交えた『Drawn from Life』を完成させる−−のだが実はそこには前日譚があった。

イーノがシュヴァルムと知り合って間もない頃、3回目に会ったのがこのたびの発掘音源のリハーサルだそうである。そしてそこにはスロップ・ショップのベーシストであるラウル・ウォルトンおよびドラマーであるイェルン・アタイのほか、シュヴァルムが初めて対面する、カンの創設メンバーでありベーシストとしても知られるホルガー・シューカイがいた。イーノとシューカイはすでに『Cluster and Eno』（1977年）および『After The Heat』（1978年）で共同作業していたが、いずれもシューカイが参加したのは1曲のみ、かつベーシストとしての客演だった。しかし発掘音源に収められたイーノおよびシュヴァルムとのセッションでは、シューカイが「ラジオ・ペインティング」と呼ぶような、短波ラジオとテープを用いたサンプリング／コラージュを行っている。ともかく、三者が揃ってライヴを披露するのは初めてのことだった。しかもウォルトン、アタイを含む5人のメンバーが揃って演奏を行う機会はその後ついに訪れなかった。奇跡的な邂逅と言っていいだろう。

ブライアン・イーノが当時ライヴを行うこと自体も珍しかった。だがこの発掘音源の元となった「Sushi! Roti! Reibekuchen!」なるイベントはやや特殊なものだった。食べ物をタイトルに掲げているように、主役は料理人なのである。というのも、ドイツ・ボンの美術展示館で開催されたイーノによるインスタレーション展のオープニング・パーティーとして野外で行われたイベントだったのだが、字義通りパーティーであり、会場では大勢の来場者に料理人たちが食べ物を振る舞っていた。そうした中、用意されたステージでドローンが鳴り始め、そして5人のミュージシャンが即興で演奏を行った。イーノによればこのイベントにおけるパフォーマーは料理人たちであり、自分たちが作っているのはバックグラウンド・ミュージック。つまり音楽のパフォーマンスではなく、バックグラウンド・ミュージック付きの料理のパフォーマンスなのだという。イーノらしいコンセプトだと思うが、しかし、ステージで魅せる音楽は少なくない観衆の耳を釘付けにした。イーノとシュヴァルムが作り出すミニマルでアンビエント／ドローンなサウンドに、ホルガー・シューカイのサンプリング／コラージュが色を添え、そしてラウル・ウォルトンとイェルン・アタイは時に人力ドラムンベースのごとく怒涛のグルーヴを生み出していく。演奏は2セット、計3時間にもおよび、最後は警察に電源を切られて強制終了させられたという逸話さえ残っている。

発掘音源『Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen』に収められているのは、そのような計3時間のライヴから抜粋された5つのトラックである。「料理のパフォーマンス」に付随するバックグラウンド・ミュージックとして構想されたライヴは、こうして音源化されることで新たに主役の座に躍り出る。そこから聴こえてくるサウンドは、ブライアン・イーノ、ホルガー・シューカイ、J・ペーター・シュヴァルムという三者の一期一会の本格的なインプロヴィゼーションであるとともに、ただ貴重な記録というだけに留まらず、アンビエント経由の「歓迎されないジャズ」に類する音楽が生演奏で収められた作品として、四半世紀経った2024年現在も実に興味深く思えるのである。

Text by 細田成嗣

Reverberations of Non-Stop Traffic on Redding Road is a duet in ambience by Pan American (Mark K. Nelson) and Kramer. This experimental record is 11 brief sojourns into the dream state, produced by Kramer (of Shimmy-Disc) and co-written with Mark K. Nelson (of Labradford, Anjou).This record is a brotherly and collaborative follow-up to Kramer's 2022 ambient excursions, "Music For Films Edited By Moths".On the making of this collaborative project, Mark K. Nelson said "It was an honor to work with Kramer. That we came out of it with a great friendship and a record that's unique to each of our histories and music that we're proud to share is a privilege and a joy."As Kramer has described, the result of this record is a work that begs listeners, both animal and human, to allow these beautiful landscapes to sing and speak and weep for themselves.Simply put by Kramer, "Please. Forget about words. Just LISTEN."

Characteristically invisible and inaudible, the wind is made manifest solely by its agency and performance on objects: huge waves crash to shore, sand dunes edge forward over millennia (rumbling as they go), cyclones uproot trees and houses, intergalactic winds confound the planets. On a more modest scale, I’ve been building aeolian instruments since 1979, part of my investigation into the innumerable aspects of the vibrating string. I designed the two recent aeolian instruments heard on this album, the Monolith 2021 and the Tube 2022, with a focus on engaging with the variable windy conditions experienced in central Australia. The bodies of these instruments are flanked on all sides by multiple strings. The 1.25-meter Monolith is made of plywood, with 36 strings of both piano wire and fishing line. The Tube is literally a 2-meter PVC pipe and is fitted with fishing line only. Discrete adjustments can be manually made if the wind shifts or if the operator wishes to engage other adjacent strings, often resulting in microtonal beats. The Monolith is set up with contact microphones cut into each bridge, and the Tube was recorded with air microphones inserted internally. Tuning rational has as much to do with tautness, thickness, and material quality of string as actual pitch when in a state of ‘excitation’ - this violinist’s intuition. These aeolian experiments are ongoing and may go some way to designing an instrument that simultaneously handles both the von Kárán vortex effect and unpredictable wind patterns. The results so far have generated numerous sonic surprises.

ドイツのミュージシャン/作曲家のDaniel Rosenfeldが変名C418にて製作した傑作！物理世界とピクセル化された世界の両方で響くサウンドを描き上げた『マインクラフト』のオリジナルサウンドトラック盤『Minecraft Volume Beta』が〈Ghostly International〉からアナログ・リプレス。前作『Alpha』には未収録の楽曲だけでなく、ゲーム内では使用されたなかった楽曲も収録したC418自身のオリジナル・アルバム的一枚！牧歌的で穏やかなサウンドスケープに仕立てられた前作と比してよりダークで内省的な側面もクローズアップされた魅惑のアンビエント/エレクトロニック・ミュージックが収められています。

Drifts and Surfaces is a three-piece set, with each work originating from commissions, and unified by shared themes: the flux between ephemeral movement and everyday stasis, the paradox of extraordinary and mundane beauty, and the ambition and idleness, that defines living in the 21st century. Saxl continues to utilize chamber-music ensemble alongside analog synth and digital experimentation, deeply tuning into textural emotion and the vivid details of small actions. While her 2021 breakthrough LP, The Blue of Distance, processed recordings from the Adirondacks and Lake Superior, Saxl’s source material here comes primarily from live percussion and other instrumentation. The project started in 2018 in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood at the practice space that Saxl’s band shares with the percussion trio Tigue. Later that year, they performed a residency together and captured the piece before the pandemic set in. In 2021, she began a new commission with Chicago’s Third Coast Percussion.Drifts shares its title with Kate Zambreno’s 2020 novel, where the protagonist becomes entranced by the work of Chantal Ackerman, which presents the typically female invisible forms of domestic labor as equally valuable to activities more commonly seen as productive. Saxl posits Drifts in the spirit of that feminist thesis: “It feels like there’s a little lineage here of women exploring this idea and celebrating small action that I hope I am continuing the work of.”The final piece, “Surfaces,” was commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum in conjunction with the Alex Katz retrospective in 2022. The group — comprised of Henry Solomon on baritone saxophone, Robby Bowen on glass marimba, and Saxl — leans into light, ruminative tones inspired by the pioneering painter’s present-minded approach. Katz's work deals with the optical perception of “quick things passing,” like the liminality of dusk when an object's outlines start to become unclear. “The ways in which our perception of things change not because they change but because we change,” explains Saxl. “I wanted to have these really minor changes feel dramatic, to mirror the imagined movement in his paintings.”Stepping back to view “Surfaces” within the set, Saxl finds the stream that runs throughout, the concept of the self as part of something greater. “Katz’s depiction of multiple generations of New York City artists inspired me to think about how there is no individual ‘me’ as an artist without both the artists who came before me and the community of artists I’ve grown alongside. The delineation between us blurs, and I feel as though I am carried on an interwoven surface formed by the community around me. At the same time, I know that eventually, I have to turn inwards and swim out alone.”

Rachika Nayar's fragments (expanded) is a collection of sonic miniatures constructed from guitar loops created in the familiar comforts of her own bedroom. These cyclical, meditative pieces stem from an intimate part of Nayar's creative practice, revealing a deep source of self-exploration and restoration. A collision of midwestern emo and post-rock influences with virtuosic minimalist guitar, fragments (expanded) provides an intimacy between Nayar and those listening in parallel spaces, activating our collective past and shared unconscious experience. This expanded vinyl edition adds a full extra side of previously unreleased pieces and includes a high quality multi-format digital download.

Evening Air is the result Loren Connors and David Grubbs’s first trip to the recording studio in the two decades since their first duo album, Arborvitae (Häpna). Arborvitae stood out for its spellbinding, utterly unhurried meshing of electric guitar (Connors) and piano (Grubbs). With this long-awaited return, Connors and Grubbs take turns trading off on piano and guitar, with Grubbs at the keyboard for the two gently expansive pieces on the first side and Connors taking over the instrument for three gorgeous miniatures on the flip, including an album-closing and perfectly heart-stopping version of Connors’s and Suzanne Langille’s “Child.” The album’s wildcard is “It’s Snowing Onstage,” which finds the two locking horns with two electric guitars before Loren blew the minds of all present in the studio by unexpectedly switching to drums. Loren Connors is one-of-a-kind, one of a handful of deservedly storied musical greats gracing us with their presence, and with Evening Air David Grubbs again demonstrates that he’s a stellar musician who also ranks among the most simpatico of collaborators. A cover painting by Connors—another wordless signalling—sets the tone for this most beguiling of seances.

From Justin Broadrick: The theme of this recording is the invisible world, and one's (my) need for it. It's necessary for me, this idea of the invisible world, if I am to function on a daily basis. I find comfort in knowing that this is all not just us here and now, that there's something else around us. That there's something within us, that isn't just this frail skin and bones and the immediate environments we drag ourselves around. I am sure since I was a child, that within me I am many, I am more than this. I surely can't be just this, so I am motivated by the fantasy and/or promise of more...

Irish supergroup Princ€ss arrives to wherethetimegoes to release their self titled debut album.