MUSIC

Rachika Nayar's fragments (expanded) is a collection of sonic miniatures constructed from guitar loops created in the familiar comforts of her own bedroom. These cyclical, meditative pieces stem from an intimate part of Nayar's creative practice, revealing a deep source of self-exploration and restoration. A collision of midwestern emo and post-rock influences with virtuosic minimalist guitar, fragments (expanded) provides an intimacy between Nayar and those listening in parallel spaces, activating our collective past and shared unconscious experience. This expanded vinyl edition adds a full extra side of previously unreleased pieces and includes a high quality multi-format digital download.

2023 marks the tenth year of Music From Memory; a decade of groundbreaking archival releases, cross-generational collaborations and long-standing creative partnerships with our ever-expanding community of artists. To celebrate this milestone, earlier this year we asked our roster of artists to submit a piece of music for an anniversary compilation. As submissions gradually came in, we were blown away by what we received and slowly began to piece them together into what was to become “10”. Featuring work from artists who were present during the formation of the label, such as Gigi Masin, Joan Bibiloni and Michal Turtle, as well as artists like The Zenmenn, RAMZi and Dea, who have helped the label expand over subsequent years, “10” serves as a natural bookmark of where we are musically, whilst simultaneously reflecting on the label's rich musical past. In keeping with the Music From Memory ethos, the music of “10” spans both time and space, with submissions ranging from Vito Ricci's 'Da Hamptons' (1985) to Yu Su & J. Wilson's 'Mitti Atar' (2023). It crosses the globe, with a total of 10 countries represented across 17 tracks. The final result is an immersive musical compilation that flows perfectly from start to finish. Tragically, during the last few weeks of finalising MFM066, label co-owner Jamie Tiller passed away in a sudden accident. “10” was always intended to be a way to reflect on the journey of Music From Memory. The fact that it is now also one of the last releases that the team all worked on together adds a whole other level of reflection and makes it all the more special.

During the 1990s Shizuka self-released a series of four cassettes, barely heard by anyone outside of their inner circle. Culling together live recordings and home demos, these served as companions to the scant amount of proper Shizuka releases at the time (including the recently reissued Heavenly Persona). Concentric Circles is proud to present the third and most anomalous cassette from Shizuka, simply titled III, on vinyl for the first time in an edition of 500 copies. Formed by guitarist and singer Shizuka Miura, alongside husband Maki Miura, who’d previously played with both Les Rallizes Dénudés and Fushitsusha, the group known as Shizuka started in the early 90s with Jun Kosugi (also of Fushitsusha) on drums, and a revolving cast of bass players, including J.J. Junko, whose sole recorded appearance with the band is here on III. Devoid of any of their trademark noise and bombast, III feel distinct from their studio and live albums of the era, largely due to its fragility; haunted and spare, the songs revolve around Shizuka Miura’s gentle, unforced sighs, and Maki’s flickering, flinty guitar. The first side of the album features four songs – “For You,” “Lunatic Pearl,” “The Night When The Door Opens” and “To The Sky” – which will be well-known to Shizuka fans from previous recordings, but the drastically understated renditions here are particularly moving for their quietude and intimacy. The second half of III consists of a side-long duo session, just Shizuka and Maki Miura together at home, circling around the simplest two-chord motif for twenty minutes, Shizuka singing the most heavenly melody, strung through the sky of this lengthy improvisation. It’s an astonishingly beautiful performance, one that stills time through its becalmed repetition, pointing towards the endless forever. In this respect, it feels like an ultimate extension of Opal’s early recordings, Big Star’s 3rd or even Galaxie 500’s quietest moments. III lifts the darkness away, allowing for a softer, more gentle Shizuka to shine through, bringing with it a side to the band that most never knew existed. A lovely discovery if there ever was one.

"What the f**k this is unREAL! I love Liquid DnB and this is classsssss!" - DJ Mag (Chris Blackhall) "Amazing job, the vibes from the music to the artwork was just *chefs kiss*...Liquidy drum and bass paired with a late 90s/early 00s video game aura… perfect breaks for late-night drives." - Pad Chennington "There aren't too many artists that sound this authentic...it just sounds like he knows this music like the back of his hand...it's a complete banger from start to finish" - Future Sounds FM (My Pet Flamingo) "We've been lucky enough to have the Level Select album for a while now in the SEGA Powered office, and it's a cracking one to put on for those late-night deadline evenings!" - SEGA Powered Magazine Pizza Hotline’s Level Select is one of my records of the year. It came out right at the start of 2022, and crystallises a cultural moment...Level Select is the most successful album by a single artist at capturing this kind of DJ/compilation-style flow and sense of journey. It is deep and heady, while melodic and fun at the same time. - Thom Hosken (Future Sounds FM) WRWTFWW Records is extremely excited to announce the first ever vinyl release for Pizza Hotline’s brilliant 2022 full-length Level Select, originally only released on cassette and digital. The liquid drum & bass meets Y2K era video gaming aesthetics monster is now available in a limited edition transparent vinyl double LP with a glorious 45rpm cut, p Entirely written and composed by UK producer Pizza Hotline (apart from "GLACIER ZONE", a collaboration between Pizza Hotline and DJ Total 90), the stellar 8-song album was initially released as a limited cassette in January 2022 and quickly gained cult status - making a full-on vinyl release quite the necessity. It’s here now with the the previously unreleased track "POLYGON DREAMSCAPE" (which sounds as magical as its title) and 45rpm cut for louder, bigger, deeper bass rumbling. Spellbinding, atmospheric, and beautifully melodic, Level Select is a large scope dreamy adventure of liquid DnB filled with ambient escapades, ethereal jungle, high vibe breaks, and a heavy loving dose of late 90s / early 2000s video game influences. Hypnotic late night hype and pensive chill moods mesh with ease in a cinematic soundscape that re-contextualizes and gives a new life to a beloved music genre - LTJ Bukem, Peshay, the Wipeout OST or Soichi Terada's Ape Escape come to mind, and sounds and soundtracks from the Sony Playstation, the Nintendo 64, and the Sega Saturn resonate from the speakers. It’s all fresh with a subtle nostalgia and so much heart. An instant classic. Spellbinding, atmospheric, and beautifully melodic, Level Select is a large scope dreamy adventure of liquid DnB filled with ambient escapades, ethereal jungle, high vibe breaks, and a heavy loving dose of late 90s / early 2000s video game influences. Hypnotic late night hype and pensive chill moods mesh with ease in a cinematic soundscape that re-contextualizes and gives a new life to a beloved music genre - LTJ Bukem, Peshay, the Wipeout OST or Soichi Terada's Ape Escape come to mind, and sounds and soundtracks from the Sony Playstation, the Nintendo 64, and the Sega Saturn resonate from the speakers. It’s all fresh with a subtle nostalgia and so much heart. An instant classic. Press start. Points of interests For fans of liquid DNB, Video games, ambient, late night vibes, computers and clubs, Soichi Terada's Ape Escape, LTJ Bukem, Peshay, Wipeout OST, good music, good music on video games, playing video games all night and possibly all week. Limited edition vinyl of Pizza Hotline’s 2022 cult hit album redefining liquid drum & bass with a Y2K video game twist.

Trances, Jules Reidy’s follow-up to the celebrated World in World (2022), takes place in between states, tracing a kind of restless movement in search of—or is it away from?—a center. The twelve tracks shift between fragment and epic, returning to familiar phrases between forays outward into uncertain expanses. Through its exploration of the cyclical movements of grief and emotional turbulence, Trances produces a sonic world as raw, absorbing, and surprising as anything Reidy has created to date. Trances’ primary instrument is a custom hexaphonic electric guitar tuned in Just Intonation. Reidy’s combination of fingerpicked phrases, open strums, and corrugated processing push on the grammar of guitar-driven experimentalism, locating expressive heft in open-ended harmonics and the odd angles formed by overlapping elements. Chords are slowed and stretched as if to examine their resonance, then overtaken by subterranean motion. The effect is that of oceanic depth, but the rippling that passes between the compositions’ sedimentary layers often takes on a metallic edge. The addition of synthesizers, sampled 12-string guitar, field recordings, and half-submerged autotuned voice further denaturalize the compositions. Reidy’s vocal interjections—their particular linguistic content rendered inaccessible—are based on counting and self-observational techniques for bringing oneself back into the present; at times Reidy’s picking also assumes a mantra-like quality, though ultimately the flow of the composition subsumes both. There is a heavy sense of the strange throughout these songs, which bleed at their edges into a continuous, questioning whole. That Reidy’s compositions here have a tendency to engulf the listener, like a wave or a squall, can be variously comforting and disorienting. Either way, we are fortunate to follow Reidy on such a journey.

This is the Medium's 2nd ambient compilation album.We offered this compilation to 24 artists from all over Japan, Canada and Shenzhen who have a great expression of ambient music, and it has finally come to fruition.

Recorded in correspondence throughout a calamitous and uncertain 2020, “Eye of the Sea" is a collaborative record made by Tom James Scott of the United Kingdom and Svitlana Nianio of Ukraine. Active since the late 1980s, Nianio has released a treasure trove of diverse and beguiling music under her own name, as a member of the legendary Ukrainian experimental unit Cukor Bila Smerť, and in collaboration with the late musician and instrument maker Oleksandr Yurchenko. For his part, Scott has steadily published solo recordings since the mid aughts on labels such as Bo’Weavil, Students of Decay, and Where to Now?, and worked often in collaboration with kindred spirits like Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Lujik. “Eye of the Sea” began as a series of intimate, muted piano sketches put to tape by Scott, which Nianio embellished and re-contextualized with voice and instrumentation before returning them to Scott for further overdubbing, editing, and mixing. Listening to these recordings, I’m struck most by their patience, frailty, and beauty. Soft piano lines unspool alongside Nianio’s weightless voice on tracks such as “Slowly Turns the Spring,” which achieves a richly devotional air, and “Lotus,” a piece that all but halts the passage of time as it slowly blooms into expression. But despite their elusive, gauzy palette, there is a startling directness to these recordings that feels unique in the oeuvres of both musicians. Much like Nianio’s wonderful “Lisova Kolekciya,” (reissued by Scott on Skire in 2017) there is the sense that this music, particularly the vocal arrangements, is firmly rooted in some hermetic, primordial tradition. Ultimately, “Eye of the Sea” is a work of romantic, phantasmagoric beauty shot through with morning light; one which draws deeply on 20th century classical, chamber and liturgical musics, and ambient minimalism to arrive at a distinctive voice of its own. - Alex Cobb (Students of Decay/Soda Gong) credits

music and design by buttechno vocals and graphics by Triš © Psy X records, Berlin, 2023

This is first reissue ever Che-Shizu ライヴ集１（Steeple & Globe） www.discogs.com/release/1239264-シェシズ-ライブ集１1986-1988 With Download Code Chie Mukai Takuya Nishimura Yoshio Kuge Tori Kudo Masami Shinoda Yuriko Mukoujima Wataru Okuma Shinya Kimura Designed by Toyohiro Okazaki Remastered by Yasushi Utsunomiya Liner Notes by Shinji Shibayama Translate by Alan Cummings Limited Edition to 100.

Marginal Consort is a Japanese avant-garde improvisational group comprised of sound artists Kazuo Imai (a student of Japanese free jazz linchpin Masayuki Takayanagi and occasional performer in both Taj Mahal Travellers and Takayanagi’s New Direction Unit), Tomonao Koshikawa, Kei Shii, and Masami Tada (also in group GAP). Formed in 1997, the four members of Marginal Consort attended Takehisa Kosugi’s music classes at the Bigakkō art school in Tokyo in the mid-1970s, where they teamed up with other students to record East Bionic Symphonia’s debut album “Recorded Live” in 1976. Since its inception, each year Marginal Consort holds one (or more when invited) annual concert at spacious venues in which they perform continuously, without interruption, for over three hours. Their extended set explores forms of sound and ways of playing that never coalesce into music but create a group dynamic of ebb and flow, exploration and fluidity. Their performance, which is completely free from abstract, political or sometimes mystical ideas about improvisation, neither contraposes the immediacy of action or anonymousness of sound against music nor dramatises the dialectics between the individual and the whole. Even the general idea of the words “collective”, “improvisation” and “project” do not really tell the way they work. Marginal Consort performed at South London Gallery; St. Elisabeth Kirche, Berlin; Asahi Square, Tokyo; Kotoku Morishita Bunka Center, Tokyo; Mikawadai Junior High School, Tokyo; Super Deluxe, Tokyo; Tokyo Arts and Space, Tokyo; Macao, Milan; Instal 08, The Arches, Glasgow; St. John at Hackney Church (33-33), London; The Substation, Melbourne; Carriageworks, Sydney; Third Edition Festival, Stockholm; nyMusikk, Bergen; Borderline Festival, Athens; On the Boards, Seattle; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; PuSh Festival, Vancouver; Zebulon, Los Angeles; Pioneer Works, New York. ​​​​​​​“A form of sound that does not turn into music and a group that does not produce harmony; individual concepts and group fluidity; individuals who are at once independent entities and components of the whole; coexisting time frames and intersecting rhythms – these are among the images of group improvisation that have occupied my mind since the ’70s. These images neither presuppose specific elements nor regulate the entire process. There always remain, however, the fundamental premises that sounds are separately produced phenomena and that their accumulation forms the whole”. – Kazuo Imai

Recital is pleased to publish the first vinyl edition of Let the Darkness Fall, a forgotten corner from the vast discography of Suzanne Langille & Loren Connors. Joined here by David Daniell and Andrew Burnes (of the Atlanta-based group San Agustin), Darkness was recorded in the summer of 1998 on a Tascam Porta-5 in Loren and Suzanne’s Brooklyn living room, and issued the following year as a limited CD by Secretly Canadian. The tender gloom of Let the Darkness Fall sounds like a broadcast of some private séance. The trio of guitarists here show a beautiful restraint, hovering just underneath vocalist Suzanne Langille’s ephemeral poetry. Once they hit RECORD, the sensitivity of the players melded this quartet into a sole-entity; finishing each other’s phrases in slow motion. Suzanne’s gentle voice glows through the wispy guitar shadows with a quiet determination. One could almost imagine her building a nest out of the guitar lines she’s gathered. This collection of musicians is a precursor to the band Haunted House, a wild sort of jam-band playing the blues without playing structure. Recital is proud to continue the series of Loren Connors-related editions, stretching from his art books Wildweeds & Night of Rain, to his masterpiece solo LPs Airs & Lullaby. And Recital is equally thrilled to highlight Suzanne Langille’s mystifying command of voice and word and the intricate guitar work of Andrew Burnes and David Daniell. Come revisit the mist that filled that living room 25 years ago.

Kate NV’s WOW offers listeners a prismatic shift in perspective and scale, a parallel dimension in which the mundane becomes funny, unfamiliar, and altogether sensational. Turning the contents of her 2020 album Room for the Moon upside down and spilling it across a floor checkered with intrigue and surprise, Kate places sound, object, and ritual under the microscope to magnify the delight hidden in plain sight of everyday life.

Hania Rani announces "On Giacometti" a tender meditation on the life and art of Alberto Giacometti and family. "On Giacometti" is a collection of beautiful recordings inspired by the renowned artist and family and features some of Rani’s most profoundly delicate compositions to date. Invited by film director Susanna Fanzun, to score her forthcoming documentary on the legendary artist Alberto Giacometti, Hania Rani took herself to the Swiss mountains to compose in blissful isolation. As Rani explains eloquently below the compositions are based on improvised melodies, simple harmonies and structures and inspired by the silence of the mountains as Rani returns to her main instrument, the piano. The results are beguilingly reminiscent of her beloved debut album Esja, but with subtle extra layers of synthesiser, and on two tracks cello from friend and long-running collaborator Dobrawa Czocher. 'On Giacometti' is presented as a limited edition LP with bespoke packaging featuring Les Naturals - Chocolat (Gmund) sustainable recycled paperboard made from 100 % recovered paper with Foil Artwork by Łukasz Pałczyński. Plus Double sided printed insert and download code inside. Words by Hania Rani "On Giacometti" When I was asked to compose a soundtrack for a movie about the family of Giacometti I didn't think twice. Alberto Giacometti, a Swiss artist, who worked mainly as painter and sculptor has been one of my favourite artists for a long time. His individual style, aesthetics and the character of his creative process is still fascinating to me on many levels, so being able to dive even deeper into his universe, getting to know not only him but also his family was an opportunity that I couldn’t miss. Little did I know how far this "yes" will take me - not only mentally and on a creative level but also physically. Thanks to the director of the documentary - Susanna Fanzun and by a stroke of luck and a couple of extra questions I decided to move for a couple of months to the Swiss mountains, not far away from the place where Giacometti was born and where the place he called home was, although he didn’t live there. Susanna showed me a place close to her hometown where I could rent a studio and work on the soundtrack but also for my other projects. It was the middle of a winter, the area was full of ice and snow, just like only it can happen still in the mountains. The residency house was located in a valley surrounded by high mountains and the sun in the winter season was not coming up for too long during the day. I remember she told me about it and added "that not everyone is feeling well there, but I hope you will". I did. Being almost separated from reality, the city and its entertainments, people rushing and everything that usually takes my attention I could fully concentrate on the music and soundtrack, spending most of the day with my own thoughts and having enough space to experiment and be free in a creative process. This soundtrack would probably be a very different thing if composed in a place that I am usually living in. I took this a chance to explore something new about myself as a composer and human being, taking the opposite direction that I would usually choose for myself. The album "On Giacometti" includes the excerpts from the soundtrack, the most representative tracks and those which became a strong voice itself. Based a lot on improvised melodies, simple harmonies, structures and silence it reminds me of my debut album "Esja" which was partly composed and recorded in another chilly place - Iceland. All these components, both mental and physical, guided me back to my main instrument - piano, which I tried to redefine again with a language of the space that I was working in. The space is usually the key element that gives me the answer about the arrangement or character of the project. Space seems to be the first to appear and music is the invisible power which is changing its angels. Living surrounded by mountains makes you change the perspective and understanding of scale as Alberto Giacometti once famously wrote in a letter. It gives an impression that things that are actually far away, like mountains, are close and the other ones that are not so far away, like people, seem small, watched from a distance. You feel like touching the mountain top with your finger could be as easy as touching the tip of your nose. The snow additionally protects the whole area from the noise, each sound lands softly on the ground accompanied by echoes of immeasurable space. Each scratch or whisper is becoming an autonomic entity, opening the gate to the world of ghosts and lost spirits. It's easy to think that time stands still there, while nothing is moving and changing at the first sight. But the ubiquitous ice and snow reveal the passage of time, transforming frozen paysage into the wild stream of water - each day, hour and second. Melting and vanishing, clearing the space from white powder and noise consuming surface. Invisible process for a one night traveller, becomes painfully real for longer time settlers. Time flows with each new wave of sound coming through the river, reminding us that we are part of the cycle, which endlessly repeats itself. I left the valley with the first breath of the spring.

IS THERE ANYTHING AFTER NOTHING IF EVERYTHING IS ALREADY HERE IN A VIBRATION OF A FEEL STRING “SPACE IS AIR I BREATHE” SHE SAID BODY NARRATING MEMORIES THERE IS NO GOOD OR BAD ANYMORE ONLY WHAT IT IS HEAR ME HEAR THE WIND HEAR THE GRASS DANCING ONE BIG PAINTING CALLED LIFE FROM ONE TO ANOTHER GIVING FROM OTHER TO SELF CARE HOLDING FOAM OF DAYS IS PRECARIOUS CAN BE PRECIOUS FENCE UP AND WATER THE GARDEN LAST CALL LASTS FOREVER GROW GONE WILD INTO CRUMBLES OF TIME CAR ROOM WITH A VIEW REMEMBER HOW A NIGHT COULD BE A DAY … AREN’T WE ALL HERE TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING WE HAVEN’T

Izum1, a promising 19(18?) year old trackmaker based in Hiroshima, Japan, who runs a net label "Nekomata Records," has just released his latest cassette album "There is Substance in 2-D." It is a very excellent collection of 12 pop&cute, avant-garde lolicore tracks from this next generation CDR! The album features 12 tracks of pop, cute, and avant-garde lolicore by the next generation of CDRs.

An exceptional masterpiece that must be heard by all shoegazing enthusiasts. The 2023 cassette reissue version of the 2021 digital work "_____" by the one-man post-black metal act "Sadness", which is one of the most popular blackgaze acts, will be released from in Italy. Stocked! Sweet and gloomy, aetherial and nocturnal, anthemic and prayerful, a solitary masterpiece in the 2020s! Limited 97 copies.