Electronic / Experimental

LINTD, a pseudonym of Iyunoluwanimi Yemi-Shodimu, a notable musician from Nigeria, based in Manchester, will release his latest work in 2025 on vinyl from HEAD II, the cutting edge of the London underground. A strange work that can be called a modern dark audio fairy tale, with a strange fusion of gothic sensibility and experimental structure. The acoustic space woven between decadent and mysterious narration, strange beats, distorted melodies and silence is like a dark fable drawn with sound. A sharp and solitary strange work that reminds us of the narration x acoustic structure after Dean Blunt and even the illusion of The Shadow Ring.

Cortex of Light, a notable Italian trio that includes the leftfield techno genius Piezo and the experimental ambient genius xàr num, has released their debut album from 3XL, the label headed by special guest DJ uon! A futuristic therapy sound where environmental sounds and electronic sounds intertwine. Drone sounds, deconstructed rhythms, and grids of drowsy reverberation are sewn together, and the sound seems to trace the membrane of the city. It is the afterimage of a club, the architecture of a sleepless night, and an optical abstract sound image. While resonating with mysterious labels such as bblissss, West Mineral, and Motion Ward, the unconscious underflow that is characteristic of 3XL runs throughout the entire album, making this a prayer for modern sounds.

If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated. — Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces. In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds “as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup.” And, as he suggests, “with the addition of city noise from outside the window,” you may hear Surround in a completely new way. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura’s previous works included Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular GREEN (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura’s yin and yang.

The 20th Anniversary Edition of "The Creep" by Slomo, this ambient doom masterwork, is now available on vinyl for the first time via Ideologic Organ. This is a storied album of verbal history, and emerged from a figurative long barrow deep within a virtual space of great depth and contemplation, an inverted framing of acoustic space with heavy floors ranging from the wake of COIL to the heaviest Japanese fire of psychedelia to the monuments of drone coagulating in the early 'aughts. A first tiny CDR edition (100 copies) of "The Creep" in 2005 garnered the focus of heavyweights like SUNN O))), Julian Cope, GNOD, the esoteric legendary record store Aquarius, and the Wire. Ideologic Organ is honoured to have been tasked with bringing this to a limited LP for the very first time, and has collaborated with mastering genius Rashad Becker to create a 61-minute single LP in perfect cut. The album will also be distributed widely on all digital channels.

–Stephen O'Malley, Stockholm May 2025

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Doom Metal is often appraised in terms of its sludginess. You might suspect Julian Cope associates Holy McGrail (guitar) and Howard Marsden (synth) of having taken these criteria to heart when they recorded their debut album as Slomo. Initially released on Cope’s Fuck Off & Di label and later reissued by Important, The Creep strains at the very boundaries of Doom. An eerie and evanescent hour-long exercise in bottom-heavy drone, it shares as much with Eno’s On Land as anything by Sunn O))) or Earth, including a comparable attitude towards the wild spots of the British landscape.

Sinking deep into their environment, McGrail and Marsden initiate contact with the pagan spirits lying dormant in the soil, such as the indolent entity of the album’s title and the “Old Rhyme” printed on the sleeve (“In Old England they called me Slaewth the slothful…”), while mimicking the slow, imperceptible processes of growth and decay. The duo’s low-frequency ooze certainly succeeds in evoking the subterranean, but its unhurried rumble also conjures the hidden spaces that flourish against the odds all over the British Isles, from untouched railway verges and motorway laybys to overgrown footpaths where used contraceptives, pornography, Coke cans and crisp packets collect like offerings to the Great God Pan. In more than one sense, The Creep is a fitting tribute to what lies beneath.

-Joseph Stannard, 2012

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The Creep, contextualised.

Just one week after the passing of COIL's Jhonn Balance in late 2004, the 61-minutes of "The Creep" manifested in a Sheffield suburb. Not yet a band and only captured due to happenstance, this first music of Slomo flowed forth without any consideration of it even being "a piece", let alone a release, though it didn't take long for the participants (Chris "Holy" McGrail and Howard Marsden) to realise they'd captured something of distinct colour on account of how often they were listening to it.

Initially dubbed "The Ballad of Jhonn & Sleazy", the pair soon instead ascribed the music to Boleigh Fogou; a prehistoric underground chamber on the Land's End peninsula that both had recently visited and been affected by. "The Creep" took its name from the peculiar side chamber assumed to be of ritual function, having no apparent practical use. This ponderous music chimed perfectly with the fogou; an apparently stolid place that teems with life once you become attuned to its frequency.

Fitting in perfectly alongside other massive single-track albums such as Sleep's "Dopesmoker", COIL's 'Queens of the Circulating Library', Cope's "Odin", and Boris' "Flood", "The Creep" secured a limited release on Cope's Fuck Off & Di CD-R label in 2005 that quickly sold out via supportive outlets such as Southern Lord, Aquarius Records and Stephen O'Malley's Ideologic Organ - then operating merely as a blog and micro-store.

After a wider CD release in 2006, Slomo followed up "The Creep" with "The Bog" in 2008 – a much denser plunder into the fundament. 2012 brought with it the pair's first live outings and "The Grain", another nod to Land's End with an airier, more agricultural sound and the first signs of creeping automation. 2017's "Transits" captured three spontaneous compositions for time and space and remains a firm favourite among the band's listeners; one of the tracks going on to be remixed by twelve of the band's favourite artists on 2018's 2xCD compilation "Super-Individual: Collective Ritual". The band returned in 2024 with "Zen and Zennor" and live shows with GNOD and a sold-out show at Stone Club, London.

In other's words :

“If the doom metal of Khanate is the ideal soundtrack to the 21st Century Odinists’ hanging upon the tree of Yggdrasil, then the vegetal music of Slomo is the unfolding, nurturing, ever-becoming ur-ooze that titanically irrigates the roots of that sacred tree. Slomo restores our timeless beginnings and fulfils the Ginnungagap… motherfuckers.”

JULIAN COPE

“…seeps into your subconscious, where it flutters like a trapped and burning moth at the back of your brain. Ghostly sounding and ominously rumbling with atmospheric threat, The Creep is an undeniably effective chunk of subterranean echo, whose quaking aftershock could cause sleepless nights.”

THE WIRE

“Uneasy, brooding, and honestly unsettling, this disc slowly works its way out of the speakers and into the psyche. Ingrained, it’s impossible to put it down, lock it away, carry it to the street with the beer and Scotch bottles to be recycled. Inactivated, it defiantly surfaces in the cat’s purr, the Volk’s engine knocks, a fritzing hard drive.”

DUSTED MAGAZINE

    
Entering its 26th year of activity, the morphing, Los Angeles based experimental outfit, Sissy Spacek, joins Shelter Press with Entrance, among the project’s most captivating outings to date. Encountering the duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma joined in various configurations by an incredible cast of collaborators - Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, Ralf Wehowsky, and C Spencer Yeh - collectively transformed into a series a deeply intimate and delicate gestures of musique concrète, Entrance radically repositions the possibilities presented by group improvisation outside of time and place.

Founded at the end of the last millennium, the Los Angeles based project, Sissy Spacek, initially emerged from the knotted, fiery context 1990s American noise and grindcore, producing sheets of visceral sonority that quickly set the scene on its head. Going through numerous evolutions, before eventually settling as a duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma - joined by a rotating and often recurring cast collaborators - over the last 25 years the band has continuously entered states of evolution that have defied the expectations of its own context, seeding the sonic extremes noise with subtle and sophisticated approaches to free improvisation and musique concrète.

Fiercely positioning its efforts within the outer reaches of contemporary experimental music, while resisting the constraints of a singular sound or proximity, Wiese regards Sissy Spacek as being primarily centred around the practice of musique concrète and the pursuit of extremes. From its earliest releases - collage treatments of material gathered from the band’s full throttle practice sessions - the project’s conceptual framework has continuously evolved within a deeply engaged process of experimentation, not only reworking tactical approaches, but also definitions and perception regarding the location and action of their work. In recent years, this has led to an increasingly varied and diverse output. Percolating within, is a thread marked by a striking sense of delicacy and intimacy, driving forward while doubling as an unexpected challenge, in real time, to perceptions connected to the band’s past. Entrance is the most recent of these.

Embarking upon the four compositions that comprise the finalized four sides of Entrance, Wiese and Mumma enlisted longstanding collaborators, Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, and C Spencer Yeh, as well as new initiate, Ralf Wehowsky (of the seminal German electronic noise collective P16.D4), requesting a contribution of sounds from each, determined by a general set guidelines that dictated certain qualities the given sonorities, while allowing for the expression of each player’s distinct creative voice. The sets of resulting recordings were then chopped, harvested, manipulated, and reassembled as the four tape compositions that make up the album - Web Of Unfolding Appearance, Figure Of Reflected Light, Trancher And The Inheritors, True Dimension (From The Opaque - Spike) - each blurring the lines of authorship and clear creative proximity in remarkable ways.

Where historical gestures of musique concrète tend to draw upon non-instrumental sound sources - regarding its sonorous material as raw elements, unburdened by inherent meaning or association, to be transformed and imbued with musicality - Sissy Spacek turns this position on its head. Entrance comprises works of musique concrète that not only draw upon instrumental sound sources, with all their possible meanings or associations, but also individual characters and personalities of their players, crediting each resulting piece to its respective configuration of contributors.

As such, Entrance is an effort of sound collage defined by a rare sense of intimacy and humanity: four pieces that often take on the resemblance of group improvisation, but have, in fact, been assembled outside of time and place. Bent under the ever-present hand of Wiese’s tape treatments and manipulation, each of the album’s four compositions unfurl startling states of sonic abstraction and percolating texture, marked by a striking sense of hard-shifting structure, that culminate as tense, driven manifestations of ambient music: scrapes, squeals, rattles feedback, rolling drums, bouncing tones, whispers, bent electronics, electric artefacts, and seemingly everything else under the sun, configured into immersive, sublime mediations in sound from the most improbable events. 

Shelter Press and INA GRM's excellent Portraits GRM series continues with Michelle Helene Mackenzie and Stefan Maier's collaborative piece 'Orchid Mantis' which takes inspiration from Taiwan's abandoned Sanzhi Pod City. The building project came to a halt following multiple accidents in the workplace. The site is now a wasteland, said to be haunted, and is inhabited by five species of orchid mantis. Their soundworld conjures this mysterious place. Meanwhile, Olivia Block's electroacoustic piece uses field recordings from the San Ignacio lagoon and synthesised sounds to provoke thought on humanity's threat to the survival of Pacific grey whales and other species.

Trigram for Earth, by Flora Yin Wong, is inspired by traditional eight-sided Pakua mirrors and the trigrams inscribed on each of their edges. The function of the mirrors is to show the nature of reality as being composed of mutually opposing forces and modulate them. Here, energies seem to be manipulated to guide and direct our listening, lost in a maze of sound, diffracted to the point of merging with the artist's own listening, through her memories, her obsessions, the fragments she carries within her. Flora Yin Wong invites us to embark on a multi-faceted investigation of sound, a journey through the meanders of liberated sonic forces, an auscultation of her own listening and a portal, at last, ajar to a fragmented and forever mysterious inner world. In his work '50 frequency and amplitude modulated sine waves describing a landscape,' Sébastien Roux applies his approach to algorithmic composition to the observation of the natural world, bringing the sound of the sea and the song of birds into the electronic domain, transmuting them into each other through a slow process of gradual modulation. Exploring the abstract space of pure sounds between two naturalistic tableaux, Sébastien Roux offers us a fascinating meditation on the world of synthesis, revealing, with an economy of means and great formal elegance, the magic of sonic simulacrum (deepl propose simulacra, mais là je suis pas assez calé...) and the strange beauty of the artificial, in a gesture that is ultimately as poetic as it is musical.

Hampus Lindwall is a musical artist active in many fields ranging from contemporary music to experimental and electronic sound / music. He has released many albums, as a soloist and in collaboration and is the titular organist in Saint-Esprit, Paris, since 2005.

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emile Mosseri, and Ghostly will be making a donation from today’s Bandcamp Friday sales of their collaborative album, I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon to support reproductive rights via Noise For Now. "His music filled me with the urge to connect with the world," Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith says of Emile Mosseri. She first heard his work while watching the 2019 film The Last Black Man In San Francisco; just minutes in, she paused it to look up who did the score and wrote to him immediately. "I love Emile's ability to create melodies that feel magically scenic and familiar like they are reminding you of the innocence of loving life.” Those talents saw recognition in 2020 with an Oscar nomination for Mosseri’s original score to the film Minari. He was already a fan of Smith’s and became increasingly intrigued by her impressionistic process as they started to talk. "The music feels so spiritual and alive and made from the earth," Mosseri says. "I think of her as the great conductor, summoning musical poetry from her orchestra of machines." I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon, their two-part collaborative album, introduces an uncanny fusion of their sonics. Constructed using synthesizer, piano, electronics, and voice, this soft-focus dream world is lush, evocative, and fleeting. It finds two composers tuning their respective styles inward as an ode to mutual inspiration, a celebration of the human spirit and its will to surrender to the currents of life. Early into their correspondence, Smith and Mosseri realized they were neighbors in Los Angeles and met up for a few hikes. Their conversations led to a musical exchange over email. The exercise became a sketch, the start of their first song together, "Log In Your Fire,” with Mosseri finding flourishes in Smith’s cathartic synth lines to intonate and harmonize alongside. Lyrically, it's a beautiful, open-ended sentiment. "Being a log in someone's fire, to me, means letting go, and surrendering to that feeling," says Mosseri. From there, the pair composed a series of musical foundations, trading files from afar, nurturing the eventual expansion as the remote days of 2020 set in. Smith likens the collaborative experience to the exciting uncertainty of starting a garden, "doing what I can to facilitate growth while enjoying the process of being surprised by what will actually grow." In the summer of 2021, the duo finished work on the sequel, I Could Be Your Moon, expanding their musical language as the first part reached its September release. Songs from these more recent exchanges find them even more synced, forging into percussive and harmonic experiments, leaning further into their “unused musical muscles,” as Smith and Mosseri put it. A unified vocal presence emerged. “As the friendship grew I think we both learned how to support each other more and musically that was communicated through singing together,” adds Smith. Now taken as a full album set, I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon moves fluidly from track to track, panning through textural vignettes. Two roughly 17-minute halves, the set evokes the bittersweet sense of something too bright or rare to last, a short-lived glimpse into a golden hour. "Moon In Your Eye" sends a choral refrain skyward; we stay behind, watching it haze away in the heavens. "Brush" bubbles with Smith's characteristic wonder and curiosity, expressed in a flutter of horn-like sounds, leading into the album's central expression, its titular track. Above pulsing harmonies, in his tender falsetto, Mosseri repeats variations of the mantra, "I don't want to feel / lost anymore /I can’t make you what I am." He says the idea they are reaching for is more abstract and universal, "It could mean I could be your friend / buddy, I could be someone / something else, I could transform, I could be your companion, etc. What I like about it is it could change based on what that means to you, or what the word dog means to you." The orchestral march of 'oohs and ahhs' on "Blink Twice” could register as both triumphant and tragic. "Moonweed," strays closer to the latter, with low and slow piano keys guiding the alien hums of a starlit goodbye. I Could Be Your Moon, the second installment and side B of the record, opens with the striking “Green To You.” Depicting a dream or a need for renewal — to be new in the eyes of another, all excitement of seeing and being seen as imagined, idealized versions of ourselves — the song unveils the duo’s newly fused voice. “I only want to be green to you,” they sing, as an organ phrase swirls underneath. There’s a wistful sense that bleeds into instrumental “Amber” and continues across “Standing In Your Light,” a piano ballad-turned-mini-symphony that traces over feelings of remorse (“I was distracted / overreacted… come to your senses”). “Shim Sham” starts woozily in anticipation before flipping on a drum break, becoming the collection’s energetic apex; their hums dance with the beat, wordless yet undoubtedly expressive. Once introduced, the percussion stays and syncopates for “Golden Cow,” another radiant duet that reads like a playful plea, or a reminder to their creative selves (“slow down / be careful now / you’ve done this one before”). The record ends inside “Radio Replacement,” a swan song in the lineage of somber album outros; lyrically they reflect on past loves and the passage of time, personifying the music (“I would really love to be / your favorite melody / for a while”). There is a dreamy, elemental intention to this music, which Smith and Mosseri say came naturally, as they both embraced intuitive interplay throughout their creative back-and-forth. The stylistic threads of each composer are recognizable yet become more ambiguous as the album progresses, sewn into a singular vision. "I'm so grateful that my musical ideas could dance with hers with some grace and harmony," says Mosseri. Smith adds that this experience helped her "remember that music can be a connecting layer of friendship, especially in a time when the usual ways were out of reach."

“Summer Jam” is back! A long-awaited repress of this powerful and joyful tune described as “acid pied piper”, with new artwork and new flip-side. EM Records is very happy to again bring you our & your favorite tune from the artist known as Tapes, here in a 10-inch vinyl/download format that, with its good vibes, positivity and major-key delightfulness, will rescue you from any doldrums you are experiencing, whether personal, societal or cosmic. “Summer Jam” is a solo recording from 2019, but it soars over the worries of the year, any year, with an uplifting rhythmic lilt, a positive tonality, non-annoyingly catchy melodies and some lovely sonic textures. There’s something here for fans of bass music, mid-80s-and-beyond electronic music, and pure toe-tapping good times. There’s a sweet chord progression and background drift in the title track that are particularly pleasing, and the flip-side is a very satisfying “acid” live version with his ally, 7FO, that will lovingly catapult you to another major-chord heaven. The sun can shine anywhere, anywhen, so enjoy!

The 5-CD set ‘The Way of Raku’ is a grand experiment that shatters conventional musical concepts. Electronic music and soundscapes merge, inviting the listener's consciousness into an infinite universe. With this work, composer Eloa pursues the ‘path of sound’ and opens up new horizons of aural experience. In this work, the composer Eloa combined Western musical traditions with Eastern thought to create a unique musical world.

The Way of Music is not just a musical work, but a meditative experience that takes the listener's consciousness into the abyss. It encourages the flow of time, the expansion of space and a dialogue with the self.

‘The Way of Raku’ eschews any visual elements and appeals solely to the sense of hearing. The listener is immersed in a flood of sound, weaving his or her own story.

Disiniblud, the thrilling new collaborative album project from the composers/producers/multi-instrumentalists Rachika Nayar and Nina Keith. Rachika and Nina meet on complementary but seemingly disparate musical grounds. On her 2022 breakout LP Heaven Come Crashing, Rachika departed from her usual ambient guitar in favor of maximalist synths, sub-bass, and flickers of Amen breaks. Her distinct fusion of post-rock and electronica earned her accolades as Pitchfork's Best New Music, on several best of the year lists (The New York Times, Stereogum, Fader, GQ, Bandcamp, etc), and as the opening act on tour with M83. Nina, meanwhile, is best known for her self-trained approach to composition, as evident on her 2019 debut MARANASATI 19111 and its delicate medley of cello, piano, clarinet, and flute, used to explore a personal history marked by community tragedy and paranormal incidents. On Disiniblud, the two’s self-described “wordless conversation,” orbits such themes as mortality, reinvention through destruction, and sublimating fractured histories into music—all resulting in a work that suggests sweeping transformation can come from embracing old wounds with childlike wonder. Nina envisions this as she and Rachika's younger selves packing a satchel, holding hands, and daring one another to run away into a place of "wounds and wonder," only to discover an unforeseeable magic in an amalgam of post-rock, glitchy indie electronica, ambient, and pop genres in this co-created realm. Disiniblud features guest appearances from Julianna Barwick, Tujiko Noriko, Cassandra Croft, ASPIDISTRAFLY, Katie Dey, June McDoom and Ponytail's Willy Siegel.

No digital version available 

This is the long-awaited, first-ever vinyl release from the Osaka-based band goat. The five tracks are compiled from their debut album “New Games” (2013) and their second album “Rhythm & Sound” (2015). The titles of those releases provide a hint: a sense of joyful play within defined structures, and an emphasis on propulsive pulse and a prioritizing of pure percussive sound over melodic content. With guitar, bass, drums and saxophone, goat create music which is unlike most rock bands, utilizing harmonics outside standard tonality, as well as clever muting, to craft intricate, driven, forceful compositions by Koshiro Hino, aka YPY. goat is currently going through a period of new development and further exploration of intertwining patterns of rhythmic repetition; this compilation is the bedrock. Superbly recorded and mixed by Bunsho Nishikawa, mastered and cut by Rashad Becker, cover art by Tomoo Gokita, this release will be a revelation for your turntable. 

TRACKS: 
A1. New Games 
A2. std 

B1. Solid Eye 
B2. Ghosts Part 1 
B3. On Fire

FJLP-05 continues with Forest Jams recent trend of Japanese re-issues from the 90’s. This one is E.S. Island’s “Southwind from Hachijo” a deep ambient exploration that is more tribal and spiritual than prior E.S. Island releases. This was recorded on Hachijo Island featuring several traditional instruments with the bulk of the music being played by Eisuke Takahashi (R.I.P.) and Nene Sanae. Limited copies.

At the end of my armA finger, a thread, a vanishing pointWhere nothing can be seen and the air is movingAnnie A, the one-off collaborative project between Félicia Atkinson, Time is Away’s Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney, Christina Petrie and Maxine Funke, arrives on A Colourful Storm with a profoundly inquisitive, exploratory composition evoking questions of inconstancy and reconciliation, vastness and finitude, and the sometimes cruel deception of human perception. Who will conduct our dreams if we never wake?Annie A quietly observes and attempts to compartmentalise the answers. A geographically diverse yet determinedly like-minded ensemble, its seeds were sown during a spring night in London, where time on stage was shared and cherished by Atkinson, Time is Away and Petrie after years of mutual appreciation. Atkinson had found solace in Time is Away’s Ballads, Funke’s Seance and particularly the voice of poet and performer Petrie, whose remarkable delivery, first heard on Ballads, here drifts effortlessly from a wide-eyed stream of consciousness to crystalline sensory expression: “The wind is full of creases / It is shaking the weak threads in the cliff / The coast is releasing teeth and nails into the air”. It is the perfect accompaniment to Atkinson’s hushed tones - a sometimes textural, if not spectral, presence - spoken sensitively like a mother to a resting child, reflecting upon the forces of nature, the fragility of ecology and the surrendering of self to air, rain, and earth.Devotees of Atkinson’s practice will recognise the significance of the natural world in her work, her evocative sonic landscapes formed from a toolbox of keyboard, voice and materials collected from everyday life on the dramatic rocky coast of Normandy, as well as field recordings from places far and wide. She breathes life into liminal spaces, the sound of wind, whispers and the distant clatter of rocks conjuring visions of places both beautiful and eerily familiar. Petrie wanders curiously in these places. “First the Crocus” introduces her desirous cries above a wistful electronic signal, the alternation with Atkinson’s whispers suggestive of each other’s distant presence. “The wind that had not touched land, moving with the warm gyre of the sea / Is now touching land / And is beginning to draw the dust”. What is her fate when this wind touches land? The meeting of the other, the crossing of paths. Their voices, layered and dreamlike, drift and entrance each other with gossamer intensity.Interpreting and arranging the field of sonic accoutrements is Time is Away, whose weaving, layering and sensitivity to detail is likened to the meticulous assembly of an Anni Albers textile. The spirit of Albers guides the piece’s entirety, Petrie’s recounting of her loom and thread a symbol of endurance, vitality and seeking wonder in intricacies: “Every thread needs to pass through the eye of a needle before you begin / I keep wondering, I just keep wondering what will happen”. The piece concludes with a timely appearance by Funke, whose meditation on vulnerability confronts and surrenders herself to the enchanting natural world.

One of the definitive albums of 2024, edited and remixed by close pals and admirers; Conrad Pack, ML Buch, Blood Orange, Valentina Magaletti, Lolina, Smerz, Slauson Malone, HVAD and more.

The judicious pick of editors render the downbeat charms and quietly reflective, penetrating lyrics of ‘Great Doubt’ into spaces faithful to, adjacent, and far removed from Astrid Sonne’s beloved originals. Variously teasing its baked in ingredients of chamber music, art-pop, and R&B from curious new perspectives, they range, for example, from the plonging industrial dub rework of ‘Boost’ by Conrad Pack, to a standout 12 minute expansion of ‘Light and Heavy’ along moonlit, Autechrian lines by an ever reliable HVAD, whereas avant R&B star Blood Orange emphasises the breezy soul of ‘Give My All’ is a bright, lustrous overhaul refreshed with tumescent art-pop harmonies, and ML Buch puckers ‘Overture’ to a sparkling whorl that highlights her collaborator’s instrumental tekkerz.

Valentina Magaletti (whose work rate, at this point, makes us wonder if she’s a tulpa) can be counted on for a dusted downbeat take on ‘Everything is Unreal’, and Lolina likewise reliably enhances the oddness of ‘Almost’ in her elusive way, whilst the likes of pop duo Smerz and Slauson Malone amplify Sonne’s infectiouus hooks with a dance-pop appeal.

With a clutch of EPs under his belt spanning a wealth of pallets, Henzo narrows the focus on his debut studio album “The Poems We Write For Ourselves” - a culmination of persistent iterations over several years, distilling his sonic milieu into something that feels decidedly his own. The album proper is coupled with a debut live performance which reinterprets the tracks and splices them with omitted material from the time of writing - recorded in full in the intimate confines of Manchester’s growingly infamous Stage and Radio basement. Honing his craft in the shadows of Lancashire, Poems is an expansive reflection of the producer’s time spent away committing to the scope of an LP.

A thread of stratified sound design weaves throughout the record, but with a discerning dancefloor proclivity mostly prevalent. Cold opener “Noggin” riffs on noughties Raster-Noton a la Byetone rebuilt with fractal tear out DnB, with closer “Indulgence” following suit on a puckered plod of Dub Techno ambience. More club-focussed moments come in the form of “Rustica Slump” and “Blue Will...”, the former’s sickly sweet vocals resolved by the latter’s stoic UKG/Techno rudeness. “A Bouquet of Clumsy Words” channels mechanical shuffle with a stripped back 2/4 pulse whilst maintaining a firmly FWD>>energy alongside “Plant Your Roots In Me” on a similar vector - swapping out a straight kick pattern for a bludgeoning 808 assault on an early Hessle-indebted tip.

“Take Stock, Touch Grass” harks to golden era ClekClekBoom and Night Slugs with a bare bones kick and vocal motif, updating the formula with a tweaking lead line that places it firmly in the contemporary space. “Swell:Shrink” sings from the same sheet with a shrieking, space age wobble doing the heavy lifting, knocking the pace back to a shoulder-lean swagger on a slow fast conundrum Henzo has shown his flair for on previous releases.

The outliers to Henzo’s more known approach, “Worm Grunting” with Belfast’s Emby, an amalgamation of halfest time DnB and illest mannered Road Rap, plus “The Rest Is The Mess You Leave”, a starkly anti-retro Ghettotek endeavour, give grounds to the LP. Clearly rooted in the comfortable universe of the dancefloor, these tracks expand the producer’s realm into loftier heights as he graduates into long play land.

We are delighted to present the new 12" maxi on Dubatriation records, two extended tracks for complete immersion ! This opus defines the encounter of Panda Dub and Adi Shankara, two artists already signed to the label.

Like buried treasures, these tracks from a joint studio session have been unearthed and reworked for this release.

Infused with the orientalist flavours of French dub, these two tracks elevate the genre with their neat sound design. Panda Dub's ethnic samples and catchy melodies blend with Adi Shankara's rough and hypnotic textures.

Following the label's signature style, this record offers a deep and solemn musical experience. Embark on an introspective journey without further ado !

Al Wootton samples a museum-worthy haul of vintage drum machines on this sick Library Record for his Trule label - big one for anyone into his work in Holy Tongue, or curios from Tolerance, Freedom To Spend, R.N.A. Organism. Tip!

Wootton was invited to Melbourne's Electronic Sound Studio where he got to work sampling their collection of rare vintage drum machines. And it's those boxes that laid the groundwork to 'Rhythm Archives', the prolific producer's most satisfying full-length to date. Wootton's been at this long enough to realise that restraint is the key, and playing with Holy Tongue has no doubt sharpened his skills. There's not much going on here, but that's what makes it so enticing - Wootton lets the machines set the pace for each track, and adds only the sparsest additional instrumentation for colour. On 'March', the plasticky beatbox pattern is fascinating because it's so weedy compared to the sounds of more modern machines - the kicks are like fingers on wet cardboard, and Wootton shadows them with bone-rattling rim shots, filling in the silence with cinematic piano twangs, white noise and a snake-charming flute.

In the wrong hands, this material would creep towards cringe - there's more than enough artists making canned library music or hauntological slop. But Wootton vaults over the pitfalls, staying on the right side of kitsch. The dissociated voices on 'Slow Rock' that shiver next to his new wave-patented Roland CR-78 take us to the seedy world of 'Liquid Sky', not the postmodern sampledelia that followed, and the footwork-inspired 150bpm whirr of 'Shuffle' is sneakily anachronistic, only echoing the Chicago genre's polyrhythmic patterns, not repeating them to the letter. Wootton does a good job staying away from very obvious genre signifiers; there's the character of each machine that's present, of course, but he sounds like he's trying to subvert the application, wondering how these decaying rhythms might react to his various processes.

If there's any real reverence here, it's for dub, and the genre's influence on everything that followed: post-punk, bleep techno, industrial music, whatever - Wootton sounds right at home threading tape echo trails thru his stuttering cycles. It's a love letter to the drum machine, and it doesn't lag for a moment.

ZamZam 95 is a link with the enigmatic French producer Hiss Is Bliss. We’ve been fans since the very first drop on their 777Hz label and these two sides drive straight to the heart of the dub techno galaxy. Little is known about Hiss Is Bliss beyond the fact that they hail from France, are steeped in esotericism, and create tunes as masterfully grounded in roots reggae as they are in techno and related strands of electronic music. Their releases are utterly free of hype, beautifully crafted 10” vinyl plates that let the singers and tracks speak for themselves. At the risk of being cheeky, “Nope” is absolute dub techno bliss. The 808 kick propels the track relentlessly forward, saturated washes of color streak the night sky, while syncopated hi hats and warm, soulful chords bring life- dare we say funk- to a style too often stiff and clinical, too in thrall to the past to truly step forward. Matching Hiss is Bliss in mystery, Ras Lys’ vocal brings a Dread perspective on music and the sometimes shady business of music, a grounded contrast to the deep inner space explored by the tune itself. The B-side version “Abbadia” splits musical atoms through the desk, focusing squarely on the stripped 4/4 elements and gloriously distorted pads that echo and cycle like tides in a darkly shimmering sea.

The album includes the excellent track "Rasta Forever," which explodes with hypnotic and blissful dub techno sounds accompanied by powerful narration by Horace Andy.

On his latest full-length, Low End Activist swerves towards weightless grime and suspended hardcore miniatures to tell a very personal story. The UK-rooted producer continues his habit of zeroing in on a distinct approach for each release, leaving a logical breadcrumb trail of soundsystem science in his wake as he channels decades of bass absorption into 14 atmospheric cuts that prize patience and precision over obvious club functionality. Municipal Dreams plays out as a semi-autobiographical tour through the Blackbird Leys estate that the Activist grew up on. It’s a lived reflection on inequality and the ripple effect it has in working class communities, using the sonic palette to set the mood and scattering pointed samples throughout to spell out the story. In sampling the exhaust of a stolen Subaru Impreza, ‘TWOC’ looks back to the recreational car theft which was standard entertainment for the kids in his community. There’s an underlying idea that this ‘council estate sport’ wouldn’t have been so prevalent if there were public services and opportunities presented to the scores of disaffected youth looking for somewhere to direct their energy and frustration. In ‘Just A Number (Institutionalised)’ LEA alludes to the shattered juvenile detention system, growing up seeing friends and family members locked up at ease with little to no support on being released back into society, just meant that the same cycles of behaviour would play out over and over.

‘Violence’ samples from a short film shot by the drama division of the Blackbird Leys Youth Club to evoke the physical threat which formed a background hum to life on the estate. The industrial mechanics of the local car factory, which served an integral role as a workplace for many in the community, gets sampled in ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ while the ‘Everyone I look up to are either junkies or criminals’ sample in ‘Broke’ looks to a lack of positive role models. Municipal Dreams isn’t a one-note indictment of life on the estate, ‘Innocence’ captures the simplicity of a child at birth before their environment has time to shape them. The Hope interludes cut through the grim honesty of the longer tracks while a subtle thread of wry humour finds its way into some of the talking heads cutting through the signature LEA murk. But honesty is the operative word here, and the message feels all the more meaningful at a time when the UK’s social divisions are laid bare in the wake of a devastating stretch of austerity. Returning to Blackbird Leys to shoot images for the photo-zine and album cover, the Activist found the local community centre being demolished. The local pub stands derelict, its faded Welcome sign a grimly ironic portent of the options facing children of the estate in the wider world. Funnelling his memories, hopes and fears into a singular twist on the bass weight tradition, LEA captures evocative scenes that land somewhere between kitchen sink realism and rave futurism.

Some marriages are made in heaven and this is definitely one of them. Two of the great ambient masters of recent times concoct a stunning EP full of spine-tinglingly beautiful moments, subtle rhythms and soul-soothing tones. Echoes of Ry Cooder and Eric Satie mingle with found-sounds and warm electronics to create a landmark of ambient exotica.

Jim Coles’s fifth instalment of his best-selling ‘Acid Dub Studies’ series arrives in the form of the third set of original works exploring the infectious sound of the 303 bass-line in a dubwise setting. The album takes in traditional dub mixing approaches in a digital and roots/digi-dub style whilst also making space for more electronic and ambient processes to close the project.

‘Acid Dub Studies III’ arrives after 2 years of touring the material in a live setting at festivals and clubs including CTM at Berghain, Les Nuits Sonores, and Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza festival and is the culmination of some 5 years of experimenting with a style that has been met with critical acclaim, reaching far and wide into many a DJ’s box having been noted by some as a truly ground-breaking approach to working with the 303.