Ambient / Minimal / Drone

Artificial Dance founder Interstellar Funk releases Live At The Rest Is Noise - Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ. Limited to 150 cassettes, the recording documents Interstellar Funk’s performance at Amsterdam’s Muziekgebouw concert hall in October 2021. The 45-minute set ebbs and pulses, leaving behind Interstellar Funk’s penchant for hard-wearing club sounds in favour of melody and texture. Some passages mirror elements from the studio album Into The Echo (Dekmantel, 2022), but the live setting allows Interstellar Funk to expand and explore richly detailed sonic spaces that highlight his skills as a composer-performer. Download card included.

I can soak. The 2020 ambient masterpiece "Moss King" for plants, which has also been made into LP & CD, is the latest collaborative album by Omni Gardens and Jogen Salzberg, which is familiar with our store, and released as a cassette from . A gem of work in which meditative and natural beauty-filled new age/ambient sounds are loosely connected on top of Salzberg's soft poetry. Definitely recommended for those who like Iasos and Laraaji! Limited to 300 copies.

Felis Catus and Silence is a breakthrough release for Tokyo composer-guitarist Leo Takami, following the milestone albums Children’s Song (2012) and Tree of Life (2017). Takami counterpoints the soothing aesthetics of prime-era Windham Hill New Age guitar-heroism with meditative, intellectual compositions comprised of ambitious, process-oriented arrangements. While Takami largely wears his genre influences on his sleeve -- jazz, classical, Japanese gagaku -- the influence of ambient music is a tacit foundation of his work. Working diligently outside of any established communities for fringe musics, Takami conjures this association through a patient focus on generous musical intervals. Steady, kaleidoscopic unfolding of his compositions reflect Takami’s creative intent to “become aware of precisely the time and place I am living.” The unabashedly sweet, tuneful virtues of his music in concert with this reflective form provide an artistic relief of Takami’s thematic harmony. “Each song is based on birth and death, and moving onto the next stage...”

Leo Takami, born 1970, studied guitar under Hideaki Tsumura (aka Kamekichi Tsumura) and performs regularly in Tokyo.

Recordings of The pale faced family on the hill took place over a week in January 2020 in a small church hall on the outskirts of London. A small number of electronic music producers decided to form a collective and make heavy ambient music for raw pleasure in the agreement that their identity be withheld. They invited Oliver Coates as a live musician to contribute cello drone which they would then add to, process, subtract from and mix with weather recordings and esoteric ways of generating sounds, including old sample packs and whatever else they had to hand. The results were mixed down to tape live without further editing or arrangement. Wishing to work under a cloak of anonymity, the process freed the producers from their other lives and released output, allowing them to enter a new group alias, to induce heady states of sound and to become a group without hierarchies.

»Tides« marked a radical change in direction for Arovane. After Uwe Zahn had made a name for himself with cutting-edge IDM rhythms and slick ambient textures on a slew of releases, his sophomore album saw the prolific producer opt for a sample-based approach that resulted in a more organic sound and laid-back downbeat grooves. Having reissued Arovane’s seminal »Atol-Scrap« as a double LP in 2021, the Berlin-based Keplar label now makes »Tides« available on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 2000 through the legendary City Centre Offices. The new version has been remastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering and comes with a brand new cover artwork. It shines a new light on a release for which Zahn quite literally ventured into previously unknown territory — »Tides« is an album that emits a timeless, quiet calm and nonetheless stays constantly in motion. »The idea for the album came to me after a vacation in France«, says Zahn. Inspired by the landscape, especially the coastline and the sea, he made field recordings throughout his trip that were also used on the record, giving it its sensual feel. The foundation of the album however, the loose yet gripping grooves at the heart of every track, result from Zahn working extensively with samples. »I wanted to make use of drum sounds and small excerpts from old jazz vinyl records«, he explains. He maintained the unique sound signatures and rhythmic flutter of the source material while building intricate beats with them. Most of the material was culled from the record collection of Christian Kleine, whose spontaneous guitar improvisations over the first musical sketches were recorded and edited by Zahn and can be heard on four tracks. Also employing the occasional cembalo or spinet sound, he worked with a hardware sequencer and a delay to integrate the different, discrete elements into nine tracks that feel both dense and light at once. What’s astonishing still 22 years later is how spacious »Tides« sounds. This is due to the fact that Zahn not only paid close attention to the sonic idiosyncrasies of his source material, but also to what happened in between those sounds. »Mark Hollis’s solo album was a huge inspiration at that time«, says Zahn. »What I find fascinating about it until this day is how silence and the subtle hiss of the mixing boards were being used on that record.« Silence was also an important stylistic element on »Tides« and adds greatly to the overall atmosphere of an album that with the appropriately named »Theme« immediately sets the mood with intricate spinet melodies: Zahn opens a door for his listeners and invites them to follow him to see a specific part of the world through his very own lens. As a whole, the album mirrors Zahn’s trip that took him along the steep cliffs on a foggy day (»Seaside«), to an abandoned house in which he found old maps (»A Secret«), along the coastline during a long car ride (»Deauville«), to a sleepy village and the slowly moving sea (»Tides«) and finally back home to his native Germany where he started reflecting upon his experiences, ultimately deciding to translate them into music (»Epilogue«). »Whenever I listen to this album now, the images and memories it evokes are incredibly vivid and vibrant«, he says. It’s not hard to see — or rather hear — why. »Tides« may have been a deeply personal project, but it effortlessly evokes universal feelings by (re-)building an entire world in the course of only a few pieces of music.

Like the ever changing shapeshifting nature of Kami in Japanese Shinto faith, the music on this new collaborative lp is a mirror reflecting, obscuring or modifying the ever changing rivers of sounds. Louise Landes Levi has a long history in music from studying sarangi with Annapurna Devi and La Monte Young to performing with like minded poets as Ira Cohen and Simon Vinkenoog. As on the previous Ikiru lp she collaborates with Timo van Luijk (Af Ursin, Elodie, Asra, In camera etc) and Bart De Paepe (Ilta Hämärä, Bombay Lunatic Ensemble etc). The trio weaves several delicate threads together into a surrealist, organic but overall poetic language. Includes a postcard. Limited to 500 copies.

12H is a two hours long summa of the very best material produced for the eponymous sound installation, specifically designed by Donato for the Music Bridge - Armando Trovajoli in Rome under the curation of MAXXI Director Bartolomeo Pietromarchi. The original piece translated in music the architecture of the bridge and its surrounding life, layering samples and field recordings in the language Donato knows best: the repetition, rhythm and harmony of different building blocks. The work was originally reproduced by 24 speakers spread along the bridge colonnade, escorting the visitor through different musical places in their crossing. It now takes its final stereo form in this continuous mix version: a dense, enthralling flow akin to Tiber’s murky waters. The original installation was set up by sound engineer Giuseppe Tillieci / Neel, a frequent collaborator of Dozzy in the “Voices from the Lake” project, with Funktion One support.

« Similar to a whale skeleton beached on Tiber’s banks, the Music Bridge connects two parts of the city that had been ignoring one another for centuries. On one side the slopes of Mount Mario dominate the CONI (Italian National Olympic Committee) sports fields where many masterpieces of Italian modernist architecture were built: Moretti’s Fencing Academy, the Youth Hostel, the Olympic Pool and later on the Tennis Stadium and the Stadio Olimpico. On the other side there is Quartiere Flaminio, with its theatre, contemporary art museum MAXXI and Renzo Piano auditorium. Donato Dozzy has converged sport and music in his sound installation for the Music Bridge, recounting the story of the two universes connected there. The work, originally presented in a 12 hours format, was a day-long journey through environmental sounds and Donato’s own melodies. In the new-found synthesis we present today we experience once again time and Tiber flowing together, from the crack of dawn until nightfall artificial lights. »
(Pietromarchi Bartolomeo, Director of MAXXI)

Few DJs and producers are as widely and universally acclaimed in techno circles as Italian Donato Dozzy. He has a rare ability to work his way into peoples’ minds in both contemporary and classical settings, conjuring real mood and atmosphere. Never one to pay heed to the zeitgeist, he prefers to deal in hypnotic soundscapes that really take you on a trip.

Enigmatic as he is, and laidback as he seems, as an artist he is constantly unveiling new work. Displaying a large variation in terms of sound and method across many new releases each year — some of which come on his co-owned label Spazio Disponibile — he also puts out installations for public spaces and museums, uses obscure musical instruments, collaborates with likeminded producers, classical singers or visual artists. Donato seems to continuously challenge himself on a creative level: whatever method he uses, though, he is always likely to permeate your cerebral cortex and rewire it in fascinating and compelling new ways. 

French photographer, musician, and lifeguard Romeo Poirier is also known for his cult favorite "Plage Arrière," a meditative deep sea ambient cassette released on Kit Records. A long-awaited repress of this popular work, originally released in 2020! Is this truly a miraculous fusion of Andrew Pekler and Biosphere? Mastered at Schwebung by Stephan Mathieu. If you like Jelinek or Boards Of Canada, you will love this. Limited edition clear vinyl.

The inner journey of Lorenzo Fortino brings to mind many example of minimal and contemporary music, verging on sophisticated ambient electronics textures. A pleasant experience all in all, a tender scenario and a truly looking-forward album with a real taste for harmony and arrangements. A lifting experience for a mature young composer. (Luca Collepiccolo)

A supreme soundscape! World premiere recording of a 1997 work by a composer/guitarist who has left his mark on the contemporary Mexican music scene! Eblen Macari has been ambitiously developing his unique musical style for 40 years, from the 1980s to the present. Production began. The work was inspired by the sound of the guitar and the ecology of the trees that make up the wood used for the guitar. The influence of Ralph Towner and Egberto Gismonti, whom Eblen admires greatly, and ECM Records, represented by Egberto Gismonti, is reflected especially strongly in Eblen's works.
・Remastered by Kuniyuki Takahashi
・First ever vinyl release (originally released in 1997 on CD)
・Limited to 500 copies
・For fans of Ambient, World music& ECM Records

"Ambient Music For A Young Girl", a very good new title, has arrived. This is a masterpiece of ambient music that exudes warm nostalgia and a profound sense of tranquility towards the approaching footsteps of autumn. The latest solo album by Cass., one of Germany's most important new age/ambient artists, is now available from Growing Bin. Beautiful. With the music of the foreground, it is a fascinating experience to rescue oneself from ego. After a year of isolation in the current situation, this album is for many people who are going through introspection. Please listen slowly and deeply.

Finally! The long awaited reissue of a very rare album that was originally released in 1985 on For Life! One of the last treasures of Japanese music, highly recommended for lovers of Japanese New Age, Japanese New Wave and Avant New Wave. This is an analog reissue of the only work left by MU-PROJECT, a fantastic unit formed by synthesizer player Ryoichi Kuniyoshi, known for his participation in the works of Riri, Yoshikazu Sasaki, and Motoharu Sano, and engineer Kiyoshi Toba! The original was priced at nearly 30,000 yen and has been long overdue for a reissue. Shuichi Murakami (Ponta), Hideki Matsutake, Kiyohiko Semba (Haniwa-chan), Keishi Urata (Aragon, The Seatbelts), and many others participated in this exotic oriental/ Balearic new age album. I recommend this album to a wide range of listeners who are looking for something out of the ordinary, not only Mariah and YMO, but also to those who like Digital Trip and the Synthesizer Fantasy series!

600 copies. Lovely crafted tip-on sleeve. Remastered from the original master tapes. ** Sunstroke were Ben Bollaert and Etienne Delaruye, both were obsessed with the burgeoning possibilities of electronic music and it made sense that they collaborate in the studio. The resulting experiments culminated in the 1985 release of Nothing's Wrong in Paradise. The record was conceived as a soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist - a sophisticated meeting of post-Berlin-school dreaming, Yen-records hi-tech calm and Impressionist Café music ennui. What makes it most compelling though, is that even while it conjures a seemingly perfect world, something around the edges lets you know that all might not be as it seems. Maybe there is nothing wrong in paradise. Or maybe that’s just wallpapering over the cracks. The rough edges and regret of everyday life cannot help but intrude. Once you have spent some time with it, the whole record starts to seem bathed in a dim half-light, suggesting utopia glimpsed through a smudged lens. Just like the ethereal space in their music Sunstroke only existed for a moment, a second LP was planned but never materialised, briefl

Ulla Straus is a Philadelphia-based ambient artist who has released a number of masterpieces of acoustic dub/ambient music under the direction of Huerco S. collaboration with Pontiac Streator on West Mineral, a label that is now recognized as a sacred place, caused quite a stir. This album was released in 2020 under a different name from a new label [Experiences Ltd] started by uon, a special guest DJ who is an important acoustic dub act at [West Mineral]. It's so beautiful and so deep, you can sink into it forever. This album is built around chant sampling and piano, and is a further exploration of the world of "Big Room", a masterpiece ambient cassette released last year on [Quiet Time]. Mastered by D&M and amp; cut to perfection. Limited to 400 copies. Don't miss it if you like "Mono No Aware" or "bblisss", not to mention [West Mineral] works!

reversals and slippage toward glass, reconfigured
smasht past it
smeared the oil cross currents
and me
plant rotting its container, or, grains lovingly
no warm water to spit back
no cloth to tie

i glance back
refractions stack right.

a kiss that will stew until it evaporates
scuffed across my feet, feet crossed

bubbled trash that spilt intermittently,
who cleaned the air with a smudgey for you.

Huerco S’ West Mineral label follow Pendant’s sublime 'Make Me Know You Sweet' album with uon’s wholly absorbing study in brownian motion and isolation tank ambience; a hypnotically lush exploration of underwater romance. If you're into the impeccable run of Vainqueur releases on Chain Reaction, this one's for you.

It’s the 2nd release from the enigmatic project, whose debut 12”s in 2017 was among the year’s standout ambient and dub-related releases. On this new one uon poetically describes three different behaviours of water and its amorphous states through a gently elemental push and pull of forces best considered in the vein of Basic Channel, Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas or the shimmering convections of Ross 154.

Beautifully elusive but crucially watermarked with a sense of originality in personalized style, Solaris opens the set with a 17 minute cut - a seemingly infinite journey through swells of diffracted chords and silty filters, simultaneously connoting sensations of opiated amniotic safety and oceanic infinity.

Where the A-side feels like floating in a lush mass, the bass-heavy articulation of his B-side’s J may well urge listeners onto the ‘floor with the same, inexorable traction of classic Vainqueur records, and in a way smartly reflects uon’s mutable DJ style, before the aqueous qualities of his final track Bus soothes to a deeper blue state of loved-up introspection which, like Solaris, could have have easily taken up a side to itself.

Bliss.

After travelling to India, Indonesia, Thailand, Bali and Java in his younger days, Cybe released three cassette tapes. "Tropisch Verlangen” now compiles a series of ten wonderful handcrafted analogue electronics from those tapes, sounding like lush fields of electronic wheat swaying in voltage controlled wind. It reads as a musical travelogue from a Dutch musician from Haarlem, who listened to way too much Gong and went searching for inspiration, sound recordings and instruments in the East in the early eighties. Right up my alley, and hopefully yours too.

Japanese Balearic Masterpiece ('93) is re-pressed on Clear Blue Vinyl! HIROSHI II HIROSHI" is a unit of Hiroshi Fujiwara and Hiroshi Kawanabe (Tokyo No.1 SOUL SET). This is their chill-out~Balearic classic (EP), which was distributed as a picture disc with a vinyl jacket at the time, and is now a popular and expensive item on the second-hand market. The EP features "H2O," the first track that takes you to a fictional resort with its gentle guitar strumming, and "Beauty & Beast + Bagle (Dub)," an exquisite summer resort dubwise track with melting sounds and the melancholy of the sun in the west. The album also includes six evergreen songs that pioneered the Café Del Mar craze that later spread throughout Japan. The artwork is a faithful reproduction of the CD-era design by Hiroshi Nagai.

For the past 10 years, it has been a sacred place that has expanded the horizon of the underground scene in Copenhagen, Denmark, to the world, and defines one of the current experimental lifelines represented by and . A new catalog of Posh Isolation, a sacred place where you can feel the shoegaze sound of a new era, which is a prestigious and unprecedented beauty, is in stock at once! !! The latest 2022 "The Last Picture Show" by Christian Stadsgaard's famous project Vanity Productions, which is known for his activities in the noise duo with Loke Rahbek sponsored by Posh, Damien Dubrovnik and The Empire Line, has been released on CD. A masterpiece that created an exceptional drone gaze sound full of melancholy and introspection as a desolate by repeating loop operations! You can enjoy the fantastic and majestic sound that is typical of Posh, which makes you feel the gaze of "somewhere other than here" far from this world such as the equinoctial week and the heavens. Limited to 300 copies.

Masterpieces from Australia-based label that seems friends of the current dub ambient landmark West Mineral led by Huerco S. The debut album under the name of "J" by Australian experimental musician = Justin Cantrell, who is also known as the name of Ju Ca and collaboration with mdo as a popular unit called "picnic", has appeared. A daydream or heavenly fantasy, an intimate & nocturnal fantasy ambient / modern classical masterpiece that keeps swaying and swaying forever, it can only be said to be the best! Mastered by Shy (uon).

DJ Python revives his cult alias, Luis, with a reflective ode to his best friend. The five tracks here represent the inscrutable mix of detachment and contentment that made DJ Python's Mas Amable a modern touchstone, but the 057 (Schwyn) EP also possesses the heartfelt '90s sheen that is Luis's sonic signature. Idiosyncratic rhythms and twinkling ambience build patiently before arriving at the blissed breakbeat closer. "missen and loven. schwyn and i go into each others lives here and there quiet and present. always missen and loven. to know he is on the earth is to know that it is beautiful." - Brian Piñeyro

180g vinyl pressing. - “A love letter to the masters of Japanese ambient and environmental music.” During the late 2010s, music lovers around the world began obsessively listening to increasingly esoteric albums on Youtube. More often than not, they’d leave the browser on autoplay. This was how Facundo Arena, the composer and producer behind The Kyoto Connection, discovered the technonaturalistic pleasures of Kankyō Ongaku (environmental music), a distinctly Japanese interpretation of European, British and American minimalist composition and ambient music. “It was a kind of algorithmic magic,” he says. Upload by upload, the utopian music of Hiroshi Yoshimura and his 80s Japanese contemporaries transported Facundo back to his childhood. When he was five, his father placed him in karate lessons and began watching martial arts movies with him. From those early experiences, Facundo became fascinated Japanese history, tradition, and culture, particularly that of Kyoto - the cultural capital of Japan. Kankyō Ongaku reminded him of hearing the sounds of Japanese folkloric instruments as a young boy, and suddenly, the way the influence of Japan had manifested in his music made sense. “I had the sensation that for many years, I’d been doing something similar to the style,” he explains. Inspired, Facundo used an iPad and an old Akai cassette deck to record Postcards, his homage to Japanese minimalism and Kankyō Ongaku. By this stage, he was twelve years deep with The Kyoto Connection, the musical project he launched in 2005 in his hometown of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Over that late 2000s and 2010s, Facundo, later on joined by collaborators Rodrigo Trado (drums), Jesica Rubino (violin) and Marian Benitez (vocals, now his wife), released numerous D.I.Y albums. Project by project, they followed the threads between 80s synth-pop, ambient, new age, house, techno and acoustic composition. Postcards introduced The Kyoto Connection to listeners around the world and brought Facundo into our orbit. During Argentina’s covid lockdown, Facundo received a set of soundscapes recorded in Kyoto by the Japanese musician and sound designer Masafumi Komatsu. Over several insular months, he decorated them with synthesisers, samples and subtle rhythms, creating The Kyoto Connection’s next album, The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain to be released via Isle Of Jura offshoot Temples Of Jura. Ostensibly made up of twelve distinct tracks, listening to The Flower, The Bird and the Mountain feels more akin to spending calm, meditative time in twelve specific environments. Although the foundations they rest on are recordings made in geographic locations around Kyoto, Facundo has yet to visit Japan. As a result, the landscapes he paints sit somewhere between fiction and fact, richly pictorial sonic imagination juxtaposed with echoes of reality. Regardless, as his bubbling melodies and glistening synthesisers glide against Masafumi Komatsu's recordings, Facundo guides us into a blissful zone of tranquillity well worth spending time within.

EURYBIA is the second solo album by Italian artist Francesca Heart. The result of a compositional process that began in summer 2020. The work is the product of a series of intimate imaginary projections and aural engagements with a number of geographical sites scattered across the Italian landscape. Places which have resonated with Francesca during various personal travels and pilgrimages, due to their extramundane and often even mystic significance. The most outstanding / iconic being the cloisters and gardens of San Gregorio Armeno’s monastery in Naples and the Nympheum of Villa Giulia in Rome. Indeed the whole record seems to bring the listener constantly together with the overwhelming, tender presence of the surrounding environment. Seemingly permeated with a feeling of refreshing musky moistures or textured with soft, wet soil, EURYBIA reminds us of walking barefoot near the lush architecture of some ancient, overflowing fountain or amidst the continuous flows of shallow rivers’ bedrocks informing the album with strong physical, sensory qualities. Myth, senses, and imagination become anchors of artistic and healing expression as well as forms of romantic escapism from an ever complex world. On the whole, EURYBIA’s seven tracks alternate dense enmeshment of sounds and melodies with sparse, forthright single-instrumental devotional hymns, working as a personal cartography of ephemeral audio monuments to human, transcendental, and mythographic landscapes. Influences connected by means of nuanced ascendance going from classical New Age music and Video Game soundtracks to digital phone ringtones. The fluttering arpeggios used as the main compositional device coalesce together into an experience of relaxing trance which is yet a glaring, audacious work. クレジット

Mark Barrott and Pete Gooding present the fourth volume in their series of stellar collections, showcasing the sunset sounds spun at Ibiza`s Hostal La Torre. Sets, sequences, of music designed to celebrate the passing of another day and welcome the pleasures of night, as the Sun makes way for Sister Moon. On this occasion, the ceremony starts with a gift from the Golden Girls - a side project of Phil Hartnoll, of Orbital fame. In its original form Kinetic was a prime piece of pumping early `90s trance, here, however, it`s been remixed by David Morley into something far more in line with Belgian rave label R&S` ambient off-shoot, Apollo. Practically beatless, but boasting a big, undulating, bottom-end, it now resembles something from Tangerine Dream`s back catalogue. A slightly kosmische, serene wall of sonically shining sound. The room-shaking riffs are reduced to echoes, while pitter-pattering percussion races. When the familiar hook finally surfaces, it`s accompanied by spirit-stirring, symphonic strings - inducing fierce flashbacks to quality highs, and newly expanded minds and horizons. Man, I can remember the wonder, before it all went pear-shaped. Next up are NO ZU, a sadly seemingly defunct 8-membered musical monster from Melbourne, Australia, who were absolutely amazing live. Banging out a percussive concoction that they called Heat Beat, their funk was / is most definitely post-punk - channelling `80s no wave New York, the Mudd Club, and in particular the band, Liquid Liquid. Slapping basses, car horns, electronic keys, buttons, cowbells, and anything else that came to hand and seemed to fit, while lifting beats and piano parts from Chicago house. The party-starting call and response repartee of Ui Yia UIa finds them shouting out their star signs of criss-crossing compatibility over a muscular slo-mo stomp. Daphne Camf Rest In Peace. Bassekou Kouyate is a Malian maestro on the 6-stringed ngoni. A goat-skin covered “hunters harp”, that via slave traders evolved into the North American banjo. With his group, named after this traditional griot instrument, and Zoumana Tereta on lead vocals, he delivers a dizzying display of dexterity on Bala. Generating a super mellow, spiritual groove, his playing countered by equal virtuosity on balafon and bolon. The voices switching between the sweet and the raw, and the song showering you in savannah sunshine, no matter where you happen to be hanging. American trio, Rare Silk, share their jazz vocal take on Stanley Turrentine`s Storm, where wildlife whistles and chirrups surround soft Synclavier sighs. Slick, smooth, imagine Manhattan Transfer meets Wally Badarou. A marimba doing the mambo, the reeds winding like wafts of smoke carried on warm Caribbean winds. The rhythm that of a gently lapping tide. The Synergetic Voice Orchestra was a one-off, one-time only outfit led by keyboardist / composer, Yumiko Morioka. A follow-up to her highly respected solo piano work, Resonance, the album, MIOS, was a far more ambitious affair, that brought together a collective of 6 musicians and 3 vocalists. The results moving away from new age and modern classical toward pop. The track, Zebra, is a Jon Hassell-esque fusion heat haze / fog. Riding a slowly rumbling thunder-thumbed bass-line. A snake-charming woodwind cutting through the synthetic shimmer, weaving its seductive spell. Family Doggo first appeared as the b-side of Paul Woolford aka Special Request`s balls-out 2020 drum and bass single, Spectral Frequency. “Doggo” in comparison is an oasis of calm, albeit packing some serious sub-woofer worrying boom. Stripped back, speaker-rattling, electro-edged introspection, emotive and euphoric without recourse to arms-in-the-air tropes, it`s bleep`s more sensitive, more thoughtful sibling. The awakening of the morning after the night before`s rush. Margaret Wakeley`s magical Hard To Leave The Island was initially rediscovered and dusted down by the people that power the respected DJ / artist agency, Warm - who took it from Margaret`s 1976 LP, Better Days, and pressed it on a limited 45. A slice of superior soft / yacht rock, it`s a cool cocktail-hour summer holiday serenade. A sophisticated arrangement of brass, jazzy keys, and acoustic strum, topped off by a smart sax solo. Equatorial Sunrise was / is one of the standouts contained on Pauline Anna Strom`s sadly posthumous album, Angel Tears In Sunlight. Describing herself as a Trans Millennium Consort, the San Francisco-based synth pioneer attempted to blur, blend, past, present, and future, with her novel new age music. The song in question sees wind-chimes, marimba, and talking drum conversing in counterpoint - conjuring the Cafe del Mar classic, Richard Wahnfried`s Grandmas Clockwork. Its calming, time-melting timbres creating a comforting analog bubblebath. Aching with synthesized ethereal emissions, while pinpoints of sound echo into infinity, like signals from distant stars. The Vendetta Suite is the pseudonym of Gary Irwin, the former in-house engineer at David Holmes` Belfast-based Exploding Inevitable Studio - a hive of musical activity where Timmy Stewart was also a frequent visitor. The 3 amigos mentioned were all stalwarts of the city`s early `90s house and techno scene. Some 30 years later Timmy remixed Gary`s track, Warehouse Rock, into a highly strung - think Malcolm McLaren`s Deep In Vogue - soundclash of reggae and rave. A four-to-the-floor mediation subjected to devastating washes of delay, where bionic bass, Mikey Dread samples and dub sound-effects are softened by bucolic birdsong. Mark Barrott’s Travelling Music (La Torre Reprise) - an exclusive version of the titular track from his recent E.P. - is all tumbling tones - playful sequences and programmed patterns “blowing” busily, like colourful streamers caught on a tropical breeze. Like the compilation`s opening number, its another ambient, beatless, trance-dancer - suffused with sustained swells and chords that feel like sunrise itself. Composer / pianist Lola Perrin`s Cloud Sky Fade is an unadorned, unadulterated - save a little reverb - rippling river of cascading classical keys. Her piano rolling, reaching crescendos like crashing surf. Licensed from Lola’s 2006 CD, Fragile Light, its worthy of comparison with Keith Jarrett`s ECM output, and Wim Mertens` beloved The Belly Of An Architect score. If you look on Wikipedia, you’ll see that Suzanne Ciani has the affectionate moniker of “Diva of the Diode” - reflecting her huge importance in the history of electronic music. While studying at Berkley University in the `70s Suzanne became firm friends with Don Buchla, and subsequently spearheaded the use of his then ground-breaking modular synthesizer. Moving to New York, where she camped out on Philip Glass` studio floor, Suzanne set up her own company employing Don`s marvelous machine to produce advertising jingles. The success of this business eventually led to Suzanne becoming Hollywood’s first female soundtrack composer. In the `80s, Suzanne then started releasing new age records, one of which, 1986`s The Velocity Of Love, was a favourite of DJ Phil Mison, who made it a Cafe del Mar sunset staple. The beautiful Eighth Wave surely should have been the blissed-out musical backdrop to some `80s art house love scene - summoning as it does silhouettes of cinematic protagonists passionately disrobing though a Vaseline-smeared lens. Their hot clinches politely cutting to close-ups of isolated, moonlit beaches, and untamable, tempestuous tides. JIM is Jim Baron, Crazy P`s Ron Basejam, but in folky, singer / songwriter mode. Coming on like Crosby, Stills & Nash, he covers the Ian Astbury / Billy Duffy penned Phoenix in an ultra-laidback fashion. Turning the gothic rock into a Laurel Canyon-esque lullaby. Singing of love in terms of fire, and flames of desire, backed by acrobatic acoustic picking and sweeping orchestral strings. You could be forgiven for thinking that Antipodean audio auteur, Geoffrey O`Connor, is some forgotten `80s idol - so authentic is his soothing, swooning, romantic synth pop. Her Name On Every Tongue, however, dates from 2014, and can be located on Geoff`s sophomore solo long-player, Fan Fiction. The track`s vocoder harmonies proving perfect for a sing along on a top-down, Californian coastal drive. These righteous solar-worshiping rituals draw to a close with John Foxx & Robin Guthrie`s exceptional Estrellita - a highlight from the pairs 2009 album, Mirrorball - where the former Ultravox! and Cocteau Twins founders collaborate on a sublime shot of shoegaze. Generating a glacial glide of layer upon layer of treated guitar. Grounded by womb-like bass vibrations, while Foxx`s choirboy croon soars. Lending the song a prayer / hymn-like air. It`s as close as rock comes to something sacred. Dr. Rob (Ban Ban Ton Ton)