BESTSELLERS

Super Tip! Kali Malone and Drew McDowall have orbited each other's work for over a decade, their individual explorations of sustained tones and harmonic space suggesting an inevitable collaboration. When they finally entered McDowall's Brooklyn studio together, what emerged on Magnetism transcends mere musical compatibility. Malone has spent recent years extending the legacy of Éliane Radigue, redefining what electronic minimalism can accomplish through pipe organ and synthesizer. Her compositions stretch single chords into cathedral-sized architectures of sound, tracing harmonic territories that Radigue first mapped in her pioneering electronic works. McDowall brings a different lineage: as a veteran of Coil, he approaches synthesis with the patience of an alchemist, crafting electronic textures that breathe with unsettling life. Magnetism resolves this apparent contradiction through sonic diplomacy. Malone's melodic sensibilities—those long, searching lines that seem to trace the curvature of space itself—find new expression through McDowall's textural arsenal. Where Malone typically builds with mathematical precision inherited from the Radigue tradition, McDowall introduces the controlled chaos he perfected with Coil: digital distortion that pulses like organic matter, synthesis algorithms that decay at the speed of memory. The album's foundation reveals their shared fascination with the spaces between notes. Karplus-Strong synthesis becomes their primary tool, combined with just intonation tuning systems that allow Magnetism to inhabit frequencies conventional instruments cannot reach. But technique serves expression here, not the reverse. Across four extended movements, repetition becomes meditation, saturation a means of transcendence. There's something ritualistic about how these pieces unfold, their harmonic cycles suggesting ancient ceremonies filtered through electronic consciousness. This is music that operates on geological time while pulsing with digital immediacy. The collaboration marks significant evolution for both artists. Malone embraces the productive friction of working with another creative mind, while McDowall discovers in her melodic clarity a redemptive light reminiscent of Coil's more transcendent moments. Together, they've created something that feels both ancient and urgently contemporary—proof that experimental music's most profound statements emerge when distinct artistic visions recognize themselves in each other.

First re-issue album from the Skintone Edition Volume 1 Box Set

Magic Thread is Susumu Yokota’s deeply soothing and delicate debut release on the Skintone label. With a spartan palette of sounds and textures, Yokota taps into a fundamentally human need to fuse and connect disparate fibres, magically forming work which glistens and pulsates with life.

Magic Thread originally came out in 1998 as a limited-edition CD release of 500 copies. Initially intended for the Japanese market, it came without any artwork in a standard transparent CD case adorned only by a sticker containing essential album information and a quote:

‘Somewhere in the process of evolution, the spinning and weaving of thread became possible for humankind. How did this come to pass? It can only be that the thread is possessed of magical properties.’ – Yokota, 1998.

Gagaku is the oldest of the Japanese performing arts, with a history more than a thousand years old. The term refers to Japanese classical music and dance, traditionally performed by families of musicians linked to the ancient Imperial court, and later passed down in Buddhist temple ceremonies and Shinto shrines. Shiba Sukeyasu, founder and director of the Reigakusha ensemble, descends from the Koma clan, whose origins date back to the end of the 10th century. The recordings partly reflect repertoires borrowed from Chinese music between the 5th and 9th centuries. The incredible variety of timbres of the instruments greatly amplifies our exotic imagination: the eternal breath of the flutes (ryuteki and hichiriki) creates a sort of suspension of time, together with the hypnotic and hallucinatory atmosphere of the mouth organs (shō). The meditative tone of the string instruments (bika and koto) that punctuate the voids and silences is impressive, as is the enigmatic percussion section, with the tolling of the gong (shōko) and the calibrated beats of the drums (taiko and kakko).

Petre Inspirescu returns with a four-part suite of mesmeric, long-form compositions. Spanning two 12" records, each track occupies a full side - unfolding with the patience and precision of serialist structures. Drawing from minimalism and contemporary classical traditions, this is introspective electronica in its most refined form - hypnotic, elegant, and quietly expansive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Oganesson Remixes EP follows the March 2025 release of the “Oganesson” digital single, which was the first new music released by Tortoise since 2016. The EP includes the original version of “Oganesson” alongside five new remixes of the track created by collaborators and friends of the band, including poet and activist Saul Williams, prolific mastering engineer Heba Kadry, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney, indie music icons Broken Social Scene, and International Anthem labelmate Makaya McCraven. The Oganesson Remixes EP comes ahead of a new album by Tortoise, which will be released this fall via International Anthem and Nonesuch Records.

If punk culture and aesthetics ever had a poet, it would undoubtedly be Kō Machida. Best known as the visionary frontman of the pioneering punk band INU and later acclaimed as a novelist, essayist, and professor, Machida has built a career at the intersection of raw musical energy and razor-sharp literary craftsmanship. Eleven years after the groundbreaking 1981 masterpiece INU – Meshi Kuuna!, Machida returned with a new creative chapter: the album *Harafuri*. This record marked a significant evolution, fusing his uncompromising lyrical power with the modernized sonic force of Kitazawagumi, a band whose sound became the perfect canvas for Machida’s sharp wit and emotional depth. Now, Harafuri sees its first-ever official reissue, presented with utmost care and attention to detail. Every element has been restored to honor both its cultural resonance and artistic precision. Most notably, this edition includes meticulously retranslated English lyrics—bringing Machida’s singular voice to an international audience without losing its vivid intensity and layered meaning. At once biting, poetic, and ferociously alive, Harafuri is more than an album: it is a literary and musical landmark that speaks across time and geography. With this reissue, listeners everywhere are invited to rediscover Kō Machida not only as a pioneering punk icon but as one of Japan’s most vital contemporary voices.

Like on the early solo Haino album that shares the group’s name (released on P.S.F. in 1993), the instrumentation swims in reverb (the use of which Akiyama recalls as ‘a kind of point of the band’), often obscuring the instrumental sources. On the short opening piece, a distant reed instrument arcs long buzzing melodies over a bed of cymbals and gongs, like a psychedelic take on Tibetan music. The epic second part, occupying almost 50 minutes, begins as a splayed, near-formless cloud of electric guitar and bass, shadowed by bowed and plucked strings, the three elements working through twisting atonal shapes.

At various points in the recording, we hear what seems to be the sounds of musicians moving between instruments, their shuffling and bumps fitting seamlessly into this radically open music. Eventually, what sounds like electric guitar moves closer to the foreground, fixing on a repeated melodic cell around which hover mysterious clouds of long tones and a sporadic shaker. At the half-hour mark, the music begins to build to a violently emotive climax, Haino’s impassioned vocal cries punctuating a lumbering, bass-heavy murk, contrasted at points by what sounds like a tin whistle. Suddenly, the volume drops to a near-whisper, opening the way for the stunning final moments, which touch on the slow-motion balladry of Haino’s classic Affection, here given an eccentric twist by an occasional woodblock hit.

The third piece opens with a hazy trio of rumbling bass, bowed strings and abstracted slide guitar, the latter calling to mind some of Akiyama’s later solo work. Eventually joined by Haino’s voice, its fragile, haunted tone might remind the listener of the man in black’s documented love of the madrigals of the murderous Count Gesualdo, before the recording abruptly breaks off mid-note. In this new edition, the Nijiumu trio recording is supplemented by a piece recorded solo by Haino in 1973, a bracing electronic blowout stretching almost half an hour. Using a homemade electronics setup to unleash a barrage of crunching distortion and shuddering harmonic fuzz, it takes its place in the canon of extreme live electronics next to Robert Ashley’s Wolfman and Walter Marchetti’s Osmanthus fragrans, looking forward to extreme noise years before Merzbow. Taken as a whole, these four sides of music are a stunning document of some of the lesser-known waystations of Haino’s singular creative path.

Following years of memorable turns in collab with Dean Blunt and on her own solo recordings, ‘Blurrr’ is likely the moment Joanne Robertson ooozes into much wider acclaim and recognition - a stunning album of sparse heartbreakers recorded in the company of Oliver Coates and landing at an irresistibly fragile spot somewhere between classic Grouper, Cat Power and Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’. A real delicate, special album - one of the year’s finest.

In pursuit of last year’s ‘Backstage Raver’ duo with longtime spar Dean Blunt, Manchester born, Blackpool-rooted, Glasgow-based Joanne Robertson casts her strongest spell yet on ‘Blurrr’, cementing her status as a master of timeless songcraft. On nine new songs, every strum and murmured lyric exposes a patient beauty and rare intimacy that transcends the sum of its parts. It includes a trio of co-productions with Oliver Coates - noted collaborator with everyone from Malibu and Mica Levi to Laurel Halo - lending an extra frisson of flesh-tingling substance to accentuate the sensuality of Robertson’s voice.

In solo mode, she has us by a thread on the album’s longest piece ‘Friendly’ where we're treated to harmonies and hooks that pull from Nick Drake through Sarah Records and the blissed Americana of Hope Sandoval, lilting into a filigree coda somehow comparable to Vini Reilly’s sun-kissed, balearic glissandi. Her blissed coos on ‘Peaceful’ set our arm hairs on end, and the languorous opener 'Ghost' is like Robertson's answer to Grouper's timeless 'Heavy Water’, while ‘Why Me’ feels like the Nirvana Unplugged x Cat Power hookup of our dreams; there's nothing heavy handed or overdone - just bare expressions - like a blast of cool air on a humid afternoon.

Coates elevates three of the album's most striking tracks. His emotive string flourishes are remarkably subtle, there's a trace of the cinematic wonder that elevated his work with Laurel Halo on 'Raw Silk Uncut Wood' and with Malibu on the now classic 'One Life', but Coates is careful not to overpower Robertson's songs, enhancing her harmonies without ever obscuring their faultlines. On 'Gown' we’re reminded of Arthur Russell's timeless 'World of Echo', and that connection deepens further on 'Doubt', where Coates' fluttering low-end reverberates below Robertson's cool-headed voice. The killer for us, though, is 'Always Were', a glittering masterpiece that sounds like Robertson’s voice has been recorded to a half-broken mic, then dubbed to worn tape, magnifying its emotional resonance as it cracks alongside Coates' heaving strings, snowballing into a dense mass of harmony and echo.

DUMB TYPE is a multimedia performance art group based in Kyoto that was formed in 1984 and continues to be active at the forefront of the art scene. We are excited to announce the simultaneous release of two cassette book works produced by musician Toru Yamanaka and the late Teiji Furuhashi, a central figure of the group, for works from the early DUMB TYPE Theatre era: "Every Dog Has His Day (recorded in 1985)" and "Plan For Sleep (recorded in 1986)," now available for the first time on vinyl.

Since the founding of DUMB TYPE, Yamanaka has primarily been responsible for music production, while the late Furuhashi played a crucial role in translating Yamanaka’s compositions into stage direction. Their collaboration began with previous groups ORG and R-STILL, and was influenced by the NEW WAVE and progressive rock trends they were pursuing at the time, as well as by artists like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, who fused minimal music and avant-garde performance. Moreover, their bold incorporation of cutting-edge sampling and house music during that era laid the foundation for DUMB TYPE's sound, marking an important intersection in the history of minimalism, ambient music and performance art in Japan.

In the performance of this work, "Plan for Sleep" (1986), created simultaneously with “Every Dog Has His Day” (1985), Yamanaka took on the role of sound operation. The performance begins with a minimal piece where the tones of the electronic organ and striking phrases from the piano and saxophone race forward in syncopation. Following this, various sound fragments drift over a deafening industrial beat reminiscent of machine noises. There are also pieces that transform the typing sounds of a typewriter into rhythm, showcasing a range of experiments inspired by the then-novel sampling technology, beautifully intertwining with the physicality of the performance.

Additionally, influenced significantly by film music, Yamanaka incorporates a rich tapestry of colors through melancholic melodies that evoke various scenes, from secular jazz to other influences. This work constructs a uniquely original and sophisticated worldview that stands out even when surveying the canon of avant-garde performance art from around the globe in the postmodern era.

A longtime favorite at our shop, El Michels Affair—New York-based instrumental funk/soul band renowned for their unique “cinematic soul” sound and a flagship act of the esteemed Big Crown Records—returns with a brand new album, featuring none other than Shintaro Sakamoto as a guest! Rooted in funk and soul yet infused with a breezy, urban summer feel, this exquisite release blossoms into a light and airy indie pop-soul masterpiece. A refreshing soundscape full of timeless musical elegance, perfect for strolling through sun-drenched city streets.

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

To celebrate 20 years of this incredible album by Masami Akita, we are doing a limited edition gatefold vinyl pressing on baby pink colored vinyl limited to 300 copies worldwide.

following the success of their 2024 PPU EP "ramble in the rainbow", TAMTAM returns to their studio "where they dwell"