Electronic / Experimental

Concentric Circles is pleased to present a collection of recordings from Halkyn, the solo project of Chris Coyle, most known for being a member of much beloved Leeds, UK group Empress. Halkyn released two 7”s around the turn of the century on the 555 label, which have, like a lot of the best music from that time, fallen somewhat by the wayside. This LP release collects both of those 7”s, along with a few tracks that originally appeared on compilations, and two unreleased recordings from the time.Halkyn was part of a small non-scene of sorts in Leeds that included Hood and Empress, which collectively was a small group of friends who appeared on each others records, with Hood acting as somewhat of an anchor. In addition, they all shared a similar knack for writing beautifully melancholic music, with an occasional foray into electronic abstraction that still remained approachable. Halkyn’s music was imbued with a glass-like sense of fragility, sometimes feeling like it’s on the verge of collapse, but Coyle, being a master of melody, always rooted his tracks back down into the earth. This is music for slow, grey skied walks in the countryside.Halkyn has remained a lesser known name from that special time in music, but we hope that this LP, released in an edition of 300 copies with beautiful jacket photography from Coyle himself, will help put his name on the map where he belongs.

Strung-out yet precise. Introverted but with something to say. Industrial Relations is a further unraveling of the stories untold left lingering around the Piedmont capital. Cloistered away behind one of Turin’s many crumbling doorways, a basic studio set-up alongside a scattering of found photos and a type-writer forms the backbone of this bureau. Noticeably more barbed than its predecessor Chamber Music, drums are frayed and left to splutter. Grungy guitar chords come in at angles, occasionally spiralling into delay-drenched depths before coming back up for air. The ghosts of 90’s post rock are often summoned and keep close company. Drowsy drum-loops and turntable mischief is a strong nod to the bedsit charms to Crescent (specifically Electronic Sound Construction to these ears at least), whilst Hood’s fuzzy greyscale warmth forms a backdrop for the songier moments. For all its uncanny abstraction though, Industrial Relations is punctuated by moments of unexpected sensitivity and space. Burial is little more than soft nylon strings, a demure vocal and the passing of traffic. Egg Monster unravels to expose a tender character, only just about covered with vinyl crackle whilst Musica Di Guarigione demonstrates a genuine sensitivity and ear for melody. It’s music outside but of it’s time, equally of the past and the present, offering a further insight into the inner-workings of this unique Italian dilettante.

"Eau" is the lovely new album from aus, the solo project of Tokyo-born composer and producer Yasuhiko Fukuzono, who has gained attention, in Japan and overseas, for his thoughtfully paced and sensitively skillful music as well as his intriguing sound design for exhibitions and experimental cinema. Having worked primarily with keyboards and electronic sound up to this point, "Eau" is a slight yet fascinating shift for aus; the album, while still primarily an electronic work, revolves around the sonic world of a stringed acoustic sound source, the koto, that most characteristically Japanese of musical instruments. The very accomplished Eden Okuno provides the delicate-yet-rich koto sounds on offer here; Fukuzono, in the liner notes, acknowledges the importance of Okuno’s artistry to the project.

The compositions on the album are designed to balance the sound of the koto, with its subtly variable attack and flickering resonance, with the timbre of other instruments. The delicate decay and metrical flexibility of the koto is enveloped by sustained synthesizer sounds and contrapuntally constructed piano melodies, creating a flowing ambience with absorbing undercurrents, a languid and liquid quality that reveals the suitability of the title.

Avid fans of contemporary Japanese music might hear the influence of pioneering works such as the the 1979 Hiroshi Yoshimura composition “Clouds for Alma", realized by koto player Tadao Sawai, and the 1993 album "Koto Vortex I: Works by Hiroshi Yoshimura" which featured performances of Yoshimura's works by the Japanese koto quartet Koto Vortex. These works attempted to remove the koto from its traditional context and place it within the context of ambient and techno. "Eau" is available on CD/LP/cassette/digital, with E/J liner notes by aus. "Eau" is the first collaborative release by EM Records and FLAU, the label run by Yasuhiko Fukuzono (aus).

2025 repress. There are certain albums which shake the world immediately upon release, and others which come from far underground and whose shocks and aftershocks rise to the surface gradually over the years, gaining momentum and power. “Ten Dubs That Shook The World” is of the latter type. Since its original vinyl release in 1988, the prescient impact of this Australian homemade dubwise solo massive by Anthony Maher aka Sheriff Lindo has become ever-more apparent and influential. With its dual-island combination of Jamaican dub and UK industrial and post-punk, and the twinning of spaced electronic drums and effects with some very fine, superbly rooted bass lines, the tectonic "Ten Dubs" has proven to be a durable, doubly-solid shaker. This 2025 repress is dedicated to the original producer John Blades, founder of the Endless Recordings label, who along with Maher and Richard Fielding constituted The Loop Orchestra.

A buoyant masterpiece from the early 90s, “The Water Garden” was created by Okinawa-born Kojun Kokuba under the inspiring image of a “happy Asia” thriving in the sea-based trading networks of the medieval to pre-modern era, with the concept that various types of music, as well as physical goods, were distributed and dispersed across the seas connecting various parts of east and southeast Asia. Fittingly, the music here has definite and distinctive Ryukyu island roots, but is informed by a number of other Asian musical traditions, layering phrases derived from numerous Asian scales, often altered by Kojun, eschewing typical Western chordal harmonic movement. Kojun uses the synths and multitrack recorders of the early 90s to, in his words, “pile up lines” in sweet and not at all overbearing melodic accumulations, with a desire to distribute and disperse a new energy from Okinawa to the rest of Asia and the world. Despite a pleasing and compelling rhythmic lilt and the use of synths and drum machines, this music was not created as a product for the dance floor; Kojun envisioned a type of electronic salon music, a “light music” made with contemporary technology. This is the first LP edition of the self-produced original 1993 CD release and includes bonus tracks and liner notes in English and Japanese.

The third release in the early Dumb Type music series, following Every Dog Has His Day and Plan For Sleep.

This cassette release features live performance recordings from Suspense and Romance, Dumb Type’s first large-scale exhibition, held in 1987 at Tsukashin Hall in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture.

This work marks the first time composer Toru Yamanaka created and produced all the music for a Dumb Type project. It documents a unique musical collaboration with saxophonist Harry Kitte.

Developed under the theme of “Suspence and Romance”, Yamanaka's compositions weave together the cinematic lyricism of jazz with abstract textures of post-minimalist sound. Layered with Kitte's evocative multi-tracked saxophone phrases, as well as sequencers, samplers, and PCM recordings, the soundscape formed during this period would go on to define the sonic identity of Dumb Type through later works such as S/N.

Also included is a 50+ page booklet featuring rare photos, drawings, and a roundtable discussion among members.

Released as a cassette book in a box set format, this edition was produced under the direction of the Early Dumb Type Archive Project, led by original members of the collective. It serves as a valuable archival document offering a multifaceted perspective on Dumb Type’s formative years.

Jeux d’eau is the result of an exploratory collaboration between the experimental ensemble Copenhagen Clarinet Choir and Danish composer and performer Anders Lauge Meldgaard. At the heart of the project is Meldgaard’s compositions and performance on New Ondomo—a Japanese instrument modeled on the pioneering French electronic instrument, the ondes Martenot, but what makes the music truly shine is the Copenhagen Clarinet Choir’s vibrant energy and adventurous spirit, bringing Meldgaard’s vision off the page and into a living, breathing soundscape through their playful and imaginative ensemble performance.

The initial spark for Jeux d’eau was struck during Meldgaard’s visit to the gardens of Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy—a place animated by fountains that once inspired Franz Liszt and Maurice Ravel to compose piano works of the same title. Echoing these earlier musical impressions, the project channels that lineage into a new sonic journey. Where some composers of the past often sought to define strict structures, Meldgaard’s work on Jeux d’eau instead offers an open framework—one that invites playful interaction and improvisation among the musicians. Recorded at The Village in Copenhagen, the album is a sonic experience where the organic resonance of the clarinet choir intertwines with the unpredictable textures of the New Ondomo and electronic landscape.

The work Jeux d’eau is open yet structured, forward-moving yet richly repetitive, drawing clear inspiration from American minimalists such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, but rather than simply echoing the work of these pioneers, the music explores fresh terrain infused with a lyrical touch of late-romantic European sensibility, where flowing melodies and rich harmonies soften the rigor of repetition. At the same time, the music resonates with the clarity and delicacy that could be associated with Japanese composers such as Jo Kondo or Sueko Nagayo. The result is a sound world that is playful yet profound, one that continually shifts between pulsating momentum and delicate stillness. With each piece, the ensemble invites listeners into a captivating journey where tradition meets experiment, and where collective performance transforms composition into something vividly alive.

Conceived as a tribute to water and a reflection on the fragile bond between humans and the natural world, Jeux d’eau is both a sonic meditation and a quiet call to action. Through fluid forms and open notations, the work draws listeners into a space where music mirrors the dynamics of nature—demanding real-time awareness, collective sensitivity, and respect for balance. Like flowing water, the music adapts and transforms, reminding us that our environment, too, is ever-changing and in need of care. In this way, Jeux d’eau does more than celebrate nature’s beauty: it asks us to recognize our responsibility to protect the living systems that sustain us, and to pay caring attention to the world we live in.

Emerging from Italy’s contemporary underground scene, La Festa Delle Rane is the project of Naples-based musician Lucia Sole, whose new cassette release is a collaboration with UK label All Night Flight. Her music gently captures fleeting everyday moments, evoking dreamlike nostalgia through a childlike lens. With a simple setup of melodica, acoustic guitar, and flute, combined with percussion and brass, the sound balances intimate stillness and kaleidoscopic improvisation. Lo-fi recordings preserve the delicate textures of her innocent vocals, whispering glockenspiel, and distorted organ—tracing the breath and presence of space itself.

The music in this cassette comes from 1985 and is part of a cycle of sound experimentation (1983-1988) whose results have remained almost entirely unpublished, and whose recordings were even lost for decades until a few original tapes reappeared by chance. The Lost Tapes is conceptual noise music made without resorting to any type of musical instruments, not even synthesizers; using artisanal methodologies in order to generate noises, recordings with radio-cassettes, modifications through basic pedals for electric guitar and assembly techniques in cut-ups, loops and superimpositions. This reassambled edition has been published in 2024 with the reference EGK023, following the legendary k7 series edited by Discos Esplendor Geométrico back in the 1980s. To purchase the complete k7 with extensive liner notes by Marcelo Expósito and Mattin: www.rotordiscos.com/catalogo/the-lost-tapes/4912/ www.soundohm.com/product/marcelo-exposito-lost-tap "The Lost Tapes offers us some secret homemade gems recordings from the 1980s rich Spanish underground. The Spanish transition from fascism to democracy was not as smooth as they wanted us to believe. Still, there were many traumas to deal with, and noise music was the perfect medium to channel them. If noise in the 80s Japan was the acceleration of transgression resembling the economic boom that was going on in the country, Marcelo Expósito has worked through the unconscious shit that Spain was still dealing with at the time. Unfortunately, we still suffer those resonances. These recordings are part of an avant-garde that still has not been fully recuperated and give us a lesson from the past into the future: never give up on the power of noise to denaturalise and challenge the values of fascism." Liner notes by Mattin. Anti-copyright. Author of, among others, Noise & Capitalism (Co-editor, 2009), Object of Thought (LP, 2010), Unconstituted Praxis (Book, 2012), Social Dissonance (Book, 2022) and Seize the Means of Complexity (LP, 2023).

Hazy Eyes Maybe is the debut album by Grimm Grimm, the musical project of singer‑songwriter and composer Koichi Yamanoha, who works between Tokyo and London and has been active since around 2014. He has performed at alternative music festivals around the world, including Le Guess Who? and All Tomorrow’s Parties, and has also expanded his activities into film and video‑game fields through collaborations with game creator Hideo Kojima, contributing music and making a cameo appearance in Death Stranding 2.

Thrill Jockey celebrate their 20th Anniversary with this new edition of the seminal first album from Totroise, finally available again on vinyl.

Martin Rev’s fifth solo album – Strangeworld – was released on the cusp of the new millennium. The label responsible was Puu, a Finnish imprint belonging to Tommi Grönlund and Mika Vainio’s Sähkö Recordings which came to fame in the 1990s on the strength of its uncompromising minimalist sound.
Four years earlier, in 1996, Rev had unleashed See Me Ridin, an album which surprised its listeners with keyboard melody sketches and distilled doo-wop compositions. It was also the first solo album to feature Martin Rev on vocals.
Strangeworld started where its predecessor left off. Melodic passages dissolved into a thicket of fragments and set pieces, coalescing in a celestial shimmer between rhythm loops and Rev’s voice, which assumed the role of an additional instrument rather than a standard singing part.

"I'm sitting in a different room than you are now. I'm recording my own voice. By the resonant frequency of the room strengthening itself, my voice is excluding only the rhythmic elements. Repeat recording and playback until completely destroyed. At that point what you hear is the very natural resonance frequency of the room expressed by my voice. I have this movement in my voice. I think of it as a way to smooth out band irregularities, and I'm not conscious of revealing this phenomenon itself. "

A repress of the classic "I'm Sitting in a Room (1969)" by contemporary musician Alvin Lucier (1931-), originally released in 1981.
By repeatedly recording and playing back the sound of voices echoing in a particular space until the voices become indistinct, the work explores the acoustical engineering of the space to reveal its specific frequencies. It is a work that can only be realized by actually being there, and although it can be perceived as a mere acoustic work just by listening to the recorded sound source, its original purpose is a groundbreaking content that allows the listener to embody a vast and infinite space.

Originally released in 1989 as Violin Solo. Sept. 3-4, '89. Takehisa Kosugi's improvisations, both with violin and miscellaneous sounding objects, have a sense of emerging from the bottom of a spiritual unconscious. From this place comes a music based more on the feeling of sounds than conscious arrangement. Memory, physical action, tactile perceptions, environmental conditions, and awareness of subconscious microcosmic and macrocosmic extremes inform his work as much as the intention to assemble sounds into music. When listeners connect with his sounds, a direct identification of experience occurs between audience and performer. Personnel: Takehisa Kosugi - electric violin.

Sans Merit arrives on Knekelhuis with his second album Trolley Polly. A radiant album from currently LA-based Australian musician Griffin James, one that leans into unguarded joy with a playful, disarming sincerity. The album rocks right away into our world. Lifting off where the guitar pedals mash the gas and go. While at other moments the acoustic guitar passages carry a neofolk intimacy, like the low-voiced choir singer cast out of a pastoral world, left to wander in his own solitude. These moments are swept up by surging shoegaze episodes, slipping into hazy hypnagogic pop interludes and wiry post-punk turns, giving the record a restless, shifting pulse. Beneath it all lies a lyrical sensitivity that grounds the album’s movement. Sans Merit reflects on the big questions in a world that feels increasingly fragile, balancing vulnerability with a self-aware, gently naïve humor, while staying attuned to the emotional undercurrents of everyday life. It’s this perspective that makes Trolley Polly feel so human, alive in its contradictions, and quietly comforting.

Selected tracks from the album are featured in Hideo Kojima’s video game, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

Grimm Grimm’s quiet, folk‑rooted songwriting and his experimental sound treatments come together in their most refined form on the 2020 album Ginormous

Chicago-based sound artist Kikù Hibino collaborates with Japanese noise pioneer Merzbow (Masami Akita) on Rococo ∞ Echomatter, released by Superpang. Exchanging material between Chicago and Tokyo, the duo cuts spoken voice and instruments into dense noise fields. Hibino’s sharp editing turns these ruptures into structure, where voice and noise collide as physical elements in motion.

Arca, a musician, producer, vocalist, and visual artist from Venezuela, has become an indispensable figure in the contemporary music scene. Following his 2020 album *KiCk i*—which earned him two Grammy nominations—he has released the five-part *KICK* series (*Kick II* (2021), *Kick III* (2021), *Kick IIII* (2021), and *kiCK iiiii* (2021)), he is making his long-awaited comeback with the full-length album *XXXXX*.

Lolina returns with gg, a track that has become a fixture of her live sets before finally making its way to release. Balancing pop, performance art and uneasy humour, the song moves through uncertainty and contradiction while keeping its momentum intact. This edition features the extended version of ‘gg’ alongside two reworkings that push the track in different directions. An Arca remix reshapes its off-kilter energy into something even more unpredictable, while NEW YORK offers an alternative perspective on the original’s distinctive atmosphere. Part club track, part commentary and part mystery, gg captures Lolina at her most elusive, turning confusion, tension and movement into something oddly compelling.

New esclusive recordings by the one and only master of Japanoise!

All Music by Masami Akita

Recorded at Munemihouse, Tokyo 2024-2025

Mixed at Munemihouse, January 2026

Artwork by AI Generated ©️MA 2026

SML is a Los Angeles based quintet featuring Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Josh Johnson, Booker Stardrum, and Gregory Uhlmann.

'Spontaneous Music Live' contains two side-length pieces of unedited improvisation, recorded live at Los Angeles venue Zebulon during SML's December 2025 three-night residency, just weeks after the release of the band's second album HOW YOU BEEN. It was recorded and mixed live to analog tape by Bryce Gonzales (the same engineer/wizard known for his gorgeous live captures/mixes of Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet).

Between HOW YOU BEEN and their 2024 debut SMALL MEDIUM LARGE (both of which were heavily edited, shaped and post-produced) the band has developed a reputation for records that are heavily fused, polished, and punchy. The medium is on full post-modern display on those LPs, and the band’s post-production knife can be responsible for much of the perspective — the tastiest morsels collected, arranged, and rearranged just so.

But the source material from both those albums were live recordings. Long-form, unwieldy, ebbing and flowing. On top of that, every performance the band has ever done has been fully improvised in that spirit. So in the sphere of live performance the band’s esteem has grown down a different path — one of linear, hypnotic, expansion. It’s a perceived split persona shared by some of SML’s most inspiring conceptual bedfellows: compare the extended madness of Can’s 'Live in Paris 1973' to the relative tight form of 'Future Days' from the same year; the speed-funk chaos of Miles Davis’ 'Dark Magus' to the heavily deconstructed 'On The Corner' or 'Big Fun'.

'Spontaneous Music Live' removes the curatorial perspective and pulls the curtain back on that search-pluck-reconstruct editing process. What we’re left with is the psychedelic realism of the band in situ, in their home town, collectively improvising, fully in-the-moment, mining for that moment of discovery. We hear, in macro, each nugget of sound which could be the basis for a future SML album track, spattered amongst the collective chaos-and-control like stars in the night sky.

Following the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto in early 2023, Richard Pike turned to the piano as a daily ritual of improvisation – or, as he frames it, real-time composition. The result is [album title], a suite of intimate pieces for piano and looping textures that explore cassette sound sources, minimalism, harmony, and the fragile acoustic artefacts that surface from the process. Pike’s method was simple and disciplined: gather tape loops and sonic beds in the studio each morning, then move to a 1950s Eavestaff Minipiano in the living room to record melodic responses over them. These performances were captured quickly and left largely unedited, allowing instinct, error, and texture to dictate shape and direction. The music reflects a fascination with earthy, worn sound worlds, drawing on influences such as Romeo Poirier, Deepchord and early musique concrète, as well as Pike’s own history with the tape-scarred aesthetics that informed his early work with Warp-affiliated band PVT. This is a quietly expressive record of repetition, decay and emergence – a document of daily practice finding form almost by accident.

Pt. 2 of the 'Dub me crazy' series by Mad Professor. Reggae meets twisted electronics for wild dub trips! Originally released in 1982 on the same Ariwa imprint. True D.I.Y. business from this UK dub pioneer.