Electronic / Experimental
4015 products
Heat Crimes follow that Father Dionysios Tabakis smash with Terskol’s debut album of coldly cavernous, crushing and ionzied slabs of Turkish sludge doom, recorded 2017-21 on modular synths and a knackered drum machine and highly advised to acolytes of Godflesh, Sunn O))), Joachim Nordwall, Muslimgauze, Kevin Richard Martin. Joining the label’s necklace of sore thumbs, the eponymous entry from Utku Önal aka Terskol exists at a crossroads of styles combined in ways that surely recalls the number of greats mentioned above, but also with an uncanny concision and metallic resonance that leaves ice burns to the touch. Not really rock, nor fully electronic; it’s best conceived as a sort of primordial cyborganic force of nature certain to find its audience lurking in the shadows of convention. Arguably; it’s the heaviest release in the label’s half decade run thus far; 11 uncompromising payloads of glacially-paced lurch defined with shivered machine drums and radioactive reverb, prone to keen from doomscapes evoking a fantasy Stephen O’Malley x Bryn Jones hookup, to bouts of horror score vamps and barbed distortion, into passages of burned-out bliss thru to sky-razing, warmonger riffs. As with the likes of Avenir’s ‘90s electronica on the label before them, Terskol’s formerly unreleased musick is effectively new to the world at large and feels like a missing link on the timeline, nailing a combo of styles with a cloistered vision that leaves the impression it was never really intended for wider consumption. After marinading in the archive for so long it’s all clearly ripe for ritual cleansing, pulling heads wholly into unheimlich zones of seething amp worship on ‘WMEMWAMS’, and setting fire to the air in the ambient sludge of ‘9A’, hackling like theeee nastiest Godflesh in ‘Backstepper’, and with a prescient title ‘Bedroht’ to sure to snag Gen-Z doomscrollers.
Prophetic Perfect Tense is the new album on Kou Records by Oren Ambarchi - Australian guitarist, founder of Black Truffle Records, and one of the most restlessly inventive figures in experimental music over the last three decades. Recorded at Studio D ede in Tokyo in January 2026 and produced by Randall Dunn, the album finds Ambarchi at his most stripped back: solo guitar, two sides, two single takes, minimal effects - running through a Leslie cab, Fender Twin, and Ampeg B-15 into a Telefunken 24-track, with amp hum, fret squeaks, and room noise left intact. While his studio records have typically been conceptual, layered affairs with guest collaborators, Prophetic Perfect Tense breaks that pattern entirely - by his own account, the most conventionally guitar-sounding solo record he has ever made, and the closest he has come in a studio context to the live, in-the-room energy of his Ghosted trio. A record that sounds like a room.
Aaron Dilloway presents No Skill Comedy Mind Reading, a disorienting collection of solo work developed over nearly a decade. The former Wolf Eyes member and Hanson Records founder twists field recordings, feedback, tape hiss, vocal improvisation and electronics into music that veers between harsh noise and absurdist humour. Influenced by Alvin Lucier, cult horror film The Weirdo and composer Hugo Montenegro, the album also draws on Dilloway’s fascination with sound poetry and degraded cassettes. The result is deliberately unstable: strange voices, static blasts, drones and fractured rhythms assembled into a surreal, frequently unnerving whole.
etting aside the dread-soaked UK atmosphere of his Karkossyn moniker, Tavis Hitchcock introduces Grandma Love. In stark contrast to his previous work, Grandma Love welcomes listeners home for a warm, hearty stew just before the streetlights come on. Drawing from childhood nostalgia, Cornish summers, and family day trips, Hitchcock pulls the plug on a reservoir of mood and atmosphere that sits somewhere between post-club sofa lounging and early morning coffee mug steam. Following his appearance on Northfield Records' Gilbert Road EP with the track "A2," this self-titled debut album dawns the opening chapter in the Grandma Love story. Filled with field recordings, delicate percussion, washed-out pads, and fragments of home-video VHS recordings, the album opens a time capsule of lost memories, coastal daydreams, and a longing for a time washed far away with the tide.
etting aside the dread-soaked UK atmosphere of his Karkossyn moniker, Tavis Hitchcock introduces Grandma Love. In stark contrast to his previous work, Grandma Love welcomes listeners home for a warm, hearty stew just before the streetlights come on. Drawing from childhood nostalgia, Cornish summers, and family day trips, Hitchcock pulls the plug on a reservoir of mood and atmosphere that sits somewhere between post-club sofa lounging and early morning coffee mug steam. Following his appearance on Northfield Records' Gilbert Road EP with the track "A2," this self-titled debut album dawns the opening chapter in the Grandma Love story. Filled with field recordings, delicate percussion, washed-out pads, and fragments of home-video VHS recordings, the album opens a time capsule of lost memories, coastal daydreams, and a longing for a time washed far away with the tide.
Oakland, CA — Talking in a Different Way is the debut full-length release of sachi’s mirror, the creative alias of multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Shaina Pan. Melding disparate elements of ambient, electronic, dream-pop, and avant-garde classical, Pan beckons us into sonic worlds equally enigmatic and emotive. Across a collection of self-produced songs and vignettes that began to take form during a month-long residency in Vallejo, CA in the spring of 2025, she explores a theme of constant and quiet evolution, posing the question: What are we if the world we were born into no longer exists? How do we relate to one another and ourselves? Using field recordings and looped textures as sonic blueprints, she patiently constructs dimly lit, spiraling paths that simultaneously churn inward towards memory and outward towards the cosmos. Pan studied violin performance at Indiana University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, specializing in contemporary classical music. After nearly two decades of performing in classical ensembles, Pan left the path to becoming a symphony violinist, burnt out and frustrated by a culture of rigidity. She settled in Oakland where she eventually began writing and performing in post-punk quartet Juicebumps. Emboldened by her peers in the Bay Area scene, she found herself shifting towards composition and improvisation, using her violin, voice, and laptop to explore electroacoustic composition. From those efforts emerged room to receive, her 2025 debut EP on Cone Shape Top Imprint. Talking in a Different Way arrives one year later on Constellation Tatsu, a woozy 35-minute spell sparkling with the same experimental spirit, this time with moody sampled textures, gossamer string arrangements, and Pan’s vocals at the fore.
Oakland, CA — Talking in a Different Way is the debut full-length release of sachi’s mirror, the creative alias of multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Shaina Pan. Melding disparate elements of ambient, electronic, dream-pop, and avant-garde classical, Pan beckons us into sonic worlds equally enigmatic and emotive. Across a collection of self-produced songs and vignettes that began to take form during a month-long residency in Vallejo, CA in the spring of 2025, she explores a theme of constant and quiet evolution, posing the question: What are we if the world we were born into no longer exists? How do we relate to one another and ourselves? Using field recordings and looped textures as sonic blueprints, she patiently constructs dimly lit, spiraling paths that simultaneously churn inward towards memory and outward towards the cosmos. Pan studied violin performance at Indiana University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, specializing in contemporary classical music. After nearly two decades of performing in classical ensembles, Pan left the path to becoming a symphony violinist, burnt out and frustrated by a culture of rigidity. She settled in Oakland where she eventually began writing and performing in post-punk quartet Juicebumps. Emboldened by her peers in the Bay Area scene, she found herself shifting towards composition and improvisation, using her violin, voice, and laptop to explore electroacoustic composition. From those efforts emerged room to receive, her 2025 debut EP on Cone Shape Top Imprint. Talking in a Different Way arrives one year later on Constellation Tatsu, a woozy 35-minute spell sparkling with the same experimental spirit, this time with moody sampled textures, gossamer string arrangements, and Pan’s vocals at the fore.
Originally released in 2016 on Constellation Tatsu, Body Trip introduced Japanese ambient composer H. Takahashi’s quietly immersive approach to minimal electronic composition. Built from delicate synth tones, meditative repetition, and understated melodic movement, the album has become a lasting favorite within contemporary ambient circles. Over the past decade, Takahashi has developed an internationally respected body of work spanning releases such as Raum, Low Power, Escapism, Elegy, and Paleozoic. Beyond his solo output, he has collaborated through projects including UNKNOWN ME, ATORIS, and H TO O, contributed music for installations and exhibitions, and performed throughout Japan’s experimental and ambient music communities. Body Trip (Remixed & Remastered) revisits the original 2016 album with a newly remastered edition alongside reinterpretations from a cross-generational group of contemporary electronic artists. The collection connects H. Takahashi’s meditative ambient language with artists working across contemporary experimental electronics, dub-informed minimalism, ambient techno, and modern new age composition, extending the album’s original aesthetic into a broader contemporary context. Fans and listeners have frequently described Takahashi’s music as calming, minimal, comforting, and deeply transportive, with recent online discussions continuing to highlight Body Trip and Escapism as standout works in modern Japanese ambient music.
Originally released in 2016 on Constellation Tatsu, Body Trip introduced Japanese ambient composer H. Takahashi’s quietly immersive approach to minimal electronic composition. Built from delicate synth tones, meditative repetition, and understated melodic movement, the album has become a lasting favorite within contemporary ambient circles. Over the past decade, Takahashi has developed an internationally respected body of work spanning releases such as Raum, Low Power, Escapism, Elegy, and Paleozoic. Beyond his solo output, he has collaborated through projects including UNKNOWN ME, ATORIS, and H TO O, contributed music for installations and exhibitions, and performed throughout Japan’s experimental and ambient music communities. Body Trip (Remixed & Remastered) revisits the original 2016 album with a newly remastered edition alongside reinterpretations from a cross-generational group of contemporary electronic artists. The collection connects H. Takahashi’s meditative ambient language with artists working across contemporary experimental electronics, dub-informed minimalism, ambient techno, and modern new age composition, extending the album’s original aesthetic into a broader contemporary context. Fans and listeners have frequently described Takahashi’s music as calming, minimal, comforting, and deeply transportive, with recent online discussions continuing to highlight Body Trip and Escapism as standout works in modern Japanese ambient music.
The album opens at dusk with an imagined final stop before departure, a roadside gas station just as daylight fades. This introductory scene, conceived as “Last Gas Station Before the Horizon,” places the listener amid passing cars, distant seagulls, and the low hum of anticipation. The idea is to frame the record as part of a radio program, potentially guided by a radio announcer’s voice drifting in and out of the soundscape. From there, the journey moves fully into night. Tracks progress like signals picked up along the drive, calm, reflective, and gently nostalgic, until the album’s closing moment. “Peaceful Blue” represents arrival at the final destination at dawn, when the sky shifts into a deep blue and the listener waits quietly for the sun to rise and a new day to begin. Transcoastal Night Drive is an album about motion, atmosphere, and memory, less a narrative than a feeling, inviting listeners to settle into the drive and let the night pass by.
Previously released on Low Company in 2023, Purely Physical Teeny Tapes reissue the full album from Tarquin Manek, one of the most prolific, distinct and perhaps under-recognised producers in our orbit. If bezonked, subaquatic dub-pop zoners are your thing, anything from The Skaters to Swell Maps, YL Hooi to Carla dal Forno, CS + Kreme to Jac Berrocal, this one’s for you. The 16th and final number from short-lived yet beloved London shop-turned-label Low Company renders a raft of works made by Tarquin Manek (F Ingers, Kallista Kult, Tarcar) 2013-2020, and shafted in the release schedule until now. Nine songs depict Tarquin in his soggiest songwriting mode, floating over rugged, groggy loops in a rare, non-collaborative form. It’s a captivating self-portrait of an artist who is perhaps best known for his collaborations and work behind the scenes, variously fostering talents from the Naarm (Melbourne) undergrowth such as YL Hooi and Carla dal Forno, the latter of whom was his bandmate in F Ingers alongside Sam Karmel of CS + Kreme, and many of whom would grace Low Company and its cult predecessor Blackest Ever Black. A sense of desiccated bliss riddles the bittersweet fantasy tang of ‘Breathing Under Honey’, where Manek sets a course from the bleached coral underfoot on ‘Stones on the Beach’, to a lizard-hipped bossa shuffle on ‘Mirage Game’, via superb bouts of Count Ossie-meets-Spencer Clark whims on ’Submerging Emergency’, thru Hassellian trumpet gargling in the sink on ‘Sea Slug Bender’, to instrumental cyberpunk sea shanty, ‘Age Old Squall’, or coming across Lewis on a jolly with drunken sailors at a late night Berlin bar on ‘Basic Trouble’. Of course it all hits that crinkled sweetspot for levels of eyes-half-shut perpendicular pop that we’ve come to expect from Low Company and their constellation of affiliates, joining dots between the ahead-of-their-time ‘80s post punk tape oddities that surface on Efficient Space, A Colourful Storm’s febrile dream sequences, to rickety DIY bops from the London mulch. Laters, Low Company - a proper bunch of sound cnuts.
Klara Lewis' Opening is a deceptive recording with veiled melodies and clandestine bangers. "Klara Lewis’ distinctive talent for disfiguring sound into forms that remain recognisably song-like reaches a new peak here. Lewis, creator of worlds, treats music as a mirror that reflects a perspective misaligned with the real image. Her music moves in unusual and often startling ways. Acoustic instruments such as ukulele and piano are subjected to processes of deconstruction and reconstruction, their original forms continually reshaped. The tracks within Opening offer an array of disorientating tactics; damaged field recordings are suddenly sliced into ominous rhythmical patterns whilst deceptively simple tactics provide foreboding dread. Often alien on entry, the progression of a piece can land in a surprising tenderness, or the other way around. The momentum grows as a physical state but also one which is questioning, desiring, encapsulating a feeling, to explore a further way of expression and ultimately connecting: A new closeness, a new perspective. Opening is an album in which the protagonist’s manipulation of sonic matter seems to extend beyond the music itself, resulting in a corresponding manipulation of the active listener. Sounds shift, dissolve, and re-emerge in altered forms, creating an experience that feels both intimate and disorienting. Lewis maintains a delicate balance between abstraction and emotional immediacy, drawing the listener into a world where familiar musical gestures are constantly reconfigured in surprising ways. The works on Opening are refracted through an exploratory and transformative lens, suggesting an artist continuing to redefine the possibilities of musical language as a space where the instantaneous and the eternal come together."
Keith Freund’s music occupies a space where careful musicianship and homebrewed experimentation meet and shake hands. On “Window Left Open,” spacious melodies drift through dense fields of electronic activity: saxophone lines rise above buzzing circuitry, percussion flickers at the edges of the frame, and clustered glitch textures dart through the music like insects in tall summer grass. Every sound feels vividly animated, a charged part of the same mercurial ecosystem. Freund’s talent lies in balancing warmth and unpredictability with remarkable ease. Patient motifs recall the exploratory spirit of early folktronica, while bit-reduced textures, degraded loops, and idiosyncratic synthesis techniques continually reshape the terrain beneath them. Rather than treating acoustic and electronic elements as opposing forces, Freund allows them to intermingle until distinctions dissolve, creating compositions that reward close listening while retaining immediate warmth. This record finds Freund working with a fully formed vocabulary that is truly his own, transforming glitch, melody, improvisation, and atmosphere into songs that are both fundamentally curious and disarmingly engaging.
Buenos Aires composer Ignacio Sandoval, aka YOTO, returns to London's Kit Records with a new album of dismantled Argentinian folk music. Taking root at the border between Latin American folk tradition and the kiln of Buenos Aires' distinctly bustling experimental arts scene, Ciprés is a loose-limbed collection of elegiac storytelling. Guitar remains at the heart of YOTO's practice; each piece on Ciprés began life as a miniature improvisation, recorded in real time then gently adorned with splintering melodies of marimba and xylophone, and funereal marching percussion. The results form a series of private moments; internal sculptures and scenes that speak to the intimacy and solitude of domestic life. Like fellow Argentinian boundary-pushers Aylu and Vic Bang, YOTO's previous work bubbled with a fermented maximalism (see "Levure"). In contrast, Ciprés alludes to weathered forms - dialogues that fork, disintegrate and improbably rekindle, like aerial roots feeling their way through an ancient city wall. When Sandoval's voice does appear - on "Viento De Otoño" - it casts a dappled, swaying shadow..
Carrier winds the rhythmic tension to breaking point on his 4th self-released 12”, flexing fine-tuned muscle memory and inch-tight production in acres of negative space across a trio of soundsystem phantoms that dance in the long shadow of D&B and broken beat science. Huge tip FFO Autechre, Burial, Photek, T++. Now three years into a generational run of inspirational plates - including an AOTY ’25 with ‘Rhythm Immortal’ for Modern Love - Carrier’s core sense of discipline and restraint continues to yield peerless reward on ‘Thresholds’. A lifetime’s love of, and immersion in, fwd UK dance musics has prompted him to chase a particular dragon of syncopated swerve and cavernous psychoacoustics to logical, next-level depths diffusing that dread pressure with an adroit, tendon-twitching precision and tactility. Carrier has been instrumental in reminding ravers what was lost when D&B went stadium and pop-chart scale over the past decades, daring to run against the grain, trust his instincts, to return a sense of mystery and bold experimentalism to what was once a thrilling paradigm. This new trio of cuts eke exquisite nuance from tweaked fundamentals, swivelling 2-step off the bone into smoky hall-of-mirrors reflections of ‘Cure’, and specialising in a razor’s edge, toes-off-the-ground sorcery in a recursive, wraithlike zinger, ‘Scout’ that dips to the sexiest, tongue-tip breakdown, beside the tantric, anticipatory chicanery of ‘Black Channels’ which finishes us off with an all-tension-no-release weapon for the ages.
Still somehow operating in the shadows despite a pair of exceptional albums under his belt, plus a standout appearance on Space Afrika’s acclaimed ‘Honest Labour’ album, Nigerian born Londoner LA Timpa returns with this super deep, confounding third album featuring screwed, unfathomable dreampop variants that worm from layered flutes to oddly tuned trip hop, referencing everything from Mica Levi to Klein to early Yves Tumor and, most obviously, A.R Kane - ultimately sounding like nothing else. LA Timpa snagged our attention with his exceptional debut ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ for O___o?, and an acclaimed follow-up for Rabit’s Halcyon Veil, which eventually led to a guest spot on Space Afrika’s cult lightning rod ‘Honest Labour’ and a remix for Tricky. After letting the dust settle, he returns with a new collection of songs mired in rawly sublime melancholy, turning existential reflections into a richly evocative sort of chamber pop akin to Arthur Russell jamming with A.R. Kane. It drifts heavy-lidded between fully formed songs obfuscated by a dense fug to properly bezzonked lo-fi improv that follows his nose for detuned strings smudged and activated with field recordings. It’s all done in the loosest, most hypnagogic style, characterising how the spirits of ‘80s no wave NYC and even ‘90s Kiwi indie rock have sluiced into the truly singular milieu of South London in the 2020s. Sung in a fragile yet shatterproof falsetto to backdrops of smeared loops and lines of coruscating guitar and keys, ‘Pity By One All Good Treasure’ conveys itself by seduction and suggestion rather than any heavy handed or literal techniques. Whether by design or implication, its rhythmelodic make-up recalls how West African music surfaces in the lilt of Lifetones, or even how Jim Reeves’ country music unexpectedly percolates thru Nigerian styles, all obviously at a remove of decades, but nonetheless short-circuiting expectations and putative timelines in the process. The record wails into view with 'Wide', a properly bewildering opening of tangled flutes that sounds like Debit’s pre-historic wind instrument investigations as if treated by Alvin Lucier, before taking flight on a screwy trajectory that seems to reference a great deal of music we love; from labelmate Dawuna to Coby Sey’s pop inversions to Dean Blunt’s enigmatic world-building, from Tricky’s low-lit pre-millennial tension to Mica Levi’s unsteady phased strings - it all sounds immaculately produced and entirely unresolved. In fact, the glossolalic unintelligibility of the songs becomes a virtue it its own right, initially limning and drawing us into psychoacoustic parameters and occupying an elusive mid-distance throughout the album, form the slippery lilt of ‘It Smiles Without my Lie’ to the Blood Orange-esque nod of ‘City Hell Cast In Fire’, the haunted blooziness of ‘Treatment’ and eyes-in-backa-head grog to ‘Brave (forsake)’, and a properly wooze-inducing enigma on the nine minute denouement ‘Ruthless’ - a crumbling epic that centres negative space, splicing field recordings with instrumental strums. When a song does eventually appear from those embers, it's like a queered response to Grouper's enduring 'Heavy Water’ as though perceived through layer upon layer of gauzy saturation. It all makes for a supremely unusual and engrossing listen, and provides further proof, if needed, that LA Timpa is an elemental force all of their own, a vital part of South London’s eminently watchable new musical ecology.
Pity by One All Good Treasure LA Timpa
Fresh from an appearance on Space Afrika’s 'Honest Labour’ album, collaborations with Klein and Lol K and a placement in the Dazed 100 list, LA Timpa finally offers his head-turning 'Equal Amounts Afraid' album on vinyl following a short CD run just before the pandemic hit in early 2020. Served up on promising yung London label O___o, and made with additional mixing from Solange collaborator Kwes and mastering from sometime Dean Blunt engineer Amir Shoat, ‘Equal Amounts Afraid’ is a beautiful smudge of pop experimentation riddled with timeless musical soul. Following from his 2016 debut ‘Animal’, and guest production for Cold Specks’ trip hop sound, LA Timpa’s gently reserved and melancholic productions push an intimate pop vocabulary into spectral, dreamlike dimensions. Introspective and avant like Klein’s psyched chop-ups, as sensuous as Blood Orange, but with a taste for expressively harmonised pop refrains that clearly recall Yves Tumor via Richard Youngs, the album unfolds with its own logic, deploying eyelid-tugging levels of hypnagogic charm that practically demand to be heard in sequestered, lowlit situations. Seducing us to his singular temporality and hazy atmosphere with the vaporous falsetto and ambient soundfield of sirens and groggy bass in ‘Around’, a cut-up interlude leads into fragmented music box melody and intimate plainsong on ‘Fertile’, while ‘Core’ almost echoes the 4AD dream-pop of A.R. Kane, and ‘Give’ beautifully dematerialises indie-pop into ambient gauze. ‘Backyard Exotic’ surfaces his strangest side in a maze of mushied songcraft, ushering a trippier 2nd half where the songs really start to fray between ‘Caretaker’, the smokers’ hymnal vignette ‘Towel Under The Door’, before channelling Thom Yorke in the melting Mbira melody of ‘Rattle Snake’, and spooling out into proper ambient soul with the spine-tracing lines of ‘Tried Ice’ and the smudged magic of ‘Memory Phone’ where he truly divines a strength in his vulnerability in a way that should resonate with the most sensitive souls.
Nueen follows production for Iceboy Violet and a string of releases for Quiet Time Tapes, Good Morning Tapes and Balmat, with a sprawling new album for 3XL, an ambient drill epic featuring guest spots from Dawuna, Space Afrika, Loraine James, Xzavier Stone and RenzNiro. Everything clicked into place for Nacho Pezzati when he turned the humid soundscapes of his early releases into distorted beds for Iceboy Violet's casual free associations on the Hyperdub-released ‘You Said You'd Hold My Hand Through the Fire' back in 2024. He retains the same energy on 'Swerved', working alongside a team of vocalists and collaborators to locate a sweetspot between rap, dub and ambient vistas. His methodology is laid bare on 'Searchtiers', obscuring its UK drill-style sliding bass with weightless synths and gaseous FX, upping the ante when vocalist and producer Xzavier Stone jumps on the mic on 'Nowhere Near A Section'. The addition of proper hooks, adlibs and rhymes - "let it burn like Usher Raymond" - makes the production hit that much harder, not just referencing radio rap and R&B but challenging the paradigm. Fittingly, Loraine James, who early on inhabited similar zones, lends her voice to the grimy 'Atmosphere is my Style', whispering over Pezzati's hair metal samples and booming 808 Mafia-style basses. Manny's own RenzNiro checks in on 'Impls', rhyming over one of Nueen's most decisive beats, all clipped snares, gong samples and tweaked bass. And Space Afrika turn up with an assist on the low-slung highlight 'Shm', a smoove and sensual D'Angelo-style soul banger with none other than Dawuna on the mic. Dawuna returns on 'Matrix', splitting duties with Xzavier Stone who provides an impressive '00s post-jiggy hook and Pezzati's vision materialises. The haze of half-remembered bites of cloud rap, pop and club rap represents a post-P2P hauntology that's global, not really localised. And connecting with Space Africa again on the closing track 'I Guess', he travels beyond the boundaries of the album itself, lavishing SA's orchestral cries with fuzzy synths and swirling vocals.
Michael J. Blood executes a stunning volte-face from rugged house and soul to more intuitive, introspective, world-building ambient jazz and electroacoustic dub realms under a new moniker SEES, signifying a newfound psychoactive frisson to his work that lands him somewhere in the spiritual vicinity of Vangelis, Moodymann, Ron Trent, Pendant, Terre Thaemlitz. ‘Ampersand Curve’ initiates a brilliant new phase of work by North Manchester’s most elusive artist, best known as Michael J. Blood. His string of ruffkut club bangers as well as jams with Rat Heart & Samizdat over the past seven years, have made his records a true cult property, and now find him signed to one of the UK’s most foundational techno imprints - more of which later this year. But under the SEES aegis, he swims in very different waters, following his instincts to use the studio-as-instrument to produce his most impressive, deep-minded work, made from - and for - the heart. Where MJB was all about off-the-cuff club jams cooked for immediacy, his new stylistic switch reveals myriad worlds of influence swirling under the hood, where interrelated spheres of spiritual jazz, dub, ambient and concrète more clearly light up his rich inner world. As the story goes, MJB was burgled a few years back, and lost most of his studio just as the project was hitting its stride. It prompted a personal review of his practice, re-learning new kit, allowing him to bend the rules. Adopting a sort of first thought, best thought approach to composition, the new methodology fuelled a renewed imagination in flux, or what he identifies as SEES: a personalised way of conveying complex emotions. That un-doing of musical and mental conditioning opens the walls of his music to vast new horizons. Opener ‘Ithaca’ fathoms sonorous midnight jazz with 10 mins of a plangent, searching sax solo in HD widescreen, like some alternate version to the Blade Runner Love Theme, while a resonant vocoder soliloquy ‘Unseem’ reaches into space harmonised between Alvin Lucier and Ron Trent, and ‘Sheer’ chases the devil out of labyrinthine dub dimensions. The floating dream architecture of ‘Caprices’ caps the LP’s underlying narrative and painterly qualities with a romantic conclusion of blushing pads and shivered, metallic echoes of the subtropical that suggest a coming-to-terms with worries, refreshed and good to go again. A huge, heartfelt tip for a 2026 stunner.
Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electronic music as accompaniment. After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nikolais became the first owner of Robert Moog's synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York in late 1964. Relying heavily on the Moog and later the Synclavier synth/sampler, these 21 tracks document Nikolais' highly-prescient compositions across the mid 1960s through to the late 1980s - existing not only as extensions of his other-worldly choreographic pieces, but standalone pieces of foundational mid-century American electronic and experimental music.
Often credited as the father of multi-media theatre, Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) took complete creative control over his productions - including cutting-edge approaches to lighting and costume that transformed human bodies into shifting sculptural shapes, while also composing wildly innovative electronic music as accompaniment. After initially experimenting with musique concrète and tape manipulation (as demonstrated on the 1959 LP Choreosonic Music of the New Dance Theatre of Alwin Nikolais) Nikolais became the first owner of Robert Moog's synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention in New York in late 1964. Relying heavily on the Moog and later the Synclavier synth/sampler, these 21 tracks document Nikolais' highly-prescient compositions across the mid 1960s through to the late 1980s - existing not only as extensions of his other-worldly choreographic pieces, but standalone pieces of foundational mid-century American electronic and experimental music.
qorakitobchi aka Anvar Kalandarov is a music archaeologist, musician and producer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan whose work is dedicated to uncovering forgotten sounds from across Central Asia. In recent years he has emerged as a singular voice documenting the region’s musical heritage, co-compiling Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz for Ostinato Records and curating Digging Central Asia: Musical Archaeology Along the Silk Road split release for Death Is Not The End, alongside presenting his own Maqom Soul imprint. For this mixtape, Kalandarov turns his attention to the synth-pop, disco and electronic music that flourished across Central Asia during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawn from rare vinyl records, private archives and forgotten recordings, this selection explores a period when Soviet modernity, regional traditions and emerging synthesiser sounds merged to create a uniquely Central Asian vision of the future. From Uzbek disco and Tajik synth-pop to lesser-known oddities, the mix offers a glimpse into a musical world that remains largely unexplored outside the region.
