Electronic / Experimental

Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996—the first comprehensive collection of Ukrainian music recorded prior to, and immediately following, the USSR’s collapse. From subtly dissenting Soviet-era singles to DIY recordings from Kyiv’s vibrant underground scene, the compilation chronicles the development of Ukraine’s rich musical landscape through rare folk, rock, jazz, and electronic recordings. “This record is a labor of love and a long time coming,” says label owner Matt Sullivan. Over the course of the last five years, Sullivan, alongside producers David Mas ("DBGO”), Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and Ukrainian label Shukai Records worked tirelessly to compile a carefully curated, chronological playlist. But behind the scenes, ongoing war & politics would shape the evolution of the tracklist, which originally featured both Ukrainian and Russian artists. “We found ourselves in the midst of a larger political issue; what began as a broader overview of a sonically underrepresented region suddenly became quite the controversial project,” Sullivan continues, “so we decided to pivot and focus only on Ukrainian music. There were times when it felt impossible to bring this project to fruition, so to be sharing it with the world today is truly humbling and long overdue.” Guiding listeners through the physical editions of the album are insightful liner notes and track-by-track details by Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi—a Kyiv-based filmmaker, DJ, and writer. The 2xLP is housed in a beautiful gatefold package showcasing Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko’s beloved and iconic folk paintings. The vinyl edition features a 20-page booklet with artist photos & liner notes in both English and Ukrainian, pressed on Clear Blue Sky & Sunflower Yellow wax; the CD edition features bonus content housed in a deluxe, 64-page hardbound book. Light in the Attic will donate a portion of proceeds directly to Livyj Bereh, a Kyiv-based volunteer group working to rebuild in the regions affected by ongoing war in Ukraine. “Music has always pulled Ukrainians out of the abyss,” writes Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi in his liner notes for Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996. “When there is no hope for the future, there is still music. At such moments, the whole nation resonates under a groove. Music, breaking through the concrete of various colonial systems, is an incredible, often illogical, way to preserve dignity.” While the songs collected in Even the Forest Hums were recorded during periods of immense societal and political upheaval—and certainly reflect the resilience of the Ukrainian people—they are rooted in the universal spirit of exploration: from post-war teenagers seeking fresh rhythms and artists experimenting with DIY recording technologies to an entire nation being introduced to decades-worth of previously-embargoed albums. Yet, until now, it has been nearly impossible for anyone outside Ukraine to explore the country’s flourishing music scene for themselves. Much of this can be attributed to Soviet-era restrictions. Music, much like any other commodity, was tightly controlled before the fall of communism. “Only state-authorized performers who had gone through hellish rounds of the permit system could record at the few monopolistic, state-run studios,” explains Bardetskyi. While many of these compositions were released and performed to mass audiences, however, they weren’t necessarily what they seemed. “Some of the artists managed, even under difficult ideological circumstances, to build a whole aesthetic platform which was essentially anti-Soviet.” Bands could slide under the radar by changing the lyrics of rock songs to reflect Soviet ideals or by performing traditional folk music with subtle outside influences. “This resulted in a whole scene that combined central-eastern Ukrainian vocal polyphony, Carpathian rhythms, and overseas grooves,” writes Bardetskyi, who refers to this era of music as “Mustache Funk.” Examples featured in Even the Forest Hums... include 1971’s “Bunny” by Kobza. While the folk-rock group was known for their polyphonic vocals, this particular composition is an instrumental waltz, which blends elements of traditional Ukrainian music with progressive rock, British beat, and jazz-rock. Another example of “Mustache Funk” comes from the latter half of the decade, with the Caribbean-influenced “Remembrance” by Vodohrai. While the group—which included some of the best jazz musicians in the country—had a multitude of traditional hits, inspired jams like this one could, for a lucky few, occasionally be heard live. While the 70s proved to be a golden age for Ukrainian music (complete with pop stars, large-scale tours, and legions of adoring fans), the excitement was short-lived. “The Soviet system finally understood that funkified beats quite strongly contradict[ed] [its] principles,” notes Bardetskyi, who adds that by the 80s, “The once prolific scene was almost completely colonized, appropriated, and largely Russified; the state radio and TV waves were occupied by banal VIAs and cheezy schlager singers.” With tighter restrictions, however, came the rise of the underground. While the decade leading up to Ukraine’s independence was marked by great turmoil—including the political reform of Perestroika in the USSR and the Chernobyl disaster—it also marked a time of incredible creativity. Mirroring global trends, the first half of the decade found many composers and producers experimenting with electronic music. Among them was Vadym Khrapachov, whose scores have appeared in over 100 films. His moody, Moroder-esque “Dance” (written for Roman Balaian’s iconic 1983 film, Flights in Dreams and Reality) is notable in that it was recorded on the USSR’s only existing British EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. Producer Kyrylo Stetsenko, meanwhile, was reimagining traditional songs for the dancefloor. Among them is 1980’s “Play, the Violin, Play,” by Ukrainian pop star Tetiana Kocherhina. Stetsenko, who produced the album for Kocherhina, created a hypnotic remix of the folk tune that was fit for a disco. Stetsenko is also featured here with 1987’s “Oh, how, how?,” in which he transforms a melancholic ballad by Natalia Gura into a synth-forward, breakbeat jam. As the fall of communism approached, the scene continued to diversify—particularly as music from around the world became increasingly available. Kyiv, in particular, became an epicenter of creativity. In the early days, bands like Krok offered a preview of what was to come. Described by Bardetskyi as “The first real Kyiv supergroup,” Krok was led by guitarist Volodymyr Khodzytskyi and featured musicians from local Beat bands. In addition to backing the biggest pop acts of the day, the versatile collective explored a spectrum of styles in their own recordings, including fusion and electro-funk. They are represented here with the mellow “Breath of Night Kyiv.” By the late 80s, Kyiv “was buzzing like a beehive,” recalls Bardetskyi. “It was a period of very active socialization and exchange of musical information and ideas; local musicians evolved with supersonic speed, absorbing decades of the world's musical background and transforming it into their sound.” While rock bands comprised much of this era’s first wave, artists continued to expand their repertoire as new influences pervaded the scene. The global rise of DIY recording technology and electronic instrumentation, meanwhile, also contributed to the growing sonic landscape. Highlights from this period include the avant-garde improvisations of violinist Valentina Goncharova. Recordings like 1989’s “Silence” were created by a series of layered tracks and custom pickups. Similarly, composer Iury Lech paints a warm ambient soundscape with 1990’s “Barreras.” On the other end of the spectrum is the industrial “90” by Radiodelo (the project of Ivan Moskalenko—aka DJ Derbastler), which combines frenetic drum machine beats and haunting, reverb-soaked instrumentation. Post-punk was also thriving, with acts like Yarn (a large, loosely based collective) dominating the scene. “The interests of [Yarn’s] members extended all the way to medieval chamber music, which would clearly be noticeable in ‘Viella,’” writes Bardetskyi. The track features two of Yarn’s co-founding members: multi-instrumentalist and graphic designer Oleksander Yurchenko (who became a significant figure in modern Ukrainian music) and Ivan Moskalenko. Yurchenko is also represented here as part of Omi, a parallel project by the chart-topping electronic group, Blemish. 1994’s dramatic “Transference” (which features contributions by legendary Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and American singer-songwriter Diamanda Galas) serves up horror-movie-soundtrack vibes, particularly with the addition of eerie vocalizations. Cukor Bila Smert’ (which translates to “Sugar White Death”) were also major players in the Kyiv underground. Interestingly, Bardetskyi notes, “In the reality of the general dominance of post-punk, the aesthetic message of Cukor Bila Smert’ was countercultural to the countercultural process itself.” For their contribution to the compilation, the experimental quartet provides 1995’s “Cool, Shining.” In the years following Ukraine’s independence, Kyiv’s underground scene continued to flourish, particularly as Western trends became more accessible and Ukrainians found themselves at the forefront of their own cultural output. While the country’s music would largely evolve in new directions throughout the 90s, the final entry on Even the Forest Hums... provides a glimpse at what the future held. The album closes with 1996’s “Lion,” by Belarusian transplant German Popov, whose project, Marble Sleeves, was “one of the few Kyiv formations that tried to master jungle/drum-n-bass,” per Bardetskyi. Though this compilation only scratches the surface of Ukraine’s vast and diverse music scene, Even the Forest Hums offers an in-depth overview of a significant period in the country’s cultural history and unites a number of influential figures in the same collection for the first time. As Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Schegel writes in the foreword, “This is our Ukrainian treasure. It is impossible to lose and impossible to win.”

Organic, electric, freeform. Pete Jolly's Seasons is comprised of melodies and textures composed live and without pretense—its grooves contain a complete and divine listening experience that surpasses all others of the era in which it was originally released, coming as close to transcendent musical meditation incarnate as one could possibly imagine. Seasons is an unsung masterpiece of ensemble groove and stellar musicianship, equally unsurpassed and inspired in its quiet excellence. While Seasons never had significant commercial success upon its release, it has since amassed a cult following, leading collectors to pay top dollar for copies of the rare record. Out of print since 1971, it has only been reissued once on CD. In his liner notes accompanying this release, Dave Segal puts the album’s massive demand in perspective: “British label owner Jonny Trunk put up an original pressing of the LP for sale for an undisclosed but large sum on Instagram in January 2023, and it sold in five minutes. With Seasons back in circulation, maybe Pete Jolly will finally gain the broader audience that his phenomenal skills merit,” writes Segal. “If nothing else, it serves as a valuable lesson to artists: venturing outside of your comfort zone can bring the most interesting, enduring results.” Remastered from the original analog master tapes by Kevin Gray at Coherent Mastering, this record not only foreshadows the roots of hip-hop but manages to embody the richness of a full album listening experience that few records can offer. Its timeless appeal is rare—and its dynamic range sets it apart as an album that straddles both the jazz and pop worlds in a way that almost no others can. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the changing and complex colors of Seasons for the first time ever since its initial release.

Following the release of the well received Rave ‘Till You Cry compilation of unreleased versions from the vaults in 2019, Disciples follow it up (a mere 5 years later!) with a new album from Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski, complete with another manifesto style title: You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever.

A collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Each piece is short and to the point, a record of perfect miniatures. Whilst this description may sound utopian, the album is conceived around themes of late stage capitalist brutality, hyper consumerism, online doom and alogorhithmic apocalypse. Beauty in the face of planetary collapse and 24/7 livestreamed genocide. The theme summed up by the front cover which just features a giant (readable) QR code, that most ubiquitous of modern symbols. We’ve asked Bogdan on several occasions for more background information on the creation of these tracks, but received a different answer each time. One of the below statements might be true, though it’s equally possible that none of them are, just like the real news.

1) All these tracks are a result of Bogdan asking AI to make an EDM album.

2) These tracks originated in a desperate bid by Bogdan to crack the lucrative mood / chill / coffee / gym algorithmic playlist market.

3) All of these tracks were commissioned for a Tesla infomercial but rejected when Elon Musk heard them.

4) The music on this album is over ten years old.

5) The music on this album was made in a furious weekend of creative inspiration in early 2024.

The QR code on the cover takes listeners to an ever-evolving page on Bogdan’s website which may delve into some of these theories in more detail, or ignore them completely.

We leave you with Bogdan’s text in the booklet that accompanied Rave ‘Till You Cry as the closest we may ever get to some kind of logical reasoning:

“Burn the damned art labels. Ambiguity is wonder. Information is an affront to expression, a death knell to spontaneity. For if an explanation is required, then a connection has failed to be made. Art should be like an overtone, resonating invisibly with your history to form an ethereal experience. Either it hits you or it’s wrong time, wrong place. To hell with the dawdling interviews and vanity shots. One turns to music precisely because it least resembles what’s in the mirror. Put away the arrogance and pride, and boast and bias. With each word uttered, your mystery wanes. Your shimmer dims. In my nostalgia, your light show is drowned out by the ricochet of soundwaves. Art is best when all else is drowned out. Black as though the moon forgot to come out. Let the night cover my flailing humanity like a veil. Gangly arms tangled, feet aflutter, yet all but silent against the din. This is not an escape. This is me screaming, happily, inside, out through my fingertips. This is my beck and call. Carefully assembled to drw forth some other form of you. May we partake in this moment together, for just a little longer.” 

Mirae Arts is thrilled to announce the release of "The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn," the debut album from Katsunori Sawa under his new KWARP alias. This six-track album marks a significant evolution in Sawa's musical journey, blending his experimental roots with fresh, vibrant textures.

"The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn" reflects on the fleeting nature of youth and the aspiration to maintain a childlike curiosity, while also acknowledging the fatigue that comes with aging. Mostly produced with modular synthesizers and analog equipment, the album takes listeners on an auditory adventure through a series of imaginative soundscapes.

The album opens with "Frog FM," a track characterized by forward-driving hi-hats and alien voices echoing and clashing, reminiscent of a scrambled FM frequency or a child playing with an analog radio dial. "Light Dash" follows, placing the listener in the cockpit of an unknown vehicle emitting reverberating artificial sounds. Side A closes with "The Spectator," featuring voices from above and creatures talking with one another.

Side B begins with "PlayStation," evoking the sounds of a gaming console booting up. "Metal Gear" reflects the inner metallic workings powering our entertainment. The album concludes with "Ultra," a track filled with belching aggression and mechanical expressions, almost as if the music itself is trying to escape the speakers.

KWARP's "The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn" is a testament to Katsunori Sawa's innovative spirit and his ability to push the boundaries of electronic music. The album's artwork and illustrations are done by the talented Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, adding a visual dimension that complements the auditory experience. The mastering and lacquer have been precisely crafted by Beau Thomas. 

その圧倒的なまでにオリジナルなサウンドでゼロ年代を代表するアーティストとして君臨するBurialと〈Hyperdub〉主宰にして、エレクトロニック・ミュージックの最前線を常にひた走る重要人物Kode9 が、2024年6月にデジタルでサプライズリリースしていたスプリット・シングルを数量限定12インチで発売！

Miraculous reissue of a Japanese 80s new age - ambient masterpiece! The spiritual sound spun by the original composition of synthesizers and live sounds such as flute, oboe, guitar, and percussion!

After a classical career as a flutist, Matsuzaki became a composer/arranger in 1982, and from 1985 to 1987, she worked as a studio musician and tour support member as a flutist, synthesizer/keyboardist mainly in London, gaining a high reputation overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene. Yuko Matsuzaki, who was highly acclaimed overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene, has decided to reissue "Raden no Hako (Box of Raden)", an extremely rare album she produced in 1985 before moving to the UK in a limited edition of 100 copies/LP only! The spiritual and fantastic sound with a hint of Japanese taste in many places was inspired by Simon Jeffs of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, who heard this work and decided to participate in "Pink, Blue and Amber" by Roderius, a German electronic musician and pianist known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and others. This album is a world-standard masterpiece that was born in Japan during the late 80's, when ambient music was expanding globally along with the rise of house and techno music!

Man Rei’s music traces plaintive states, haunted by hazy memories and heavy musings held in suspension. With its resonant loops, dazed iterations and eternal returns, ‘Thread’ weaves a gorgeously blurred portrait of restlessness, desire and longing. The album grew around loungey ballad 'Call', first heard on last year’s ‘The Blue Hour’ compilation and serving as this collection’s tender heart. The gauzy vocals and low-lit instrumentation of ‘Call’ diffuse across ‘Thread’, which roams under a fog of low-hanging guitars, misty piano, muted synth lines and half-heard field recordings. Man Rei sings from the shadows, sharing a poignant, raw-edged poetry that drifts in and out of ambiguity. As their lyrics stitch the literal to the ephemeral, we’re moved into a trance; considering all that’s been left unsaid; leaden with weightless feelings that slip beyond recognition. - 𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘗𝘢𝘯𝘻𝘦𝘳

Madelyn Byrd’s practice is built on the intersections of hydrofeminism and neuroaesthetics, an exploration into uncanny interactions between ecology and technology. Under their Slowfoam moniker, they have produced a string of intoxicating EPs, synergizing acoustic and synthetic sounds. In a mutated evolution from 2000’s glitch and micro-tonal experimentalism, Slowfoam’s queered ambience oozes with sensual tactility, an effervescent gurgling of digitally processed organic material. On their debut LP, Transcorporeal Portal, aqueous field recordings are stretched, compressed and elongated into a symphony of celestial purls, smudging all sense of time. Digital ripples are traced by murmurs of the body; the steady pulse of a heartbeat and the intimate breath of whispered words. Slowfoam embraces the glossy tonality of the hyper-digital, metamorphosing samples through deep manipulation. Sounds are sequenced in intricate arrangements like branching fractals of living organisms, with complex patterns forming at every scale. This process, layered and enigmatic, evokes the unfathomable processing of AI algorithms, offering prophetic glimpses inside the shimmering portal. Through all the digital rendering, there’s a profound vitality to their sound, evident of the immensely rich source material. Collaborator Pablo Diserens, founder of the forms of minutiae imprint, contributes exquisite, esoteric field sounds, too strange to be fictional; bubbling sulphur pools, gushing, glacial streams and the intense, shrill calls of krías (birds of death), interlacing the record with mythical wonder. Elsewhere recordings are sourced from the delicate thrum of a hand-made lyre harp, the spiritual flute playing of Diane Barbé and the digital instrumentation of composer Ran Park. From the rumbling inception of Enlightened Smudge on the Machine, Slowfoam’s sound world erupts into life in rapture, like sparkling light through opalescent glass. As quickly as they appear, these heightened reverberations decay, revealing the deep depths below the surface, radiant drones drifting and rolling eternally. The allure of these unadorned drones evokes altered states of consciousness, a full-body tingling of erotic synesthesia. There is a meticulous balance in the way sounds materialise and disintegrate, hypnotizing in their free-flowing sway. Byrd describes their creative process as resonant with the alchemic manifesto ‘solve et coagula’ and Transcoporeal Portal is teeming with the remnants of former encrypted layers that were ripped away. They find catharsis in the transformative cycles of regeneration, reconstructing their narratives with a tender embrace of the present through interconnection with the fluttering of life in the here and now. “Degenerate to regenerate, rend to reconstruct, in art, and in life. All circles back to Earth, and our exuberant fidelity to the Now, the Here, and the Tomorrow. Slowfoam teaches us that speculative melting yields radical presencing.” - Lou Croff Blake

990x has been blurring the line between rap and ambient for almost a decade, breaking up his subby, saturated 808 kicks and itchy percussive trills with effervescent pads, levitational loops and the kind of ghostly contrails you'd expect to hear on a Grouper record. He's never sounded quite as liminal as he does on 'Ruins', though, an album produced in recovery as he contemplated the healing process, shifting between one state and the next. As part of the recently formed label clique The Citadel, along with Sauron and IJI, he hones in on decentralised, defocussed sounds linked across continents by the internet’s rhizomatic networks, repping a certain slant on the sound that originated with Lil B and diffused via soundcloud to become a key node in the contemporary definition of what Brian Eno termed a “scenius”; a collective intelligence that transcends the sum of its parts. Throughout ‘Ruins’, 990x deploys all the hallmarks of the aesthetic - glyding 808 bass and sibilant trills, vaporous pads, and noctilucent melodies - with a melancholic grip all his own. According to classic cloud rap convention, the 8-part, 40 minute suite evinces a liminal, weightless state of mind with immersive structures that appear to float, buoyed by subs that plunge all the way down, whilst his ambient soul wraps the head in high tog puff stuffed with hopes and dreams. Shimmering echoes of Lil B and Clams Casino’s early works perfuse ‘Forest of Silence’ in his use of guzheng-like string motifs diffused to the rafters on diaphanous subs, and Yungwebster’s screwed diagonals come to mind in the vertiginous bliss-out ‘Fallen’. A tempered ecstasy thieves thru the saturated cinematic panorama ‘June Lovers’ and gives way to the ruder ballast of ‘Crates’ while the fractal hi-hats on ‘Sonar’ ultimately get subsumed by saturated waves of bass and screwed ambient dub on the album’s longest cut, the subtly optimistic 8 minute parting shot ‘Wisdom’, deploying a horizontal dembow rhythm that can't help but remind us of Kelman Duran's epochal '1804 Kids'.

Finally…Terre Thaemlitz saves the most sought-after cuts of her debut LP ‘Tranquilizer’ for the third and final of its 30th anniversary, first-time vinyl editions, including that stunning Memphis rap x proto-dubstep dedication to MLK - 100% essential ’90s ambient bass, oneiric concrète and breaks driven deep house for the heads. Frankly unmissable if even just for the album’s opening killer ’040468’ - named for the day MLK departed - which sounds better than ever on its sumptuous vinyl cut, ‘Tranquilizer EP3’ is the one the stans have been eagerly awaiting. It brings to a close a necessary reissue series for a prized totem of‘90s ambient music, conceived in the wake of the KLF’s inspirational ‘Chill Out’ album, after Terre had laid deep roots in NYC’s queer deep house club scene, and began to seed one of the most distinctive catalogues in contemporary electronic music. Semi-autobiographical and coloured with an inherently political take on ambient music, the album can be heard to reference their background in the US Midwest via the track titles and aesthetic inference of wide open spaces at night, as in ‘2am on a Silo’, and on thru their formative journey of self-discovery in downtown NYC, where they took up residency at a queer bar playing earliest deep house to sex workers during the years of devastation from the AIDS pandemic. While that would be expounded more explicitly in their later albums as DJ Sprinkles, on ‘Tranquilizer’ it’s implied by a deep sense of melancholy and longing. ‘Tranquilliser EP3’ pretty much distills and triangulates the album’s most salient points in a discrete story unto itself. Her politics are writ in a titular nod to the day Martin Luther King died on ’040468’, which we’ve long marvelled at as a remarkable prototype for both booming Memphis rap instrumentals, and the mid ’00s halfstep dubstep sound, due to its sweeping subs that go all the way down, and then some, under a blanket of starlight twinkles and bluest pads. An absolute all timer - trust. The nocturnal is also evoked in the wheezing electro-acoustic rawness and plangent beauty of ‘2am on a Silo’, like the soundtrack to a memory of a dream, and perfectly characteristic of a sound sensitivity that became Terre’s calling card, whilst ‘Raw Through a Straw’ offers the most tangible bridge between her deep house background and the emergent ambient house sound in its mingling of gorgeous organ ruminations rolling out into Dennis Coffey’s ‘Scorpio’ break, a cornerstone of hip hop deployed in deadliest deep house style. Finally we can rest easy knowing this one’s on wax.

The second in a series of EP's from Terre Thaemlitz, 1994, with almost half an hour of gorgeous, bleary-eyed dreamweaving that slots in the all-time sublime alongside The Art Of Noise’s ‘Moments In Love’, here pressed up on vinyl for the very first time, in two extended versions. EP2 in the ‘Tranquilizer’ reissue series gives new afterlife to the curtain closer of Terre’s debut album with a previously unheard extended mix, and that gorgeous Art of Noise style version that also recalls SAW II-era AFX x Bryn Jones on a deep one. Both sides scroll right back to a nascent Terre, sensitively feeling out a sound between the tumultuous summer of ’93 and spring of ’94, in the years after she’d carved a name for herself as an influential deep house DJ in Manhattan’s queer bars and clubs. Terre’s debut album ‘Tranquilizer’ would emerge as a reflective antidote to club pressures with a lushly melancholic, deeply atmospheric suite intended to cushion bodies and minds in a vein spawned by the dreamy collages of The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ album in 1990, and further developed by a rhizome of international artists including Terre’s Instinct labelmate Dave Moufang (Move D), and the likes of The Orb, AFX, and many others whose work endures to this day. ‘Fina-Departure (Original Long Version)’ extends the balmy, beat-less scene of woozy keyboards, cicadas and swooping crop-duster planes to twice as long, with what we detect as a personal frisson of melancholy/nostalgia for the Midwest planes of Missouri, Kansas, where Terre grew up. The flipside’s ‘Fina’ feels like a hidden level addendum to the album, where night settles on the plains as distant drumming mingles in the hot air to form an utterly timeless scenario reminding us of the stark drum passages of Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works’ or the kind of ritualistic ambient pursued in Stroom reissues of ‘90s Pablo’s Eye. Aye, it’s a special one. Some words from Terre: Up until 1984 or so, there used to be a Fina gas station on North Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. Sitting on the floor inside was a cardboard box filled with records for $1.00. It was a way station for unwelcome electronic music in a town of bluegrass, gospel and rock'n'roll. Neuromantic by Yukihiro Takahashi, Vapor Drawings by Mark Isham, Vistamix by Bill Nelson.... Albums that had strayed outside their intended distribution systems, only to get lost on old Route 66. I was a faggy, gender-bending teen similarly stranded in that town ironically nicknamed the "Queen City of the Ozarks." Daily life consisted of being ritually bashed in public, and defeated by psychotic family dynamics in private. With nowhere to go, I drove aimlessly in a 1960 Ford Falcon woven of rust, dents and torn upholstery. Baby blue, four door, three-on-the-tree manual transmission. A little-old-church-lady car with a color coordinated baby blue rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. On the back seat sat a boombox for playing home recorded cassettes. I checked in on the box at Fina whenever possible, offering records a chance to depart. Between the gas and music, the kindly staff at that fueling station variously offered me the same. At the end of the day, that was our unspoken agreement.

Terre Thaemlitz’s precious 1994 debut album finally makes a vinyl appearance of sorts 30 years later, hailing its sublime downbeat highlight in three different versions that come with highest recommendations if you’re into classic Mo’ Wax, The KLF’s Chill Out, Urban Tribe, Blue Lines-era Massive Attack, DJ Sprinkles! Tranquilizer’s mesmerising centrepiece ‘Hovering Glows’ is here deployed in 3 different versions totalling almost half an hour of amniotic bliss. The original 9 minute depiction of crepuscular Midwest ambience and dusted dub is beloved of anyone acquainted with the album over the years, finding Terre’s feel for electro-acoustic sound sensitivity flooded with a rarified sense of deep blue soul distilled to near-perfection. It mines a similar path to Future Sound of London productions of the same era, and in its moody abstraction foreshadows 4hero’s ‘The Paranormal In 4 Forms’ that would follow a couple of years later. The OG is joined on by two alternative versions: a ‘Little Guy Mix’ that swerves the few minutes of sensuous atmospheric foreplay to slip right into the pendulous swing; and a longer ‘Vinyl Mix’ that duly opens out the intro with Terre’s unique grasp of subbass and tongue-tip atmospheric suss. Collected, they supply an extended session of beatdown ecstasy to discerning, romantic listeners who’ve awaited this release for decades, ‘cos as Comatonse fiends know, their releases always sound especially exquisite on vinyl.

Formed from the ashes of Rema-Rema and Mass in the early '80s, The Wolfgang Press were originally a trio of bassist and vocalist Michael Allen, keyboardist Mark Cox and guitarist Andrew Gray. They were one of 4AD's longest-running acts, and shifted from pitch-black, industrial-tinged post-punk in their early years to funky, hip-hop-inspired avant-dance as they stepped into the '90s. But since '94's 'Funky Little Demons' they've been relatively quiet. There was a compilation of unreleased career-spanning material mostly penned by Allen and Gray released in 2020, but 'A 2nd Shape' is the first all-new gear from the duo in almost 30 years, with Gray's brother Stephen replacing Cox on keys. It's a fitting move for Downwards too; not only do The Wolfgang Press neatly straddle the label's musical poles, but the band's '88 high point 'Bird Wood Cage' is an enduring favourite of Karl O'Connor.

 

 

'A 2nd Shape' reflects The Wolfgang Press's output up to and including that touchstone - the soulful, sampledelic mood of 'Queer' (and it's popular single 'A Girl Like You') is nowhere to be found. Allen's signature dubbed-out basslines are front and centre on 'The Garden of Eden', booming over gnarled synths and a blitzed, slo-mo drum machine - the bleakness of 'The Burden of Mules' is latent, but sliced into bits by discordant feedback and dissociated FX. The band have always been hyper aware of contemporary musical developments, and it sounds as if they're offering a corrective here in a landscape pocked by post-punk pretenders. On '21st Century', Allen snarls knowingly over menacing oscillations: "The 21st century can tell you who you are, can tell you what you're thinking." The music's not a remnant of the past, but a way for The Wolfgang Press to acknowledge their tenure while peering into tomorrow. 

 

 

'Take It Backwards' is the album's most direct post-punk stomper, it's got all the hallmarks you'd expect to find - reverberating guitars, resonant bass, ice-cold synths - but sounds as if it's been infected with modern paranoia. If the trio's early run was marked by inky depression, their new material sounds just as umbral, but far more self-assured. "The future has been set to one side," Allen deadpans on 'Rest Your Mind', slurring over horizontal drums and fuzzy clouds of electronics. They might have lost their appetite for funk, but The Wolfgang Press's claws have never sounded so razor sharp - 'A 2nd Shape' is the rarest of comeback albums, one that captures the OG magic without a shred of pastiche or a trace of repetition. 

<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 439px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3832907613/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://regis-dns.bandcamp.com/album/a-2nd-shape-2">A 2nd Shape by The Wolfgang Press ( TWP )</a></iframe>

Demdike Stare’s DDS label kicks off a new series of limited edition 12”s with the return of Shinichi Atobe, offering a slow evolution of his inimitable deep house, finely balanced with a new found sub-heavy bias while unlocking extra space in the upper registers.

 

 

Atobe’s third 12” since debuting on Chain Reaction in 2001 marks a subtle but crucial development of his style, leaning towards classically deep, dub house templates. On both sides he adds supple flesh and hypnotic emotive pathos to his stripped formula, resulting in some of the most immediate and enduring work in his canon thus far. It coincidentally also marks a decade since he first graced DDS with his debut album ‘Butterfly Effect’, followed by a tranche of cultishly acclaimed albums in the years since.

 

 

On the A-side pearl ‘Ongaku 1’ he steps out with a shimmering take on the effortless gait of M-Series blueprints, as derived from the deepest NYC house, delicately ornamented with cascading levels of detail. Precision-tooled kicks precipitate Prescription-via-Maurizio feathered dub chords, interlaced with a frisson of darker strings and synth melodies for the full goosebump. ‘Dub 6(six)’ on the flip whisks up a psychedelic lattice of arps and synth voices with ruder bass ballast, taking its sweet time before the kicks come to swing the ‘floor deep and wide. 

 

 

Straight bullets, no messing.

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Starting from a tiny inspiration, looping and expanding until the music grows completely and autonomously, these achievements are faithfully recorded in "Motivations TO-GO". In this album, CHILLGOGOG cherishes every motivation. We aim to make an "album that can represent the group", but we do not preset the completed form of each track. At the beginning, it is just a drum set, a loop, a sample, and an idea. Under the dual perspectives of the producer and the listener, we act according to the frequency we hear. The final work is more the result of the mutual selection of sounds. We are also very fortunate to be the first witness of this organic journey.

CHILLGOGOG is a production duo that grew up in Shanghai, and its members include LATENINE6 and FunkeeCookee. Influenced by many old, new, unique, and fusion styles and musicians, various interesting ideas continue to inspire the group's creation. After releasing a series of singles and EP works, we set out to complete the album "Motivations TO-GO" in 2024.

When we were conceiving the album, we found these two words that fully condensed CHILLGOGOG's creative concept. “Motivations” represents our interest and respect for small things, even if it is just "a short musical inspiration, a few prominent patterns that are reproduced repeatedly, and a piece of music composed of a small number of notes"; “TO-GO” is a synonym for self-motivation. Any motivation needs a practical driving force to go further. It also represents the relaxed state that we want to present when facing more listeners. There is no sitting upright in the music world of CHILLGOGOG. We have prepared this take-out meal, and you can choose to enjoy / listen it in any scene.

As CHILLGOGOG's first official album, we present as many different creative tendencies as possible on the background of free growth, and boldly integrate them based on electronic music production, making it difficult to accurately define the style of most of the works. The production techniques of the ten tracks are not limited to the combination of midi sound sources. Some of the performances and recorded instrumental clips are raw but vivid. The looming and interesting sampling spans from childhood to contemporary internet memories, waiting for someone to discover the same frequency surprise. The vocal recording part is also more from sudden inspiration: the first song directly explains the album's "motivation", "Beach Burger Music Fest" imitates Prince and SpongeBob's improvisation at the same time, and "The Legend of Salima" is a fantasy of the adventure between aliens and African natives... These clips jump out of the "singing" framework and become a way for CHILLGOGOG to tell stories.

At the same time, we hope that this album can embody a certain kind of civilian "Chinese style" in terms of details and sound combination concepts. Through the fragmentary recording of the past and present language, we can trace where we come from and show some local sound characteristics that have not yet been clearly tagged to listeners around the world.

Start with a small playback motivation, please feel free to develop your "Motivations TO-GO" listening experience.<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2824916570/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://chillgogog.bandcamp.com/album/motivations-to-go">Motivations TO-GO by CHILLGOGOG</a></iframe>

重要前衛作曲家ルイジ・ノーノの生誕100周年を記念した弦楽四重奏のための作品の再解釈音源が登場！ノーノ自身が「私はまったく変わっていない。優しさ、私的なものにも、集団的、政治的な側面がある。それゆえ、私の弦楽四重奏曲は、私の中の新しい回顧的な路線の表現ではなく、実験的な現在の私の立場の表現なのだ」と延べており、ベートーヴェンから続く西洋音楽の伝統を感じさせるターニングポイントとなる作品と評された超重要作品。演奏は現代音楽、エレクトロニクス、マルチメディアの実験分野で20年以上活躍しているモーリス・クァルテットで、ノーノの最も親密で熱狂的な側面を捉えることに成功した名演！300部限定お見逃しなく！

25th anniversary reissue of MERZBOW's legendary Tauromachine, available for the first time on vinyl, now remastered by James Plotkin!

Comes in oversized o-card with label, piece of fabric and some paper rolled up. Recorded & mixed at Munemihouse, Tokyo, November 2023.

A classic compilation that emanated out of Osaka, "Noise Forest" brings together a powerhouse of early 90's Japanese noise stalwarts: MERZBOW, C.C.C.C., SOLMANIA, DISLOCATION, MONDE BRUITS, MASONNA, VIOLENT ONSEN GEISHA, and INCAPACITANTS.

The ultimate Japanoise collection, originally released in 1992 on the cult Les Disques Du Soleil label / record store on CD-only, and now impossible to find. Remastered and presented here on deluxe 2LP in matt-laminate gatefold sleeve (first time on vinyl) and new CD edition, all with new artwork.

A forest isn't something normally associated with noise; it brings to mind silence and solitude. However, the ominous cover art here - and the artists within - bring to mind the notorious suicide forest Aokigahara. Despite all tracks falling into the Japanoise genre, the tracks are very diverse, yet every track is so distinct it could only be by that artist.

“I have worked together with sheep before” – says Henning Christiansen – introducing the performance he did in front of the Brucknerhaus in Linz in July 1988. But this time he went beyond, building a “Concert-Castle” with hay blocks where thirty sheep could perform music. Another time the animals – Christiansen’s obsession and passion – become the musical instruments used for his compositions: “Originally most of instrumental sounds derived from animal voices or other sounds of natural phenomena. The violins, for instance: someone found out that stretched intestines, dried bowels, could produce a sound. This has simply been civilized, refined”. Schafe statt Geigen (Sheep Instead of Violins, 1988) and “Verena” Vogelzymphon (Bird Symphony, 1990) first appeared as a small CD edition issued by Galerie Bernd Klüser in 1991. Both works, each one occupying a full side of this LP edition, extend from one of Christiansen’s long standing conceptual strategies – deploying recordings of animals as stand-ins for musical instruments, sheep and birds respectively. While each work allows these source to take the natural lead, at times masquerading as field recordings, both feature subtle tonal and electronic interventions by the composer, creating strange and brilliant compositions which shift the terms and subjects of music as they were long understood. Accompanied by a twenty page booklet featuring drawings and texts by Henning Christiansen, as well as pictures of the performance by René Block. “The background, the space where music happens is what I want to put into the foreground.” 500 copies on black vinyl. Includes 20 page photographic book.

1st edition of 500 - no repress. Deluxe edition with two booklets. Originally released in 1974. Holidays Records: "Blending Native American references into a body of sonority that draws on free improvisation, experimental electronic music, and spiritual jazz, Pygmy Unit’s “Signals From Earth” - originally self-released by the band in 1974 - forges a singular and almost entirely unknown path, and stands almost entirely on its own in the history of west coast American jazz. First appearing on the San Francisco scene sometime during the early 1970s, almost nothing is know about the Pygmy Unit, a seven piece band steered by Darrel De Vore, who contributed flute, bass, percussion, piano, and vocals to the band's lone LP, first appeared with percussionist Terry Wilson within the psychedelic folk rock band, The Charlatans, who belonged to the legendary Family Dog scene. Jim Pepper, a Native American tenor saxophonist known for being a member of the Mal Waldron Quartet, played with Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, and numerous others, and produced the cult favourite, “Pepper's Pow Wow”, for Embryo Records in 1971. John Celona, who contributes parts on sax, synthesizer, and percussion, would later go on to be regarded as an electronic composer of some note. Of the remaining members, saxophonist Frank Albright, bassoonist Ron Grunn, and percussionist Marvin Kirkland, very little else is known. It seems this LP is more or less all they recorded. While undeniably jazz - riding a remarkable line between avant-garde electronic music, spiritual jazz, and free improvisation - the band was very much a product of the diverse creative ferment that developed in their hometown of San Francisco during the 1960s. Embodying the raw spirit of DIY (many of the instruments used in the recordings were made by DeVore himself, self-described as an “itinerant flute-maker”) the ensemble channels references - via passages of chanting and percussion, as well as conceptual underpinnings - from Jim Pepper’s Native American roots, intuiting them with the soulfulness of spiritual jazz, wild moments of avant-gardism centred around synths and electronic effects, and explosions of wild free improvisation. “Development of new music is a continuous path that grows directionally according to psychoacoustical phenomena available for unification. This record is evidence of that development, containing 12 performance pieces, at 12 separate times in different acoustical spaces with various combinations of musicians and instrumentation. The music is shaped by signals, received and sent by life forms on this planet. It is unwritten, unrehearsed, utilizing new and traditional approaches to energy, motion, and form. Eventually, music develops as a natural extension of the environment in which it exists. It is the aim of the traditions… to signal the universe from the Earth.”

150 copies on Crystal Red Vinyl, deluxe edition 3LP Box, silver print on deluxe Fedrigoni Ultra Black paper, released with the full approval of the Sun Ra Estate. * Since their founding during the early years of the new millennium, the Italian imprint, Holidays Records, has stood at the vanguard of forward thinking sound, building a carefully curated catalog of release that collectively build context and conversation across numerous avenues of exploration - contemporary and historical sitting side by side - within the wider field of experimental and improvised music, via stellar LPs by Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble, Jean-Yves Bosseur, James Rushford, Delivery Health, Henning Christiansen, Four Horsemen, Maria Monti, and whole lot more. With every subsequent release, Holidays has seemed to manage to up their game, and this is unquestionably the case with their latest, Sun Ra’s “Live in Rome 1980”, capturing the Arkestra in incredible form and arguably the label’s most ambitious endeavour to date. Issued as an astounding 3xLP vinyl box set, with a 24-page booklet loaded with stunning photos, in a very limited edition of 150 copies, it encounters Ra’s legendary band entering their fourth decade of activity (1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s) in a rollicking storm of spiritual jazz, free improvisation, heavy grooves, and their defining take on Afrofuturism. Simply put, it’s hard to think of a better live recording of the Arkestra than this. Born Herman Poole Blount in Alabama during 1914, Sun Ra first emerged on the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s. One of the great avant-garde composers of his generation - leading the way on piano, organ, and (eventually) synthesizer - beginning in the mid-1950s and lasting until his death in 1993, led the Arkestra, a band through which a near countless number of important artists passed and collaborated with, and many remained for the duration of their careers, notably Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and June Tyson. Known for their wild costumes and theatrics, Ra’s eccentric image and claims that he was from Saturn was deeply political, imagining an alternate social order, history, and future for African Americans that rests as a pioneering force in the Afro-Futurist movement. While Sun Ra and his Arkestra can best be located within the broader movements of avant-garde jazz of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s - particularly as innovators of free and spiritual jazz in their evolving forms - the composer was notoriously hard to pin down on creative terms. He was a visionary titan whose work traversed nearly half of the 20th Century, continuously pushing the idiom of jazz at every turn, ingesting and incorporating the entire history African American music - the blues, R&B, soul, gospel, ragtime, hot jazz, swing, bebop, free jazz, and fusion, etc. - into his work, without any division or hierarchy, producing roughly 100 full lengths bear his name, beginning with 1957’s “Jazz By Sun Ra Vol.1”, and stretching well beyond his death in 1993. Despite how much was captured and released, remarkably, rare and previously unheard recordings continue to emerge and amaze into the present day, notably Holidays’ latest, “Live in Rome 1980”, capturing the Arkestra in incredible form at the dawn of a new decade. Recorded live at Teatro Giulio Cesare on March 28, 1980, comprising an astounding 27 compositions, including the highly celebrated “Astro Black”, “Mr. Mystery”, “Romance of Two Planets”, “Space Is the Place”, “We Travel the Spaceways”, and “Calling Planet Earth”, over the collections of six vinyl sides. High among the greatest live gigs by the Arkestra captured on tape, carefully mastered by Matt Bordin at Outside Inside Studio, “Live in Rome 1980” is a near perfect snapshot of the band’s versatility and range, including many of their most notably and famous songs, as well as striking renditions of the Horace Henderson penned Benny Goodman number “Big John’s Special”, Fletcher Henderson’s “Yeah Man!”, and Django Reinhardt's "Limehouse Blues”, displaying Ra’s willingness to address and rework the entire, diverse history of jazz in a single go. Heard in its totality, perhaps what makes “Live in Rome 1980” most striking is the way in which the concert plays out. Roughly the first half encounters the band locked in some of the most out-there, free jazz fire that can be imagined, weaving a startling sense of interplay and furious energy into a brilliant tapestry of writhing sonority, the likes of which were only really achieved by this band. The second half, with only moments of exception that return to the furious energy of the first, is a very different affair, easy toward the vocal standards, led by June Tyson’s vocals and the joyous collective chanting of the band, for which they have become so widely celebrated, threading the sounds of off kilter big band swing with heavy grooves and imagines of outer space. Absolutely engrossing and creatively enthralling from the first sounding to the last,

In 1986, the vibraphonist Tom Van Der Geld composed his personal ode to creation, a tonal poem for all natural beings. Small Mountain reveal a pure minimalist inspiration, a vibrant style of sound variations that is decidedly more Zen-Impressionistic than the mathematical-metaphysical works of Steve Reich. This music, for four marimbas and other percussion instruments suggests an emotional osmosis with all the elements, a flow of ecstatic progressions that is more immanence than transcendence. It's the rain that falls softly on fragrant moss or the fog that hides the frost on the grass; an exotic spectrum of mutliform colours, dances of leaves, branches, sticks, fronds, lianas, swirls of petals and bark. Ode to the wind, to the rainforest, a psalm to the waters energy that opens the portals of the temples of Nature. As in the aboriginal songlines, every place or being on Planet Earth becomes, through music, space for the sacred. credits

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.