Electronic / Experimental

When one thinks of the terms “mass” and “massive” in music, especially contemporary music, perhaps certain aural images come to mind: generic metal heaviness; dynamics-bereft noise; ear-battering dance floor madness; the multitudinous forms of drone darkness. All of these are massive in their own fashion. However, this new studio album from 7FO (pronounced “nana f o”), a composer-performer based in northern Osaka, investigates and inhabits a different aspect of the massive. A glorious combination: dense low frequencies; sculpturally condensed blocks of sound, subtly swinging gravitational fields ― and a surprising sense of rolling and rollicking joyfulness and play. “Massive” doesn’t have to mean “dark” ― consider the sun. This is the third 7FO release on EM Records, following the well-received “Ryu no Nukegara (Dragon's Husk)" (2018). On these 2024-25 recordings, 7FO focuses his drum machines, synths and musical vision into eight compact structures which were partially inspired by the intense essence of American pre-war blues and the shining soul of traditional Ethiopian music, especially the works related to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. While not obviously evident, the glowing core of these musics has been captured and condensed here; another inspiration is the massive sculptural 1980s works of Yoshi Wada ― although there are obvious differences, there is a similar material tangibility to the vibration of the air. The final piece, “Shirohebi”, is an update of the b-side of 7FO's 7-inch single "Healing Sword" (2023), featured on Henry Rollins’ radio program. We invite you to experience and enjoy these eight massive blocks of sound, imbued with 7FO’s heartfelt warmth and humour, dense but not dark; shifting, rolling, appearing and disappearing: 7FO once picked up a roadside stone, which split as it sat in his palm. This experience, referenced in the release’s title, hints at the metaphysical magic of music, a realm beyond mere coincidence: even the massive density of stone can split, and reveal the magic within. Available on CD, LP and digital download. Artwork by Hiroaki Hidaka.

When one thinks of the terms “mass” and “massive” in music, especially contemporary music, perhaps certain aural images come to mind: generic metal heaviness; dynamics-bereft noise; ear-battering dance floor madness; the multitudinous forms of drone darkness. All of these are massive in their own fashion. However, this new studio album from 7FO (pronounced “nana f o”), a composer-performer based in northern Osaka, investigates and inhabits a different aspect of the massive. A glorious combination: dense low frequencies; sculpturally condensed blocks of sound, subtly swinging gravitational fields ― and a surprising sense of rolling and rollicking joyfulness and play. “Massive” doesn’t have to mean “dark” ― consider the sun. This is the third 7FO release on EM Records, following the well-received “Ryu no Nukegara (Dragon's Husk)" (2018). On these 2024-25 recordings, 7FO focuses his drum machines, synths and musical vision into eight compact structures which were partially inspired by the intense essence of American pre-war blues and the shining soul of traditional Ethiopian music, especially the works related to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. While not obviously evident, the glowing core of these musics has been captured and condensed here; another inspiration is the massive sculptural 1980s works of Yoshi Wada ― although there are obvious differences, there is a similar material tangibility to the vibration of the air. The final piece, “Shirohebi”, is an update of the b-side of 7FO's 7-inch single "Healing Sword" (2023), featured on Henry Rollins’ radio program. We invite you to experience and enjoy these eight massive blocks of sound, imbued with 7FO’s heartfelt warmth and humour, dense but not dark; shifting, rolling, appearing and disappearing: 7FO once picked up a roadside stone, which split as it sat in his palm. This experience, referenced in the release’s title, hints at the metaphysical magic of music, a realm beyond mere coincidence: even the massive density of stone can split, and reveal the magic within. Available on CD, LP and digital download. Artwork by Hiroaki Hidaka.

For his new album, Irreparable Parables, Andrew Wasylyk felt a strong desire to write a set of songs featuring an element hitherto rare in his work: the human voice. Equally strong was the conviction that he did not want to sing them himself. The Scottish multi-instrumentalist and composer set about assembling a group of guest singers, sending out the songs to wherever they were in the world. The vocals were recorded remotely and then, like migrating birds, winged their way back to Scotland. The result is an album of great beauty which, perhaps preeminently in Wasylyk’s work, expresses the vulnerability and resilience of the human spirit. Six singers appear on the record, represented by six songbirds illustrated on the sleeve by Clay Pipe Music’s Frances Castle. The cuckoo is a nod to Belle and Sebastian’s 2004 single ‘I’m A Cuckoo’, that band’s Stuart Murdoch being the first voice you hear on the new album. When the vocal for ‘Private Symphony #2’ arrived, says Wasylyk, “it was everything that I was looking for and more. But this is Stuart Murdoch. Of course he’s going to make something incredibly beautiful and thoughtful.” The song lyrics were, for the most part, written by the singers. The music is Wasylyk’s creation. He navigates a sound world that lies somewhere beyond the borders of classical and jazz, ambient and abstract. It is difficult to describe, but easy to understand, which is to say to feel. That is the way Wasylyk’s work is experienced: as a feeling. It takes you back to childhood, perhaps, to feelings of comfort and safety, or to memories of walks at sunrise and sunset, or to the way a shadow falls on a particular field in a particular place at a particular time in your life. This is consoling music. That is why, though pretty, it is not merely pretty. These are songs to shore up the soul. Wasylyk writes in a room, in his native Dundee, full of “half-broken” instruments. He picks these up, plays a little, seeking an idea, a feeling, a door that lies ajar. The musical palette of Irreparable Parables includes brass and woodwind, a six-piece string section, guitar, bass, drums, vibraphone, Mellotron, Fender Rhodes, tape loops, synthesisers and percussion. The strings were arranged by the cellist Pete Harvey, a long-term collaborator. Among the other guest vocalists are Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals, Saya Ueno from Japan’s Tenniscoats and Peter Brewis from Field Music. Wasylyk himself takes the lead vocal on the title track, though a throat infection and touch of pitch-shifting have altered his singing in a way that even he, having fallen out of love with his own voice, finds acceptable. The heart of the record can, arguably, be found in two tracks, ‘Love Is A Life That Lasts Forever’ and ‘Spectators In The Absence of God’, sung respectively by Molly Linen and Kathryn Joseph. The former, bright with trumpets, was inspired by the writing of Derek Jarman. “I was feeling deeply upset about the world and wanted to try and write something that was obviously hopeful,” Wasylyk says. ‘Spectators …’ offers an emotional counterpoint. It is an “apocalyptic hymn” that seems to grapple with watching human suffering from afar, too distant to be at physical risk, but experiencing the psychological wounding, and feelings of helplessness, even complicity, that come with constant awareness of other people’s pain. “Kathryn’s a pal, I love her dearly, and she’s a brilliant artist who really feels what she writes,” Wasylyk says. “The cracked tenderness of her voice is spellbinding.” The album closes with an instrumental piece, ‘Soul Enters The Ocean Sun Climbs Out Of The Sea’, all piano and strings, that offers a sense of resolution and ascension. A good moment, too, for Wasylyk to reflect upon the artistic companionship that he enjoyed while making this record – the songbirds that answered his call: “These humans are incredible at what they do. I’m deeply grateful and feel so lucky. It blows my mind.”

Endlessness is a deep dive into the cycle of existence. The 45-minute album delicately spans 10 tracks with a continuous arpeggio playing throughout, creating an expansive, mesmerising celebration of life cycles and rebirth. Following Sinephro’s critically acclaimed 2021 debut album Space 1.8, Endlessness further elevates her as a transcendent and multi-dimensional composer, beautifully morphing jazz, orchestral, and electronic music.

The album was composed, produced, arranged, and engineered by Sinephro. Performing on the album are Sheila Maurice-Grey, Morgan Simpson, James Mollison, Lyle Barton, Nubya Garcia, Natcyet Wakili, and Dwayne Kilvington, joined by Orchestrate’s 21 string players.

This is a work synonymous with the Aphex Twin, featuring one of the most popular songs of their career, "Girl/Boy Song".

Three long-form compositions that peer through a glimmering aperature into diaphanous realms of textural experiences: “What are the pros and cons of being lost in a thought?”

"Röntgen" is Ø's (aka Mika Vainio) subliminal, minimal techno classic, and was featured on the first Sähkö Recordings release in 1993. Spatial, silvery-sharp, and reduced yet frenetic, it's a blueprint of drum machine and synth work that helped redefine an era in techno. This special-edition 12" also features a full-side cut of a previously unreleased Ø track from 1995. The untitled B-side carries the same approach as the title track—minimal TR-808 and acidic synthesis—but in contrast to the hard-edged A-side, this track features a subtle, warm melody towards the end, a melodic approach also heard on later Ø productions.

Laurel Halo returns with an album of original soundtrack music, composed for the film Midnight Zone by visual artist Julian Charrière. Following the path of a drifting Fresnel lighthouse lens as it descends through the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone — a remote abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean, rich in rare metals and increasingly targeted for deep-sea mining — the film traces a descent into one of Earth’s last untouched ecosystems.

Charrière’s film reveals the deep not as void, but as a luminous biome teeming with fragile life: bioluminescent creatures, swirling schools of fish, and elusive predators. The suspended lens becomes an abyssal campfire, attracting species caught in the tides of uncertainty, their futures hanging in the balance.

Echoing this tension, Halo’s compositions evoke a sensory freefall, where gravity falters and light and sound flicker in uncertain rhythms. Midnight Zone is a sonic drift through the space between what we seek to extract, fail to understand, and must protect.

Halo’s score evokes the life that exists beyond our physical airbound capacity. The material features long, subtle passages of electro-acoustic ambient, drone and sound design, slowly flowing and unfolding with rich detail. The music, composed largely on a Montage 8 synthesizer and Yamaha TransAcoustic piano at the Yamaha studios in New York City, possesses an uncanny quality: that of synthetic waveforms being amplified and sung through the stringboard of the physical body of the TransAcoustic piano. Combined with stacks of violin and viol da gamba, the music on Midnight Zone possesses trace elements of a human hand in an otherwise sunken landscape. Patient, submerged, and alive. The album will be the third on Halo’s imprint, Awe.

The film is central to Charrière’s current solo exhibition Midnight Zone. The exhibition engages with underwater ecologies, exploring the complexity of water as an elemental medium affected by anthropogenic degradation. Reflecting upon its flow and materiality, profundity and politics, its mundane and sacral dimensions, the solo show acts as a kaleidoscope, inviting us to dive dee

it was recorded live at my first concert in new york city in the summer of 2022, right before i recorded iiyo iiyo iiyo and right after i recorded the doober with sam gendel and then Nothing with Louis Cole.

i think it is my most grooving record.

This seminal, eponymous post-punk album by Japanese group Aunt Sally, fronted by experimental singer Phew, was first released by the iconic Vanity Records label in 1979. Over the past forty-plus years, Phew has forged a singular path through a wide range of styles - from free improvisation to pop - and has collaborated with the likes of Ryuichi Sakamoto, members of Can, DAF, Einstürzende Neubauten, The Raincoats and more. But Aunt Sally is where she got her start and, despite the members’ young ages (still in college at the time), Phew and the band delivered a mature, timeless take on minimalistic punk. Remastered from the original analog tapes, this fully authorized reissue.

A highly anticipated 7-inch analog vinyl release, "Mr. Maxmetal," by DJ/producer Master Kohta—the owner of the retro gaming cafe "cafe la siesta" in Kiyamachi, Kyoto, and a pioneer who has driven the chiptune scene for many years—is now available from KUMARU Records!

By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rarely left anything on the table. Any musical performance was an opportunity to present an amalgamated version of all the things he had learned. He was an innovator and a teacher at his core, and the concert venue was one of his first classroom settings. In March 1976, Verna Gillis invited Graves to perform on WBAI's Free Music Store radio show. For the date, he chose to present a trio lineup which he had been occasionally playing – featuring two saxophonists who were dedicated to the drummer's vision. Hugh Glover is almost exclusively known for his work with Graves, while Arthur Doyle would gain exposure later for an obscure record that he made two years later, Alabama Feeling, which would become a highly collectable item among free jazz enthusiasts. Originally released in 1977, Bäbi remains one of Graves' most seminal recordings. The music played by the trio was ecstatic. Extreme energy music, buoyant and joyful. It relied on Graves' new way of approaching the drum kit, in which he had opened up the bottoms of his skin-slackened toms and eliminated the snare. Graves' art was always unblemished by commercial interests, and this album is its finest mission statement. First-time vinyl reissue. Sourced from the original master tapes.

2026 repress; clear with red color vinyl. "Standards, the fourth full-length recording from Chicago's Tortoise, boldly announces their return following 1998's TNT. Tortoise spent the bulk of 1998 and a portion of 1999 touring the world. Following tours of the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Brazil, and Australia, Tortoise members worked on other projects that occupied them until the spring of 2000 when they began to record Standards. In 1999 members of the band toured the US as the backing band for legendary Brazilian composer/singer Tom Zé's. Musically, Standards is their most concise statement of purpose thus far. The tunes are direct and immediate, yet they maintain the exploratory edge that has always characterized the group's output. The fusion of instrumental sounds (electric, acoustic, and synthesized) is subtle and subversive. Similarly, the group's fluency within the studio environment gives the finished work a quality that alternates between artifice and reality. Whilst TNT was constructed in the studio using segments recorded, improvised or altered electronically, the 'Standards' sessions began after a period of rehearsal and composition. The contrast, simply stated, is that the studio was used extensively as a compositional tool for TNT, whereas with Standards it was used predominantly as tool to realize and enhance the existing new compositions. The studio does not impose itself on the recording to the same degree listeners witnessed on TNT, and the resulting record is in many ways reminiscent of their unadorned self-titled debut. Sounds, notes and rhythms are manipulated but in general, processing is spare. Tortoise's highly lyrical melodies, rich and varied tonal palette and high level of musicianship were recorded in a studio designed by McEntire. The resulting record is the clearest demonstration of the band's many skills and strengths."

Glorious vinylization of this 2022 duo session, originally issued as a cassette, documenting the first time Suzuki and Noyes ever collaborated. Ayami Suzuki has become known to cognoscenti for her brilliantly imagined vocal improvisations, through recordings with like-minded folks such as French vocalist/polymath Delphine Dora and avant hurdy gurdy player, TOMO. Rob Noyes has developed a parallel reputation as a master third-generation acoustic guitarist in the post-Takoma tradition. Originally based in the U.S. he wisely relocated to Tokyo several years ago. Which is where this meeting took place, And while I initially assumed the music had been composed to some degree. Rob assured me that was not true, He says, “I think the recording can seem like something we took a lot of time with and discussed/composed to some degree, but we actually just agreed to meet at a rehearsal studio. It took a little more than an hour to track it all, without ever having played together before or even really discussing the approach we were going to take. I just tuned my guitar to a different tuning for each one and we let it roll.” The results kinda speak for themselves, but I was blown away by the notion they had never collaborated previously. The intimate nature of their blend recalls such long-time collusionists as Tim Buckley & Lee Underwood or Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille. Rob's delicate instrumental arcs create a perfect net for Ayami's vocals, which are usually wordless (although they always feel weighted with emotional content). It's a mesmeric pairing of voices. Which I can only hope is the first of many. Classic Fevers and Chills is a perfect soundtrack for spring, Unconditionally magical. --Byron Coley, 2026

Eliane Radigue's complete Opus 17 (1970), her finest and final work created using feedback, is contained on this double CD. With Opus 17 Radigue perfected her slow mixing technique with sublime results. Imperceptible transformations envelop the attentive listener who is confronted with an immensely physical experience. Time is suspended in powerfully poetic and artful ways as Radigue masterfully sculpts the physical matter of sound using feedback for the last time.

Opus 17 is an absolutely essential masterpiece in the realm of early electro-acoustic/drone/minimalist composition.

Metallic silver ink printed on high gloss paper.

“Time Code,” the 1983 album by German electronic duo YOU. Drawing from the Berlin School tradition and echoing the analog‑synth textures of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, this is a hidden gem of early‑80s progressive electronic music.

Infant crafts eight immersive dub pieces built from echo-laden rhythms, shimmering ambient textures and spacious production. Drawing on Detroit techno and sound system culture, the album unfolds with patience and depth, favouring mood over momentum, with blissed soundscapes that ripple and refreact like liquid metal. Recommended for fans of the ambient side of echospace [detroit] axis.

A special reissue of "Fagjazz," the double CD originally released in 2000 that introduced the world to the expression 「ベリー・ファッキング重低音」. Disc 1 compiles tracks from various Comatonse releases, many of which had previously only been available on vinyl. However, the real centerpiece of the release is Disc 2 "Superbonus," an hour long ambient-jazz track in 5/4 time only found here, for which Thaemlitz received an Honorable Mention in Digital Musics from the 1999 ORF Prix Ars Electronica competition. For the collectors, the versions of "Sloppy 42nds" and "Thirty Shades of Grey" found here are different than those found on Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion "Recalls" (C.030, 2021). Self-released on Comatonse Recordings with custom packaging hand assembled by Terre herself, the package includes two CDs in an archival vinyl pouch with one double-sided insert card (100mm x 100mm), phonograph style anti-static inner sleeve, and 4x4 panel poster insert printed on newsprint (472mm x 472mm).
sample-Terre Thaemlitz & Funk Shui: Superbonus(Excerpt)
sample-Chugga: Deep Space Probe(Excerpt)
sample-Comatonse.000: Pretty Mouth (He's Got One) (Excerpt)
sample-Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion: She's Hard (Excerpt)

A CD compiling all of Terre's Neu Wuss Fusion's releases to date. Includes previously unreleased and alternate versions of tracks found elsewhere (such as on DJ Sprinkles "Gayest Tits & Greyest Shits" and "Fagjazz"), so this CD will still be of interest to collectors who might already have those other items. Self-released on Comatonse Recordings with custom packaging hand assembled by Terre herself, the package includes one CD in an archival vinyl pouch with two double-sided insert cards (100mm x 100mm), phonograph style anti-static inner sleeve, and 4x4 panel poster insert printed on newsprint (472mm x 472mm).

sample-She's Hard (2007 Archive of Silence Mix)(Excerpt)
sample-A Crippled Left Wing Soars With the Right (Steal This Record Club Mix)(Excerpt)
sample-Thirty Shades of Grey (Demo Version) (Excerpt)
sample-Sloppy 42nds (Terre's New Wuss Fusion Edit)(Excerpt)

Snowflakes & Dog Whistles: Best Electroacoustic Ambient & Sexpanic 1995-2017 is a double-CD compiling twenty-nine of Terre Thaemlitz' best electroacoustic ambient and computer music works produced between 1995 to 2017, including many special edits only available on this release. The majority of these tracks have been physically out of print for decades, and were originally released on a variety of labels including Mille Plateaux, Daisyworld Discs (Haruomi Hosono of YMO's private imprint), Instinct Ambient, Caipirinha Productions, and of course Thaemlitz' own Comatonse Recordings. The first disc, Snowflakes, focuses on tracks that are more conventionally ambient or perhaps even "pretty." Dog Whistles, the second disc, compiles tracks featuring a chaotic array of samples and sounds that are more overtly related to themes of gender- and sexual variance.
Thaemlitz frames the tracks with a new 9000 word essay spread across two large posters, providing a basic introduction to the underlying topics, ideas, contexts and histories behind electroacoustic ambient - both as a genre in the broader sense, and in specific relation to her own work. From the text:

Most of the questions posed over the years in these tracks remain in tension with contemporary mainstream views, including those coming from the LGBT establishment. In this way, one might say a thread running through my projects is that they remain "unlistenable" to most. Any potential critical use value of these tracks emerges from understanding how they are utterly symptomatic of a particular social system - even in their dissonance. Or, to be more precise, because of their dissonance.
Self-released on Comatonse Recordings with custom packaging hand assembled by Terre herself, the package includes two CDs in an archival vinyl pouch with two double-sided insert cards (100mm x 100mm), phonograph style anti-static inner sleeves, and two 4x4 panel poster insert printed on newsprint (472mm x 472mm).

*300 copies limited edition* Drawing from field recordings collected during a trip to Japan, boring tables saturates sonic vignettes in sentimental key, replaying familiar traces of lived experience into something more abstract. The seven tracks on mathematical model 0010, Luca Quartarone's debut album, trail through evolving tonal expanses that envelop the environment in a perpetually expanding haze of serenity. Though sonic fragments hail from the everyday, the compositions themselves inevitably glide towards something much larger—just like a passing instant can extend into an ongoing remembrance.

The title of the album is inspired by a piece of land art by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which Luca encountered during a visit to the Enoura Observatory at the Odawara Art Foundation. The work features a metallic plane that embodies the geometry of a hyperbolic surface with constant negative curvature, continuously converging toward a 5mm gauge without ever meeting. Much like the geometry of this piece suggests a mathematical infinity, the album's sonic cartography evokes the feeling of intimate gestures within infinite expanses.

Heavy, heavy, heavyyyyy rhythmic madness from Shackleton, Scotch Rolex and Omutaba, invoking new rhythmic traditions on an enchanted debut album for Nyege Nyege Tapes, twisting galvanic rhythms from HHY & The Kampala Unit's Omutaba into sozzled, psychedelic peregrinations. Dubby, kinetic and viciously mind-bending, it's peak gear if you're into anything from African Head Charge to Mark Ernestus' Ndagga Rhythm Force.

Leading on from Shackleton and Scotch Rolex’s maiden merger, ‘Death by Tickling’ in 2023, the duo pull in the dextrous limbs of Omutaba - known from his work with STILL, Metal Preyers and HHY & The Kampala Unit - for a dervishing session of dubbed-out and tumbling polyrhythms and psychoactive vibes as Three Hands of Doom. Shackleton’s hand on the tiller is patently apparent but, as with his recent works with Heather Leigh and Wacław Zimpel, he proves a mutable collaborator and porous to the shared spirits of fellow electronic music journeymen Scotch Rolex and Uganda’s Omutaba in four swingeing sections defined by their joint ability to diffract the flow between rolling and irregular grooves.

‘Ring Dirt’ opens the session with a limber display of monotone strings and suspenseful synth work that calls to mind Can sent economy class to the equator for ritual teachings. Enlightened, they proceed thru the lush, whorling metric calculations of ‘Insect Vibration’, layering shivering incantations and worm-charming subs with a frisson of field recordings. At this point fully attuned to each other, Omutaba’s Ugandan drumming is felt most powerfully meshed into the 10 minute matrix of rug-pulling and thunderous detonations to ‘Burnt Earth’, before they all buckle into the outright dread of a standout eponymous title tune that appears to follow rhythms from the Congo thru West Africa, to Haiti, via Japan and Berlin, and back to Uganda.

Both Shackleton and Ishihara have been on blistering form in the last couple of years, and 'Three Hands of Doom' feels like both a continuation and an extension of last year's 'Death By Tickling', weaponizing Omutaba's exhilarating playing into something that feels much, much more than the sum of its parts.

aisie returns with a transformative descent into the darkness, assembled entirely from snippets of obscure educational science shows, ghost station radio transmissions, vinyl record detritus and blown-out microscopic field recordings. Twisted into mystifyingly revelatory aural documentations of moments that never were, it unfolds like a dream sculpted out of shadows. Enchanting, enigmatic and elusive like the origins of the source material used for its creation.

This is fun. L.A. purveyor of beats and certified hip-hop aficionado Samiyam, of Stones Throw and Flyamsam (with FlyLo) fame has made an album dedicated to another passion of his: a love of Death Metal. Thus the new record was born, consisting of 13 tracks of heavy beats and even heavier metal tones. Far out.