Electronic / Experimental
3905 products
“Tunggak Semi” is the third album from Indonesian musician and producer Bambang Pranoto. Originally released in 2000, it’s an exemplary slice of what has become his signature style, a dream-like meditation on aspects of nature, combining elements of accordion, acoustic guitar, flute and percussion. The compositions cross eastern and western notation to inhabit a world of their own, a world between worlds, where harmonies reflect the beauty and joy of nature.
Bambang had a rather atypical entry into music, and studied electronics and telecommunications, before he took advantage of the wave of computer software like Cubase and Protools in the 1990s that enabled him to set about recording his own compositions and soundscapes. After playing in groups, he developed his own approach to constructing his productions. He invites musicians to record interpretations of his themes, which he then pieces together in Protools like a jigsaw puzzle. “The musicians have never even met!” he chuckled on a Skype call.
“Tunggak Semi” refers to the giant trees that appear all over Bali, and their process of renewal and regeneration. “If you cut the tree, and leave the roots, they will grow again. Everytime we cut, they grow again. It’s limitless. This philosophy means there’s always something new coming, whether an idea or music, anything.” This approach has grown out of Bambang’s studies into meditation, including Indian and Chinese scriptures, also Balinese and Indonesian religions. Music, like meditation, is a daily practice, and acceptance of the music and its ‘unfinishedness’, forms a central part of the process.
“We must not just think, but we must also feel, and we must accept that feeling,” explains Bambang, and that’s a step of opening one’s mind to possibility. It seems in keeping with two of Bambang’s musical inspirations, namely Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel, both known for their love of world folk music, and fusion of musical traditions. That’s mirrored in Bambang’s own collage-like approach, recording elements and piecing them together to make something unimagined. While the acoustic sound palette for “Tunggak Semi” is rooted in live recordings, Bambang is not afraid to put the digital technology to good use.
“We have to use the computer as a tool in the best way we can,” Bambang says. “Sometimes people say music is made by people, not by the computer, but it’s just another piece of equipment. What can we compose from this equipment? It’s technology music!”
Written and produced by Bambang Pranoto at interactive garden studio, Depok, Bogor between September and December 2000. 2025 version remastered by Wouter Brandenburg at Brandenburg Mastering.
Bag of Max Bag of Cass is a joint work from Zach Hill and Lucas Abela. Hill, while primarily known as a founding member of Death Grips, is a titan in music—a visionary drummer, master of velocity and compositional design. Abela’s practice stands alone in the world of free improvisation, forging entire universes literally from shards of amplified glass. These aren’t songs so much as vast, textured fields. Here, noise becomes a sonic environment of focus and intensity. For all its volatility, the music holds an unlikely stillness. Hill’s rhythms refract against Abela’s sustained, splintered overtones, forming a labyrinthine architecture ever ready to ensnare you.
Music and noise composed and recorded on the photoelectron synthesizer ANS by Edward Artemiev. LP and CD remastered in San Francisco, CA in May 2013. Exclusive photo book with unreleased images of the movie set and essays about music and cinema of the duo Artemiev/Tarkovsky. The cd has the same vinyl tracklist.
A1 Part I 2:48
A2 Part II 2:32
A3 Part III 2:22
A4 Part IV 3:13
A5 Part V 2:27
A6 Part VI 7:18
A7 Part VII 3:55
B1 Part VIII 2:56
B2 Part IX 1:26
B3 Part X 0:38
B4 Part XI 2:09
B5 Part XII 1:42
B6 Part XIII 4:44
B7 Part XIV 0:44
B8 Part XV 4:36
B9 Part XVI 6:19
B10 Part XVII 1:21
The visionary Walter Maioli (Futuro Antico, Aktuala) and the eccentric electronic musician John Zandijik first met in 1984 when they both gravitated toward the experimental Sound Reporters collective, participating in the release of Ethnoelectronics (1986). Shortly afterward, the two met at Zandijik's studio in Rotterdam, where they completed their journey of exploration to the edge of the Universe in just three nights. The recordings were made only after 3 a.m., when psychic energy is at its peak, and inspiration belongs solely to the realm of dreams. It was a ritual of long galactic fluctuation, where the mystical sound of the flute was filtered and expanded by the Aureal system, a device capable of breaking it down into cascades of aureal harmonies. Through its extemporaneous approach, the music transforms perceptions of ancient pyramids or tropical forests into phosphorescent nebulae, luminous fountain openings, and unprecedented planetary interstices—interstellar portals leading to new archetypal-ancestral visions. It feels like sailing through colored orbits in the red gases of Jupiter and Mars, lost and dissolved forever in the engines and gears of the most secret cosmos. Between Pink Floyd-esque psychedelic flashes and Tangerine Dream-inspired sidereal architectures, Maioli and Zandijik reveal the most phantasmagoric and unknown side of Sound Reporters.
Before Guaracha UFO propelled Meridian Brothers onto the international stage, Eblis Álvarez was already shaping his singular sonic universe in the shadows. Released only on CD in between 2009 and 2012 via local label La Distritofónica, Meridian Brothers VI and VII never had wide distribution or media exposure. Yet, these albums represent a crucial phase in the band’s evolution, capturing the energy of Bogotá’s experimental cumbia scene at the time.
On VI, Álvarez crafts a hallucinatory patchwork of cumbia and vallenato, using his guitar as the guiding thread before layering other instruments on top. VII pushes experimentation even further with a custom-built sampling algorithm, generating unpredictable loops and grooves. These two albums laid the foundation for the radical fusion and irreverent spirit that would later define Meridian Brothers.
Now reissued on vinyl for the first time, these historic recordings offer a raw and fascinating glimpse into the origins of one of Latin America’s most forward-thinking musical projects.
Before Guaracha UFO propelled Meridian Brothers onto the international stage, Eblis Álvarez was already shaping his singular sonic universe in the shadows. Released only on CD in between 2009 and 2012 via local label La Distritofónica, Meridian Brothers VI and VII never had wide distribution or media exposure. Yet, these albums represent a crucial phase in the band’s evolution, capturing the energy of Bogotá’s experimental cumbia scene at the time.
On VI, Álvarez crafts a hallucinatory patchwork of cumbia and vallenato, using his guitar as the guiding thread before layering other instruments on top. VII pushes experimentation even further with a custom-built sampling algorithm, generating unpredictable loops and grooves. These two albums laid the foundation for the radical fusion and irreverent spirit that would later define Meridian Brothers.
Now reissued on vinyl for the first time, these historic recordings offer a raw and fascinating glimpse into the origins of one of Latin America’s most forward-thinking musical projects.
One of Yokota's most loved releases that explores the intersection of jazz, new age ambience and a world of found sound and samples.
Grinning Cat confounded devotees of Sakura with a far more complex set of tracks. A landscape of ambiguous emotional resonance within an album of measured extremes. Sentimental without being schmaltzy, joyful without being saccharine, Grinning Cat sees Yokota at his most playful and experimental, channelling moments of transitory wonder and jubilation, and opening up a sonic environment in which we can romp and play.
Om Unit presents Acid Dub Versions III, the third set of remixes of material taken from all three volumes of his legendary Acid Dub Studies album trilogy. Taken together, all three Acid Dub Studies releases and their remix companions have proven a highly influential series, and Om Unit’s best-selling work by far. He’s toured relentlessly throughout the EU and the US throughout 2025 presenting live versions of the material to consistently sold-out crowds and overwhelmingly positive response from both longtime fans and newcomers alike.
The album celebrates the legacy of the acid dub project with a high-caliber set of remixes. These include such prolific luminaries as Daniel Avery, Satoshi Tomiie, Richard Fearless (Death in Vegas), Tadd Mullinix (as Dabrye/Ghostly International) and Tilliander (TM404/Mokira/Kontra-music).
Portland-based dub generals Alter Echo and E3 (of BSI Records and ZamZam Sounds fame) and UK dance pioneer Bok Bok (Night Slugs) join forces with newer faces like Beatrice M (Tectonic/Tempa), Dubrunner (Menace), Azu Tiwaline (Livity Sound), N1_Sound (Spiritual World), Krotone (Of Paradise/Challenger Deep), Piezo (Subaltern/Hundebiss), RS Tangent (Trilogy Tapes) and lowkey noise/techno/ambient polymath Misseterspoon (Avon Terror Corps).
Each artist was given free reign to interpret using material from anything from all three albums. The result is a heady mixture of dubs from many angles, each one multi-faceted and high-quality. The variety of approaches puts Acid Dub Versions III firmly in the realm of legendary modern dub compilations as Macro Dub Infection and Box of Dub.
With the possibility of more acid dub in the works from Om Unit, Acid Dub Versions III stands as a testament to the project's ongoing evolution—bridging scenes, generations, and styles—and reinforces its lasting influence on the trajectory of 21st century electronic music. This is definitely one for the heads.
Vel, recognized for her striking presence in the contemporary techno scene, initiates the Cuddle Protocol, her first ambient album and the third outing on her own label PURR. The nine-track record is a personal and intimate statement. With Cuddle Protocol, Vel explores the paradox of intimacy in a coded world. "I like the idea of a protocol for softness," she explains, "of codifying something that should be intimate and spontaneous." This tension runs through the album: fragile voices and soft layers unfold against serious, carefully structured arrangements, balancing tenderness with rigor. Ambient music has always been Vel's "first love." Before producing techno, she composed ambient exclusively, and this album marks a return to the form in its most sincere expression. "I know this music will follow me all my life. It's not a phase. It's how I express myself most truthfully." Cuddle Protocol is about slowing down, embracing sincerity, and reaching for deeper connection. "When I listen to ambient, I access another world. It's charged with emotion, it makes me drift and forget everything. That's the feeling I wanted to share." Mastering by Sixbitdeep. Artwork by Adone Giuntini.
Arriving two years after the first chapter, Absurd Matter 2 isn’t just a sequel, it’s an evolution, redrawing the boundaries established by its acclaimed predecessor. The Berlin-based Italian producer tempers his confrontational sonics with rare moments of introspection, shifting seamlessly between blown-out noise, warped hip-hop, mutant club experimentation, and weightless ambience. Textures disintegrate and reassemble, rhythms flex and crumble, and every detail balances on the edge of fantasy. It’s a poetic, layered response to Nino Pedone’s changing physical reality: the gradual hearing loss and perceptual renegotiation triggered by Ménière’s disease, which struck him in 2022. At first, the experience felt like betrayal, a brutal disconnection from the very sense that had shaped his life. But over time, the disorientation turned into a strange kind of focus. The silence between sounds became as expressive as the sounds themselves.
The first Absurd Matter was a visceral reaction to trauma; the second is more reflective – an ambiguous chronicle of sensory recalibration. Pedone doesn’t represent his altered inner reality through extremes, but through depth, zooming in on illusory distortions, tense rhythmic fluctuations, and fragmented sonics. Dense, immersive, and mystical, the album mirrors Pedone’s evolving relationship with perception itself.
Tinnitus-like feedback wails and noir-ish strings introduce “Repeater”, making it immediately clear that Pedone is painting a more delicately finessed image this time around. Fleshed out by raps from cult MCs billy woods and E L U C I D, the track is marked by subtle, sophisticated contrasts: the blurred, inverted rhythms that couch Armand Hammer’s haunted back-and-forth, and the glitchy interference that offsets the lavish orchestral phrases. Backwoodz associate Fatboi Sharif lends his Lynchian drawl to “Bandage Chipped Wings”, grounding Pedone’s lysergic rhythmic distortions with syrupy, horror-inspired couplets. Pedone also invites discomfort into “Crash Landing”, with droning, metallic tones that contradict South Central rapper ICECOLDBISHOP’s elastic flow. “Bitch, I don't give a fuck about anybody,” he squawks over Pedone’s incongruous rasping textures and time-warped beats, “cash out at any party.” Working alongside London’s Loraine James on production, Pedone reunites with Moor Mother on “I Saw The Light”, blending James’ soft-focus atmospherics with soundsystem-damaging, overdriven bass hits and rusted percussive snips. Moor Mother’s assertive words hover over the wreckage, tightening Pedone’s themes of overstimulation and altered awareness as they stutter and veer off course, vanishing into the backdrop.
Contrasting his more pensive experiments, Pedone’s dancefloor deviations are more concentrated on Absurd Matter 2 than ever before. He torches a stuttering dembow structure on “X”, obfuscating the rhythm’s familiar energy with disturbing audio hallucinations. On “Splintered”, he reunites with Kenyan prodigy Slikback, mangling neon-lit trance arpeggios with dissociated trap rhythms. He sharpens his skills to a fine point on “Oblivion Step”, observing 2-step through a lens of distortion and personal abstraction, shaking blipping synth leads over neck-snapping drums and counteracting the momentum with airless sci-fi soundscapes.
Perhaps the album’s most surprising moment arrives with “Viel”, which features vocals from Los Angeles-based composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. Together, Pedone and Smith chance upon their notion of dub techno, fogging synth stabs and ghostly vocal traces into eerie harmonic distortions. On some level, it’s almost pop music, a far cry from the bleak dissonance of Absurd Matter and a hopeful way to reframe turbulence as transformation.
Absurd Matter 2 doesn’t simply document a process; it enacts one. It doesn’t offer clarity; it invites disorientation. It’s not a map of the labyrinth, but a foghorn piercing the darkness.
Om Unit surprises us with a second volume of his 'Acid Dub Studies' project, once again fusing his love for the 303 with studio techniques given to us by musical heroes such as King Tubby, Adrian Sherwood, Jammys and Basic Channel
This second volume further solidifies the convincing narrative created by its best-selling predecessor, heading in a more groove-based direction in places whilst being underpinned by the same sonic narrative that has been enjoyed by many music fans from a variety of different spheres for the past 18 months or so
Support so far for the Acid Dub Studies project has come from many corners including some of the most highly respected names in UK Radio such as Don Letts and Steve Barker, Benji B and Tom Ravenscroft as well as a whole host of truly global worldwide underground support both via radio and in the dance
Om Unit says of this record: 'I felt encouraged by the sheer love for the original selection of works to go back in again and continue to experiment with this approach to writing whilst refining some of the process. Being able to combine processes and influence has been the mainstay of my creative life and I hope this next volume of Acid Dub will be enjoyed by everyone who was a fan of the first'
The beloved 303 bassline continues to inspire every new generation and Acid Dub Studies II is another storybook of sound in that vast continuum that shows no sign of slowing down
Ultimo Tango (Milan) & Glossy Mistakes (Madrid) are thrilled to announce the release of "Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90", a compilation of otherworldly percussion-driven tracks, digging deep into this unknown realm of a past era.
Compiled by Luca Fiore and Glossy Mario, the album takes listeners on a rhythmic journey through the diverse sounds of Europe from 1979 to 1990. This collaboration between two like-minded labels highlights forgotten recordings from across Europe, including works by artists from France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands...
Opening with the ethereal “Rainforest” by British female duo Ova, this collection weaves together nine tracks from artists who were deeply influenced by global percussion traditions. With hints of jazz, new age, gamelan, and West African rhythms, these tracks feature instruments like congas, tablas, and shekeres, and reflect a shared fascination with the organic beat of the drum.
From the industrial-meets-African grooves of Jean-Michel Bertrand’s “Engines”, to the hypnotic accordion and tribal chants of Cuco Pérez’s “Calabó Bambú”, the compilation offers a cross-cultural listening experience that is both meditative and invigorating. Despite creating these works in isolation during the last years of the Cold War, each artist was inspired by a borderless world of sound. The compilation pays homage to these nomadic musicians who respected the traditions they drew from, while contributing their own experimental takes on percussion-led music.
In Tribal Organic, Glossy Mario and Luca Fiore have unearthed a treasure trove of rhythm-driven tracks that blur the lines between nations, genres, and cultures. This compilation offers more than just music; it’s a listening experience that is both spiritual and grounded—bold, exploratory, and deeply rooted in the beat of the Earth. <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3608275395/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://glossymistakes.bandcamp.com/album/tribal-organic-deep-dive-into-european-percussions-79-90">Tribal Organic: Deep Dive into European Percussions 79-90 by GLOSSY MISTAKES</a></iframe>
30 years!!!
Produced in 1995 by the gold-grilled hardcore/jungle/D&B pioneer, engineered by Rob Playford, Dillinja, and 4Hero’s Dego and Mark Mac, with vocals by the legendary Diane Charlemagne (R.I.P.), ’Timeless’ was and still is an ambitious and enduring example of British Afrofuturism. The album’s sense of discipline and crucial style was symptomatic of the scenius developed by a tight circle of mostly Black and mixed race British artists who drew on their African and Afro-Caribbean roots to develop a unique artform that expressed their identity, which would in course become adopted by a wider generation as their own.
A pinnacle of its artform, arguably never bettered, the album was practically ubiquitous during the mid-‘90s, with its introductory anthem ‘Inner City Life’ - part of the album’s opening three-part suite - a staple on MTV2 and mainstream radio, which helped transcend its urban roots and infect a whole generation beyond big cities and their clubs. It’s almost hard to imagine such a futuristic album quite like this appearing and exerting so much effect on the popular consciousness in 2021, but the ‘90s was a very different place and time, and we can only live in hope that the next decade will foster the next Goldie.
Oh, one last thing - Gerald's 'Black Secret Technology' came out almost exactly 5 months before 'Timeless', it didn't have the same promo budget behind it, but it's legacy seeps even further and deeper than 'Timeless' - and is perhaps, on the quiet, one of the most influential and enduring electronic albums of the late 20th century. Just sayin.
An intimate, mesmerising record about loss and change, sorry i thought you were someone else is K-LONE’s most personal album to date and his debut release on Incienso.
Made after his father’s passing, the album became a place of escape and reflection. A warm, hypnotic space to drift within.
OSMIUM is a collaboration between Oscar-winning Icelandic composer and cellist Hildur Guðnadóttir, James Ginzburg (emptyset, Subtext), Rully Shabara (Senyawa), and Grammy-winning producer and sound designer Sam Slater.
Forging burnished electroacoustic soundscapes with metallic drones, barbed rhythms, and bio-mechanical vocalizations, OSMIUM’s debut album resists any fixed vision of the future. Instead, it channels a viscous, unorthodox flow of sonic speculation—smoldering through echoes of ancient pasts while blazing toward a volatile frontier of fate.
Driven by questions around the relationship between humans and machines, tradition and progress, individual and collective expression, OSMIUM channel their deep expertise into a set of forward-thinking sonic interrogations. The music draws from folk, doom metal, 20th-century minimalism, industrial, and extreme noise, yet never settles fully into any genre.
While each member brings along a laundry list of accolades, the project is far greater than the sum of its parts. Widely known for her aforementioned soundtrack work and run of acclaimed solo albums on Touch, Guðnadóttir plays the halldorophone, a unique cello-like electroacoustic instrument designed by Halldór Úlfarsson that allows the performer to harness unstable feedback loops.
Taking his cues from this process, Sam Slater - who's worked alongside Jóhann Jóhannsson, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Ben Frost and others - generates rhythms using a self-oscillating drum he custom designed with KOMA Elektronik, and Ginzburg – one half of emptyset and curator of Subtext Recordings - responds in kind, producing booming tambura-like sonorities from a device he developed himself based on the monocord, an ancient single-stringed resonator.
OSMIUM synchronize the three unique instruments using a custom system of robotics to generate basic rhythms that underpin their improvisations and experiments, and although Shabara just uses his voice, it's his alien tones that supply the band with their conceptual fulcrum. The vocalist is one of South Asia's most recognizable underground artists, and the sounds he's able to create using exhaustively rehearsed extended techniques are so distinctive that he's been studied by scientists back home in Indonesia. As part of OSMIUM, Shabara attempts to merge with the band's machines, warping his vocal cords to mimic the robotics and originate hoarse percussive cracks and eldritch tonalities.
At the center of this volatile assemblage is Rully Shabara, whose voice forms the band’s conceptual and emotional fulcrum. One of Southeast Asia’s most singular underground artists, Shabara employs exhaustively rehearsed extended vocal techniques—so unique they’ve even drawn scientific attention in Indonesia. Within OSMIUM, his vocalizations merge with machines, producing hoarse percussive cracks and eldritch vocal tones that blur the line between human and mechanical expression.
The next installment of MFM's popular multi-artist compilation Virtual Dreams: 'Virtual Dreams - Ambient Explorations In The House And Techno Age, Japan 1993-1999'. As with Part One, released in 2020, 'Virtual Dreams II' shines a light on house and techno-adjacent music that helped redefine the definition of ambient music during the 1990s.
The focus of Part One heavily fell on music from techno and house producers in Europe, eagerly exploring new soundtracks for chill-out rooms and re-imagining the potential future of club culture from new perspectives. For Part Two, we narrow the lens to focus on a unique time and place, namely Japan between 1993-1999. Despite missing out on the 'Acid House Fever', club culture was beginning to take shape in Japan during the early '90s. In contrast to the rest of the world, where ambient techno / IDM emerged as a by-product or response to the scene, 'listening techno', as it is known in Japan, was a central pillar of the culture right from the start.
'Virtual Dreams II' aims to shine a light on this unique moment in time where the thread of ambient music weaved its way through the music of an emerging club culture. This period saw the birth of many great Japanese techno labels such as Sublime Records, Transonic Records, Syzygy Records, Frogman Records, and Form@ Records, following in the late '90s. 'Virtual Dreams II' features ambient, chill-out, and intelligent techno from these leading labels alongside other lesser-known but equally influential imprints, as well as ambient deviations from Japanese house producers. Much of the music featured has only ever been released on CD.
'Virtual Dreams II' is compiled by Eiji Taniguchi and Jamie Tiller, who have worked closely together on previous Music From Memory releases such as 'Heisei No Oto' and 'Dream Dolphin - Gaia'. It is also the final project Jamie Tiller worked on before his tragic passing in 2023. Jamie had been researching, planning, and compiling this version of Virtual Dreams even before the first chapter was released, believing that there were many great tracks in Japan that fit the concept of the series. Knowing how much love and energy he put into compiling it gives it an extra special place in our hearts.
Compiled by Jamie Tiller and Eiji Taniguchi with artwork by Kenta Senekt, design by Steele Bonus and liner notes by Itaru W. Mita,
Yokohama multi-instrumentalist Tokio Ono eases into the Accidental Meetings' family with an array of Japanese folk tinged avant-dubs, drenched in beautiful texture.
The elusive artist has spent much of his life in his hometown with a view of the Yokohama waters, before settling into a new environment in Tokyo where Peel gradually took shape. The essence of a given situation emerges as you peel it away, these tracks were inspired by the accumulation of days and flashbacks of memories: layers to peel joyfully from our lives, while offering a slightly shifted and refreshing perspective on one’s surroundings. It's a dreamy journey from open to close, Ono's world engulfs you in a blissful dubbed out wormhole. Featuring a flip from the sound system royalty of Seekers International to top it off, Peel is a unique and exquisite piece of work.
As far as we know, or at least can discern from those letters and records published after his tragically early death at the age of 40, the author Franz Kafka had two great love affairs. The second, with journalist and translator Milena Jesenská, has been widely celebrated in the decades since the collected, one-sided Letters to Milena was compiled and published. In it, we see what must be the total store of his warmth and passion – everything lacking in his disorienting, menacing fictions. The Milena letters, strange and hot and highly questionable as they are, remain a source of fascination and inspiration for Kafka fanatics, erotomaniacs and historians alike.
Unfortunately, their intellectually salacious reputation means those Letters far overshadow an earlier, thicker, darker volume penned by Franz K to his first great love and one-time fiancée, Felice Bauer, a relative of his lifelong editor Max Brod. While Kafka’s real-life story is one of brutal sexual failure and alienation before, during and after these two longer-term relationships, he managed a depth of written intimacy with both of these women most accurately described as harrowing. This tendency to expose himself most in moments of bitter melancholy is far more apparent and striking in the collected Letters to Felice.
This cold zoetrope, which conceals and reveals at accelerated frame-rates, eventually making a complex picture from an endless sequencing of small repetitive gestures, is the scaffold supporting Aris Kindt, the ongoing two-piece ‘post-structuralist pop’ project from Francis Harris and Gabe Hedrick. With Now Claims My Timid Heart, Harris and Hedrick continue the experiment started on Swann and Odette, crafting closed systems that promote a hushed correspondence between their sonic (Basic Channel, drone metal) and literary influences (Kafka, Sebald, Pynchon).
Their commitment to this insular, architectural thesis resolves itself yet again with a record that manages to be simultaneously alienating and deeply human. This is largely due to the novel and particular ways the band achieves its trademark sound: For Timid Heart (their first record since 2017 as well as their first release on NYC’s Quiet Time Tapes), Harris eliminated much of music’s normal dependence on physical space, instead creating hermetically sealed sonic ‘rooms’ where the songs can live by sending samples and loops through convolution reverb. Each of the eight tracks on Timid Heart is fundamentally, thus, a field recording from an inaccessible world.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on ‘Letters to Felice,’ which contains some of the album’s most Kafkaesque, dystopian atonality, as well as the most obvious influence of storied producer and engineer Phil Weinrobe (Adrienne Lenker, Big Thief), who oversaw mixing for the record. This is about as upbeat as Aris Kindt gets; listening closely and taking into consideration the Rembrandt painting that gave the band its name, one can only hear the ravings of the human heart in a biomechanical sense. Not the stuff of love letters, but the operating table; not throbbing with lust, but electricity. It is the sort of music that begs the listener to remain at a slight remove for their own safety, to avoid going out in the way that desire, once sated, also ceases to be.
Now Claims My Timid Heart is, in this way, both a continuation of and an advancement upon Swann’s speculative emotional landscape; it maintains the band’s mystic sense of intimacy while simultaneously moving it in a more interior, cautiously analytic direction. Like viewing the Aris Kindt of Rembrandt’s masterpiece, or the vulnerabilities of Kafka on the private page, Timid Heart feels at times like getting a peek into an autopsy in progress. Simultaneously raw and clinical, it pulses inside the listener, encouraging retreat – if only into oneself.