MUSIC

Tokyo visionist Soshi Takeda’s second album took shape across eight months of the winter and spring, inspired by an iconic mid-80’s photography book of Chinese landscapes. Scenes of lantern-lit fishing boats on misty mountain lakes seeded a mood of hidden paradise, with ancient waterways snaking secret paths into the past. Recorded at his home studio using hardware synths and samplers from the 1990’s, the six songs of Floating Mountains (plus digital-only bonus track, “Deep Breath,” from the 2nd Life Silk compilation) evoke shrouded vistas of liquid skies and shining lakes, like some Li River twist on Balearic half-light house. Shades of cosmic drift and crystalline electronica ebb and flow within the nocturnal pulse, pagodas and pearls reflecting the waning moon: “I hope you can feel the cool and exotic atmosphere.”

Farmer and deep house producer Hiroyuki Tanaka aka Charles A.D. has been quietly cultivating his crop of live hardware dub techno and devotional acid since debuting with the 熱い海 (‘Hot Sea’) EP on Austria’s Dream Raw Recordings in 2017, followed by two long-form classics for Tokyo’s Umé label in 2019 (Inception) and 2021 (Dry Flower). His latest, West Pontoon Bridge, further refines Tanaka's composite of rhythm, repetition, and vanishing point electronics, shaded in what he calls “characteristic sadness.” Schemed and tracked across a half decade of studio explorations, the album moves through gradient landscapes of twilit trees, mossy waterfalls, and hidden temples shrouded in ocean mist. Named for a nearby Japanese landmark of boards laid across boats at the river mouth in place of a permanent bridge, the collection unfolds in a similarly improvised and panoramic sweep. Lean percussive systems crosshatched with bass, haze, liquid loops, and spatial FX, the album subtly accelerates as it advances, spiraling softly towards a strobing dance floor in a sacred grove.

An official re-issue of the 1996 album, Beyond the Circle, from Dr. Osamu Kitajima presented by Forest Jams on vinyl for the first time. As the title suggests, Japanese music explorer Osamu Kitajima takes the listener beyond the known on a musical voyage into new territory where his compositions are a synthesis of Western electronics and ambient dance rhythms, tempered by the wisdom of ancient Japanese traditions. “Beyond the Circle” is music that is as energizing as it is spiritual and melodic.

Originally released on September 30, 1991, Orbital's eponymous debut album became known as "The Green Album" to distinguish it from their second album (known as "The Brown Album") The Green Album includes the seminal 'Belfast' and a live version of 'Chime', the landmark dance track that launched their career in 1990

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.

ダウンビート経由のディープ・ハウス/チルアウト・エレクトロニクス秀逸作！〈Tax Free〉を主宰するベルリンのダウンビート/ブレイクス名手Max Graefによる最新アルバム『Natural Element』が、Space GhostやNu Genea、Zopelarらの作品も知られるダウンビート/モダン・ファンクの一大聖地〈Tartelet Records〉からアナログ・リリース。低音重視の空想と繊細なダンスフロアの冒険をテーマとしたジャンルを超えたリスニング・トリップ。今回は、煌めく才能と伝染的なその魅力的なサウンドを、バックルームのビーンバッグに心地よく収まったサイケデリックで夢見心地のジャムへと落とし込んだものとなっています。

Light, textural daydream house from Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote, whose debut 1080p release under the Khotin title lands in the middle of close, bedroom zones and more club-friendly grooves. Since his initial moves towards house and techno genre experiments two years ago, Khotin has refined his unique slant on gentle acid and blurred yet effervescent hybrid house, with a stack of hardware: Roland TR-505, 606, 707, SH-101, Juno 106, Korg MS-10, Yamaha DX7, and various casio keyboards. Khotin’s lightly dusted grooves are inflected with a bedroom pop sensibility as much as reverence for heavy techno greats, scattering samples over breezy house rhythms. Loose themes of flight and brightness coast in and out of each side (mixed live); loose house drifters like “Flight Theme” and title track “Hello World” float on gentle bongos and hi-hats and brightly hued melodies (that are consistently focal and catchy across the record) while darker techno heavy hitters like “Why Don’t We Talk” and “Infinity Jam” bring a distinct take on cosmic hardware vibes.

With Lucifer, Kompakt presents an album of rare beauty from two masters of modern music. A family affair, it’s a collaboration between the Italian father-and-son duo of Luciano Michelini and Lorenzo Dada, whose combined histories bring to Lucifer a depth of experience alongside clarity of vision and a finely tuned, neatly developed combined compositional voice. A lovely, beguiling suite of music that combines the electronic and the acoustic, the urban and the pastoral, its gorgeous night-eye vision and tender melancholy sits neatly within the Kompakt universe, while offering the curious listener some rich new perspectives. There is already plenty to know both artists by. Lorenzo Dada creates across multiple fields – a techno producer and DJ who has already worked with the likes of Jay Haze, Fete, Leo Benassi, and Der, he’s released a small clutch of stylish, smartly designed EPs, and a solo album, Second Life (2018). His complementary background in classical music and composition informs his ensemble project, Tears Of Blue (who appear on Lucifer), where Dada paints with neo-classical tones for a quartet of violin, viola, cello and grand piano, supplemented by electronics for live performance. Luciano Michelini’s history is yet richer. He may be best known, to many, for his piece “Frolic”, the theme to Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm series; it was also sampled by Snoop Dogg for 2022’s “Crip Ya Enthusiasm”. But there’s much more to Michelini’s story. A successful soundtrack composer, Michelini both studied and taught at the Conservatoro di Santa Cecilia, and worked for RCA from the sixties to the eighties; his soundtracks from this period are gorgeous examples of the form, particularly his work for Il Decamerone Nero (1972), L’Isola Degli Uomini Pesce (1979), and the devastatingly gorgeous Dimensione Donna (1977). In the eighties, Michelini and his wife Anna Gutling founded the Electronic Music Division studio and academy in Rome, which is where the majority of Lucifer was recorded. Dada reflects on the experience: “We never worked together before, so it was all new for both of us,” with Michelini adding, “I truly love this experience with my son. He’s a talented pianist and composer. I am not very familiar with electronic music nowadays, but we did it fluently.” There’s certainly a familial energy at play through Lucifer, and you can hear how Dada and Michelini, through exploration and experiment, find a shared language, balancing Dada’s tendency toward minimalism, and Michelini’s composerly voice. Lucifer flows as a suite that interweaves electronic music with acoustic instruments: the lonely sigh of saxophone; Michelini’s lush, verdant piano; the weeping strings of Tears Of Blue (recorded at the studio of Michelini’s friend, the late Maestro, Ennio Morricone). These multiple voices are located within the electronic sighs and swarms from Dada’s kit; there are moments of propulsion, and passages of lambent drift, where the album revels in its tonal sweetness. If it flows so effortlessly, that’s because Lucifer was designed that way, as a suite or a sonata of sorts. And the title? Dada reflects, “Lucifer was an angel who decided not to be one anymore. The miracle of life is that we can decide what we want to be, even if we are born as angels or vice versa.” This feels somehow apposite: there’s certainly something of the transformative, and the transportive, in Lucifer, a unique family collaboration of rare poetry and sensitivity, where two generations meet in the modern crucible that is the electronic music studio.

The first in a series of mini compilations exploring instrumental Dub versions of sought after and long out of print titles from the world of Reggae, Disco, Boogie and House. Many of these versions still contain vocals, snippets here and there drenched in delay or reverb, a style you’ll recognise from many of the Jura Soundsystem edits on the label. The late Glen Adams & Finesse open proceedings with their Island Disco cover of Marvin Gaye’s classic, followed on the A2 by a super rare UK Boogie/Brit Funk mix of Tippa Irie’s ‘Panic’ (shouts to Tippa for personally helping to push through the license) and the A side closes with the 80’s leaning ‘Yes I Do’ from Belgium’s Special Occasion. The first half of the B side comes from Carol Williams with the Special Club Dub mix of ‘Can’t Get Away’, originally a one sided promo only 10” from 1983 complete with spoken word intro from Carol thanking New York’s Metro DJs for their support of the song. The LP closes with a Jura Soundsystem Dubby Edit of La Palace De Beaute’s ‘Sin’ pulling back on the vocal and going heavy on the delay.

The latest by Chicago trio Purelink unspools an alchemical suite of fractal ambient, dusted dub tech, and interstitial electronica, born from a spirit of unity and flux: “All hands on the mixer, forever finding the sound.” Since forming in 2020, Tommy Paslaski (aka Concave Reflection), Ben Paulson (aka kindtree), and Akeem Asani (aka Millia) have convened regularly in a shared studio to workshop, swap samples, and hone their collective muse via “the endless possibilities of a laptop,” seeking “something different than we would make on our own.” Distilled from extended compositions prepared and performed across 2022 in Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Los Angeles, Signs captures their chemistry at its most liquid and immaterial, mapped in mutating systems of glitch, glass, rhythm, and space. It’s music alternately subdued and subterranean, elevated and remote, attuned to the flickering sentience of outer spheres.

Here is the debut, self-titled album from a.s.o., singer/songwriter Alia Seror-O’Neill, and producer Lewie Day. ‘a.s.o.’ is a thematic consolidation of the previous three singles and an impressive artistic progression. Day and Seror-O’Neill show they’ve mastered the format of the radio-friendly pop song and found how to subvert it completely. Across eleven songs, they have built a rich and compelling body of work. We know where we are now, emotionally complex, trip-hop torch songs for club freaks. But the palette has broadened to encompass ethereal dream pop à la Cocteau Twins, slow-burning AOR-soul, and dubwise stylings. As a result, ‘a.s.o.’ is a satisfyingly coherent listen but never a musical monoculture. Variously there are nods toward Julee Cruise, Fleetwood Mac, and the uneasy listening of Portishead. It’s an album that wears its influences lightly, is never weighed down by them, and always sure of its own identity. It’s anchored by Alia’s unique voice. Her words speak of restraint and release, taking us from the elegiac to the euphoric. This elegantly crafted, perfect pop music sounds like it has had enough of your shit. And Day’s music is the perfect foil; deep, slightly menacing, restrained, and powerful. The album has a cinematic texture, as with David Lynch; the seemingly familiar becomes uncanny and strange the closer we look. a.s.o. take our emotions for a joyride before leaving us floating in space. ‘a.s.o.’ is a journey; by its end, we all are changed.

Two new songs from Khotin ideal for soundtracking slow dewy mornings.

Paige Emery is an ecological artist interweaving music, painting, and plants through healing rituals to explore ways of remembering the Earth. She catalyzes ritual to illuminate the way our practices co-write our cosmologies and to find cyclical resonances that bring us back home. Works such as sound pieces to guide ecological journeys, paintings alchemized with herbal concoctions, ecopoetic tea ceremonies, plant remedies, and starting mutual aid guerrilla gardens with her community are among the ways this practice manifests itself. Intercommunications follows a cyclical journey of healing with plants. The album was seeded from her ritual of singing to her plants every morning after she meditated with them. As an inquiry into communicating with the nonhuman, the songs grew through deconstruction of language layered with sounds of the environment, a communication shaped by honest forms of harmony and chaos, death and rebirth. Each song represents a different state of connecting with plants, while the album as a whole serves as an arc through a healing journey with their medicine - opening, sensing, letting, washing, waking, dancing, calling, following, swelling, enduring, decomposing, which in the end leads to another opening. These states of being sing along with the cycles of nature that we can continue to learn from.

Rod Modell returns as Deepchord for his first solo release on Astral Industries since inaugurating the label with his sought-after ‘Lanterns’ EP. Consisting of two stunning long-form pieces split on one side each, 'Immersions' captures the emotive, halcyon sound that Rod has long become synonymous with. Opening with glistening ambient textures, ‘Immersion I’ grows into an 18-minute piece of deep rolling dub techno. On the other side ‘Immersion II’ paints pristine soundscapes of soft, lapping waves, underpinned by submerged pulsations that rise to the surface to continue its deep space explorations. Two highly refined and inspiring tracks that sit on the apogee of this sound.

My Noise is Nothing’ is the collaborative LP between Lord of The Isles and Scottish poet Ellen Renton, set for release on the 29th September 2023. For the pair, both the poems and music came to them in a quick and concentrated period. Renton's poems were written during 2020 and capture something of that time- that feeling of having no obstacles between ourselves and our emotions. Especially the feeling of anger, which is expressed by Renton as a feeling that is not wholly negative but complicated, necessary, unifying and even joyful. Likewise, Lord Of The Isles’ dusky and unfurling production refuses obstacles- embracing experimental live recordings using pedals and vintage synths. It is warm and fuzzy, but most importantly organic, with all the imperfections and character of a living entity.

Downtempo, Experimental, IDM … Knopha steps out on Mood Hut Records with ‘Kwong’. Ranging in tone from downtempo drum and bass to Herbert-like cut up house tunes, from esoteric pop to digital abstractions.

Mix Mup & Kassem Mosse mark a decade since their rudely offbeat debut with a 19-track, 1hr+ payload of woodcut drums and groggy samples tessellated in beatdown mode for fans of Theo Parrish, STL, Actress Back in 2012, MM/KM’s s/t maiden voyage was a staple round our ways, beloved for its odd bag of skewed grooves. After leaving us with only a 3-track EP ‘Have You Seen Them’ in the interim, the German duo return with ‘Ich sehe Vasen’, or ‘I See Vases’, making up for the big pause in duo production with a heavy satisfying session of loping, peg-legged rhythms, off-the-cuff keyboard lines and hiccuping ambient wobbles that feel right back at home amid the screwballs on TTT. The expanded run time of ‘Ich sehe Vasan’ allows for a far mazier and demonstration of their intuitive, lo-fi style, peppered with numerous beatless nuts and bolts that join the up the club workouts like a game of snakes and ladders on K. Roll the dice and expect to encounter the haziest, Theo Parrish-like Detroit house one minute, then trip down wormholes of lush ambient, or whirling percussive derives the next, popping out along the line at wheezing Actress-like grog, all primed for slinging on at the afters to regular calls of “what the fuck is playing, man?” until the sun goes down again.

Incorrectly perceived as simply an Autechre side-project, Gescom in fact exists as a platform for a number of aligned artists to work in various different combinations, whilst remaining otherwise-anonymous. Personnel in Gescom has varied from release to release and even track to track. Quote from the Autechre FAQ: "Actually the whole Gescom crew consists of almost 20 people. Sean Booth calls it an 'umbrella-project'."

When it first slipped out back in 2015, Manabu Nagayama’s ‘Light & Shadow’ passed most people by. Yet it’s a genuinely overlooked gem a musically expansive and uplifting Japanese deep house workout that first featured on a promo-only compilation back in 2015. A softly spun slab of slow-building brilliance full of fluid piano motifs, heady hand percussion, the track effortlessly sashays between heartfelt dancefloor melancholia and tactile deep house positivity. One DJ to see its potential was Rush Hour co-founder Antal Heitlager, who asked Masalo to remix it. Over ‘a few years’, Masalo worked on the revision in bursts, tweaking it and subtly altering the arrangement until he was happy. The results are undeniably impressive, elevating an already excellent track to whole new levels. DJs seem to agree, too, with Masalo’s fine remix becoming something of an underground anthem following the release of a limited number of white label test pressings earlier last year. Taking the spiritual end of deep house as his inspiration – and happy memories of attending events while visiting Japan – the Dutch-Japanese producer has delivered a slowly-building epic that subtly ratchets up energy and excitement throughout, while effortlessly eking out every last drop of emotion from Manabu’s piano-laden production. Extensively road-tested at the Brighter Days parties he runs with long-time DJ partner Kamma, Masalo’s remix settles into a chugging groove before introducing Manabu’s tactile hand percussion – a staple of spiritual deep house cuts – and melancholic piano refrains, as well as his own lilting chords and cascading synth sounds. By the time the original’s bouncy piano riff drops midway through, you’ll be lost in the music. Fittingly given the quality of Manabu’s original, it’s a revision that showcases the track’s best elements while gently lifting it to new heights.

Lipelis makes a welcome return to L.I.E.S. with his TMO project and lines up a huge release with this four track ep, housed in a killer picture sleeve. Massive anthem alerts here as Lipelis teams up with keyboardist Eugene Piankov with epic results. From the absolutely soaring and melodic 303+909 driven opener, to the pensive mid tempo "Bright Jam" Everything comes to a head with the B1. cut that is a huge piano house anthem, this will save the party or bring it to the next level... solos, chord progressions, 303's, phased claps....everything going exactly how it should be...clean as a whistle, rockin the floor like mad. Absolutely recommended for connoisseurs of real dance music.

Enter Demi-Monde: A “half world” of botanical sounds and surreal impressions assembled as four tracks for Munjebel’s first release on Mesma Records. Oscillating between Ambient, Fourth world and Environmental Music, Demi-Monde is a peaceful yet captivating promenade into organic and percussive synth scapes — melancholic, escapist and contemplative. Munjebel is the joint project of Royer (Lobster Theremin, Closer) and Aurèle (Demi-Monde, Rinse, Cracki).

After his first album on BLESSYOU "Turquoise", Mogwaa aka Seungyoung Lee from Seoul is back with another stellar contribution this time re-visiting his earlier days of musical appreciation in Reggae music. This album is another entirely instrumental work with 8 tracks, effortlessly displaying his confidence in the studio when it comes to dreamy dubbed out ambient sounds intertwined with heavy digi/stepper and even dancehall influences. A refreshing treat to the ear when it comes to contemporary productions as Mogwaa approaches the Jamaican genre with a refined aesthetic of his own. From Korea with much craft and dedication for the music, a pleasure to have him back. Mastered at Manmade mastering.

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

Where is Agartha? What is the specific region in which it lies? Along what road, through what civilizations, must one walk in order to reach it?.’ Saint-Yves d’Alveydre in 1886 Agartha, the debut full-length album by Japanese producer Wata Igarashi, is a mysterious, divine thing. Named for the mythical secret kingdom, understood as a complex maze of underground tunnels, perhaps designed by Martians who colonised the Earth tens of thousands of years ago, it’s a similarly mystical, perhaps even cosmic trip – but this time, exploring an inner, deeply personal cosmos. Beautifully detailed and bustling with rich incident, it takes Igarashi’s music to new places, which still retaining his unique sonic imprimatur; in this respect, it’s perfectly at home with Kompakt, a label that’s always encouraged artists to make the visionary music they need to create, to take risks and make sideways steps into uncharted territory. An eloquent producer and DJ, Igarashi has been releasing techno for eleven years now, appearing on such imprints as The Bunker NY, Delsin, Midgar, and Time To Express; he has also self-released his productions via his WIP net label. Throughout, Igarashi has consistently explored his unique approach to techno and electronic music, one that’s eloquent and poised, even when it shifts into more psychedelic terrain; he’s a master at balancing the sensual and the functional, and he has an unerring ear for the right texture, the right tone, at the right time. He brings all of this into Agartha, his most thorough-going expression of self to date. For Agartha, Igarashi had a strong concept he wanted to explore. Visualising specific scenes from an imaginary film based on the titular secret kingdom, he created soundtracks for those scenes, spending time during the pandemic in his studio, working away carefully at the ten tracks here. Given his background in creating music for television and advertisements, Igarashi is well-placed to explore the marriage of the sonic and the visual in such intimate ways, but freed from commercial concerns, he let his imagination run riot. He also drew on a rich palette of musical influences – techno is in there, of course, but you can also hear the smoky, improvised jazz of the likes of Miles Davis (to whom the album’s title is an indirect nod), and the minimalism and systems music of Steve Reich. The latter is particularly pronounced on the gorgeous, beatless drift of “Floating Against Time”, where an arpeggiated sequence lingers, lovingly, around your ears for nine blissful minutes, coasting across swooning drones and waves of ambient noise. “Ceremony Of The Dead”, originally composed as part of a Sony 360 Reality Audio spatial sound concert, is a deep pass into systems composition, with various patterns overlaid and interlocking, before a wordless vocal rises from the depths, a gorgeous counterpoint to the swarming textures that gather across the track. On the other hand, tracks like “Burning” and “Subterranean Life” nudge toward Fourth World territory, painting deluxe dreamscapes of uncertain provenance; the title cut is an abstract drift-world, Igarashi painting an alien tableau dotted by shape-shifting creatures. Agartha’s conceptual framework means that everything on the album sits perfectly together; listening to it in one sitting is a dizzying, lush experience. Its imaginings of inner landscapes recall, in some respects, the nautical, aqueous mythologies of the Drexciyan universe, though from different perspectives. But the result is Igarashi’s own creation, a deluxe, enchanting trip through the visionary Agartha of this unique producer’s cinematic mind’s-eye.