MUSIC

Masahiro Sugaya began his career in the 1980s, working alongside the environmental music scene of that era while also making a significant impact in stage music through his involvement with Pappa TARAHUMARA.

Over the past 20 years, Sugaya has shifted from traditional composition using instrumental music to creating works for 8-channel multi-speaker systems, incorporating environmental sounds and field recordings. His latest album continues this evolution, featuring collages of environmental sounds within individual tracks. The album is structured to balance past and new works, creating a collage-like representation of Sugaya’s diverse creative output.

"しるしまみれ / Overflowing Signs" offers an experience that navigates freely between Sugaya’s environmental music approach and his practices in field recording and musique concrète, presenting a sequence of sounds that defies easy categorization or symbolism. Additionally, this album marks Sugaya’s first stereo full album release in nearly 20 years.

'Shardcore' is the debut full length from Myriad Myriads, aka Bass Clef, a return to the dancefloor refracted into ten thousand kind shards, revolving. "Those waves! Soon I'm going to try once more to draw something wavelike. But how can you simplify something as complicated as a wave in the open sea to something comprehensible?" Escher Recorded in The Hague. Elektron M:C and M:S / FMR audio RNLA and RNC.

Le Jardin des Plantes, in four parts, for cello and electronics. A place in Paris and a novel by Claude Simon. Memory spaces, a source, a scrying of time. – Anton Lukoszevieze

The 006 on the imprint is "Versions Vol. 2" a new mixtape written and produced by NPLGNN Messing around with a big bunch of samples NPLGNN chops, resynthesizes and assembles them in a no-nonsense sonic collage flux 100% Sound-System fuckery Around 42 mins through MCs toasting, pitched amens, dub glitches, screwed recordings and moody red-eyed interludes

Originally released in 2018 in a very limited series of 50 cassettes the 003 of the Japanese legend Yousuke Yukimatsu is now repressed and restyled for a 2024 150 units edition. Six years later Yousuke has skyroked and now known all around the world for his amazing DJ skillz and unique music taste. We told you so back then and we are so happy to see that happen. --- 2018 press release: Founder of Zone Uknown, Dommune selector and recent affiliate of Asian Dope Boys, Yousuke Yukimatsu (Osaka, 1979) is a key figure in the Japanese electronic culture. If you see him playing is impossible to don't get caught by his unique and somehow visceral style of DJing. For MBE series he recorded 90 minutes of music made strictly by Japanese artists offering us an extraordinary wide-eyed perspective on the far east electronic culture. Imagine to be in Osaka or in Tokyo in an overcrowded obscure underground small cave listening to some sweating freaks playing distorted noise, or sitting on a bamboo mat in a machiya while Shigeo Tanaka is playing the yumi, or being in the Hozen Ji temple reaching the ascension with the chants of the priests, or getting lost into a cyberpunk scenario with DJs spinning dark techno into a foggy warehouse with just a low strobe light on.. well you can just get a glimpse of what this tape is.

Modern Lovers' self-titled debut album, released in 1976, is a timeless exploration of proto-punk and alternative rock. Led by Jonathan Richman, the album captures a minimalist and lo-fi charm, with tracks like 'Roadrunner' becoming anthems of the emerging punk scene. Richman's witty lyrics and stripped-down sound make 'Modern Lovers' a seminal work, influencing generations of indie and punk musicians. The album stands as a testament to the band's pioneering role in shaping the landscape of alternative music.

Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a pretty perfect triangle, musically and geographically. Based out of Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, the three convened at Sage’s converted barn studio at the foot of the Rockies to diagram their kindred ability to extract grandeur from the most passable of life’s daily details. On his own, saxophonist Joseph Shabason warps late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into tidepools of fourth-worldly sound design that are infinitely more self-aware and emotionally honest than any of their distant reference points. M. Sage, in a parallel sense, blends his skills as an instrumentalist with synthesis and field recordings to create auditory reflections of the natural world that are as whimsical as they are profound. Sitting cozily between these two heartfelt experimentalists is singer Nicholas Krgovich, whose observational slice-of-life poetics paint a relatable face onto his collaborators’ calm expressionism, both guiding and highlighting its deep sense of affect. The resulting album, prosaically titled Shabason, Krgovich, Sage warmly invites sound artist Matthew Sage into the world of wry and melancholy micro-miracles that Shabason and Krgovich established on 2020’s Philadelphia, and 2022’s At Scaramouche. Album opener “Gloria” is a perfectly balanced representation of the trio’s individual abilities. Sage’s slowed and watery zither bleeds in from the edges of the canvas, laying ground for breathy woodwinds and harmonica that pantomime a distant locomotive. Speaking directly to the sonics at play, Krgovich melodically narrates, “Penny, did you hear that train whistle? Theo, did you hear that owl hoo?”. Even from this first moment, the intimate dynamic is so palpable that the listener falls unwittingly into the backstory of Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. “After connecting with Nick and Jos through DMs since 2020, it felt like a fun experience awaited us as potential collaborators,” Sage recounts. “I had built my barn studio, and I think it looked appealing to them to make an adventure out of coming to the Wild West to make music with me.” After spending the majority of a decade immersed in Chicago’s legacy of jazz and experimental electronic music, Matthew Sage moved back to his home state of Colorado to raise a child in a more casually agrarian atmosphere, and to work in the kind of setting that led to his 2023 album for RVNG, Paradise Crick. It was here at the cusp of the Rocky Mountains that the initial push of Shabason, Sage, Krgovich began, in person. Making sense of the trek, Shabason adds “I have realized that making music with people who live very far away is a real possibility. As long as we can get into one space together for a short amount of time, the collaborative magic that is needed to make a record is totally possible.” The three artists’ fingerprints are equally visible across the album. There is soft textural detritus floating freely in the air, punctuated by glassy electric keys and rubberized basslines. The sparseness in the placement of all the elements leaves them subject to ghostly visitations from a whispery saxophone, and a gentle guitar that peers around the corners of Krgovich’s free-verse musings. The album’s midpoint “Don” passes overhead like pollen on the breeze, constantly drifting out and back across pockets of completely empty space. “Old Man Song” turns a rare B-side by Low into an even gentler end-of-life reflection that is sweetened by Krgovich’s falsetto during the track’s wordless chorus. As nebulous as that may seem on paper, the hidden songcraft slowly surfaces over the course of each piece, exemplified by the closing track “Bridget”. There are plenty of other moments of the album that bear discernible rhythms below the fogline, but it’s here that they rise up into a full-on groove under Krgovich’s lyrical fourth wall breaks in which he details everything from Joseph’s studio habits to seeing “Cats” at the theater with his sister. Despite the song’s relative density and pop sensibility, a careful use of space still reigns supreme. On the eleven-minute “Raul”, Krgovich comes close to unintentionally codifying this approach as he sings “The container shrinks, and shrinks again, with every day, the relief that comes from not wanting more...” Truly, the most abundant virtue on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage is patience. The trio interacts without interrupting one another, contently waiting their turns, all locked onto the same distant point on the horizon yet unconcerned with when they might actually arrive. The groundwork laid by Shabason & Krgovich on their previous joint offerings is omnipresent, but it’s amplified by the joy Sage must have felt shepherding them to his idyllic and intimate new homebase. Prior to meeting up with Sage, the pair’s music often dealt with the beauty of The Great Indoors, but their new host and collaborator has smartly refocused their lenses on the small wonders of wilder localzes. Like magic, Shabason, Sage, and Krgovich have not just musically photographed their surroundings, they’ve managed to reproduce them exactly. The sharp open air, the quiet thrill of an escaped routine, the self-reflective thought-loops during a twilit moment at the edge of a field, all of it’s here on Shabason, Krgovich, Sage. Through the trio’s skillful ease, the listener is there, too.

The entire album is permeated with ethereal, lo-fi sounds, creating a superb ambient/drone masterpiece that is melancholic and introspective, yet filled with sweet, meditative charm!

After a limited self-release in 2022, Extravision, the deeply therapeutic musico-psychonautic offering from experimental guitarist Guy Blakeslee has received the Leaving Records “all genre” re-release treatment, with the understanding that more listeners should hear with this vulnerable and graceful document. The record is, in a word, a balm. Like a window flung open on a sweltering day, Extravision occasions the sudden awareness of space, of calm, of context, of possibility. The record also catalogs a musician’s search for meaning and healing in the wake of catastrophe. Since its initial run, Blakeslee has been bracingly open about Extravision’s genesis. On March 13th, 2020, while walking across the street, Blakeslee was struck by a car. Upon regaining consciousness the following day, the hospitalized Blakeslee found both the outer world and his inner world suddenly transformed. As lockdowns took effect, it was immediately clear that the brain injuries Blakeslee sustained had not only affected his vision but altered his very consciousness and would inevitably affect his music-making. From Los Angeles, to Virginia, to Baltimore, he pursued physical and spiritual recovery with music as his primary medicine. Sitting for hours at the piano, the man for whom guitar had always been the primary instrument now intuited the riddles and patterns laid out neatly before him in black and white. Armed with beginner’s mind and a cassette 4-track, Blakeslee began to experiment with wordless, impressionistic songcraft. Extravision is the transcendent result, an hour-plus compendium of humble and fiery dalliances with the musical and psychical unknown—a record from a lifelong musician rediscovering the joys and vexations of learning. Throughout Extravision, the guitar exists as both specter and reference. A majority of the album’s tracks notably do not feature any discernible guitar—the songs functioning as emotive, drone-based exercises in texture and duration. And yet, one never doubts the extent to which Blakeslee’s practice has been (and continues to be) informed by a uniquely American folk guitar idiom. We are, with Blakeslee as our guide, gladly charting the vast and newest horizons of so-called “American Primitive” music, now often referred to as “Cosmic American.” And when Blakeslee’s interdimensional guitar does eventually emerge — see the album’s fittingly final title track, “Extravision”— the sweetness, not untinged by loss, is palpable. Blakeslee has stated that his goal, with Extravision, is to induce in the listener a trance-like state, to inaugurate the conditions under which time might function “differently.” To be sure, the drones and gentle recurrent phrases that comprise much of Extravision are a welcome antidote to the now commonly felt acceleration of time. But it is the experience that Blakeslee is transmitting with and through and beyond these musical gestures—the experience of non-linear time, of total time-loss, of starting again, of retracing one’s steps and rerouting one’s journey—that challenges and rewards us.

Los Angeles-based vocalist, composer, and producer Sharada Shashidhar has a deep awareness of the cosmos. There's a distinct tug-of-war in her music, an understanding that scanning the heavens to answer existential queries isn't quite enough; there are internal depths to plumb as well. Shashidhar's first album, 2020's Rahu, found her voice billowing out of smoky, post-beat-scene soundscapes, meditating on the collective unconscious and the energy exchange between all living things. Her newest work, Soft Echoes, is a bold step forward, echewing her work's hip-hop tilt for expansive compositions that blend jazz and Indian classical influences into a swirling, spiritual whole. Though she has an extensive resume as a collaborator in LA's previous experimental jazz scene, notching work with the likes of Carlos Niño, Zeroh, and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Soft Echoes marks Shashidhar's first outing as a bandleader. Gathering an ensemble that includes Anna Butters on bass, Julius Rodriguez on keys, Devin Daniels on saxophone, and Timothy Angulo on drums, Shashidhar sought to create a band that ostensibly functioned as an extension of herself. Her primary goals in writing these songs were to “let [her] body do what it wanted to do,” to trust her intuition, and “play without judgment.” Through that process, making Soft Echoes became a practice of presence and exploration, a chance to unlearn rigid structures and rediscover the joy of creating for oneself. Recording took place over three brief, distinct sessions at Altamira Sound in Alhambra, California. Though the full band wasn't ever present at the same time, Soft Echoes sounds like the work of a group in complete, mind-meld focus. Splashy drums nudge up against skronkingsaxophone on “Canyon Song,” while mushrooming synth tones stack up behind rippling Rhodes piano on “Luckiest.” Shashidhar's elegant voice is the anchor for each of these tracks, sometimes gracefully stretching between instruments like a lithe dancer's limbs, other times scattering through psychedelic delay. She describes the album as having “two poles, ” illustrated by the whimsical, buoyant opener “Soft Echoes” and the darker, more anxiety-ridden closer, “New Echoes.” The songs in between may come from different emotional spaces, but “it's all really reflective,” she explains. album can play like a loop, with Shashidhar entering a portal “into the endlessness” during “New Echoes,” only to be transported back to the beginning, full of gratitude and pondering “how strange it is to be alive.” On Soft Echoes , Shashidhar leads us on a journey through her mind, traversing its peaks and canyons in search of greater connection. “I want to take people places,” she says, pausing thoughtfully. “I can’t always guarantee that they’re good places, [but] hopefully you’ll feel something.”

This tape contains a recording of a live of NPLGNN recorded atHuman Razzmatazz (Barcelona) on March 2023.Everything you hear it comes from two Korg Electribe EMX1 +Pioneer DJM900 NXS + Traktor. To describe the sound it makes sense to bring back what was the press release of “Sigma/Tau” the first record of NPLGNN released in 2014 on Where To Now? (RIP): “NPLGNN creates a less pampered style of body music, stripping away the usual signifiers such as melodies and bass lines to create something more utilitarian, brutal and pure. This is the pre-babel language of dance music - it's cadences are rhythmic and its meaning is comprehensible to all on an innate, primal level.” Ten years later this tape makes those words still remarkable to describe the sound of the Neapolitan head.Among a bunch of unreleased sounds you can go through all the NPLGNN recent records for LavaLava, Youth, Hundebiss and it own lathe cuts series dubbed here and there with vocal cuts intersections. Coming off like the rude son of early ‘00s breakcore heroes, quoting the Manchester Boomy heads, NPLGNN delivers a 45 mins mutant soundsystem recording. It's acid dancehall punk, amorphed ragga riddimz, or whatever you want to call it. 100% dancefloor melting. Ask Aphex Twin for a couple of IDs ; Soundsystem mutant NPLGNN shells blistering and bone rattling yardcore styles in his recording made at Barcelona’s Human Razzmatazz in 2023 A decade since they emerged via Where to Now? and the NZO-related OKNO label, with subsequent turns for everyone for Reel Torque to Youth and their rhythms rinsed by likes of AFX, plus killer programming of the MBE mix series and Forever Now with Dave saved; NPLGNN has surely held his ground in ruggedest mutant dancehall terrain. ‘Live At Human Razzmatazz’ catches them in full flow rattling thru stacks of custom soundsystem dubplates that roughly resemble the millennium era surge of scuzzy breakcore by Ambush don DJ Scud or DJ /rupture as much as his contemporary, Ossia, or even Rat Heart’s rudest; harnessing coarse machine rhythms of spark-sputter hi-hats and nervy snares with depth charge subs and ragga chat, crudely dubbed into the red and maximized for steppers pressure and battling stacks.

Acoustic Rhythm & Texture Sequencer Available as C60 Limited Edition of 50 mirror dubs- (same on both sides) + Inserts written and produced by S.Gordon 2024. additional percussion by Islay Spalding - TRK 7, recorded at SFS studios 2024 Synths & Radial - SDGordon. The Radial instrument was designed to explore various material's acoustic characteristics in ways that could only be achieved through mechanical and electronic control. It creates sporadic dense percussive sequences & sharp reciprocating sweeps or can focus in on tiny acute angles to produce deep shaking drones among a host of other planned and unplanned acoustic sounds. Radial uses 5 voltage controlled motors and interchangeable textured cylinders captured via contact microphones positioned within the chassis. The cylinders can be synchronised or independent & the blades are interchangeable allowing the flex of certain materials to skew and augment the movements and sounds and sequences. Playing the Radial instrument is a direct visceral experience. Its sequences sound unlike anything else i have used and the simple design by no means limits the scope of its rhythmical output. After feeling out the controls you arrive somewhere in-between the rubbery juddering fuzz or clockwork blasts of percussion and can step back allowing the physicality of the instrument itself to dictate how things proceed. Minor adjustments can have a butterfly effect on the entire tone inmate rewardingly unpredictable but controllable way. On certain tracks there’s some synth work in a move away from the potential “instrument study” vibe of the release and Islay Spaldings blistering scrap metal percussion on Track 7 was incredible to watch.. Additional thanks to Stephan P Richter “SPR” for the advice and encouragement through the whole build.

Kindred the shop and radio station based in London mint a new in-house label, headed up by one of the store's founders, Scar. Up first is station regular, Alicia, with a 60 min hazy trip through dubwise ambient & downtempo niceness, really cracking listen this one. Limited edition c60 cassette.

版元完売。Theo Fabunmi Stonn (404 Eros) & Jon Phonics (Astral Black)の2名が主宰しているロンドンの気鋭レーベルであり、Lunch Money LifeやVanessa Bedoretといった面々による先鋭的な作品を送り出してきた〈Scenic Route〉のショーケース的コンピ盤をストック。レフトフィールドでサイケデリックなテイスト抜群のドリーム・ポップやインディ・フォーク、オルタナティヴR&Bを中心に、知られざる現行の地下アクトたちを一挙20組紹介した意欲的な1本！

boycalledcrow is the alias of Chester-based sound artist Carl M Knott (Wonderful Beasts, Spacelab). Knott, a former folk musician, uses his myriad acoustic influences to create unique, strange and beautiful compositions. We're excited to be able to bring you the latest wonderful album from Chester's boycalledcrow, after some superb releases for labels such as Mortality Tables, Waxing Crescent Records and Subexotic Records. Knott's music doesn't sit easily in any pre-existing genres, being at once strange and experimental, yet melodic and somehow comforting. His music is intimate and evocative, deeply personal, and manages to be both bucolic and yet totally 21st century, like Kraftwerk's robots dreaming of sheep. The songs and sounds on “eyetrees” are inspired by a rich family life and the wonderful times spent with his wife and kids, both at home and out in nature. Knott said of the album and its inspirations: “We enjoy spending time in the woods with our young children, creating stories about the "eye tree”. This tree, with thousands of eyes, watches over us and cares for us like family. We make fox medicine and cherish these blissful moments. The music reflects these times, seen through the colors of an old, fuzzy reel—orange, red, and yellow with blurred edges, like an old photo scorched by the sun. I feel a deep spiritual connection to the countryside; the hands of Arcadia cradle me when I feel sad. Some of the album was created during times of sadness when I felt death was close and the lines between worlds were blurred. This feeling—that anything can happen and that life is delicate and can be taken away in a flash—permeates the music. The song titles are stories and memories of my family, filled with hazy pinks, yellows, reds, and oranges. Wonky acoustic guitar, broken electronics, and a warm, otherworldly space."