MUSIC

After a long break, we're happy to present another masterpiece in The Fact Of Being collection. A long-awaited reissue of the legendary ambient/new-age album "Reflections" by Laura Allan with Paul Horn. The album was recorded in 1980 and marked by the participation of twice Grammy Awarded jazz legend flutist Paul Horn. The meeting of Laura and Paul was a true miracle that brought amazing fruit. Since 80th "Reflections" captivate the minds of spiritual ambient music fans all over the world. Magical sounds of flute, endless melodies of zither, Laura's heavenly voice lighted by meditative bells and synthesizers. A simple recipe but with great talents and unique results. Laura's reflections lead a listener to deep meditation, harmony, and to the eternal palace of inner peace. We hope you'll share with us the pleasure of listening to the record and the world become a bit more peaceful place for everyone. This is the first reissue on the vinyl since 1984 when the album was repressed the last time. After 38 years the record became collectors' dream and now it's available again as it should be. Moreover, as always, we love CDs and it's available as a limited DigiCD version. The record was mastered by Grammy-nominated Jessica Thompson which guarantees extra ordinal sound experience. Yes, a lot of Grammy here... Laura passed away on May 19, 2008, after a half-year battle with cancer. She was just 56. Enjoy Laura's art that makes her alive. Below you'll find memories by Steven Halpern: LAURA ALLAN ( 1952 -2008) was a gifted singer and songwriter who was a legend in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s. REFLECTIONS is her beloved album, and features her original songs, one of which includes a collaboration with Paul Horn on “Passages”. Her voice and zither take center stage on “As I Am”, “ Waterfall” and “Nicasio”. Other artists, including Dallas Smith on Lyricon wind synthesizer, add to the mix. It is my honor and privilege to bring her music back into the world. I met Laura after her performance at a new age conference in 1975 held on campus at Sonoma State College. Her magical aura of angelic voice, luminous blonde hair, and energetic strumming or meditative Celtic harp-inspired zither, captured your attention instantly. My first LP had just been pressed, and this was my first public presentation. Nevertheless, my instincts were right on. Even though I had only one album and no track record yet, I invited Laura to record her album on my label. It was too early for both of us. Several years later, she signed with another local label, Unity Records. After Laura regained the rights to REFLECTIONS, she contacted me in the mid-1980s to see if I were still interested. Of course I was! She licensed the album to my indie label. I then re-released the LP and cassette on the Hear & Now imprint, (a division of Halpern Sounds) which was my main label name at the time. Our deal was actually a two album deal, and I would record and produce the album combining her voice and zither and my arrangements. Alas, that album was never completed." "In an unlikely collaboration between folk singer Laura Allan and New Age pioneer Paul Horn, Reflections capture two artists in perfect harmony of their talents. Allan, in addition to being an incredibly gifted songwriter, was something of a string instrument prodigy and made instruments for other Laurel Canyon heroes including Joni Mitchell and David Crosby. Her zither playing and vocals here match perfectly with the New Age aesthetic set by Horn and the sounds are beautiful and organic, characteristic of the early more experimental days of the New Age genre before it would later be marred by “easy listening.” Highly recommended for fans of Lauraaji, Alice Coltrane, David Casper, and Light In The Attic’s “I Am the Center” compilation." – Phil Cho

After a long break, we're happy to present another masterpiece in The Fact Of Being collection. A long-awaited reissue of the legendary ambient/new-age album "Reflections" by Laura Allan with Paul Horn. The album was recorded in 1980 and marked by the participation of twice Grammy Awarded jazz legend flutist Paul Horn. The meeting of Laura and Paul was a true miracle that brought amazing fruit. Since 80th "Reflections" captivate the minds of spiritual ambient music fans all over the world. Magical sounds of flute, endless melodies of zither, Laura's heavenly voice lighted by meditative bells and synthesizers. A simple recipe but with great talents and unique results. Laura's reflections lead a listener to deep meditation, harmony, and to the eternal palace of inner peace. We hope you'll share with us the pleasure of listening to the record and the world become a bit more peaceful place for everyone. This is the first reissue on the vinyl since 1984 when the album was repressed the last time. After 38 years the record became collectors' dream and now it's available again as it should be. Moreover, as always, we love CDs and it's available as a limited DigiCD version. The record was mastered by Grammy-nominated Jessica Thompson which guarantees extra ordinal sound experience. Yes, a lot of Grammy here... Laura passed away on May 19, 2008, after a half-year battle with cancer. She was just 56. Enjoy Laura's art that makes her alive. Below you'll find memories by Steven Halpern: LAURA ALLAN ( 1952 -2008) was a gifted singer and songwriter who was a legend in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1970s. REFLECTIONS is her beloved album, and features her original songs, one of which includes a collaboration with Paul Horn on “Passages”. Her voice and zither take center stage on “As I Am”, “ Waterfall” and “Nicasio”. Other artists, including Dallas Smith on Lyricon wind synthesizer, add to the mix. It is my honor and privilege to bring her music back into the world. I met Laura after her performance at a new age conference in 1975 held on campus at Sonoma State College. Her magical aura of angelic voice, luminous blonde hair, and energetic strumming or meditative Celtic harp-inspired zither, captured your attention instantly. My first LP had just been pressed, and this was my first public presentation. Nevertheless, my instincts were right on. Even though I had only one album and no track record yet, I invited Laura to record her album on my label. It was too early for both of us. Several years later, she signed with another local label, Unity Records. After Laura regained the rights to REFLECTIONS, she contacted me in the mid-1980s to see if I were still interested. Of course I was! She licensed the album to my indie label. I then re-released the LP and cassette on the Hear & Now imprint, (a division of Halpern Sounds) which was my main label name at the time. Our deal was actually a two album deal, and I would record and produce the album combining her voice and zither and my arrangements. Alas, that album was never completed." "In an unlikely collaboration between folk singer Laura Allan and New Age pioneer Paul Horn, Reflections capture two artists in perfect harmony of their talents. Allan, in addition to being an incredibly gifted songwriter, was something of a string instrument prodigy and made instruments for other Laurel Canyon heroes including Joni Mitchell and David Crosby. Her zither playing and vocals here match perfectly with the New Age aesthetic set by Horn and the sounds are beautiful and organic, characteristic of the early more experimental days of the New Age genre before it would later be marred by “easy listening.” Highly recommended for fans of Lauraaji, Alice Coltrane, David Casper, and Light In The Attic’s “I Am the Center” compilation." – Phil Cho

Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint. The Sinking of the Titanic, Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus. Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bear. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music. Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, The Sinking of the Titanic draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.

Ever since he made his first trip to Japan to DJ, Optimo Music founder JD Twitch has been bewitched by Japanese music, and particularly the vibrant, imaginative, and often far-sighted sounds which emerged from the island nation during the 1980s. Now he’s put years of digging in Japanese record shops to good use on Polyphonic Cosmos, the latest release on his compilation-focused Cease & Desist imprint. Subtitled ‘A Beginners Guide to Japan In The ‘80s’, the collection offers a personal selection of Japanese gems recorded and released between 1981 and ’86 – a period when advances in recording and musical technology offered the nation’s artists and producers a whole new tool kit to employ. When combined with the unique musical culture of Japan, where local traditions are frequently fused with Western styles to create timeless, off-kilter aural fusions, this embrace of locally pioneered music technology had spectacular, often unusual results. Eight years in the making, Polyphonic Cosmos provides an endlessly entertaining musical snapshot of Japanese music of the early-to-mid ‘80s with all of the open-minded eclecticism and sonic twists that you would expect from the Glasgow-based DJ. Compare and contrast, for example, the gently breezy, morning-fresh folk-plus-electronics bliss of ‘ばら二曲 Baranikyoku (Fellini&Rota)’ by World Standard – the most familiar alias of long-serving musician/producer Sohichiro Suzuki – and the hallucinatory, slow-motion tribal rhythms, post-punk rhythms and tape delay-laden electronics of Imitation’s ‘Exotic Dance’. Or, for that matter, the tipsy mid-‘80s electronic reggae of Pecker’s ‘Sha La La’, the grungy but melodic post-punk strut of ‘You Go On Natural’ by Earthling (a track Twitch accurately describes as “sheer unrelenting groove”), and the unearthly, swirling sonics, new age instrumentation and flotation tank vocals of prolific (and seemingly mysterious) act Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s ‘Rimme Kohkyogaku Meiki’. It’s a credit to JD Twitch’s curatorial skills that the quality never dips, and sonic surprises lurk around every corner. Consider for a moment the hard to describe, far-sighted audio immersion of D-Day’s ‘Ki-Ra’ – all languid post-pop guitar, enveloping chords, spoken word vocals, shuffling 808 beats and marimba melodies – and the two contributions from video games soundtrack specialist (and driving instrumental synth-pop specialist) Hiroyuki Namba. The collection naturally includes some selections that have long been favourites in Twitch’s DJ sets – see Masumi Hara’s ‘Your Dream’ – as well as a handful of tracks from artists who may be more recognisable to those with only rudimentary knowledge of Japanese musical culture. The great Yasuaki Shimizu, whose work as Mariah has become far better known in recent years thanks to reissues of some of his most magical albums, is represented via ‘The Crow’, a picturesque chunk of horizontal, hard-to-define jazz-not-jazz smokiness, while the collection fittingly concludes with a sublimely funky, oddball electronic workout from Yellow Magic Orchestra legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (the frankly incredible ‘Wongga Dance Song’). Optimo’s JD Twitch extends a guided tour of his Japanese record collection, acquired on DJ jaunts to the Far East and spanning obscurities by Yasuaki Shimizu, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Normal Brain, a.o. The second release on Twitch’s Cease & Desist label, which delivered the ace Sheffield bleep & bass retrospective in 2020, ‘Sonic Innovations in Japan (1980-1986)’ dives deep into a pivotal era of Japanese music around its ‘80s economic boom time, when leaps in musical technology and recording brought the future into much sharper focus. The selection effectively takes Twitch’s ‘Polyphonic Cosmos’ mixtape (one of many exquisite selections along with Belgian new beat, Jamaican dub, and mooching goth) as jump off point into the rarified realms of ‘80s Japanese music, spelled out in full fat, legit licensed cuts that work equally well as a mixtape in their own right, or component joints to fetishise and send heads scurrying down discogs wormholes. Fans of YouTube algorithms will no doubt be enticed by yasuaki Shimizu’s opening gambit, the sultry lounge stroller ‘Crow’, while the DJs, dancers and Kraftwerk fiends will plug right into the speak ’n spell electro-pop of ‘M.U.S.I.C.’ by Normal Brain, the glittering uptempo disco energy of Hiroyuki Namba’s ‘Who Done It? (Part 2)’ and likewise their Pet Shop Boys-on-holiday viber ‘Tropical Exposition’. There’s also a super juicy cut of bendy-limbed post-punk from Pecker and EP-4, and, for the wee small hours, sexier turns of dry-iced electro boogie glyde on ‘Your Dream’ from Masumi Hara and the breezy beauty ‘Ki-Ra-I’ by D-Day.

Music From Memory quietly released the stunning debut album from the mysterious duo The Zenmenn (who turned out to be musicians Magnus Bang Olsen and Ben Anderson) in 2021. ‘Hidden Gem’, recorded with singer and songwriter John Moods, serves as a kind of companion piece to ‘Meet The Zenmenn’ (its title the same as a song that didn’t make that debut’s final cut). Another set of extended jams encompassing country, AM rock and folk. Music From Memory are delighted to present a new chapter in their ongoing collaboration with Berlin based band The Zenmenn. 'Hidden Gem' is the band’s first full album produced together with songwriter and vocalist John Moods and follows their much-loved debut record, 'Enter The Zenmenn'. Named after a country song that didn't quite make it to the final selection, 'Hidden Gem' is the result of an extended jam session at a friend’s studio, in a field of mystical meadows somewhere south of Hamburg, in which the band would experience a series of inexplicable phenomena. It was their earlier collaboration on the future classic, 'Homage To A Friend' that kickstarted their idea to team up with John Moods again, and in the late summer of 2021 the band set to work on a full album of material together. Using The Zenmenn's trusted drum kit, good old DX7, an unusual Ukrainian bass and an almost discarded pedal steel guitar, combined with Moods’ uniquely fragile voice, the outcome resulted in six timeless songs. The resulting harmonic sound is, as the band put it, “something like Adult Oriented Rock with a teaspoon of Celtic sentimentalism, a pinch of big city Country wrapped in a late night '70s style jam”. 'Hidden Gem’, much like their debut 'Enter The Zenmenn’, was recorded without pre-arranged songs or any fixed musical concept. Instead, it captures fleeting moments of creativity and reflects the joint musical sentiments of the band members at the time. “Some artists are amazing at vision and curating, our work-flow is opposite to that. We are pretty messy and all over the place in our creation, as in life. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but hopefully it comes out all right in the end.” MFM060 will be released in LP and digital format, and comes with artwork by Bráulio Amado. The album is expected to release on October 17th 2022.

First emerging during the early years of the new millennium, over the last two decades, the Palermo born, Munich based composer, Valerio Tricoli, has forged a singular path within experimental sound practice, continuously rethinking the relationship between electroacoustic composition and narrative possibility. Say Goodbye to the Wind, his first LP with Shelter Press, stands among his most poetic and groundbreaking efforts to date. Across three intricate, deeply personal works of concrète music - dense with themes drawn from J.G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, theosophy, and the temporal blur of DMT - the composer blurs the boundaries between the tangible and abstract, weaving complex allegories for the self. Exploring auditory phenomena and the narrative potential of electronic and acoustic sound sources, Valerio Tricoli’s work - as it has appeared across a carefully executed body of solo recordings, as well as noteworthy collaborations with Stefano Pilia, Dean Roberts, Thomas Ankersmit, Hanno Leichtmann, and numerous others - rests at the shadowy juncture of internal and external worlds; a meeting place where the synthetic and organic give way to utterances of the existential, psychological, physical, and occult. Most commonly created on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel - manipulating, live sampling, and real-time editing / mixing of field and studio recordings - in Tricoli’s hands, estranged moments of sonorous ephemera transmogrify and intertwine as metaphorical and allegorical sums, far greater than their parts. Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s sixth full-length, gathers three works of musique concrete, thematically bound by notions of absence, loss, stillness, and release. The album’s title is taken from a story by J.G. Ballard, set in the desolation of a holiday resort that rests among a landscape of endless rolling dunes that are populated by ʻsound sculptures’ and monsters. The otherworldliness of this reference is further expanded by the depth exposed by the many possible implications and meanings implied by the combination of words; wind being a metaphor of the breath of life, and its absence meaning death. If the wind is a storm, what is the abstraction that remains in the absent void when it leaves? Historically, one of the primary pursuits of musique concrete is the transformation of everyday sonority - field recordings, found / incidental sound, etc. - into abstractions of profound meaning and weight. While this process unquestionable played a heavy hand in the composition of Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s approach to the idiom sets the stage for something entirely unique. Not only are the practices of tape music applied to field recordings, but to the sounds of piano, synthesizers, objects, and the composer’s voice, in addition to interventions by Ecka Mordecai on cello, Lucio Capece on soprano saxophone, and Ida Toninato on vocals. Further expanding to potential of meaning, are the references - literal and abstract - that guided each work into being. The album’s opener, Lo Spopolatore, draws its title from Samuel Beckett’s short story Le Dépeupleur, translated in English as The Lost Ones. Formed from dense but spare prose, the story describes a world consisting of a flattened cylinder, where each inhabitant is “searching for its lost one”. Devoid of plot, Beckett frequently repeats certain phrases and bits of information, setting up both conceptual and structural mirror’s Tricoli’s work, which weaves , from a multitude of sonorous fragments - field recordings, voice, and diverse instrumentation - a similar sense of density within its minimal expanses; clusters of textures forming as haunted ghosts, shifting between pure abstraction and conscious imprints of the sources from which they were drawn, before drifting into a space of placid, ambient calm. It is arguably the versatility of possible meanings, harnessed by Tricoli from his sound sources, through which the composer’s greatest talents come to light. Say Goodbye to the Wind’s second composition, Mimosa Hostilis - the name of a Brazilian plant which contains DMT - begins with same recording as its predecessor, made of his son’s breathing, a few months after his birth, in the Sicilian sea wind. In place of abstract images of place and the futility of being, Tricoli pursues something closer to a state of mind. An expanded or exploded consciousness that encounters the self, bleeding into and becoming a natural environment. “A jungle of contrasting noises and perceptions, of childhood memories that translate without coherence into adult desires.” Here Tricoli treats his sources with pointillistic precision, intermingling vocal and minimal instrumental gestures into a polyrhythmic patter that transforms commonplace sonority into aural echos of wind, rain, the shadowy species within. The album’s final work, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus, is a love song in a dystopian world. Its title is taken from the name of the first paper published by Otto von Guericke - a 17th century, German scientist, inventor, and politician - relating to his experiments with the Magdeburg hemispheres, a pair of large copper hemispheres, that were used to demonstrate the power of atmospheric pressure. These two mated objects are a metaphor for the work’s theme; two halves which become a sphere by the power of the void, the void that they contain, or the void that they embraced. While no less oriented around the abstract possibilities activated by field recordings, De Vacuum Magdeburgicus is the album’s most explicitly musical work. Warbling instrumental sounds and vocal interventions, bent by the hand tape manipulation, push toward heightened states of drama and tension, pushing and pulling against a vast pallet of textures drawn from the natural word and beyond. A masterstroke of contemporary musique concrète and auditory conceptualism, dense with metaphor, allegory and meaning, Shelter Press is thrilled to present Valerio Tricoli’s ‘Say Goodbye to the Wind’. Issued in a limited edition CD and Digital, mastered by Rashad Becker, with artwork by Mårten Lange.

34-song SUPERSTORE is the Sam Gendel all genre follow-up album to 2021's 52-song Fresh Bread. SUPERSTORE is more unreleased music from the enigmatic producer/saxophonist collected from personal archives of solo recordings and collaborations in various venues. Contributing players on select tracks include Blake Mills, Gabe Noel, Kevin Yokota, and Philippe Melanson.

前回入荷したカセット版は瞬殺完売だったので、絶対にお見逃しなく！撫子ちゃん好きの方も必携です。”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、アメリカの新鋭プロデューサーSeyNoeによる〈FOCUSONTHE〉からの21年大人気カセット作品『SeyNoe World』が待望のアナログ化！同レーベルからの昨年作が秀逸だったvoipetsuがコラボ参加。迸るレイヴ&ダンス・ミュージックのエクスタシーとアグレッシヴなドラムンベース・サウンドを発揮した傑作。昨今世界的にアンダーグラウンドなシーンで勢いづくDepressive BreakcoreやAtmospheric Drum'n'Bass、Hardcore Breaksといったジャンルのファンにもたまらない一枚です！限定たったの80部。これはレア化必至。

Originally released in 2005, Insen is the second collaboration album between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto and the second installment of V.I.R.U.S.‘s five albums series. Remastered in 2021 in collaboration with Calyx Studio, the album’s recordings are accompanied by an unreleased composition titled Barco. Initially composed for Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2005 Insen tour, the audio material used in this piece is based on the subtle sounds of Barco projectors, whose tonalities served as a ground for the artists’ live improvisation. In Insen, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto explore the potential for interaction and tension between electronic and acoustic instrumentation. Across eight compositions, the echoes of the cascading piano combine, collide, and dissolve with the tapestry of digital breakages in sheer vibrancy. This relationship lies at the album’s core. It subtly continues Vrioon‘s calm melancholia, becoming a vessel for all the emotions and memories nourished by the listener. As you hear the opening, lonesome notes of Aurora, you realize that the pair have once again conceded an ambition to embed elaborate disciplines into an archetypal sound of soul-searching beauty. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai Mastering by Bo @ Calyx

Cole Pulice is a composer, saxophonist and electroacoustic musician from Oakland-via-Minneapolis. Following their debut album "Gloam" and two duo collaborations with Lynn Avery and Nat Harvie, Cole Pulice returns with their sophomore album "Scry". The sound is deeply contemporary, incorporating saxophone/wind synth with live signal processing and modern electronics/software. It drifts between electroacoustic experimentalism and more traditional forms of song-like beauty, casting a wide sonic net that highlights Pulice’s versatility and creativity as both an improviser and composer. From Cole: "Scry is a collection of musics exploring fragmentary or gradient states of liminality – recursive spirals of worlds hidden within worlds, dreams within dreams, sensations of time, and the notion of the past, present, and future all occupying a single point. It’s a record that, for me, resonates strongly with this sort of “between-ness:” it began in Minneapolis, and was finished in Oakland, bridging pre-pandemic life with the “new normal” of current times; being genderqueer and navigating the spaces between and outside of the masculine and feminine binary; wandering through a musical interchange station that is interconnects improvisation, “song,” and collage experiments . . . multidimensional yet woven together by similar aesthetic threads. Whereas my previous record, Gloam, was mostly a series of compositions for a very specific electroacoustic setup, Scry utilizes a series of different hardware/software frameworks and apparatus. Or, to think of it in another way: Gloam was like looking through a kaleidoscope (each turn of the handle giving a different abstract perspective of the same bits of gemstone); Scry is more like a stained-glass crystal ball (a singular sculpture, with each fragment somehow offering an ephemeral glimpse into another world or dimension). Scry is deeply indebted to the electroacoustic works of Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Marion Brown, Maggi Payne, Harold Budd, and Jon Hassell - all of whom explored, in their own ways, the interconnectivity between acoustic instruments, interactive electronic signal processing, and improvisation - the crux of ‘Scry’s DNA. To this end: virtually all of the signal processing on ‘Scry’ is done live as I play saxophone/wind synth, either through a hardware setup that I control with my feet as I play, or through software instruments I build which respond live to what I’m playing. Often, both software and hardware processes are being used simultaneously. "To scry" defines the practice of foretelling the future through gazing into a crystal ball or other reflective surfaces. There's a lot to say here regarding the mix of temporalities, timelines, states of being, and so forth, but I mostly just have to give a special thanks to glass artist, composer, and dear friend Sadie Robison. The arcane aesthetics of her technicolor stained glass sculptures were a major influence on the themes of Scry 🧡" —Cole Pulice

To celebrate Arbutus' 100th release we have created a compilation of our artists covering each other's songs. Available on cassette and digital download, all proceeds from the cassette will be donated to Suicide Action Montreal.

This is one of the best long-lost treasure from the 80s – and it's one long composition filled with raw sounds from the jungle, natural objects and electronic treatment. The idea to evoke a deep journey in the Amazon rainforest has affected various musicians in the history of popular and experimental music, but comparing to other works this rare Amazonia 6891, released only on cassette in 1986, appears as totally original and extreme in his conception. Here, the interest in ethnomusicology of the expert Walter Maioli (mind of Aktuala and Futuro Antico projects) is linked to a precise and comprehensive ecological, botanical, ethological and ethnographic perspective. In fact, starting from the sound recording of the ethnographer Pit Piccinelli's collection of natural objects, the collected material for this work is re-elaborate in different times by the anthropologist and electronic pioneer Fred Gales and by Maioli him-self. The result of this multi-disciplinary approach its 'a long concrete poem of plant organisms, fields recordings of verses and calls of tropical animals futuristically mixed with electronic sounds, as already happened for the great experimental trials of Futuro Antico and Ariel Kalma's Osmose. Listen this imaginative collage look like to entering in a precious cabinet of antiquities and curiosity whose wonders of multi-coloured cellular fragments are shaped in the synthesis of a single universal sound matter. The merger between the wild jungle, the mysterious voices of the Indians and the oscillation of the electronic waves creates a spasmodic tension between amazing and heavenly moments that leaked also obscure paths and alien sequences. So, Amazonia 6891 it's a magic trip into the unknown wild, into abyss of creation of kaleidoscopic floras and faunas, simply a proposal for a synesthetic experience and multi-sensory.

Over the 23 years since Loren Connors’ Airs was first published, it has drawn a thick circle of fans. Gently recorded to cassette tape in 1999, (with wonderfully subtle multi-tracking), Airs is comprised of a series of brief electronic guitar poems. Intimately composed with the patience and purposeful hesitation we have reverently come to expect from Connors. Lyrical melodies recur in different forms throughout the LP, as shifting figures in a dream. Shadowy and sunken, the tone evokes an overcast seascape. The album feels singular; woven along as one flowing piece. 

Airs is perhaps the most approachable and beautiful in all of Connors’ catalog, seducing strangers and familiars just the same. Forlorn wonderment; a human quality that makes this such an enchanting record. It is the humble simplicity and the directness of the guitar inflection that conveys such truth. The stark grace of Connors’ playing resonates here for all to embrace.

Tetsu Umehara was born in Yokohama, Japan, but spent much of his childhood in Dusseldorf, and it was in the western German city that his nascent interest in architecture first blossomed. His debut album, Handwritten, is a personal journey that explores the intersection between architectural urbanism, acoustic ecology and human emotion. Formed from a diverse range of sounds created from field-recordings taken in, and inspired by, various cities and urban settings, Handwritten pairs guitar, piano and angular percussive elements to create a rich world of aural depth and intricacy. “If music is a site-specific culture, then the process of making music is nothing more than creating an imaginary place within oneself.” Whilst Tetsu learned to play music from a young age, architecture always remained a driving passion and he would go on to study architectural design at Tokyo University of the Arts. His studies have continued to create an inner dialogue around sound and space, imagining music for specific sites and visualising architectural designs in his own sonic creations. Handwritten is an ode to the diverse styles of architecture that have influenced Tetsu. From the modern urban planning of Yokohama’s harbour to the inorganic sprawl of Berlin, Tetsu sees the fluid hand of the artistic creator in a building’s immobile geometry. In an attempt to mirror the disciplined complexity of a city within music, Tetsu has found a way to talk about the interaction of spatial and auditory dynamics. “It is important that the Handwritten be a record of my musical journey. For me, making the album was like a short trip through the landscapes of my memory.” Handwritten is released by Métron Records on 08/06/22 with the album’s artwork a collage of various sketches taken from Tetsu’s time studying. A portion of profits will be donated to Human Rights Now (HRN), a Japanese organisation looking to improve human rights around Asia.

Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work. Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria. This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting.

Begging the Moon is a collection focused upon an early-to-mid 20th century style of Thai popular song, commonly named Phleng Thai sakon (meaning "song which is both Thai and universal"). With recordings taken from the end of WWII until the start of the 1960s, many of these tracks may also be referred to as Luk krung (meaning "child of the city") a more urbanised style of popular song that is in contrast to the Thai country music known as Luk thung ("child of the field"). Following the Thai cultural revolution of the 1930s and the following reign of west-leaning premier Plaek Phibunsongkhram, Thai culture began to adopt more and more western influences - with Thai traditional and classical music starting to incorporate western notation and particularly Jazz-orientated themes. Thai folk melodies were also adapted to create "ramwong" - a merging of popular western dance music styles such as the tango or rumba, spear-headed at the time by the pioneering Suntaraporn band. In the years following the end of WWII, the Phleng Thai sakon began to gradually develop sub-genres such as phleng talad (market songs) or phleng chiwit (life songs) focused on rural topics, and sung with rural accents. A little while later this would lead to a formal demarcation in the music - with the polished and western ballad-orientated music known as Luk krung, and the more traditional/country style now dubbed Luk thung. The gap between the two would then widen, both musically and culturally, right up to the present day. The recordings compiled here can broadly be categorised as being in the former Luk krung style, though some tracks may touch on rural subjects and motifs. However that is not to say they are overpowered by western musical influence - many of these tracks display potent aspects of traditional Thai music within their beguiling and romantic arrangements. Thanks to Peter Doolan/Monrakplengthai.

On November 11th the widely-loved electronic maestro Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahinè' – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever. Masin always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year. “There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè' are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost 4 in the morning, but I couldn't sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying. I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realize dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn't make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary 'Vahinè', because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.” Gigi Masin A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’. The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’. A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows decease not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies. Masin closes with ‘Vahinè' – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope. Helmed by the deftly talented Alessia Avallone, Language Of Sound is new record label which marks ‘Vahine’ as its maiden voyage. Language Of Sound is also a management company founded in 2017, with singular talents Ron Trent, Lyra Pramuk, Huerco S, Carmen Villain, Gigi Masin, Paquita Gordon and Soundwalk Collective on their impeccable roster. Dedicated to facilitating ideal conditions for artists to flourish, where appropriate Avallone also collaborates creatively, including the video for Gigi Masin’s ‘Marilene (somewhere in Texas)’ which she produced and directed.

Recent years have seen the release and reissue of dozens of hours of Roland Kayn’s music, on several labels and in both physical and digital formats. Our interconnected yet chaotically imbued age seems to be the setting in which Kayn has truly found his audience. The scene is now set for one of the most momentous works in his oeuvre to return to the shelves. ‘Infra'. One of the titanic cybernetic works Kayn originally released on the Colosseum label in early 80s, ‘Infra’ (1978-79) has come to occupy a very special place in the hearts of fans lucky enough to have copies of the original vinyl box sets. Now lovingly remastered from the original archive masters by Kayn devotee Jim O’Rourke, ‘Infra’ has finally found its way to CD for a new generation of admirers to discover.

Oliver Johnson aka Dorian Concept will release his new album “What We Do For Others” on 28th October on Brainfeeder Records. It’s the third studio album by the Austrian producer and synthesizer savant, famed for his singular, beautifully detailed sonic tapestries and wild, utterly joyful live keyboard jam videos.

“What We Do For Others” is a relaxed, quietly confident and intimate record, founded on delightfully loose arrangements, feedbacked soundscapes and blessed with snatches of his own cryptic vocals that are presented more as additional instrumentation rather than lyrical phrases. All the elements and layers were recorded without interruptions and deliberately not edited. “I think that's why this record has something of a ‘band sound’” says Oliver. “It's me playing all kinds of different key-instruments, singing and using fx-units to create these freeform compositions.”

The title came to Oliver in a dream and stuck with him. “One thing I often find interesting about my creative process is that when I believe to be making something that others could like, it tends to not really connect with people,” he says. “Whereas when I get to that special place and just work from my gut – the music tends to often speak to the outside world naturally.”
Johnson says that he tried questioning his internal voice of self-judgement and temper his constant urge for improvement during the making of the album.

“I feel like for me as a musician - up until now I've always had this drive to do things 'properly' - to somehow strive for perfection.” Oliver explains. “But this is an album about me letting go of that urge – about understanding that there's something magical that happens in these first takes we often call drafts... a spirit is captured. And once you try to re-record it, the essence of the idea gets lost. So in a way I wanted to see how little ‘control’ I could exert on the music whilst recording it... to almost let the music make itself.”

Based in Vienna, Johnson has nevertheless been a stalwart of the experimental jazz/electronic scene that has flourished and diversified in the orbit of Brainfeeder’s figurehead Flying Lotus. With early releases on Kindred Spirits imprint Nod Navigators and Affine Records, Johnson played Brainfeeder’s earliest international label nights in 2009 (Off-Sonar in Barcelona and the infamous Hearn Street Car Park session in London) forming a strong family bond with the Brainfeeder crew founded on a mutual love of freakazoid electronic-jazz fusion.

Oliver contributed production to Thundercat’s “The Golden Age of Apocalypse”, played keys on Flying Lotus’s seminal album “Cosmogramma” and has toured in the live bands of both FlyLo and The Cinematic Orchestra. He also contributed keys on MF DOOM's "lunchbreak" which was produced by FlyLo and Thundercat. Most recently he collaborated with Kenny Beats on his debut album “Louie”, playing keys on three tracks, and partnered with another don of future-facing electronics – Mark Pritchard – to compose music for Damien Jalet's contemporary dance performance "Kites" at the Gotheborg Operan. In 2020 Oliver worked with one of the world’s leading ensembles for contemporary music – Klangforum Wien – composing and performing a piece called “Hyperopia” at TRANSART Festival in Austria.

The album artwork is by the Austrian artist Kurt Neuhofer with Oliver himself taking on video production duties armed with a vintage 90s video mixer and inspired by analogue video art and the world of home movie entertainment. “To an extent it’s about me re-connecting with my teenage self – but with a certain scepticism towards the sentimental and nostalgic energies that come up when you look back,” he explains. “I like that Carl Jung once said that ‘sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality’. I wanted the videos to capture this feeling of unease you can have towards your own past.”

Johnson released his debut album “Joined Ends” (2014) on Ninja Tune, before landing on Brainfeeder in 2018 to share “The Nature of Imitation”: an album of dizzying swells, cacophonous breakdowns and formidable rhythms with Pitchfork gushing “Dorian Concept creates something that 70s and 80s electro-funk auteurs like Kraftwerk, George Clinton, and Roger Troutman hinted at: computer music that uncannily imitates the funk, rather than just faking it.”

Yokobue (transverse flute) player Michiko Akao's 1983 release "Yokobue: The World of Michiko Akao" is being reissued for the first time! Produced with Shigeaki Saegusa as composer and arranger, this is a new age work that goes far beyond the realm of pure Japanese music. This is a definite recommendation for listeners who are following the current new age/ambient music.

Modern Love debut from Delia Beatriz aka Debit; a study of Mayan wind instruments from the late post classical period, rebuilt as synth instruments and deployed with ultimate heft and wooooze. Delia Beatriz’s musical output straddles two distinct artistic poles; her debut solo album, 2017’s acclaimed “Animus”, oozed from sensual, beatless soundscapes to high-octane club music, while her 2019-released 'System' harnessed tribal guarachero elements while simultaneously scraping ideas from industrial techno. On 'The Long Count', the Mexican-American producer has inked her most rigorous statement to date, sublimating opaque ancestral knowledge into vaporous AI-stirred fog banks, activating an ancient rite that reaches into tomorrow. It’s audacious electro-acoustic archaeology that sounds disorientating, anachronistic and arcane. 'The Long Count' is rooted in research Beatriz made into Mayan wind instruments - whistles, ocarinas, flutes and trumpets - using the archive of the Mayan Studies Institute at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the oldest and largest collection of its kind. Developing a set of digital instruments that could be played using different types of temperaments and scales, Delia processed these sounds using machine learning techniques to shuttle the distant past into our extant artistic universe, peering into Mexico’s pre-colonial history and weaving those ideas into complex tonalities gleaned from musique concrète and contemporary electro-acoustic music. Beatriz describes the Mayan instrumentation as ancestral technology, part of a world that’s not so much been forgotten, but purposefully erased. And although it’s impossible to know exactly how Mayan music may have sounded, it’s feasible to converse with history using modern technology to conduct a ceremony of remembrance. Featuring soundscapes that are haunted by indistinct, shared memories and centuries of pent-up emotion, the material here is as intentional, direct and meticulously crafted as the work of Deathprod or Thomas Köner; Debit's microtonal compositions are psychedelic to their core, shapeshifting through dimensions and painting complex mental images while retaining a stylistic focus and lucidity that’s all too rare. Although 'The Long Count' was nurtured by machines, human experience is coded into its DNA - an ancient-future heirloom that whispers through countless generations. File under: magick concrète.

12 tracks of pure soviet disco fever. Alright, put on your dancing shoes and get ready for a weird trip to the dance floor, to a time when the Soviet Union - still alive and under the flag of the hammer and sickle - managed to produce some wonderfully odd and hypnotic disco hits, mutant funk smashers and electro hip breakers. Coming from all over the huge landscape that the USSR was, the artists on this killer compilation showcase a variety of visions on the subject of shaking the ass that will surprise even the most cynical connoisseur of the genre. TRACKLIST SIDE A A1. Mirdza Zivere - Vienmer but (Latvia, 1979) A2. Оригинал - Сен Қайдан Биласан (Uzbekistan, 1981) A3. Anzhelina Petrosova / Анжелина Петросова - Танцующий Остров (Uzbekistan, 1987) A4. Pervouralsk / Первоуральск - Наташка (Russia, 1990) A5. Güljan Hümmedowa / Гүльджан Хүммедова - Ак Пагта / Белый Хлопок (Turkmenistan, 1984) A6. Roza Rymbaeva / Роза Рымбаева - Жездеке (Ka¬zakhstan, 1988) lika - Noktirne (Latvia, 1981) SIDE B B1. Махфират Ҳамрақулова & Гульшан - Резаборон (Tajikistan, 1989) B2. Janina Miščiukaitė - Amžinas šokis (Lithuania, 1980) B3. Verasy - Polet (Belarus, 1985) B4. Formula Dreyka / Формула Дрейка - Репка (Russia, 1990) B5. Eolika - Noktirne (Latvia, 1981) B6. Raduga / Радуга - Рассветает (Bashkortos¬tan, 1979)

Discrepant introduces a new series of albums based on the concept of "aquapelago", with gooey compositions from Andrew Pekler, Sugai Ken, Mike Cooper, Yannick Dauby and others. What is it about water that makes it so inspiring for experimental musicians? Discrepant's new series of albums promises to expand on a concept that imagines a deep underwater world. So it makes perfect sense that Japanese composer Sugai Ken - who impressed with 2020's slippery "Tone River" - should start things off with the unsettling 'Boundary', a spoken word piece in English and Japanese leading into Andrew Pekler's predictably balmy 'Shima No Yume', that sounds like being underwater and marooned on a desert island simultaneously. Brussels-based Mexican sound artist Vica Pacheco takes a different approach, splicing together environmental recordings and juxtaposing them with half-speed, haunted brass that sounds as if it's been recorded in an empty swimming pool. Mike Cooper swerves any obvious signals completely, preferring to create a secluded paradise on 'Lamma Island' with gusty field recordings and beachy guitar harmonics. Italian duo Babau bolt together one of our favorite tracks, using idiophones to create a shimmering backdrop that harmonizes with Visible Cloaks' cult "Fairlights, Mallets And Bamboo" mixes.

A globetrotter in the most pure and respectful sense, away from the trappings of neo-colonialist ventures and predatory tourism, Discrepant head honcho Gonçalo F. Cardoso returns to his Island impression series to offers us another glimpse of his deep, abstract impressions of (an)other island. After passionately collecting the sounds and lives inhabiting the main Island of Zanzibar, Unguja, released through Edições CN back in 2018, Cardoso now dwells into the Malaysian heartbeat of the Borneo forest through Island recordings made during a trip in 2016. Assembled in situ with meticulous craft from portable recorders, samplers and battery powered synths, these nice recollections conjure the spirits that lurk behind the inhabitable and the communal that are as much part of a personal memoir as an impressionistic portrait open to new meanings. Focused compositions that flow organically, bending the environment in & out of shape into a new dreamlike exotica with plenty of breathing room for every detail, silence and movement to surface. A particular moment suspended in time, haunted perpetually by its bygone existence. Something no postcard or photograph could ever, ever come even close to.