MUSIC

When words trail off at the beginning of claire rousay’s “everything perfect is already here,” ornate instrumentation is waiting to fill a void left by the breakdown of language. Yet it becomes clear as we trace rousay’s collaged sonic pathway that breakdown, of meaning and also of melody, is also a place to rest. everything perfect… is made up of two extended compositions that cycle between familiarity and unknowing. There are seemingly infinite ways to feel in response to these pieces of music, which shift tone across their languid duration, earnest like a familiar song but unbound from the emotional didacticisms of lyrical voice and pop form. rousay builds a fluid landscape around the acoustic contributions of Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics and violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), whose respective melodies weave gently in and out, sometimes steady, sometimes aching, sometimes receding altogether in deference to less overtly musical sounds. That is, percussive texture in the form of unvarnished samples and field recordings: the rattle and rustle and the stops and starts of life unfurling, voices sharing memories nearly out of reach, doors closing, wind against a microphone. Everything comes from somewhere in particular, possessing the veneer of the diaristic, but sound’s provenance is secondary here and so these details become tangled and fused. On this release I hear such details not as individual ornaments or stories but the collective architecture of the greater composition. It’s an architecture that is not quite formed and thus full of openings out to the world unfolding. “The world unfolding,” that’s a kind way of saying change, movement, loss, transformation. Things rousay here indexes, not without shards of desire or pain, still somehow what I hear is coarse peace in the in-between. These two pieces sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Where am I now? What is different outside of me? What is different inside of me? Um. I think. everything is perfect is already here, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways. The music guides a certain experience of the world around. In claire’s music there is this marriage—not just a pairing or juxtaposition but an interrelationship, an eventual confusion—of song/texture, narrative/abstraction, figure/ground. Everything comes from somewhere in particular but not just the voices, the field recordings, the what is being said or meant, what matters is “the where you are now.” There are so many ways of anchoring oneself in the present, some have to do with fantasy or storytelling and some with accepting what is. These two compositions find peace between these modes. They sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Their mode of feeling is inquisitive. Where am I now? What has changed outside of me? What has changed inside of me? The music, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways.

Live at KEXP! is a studio‑live recording captured during Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio’s appearance on Seattle’s KEXP, offering the most direct and unfiltered experience of the band’s signature sound.

NYC発のバンドSay She Sheの最新作からフロア映えする2曲を抜き出した強力な7インチ。グループの代名詞である3人のハーモニーが大きく広がり、ファンクのベースラインが全体を強く前へ押し出すキラートラック「Cut & Rewind」とストリングスやホーンが煌めくアップビートなディスコ・ファンク「Disco Life」を収録。70’sディスコの質感を現代的にアップデートしたディスコデリックなサウンドが際立つ、Say She Sheの個性が凝縮された一枚。

A small treasure trio.At its center is the first-ever 7” appearance of Sylvester “Syl” Johnson’s vibrant, groove-driven “Tripping on Your Love” and the title track “Foxy Brown,” long considered a funk collector’s grail—never reissued, never compiled, and sitting in that sweet spot between boogie and steppers, the kind of private-press rarity that could only come out of Chicago. Joining Syl is Ujima’s full-bodied soul workout, powered by steady rhythm and rich group harmonies, paired with Spirit of Brotherhood’s gritty, street-level funk cut—recorded to tape, nearly lost to time, and later revived as the standout opener of Side A on Eccentric Disco, a release strong enough to spark seven more genre-focused editions from Numero.Each 45 holds its own, but together they form a memorable trio for anyone seeking these tracks in their best-sounding and most tangible form.

By no means a secret, (and in steady demand,) but certainly in the category of IYKYK, multi-instrumentalist Aaron Shaw is one of Los Angeles’s brightest young Composers, Producers, Arrangers, Band Leaders, and Music Directors. In his Home Studio that he shares with his older Brother, Lawrence (together making up the group Black Nile), Shaw can be found playing Saxophones, Clarinets, Flutes, Keyboards, Drum Machines, and also Engineering Sessions. A frequent fixture at The World Stage in Leimert Park, Shaw has collaborated with everyone from Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Phil Ranelin, Herbie Hancock, and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, to Mary J. Blige, Dave Chapelle, Tyler, The Creator, Anderson .Paak, Nightmares on Wax and many more less well known OG, established, emerging, and underground Artists in the LA Jazz, Hip-Hop, Rap, Electronic, and Experimental Music scenes. Born and raised in Ladera Heights, he cut his teeth at the Fernando Pullum Community Arts Center and the LA County High School for the Arts (LACHSA) before eventually entering the tutelage of Kamasi Washington, who he is featured with in tandem Musical conversation on the entirety of the 2025 release Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople. After years of study, dedication, and gig-work, the path to his first full-length release proved to be a perilous one. And So It Is, out February 13th on Leaving Records, documents the physical, musical, and spiritual transformation thrust upon an already extraordinary talent. In 2023, at age 27, and after months of troubling symptoms and medical dead-ends, Shaw was diagnosed with bone marrow failure—a state of affairs he succinctly describes as “grim.” To say nothing of the alienation, exhaustion, and fear that accompanies such a diagnosis—the endless testing and treatment protocols—Shaw’s very capacity to play music, the craft to which he had consciously dedicated his life since the sixth grade, was suddenly, radically altered. The key matter was Shaw’s red blood cell count, and his incapacity to produce sufficient oxygen. Breath, the activating force of the wind instrument, was now in short supply. A once-normal gig became a medical gamble. How many stairs to the stage? Could he play in Idyllwild’s higher altitude? The subsequent process of acceptance was fraught and non-linear (as major health journeys tend to be), characterized by periods of emotional exhaustion (crying spells, social isolation), as well as brave attempts to troubleshoot his limitations (experimenting with new mouthpieces and reeds, changing his posture). Initially frustrated by the resultant changes to his sound, Shaw pushed through. Playing music was still his primary source of solace. Through this self-therapy, and within the constraints of a new playing style, songs began to coalesce. “And So It Is,” a saying Shaw traces back to a childhood immersed in church music, became the mantra for this creative period, and eventually the collection’s title. Under the nurturing eye of Leaving Record’s affiliate Carlos Niño (percussionist and, notably, the Producer for Andre 3000’s New Blue Sun) And So It Is slowly took shape—An eight song cycle that plums the depths of despair and isolation, as well as the strange clarity that comes from confronting one’s mortality. The aptly-titled first track, “Soul Journey” orients the listener. An initially off-kilter, ruminative, almost rainswept movement gives way to a more focused and propulsive mid-section (one senses grit here, a desire for forward momentum), before gradually laying down to a bed of cello and harp. And So It Is retains an inward focus throughout, and there are moments of transcendence, when the individual concerns plaguing Shaw seem to give way to pure delight in the discovery and expression of musical forms. Shaw carefully selected his collaborators for this project, numerous and talented, including Lawrence Shaw and elder statesman Dwight Trible, among others. That track three, “Windows to the Soul,” is an interpretation of a Chick Corea composition, and that track eight, “Never Catch Me Out Of Alignment,” is sort of a cover of a Kendrick and Flylo collab, will intrigue and entertain old and new heads alike. And So It Is is a lovingly produced collaborative document of an artist at a crossroads who has chosen to proceed. Was it ever really a choice, even? While the future remains forever uncertain, for all of us, there is an infinite well-spring of hope and freedom and joy in doing what we do, and doing it well.

Luke Schneider’s new EP 'For Dancing in Quiet Light' finds the pedal steel guitarist further refining his singular ambient vocabulary—gentle, resonant, and quietly radiant. Following two releases on Third Man, this Leaving Records debut is inspired by the intersection of breath and movement, drawing influence from his rural Tennessee surroundings and Lou Reed’s little-known tai chi soundtrack Hudson River Wind Meditations. These compositions offer a delicate but emotionally resonant companion for both rhythmic physical motion and the subtle choreography of the inner self. The title track, built solely from pedal steel and carefully layered effects, sets the tone with its glowing textures and unhurried grace.

In music, form is sometimes so intimately connected to experience as to speak meaning more compellingly than any word could. On After the Town was Swept Away, out September 5th on Leaving Records, BlankFor.ms, aka Tyler Gilmore, finds in rhythm a new vocabulary of self-collection. Confronting both grief and joy, its twelve tracks of tape loop manipulation festoon and murmur — the imperfect cyclicality of tape itself at once a metaphor for the record’s meditations on time, and the actual physical support shaping its sounds. Composed in the aftermath of two quickly succeeding life-changing events for the artist — the birth of his first child, Ellis, in November 2023, and the loss of his mother after a two-year battle with cancer in January 2024 —, the sounds of After the Town was Swept Away were born of unmaking and remaking. The composition process was mostly one of revision: early drum machine sketches were emptied out and degraded, whole songs restructured, tape loops stacked to digest a complex rhythmical biography. Rooted in early experiences in jazz and a long-held love of house and drum & bass, BlankFor.ms’ beat allegiances surface in ways that are never obvious, a vehicle for reinterpreting one’s times anew. Commanding such an articulate rhythmical language, the music of After the Town was Swept Away speaks thus in intense, affectionate, at times uneasy tones. We feel this deeply on lead single "Formed by the Slide". Against the offbeat loops of quietly loose, layered held-tone vocals — by composer, vocalist and friend of the artist, Ella Joy Meir —, rhythm emerges in noisier surges as if answering their achingly beautiful call. It is the sound of experience in its barest form: when life speaks, we respond as we can. After The Town Was Swept Away was born from love — not just in tender musing, but through actual, felt communion. This is true, for example, of the triptych titled after Kinship, the Highland Park yoga studio where, in 2024, experimentalist Colloboh hosted BlankFor.ms for an impromptu performance to a routine by yogi Meg Shoemaker, from which the three tracks were assembled. But the influence of others — both musical, as with jazz drummer Marcus Gilmore and pianist Jason Moran, with whom BlankFor.ms recently released a collaborative album, and more intimately personal — is felt throughout the whole record, bound together in rhythm. Could it be otherwise? Tape loops have a way of preserving and altering the past at once, marking and unmarking sounds and their sources. The beats on After the Town was Swept Away — pensively yet felicitously — come to terms with just that, their rethreaded rhythms making room for unexpected, unhoped for recollection — a way to survive the flood of experience.

Originally compiled & released in 2015 by Leaving Records & Laraaji, we proudly present (again), with humble gratitude, three re-issues of seminal works by new age musician, composer, and laughter meditation workshop leader Laraaji - recorded between 1978 and 1983. Although some excerpts of the material have been featured on various compilations, this was the first time in over 30 years that one can experience the uninterrupted duration of these cosmic etudes in their complete form. The added length creates an immersive environment of fresh, exploratory, experimental and healing sounds in which to dwell– these are the proper, entire experiences as intended by their creator.

1978’s Lotus Collage was recorded live in a Park Slope, Brooklyn living room during Laraaji’s busker years. The sounds consist of freestyle electric open tuned zither/harp, Ecstatic Rhythmic hammer percussion, and free flow open hand ethereal moods. This recording crucially predates Laraaji’s now mythological “discovery” by Brian Eno, and is significant as one of Laraaji’s first electric zither recordings. This early recording captures a youthful Laraaji at the outset of his musical journey, still ripe for discovery, exploration, and transcendence. 1981’s Unicorns in Paradise was performed on electric keyboard Casiotone MT-70, and once again features Laraaji’s iconic zither in a flowing atmospheric improvisation. Laraaji describes its sonic environs as “an ideal habitat in another dimension of timelessness.” Many years later, this description holds true as its vibrant sounds inspire sensual reflections of the excited imagination. The final re-issue consists of two parts. Its first side, “Trance Celestial,” is a glowing, amorphous survey of muted and malleable electric sounds. Its uncharacteristically dark atmospheres nevertheless still paint a surreal atmosphere for self-reflection. Much beauty and inner-wisdom can be found in the depths of its inward trajectory. In contrast, the title track is a guided meditation full of light and optimism. Its spoken word segments and patient arrangements illustrate a constructive framework for enjoying the whole of Laraaji’s extensive catalog.

Originally, these releases were hand-made and dubbed to cassette by Laraaji himself. Of the process, he says “I felt like I was distributing artwork. As a matter of fact, for some of the cassettes I actually did some extra handwork on the label, doing a screen print or magic marker to add some color. So there was a sense of how to be an industry homemade artist direct-to-consumer feeling in the early years. People would ask for cassette tapes of an issue that I had not mass produced. So, now and then I’ll run into somebody who has a cassette tape… I’ll look at it and say, ‘Oh Wow, hand-made label, J-card and HEART.'”

Available on both cassette and digital, these re-issues offer Laraaji’s early music in both its original form and a form that did not exist at the time of its recording. Regarding this parallel, Laraaji reflects, “Having the music move in dimensions I didn’t predict… It feels like an extended blessing.” 

Meditations bestseller! Originally released as a self-pressed in 2018 in a limited edition of only 50 copies. A collaboration between L.A. saxophonist Sam Gendel, best known as the leader of the jazz trio Inga, and bassist Sam Wilkes, whose unique sound has been described as psychedelic, outsider and meditative, and Jon Hassell's Fourth World.This is a collaboration between Sam Gendel, a saxophonist from LA, and Sam Wilkes, a bassist from LA. You will be into a vortex of dope music. This is a work of confidence, in which a sophisticated jazz mind is incorporated into a unique and experimental sound full of the free spirit of the West Coast, and sublimated into a unique sound that is even meditative. The muffled soundscape with the perfect amount of salt makes the listener feel even better.

Leaving Records presents Music For Living Spaces, the debut LP by non-binary Los Angeles-based artist Green-House. Olive Ardizoni helms the project, which made its debut with the charming 2019 EP Six Songs for Invisible Gardens. Music for Living Spaces represents an evolution of its predecessor’s minimalist compositions into songs that move with winsome melodies and emotional arcs. Though recorded during a pandemic, the transporting nature of Music For Livings Spaces offers a remedy for dreariness. Ardizoni states, “I’m trying to hit that part of the brain that’s affected by the emotional state that you’re in when you perceive something as cute.” 
 
Music For Living Spaces' first single “Sunflower Dance” sports a breezy, bucolic vibe. The track is intended to invoke the whimsical image of hamsters happily dancing in a field. Ardizoni brings an intentionality to these playful atmospheres. They state, “In our culture, we prioritize profound artistic expression through emotions like sadness or aggression, but cuteness, silliness or fun, are the things that we trivialize in our culture. We say that they’re childish and it gets invalidated.” The complex and radiant productions on Music for Living Spaces counter this view. Ardizoni continues, “Cuteness and joy are gateways to compassion. It’s the gateway to empathy and activating the network in your brain that boosts moral concern for other people in the world around you.” Despite its general sunniness, Music For Living Spaces does not solely rely on exuberant, colorful moods. “Royal Fern” is a sophisticated composition of voices calling and responding to each other in rippling waves, while towards the closing of the album we hear Ardizoni’s ethereal voice for the first time that carries a nuanced, contemplative aura that defies categorization. 
 
Music For Living Spaces is a step forward for Green-House. Ardizoni states, “The intention of this project is to facilitate the connection between humans and nature. Instead of perceiving nature as something that's separate from us, or outside of our homes, we can recognize nature as something that is within us and in everything we do in our daily lives. You don't need to have access to the great outdoors to feel connected to the environment.”

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

A new dawn of infinite and eternal grief work. Inheriting the lifeline and tape music traditions of avant-garde heroes such as John Cage, Steve Reich and Brian Eno, sampling everything from easy listening to Musac long before it became fashionable, through slow, melancholic overtones. William Basinski, a legendary NY drone writer who will make a name for himself in ambient history as a pioneer who has predicted screw music and even vaporwave. The latest album from , which was composed by himself using a tape loop from an archived sound source recorded in 1979, is now available from ! Like many previous works, it is a profound meditation music with the theme of "death and corruption", but it is melancholic and lost, with a deeper arc of sadness than any other work since 2002's masterpiece "Disintegration Loops". Deformed screw music like steam of feeling. Of course, fans around The Caretaker ~ Natural Snow Buildings ~ Grouper are also a must-have!

One of the most expansive instrumental Hip Hop series to date, MF DOOM’s lauded Special Herbs collection assembles a mountainous collection of his beats, ranging from series exclusives to slightly reworked favorites he produced for himself and others. Released under the alias Metal Fingers, Special Herbs succeeds at capturing DOOM’s highly influential sound which continually breaks and reinterprets the rules of the game in favor of The Super-Villain. The world is a treasure trove of sounds, and the Metal-Fingered DOOM accepts no limits; ’70s Soul/Funk classic, ’80s R&B hits, rap nostalgia, and even soundbites from children’s records & TV all find their place in the ingredients needed to perfect his recipes.

90 Day Men emerged from Chicago’s underground at the turn of the millennium with a sharp, shape-shifting take on post-rock. Their Southern Records debut blended no wave tension with hypnotic repetition, carving out eight tracks that balance wiry rhythms and atmospheric drift.

This 25th anniversary edition expands the original release with a previously unheard album recorded at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio. Engineered by Greg Norman and newly mastered by Heba Kadry, it sheds fresh light on the band’s restless creativity during their most exploratory phase.

A vital document of a scene in flux, (It (Is) It) Critical Band now stands taller than ever.

A disciple of mambo innovator Perez Prado, the Cuban-born Modesto Duran was a pivotal figure in Latin dance music’s transitionary mid-century period. His gentle slaps can be heard across dozens of 1950s mega-sellers, from Esquivel to Belafonte, Eartha Kitt to Lena Horne. On his 1960 solo debut, Duran gathers a who’s who of conga-men, including Mongo Santamaría, Willie Bobo, and Juan Cheda, delivering a cinematic and percussive melange of afro-cuban, cha cha, and exotic jazz styles for the discerning listener.

Struck for circulation after 63 years in hock within the Lou-Mood Pictures vault, this previously unissued soundtrack traffics in the high-tone timbre and highball-sipping swoon of pop's post-war years. Muddling together sugar-lipped divas, barrel-aged big bands, and "zoo be zoo be zoo" zest, with a Latin jazz Luxardo for garnish, Call Me Old Fashioned is a 40-minute stereo-sonic adventure for the 7& 7 spy-fi fanatic.

The second of Louis Wayne Moody’s trilogy of mid-century noirs, 1966’s runaway adventure They Move In The Night follows the escapades of “The Kids”—teenage siblings Cara and Applejack Seaworth—as they set out across America by thumb, rail, and bicycle in search of their long lost father—”The Man.” Hunted by the F.B.I., P.T.A., C.T.A., animal control, and a wicked grandmother dead set on claiming their inheritance, The Kids must come to grips with their orphaned reality and an unyielding future.Discovered after spending 58 years on a dusty shelf in the Louis Wayne Moody Pictures vault, this previously unissued soundtrack contains a backpack’s worth of grieving guitars, somber surf, and haunting hiss, zipped tight with the teeth of abandonment, dashed dreams, moral ambiguity, fate, tearful goodbyes, and lukewarm diner coffee. Because the long arm of society nips at their heels... They Move In The Night.

Back in print for the first time in fifty years, The Magic of The Majestic Arrows is the crown jewel of Chicago sweet soul obscurities. Originally released on his own Bandit label, Arrow Brown’s singular LP was conceived in the basement of his Bronzeville headquarters—part home, part harem, part DIY recording hub. A lush, string-heavy suite that bridges the street-corner harmonies of ‘50s doo-wop and the opulent studio sounds of the 1970s, the album is a testament to Brown’s outsider vision.

Sung by his teenage daughter Tridia and falsetto powerhouse Larry Brown of The Moroccos, and backed by the Chosen Few and the Scott Brothers, the album was arranged by Benjamin Wright and features cover art by Eugene Phillips of The Wind. This long-overlooked artefact of soul music history is less a relic than a spell—unmistakably personal, uncannily timeless.

For the lowriders, the souleros, and for any armchair drag racer who still has a record player within reach, Mid-Atlantic Story pays tribute to the aftermarket sounds of soul music, inspired by the record industry’s metric trunkload of cruising compilations, legitimate and otherwise, that soundtracked an entire subculture. This getaway ride mixtape strips aesthetics from the timeless East Side Story series, and poaches music from the greater Chesapeake Bay region. Roll with a jacked-up masterpiece.

Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff is the sprawling drum collective tearing up Dakar’s nightlife scene. Senegalese poet Djiby Ly (Wau Wau Collectif) is backed by fourteen different percussive instruments plus horns, winds, balafon, and the occasional accordion, combining Count Ossie’s spiritually elevated polyrhythms with Fela Kuti’s orchestra and Tony Allen’s groove. Based in the impoverished neighborhood of Grand Yoff and operating as a mutual aid group for the larger community, the band builds its songs on ancient rhythms passed on from Senegal, Cameroon, and the infamous Gorée Island. In both Wolof and French, Djiby preaches a message of uplift and cooperation rooted in the Sufi teachings of the Mouride Brotherhood, as well as Christianity and animist religions. “Senegal, my life my joy” is the call and response chanted over cascading, infinitely layered drum patterns on opener “La Musique Du Cœur.” “We build our own country” the band proclaims in Wolof on “Xarritt.” For twenty years and across three generations of band members, Assiko have played raucous all-night jams at weddings, secret parties, and political rallies. Grainy cellphone footage of their live shows has spread online. But this is their first album, the result of a collaboration with Swedish musician and archivist Karl-Jonas Winqvist (Sing A Song Fighter), who met the band in Dakar in 2018 and facilitated recording sessions and overdubs via Whatsapp (no small feat with so many musicians). This is vital, exciting, and innovative music, alive with energy and purpose, a band rooted in a very specific community but speaking to the world. 11月上旬入荷予定。セネガルの首都ダカールのナイトライフ・シーンを引き裂く広大なドラム集団Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoffのファースト・アルバム『Magg Tekki』が〈Mississippi Records〉よりアナログで登場！彼らは20年間、実に3世代にも渡り、結婚式、秘密裏のパーティー、政治集会などで徹夜ジャムを演奏。そのライヴ映像は携帯電話を通じてネット上で拡散されていながらも、今回初めての録音！〈Sahel Sounds〉から作品を送り出していたWau Wau Collectifのメンバーでセネガル人の詩人Djiby Lyも参加。14種類のパーカッシヴな楽器にホーン、管楽器、バラフォン、時折アコーディオンが加わり、スピリチュアルかつ高揚したポリリズムとフェラ・クティのオーケストラ、トニー・アレンのグルーヴが融合した画期的な一枚に仕上げられています。

The follow-up to 'High Art Lite', 'Ruins' is an album shaped by grief, reflection, and transformation; a record that captures both the weight of loss and the strange beauty that comes with it. Written after a self-imposed break from songwriting, it represents a shift in focus and perspective for Joseph Oxley. “I wanted to step away from what I thought I was supposed to make,” he explains. “The worst advice anyone can give you is, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ It’s always broken. It always needs fixing.” At its core, 'Ruins' explores loss not as emptiness but as presence, something that reshapes the world around you. The album finds Oxley wrestling with the dualities of human experience: the tension between what’s said and unsaid, between humanism and nihilism, public and private, despair and acceptance. “Hope and despair don’t cancel each other out,” he says. “They can co-exist — that’s what makes it feel real.” Somewhere within a lifetime of repeats, reruns, and reboots, TVAM lives, crafting work that touches on our memories while toying with our fears, creating a world in which broadcast becomes performance. Since his debut album 'Psychic Data' burst from a small bedroom studio in Wigan, TVAM has defined the sound and spectacle of nostalgia’s grip on modern life, from the sloganeering of 'Porsche Majeure' to the electioneering of 'Semantics', his music has gained daytime playlisting on BBC 6 Music and has been featured on TV including groundbreaking series Succession. Musically, 'Ruins' is expansive and immersive. Dark but magical, it is filled with reverb-drenched synths, fractured textures and hammer-blow snares. Guitars weave through the mix with a newfound restraint, creating space for atmosphere and emotion to take centre stage. "Broken reality” textures collide with driving rhythms, recalling the cinematic pulse of Floodland-era The Sisters of Mercy, and the melodic melancholy of Disintegration-era The Cure. The result is a record that finds beauty in dissonance and light in the wreckage.

The temptation to mythologize Bill Fay can be overwhelming; Fay was, for decades, as prolific as he was under-appreciated. Fay’s unsung-hero status has changed slowly, steadily, on the order of almost twenty-five years. With each new album comes new hosannas and evangelizers — Jeff Tweedy, Kevin Morby, Adam Granduciel and Julia Jacklin, to name just a few. The Bill Fay Group, in particular, is Fay’s most significant collaborative work; he records as a member of a larger group here, and the result summons a grander sonic scale, an elegant counterweight to Fay’s instincts for the understated. Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow brings to bear the galactic qualities of early rock, the intricacy of jazz improv, and Fay’s earthy folk magic. Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow has a patchy release history: recorded between 1978 and 1981, it was not released until 2005, when it appeared on CD with limited streaming and no vinyl companion. A 2006 reissue brought the album onto vinyl but with a truncated sequence and nine songs missing. Now, finally, Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow arrives in full worldwide. Available on streaming services worldwide and pressed to a double-album vinyl edition, it features the album’s original 22 songs and includes rare and previously unseen photographs from Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s original recording session. In the words of Gary Smith and Rauf Galip, missing Bill Stratton, and abbreviated from the forthcoming album notes: We chose five songs to record as finished pieces: Life, Spiritual Mansions, Cosmic Boxer, Strange Stairway, Isles of Sleep, all recorded in two studio sessions. We sent them out to try and get a record deal. There were few really independent labels back then and Punk was in the record labels’ ears. No deal. And now, Dead Oceans who have a lot of faith in Bill’s music wants to re- release the ‘Tomorrow’ album. A double vinyl package. Is there any more unreleased music for the fourth side? Of course. So, we’ve been opening old boxes, finding CDRs, cassettes, a musical archaeological dig. This is our choice from all the music we found. Fly Like a Bird.

His latest work is already here! Inspired by the global anti-racist protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the mixtape "hybtwibt?" was released in 2020 as a fundraiser against racism in the UK. Where To Now?" was featured on Pitchfork and Bandcamp as one of the "best ambient albums of the year. Space Afrika (Joshua Inyang & Joshua Tarelle) is an experimental duo based in Manchester, UK, who have been featured on various cutting-edge labels such as Where To Now? Their new album is out now on the prestigious Dais label. Liquefying garage, jungle, grime, and even dream pop into a glittering trail of pulses and pads, they've boiled down the music of Dean Blunt, DJ Spooky, the Cocteau Twins, and Klein into a candlelit narrative.

Cindytalk is the mercurial, expressionist outlet of Scottish artist Cinder. An evolution of her early 1980's Edinburgh-based punk band The Freeze, she launched the project upon moving to London, inspired by the crossroads of exploratory UK post-punk and early European industrial. Her work thrives on chance and transformation, collaging elements of noise, balladry, soundtrack, catharsis, and improvisation. After a series of celebrated albums for the Midnight Music label as well as collaborations with This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins, Cinder migrated to the United States, becoming involved with various underground techno collectives around the Midwest and West Coast. Subsequent relocations to Hong Kong and Japan further expanded Cindytalk's horizons, resulting in a fruitful partnership with Viennese experimental institution Editions Mego, for whom she released five full-lengths of swooning, granular atmosphere. 2021 finds her as engaged as ever, at the precipice of long-awaited back catalog reissues alongside multiple new works, guided by her lasting love of discovery and deviation: “new pathways always being uncovered.”

The 3rd album by Scottish industrial enigma Cinder aka Cindytalk began life as the soundtrack to an experimental film by English director Ivan Unnwin entitled Eclipse (The Amateur Enthusiast's Guide To Virus Deployment), and was originally slated for release via Factory Records' video division, Ikon. Inspired heavily by Alan Splet's eerily disembodied sound design in David Lynch's Eraserhead, the collection's 15 pieces seethe between field recordings, wistful piano vignettes, and lurking metallic haze – a hybrid palette Cinder characterized at the time as “ambi-dustrial.” Unfortunately Ikon collapsed on the eve of the project's completion so the film was never distributed, but the Midnight Music imprint repackaged Cindytalk's score as an LP in 1990 under the name The Wind Is Strong... (full title: The Wind Is Strong - A Sparrow Dances, Piercing Holes in Our Sky).

Long out of print, the album remains one of the most elusive and adventurous in the Cindytalk discography, a mix of musique concréte, haunted reverie, and desolate beauty. Even unaccompanied by their intended visuals, this is overtly cinematic music, conjuring forests at dusk and shadowed corridors, equal parts remote and reflective. Cinder cites a belief that “all sound is music,” which fully manifests here, utilizing tape hiss, ticking clocks, flicking flames, and distant whispers as evocative accents in tapestries of luminous negative space.

Although Cinder included the subtitle “A Cindytalk diversion” in the sleeve notes, The Wind Is Strong... is crucial to the project's canon, demonstrating the depth and versatility of her unique ear and intuition. She describes each album as a direct response to the previous one, and in that sense The Wind marks a bold break from the coiled song-oriented post-punk of 1988's In This World, venturing into unknown, unnamed terrain, and finding foreboding new futures to call her own.