MUSIC

Sooj — a collaborative project between members of Duster and Dirty Art Club. Picking up where their 2024 two-sider Anhedonia II b/w Ecstasy Cowgirl left off, Crusher sees Duster’s slowcore drift dissolve into Dirty Art Club’s sample-heavy, collage-minded production. The result is neither band, nor side project, but something more elusive — a third space built from tape hiss, chopped memory, and late-night signal bleed. Across its runtime, the album avoids the gravitational pull of nostalgia. Instead, it hovers in a liminal present — part collaboration, part escape route.

Light in the Attic is honored to announce the long-awaited reissue of Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, the revolutionary 1982 album from composer and musician Charanjit Singh. Pairing Indian classical ragas with then-state-of-the-art Roland synthesizers and drum machines, Singh created an electronic masterpiece that was far ahead of its time.

Recording live at Mumbai’s HMV studios, Singh married the past to the future—blending the ancient Indian tradition of ragas (a melodic framework, similar to a scale, from which musicians can improvise or compose) with pulsating, electronic dance beats. Released without fanfare, it faded into obscurity and Singh retired from recording to focus on private concerts, but that’s where the story begins…

Released in cooperation with Singh’s estate, Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat arrives on June 26th. The 10-track album was remastered by Johanz Westerman at Ballyhoo Studio Mastering and stretched across 2-LPs for the highest quality listening experience. The vinyl was pressed at Optimal Media and housed in a gatefold jacket that replicates the original artwork.

An accompanying 16-page LP booklet features previously-unreleased photos and two new essays: the first from Arshia Fatima Haq and Jeremy Loudenback of Discostan—a multimedia collective and record label focusing on music from South West Asia and North Africa—while the other comes from filmmaker and writer Rana Ghose of event and film production entity REProduce Artists, who managed Singh in his final years and documented his triumphant return to the stage. Additionally, fans can find a limited-edition pressing of Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat on ‘Pearlescent Transcendent Future’ Color Wax, while the album will also be reissued on CD with a 32-page booklet containing all of the above.

More on Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat:

Indian multi-instrumentalist and composer Charanjit Singh (1940–2015) never intended to be an electronic dance music pioneer when he recorded 1982’s Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat. Yet three decades later, his inventive use of state-of-the-art synthesizers and drum machines would prompt some to crown him the “Godfather of Acid House.” The real story, however, runs much deeper.

A native of Mumbai, Singh spent much of his career as a Bollywood session musician, collaborating with renowned composers like RD Burman and Shankar–Jaikishan, and appearing on some of the most iconic Hindi film hits of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Outside of the film industry, Singh recorded several of his own albums and toured the world alongside the era’s biggest stars—an opportunity which allowed him to collect new instruments, including synthesizers and other electronic devices. As psychedelia and disco wove their way into Bollywood scores, Singh was at the forefront, integrating a host of electronic textures into his work (his hypnotic Transicord introduction on “Dum Maro Dum” from 1971’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna is among his most recognizable performances).

By the turn of the ‘80s, however, Singh was disenchanted by the creative limitations of session work and embarked on a solo career. Not long after, on tour in Singapore, he discovered three Roland devices that had just hit the market: the TR-808 drum machine (released 1980), the TB-303 bass synthesizer (released 1981), and the Jupiter 8 synthesizer (released 1981). While this trio would fuel early electronic dance music in the coming years, Singh was among the first known artists to pair them on record when he was inspired to create his next album, Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat.

Using only the three devices and recording live at Mumbai’s HMV studios, Singh married the past to the future—blending the ancient Indian tradition of ragas (a melodic framework, similar to a scale, from which musicians can improvise or compose) with pulsating, electronic dance beats, while programming the TB-303 to follow classical Hindustani scales. From the hypnotic drones of “Raga Bhairavi” to the uplifting jams of “Raga Bairagi” the album proved perhaps to be a bit too visionary for its time. Released without fanfare, it faded into obscurity and Singh retired from recording to focus on private concerts.

Two decades later, Dutch DJ and record collector Edo Bouman was in New Delhi when he came across an old copy of Ten Ragas. Bouman was astounded by what he heard—electronic music that had all the hallmarks of acid house, recorded five years before Chicago DJs coined the term. Bouman spent the next few years tracking down Singh and, in 2010, reissued the album on his label, Bombay Connection.

Soon, Ten Ragas became a viral sensation, sparking disbelief and debates about the origins of acid house. But, as Haq and Loudenback explain, those in the conversation “Had little frame of reference for [Singh’s] music outside of the parameters of western club music.” Viewed through the lens of the Hindi film industry, they argue, the album’s through-line comes into focus. In the ‘60s, when Western artists were looking to India for inspiration, Bollywood was “A laboratory for discovering sounds, and for harnessing every new technology that could be found or repurposed…. Singh’s album is more fittingly placed within the framework of the expansion of Bollywood’s experiments in disco, rather than that of acid house.”

“Perhaps this is yet another example of how a public engages with those who are ahead of their time,” adds Rana Ghose. “This record is a direct consequence of a centuries-old classical music form, rendered through the lens of a visionary who used the vanguard of technology at the time to recast it, resulting in an artefact that, almost 40 years later, is finding entirely new audiences in an era marked by a changing and uncertain global landscape of soft-power assertion. Considering this reassessment is as exciting as it is fascinating. Much like this record.”

While Ten Ragas sparked plenty of conversations within the electronic music community, it also gave a bemused Singh a surge of newfound fame during the final years of his life, allowing him to play with his live collaborator Johanz Westerman (Thee J Johanz) to thousands of fans at packed club shows and festivals in Europe, the U.S., and India. Among those fans are Australian duo Glass Beams (who covered “Raga Bhairav”), German electronic duo Modeselektor, and Thom Yorke, who ranked “Raga Lalit” as one of his “6 Tracks You Need to Hear” via the BBC.

Most importantly, however, Ten Ragas resonated deeply with South Asian artists, who saw electronic music from India being recognized with new reverence. In the words of Vish Matre (of the UK DJ duo Dar Disku), “This record will be remembered for, not being the predecessor to another genre, but being a precursor to a lot of new music from the diaspora that relied on it as inspiration.”

Adrian Sherwood teams up with Speakers Corner Quartet and African Head Charge for new four track EP Barbican Heights, a project which traverses the musical worlds of dub, jazz, electronic, afrobeat, and beyond. Barbican Heights is born out of a spirit of collaboration, bringing together one of the UKs most innovative and influential producers, Adrian Sherwood; one of the longest serving and most iconic members of the On-U Sound family, African Head Charge; together with Speakers Corner Quartet, a rising force whose influence is integral to the sound of the contemporary UK jazz scene. Recorded during a singular day of creative spontaneity at Wicker Studios, the three acts, alongside Alex White of Primal Scream and Fat White Family, combined for semi-improvised reworkings of classic African Head Charge composition “Wicked Kingdom Of This Earth”, Speakers Corner Quartet’s own “Topanga”, as well as two new tracks constructed from scratch during the session

The album is built on a singular concept: every sound is produced from a single cello. While effects pedals are used to extend and amplify the instrument, no other instruments or field recordings are involved. What remains is the act of performance itself—an ongoing exchange between body and instrument, where sound emerges as voice. Yet the resulting sonic landscape resists any sense of limitation. Layered textures of percussive gestures, micro-noise generated by a self-made bow, and sustained drones unfold into a complex, immersive environment.

Composed through the fall 2024 while Nala was 28 years old, The Smashing Machine is Sinephro’s first film score, following her two highly-acclaimed albums Space 1.8 and Endlessness.

Artur Strekalov, aka mu tate, joins the OST roster with another set of dreamtime snapshots that he collages into a plunderphonic scrapbook of new age-y samples, dialog snippets and squirly, bass-heavy rhythms. One for fans of Oneohtrix Point Never, Special Guest DJ, Space Afrika and Ludwig Wandinger, then. Last spotted breaking bread with Nexciya and Exzald S on 2025's 'Labège', Strekalov has become a reliable presence on the dubwise ambient fringe, spreading his influence across imprints like Warm Winters, Experiences and Alex Egan's Utter. He joins New York's OST, home of Organ Tapes, DJ Pitch and shineteac, among others, with 'life of mu', an album that moves beyond the gauzy, downtempo hum of his last solo joint, 2024's 'wanting less'. This one, as the title suggests, traces a more sturdy narrative, avoiding the overtly nostalgic bass-heavy ambiance that rooted its predecessors and emphasising more suggestive soundscapes that Strekalov peppers with movie samples. Opener 'world has ended for me many times...' cuts fluttering, 'Incunabula'-alike synth vamps into radio interferences and a woman's exasperated monologue that's spirals into distortion. It's remarkably open, too - Strekalov doesn't overload us with ideas, letting his story emerge slowly from the pregnant pauses and negative space. A song almost coalesces on 'low desire society' from whirring electronics and wily oscillations, and the IDM influences that emerged on the opener crystallize properly on 'world of'. But as soon as the album takes a more corporeal form, it inevitably turns to gas: 'lost in translation' is a selection of synthetic belches and cinematic cues and 'heavyweight' is anything but, an oozing, tempo-fluxed chug that's latched to its own druggy logic. Ben Bondy shows up on 'memory of a memory' as the track stumbles from warm, Toytronic-era electronix into crunchy emo-rock in the second half, and Yves B. Golden, who helped zhuzh up Ludwig Wandinger's excellent 'Is Peace Wild', adds her side to the atmospheric 'Yves's Story'.

Friend, james K’s critically-acclaimed third album, opens as a portal and continues to garner a life of its own, a constant earworm that continually resonates as the map of its emotional cartography shifts into new ground. The map continues to unfold with Friend Remixes. Speaking on the remixes, K says: “Friends remix Friend. It is such a sweet honour to have my friends and collaborators, whose work has inspired mine, interpret and translate this work into new narratives.”

At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. “Funny Funky Rib Crib” is an unforgettable recording (made up of several sessions dating from the middle of 1974) of creative jazz overwhelmed by funk and soul. If Lancaster had already made successful albums in the same genre – notably New Horizons, under the name Sounds Of Liberation which he co-led with Khan Jamal –, this one is an homage to James Brown and Sammy Davis enjoying the company of a host of guests including François Tusques (electric piano), Clint Jackson III (trumpet), François Nyombo (guitar), Joseph Traindl (trombone)… Funny Funky Rib Crib’s cover is a three-quarter profile portrait of the saxophonist (who can also be heard on flute, piano and even vocals), however, on the record, it is the whole group, inspired and frenetic, that tests the melodies of “Just Test”, “Dogtown” or “Rib Crib” – the two versions of which display leader Lancaster’s art of nuance. On both sides of the album, the group also moves into a calmer groove, infused by blues and soul, “Work And Pray” and “Loving Kindness” are meditative tracks where listeners can lay back and relax before asking for more: Funny Funky Rib Crib!!!

Abstract dub dream-weavers SKRS INTL. & WZRDRY remerge at the behest of Bristol’s Accidental Meetings for a super lush dose of wormholing ambient dance pressure tipped FFO Rezzett, Peak Oil/False Aralia, Second Woman. ‘Orbit Flares’ combines the two Canadian units for the first time in over a decade, naturally reprising an empathic level of vibes in a half hour of music that betrays illusive tekkerz developed over the interim. Any semblance of sharp edges are smudged to a brilliantly psychedelic, polychromatic lustre and laced with disciplined, yet properly wayward rhythms that tumble, buckle and vaporise in fractious delirium. Each new SKRS drop is welcome around ours but, jeez, they really push into their most impressive work here, possibly thanks to wzrdryAV’s synaesthetic suss. Front to back it feel likes they catch minds/bodies in the split second before going under anaesthesia, and extrude us into pitch-bent helical vortices of plonging dub chords and gooey bass, finding bold new realms of computerised dub suss. Handrails are slippery as fuck, ground melts beneath feet, leaving bodies gyring in space between the weightless dub techno inflections of ‘1.1’, into air-stepping chicanery on ‘1.2’, or glitching like a hair-kissing Vladislav Delay on ‘1.3’. The smeared chords and scudding subs of ‘2.1’ call to mind Second Woman emulating the illusive dub-soul of False Aralia drops, and ‘2.3’ feels like distant rig heard on a Nitrous-induced permo. Sheer class for harder to please future dub freaks.

"Today's dancefloors are wakes in remembrance of a mythological era of openness that never was. Remember where you were. See where you are.... I'm in Kami-Sakunobe." (K-S.H.E) "Routes Not Roots" is the debut album by K-S.H.E (Kami-Sakunobe House Explosion), the newest project from internationally celebrated producer, label owner and DJ Terre Thaemlitz. K-S.H.E "Routes Not Roots" combines Comatonse Recordings' notorious "Fagjazz" sound with the classic NY Deep House and Cross-over dancefloor sensibility of "DJ Sprinkles' Deeperama," Thaemlitz' bi-monthly event held at Club Module, Tokyo. The results are spacious, bass-heavy, epic dance mixes filled with dark humor and harsh realities. As people have come to expect of Thaemlitz releases, "Routes Not Roots" mixes a wide range of social themes such as identity vs. immigrant status; community vs. tranny-on-tranny violence; authenticity vs. cultural decontextualization; openly gay African-American club imagery vs. gay sex on the Down-Low; innocence vs. childhood fantasies of violence; and more. From HIV drug trials to tranny and women's unemployment rates to sexually amorphous Japanese cross-dressers posing as high school girls, K-S.H.E doesn't miss a beat.

Terre Thaemlitz and Zeitkratzer, two noted and highly-respected names in experimental music. This release finds the Zeit guys meeting Thaemlitz on Terre’s terms, adapting and performing pieces from Deproduction with acoustic chamber instruments. Recorded live in Berlin last year, spreading over two CDs.視聴-Admit It's Killing You (And Leave) (Sound/Reading for Gay Porn) (Live Version)
視聴-Names Have Been Changed (Sound/Reading for Incest Porn) (Live Version)

This compilation brings together eight tracks by Yassine Nana and his group, recorded between 1984 and 1989, during a key moment in Mauritania’s musical history. A central figure of one of the country’s most respected musical families, Yassine stands at the crossroads of a long-standing tradition and a period of deep transformation in form, sound and production. Recorded in Mauritania as well as during stays in Paris and Rabat, these songs integrate drum machines, synthesizers and electric guitars into Saharan musical structures. Influenced by reggae, soul and new wave, the group develops a sound that reflects the circulation of music and technology in the 1980s, while remaining firmly rooted in Mauritanian languages, themes and melodic systems. Love, travel, exile and music itself run through lyrics sung in Hassaniya and classical Arabic. Originally released on cassette and long confined to local circulation, these recordings offer a rare perspective on African popular music of the period, seen from Nouakchott. A body of work that documents a Mauritanian modernity, both popular and exploratory, now brought back into circulation by Les Disques Bongo Joe and Sofa Records. 

The San Diego via Boston alt trio's complete original studio recordings, remastered, restored, and compiled into one lavish box set. Wait A Lifetime gathers the band's peerless albums Junk and This Afternoons Malady, plus a first time vinyl pressing of R.I.P., expanded to include their unfinished 3rd album, singles, splits, and comp tracks. The 28-page accompanying booklet details the entire saga via Nina Corcoran's essay and dozens of period photos, all housed in a stunning case-wrapped and varnished box. Sink into the ground and fly.

Yara Asmar’s new album, “everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much”, presents 11 pieces recorded over the past year between the small town of Alfred in upstate New York and Beirut. These sometimes fragile and tentative sound sketches reflect the times as Yara steps out, as if onto ice, into a new life on a new continent. She works with unfamiliar instruments, new materials and new sounds to build on her intimate style; homemade mechanical music boxes and a personal archive of family recordings form the backbone of its delicate textures. Asmar explores the peculiar resonance of the metallophone and her collection of deconstructed toy pianos, and guides her music into ever more surreal territories. The result is a work that is dreamlike, fragmentary and strangely timeless.

Feedback Waves — the new imprint from independent label Rings of Neptune — is proud to present Trill, the first and only album by Palomatic. Almost thirty years after its original release on CD in 1995, this beautiful nine-track work is now available on vinyl for the first time. Palomatic is an alias of Koji Takahashi, an active member of the bubbling Japanese electronic music scene of the early-to-mid 90s. Besides his solo work, he was a core member of Takahashi Tektronix (with Nic Yoshizawa) and Mutron (with Kiyoshi Hazemoto, aka Interferon), as well as working as a synth programmer for supergroup Denki Groove. Following the release of his debut track ‘Halo’ on Syzygy Records in 1993, Takahashi made a series of contributions to compilations on the scene-defining Transonic label. His first and only full-length album, Trill, combined these tracks with original material to form an absorbing and versatile standalone statement of the Palomatic sound. From the oscillating lilt of ‘Flutter’, which opens proceedings at a measured 104bpm, through to the symphonic epilogue of ‘Soar’, Trill is rooted in the fertile territory between organic and synthetic sounds — ground that was nourishing the work of many likeminded producers worldwide at the time. West Coast psychedelia and East Coast funk, the moody bass weight of Bristol trip-hop and Sheffield bleep, and the chemical rush of German techno and Belgian trance: with a distinctly Japanese sensibility, Trill drew these strands together into an elegant musical tapestry. The result is timeless — indeed, album centrepiece ‘Foaming Waves’ would sound right at home on the faster-paced dancefloors of today.

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!

Original 2xLP Remastered by Bob Weston pressed on maui blue vinyl

Never-Before-Released Live Studio Album pressed on orchid purple vinyl

all 3 LPs are packaged in a triple LP gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeves

After finishing American Don with (Steve) Albini, we were nearing the peak of interpersonal tensions that would eventually wash us overboard. I (Eric) became convinced we lost the true essence of the songs in the recording process. It was not a unanimous decision to record with Steve. We wrote the album entirely on guitar loops and Team Storm & Stress wanted to go further in the studio with Pro Tools, which felt related to both what we were doing and where we were going. Steve had just finished building the magnificent A room at Electrical and Damon insisted we would record there for the drums. He never budged on it. As soon as we got there we realized all the songs, which were written in stacks of overdubs on our pedals, would only allow for mono guitar recordings. We worked around this by performing the songs to a single loop and overdubbing all the guitars later allowing for a full stereo field to match the glorious bombast of Steve’s drum recordings. This approach

dramatically changed how we played. While it allowed for magic moments of improv (Peter Criss intro), once the album was done, it sounded bloated and the performances sluggish. With increasing certainty I was sure the sound of the Akai Headrush, and the tempos it set for Damon was the heartbeat of these songs. Ian agreed.

In an audacious last ditch hail mary, I had the idea to call Greg Norman (who worked for Steve!) and asked if we could secretly come to his studio in S. Chicago *road hot* after our next shows and re-record the album LIVE. It was an enormous gesture that could’ve never worked, but miraculously everyone agreed to do it and we gave it a try. Greg captured us at our most fiery hot personally and professionally. The tempos are faster and no one is holding back with anything to lose. These true live tapes show the songs exactly as we played them on the road where they were developed between June of 1999 and July of 2000. Now, 25 years later, the Greg Norman tapes have been dusted off, baked, and transferred to digital. With the aid of modern restoration tools, and the expertise of Sir Bob Weston, we were able to re-mix and master these recordings for the first time.

Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts is the definitive recorded collection of living Chicago DIY legend, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith. Born on Chicago's southside in 1970, Smith is a lifelong resident of the Beverly neighborhood who went on to earn 3 degrees in piano (Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate) and perform as a concert pianist in 5 countries (USA, Italy, Germany, France and Hungary). The album also marks the first archival release from Chicago’s Sooper Records.

All of the music here is being made widely available for the first time. This 90-minute collection is compiled from 30 years of Charles’ self-released original music spanning concert piano, electroacoustic experimentation, electronic beats, free improvisation, and two instrumental sketches of his evolving sci-fi opera, War of the Martian Ghosts (a 2023 electronic realization, and a 2018 piano realization). This double Vinyl / Triple CD Collector’s Edition comes with an extensive Insert Booklet containing 9000 words including poetry, interviews, quotes, 30 archival photographs, and extensive liner notes on the life and work of Charles Joseph Smith written by Sooper co-founder Glenn Curran (edited by Sadie Dupuis). This is a piece of Chicago music history.

Dr. Charles Joseph Smith’s remarkable story begins with a mute child’s gift for music, and the purposeful way he nurtured this talent to become both life practice and raison d'être. Charles recounts this artistic journey in his autobiography, The 88 Keys that Opened Doors, a self-published book that chronicles a life in which music was (and still is) the primary key to overcoming immense challenges posed by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

His career as a musician starts in the church, reaches into the international concert piano circuit, and eventually settles to bear strange fruit in Chicago’s experimental underground. Along the way, Charles Joseph Smith’s compositional voice absorbed and metabolized popular music spanning pop to jazz, the gospel of the church, the canon of the classical conservatory, modern dance scores, and the rule-shattering experimentalism of his city’s DIY subculture, where he has been a mainstay for over 30 years. Since the mid-1990s, Charles has been performing, dancing, and selling his self-published musical and written works in person, often at the local shows he frequents. He is known around Chicago as a living symbol of the power of music, and of the beloved spirit of community at the heart of DIY. This is the definitive collection of his original recordings—though it would be impossible to ever encompass the galaxies of music, poetry, and prose penned by the prolific Dr. Charles Joseph Smith.

With But remember what you have had, Stephen O’Malley continues and expands his musical approach by transposing it to multiphonic electroacoustic writing and acousmatic listening. Drawing not only on his extensive experience as a composer and live instrumentalist, but also on the countless studio production and mixing sessions he has taken part in the course of his many projects (in solo, with SUNN O))) or KTL, to name but a few), Stephen O’Malley’s work on this new piece is ambitious, engaging in an inspired research that delves into the deep intricacies between polyphony, intonation and timbrality, enhanced by melodic motifs. To do this, O’Malley summons up his own very personal sound universe, constellated with amplified textures, instrumental sustained tones and raw energy, in order to diffract them into wavefronts, waves and blows that weave a complex, rich and fascinating matter. But remember what you have had stands out as an important work in Stephen O’Malley’s repertoire: it brings together the multiplicity of his musical approach in an exemplary way, while laying the foundations and promises for the future of an already extraordinary journey.

When you’re running a label, a demo occasionally comes across your desk that makes you reconsider everything you thought your label was all about. For Balmat, such was the case with this stunning album from Stephen Vitiello, Brendan Canty, and Hahn Rowe. It sounds like nothing we’ve released so far—and that very otherness opened up a whole new world of possibilities for us. Fans of ambient, experimental electronic music, and sound art will be familiar with Vitiello, a New York native, long based in Virginia, who has collaborated with a cross-generational list of greats: Taylor Deupree, Steve Roden, Lawrence English, Tetsu Inoue, Nam June Paik, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Pauline Oliveros, and many more. On labels like 12k, Room40, and Sub Rosa, he has explored a wide range of minimalism, microsound, lowercase, ambient, improv, and other styles. But this album is something different. It may begin in ambient-adjacent territory, but it quickly veers off, and it just keeps zigzagging, taking on elements of krautrock, post-punk, dub, and the groove-heavy interplay of groups like Natural Information Society and 75 Dollar Bill. This stylistic turn is thanks in large part to Vitiello’s choice of collaborators. “We’re coming from three different schools,” Vitiello says: “sound art, art rock, and punk rock.” Active since the early 1980s, Rowe—a violinist, guitarist, and producer/engineer—has played with, or manned the boards for, a frankly jaw-dropping list of musicians: Herbie Hancock, Gil Scott-Heron, the Last Poets, Roy Ayers, John Zorn, Glenn Branca, Swans, Live Skull, Brian Eno, David Byrne, Anohni, R.E.M., Yoko Ono, and many more. But he might be most closely associated with Hugo Largo, a one-of-a-kind New York quartet—two basses, vocals, and Rowe’s violin—that in the late 1980s helped lay the groundwork for what would eventually become known as post-rock. Canty, of course, is the legendary drummer of Fugazi, the visionary DC post-hardcore group, as well as Rites of Spring before them, and, currently, the Messthetics, a Dischord-signed instrumental trio with guitarist Anthony Pirog and Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. Vitiello’s trio first collaborated on First, a 17-minute piece released on the Longform Editions label in 2023. Second picks up where the freeform drift of First left off, channeling the trio’s exploratory energies into more intentionally structured tracks and—in a real first for Balmat—some almost shockingly muscular grooves. “Sometimes my projects are more conceptually driven,” Vitiello says, “but I think this was more musically geared. I just wanted to open up the references and bring in an incredible drummer, bring in some melodies, and I’m sort of the center.” But his collaborators, he stresses, are “vastly creative in making anything I might suggest better.” Like its predecessor, Second took shape in phases, shifting between improvisation and collage. Vitiello laid down the skeleton of the music at home, sketching out initial ideas on Rhodes keyboard and acoustic and electric guitar; he then fed the parts through samplers and his modular system, recording 10- or 20-minute jams. Once he had edited them into more structured forms, he hit the studio with Canty, who added not just drums but also bass and piano; finally, Vitiello took the results of those sessions to Rowe, who played violin, viola, electric bass, and 12-string acoustic and bowed electric guitar, and assisted in some of the final structuring and mixdown. A few more surprises along the way: Reanimator’s Don Godwin, the studio engineer where Vitiello recorded with Canty, contributed what he calls “resonant dustpan”; and none other than Animal Collective’s Geologist, who just happened to be in the studio that day, sits in on hurdy gurdy on “Mrphgtrs1,” the album’s gorgeous, stunningly atmospheric drone closer. “I love these chance encounters,” Vitiello says. “Somebody I admire, a group I admire—that was an unexpected gift.” An unexpected gift is a great way of describing Second as a whole: three veteran musicians venturing outside their usual zones and finding a new collaborative language together. The results can’t be neatly slotted into any given genre; they belong not to any given category, but to the spirit of conversation itself.

Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow is the second album from funk innovators Funkadelic, arriving in 1970 mere months after their trailblazing debut. Famously originating from a single LSD-fueled marathon session, the record saw the band honing their songcraft, while still allowing plenty of space for mind-bending exploratory jams. It marked the official introduction of legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, and would go on to chart at No. 92 on Billboard's Pop chart. Remastered direct to lathe from original master tapes by Dave Gardner (all analog).

Amid the early 2000s Scottish music scene that birthed Camera Obscura, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian, Tacoma Radar were the quiet achievers. Their sole album, No One Waved Goodbye – a mesmerising collection of hushed melancholy, is now hailed as a cult classic. Reissued for the first time, this deluxe double album features No One Waved Goodbye, both seven-inch singles, and the previously unreleased Live From the 13th Note.

Fire of God’s Love is the legendary 1973 album by Australian nun Sister Irene O’Connor—a sincere, soulful, and unconsciously psychedelic song sequence devoted to self-reflection and awakening the spirit within. A collection of original folk spirituals written by and channelled through O’Connor with guitar, electric organ, drum machine and her angelic voice, the album was recorded and mixed in an astonishingly futuristic fashion by fellow nun and recording engineer Sister Marimil Lobregat. This edition from Freedom To Spend is the first authorized reissue of this holy grail since 1976; the album restored and remastered with love from the best available sources by Jessica Thompson.

Official remastered edition of COIL's 1998 drone/ambient masterpiece. “4 Tones to facilitate travel through time.” So begins the listeners’ journey into what has become one of the most treasured and revered pieces of COIL history ever released. Each of the four pieces on Time Machines is named after the chemical compound of the hallucinogenic drug that they were composed for, and the album was meticulously crafted to enable what John Balance referred to as "temporal slips" in time and space, allowing both the artist and audience to figuratively "dissolve time". Inspired by long form ceremonial music of Tibet and other religions, where the intent is to lose oneself in the music – to meditate or achieve a trance state – Time Machines became Drew McDowall, John Balance, and Peter Christopherson’s “electronic punk-primitive” answer to this tribal concept. Starting as a rough demo tape recorded solely by Coil member Drew McDowall, Time Machines started to take full form when McDowall enthusiastically delivered these demo recordings to Balance and Christopherson as sketches for a new Coil project with the primary goal of shifting Coil’s sound further into a more conceptually abstract direction. Largely recorded in 1997 using single takes with minimal post production, these four drones contain every intended fluctuation and tone, along with every glitch of the original – “Artifacts generated by your listening environment are an intrinsic part of the experience.”