Electronic / Experimental

recorded in 2012 at Impression Lointaine

Over the 23 years since Loren Connors’ Airs was first published, it has drawn a thick circle of fans. Gently recorded to cassette tape in 1999, (with wonderfully subtle multi-tracking), Airs is comprised of a series of brief electronic guitar poems. Intimately composed with the patience and purposeful hesitation we have reverently come to expect from Connors. Lyrical melodies recur in different forms throughout the LP, as shifting figures in a dream. Shadowy and sunken, the tone evokes an overcast seascape. The album feels singular; woven along as one flowing piece. 

Airs is perhaps the most approachable and beautiful in all of Connors’ catalog, seducing strangers and familiars just the same. Forlorn wonderment; a human quality that makes this such an enchanting record. It is the humble simplicity and the directness of the guitar inflection that conveys such truth. The stark grace of Connors’ playing resonates here for all to embrace.

A first new solo album by Andrew in five years, completed in 2022 at Impression Lointaine and released by ICR. Thirteen beautiful melodic tracks that weave in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory manner, evoking many different moods and emotions.

OrganumのDavid JackmanやNew Blockaders、Giancarlo Toniuttiといったノイズ・レジェンドたちとの仕事でも古くから知られる、英国にて孤高にドローンを造り続ける巨匠。Christoph Heemannとの伝説的プロジェクトMirror（1999-2004)の活動でも知られている重鎮Andrew Chalkの2022年10月発表の最新アルバム『The End Times』がColin Potter主宰の〈ICR〉よりCD&カセット・リリース。幻想的な郷愁と温かなアンビエンス息づく彼岸の地の音楽が全13曲収録されています。Denis Blackhamによるマスタリング仕様。

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Recital, we present Autumn Fair. A group LP comprised of 44 guest players (full list below), curated and edited together by Sean McCann. Autumn Fair aptly embodies the feeling of Recital as a record label; the infusion of abstract sound art and sentimental beauty – performed by both younger and older generations of artists. Oren Ambarchi - guitar, Ed Atkins - paper shredder, Jason Bannon - family, Derek Baron - keyboard, Karla Borecky - upright piano, Andrew Chalk - guitar, crys cole - birds, Loren Connors - guitar, Philip Corner - grand piano, Maxwell August Croy - whistle, Sarah Davachi - electronics, Aaron Dilloway - SFX, Delphine Dora - voice, Giovanni Fontana - voice, Scott Foust - trumpet, Peter Friel - impression, Malcolm Green - camera, Judith Hamann - cello / voice, Mark Harwood - speech, Forest Juziuk - voice, Johnny Kay - tapping, Kajsa Lindgren - hydrophone, Rob Magill - guitar, Lia Mazzari - whip, Molly McCann - flute, Sean McCann - editing / voice, Nour Mobarak - voice sampler, Azikiwe Mohammed - interview, Charlie Morrow - MIDI piano, Kiera Mulhern - SFX, Zachary Paul - violin, claire rousay - SFX, Michel Samson - violin, Troy Schafer - strings, Eric Schmid - tone generator, Ben Schumacher - SFX, Tom James Scott - keyboard / SFX, Asha Sheshadri - reading, Patrick Shiroishi - winds, Sydney Spann - voice, Matthew Sullivan - instruments, Flora Sullivan-Kelly - percussion, Connor Tomaka - SFX / synth, Alex Twomey - upright piano. I wont go into too much detail on the album itself, but after many twists and turns, the album concludes with “Recital Program,” an intense track that manically collages two-second excerpts from every Recital album to date. I extend a sincere ‘thank you’ for all the incredible support for Recital over the past decade.

Smoke Point is a duo composed of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Leech, Kranky) and Sage Caswell (Spring Theory). With their self-titled debut LP on Geographic North, the Los Angeles-based duo takes a captivating cruise through heady ambient drifts and ruthlessly rhythmic loop dreams. Foote and Caswell first teamed up to create a series of improvisational atmospherics throughout a multi-room art gallery. The pair conceived of a sprawling, dynamic experience with tones, rhythms, and textures that varied from room to room, yet were inextricably tuned and melded together. Visitors could serve as a sort of human crossfader, moving through the gallery and dialing up or down aural aspects as they pleased. And although the collaboration came together to create music for a specific physical space, the concept was never fully realized until what is now the duo’s first record. Smoke Point brings five extended, cruise-controlled exercises that calmly violate the Venn diagram's overlap between boundless dance music and unfathomable ambiance. But beyond the boundaries of an album as a set of songs, Foote and Caswell cracked things wide open and recontextualized the album as an actual DJ tool onto itself; ambient leaning and melodically focused. To achieve this, Smoke Point offers a bounty of loops in the form of endless locked grooves on the vinyl edition and brief but equally utilitarian snippets on the digital edition of the LP.

Andrew Chalk is known for his work on the legendary project Mirror (1999-2004) with Christoph Heemann, and is a master of building drones from England. The long-awaited analog reissue of the extremely rare work "Higan/Sad Distribution", which was voluntarily released in 2016 as a limited edition cassette of 100 copies and sold out immediately.

Tetsu Umehara was born in Yokohama, Japan, but spent much of his childhood in Dusseldorf, and it was in the western German city that his nascent interest in architecture first blossomed. His debut album, Handwritten, is a personal journey that explores the intersection between architectural urbanism, acoustic ecology and human emotion. Formed from a diverse range of sounds created from field-recordings taken in, and inspired by, various cities and urban settings, Handwritten pairs guitar, piano and angular percussive elements to create a rich world of aural depth and intricacy. “If music is a site-specific culture, then the process of making music is nothing more than creating an imaginary place within oneself.” Whilst Tetsu learned to play music from a young age, architecture always remained a driving passion and he would go on to study architectural design at Tokyo University of the Arts. His studies have continued to create an inner dialogue around sound and space, imagining music for specific sites and visualising architectural designs in his own sonic creations. Handwritten is an ode to the diverse styles of architecture that have influenced Tetsu. From the modern urban planning of Yokohama’s harbour to the inorganic sprawl of Berlin, Tetsu sees the fluid hand of the artistic creator in a building’s immobile geometry. In an attempt to mirror the disciplined complexity of a city within music, Tetsu has found a way to talk about the interaction of spatial and auditory dynamics. “It is important that the Handwritten be a record of my musical journey. For me, making the album was like a short trip through the landscapes of my memory.” Handwritten is released by Métron Records on 08/06/22 with the album’s artwork a collage of various sketches taken from Tetsu’s time studying. A portion of profits will be donated to Human Rights Now (HRN), a Japanese organisation looking to improve human rights around Asia.

Hailing from Łódź, Poland, Justyna Banaszczyk aka FOQL was raised in the post-industrial decay of the city beloved by David Lynch for its abundant, knackered architecture (think ‘Eraserhead’, or run go check his warehouse photo studies). ‘Wehikuł’ translating to ‘Vehicle’, echoes its provenance and dark surreality across eight cuts of intricate post-techno pulses webbed with brooding synths that lend a fine new stripe of influence to MAL’s unpredictable ‘Rebel Music’ agenda, perfectly in step with its off-road vectors.

A long-awaited repress of Detroit's H-Fusion's 2019 2LP masterpiece, which has been featured on Theo Parrish's Sound Signature and Derrick May's Transmat. The long-awaited repress! In the midst of the rave techno frenzy, Urban Tribe, Omar-S, Aaron Dilloway, and The Automatic Group mingle to create a psychotic, sagging monster of a record. Mastered and cut by Anne Taegert at Dubplates & Mastering. Limited to 500 copies.

It is said, study, work hard and life shall reward. Be good unto others and life will be kind to you. The question is, can you break free from the external constraints of control or do you negotiate your release. Should one endure the seemingly eternal struggle, wielding equality as a spearhead of revolution ? Or do you count your loses and move on to a new world where the lessons of the past are acknowledged ? A fresh start without the weight of having to shield your liberty. A place where all past wrongs can be made right and the tentacles of evil can not reach. A world where legacy can be held in esteem.

Original shoe gazer-turned-ambient electronic explorer E Ruscha V meets Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Zummo on a lush suite of cosmic harmonic projections for back of eyelids and astral armchair flight a la Jon Hassell... “'Thinking A View is a collaboration between E Ruscha V (Secret Circuit) and Peter Zummo, a fourth world meeting of electronics and wind instruments. A joining of East and West. This 14-track soundscape oscillates between ambient, psychedelic, electronic, spiritual and jazz, taking the listener to imagined realms. The sequence flows effortlessly for listening sessions, though each track is cut for DJ use.' Eddie Ruscha on synthesizers, keyboards, drum machines, vibes, tapes, clarinet, various percussion instruments and Mario C. instruments. Peter Zummo on trombone, cornet, euphonium, tuba, conch shell, plastic funnel horn, didgeridoo and voice.”

Big-bottomed techno and ambient steppers from the Rasmus Hedlund, chasing his Dialog turn on Astral Industries with a set of full sunken productions for the deep ends of the club. Working a vein of Scandinavian and Finnish atmospheric steppers pressure shared by Vladislav Delay, Andreas Tilliander and Liima, the 5th Hedlund LP in a decade stretches out on an hour of proper bass weight and reverberating echo chamber dubbing. His seven tracks balance the sort of atmospheric content found in Dialog’s recently issued ambient 2LP with the kind of effortless, durational, grooving structures caught in Sasu Ripatti’s work with MvO Trio on the brilliantly supple ‘Rytmisk’ and the buoyant, toes-off-the-floor styles of ‘Kalla Vindar’ and the lushly convective ‘Verners Funk’ with its plumply rounded subs. He sinks into pure Rhythm & Sound-via-Tilliander ambient dub weight in a radiant ‘Chords Galore’, developing in Kompakt-like Pop Ambient scaping, and ‘Bappa’ pulls it farther out in Vladislav Delay or DeepChord zones with overlapping echo chamber FX o mess with your balance, locking it off with ‘Vila Du Lilla’ on the lushest beatless tip.

Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work. Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria. This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting.

ssabæ is a nebula of friends gathering in studios, meadows and tiny apartments all over France : the tracks of azurescens were recorded during those sessions. we’d like to send love to all the friends involved in this project, it’s a special one (and it’s been in our head and in production for a f… long time)

 

On November 11th the widely-loved electronic maestro Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahinè' – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever. Masin always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year. “There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè' are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost 4 in the morning, but I couldn't sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying. I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realize dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn't make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary 'Vahinè', because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.” Gigi Masin A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’. The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’. A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows decease not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies. Masin closes with ‘Vahinè' – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope. Helmed by the deftly talented Alessia Avallone, Language Of Sound is new record label which marks ‘Vahine’ as its maiden voyage. Language Of Sound is also a management company founded in 2017, with singular talents Ron Trent, Lyra Pramuk, Huerco S, Carmen Villain, Gigi Masin, Paquita Gordon and Soundwalk Collective on their impeccable roster. Dedicated to facilitating ideal conditions for artists to flourish, where appropriate Avallone also collaborates creatively, including the video for Gigi Masin’s ‘Marilene (somewhere in Texas)’ which she produced and directed.

merch video community Tascam Space Season by Noda & Wolfers Share / Embed You own this supported by mackadub thumbnail mackadub I´m in love with this album! :) I can only recommend to give it a try!! Favorite track: スーパーナチュラル・ミキシング・デスク Supernatural Mixing Desk. Elastico solido thumbnail Elastico solido Best soundtrack for the upcoming season Favorite track: 奇妙な秋 Strange Autumn. Lord Dubious thumbnail Lord Dubious Proper 21st century rockers-like dubwise. Refreshingly lofi with no absence of heaviness. Favorite track: ダブの原型 Archetypes in Dub. more... JT thumbnail emjaycee thumbnail high_peak_drifter thumbnail Lowmo thumbnail cooling_the_medium thumbnail deeplhouzz thumbnail draygun thumbnail Con Man thumbnail Anton Nordström thumbnail Raffer7 thumbnail dʒay thumbnail bnips thumbnail renhop thumbnail stevietink thumbnail 謙太郎 金田 thumbnail davidedel thumbnail james1208 thumbnail Glen Cutwerk thumbnail Ron Ron Jones thumbnail Susannarrr thumbnail Scott Rutherford thumbnail riccardo ramello thumbnail jns.kln thumbnail Rol[s]an thumbnail from a height thumbnail Sebastian B thumbnail Ken Hidaka thumbnail GARY WARNER thumbnail Lost in Stars thumbnail Kool Hersh thumbnail Happy Folks Together thumbnail seth ogden thumbnail Pete Morrish thumbnail Jeffrey Wentworth Stevens thumbnail mummdad thumbnail Owen Knowles thumbnail D O G B I T E S V R thumbnail jbhood1487 thumbnail The Abominable Slowman thumbnail Silent Season thumbnail Toblermone thumbnail HARKO™ thumbnail aairplane77 thumbnail Jeff Stanfield thumbnail Jazzmond Farquhar thumbnail Atom Jetsam thumbnail jchiverton thumbnail Keefism thumbnail rtype thumbnail crippled_lucifer thumbnail Guillaume Lafrance thumbnail ‎‎​‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎ thumbnail Dapej thumbnail kyril garcia thumbnail yex_x thumbnail ktz thumbnail sim0n. thumbnail Kevin1976 thumbnail 87477741 thumbnail mikeliss thumbnail more... エコーの儚き目的 The Transient Purpose of Echo 02:37 / 03:36 Digital Album Streaming + Download Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app. You own this Send as Gift 1. スーパーナチュラル・ミキシング・デスク Supernatural Mixing Desk 05:47 2. エコーの儚き目的 The Transient Purpose of Echo 03:36 buy track 3. 現実とは反対に In Opposite Reality 05:12 4. 奇妙な秋 Strange Autumn 04:22 5. 未知なるもののラジカルな形態 Radical Forms of the Unknown 05:43 6. ダブの原型 Archetypes in Dub 05:20 7. ブロークン・ドリーム・テープ・サチュレーション Broken Dream Tape Saturation 04:30 about Something special on Nightwind records: Last December Danny Wolfers met up with Japansese digital dub legend Taka Noda aka Mystica Tribe to produce this Far East style heavy digital dub album. Custom made lo-fi oozing echo effects transform synthesizers and drummachines into a comforting mist of arcane sludge, laced with Taka Noda's enchanting melodica playing.

Soundway's telescope to forgotten and lesser known musical realms extends to Argentina on a brand new, triple vinyl compilation, Síntesis Moderna: An Alternative Vision Of Argentinian Music 1980-1990. A digital rewilding of computer and synth powered music, dripping with an impressive variety of influence, from Italo disco, electro-funk, post punk, tango, ambience, jazz-fusion, Afro-folk and techno pop, the record is a cultural document of a musical decade transformed after the lifting of restrictions of English language music post Malvinas War (Falklands), and the end of Argentina's military dictatorship. Síntesis Moderna: An Alternative Vision Of Argentinian Music 1980-1990 is set for release on Soundway Records this October 21st. Painstakingly crafted by record collectors, DJs and producers Ric Piccolo and Ariel Harari and conceived over 5 years ago, the duo have selected an eccentric selection, some avant garde cult obscurities, long-lost B sides and experimental versions of once-famous tracks from an array of artists, some of whom disappeared as quickly as they appeared whilst others by household names in Argentina. Ric and Ariel also weigh in with two edits, subtle rewirings, geared towards the dance-floor and a compliment to their careful curation. “They’ve come through really good on this one…” - Gilles Peterson “The latest compilation from Soundway Records, captures a kaleidoscopic landscape of Italo disco, proto-techno, and loungy ambient sounds” - Bandcamp “Fun survey of quirky punk-funk and weirdo synth-pop from the era of Maradona and Sabatini.” - UNCUT “A mix of avant-garde sounds, cult obscurities and proto-styles that predate the emergence of house and disco.” - DJ Mag “A wealth of wonderful strangeness.” - The Wire “Like mutated versions of what was happening in Europe – Kraftwerk and ZTT records chewed up and spat out with an irresistible Argentinian twist.” - Electronic Sound Mag

One afternoon a couple of years ago, an excited Ronald Langestraat could barely contain himself. “I’ve started dancing!” he exclaimed. “I never did it before - I’d always admired it in the past, but just wasn’t able to move like that!” But then, at the ripe old age of 81, Ronald was gripped by the urge to respond to the rhythm and express himself in this physical way. For a man who’s dedicated his life to music, in particular Jazz with a funky Latin inflection, it feels like an especially sage realization - like the treasure at the end of a long quest, or the princess after the end-game boss. The prize is freedom, and the shapes we make on the dance floor are mirrored in that piano solo over the stanzas - a caravan that trips from smokey basement clubs all the way to Shiva’s Tandava on the edge of the universe. The music on this album is inspired by this revelation. Although these songs were written many moons ago, their interpretation is modern, full of renewed energy, with young, yet well-worn players. While it slots neatly into the daily music practice that Ronald adheres to, it’s a new chapter in a story that is still being written - and an invitation to get in touch with your dancing self and try out some new moves.

Mansoor Brown is an artist, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Brixton, London. The debut work from , led by Henry Wu, who is the typhoon of the new generation of UK jazz, has attracted attention to the extent that Robert Glasper and Thundercat have been cited, and he has released the latest mixtape. !

It has a cinematic style throughout, and it can be said that the expressive power of the internal guitar that can be felt everywhere is a sound unique to Mansoor Brown. The B-side contains 4 songs developed without beats, and you can fully enjoy his guitar sound. "Meikai", which decorates the last track, is the closest to ambient music in the work, and it is a must-listen song that invites you to another world with modulated vocals, sparkling guitar sounds, and the electronic sound that appears at the end!

For Balmat’s fourth release, we turn our attention close to home: to the Mallorca-born, Barcelona-based artist Nueen, aka Nacho Pezzati.

Nueen has been developing his highly personal style of blissfully Balearic ambient over the past few years, with releases on labels like Quiet Time Tapes and Good Morning Tapes. On Diagrams of Thought, he explores new depths in his sound. His atmospheres remain bucolic, but there’s a disturbance at work, a hint of uncertainty swirling beneath seemingly placid pads.

While Diagrams of Thought retains the ambient (or at least ambient-adjacent) focus of all Balmat’s releases so far, the album also marks new frontiers for the label; the album’s first half is graceful and largely beatless, but the mood grows murkier with the foggy drones of “Dome” and the intimations of liquid drum ’n’ bass on “Maxima”; “Veta,” meanwhile, might just represent the most forceful rhythm to appear on a Balmat release yet. 

Despite the album’s considerable range of moods, tones, and textures, it’s all tied together by a singular preoccupation, says Nueen: 

“Lately, I’ve become conscious of my fascination for the notion of the break, on a conceptual and musical level. What’s temporary and what’s permanent. Thinking and making out of what isn’t there, yet is. Some people would call it silence, but it could also be a skip of the needle, an ellipsis. Something very basic—or Basic Channelesque. A set of sounds and silences, structuring just a hint of rhythm. Sounds that become silences, and silences that become sounds. 

The other day, I was saying to someone that for me, the sound of electric current running through the power lines above the train tracks is the most ambient sound there is. That infinity in which you never quite grasp all the harmonics and reverberations. It’s a form of time detained or expanded. Recently, I’ve been rereading Morton Feldman—you can tell, right? Vertical time, the silence that sounds. A sort of sacredness. My mind is blown every time I walk into a church, for whatever that’s worth.” 

What is the sound of the Russian dub? There is a storied history of attempts to adapt roots music to Russian soil, but most of them can be attributed to reggae (the so-called ‘northern’ variety) rather than dub. Gost has a history with the town of Smolensk. It’s home to Gamayun, whose great album Filterealism was released on our label last year. Now Anton, one of Gamayun’s members, presents his new duo Dubovaya Kolesnitsa (The Oaken Chariot). In his words, it has no connection to his other band at all and is an attempt to go back to the roots of a genre that doesn’t truly exist. The Russian word for oak, ‘dub,’ looks exactly like the genre, and the chariot emerged from the name for the group’s jams – ‘telega’ – which can be translated as a cart. All the music here is the result of live improvisations: no samples, just instruments (notably Vasiliy Shilov's bass). These recordings have been slightly edited, and even the almost indecipherable texts are freestyle. There’s no place for real riddims in Russian dub: sometimes this record sounds like something akin to dub variations on underground Russian hip hop (and we mean that in the best possible way). We should also remember that dub and reggae (and hip hop as well) all started as the voice of people. The voice of those who are always in the minority and try not to be silent. The most prominent dub producers and reggae performers were against hierarchy, imperialism, and colonialism — and their music was born out of the desire to protest against it. As Anton puts it, Oaken Chariot, the “Russian mutation of dub,” is an attempt of voicing the concern. And he links this attempt to a historic Russian tradition of Foolishness for Christ, also known as yurodstvo. The “fool” in question is not naïve at all; he’s trying to seem lunatic on purpose. For Anton, the music of Oaken Chariot is a rebellion with a cut-off tongue. Here, illegible speech, full of inarticulate sounds, is a sign of the inability of the statement. But this inability represents a statement itself that is inevitable. Yet, the music of Oaken Chariot is genuinely fun, free, and mesmerizing (like the happenings of holy “fools”), but we could also approach it more conceptually. Theoretician Michael E. Veal describes dub as a ‘postsong’, taking the form of “linguistic, formal and symbolic indeterminacy.” The duo’s faintly eerie compositions call back to the notion of musical hauntology. There is an attempt, without any direct references, to reconstruct the feeling of something that was never there at all. A little nostalgic and very forward-thinking at the same time, the music of Oaken Chariot is best described in its own words. In the opening track, a voice can be heard saying “eto delo v lob,” which means something like “it’s a straight-on thing.” This is very direct, almost in the vein of folk music. This is a great – and, it must be said, successful – experiment in searching for the soul of Russian dub. Simple as that.

Oliver Johnson aka Dorian Concept will release his new album “What We Do For Others” on 28th October on Brainfeeder Records. It’s the third studio album by the Austrian producer and synthesizer savant, famed for his singular, beautifully detailed sonic tapestries and wild, utterly joyful live keyboard jam videos.

“What We Do For Others” is a relaxed, quietly confident and intimate record, founded on delightfully loose arrangements, feedbacked soundscapes and blessed with snatches of his own cryptic vocals that are presented more as additional instrumentation rather than lyrical phrases. All the elements and layers were recorded without interruptions and deliberately not edited. “I think that's why this record has something of a ‘band sound’” says Oliver. “It's me playing all kinds of different key-instruments, singing and using fx-units to create these freeform compositions.”

The title came to Oliver in a dream and stuck with him. “One thing I often find interesting about my creative process is that when I believe to be making something that others could like, it tends to not really connect with people,” he says. “Whereas when I get to that special place and just work from my gut – the music tends to often speak to the outside world naturally.”
Johnson says that he tried questioning his internal voice of self-judgement and temper his constant urge for improvement during the making of the album.

“I feel like for me as a musician - up until now I've always had this drive to do things 'properly' - to somehow strive for perfection.” Oliver explains. “But this is an album about me letting go of that urge – about understanding that there's something magical that happens in these first takes we often call drafts... a spirit is captured. And once you try to re-record it, the essence of the idea gets lost. So in a way I wanted to see how little ‘control’ I could exert on the music whilst recording it... to almost let the music make itself.”

Based in Vienna, Johnson has nevertheless been a stalwart of the experimental jazz/electronic scene that has flourished and diversified in the orbit of Brainfeeder’s figurehead Flying Lotus. With early releases on Kindred Spirits imprint Nod Navigators and Affine Records, Johnson played Brainfeeder’s earliest international label nights in 2009 (Off-Sonar in Barcelona and the infamous Hearn Street Car Park session in London) forming a strong family bond with the Brainfeeder crew founded on a mutual love of freakazoid electronic-jazz fusion.

Oliver contributed production to Thundercat’s “The Golden Age of Apocalypse”, played keys on Flying Lotus’s seminal album “Cosmogramma” and has toured in the live bands of both FlyLo and The Cinematic Orchestra. He also contributed keys on MF DOOM's "lunchbreak" which was produced by FlyLo and Thundercat. Most recently he collaborated with Kenny Beats on his debut album “Louie”, playing keys on three tracks, and partnered with another don of future-facing electronics – Mark Pritchard – to compose music for Damien Jalet's contemporary dance performance "Kites" at the Gotheborg Operan. In 2020 Oliver worked with one of the world’s leading ensembles for contemporary music – Klangforum Wien – composing and performing a piece called “Hyperopia” at TRANSART Festival in Austria.

The album artwork is by the Austrian artist Kurt Neuhofer with Oliver himself taking on video production duties armed with a vintage 90s video mixer and inspired by analogue video art and the world of home movie entertainment. “To an extent it’s about me re-connecting with my teenage self – but with a certain scepticism towards the sentimental and nostalgic energies that come up when you look back,” he explains. “I like that Carl Jung once said that ‘sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality’. I wanted the videos to capture this feeling of unease you can have towards your own past.”

Johnson released his debut album “Joined Ends” (2014) on Ninja Tune, before landing on Brainfeeder in 2018 to share “The Nature of Imitation”: an album of dizzying swells, cacophonous breakdowns and formidable rhythms with Pitchfork gushing “Dorian Concept creates something that 70s and 80s electro-funk auteurs like Kraftwerk, George Clinton, and Roger Troutman hinted at: computer music that uncannily imitates the funk, rather than just faking it.”

Yokobue (transverse flute) player Michiko Akao's 1983 release "Yokobue: The World of Michiko Akao" is being reissued for the first time! Produced with Shigeaki Saegusa as composer and arranger, this is a new age work that goes far beyond the realm of pure Japanese music. This is a definite recommendation for listeners who are following the current new age/ambient music.