Electronic / Experimental

Strut presents an exclusive new collaboration between UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian ambient / electronic maestro Gigi Masin on ‘Dolphin’. Recorded remotely during 2021-2022 the album took shape in the form of mutual compositions, gradually developed and embellished online. Final recording sessions took place at the majestic Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle Of Wight with Moses Boyd (drums), Tom Herbert (bass) and Siobhan Cosgrove (flute, clarinet) adding elements to several pieces. Tracks include the reflective, wistful single ‘Viento Calido’ and drifting ambient piece ‘Sabena’, a beautiful tribute to Gigi’s wife who sadly passed away during 2022. Greg Foat has recorded prolifically in recent years for Athens Of The North, Jazzman and Strut including acclaimed albums Symphonie Pacifique (2020) and The Mage (2019). Best known for his 1986 ambient masterpiece Wind and as a member of Gaussian Curve, Gigi Masin has enjoyed a revival in recent years through his Calypso album on R&S’s Apollo label and renewed touring. Dolphin represents Greg and Gigi’s first landmark recording collaboration together. “I first heard Gigi’s album Wind in 2016,” remembers Greg. “I was living in Miami and I heard it playing one Summer evening. Since then, it has always been in my mind to be able to record together.” Dolphin is mastered by Mark Ashfield at Cosmic Audio with newly commissioned artwork by Niul Foat. The LP comes as transparent vinyl in a thick card outer sleeve.

Caterina Barbieri & Bendik Giske's At Source resounds music as wellspring, that which is essential and unknowable, and yet utterly primary. It finds two acclaimed composer-musicians building a world together in self-contained collaboration between analogue synthesis and an extended approach to the saxophone that conjures its own universe of sound. It is at once intimate and cosmic, drawing on the challenges and possibilities of their artistic exchange, tearing down technique to access all the expansive possibilities of their sonic meeting point. At Source is a document of the world of sound to be conjured when two artists strive for something together, discovering the expansions and limitations of performance by bodies and machines. It is not an exercise in assimilation, but in productive exchange and creative confrontation. It does not draw on outside energies or influences, but grapples with what there is to find in their respective playing. "It also reflects how natural the collaboration was," says Barbieri, "a meeting at the source which was spontaneous, graceful and natural". Barbieri and Giske first met and were enthralled by one another's performances at Kunsthaus Glarus in 2019, a meeting that spurred conversations on the power of transitions as a compositional force. Giske later contributed a rework of Fantas for Fantas Variations (Editions Mego, 2021), an ambitious undertaking to rescore Barbieri’s work for his saxophone and voice, a challenge Giske had started undertaking two years prior as an ongoing practice of transcription. “The request came as a proof of aligned ideas”, says Giske. Their new collaborative project then started during an artistic residency in Milan’s ICA in 2021, by invitation of swiss artist and curator Jan Vorisek, as the world was emerging from lockdown. This meeting, and the preceding closure of sites for cultural exchange, made their work together 'feel like springtime' says Barbieri. Giske, who was on the brink of releasing his sophomore album, Cracks, then joined Barbieri's light-years tour, which functioned as an inaugural incarnation of her newborn label and platform through a series of multi-artist curated shows with appearances of Lyra Pramuk, Nkisi, MFO, among other artists. Through the tour, they continued to develop material live, and this release, laid down in the studio, is true to that ever-evolving process of creation, where live feedback stays essential to the vitality of this collaborative effort. The tracks are each named with two evocative words that contain the two poles of their sound. Theirs is both abstract and cosmic, in the synth as machine undermined by Barbieri's naturalistic playing, and in Giske's continuous exploration of the symbiosis between his instrument, voice, and body. These binaries, of body and machine, posed various challenges, notably in how the stepped patterns Barbieri uses were near-impossible to translate for Giske's body to perform, and other times where mathematical resolutions were needed to sync their playing. Explains Giske: "It forced me to go to the core of what I am and what I have to offer”. Barbieri says that it "explores the liminality between the machine and the human, and the vulnerability in this process". On 'Intuition, Nimbus', the first track to be written, Giske's playing flutters and rises on Barbieri's synth, like a flock of birds lifted skywards on thermal columns, with clouds of pulsing tones fanning avian wings. 'Alignment, Orbit' settles into a steady torque, Giske's gentle percussions syncing with shifting loops, steadily building energy and conjuring solidity from breath and resistance. The extended 'Impatience, Magma' stretches glowing and languorous, honing in on and picking up a synth melody with whetted edge that cuts through the firmament, populating a broad cosmos of extended tones and replicating patterns in a piece that calls to mind Laurie Spiegel's extended works, and steps into transcendent duet with Giske's saxophone at its most keening and spiritual in tone and movement. 'Persistence, Buds' unfurls gracefully in sensuous sympatico, as saxophone caresses Barbieri's slowly twirling progressions, a tactile and meditative closer. At Source is testament to two divergent practices finding a whole cosmos in which to convene; music is crystalised and made utterly enveloping through the focused and critical work of two musicians working at their peak. The versions here are, temptingly, "just one of many versions" of this abundant source material Giske explains. Like the best collaborations, At Source is more than the sum of its parts – bringing more to the feast than the simple combination of two musicians, promising versions upon versions of the exquisite material captured here.

Hania Rani announces her new album, Ghosts, bringing her songwriting and beautiful vocals to the fore and featuring special guests Patrick Watson, Ólafur Arnalds and Duncan Bellamy (Portico Quartet). Ghosts is the sound of an ever-evolving artist and, just as the album’s title suggests she passes repeatedly and gracefully between musical worlds: as composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. This album builds on Rani’s earlier successes Esja and Home with an expanded yet still minimal setup of piano, keyboards, synths (most importantly her Prophet) and features more of her mysterious, bewitching voice. Its spirit is warm, beckoning one into an ambitious double album that unfolds at an exquisite pace, informed by her revelatory, exploratory live performances. Ghosts is also an album of collaborations as Rani is joined by Patrick Watson, who breathes unearthly life into the ethereal ‘Dancing with Ghosts’. ‘Whispering House’is written and recorded with her friend, Ólafur Arnalds and casts a peaceful, ineluctable spell; and Portico Quartet’s Duncan Bellamy contributes vital loops to ‘Don’t Break My Heart’ and ‘Thin Line’. Rani’s lyrics are partially inspired by a two-month residency in a small studio in Switzerland’s mountains, where Rani was working on the soundtrack On Giacometti for a documentary about the renowned Swiss artist. “Where I stayed was once an old sanatorium in an area which used to be very popular, but now there are huge abandoned hotels where the locals say ghosts live. I mean, it's kind of a local belief system – these ghosts even have names! – but once you're deep into nature or some abandoned place, your imagination starts working on a different level.” “The edge of life and death,” Rani summarises, “and what actually happens in between: this was what really interested me. Even singing the word ‘death’ was quite a shock. It’s such a weird word to say out loud, and people are afraid of it, which I found extremely interesting. Most of the songs probably still talk about love and things like that, but Ghosts is more me thinking about having to face some kind of end.”

Based in musically fertile Leeds, the 14-member jazz ensemble Ancient Infinity Orchestra have made an album (their debut for Gondwana Records) that marries influences like John and Alice Coltrane with an emphatically Northern style, alongside a communal aspect of recording that fits both the aforementioned artists and the thriving jazz scene of their hometown. River of Light was recorded in just 3 days, the massive cast of players – key member and saxophonist Matthew Halsall is part of a rotating lineup of violinists, harpists, flautists and more – working with a similarly sized choir of Brighton friends. Over this time, the collective made food together and jammed in the heat between tracks, inducing a wholesome, exuberant warmth that percolates throughout the album.

Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Matthew Halsall announces landmark new album An Ever Changing View, an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall’s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences. An Ever Changing View will be released on September 8th on Gondwana Records (the label Halsall founded 15 years ago) ahead of a landmark show at The Royal Albert Hall in London on September 21st and UK and EU tour dates. Halsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music. During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.” An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound.

On June 3rd Gondwana Records present ‘Next Time Could Be Your Last Time’ – the debut album by Forgiveness, AKA Jack Wyllie, JQ and Richard Pike. Described as “not really jazz, not really new age, not really ambient or electronica”, instead they welcome you into a synaesthesia-inducing technicolour fantasy, full of wondrous emotive beauty. This genesis began with the sharing of music, burgeoning friendships, and the mutually-inspirational benefit of the collective power of a group dynamic, with each spurring the next on to heighten their already expansive skills. Intertwining the acoustic, electric and digital, utilising instruments and tools from across the decades, their synthesized Shangri La is a place where craftsmanship meets musicianship, even including sections notated on sheet music. The mood whilst recording, however, was one of loose freedom and enjoyment, with parts displaying a light-hearted playfulness. A world where shiny electronics meet flute and sax motifs, subverting them into something new. Jack Wyllie is best known for his work with Portico Quartet, Paradise Cinema and Szun Waves as well as collaborations with artists such as Luke Abbott, Adrian Corker and Charles Hayward. Whilst JQ has released on Boxed and Lo Recordings, with his music also remixed by Loraine James, Sun Araw and Foodman. Richard Pike has had multiple records on Warp as a member of PVT, collaborated with Modeselektor and Ital Tek, recorded under his alter-ego Deep Learning, and founded the tape label Salmon Universe, all whilst composing scores for TV drama. Wide-ranging influences on the LP include 70s era ECM and Miles Davis, Spencer Clark/Star Searchers, Ansel Adams, Steve Reich, H Takahashi, Don Slepian, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’, Michael Gordon’s ‘Rushes for 8 Bassoons’, Sir Simon Rattle’s documentary ‘Leaving Home’, Horoshi Yoshimura, Ulla Strauss and Disasterpeace, plus new developments in vaporwave and software experimental. Hitting the centre at the ven diagram of these interests, the record converges the trio’s individual sound worlds into something singular. Primarily purveying a sense of endorphin-flushed tranquillity, they build synthetic, bucolic, lysergic landscapes, which although imbued with processed plasticity also contain multi-stranded depths of textural field.

"I feel like 'Home' is a second part of the same book, that the start was in 'Esja', a musical prelude to a real plot. I feel Home is a story with an ending, so the next book can tell a totally different one. I am constantly looking for new ways of expression. I am curious where 'Home' will lead me and my music". — Hania Rani Hania Rani is a pianist, composer and musician who, was born in Gdansk and splits her life between Warsaw, where she makes her home, and Berlin where she studied and often works. Her debut album 'Esja', a beguiling collection of solo piano pieces on Gondwana Records was released to international acclaim on April 5th 2019 including nominations in 5 categories in the Polish music industries very own Grammys, the Fryderyki, and winning the Discovery of the Year 2019 in the Empik chain's Bestseller Awards and the prestigious Sanki award for the most interesting new face of Polish music chosen by Polish journalists. Rani also composed the music for her first full length movie "I Never Cry" directed by Piotr Domalewski and for the play "Nora" directed by Michał Zdunik. Her song "Eden" was used as a soundtrack of a short movie by Małgorzata Szumowska for Miu Miu's movie cycle "Women's Tales" If the compositions on Esja were born out of a fascination with the piano as an instrument, then her follow-up, the expansive, cinematic, 'Home', finds Rani expanding her palate: adding vocals and subtle electronics to her music as well as being joined on some tracks by bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmijak. The album reunites her with recording engineers, Piotr Wieczorek and Ignacy Gruszecki (Monochrom Studio) and the tracks were again mixed again by Gijs van Klooster in his studio in Amsterdam and by Piotr Wieczorek in Warsaw ( Ombelico and Come Back Home). Home was mastered by Zino Mikorey in Berlin (known for his work on albums by artists such as Nils Frahm and Olafur Arnalds). For Rani, 'Home', is very much a continuation of the work she started on 'Esja', "the completion of the sentence" as she puts it. The album offers a metaphorical journey: the story of places that become our home sometimes by chance, sometimes by choice. It is the story of leaving a place that is familiar and the journey that follows it. Home opens with the fragment of the short story "Loneliness" by Bruno Schulz, which can be seen as a parable of a journey that does not necessarily mean going beyond the physical door but can signify going beyond the symbolic limits of our knowledge and imagination. "One can be lost but can find home in his inner part - which can mean many things - soul, imagination, mind, intuition, passion. I strongly believe that when being in uncertain times and living an unstable life we can still reach peace with ourselves and be able to find 'home' anywhere' This is what I would like to express with my music - one can travel the whole world but not see anything. It is not where we are going but how much we are able to see and hear things happening around us". — Hania Rani Home is also about the inevitability of change. We never find places exactly how we left them. Time flies and life with it. Just like art and music. Once you started the trip, you will never be back really to the place where you started with. It is a sentiment that is at the heart of Home, not just its themes, but at the heart of Rani's music too. Following the success of Esja it would have been easy for her to stick to the same solo piano formula, but while Rani expresses her surprise and gratitude for the success of Esja, "I wasn't sure how this album - based on Piano and silence - will be received by the audience. The reception was a big surprise to me" it has also given her the confidence to express more of herself as an artist. On Home Rani steps into more of a producer's role, adding strings, bass and drums where needed, exploring the sounds of synths and electronica, but also creating textured layered songs made from acoustic samples, mostly from piano recordings. "I try to explore new genres and discover new artists, I don't want to be stuck in things that I know, I want to learn about things that are still new to me". But perhaps most notable is her singing, Rani has a fragile, beautiful voice, both pure and expressive. Long a feature of her live shows she uses it as another instrument, adding extra layers of melody and emotion to her already deeply expressive music. "I consider voice as another instrument. Maybe if I wasn't so often alone on the stage, I would take another instrument to play the melody that I have in my mind. But while I am alone, singing allows me to have more possibilities at the same time. The human voice has a real magic, nothing carries emotions as easily and powerfully as the voice, and I think being able to bring this atmosphere on stage opens up new possibilities of expression for me". — Hania Rani Home also features Rani's new band, bassist Ziemowit Klimek and drummer Wojtek Warmi

La Ola Nocturna explores the most adventurous side of Spanish pop in the 1980s. Spanning post-punk, new wave, synth wave, darkwave and experimental electronics, this compilation brings together 25 tracks that capture a Spain in transition, suspended between the euphoria of newfound freedoms after Franco’s dictatorship and the uncertainties of an emerging modernity. Far beyond the familiar story of Madrid’s Movida, La Ola Nocturna uncovers a rich and often overlooked independent scene where offbeat pop, nocturnal soundscapes, punk feminism, cybernetic utopias, gothic romanticism and DIY experimentation flourished side by side. From Madrid and Barcelona to San Sebastián, Vigo and the Canary Islands, these artists forged a distinctly Spanish musical language, shaped as much by international influences as by the unique context of the country’s democratic transition. A journey through a decade of freedom, contradictions and relentless creativity, La Ola Nocturna reveals the roots of Spain’s future indie movement while celebrating a generation that turned the night into a laboratory for artistic invention.

''The bass-clarinetist Ville Lahteenmäki's raucous, ruggedly braying style makes him a notable addition to the Dolphy-Murray-Mahall lineage that produces maximum excitement with every outpouring of notes. His accompanists, drummer Nicolas Leirtre and bassist Trym Saugstad Karlsen, are like himself, students at the renowned Trondheim Conservatory, an institution whose impact on European jazz has been significant in modern times.'' - Kevin Le Gendre / Jazzwise

Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. Since its original release in 1977, RAGNAR GRIPPE's seminal debut album entitled Sand has been adorned with immense praise and influenced a myriad of ambient musicians and minimalist composers. Grippe’s unique approach of bonding post-modern classical composition into the tape techniques of musique concrète allowed him to be one of the leading experimental electronic musicians of the late 20th century.  Originally trained as a classical cellist, Grippe had relocated to Paris in the early 70’s to study at the famous Groupe de Recherches Musicales (more commonly known as GRM) founded by musique concrète pioneers Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry and Jacques Poullin. Around the same time, Grippe had struck up a close friendship with French avant-garde minimalist Luc Ferrari. It was under Ferrari’s direction and guidance that the young Grippe started to build a shared experimental music studio, aptly named l’Atelier de la Libération Musicale (ALM), in which Ferrari shared his knowledge and instrumental supplies, thus forging Grippe’s implementation of harmonic tone within the confines of musique concrete.  After a brief stint of electronic music study at McGill University in Montreal, Grippe returned to Paris in 1976 to compose with Ferrari at the now fully-realized ALM studio. One of the visiting artists passing through the creative epicenter of the Cité Internationale des Arts during this time was the painter Viswanadhan Velu. Velu’s recent works consisted of various Sand paintings which were to be exhibited at the Galerie Shandar, the avant-garde art gallery and home to the Shandar record label which was the home to minimalist composers Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Cecil Taylor and Charlemagne Palestine.  Grippe was asked to compose a composition that was to be played during the Sand painting exhibition and was then to be released on the Shandar imprint in 1977. This release would be the first official album that would start Grippe’s career as a modern avant-garde composer and electronic musician. After a celebrated release, “Sand” has since been out-of-print on its original vinyl format for four decades and original copies fetch high prices amongst minimalist listeners and collectors.

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And so we come to round 4 of the Long Trax series, the pivotal moment of truth. Four new deep cuts spread across 4 sides of vinyl in dual sleeves, and spun onto disc. An all-analog, hardware machine affair, full of glazed pads and spicy stabs, rhythm composure (composer) sequences, round booming basslines, and narrators from beyond. It’s the real thing, still chugging along.

Two new A/B trax pressed to wax, in a limited edition. Inspired by the activist and legend Steve Biko, "Look Anew" gives two dubs, one deep and the other dubby. Where do we go from here? Packaged in a classic reverse board sleeve, with original artwork by Tsuji Aiko, pressed on 180g black wax. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

Strut proudly presents an expansive deep dive into the world of Quatermass Sound Lab, the prolific under-the-radar East London studio founded and run by producer, engineer and The Heliocentrics co-founder Malcolm Catto. Over the last two decades, Catto has quietly established himself as a sought-after sonic architect in contemporary music. Revered for his analogue-first approach, he has built Quatermass Sound Lab around vintage recording equipment, valve preamps and live performance, creating recordings that feel warm and timeless. Equally inspired by punk, hip-hop, psychedelic rock, jazz, funk and electronic music, Catto has developed a production style that rejects genre boundaries in favour of instinct and atmosphere. Describing himself as "50% musician and 50% listener," Catto approaches each session as a collaborator rather than a conventional producer. That philosophy has made Quatermass Sound Lab a creative home for an extraordinary range of musicians, from established innovators to emerging voices. His remarkable discography spans collaborations with Yussef Dayes, DJ Shadow, Madlib, Quantic, Mulatu Astatke, Orlando Julius, Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids and countless others, each project using analogue wizardry to shape bold, contemporary recordings with a character all of their own. This collection opens the Quatermass archive for the first time, gathering previously unreleased recordings, alternate versions and mixes that chart Catto's evolution as producer, drummer and sonic instigator. Tracks include the abrasive, post-punk electronics of Snapped Ankles' ‘Shopping Parade’, French rap experimentation on Wet Enough’s ‘San Pé’ and the richly textured psychedelia of Vanishing Twin's ‘Backstroke’. Catto’s work with jazz and global sounds features with Divine Earth’s visceral ‘Free Soul’ and extended pieces by Venezuelan futurists Insólito Universo and Lausanne Afrobeat collective Professor Wouassa while undiscovered artists include the brilliant UK band Toyface with their epic ‘Potter’s Wheel’. More than a producer retrospective, Quatermass Sound Lab is a portrait of an artist whose fingerprints can be found across some of the most adventurous records of the last twenty years, presented on standard edition Black Vinyl LP or CD.

If you don’t know Sababa 5 yet, you’re definitely missing out on one of the hottest bands on the Tel Aviv music scene. Following their very popular debut release ‘Crossroad of Love’, Sababa 5 and vocalist Yurika are back on the exclusive Middle Eastern Grooves with their newest double-sided 7” collaboration titled ‘Tokyo Midnight’. The record is a dazzling encounter of cultures, inspired by the funky and exotic melodies of Sababa 5 and the resplendent Japanese words of Yurika. Title track Tokyo Midnight opens with a groovy guitar riff and continues to an upbeat rhythmic workout, complete with a funky bassline and ululating keyboards. Yurika’s enchanting voice ties things together in a soft, yet hypnotic, musical whirlwind. On the B-side - Nasnusa - a beautiful guitar solo continues into a captivating rhythm inspired by traditional Mizrahi music. Yurika’s delicate vocals evoke a love story; a couple watches the sunset as the gates to a new world are opening. As Nasnusa fades into the light, her lover recalls her beauty and expresses fondness over the wonderful time they spent together. About Sababa 5 Founded by Amir Sadot and Ilan Smilan, Sababa 5 have been playing together for two years and have recently built their own recording studio on the street that connects Jaffa to Tel Aviv. “We just wanted a place to record our music where the whole band could fit together in the same room…so, we built the place ourselves! Mind you, there’s not a lot of space…in fact, we’re a bit crammed in there but that’s how we like it. Additionally, we’re above the best hummus place in Tel Aviv so we couldn’t have picked a better location”. Sababa 5’s musical style has been influenced by all its members and is in continuous evolution, though always remaining very groove-centric. The sound is mainly based in surf rock and retro funk, especially Arabic folk and funk music from the ‘60s and the ‘70s and artists from that period, such as the legendary Aris San. Yurika is a Japanese performer who was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. During her teenage years, she discovered belly dancing and fell in love with it. She then traveled the Middle East to discover more of this antique art; learning from choreographers of the stature of Orly Portal and performing with renowned artists Raquy Danziger, Boom Pam, and Ouzo Bazooka.

"Following two remix EPs featuring reworks by Mad Professor, Peaking Lights and Danilo Plessow, Sensible Soccers return with Camminando di Notte, an album exploring the space where instrumental electronics, organic rhythms and dub-inflected textures converge into a sound of warm, hypnotic and subtly disorienting beauty. The album opens with “Chuva Morna” and "Balsinha Mentirosa", setting the tone with softly played guitars, hazy electronics and rarefied percussion. Rather than moving towards a conventional song structure, the tracks unfold through texture and repetition, establishing the dreamlike atmosphere that runs throughout the record. Together with “Rosa Mota” (previously remixed by Peaking Lights), these opening tracks form the album's most spacious and introspective passage. Guitars, synths and electronic details drift in and out of focus, creating a sound that feels simultaneously tactile and distant. The mood shifts with “Berlaitada” and “Baile de Saia Travada”, where dub production techniques meet a distinctly Mediterranean and Atlantic sense of space. Both tracks were previously reworked by Mad Professor, but here their original forms reveal a more subtle relationship between bass, rhythm and psychedelia. “Efeito Zandinga” pushes the album further into a kind of Lusitanian hypnagogia, combining an understated electronic pulse with echoes of 1980s arcade production and imaginary library music. Its persistent groove gives the track a quietly propulsive quality, while the arrangement remains deliberately uncluttered. On “Sarava”, previously revisited by Danilo Plessow, the rhythmic element becomes even more pronounced. A rolling psychedelic groove and Afrobeat inflections carry the track forward without sacrificing the album's characteristic sense of restraint. The closing “Trance Discreto” stretches these ideas into an extended instrumental piece, gradually connecting krautrock repetition, minimalism and electronic texture. Across Camminando di Notte, Sensible Soccers operate in the space between listening music and dance music without settling completely into either. Dub, ambient, psychedelic electronics, guitar music and Mediterranean rhythmic traditions are treated less as genres than as materials, assembled into a sound that is spacious, understated and distinctly their own."

Colombian experimental composer Lucrecia Dalt scores Rabbit Trap, a folk-horror film starring Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen as musicians who move to the Welsh countryside and stumble upon a mysterious sound while making field recordings. Dalt builds the film’s unsettling world from synths, ambient electronics and ominous drones, matching its tale of music, ancient woodland forces and supernatural disturbance. The soundtrack follows acclaimed releases including ¡Ay! and Dalt’s film work on The Baby and On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, with Rosy McEwen also contributing vocals.

London based Caribbean-Belgian composer, producer, and musician Nala Sinephro steps out on her own with a deeply personal debut album and her first release with Warp Records.

This is the second album after the transfer of the company, which was released in 1995, and is a compilation of songs created between 1990 and 1994. The album is a work that encompasses the dichotomy and diversity of the Aphex Twin, with acid, noise, and broken beats that could be described as "drill'n'bass," while following the ambient, IDM, and hardcore techno of the early days. The album contains 12 tracks, including the single "Ventolin," which is a strong industrial downtempo explosion, and "Alberto Balsalm," a song that is often mentioned alongside "Xtal. 180g vinyl.

Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a Deluxe Double LP compilation chronicling the infamous London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario's long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem. The tracks on this compilation were chosen by Peterson via an extensive review of track lists from his broadcasts on BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs. The compilation also includes a previously unreleased track recorded live on the Peterson-founded online radio station Worldwide FM. The RSD exclusive 2LP is on "Frozen Lake Michigan" colored vinyl. This album is released via International Anthem as part of their "IA11" series of releases and events – where the label celebrates their eleventh year of existence by looking back on their first ten years while establishing new standards for the next ten years.

Pressed for Record Store Day 2025 for "Frozen Lake Michigan" Color 140g 2 x LP, in a heavyweight UV-Gloss jacket, with 12"x12" insert booklet, with IA OBI Strip & printed poly-lined inner sleeves.

Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart are a trio who utilize string instruments, voices, and manual tape effect processing to craft compositions from alternately tranquil and disquieting improvised music. The three musicians are individually rooted in deep sound exploration, multi-disciplinary composition, and all manner of cross-genre collaboration. The musical ground covered by their solo practices is correspondingly expansive, and their individual recording and performance credits read as a veritable who’s who, ranging from DIY darlings to household names of experimental avant-garde, electronic, indie rock, and more.

The trio’s collective sound is based in improvisation—automatic, intuitive composition via their three voices and three string instruments (viola, cello, and violin, respectively). Their influences are vast—dispatched with more playful ease than a trio of string instruments is typically approached with, and just as likely to be found in the cloud-obscured mountains of Donegal, the low-rent cacophony of a midwestern basement, or the revelatory expanse of the Nurse With Wound list as in the storied halls of the academy. Touchstones and areas of interest aside, the main thing that Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart engage with in BODY SOUND is listening and reacting.

“Improvisation has a special capacity to facilitate a kind of sonic intimacy,” says Kohl. “We're making choices together in the moment. We're creating time together before thought enters the equation. It's an incredibly intimate and intuitive space to share, and feels like the heart center of this music and this practice.”

The trio’s approach to improvisation is very much embedded in and informed by their Chicago music community. The city’s ongoing improvised music tradition, which can envelop every genre imaginable, is one where a working musician’s ideas can evolve at a near-constant pace and where anything can be explored in the name of sound. And with sound, there’s always space to consider.

Where will the improvisation take place?

How will that space shape the sounds being made?

How will that sound resonate in the dim light of a small neighborhood bar?

How will it sound in the chromatic refractions of an ornate church?

Can it feel different-yet-equally perfect?

For Whitney Johnson, Lia Kohl, and Macie Stewart the answer to the last question is yes, definitely.

Stewart: Our quest as a crew is to explore space and every iteration of what that can mean, be it physical space, emotional space, sonic space, etc. Space is an instrument.

Johnson: It’s more than the acoustic properties of the recording spaces. Our bodies, emotions, and relationships show up in those spaces with affordances and limitations for the music each time. We are vibrating beings, sensitive and expressive, an amoeba of physical and psychic pressures with specific resonances in time and space.

Kohl: The space we’re in always feels like a collaborator in this trio more than in other contexts. I can always feel us all responding to where we are and the resonances that live there.”

On BODY SOUND, the trio worked with International Anthem engineer and album co-producer Dave Vettraino to translate the sonic specificities of three recording locations: International Anthem studios on Iron Street (Chicago), Shirk Studios (Chicago), and Boyd’s Jig and Reel (Knoxville, TN, as part of Big Ears Festival). Vettraino also brought a deep knowledge of tape manipulation and a willingness to experiment. “All it took was for one of us to say, ‘What if that was a loop?’, and he was already setting up the reel-to-reel,” says Johnson of the album’s post-production, which leaned heavily into their shared love of saturated tape sounds.

That trust, it seems, was already there. In addition to the communal criss-cross inherent in sharing their Chicago home base, the trio worked with Vettraino on Stewart’s 2025 solo effort When the Distance Is Blue. It was her debut on International Anthem but far from her first appearance in the label’s catalog as a player. Ditto for Kohl and Johnson, whose collaboration and friendship with the label goes back years. Taken as a whole, we could argue that this most recent collaboration, the tape-manipulated fried beauty documented on BODY SOUND, has been a long time coming.

In the context of this work, tape sound is much more than a mixing treatment or a production tactic. Here Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart are using variations on the medium to edit and reshape the pieces themselves, employing multiple analog tape machines to reimagine their improvised material into meticulously crafted compositions (“another layer of improvisation,” says Stewart). It’s all a response to the spaces they were originally engaged with, and the use of a highly physical medium like analog tape deepens the spatial engagement of the trio’s work to striking, playful, and organically psychedelic effect.

The resultant BODY SOUND is deep, melancholy, and triumphant, coming across like a kind of lost or amalgamated folk music. It’s certainly part of an ongoing creative continuum, even boasting track titles adapted from Yoko Ono’s classic book of text scores Grapefruit.

The album’s opener “dawn | pulse” puts a morning drone at the threshold of their sound world. This undulating slow roller is a free time drift of bowed tonal clusters respiring in long, melodic swells, and unfurling among wordless singing. Despite the time marker in the title, this piece feels suitable for any part of the day—the morning stretch skyward, the afternoon ambling respite, or the late-nite chillout. Both majorly serene and deceptively avant garde, “dawn | pulse” is a perfect entrée into BODY SOUND.

“laundry | blood” begins with a near-waltz percussive tumble created by a tape loop of Kohl’s barrette-prepared cello. Its soft and eerie triplet propels a deep and snarling viola-cello-violin drone forward à la the doomiest moments of the Berlin School canon or the repetitive outsider glory of Tony Conrad & Faust's Outside the Dream Syndicate. It’s a darkly cinematic take on the ambient ideal for the scarcely visible slow-moving night train chug. You can almost see it roll by.

Some moments feel intentionally disconnected from the performance, instead tied more closely to the concept of LP format listenership: the disintegrated melodic pumps and clomps of “chewing gum”, the body shaking radiator hiss come-apart of “snow | touch”, the otherworldly bass and sub-bass of “stone | piece”.

Across the album’s 11 tracks, each piece manages to keep a foot in both worlds. “burning | counting (sleeping)” begins abruptly with massive bursts of heavily-bowed sawtooth strings looping in real time, creating a near-synthetic feeling. Deep stutter-step freneticism, tape-manipulated and rendered into overlapping moments of dense psychedelia give way to an oncoming long-note tranquility—an improvised cacophony evoking some long dissipated storm-paced Irish folk drone more so than a New Music exercise or a study of Kronos / Reich.

And that seems to be the story with all of the material within BODY SOUND. It’s music with inexplicably broad appeal while maintaining a sort of mysterious outsider quality. Johnson, Kohl, and Stewart have created a stunning album—an exquisitely textured, spatially vivid, wordlessly expressive, sonically multitudinous collection—that manages to decode a slew of high level concepts while clearly and directly speaking to the human impulse. BODY SOUND is right.

The opening of "Sixtyniner" is ethereal, a perfect example of BoC's unique sound. As with all their albums, Twoism reminds me of a specific time and place. Oh, how I loved getting home from work and zoning out to "Sixtyniner". "Basefree" is another track that always stood out, one of their faster tracks with a more drum and bass style. I've always enjoyed the one-minute section starting at 4:39. One of my most important ambient and electronic music groups, brimming with memories and meaning.

Recorded over three rain-soaked days in Los Angeles, Evergreen is the first collaboration between trombonist Kalia Vandever and Darkside guitarist Dave Harrington. Their music moves between jazz and electronics, with Vandever’s breathy, soaring brass set against Harrington’s guitars, drum machines and samples. At its heaviest, the record builds into dense walls of guitar and electronic rhythm; elsewhere, the duo strip things back to intimate melodies and close, reflective playing. The result finds both musicians exploring territory beyond their solo work, moving through longing, melancholy and moments of release.

Years of playing together underpin Written in the Universe, a collaboration between flutist and composer Nicole Mitchell and percussionist Joe Westerlund. Recorded over two days near Chapel Hill, the album captures their instinctive interplay with minimal editing. Mitchell’s expressive flute and live electronics move through echoing, spacious passages as Westerlund builds intricate polyrhythms beneath them. Drawing on their shared experience across jazz, experimental music and electroacoustic improvisation, the pair favour spontaneity and discovery, creating music in which composition and intuition become almost impossible to separate.

“Kataomoi” is the 1962 debut song by Okinawan folk singer Misako Oshiro, who passed away in 2021.

Written and composed by her mentor, Teihan China (father of Sadao China), this song became Oshiro’s signature piece. Oshiro, who remained an active singer until the very end, continued to cherish and perform this song, nurturing it over the years.

This album features her disciple, Kanako Horiuchi, carrying on the legacy by performing the song.