MUSIC

Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties presents the soothing, hallucinatory side of Stone’s slow-evolving, time-bending composition. While we can’t always identify the source, we can hear that his sounds come from somewhere, and that there is a “correct” or “complete” version of them in theory; and so we can hear when they are being changed. What drives Stone’s music is the flow that he draws out of those differences: the way an Indonesian gamelan morphs into a chorus built from one female vocalist over the course of “Mae Yao”’s twenty-three minutes, the surprise emergence of a Mozart chorus out of the synths and skip-glitches of “Sonali,” or the slow, ambient evolution of “Banteay Srey”. “Woo Lae Oak,” issued in a single side edit for the first time, is an exception. Its samples – a tremolo string and a bottle being blown across the top like a flute - are simple in the extreme. Yet the Stone hallmark is clearly present, he locates the inherent emotional properties of the sounds – the tingling anticipation of the string and the calm nobility of the wind – and takes them into unexpected expressive territory.

Release date Feb. 9th. Kali Malone's anticipated new album "All Life Long" is a collection of music for pipe organ, choir, and brass quintet composed by Kali Malone, 2020 - 2023. Choral music performed by Macadam Ensemble and conducted by Etienne Ferschaud at Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-L'Immaculée-Conception in Nantes. Brass quintet music performed by Anima Brass at The Bunker Studio in New York City. Organ music performed by Kali Malone and Stephen O’Malley on the historical meantone tempered pipe organs at Église Saint-François in Lausanne, Orgelpark in Amsterdam, and Malmö Konstmuseum in Sweden. Kali Malone composes with a rare clarity of vision. Her music is patient and focused, built on a foundation of evolving harmonic cycles that draw out latent emotional resonances. Time is a crucial factor: letting go of expectations of duration and breadth offers a chance to find a space of reflection and contemplation. In her hands, experimental reinterpretations of centuries-old polyphonic compositional methods become portals to new ways of perceiving sound, structure, and introspection. Though awe-inspiring in scope, the most remarkable thing about Malone’s music is the intimacy stirred by the close listening it encourages. Malone’s new album All Life Long, created between 2020 - 2023, presents her first compositions for organ since 2019’s breakthrough album The Sacrificial Code alongside interrelated pieces for voice and brass performed by Macadam Ensemble and Anima Brass. Over the course of twelve pieces, harmonic themes and patterns recur, presented in altered forms and for varied instrumentation. They emerge and reemerge like echoes of their former selves, making the familiar uncanny. Propelled by lungs and breath rather than bellows and oscillators, Malone’s compositions for choir and brass take on expressive qualities that complicate the austerity that has defined her work, introducing lyricism and the beauty of human fallibility into music that has been driven by mechanical processes. At the same time, the works for organ, performed by Malone with additional accompaniment by Stephen O’Malley on four different organs dating from the 15th to 17th centuries, underscore the mighty, spectral power that those rigorous operations can achieve. All Life Long simmers in an ever-shifting tension between repetition and variation. The pieces for brass, organ, and voice are alternated asymmetrically, providing nearly continuous timbral fluctuation across its 78-minute runtime even as thematic material reiterates. Each composition’s internal framework of fractal pattern permutations has the paradoxical effect of creating anticipated keystone moments of dramatic reverie and lulling the listener into believing in an illusory endlessness. On an even more granular level, the historical meantone tuning systems of each organ used, and the variable intonation of brass and voice, provide further points of emotional excavation within the harmony. The titular composition “All Life Long” appears twice on the album, first as an extended canon for organ and again in the final quarter, compactly arranged for voice. In the latter, Malone pairs the music with “The Crying Water” by Arthur Symons, a poem steeped in language of mourning and eternity. For organ, “All Life Long” moves with a patient stateliness, the drama concentrated in moments when shifting tonalities generate and release dissonance and ecstasy. For voice, each word is saturated with feeling, the singers swooping gracefully downward to capture the melancholy of the narrator’s relationship to the timeless tears of the sea. “Passage Through The Spheres,” the album’s opening piece, contains lyrics in Italian pulled from Giorgio Agamben’s essay In Praise of Profanation. In it, Agamben defines profanation as, in part, the act of bringing back to communal, secular use that which has been segregated to the realm of the sacred, a process Malone enacts each time she performs on church organs. This is not music of praise, or of spiritual revelation, but it is an artistic enactment of translating the indescribable. It carries the gravity of liturgical chant, and its fixation on the infinite, but draws its weight from the earthly realm of human experience. A music that draws the listener into the present moment where they can discover themselves within the interwoven musical patterns that can come to resemble the passage of days, weeks, years, a lifetime.

Graze the Bell is a collection of soul-stirring, mesmerizing solo piano pieces, and the most distilled offering of David Moore’s artistry to date. Known for his atmospheric compositions with Bing & Ruth, as well as his collaborations with guitarist Steve Gunn and Cowboy Sadness, this marks Moore’s first widely shared solo piano album. Using the piano to meditatively inquire into the human condition, Graze the Bell is a sanctuary of sound, and an invitation for listeners to meet him in the present moment.

Key importers/translators of Japanese Kankyō Ongaku to the Western world, Visible Cloaks present a fine new bouquet of digital flowers pruned in-the-mix with help from Lifted’s Joe Williams and arranged with input by Félicia Atkinson, Yoshio Ojima, and Satsuki Shibano. Ryan Carlile & Spencer Doran’s Visible Cloaks have been instrumental in bridging the rarified world of ’80s Japanese environmental ambient and its modern offshoots since their self-titled debut of 2015. Their ‘Fairlights, Mallets and Bamboo’ mixtape and original productions inspired by that particular time and space - circa the emergence and application of game-changing musical technology - have been indispensable for discerning diggers and ears. Their first album since 2019, ‘Paradessence’ now marks the duo’s return to a sound they helped bring to wider interest, displaying cross-border/generational binds between experimental scenes in Japan, US, and EU across an intricately crafted and romantic spirited album defined by its technical sorcery and sense of adventure. Benefitting from the energy of their collaborators and time out to sharpen and reassess their sound, ‘Paradessence’ feels like the most fully realised iteration of Visible Cloaks’ illusive world building. 14 succinct pieces open out a fantasy playground where prior spars Yoshio Ojima & Satsuki Shibano chime into the pitch bent, shatterproof contours of ’Shapes’ and again with Félicia Atkinson’s french vox in ‘Thinking’, before Satie-esque piano phrases are refracted into hyaline hyperprisms glistening with Joe Williams touch on ‘Zinna’. The shearing shape of ‘Balloon’ impresses in its hyperreal tactility, and the synthetic wind-swept strings of ‘Swirl’ brings us teasingly close to oneiric dimensions also touched on in ‘Telescoping’, suffused with ultrasonic insect sounds that lend a frisson of waking dream detail for the susceptible.

'Nekkuja' is a place for Herlop's warmest, sweetest sentiments to rise to the surface and crack through the topsoil. She describes the record as a way for her to seek and affirm inner light, and it's undoubtedly her brightest, poppiest statement to date. The forward-thinking, experimental touches that nourished 'Pripyat' are still present, but blessed with a level of positivity that's rare to find in a scene so entranced by darkness and melancholy.

As Green-House, musicians Olive Ardizoni and Michael Flanagan engage human nature and the natural world through joyous, dynamic synthesis. Overlaying frequencies and expressions like camouflage, their deeply layered collaborative process begins with either artist; Ardizoni is often drawn to melody, Flanagan to harmonics. The power lies in how their ideas helix together, achieving a depth greater than the sum of its parts. For their first LP with new label home, Ghostly International, Green-House grows and refines their vivid instrumental songcraft with uncharted, genre-defying freedom and movement, a more active, percussive, and emotion-filled energy, marked by flowing bodies of sound and sweeping vistas. Hinterlands tunes into the beauty of the world with defiant, radical sincerity.

Since 2020, across a catalog of acclaimed releases via the scene-creating Los Angeles imprint, Leaving Records, the duo has pursued a curiosity in environments, reaching for innate and faraway spaces by way of organic and synthetic instrumentation, high-definition sound design, and “idiosyncratic melodies crafted with the patient and methodical hand of a gardener,” writes Pitchfork. Green-House doesn’t fit neatly into any single category. Ardizoni and Flanagan aren’t aligned with New Age ideologies or spirituality, and the ambient tag feels increasingly limited given all that’s going on in their songs, which skew closer to the realms of IDM or even modern classical on their new album. What remains inherent is an open sense of wonder, “the idea of legitimizing certain emotions within music that often aren’t taken seriously in art, like happiness and joy,” says Ardizoni, whose eclectic personality shines through even without lyrics.

They welcome influences from all over; moments on Hinterlands evoke hypnagogic folk, tropical synth-pop, pan-flute mountain music, jazzy lounge, film scores, library sounds, and other forms of paradise-world-building. The duo simply makes the music they want to hear, earnestly dreaming of idyllic settings, their hope borne of necessity.

Like any artist living in Los Angeles, the 2025 wildfires disrupted any semblance of normalcy in creative life. However, they give careful consideration to how ever-looming environmental and political anxiety may relate to the project. “There's freedom in music, not requiring nuance in order to share an emotion or a fantasy or a utopian ideal with others,” Ardizoni says. “I'm an anarchist and an artist. I don't have to explain that. I can just put the emotion in and hope that it can be used as a tool, to be comforting or inspiring for people.”

As their third LP, Hinterlands is notably fuller, bigger-feeling than past work; brimming with kaleidoscopic guitar lines, bubbling synth textures, and an orchestral radiance that often registers as more than just two people. They bring up biomimicry — learning from and adapting alongside nature — as a formative notion. “When we’re talking about mimicry, it is also like projecting yourself as being larger in a certain way, in a sonic sense, sounding like a full band, but also as people, interconnected with a broader world,” says Flanagan. “This record is us letting go a little bit as well, giving ourselves the freedom to just write and see what happens, to let the music grow naturally.” Ardizoni adds, “We try to utilize what’s right in front of us, just being in an urban environment and making do with what's there in order to continue to foster that connection we have to the natural world.”

Ardizoni and Scott Tenefrancia shot the images that appear within the droplets of the LP’s artwork on a trip to Yosemite and the Inyo National Forest; Flanagan later magnified the scenes through the water with macro photography, using the droplets as a series of lenses. The striking visual serves as a fitting metaphor for music that straddles the organic and the digital — a collection of auditory microcosms developed through imaginative fusion.

It begins in the languid heat of “Sun Dogs”, which nods to the coastal sway of Haruomi Hosono's Pacific album and Paradise View soundtrack with washes of keys, horns, and strings. “Sanibel” is pure shoreline bliss, named after the Florida island a young Ardizoni would visit, growing up on the nearby Cape Coral Island (“my first real experiences as a human exploring nature”). “Farewell, Little Island” borrows its title from the 1987 short animated film directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler, which depicts the drowning of a village by modern technology. The track’s buoyant, spiraling guitar samples, their first time exploring the effect, reminded them of the film’s paper-cut animation and of how the story balances serene splendor with tragedy.

“Dragline Silk” conjures a curious trip. Built on a bed of ascending synth and guitar chords bathed in spring reverb (stemming from their shared love for Jessica Pratt’s latest album) and named after the natural phenomenon of spiders that use static electricity to sail through the atmosphere, the track soars with grandeur. The Hinterland suite is the album’s centerpiece, three tracks traversing wide hilltop terrain, with flute and guitar playfully surveying the scene (“Hinterland I”) before more contemplative strums and astral synth and woodwinds take hold (“Hinterland II” and “III”).

Hinterlands’ sequencing takes the listener from sea to mountains to somewhere more abstract and fantastical; late highlight “Under the Oak” possesses an otherworldly calm on warbled keys, followed by “Bronze Age”, even more subdued. “Valley of Blue” ends the movement in melancholy, overlooking a blue flower field with swells of synthetic strings and oboe in the style of Final Fantasy (Ardizoni originally called it “Memory of a Chocobo”). These traces of sadness permeate the otherwise effervescent collection, reminders that, behind the wonder, lies often profound worry (after all, Sanibel Island was nearly wiped out in 2022). Green-House makes sense of these feelings through their art, with genuine tenderness and refreshing conviction.

As C418, composer and producer Daniel Rosenfeld designs sounds to resonate in both physical and pixelated realms. Best known for his original soundtracks to Minecraft, the single best-selling video game of all time, he's developed a discography of instrumental music over the last decade that traverses electronic pop patterns, neo-classical dreamscapes, and sparse ambient motifs. The latter element has broken from the "8-bit" pigeonholing of game music and earned him accolades that reference artists like Erik Satie (The Guardian) and Brian Eno (VICE). In 2015, after quietly self-releasing Minecraft Volume Alpha and Minecraft Volume Beta, Rosenfeld partnered with Ghostly International to reissue Minecraft Volume Alpha on vinyl and CD. The release garnered attention from proper music critics and the gaming community alike, becoming one of the most sought after records in the Ghostly catalog. Following several restocks of Alpha to fervent fan response, the soundtrack's second installment got its first pressing in 2020. Originally self-released in 2013, the collection features tracks that were "silently" added to Minecraft during its music updates and a few that never officially entered the game. Across Volume Beta, Rosenfeld's unmistakable abilities are on display; he creates a sweeping variety of musical ideas that mirror the limitless universe of Minecraft.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports is a studio album by the English musician Brian Eno. It was released in February 1979 through E.G. Records and Polydor Records.[1] It was the first Eno album released under the label of ambient music, a genre intended to "induce calm and a space to think" while remaining "as ignorable as it is interesting".[2][3] While not Eno's earliest entry in the style, it is credited with coining the term. The album consists of four compositions created by layering tape loops of differing lengths, and was designed to be continuously looped as a sound installation, with the intent of defusing the anxious atmosphere of an airport terminal as an alternative to "canned" Muzak and easy listening styles.

One year has passed since the release of her debut album "Approach to Anima" last year on Guruguru Brain / Bayon Production. Maya ongaku has entered a new phase of evolution, and her new sound approach is a conceptual one based on rhythm machines and electro development. The M-1 "Iyo no Hito" has already been well established in live performances. Anoyo Drive" has an unsettling atmosphere with the effective sound of saxophone riding on the minimal beat. Love with Phantom" is a strangely pop song like a children's song, and you can't escape from the loop in your brain. Meiso Ongaku" is a 15-minute epic and spiritual song that has been performed live many times. This is a masterpiece that symbolizes the original Japanese alternative music that the world is looking for!

Selected tracks from the album are featured in Hideo Kojima’s video game, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach.

Not only have Chicago’s electronic trio Purelink released on labels such as Lillerne Tape Club and Naff, they’ve also contributed a mix for Resident Advisor, marking them as one of the city’s most essential new acts. Their much-discussed release of the year on revered imprint Peak Oil is finally in stock. Centered on serene, minimal chillbient, the record delicately traces faint light seeping into deserted urban spaces and lingering echoes at the edges of a world that has lost its words. Textures dissolved in delay and reverb resonate like distant prayers drifting between city and self, while faint melodies and the sway of sub-bass create a deeply intimate immersion. A work that hovers between ambient and post-club, standing as Purelink’s poetic resistance and a defining statement of their aesthetic.

A masterpiece that defined OPN's reputation, where digital sound and serene beauty coexist!

“I first composed this music for myself as an adjunct to meditation, Tai Chi, and bodywork, and as music to play in the background of life, to replace the everyday cacophony with new and ordered sounds of an unpredictable nature. New sounds freed from preconception. …over time, friends who heard the music asked if I could make them copies. I then wrote two more pieces with the same intent: to relax the body, mind, and spirit and facilitate meditation.” - Lou Reed Lou Reed’s final solo album, Hudson River Wind Meditations, is one of his most personal musical works, combining Reed's love of creating drone music with his passion for Tai Chi, yoga and meditation. The album's ambient soundscapes have been described as a counterpoint to his intense Metal Machine Music album—but they are similar outliers in Reed's 40+ year exploration of drone music and feedback harmonics. It's for a certain time and place of mind. The album has been remastered by the GRAMMY®-nominated engineer John Baldwin with vinyl pressed at Record Technology Inc. (RTI). The Double LP and CD releases are designed by GRAMMY®-winning artist, Masaki Koike and feature new liner notes by renowned Yoga instructor and author, Eddie Stern, who guided Reed’s practice for years. Also included in the physical editions is a fascinating conversation between author/journalist Jonathan Cott (Rolling Stone, The New Yorker) and Reed’s wife, artist Laurie Anderson, who discusses the album, as well as her husband’s devotion to Tai Chi – one of the album’s primary inspirations. Hudson River Wind Meditations marks the latest release in LITA’s Lou Reed Archival Series. Launched in 2022 in tandem with the late artist’s 80th birthday, the ongoing series has celebrated one of America’s most influential songwriters through such acclaimed collections as Words & Music, May 1965 featuring many of Reed’s earliest (and previously-unreleased) recordings, including the earliest-known versions of “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Pale Blue Eyes.”

Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinct sensibilities for something hypnotic and tangibly inviting. What started as a love letter to their shared admiration for ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian music evolved into a dynamic and sprawling body of work. These sunny and expansive tunes are as immersive as they are endlessly replayable.

Both Miller and Gold attended Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music together and in the years after graduating, they orbited each other around Chicago’s music communities. “We were showing up for each other as friends and taking an interest in each other's projects, noticing a lot of resonances and similarities working within in our music,” says Gold, who’s collaborated with artists like Makaya McCraven and Jamila Woods and stretched the bounds of jazz and Americana on solo albums Imagined Sky and Midnight Choir. “We had talked so much about eventually working together that it was almost like an ongoing bit at a certain point,” says Miller. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they first had their chance on “Inside Minds,” the breezy lead single on 2023’s Resavoir. While those sessions were remote, two had palpable chemistry.

It wasn’t until Miller left the touring band of the Chicago group Whitney in 2023 that their plans to make music together in person came to fruition. “When I first started Resavoir, I was chasing the desire to produce records and now that I had time to focus exclusively on that, Matt was the first person I called to come to the studio,” says Miller. The two had bonded over an admiration for the Brazilian guitarist Luis Bonfa and songwriter Milton Nascimento, especially the latter’s work with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, so they decided to use nylon string guitar as a starting point for these early sessions. “Canopy,” which opens Horizon, was the earliest track. Kicking off with bright acoustic chords, the song slowly unfurls into a slinking groove, samples, and fluttering leads from soprano saxophonist Tim Bennett.

As these initial experiments proved successful, Gold and Miller felt they could broaden the scope of their vision. “We were initially conceiving of it as this acoustic guitar driven record but eventually we wanted to frame it orchestrally and see how many shades and colors we can bring in around that sound,” says Gold. “Dewy” thrives within this orchestral palette of woozy synths, strings from Macie Stewart, Claire Chenette’s oboe, flautist Wills McKenna, and French horns from Lloyd Billingham. “We discovered that our multi-instrumentalist mentalities—using piano and bass, samplers, drum grooves, guitar ideas all as starting points— nurtured the broad orchestration across this record,” says Miller.

“The LP took about a year with on-and-off sessions,” says Miller. “The songs benefit from letting them ferment for a couple months, coming back to it, and seeing what sort of new flavors have developed.” Co-produced by Miller and Gold (and mixed by Dave Vettraino), Horizon proudly reflects the artists’ vast artistic community and musical network in Chicago and beyond. Along with Gold, Eddie Burns (Clairo), Peter Mannheim (Tony Glausi), and Carter Lang (SZA, Lil Nas X) provide drums and percussion throughout. On the dreamlike single “Diversey Beach,” New York songwriter Mei Semones lends vocals and along with her band members Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, collaborated on a mesmerizingly conversational string arrangement. “We wrote "Diversey Beach" on the coldest day of the year watching a blizzard coming down out of the window, where the sounds of the cars driving by sounded like waves crashing on a beach,” says Miller. “I sent it to Mei Semones, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. She's absolutely incredible and it’s amazing what she did with it.”

Horizon is a testament to the feeling of endless possibilities that come from collaboration. It’s a remarkable synthesis of two artists who share musical community and an artist lineage but have carved their own paths in unique ways. Nowhere is this more evident than “Hazel Canyon,” which boasts Gold’s silky pedal steel and a subtly enveloping arrangement that evokes Erasmo Carlos. “Musically, we're always trying to capture a fleeting moment of infinite expanse, feeling the vastness of things while knowing they'll always change,” says Gold. “This record keeps the light reflecting on the water just a little longer -- our collaborative process running through the backbone of these songs and rippling out in so many beautiful directions..”

A new exclusive duo of A/B sides pressed to vinyl, in a limited edition; "Behind the Times" is a forerunner of the upcoming full length "Long Trax 4", to be released in 2025. 

Packaged in a classic reverse board sleeve, with original artwork by Tsuji Aiko, pressed on 180g black wax. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu.

Deep, deep stuff on the debut album from K Wata. Long and dubwise, dark and detailed. With bass that fills and warms a space. All noir. Cast shadows against the wall. Weight being shifted and distributed with singularly delicate poise, like a knife being balanced on the end of a finger. There’s a silvery, loose flow state to this record that maybe reveals the way some tracks were first written to be deployed live at Sustain Release 2025. Then taken back to the lab and tightened up further into the album’s final form, with beautiful mixing work between Kenzo and Chris Botta. With that in mind, Give U Space unfolds slowly and fluidly, giving the listener the chance to access and open up to the deepness of the sound, being led down a path. It rolls and builds momentum and groove, and ratchets tensions up toward peaks of energy "Whisper Dub" and "There Will Be Love". The tunes feel architectural. Rooms to be in and settle into. Simultaneously stripped back and then etched with neat little details and characterful or atmospheric sound choices. The silhouette of slo mo Memphis and Houston trap is a leading influence, especially with the drums. Mixing with bits of click’n’cut sampling and psychoacoustic tricks, the penumbra of dub techno and drowsier dubstep, and SG’s soft vocals rising in the ether. The presence and inspiration of the sound system is obvious in all of Kenzo’s work, the music can rattle when spun up louder or blended into the club. But K Wata’s uniqueness and signature comes from an often equally inward facing quality, touched by distance and longing and a sort of chiaroscuro incandescent light set up.

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

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

‘vernacular’ is the debut studio album by improvisation-based artist, and founder of life is beautiful, aloisius. built entirely from layers of improvised instrumentation recorded via laptop microphone, using various instruments such as: guitar, piano, cello, trumpet, saxophone, drums & voice. vernacular is inspired by the spirit of collective improvisation, and embodies aloisius' instinctual & organic approach to musical composition. crafted solely by aloisius (except for track 6, which features a layer of piano by life is beautiful member, friend & collaborator Bianca Scout). "Crisp, chaotic and unashamedly euphoric, it's fully human, packed with irresistible flaws and delusions that can't help but keep us completely gripped." (Boomkat) physical editions will feature a secret unlisted bonus track. to celebrate the release of the album, a semi-improvised interpretation of the project will be performed live by ‘orchestra379’ (a collective improvisation project curated by aloisius, consisting of a fluctuating lineup that differs on each occasion of performance). this iteration of orchestra379 shall feature: Isaiah Hull (vocals), abi asisa (cello), Jasper Maurice (guitar), Bianca Scout (organ), Damsel Elysium (violin), BJ Holy (trumpet & flugelhorn) & aloisius (drums & saxophone). preluding the orchestra379 performance will be a special, intimate performance by May Kershaw (of the band Black Country, New Road), performing using voice & church organ.

Copenhagen’s meme-able, custom line of genre-blurring songwriters yields Lithuanian talent, Gintè Preisait, fresh from the conservatoire and an LP with Toshimaru Nakamura, on an enchanted, waking dream blend of lower case concrète, trip hop and avant-classical experimentation calling to mind the refined crafts of ML Buch, Ugné Uma, Svitlana Nianio, Smerz, Lucrecia Dalt, Julia Holter or Martyna Basta, thru the reaches of Finland’s Fonal Records. It was bound to happen at some point, right? We've written more than enough about how Copenhagen's Rhythmic Music Conservatory has become the central node in a scene that's prioritized the permeable membrane between pop, classical training and unhinged technological experimentation - honestly where else are you gonna find Clarissa Connelly, Astrid Sonne, Erika de Casier, ML Buch and Fine? Gintė Preisaitė pushes even further into uncharted waters on her debut album, letting the pop forms evaporate like vapors around her intricately woven experimental collages. We're already off to a good start with 'Vigilance', a lengthy introduction that pays its respects to Preisaitė's past, present and future. The classically trained improviser, producer and composer begins with an ensemble of moaning acoustic instruments that she gradually chips into, tearing through the acoustic sounds with electronic treatments and introducing subtle, grounding field recordings before adding her voice and completely shifting the direction. The unwieldy blend of elements prepares us for an arguably bolder experiment, 'Summary Saint Mary', where Preisaitė matches her gamelan-like prepared piano phrases with Björk-ish vocal loops, OPN-inspired electronic touches and wheezing processed acoustic sounds. And it's remarkably well controlled; even in capable hands, it's a tough palette to work with and Preisaitė makes it look almost easy, never stepping too far in any direction or another. Because it's not really a pop record at all, it's an album that's aware of pop, doesn't avoid its charms, but manages to corral its characteristics into the avant garde's misshapen spirit. Even the relatively upbeat, straightforward 'Aéroport', a track that would have sounded stylistically comfortable on Smerz's RMC love-in 'Big city life EDITS', she never goes full James K, letting the melodies curve towards freeform abstraction in the final act before hitting us with three tracks of choppy, half-dissolved prepared piano. It's ambitious stuff, and all the better for it.

"Linear ancient voltage-controlled sound rituals. Alien liturgical tones" Convergence is an ambient album formed through a series of morning rituals during rehabilitation following a severe medical event and an extended hospital stay. After weeks immersed in the constant alarms, beeps, and environmental signals of medical equipment, the act of listening itself became recalibrated. The music was performed and assembled using glass marimba, flute, and analog synthesizers, with each instrument treated as a source of resonance and gradually dissected through spectral analysis—allowing melody to emerge from fragments through repetition, attention, and daily practice, where synthesis functions not as traditional composition but as an exchange of signals. Working slowly and intuitively, Stardust Multiplier approaches sound as a communicative medium between humans, the natural environment, and non-ordinary states of perception. Motifs evolve through repetition and subtle variation, informed by ceremonial music, mythic structures, and speculative communication frameworks associated with non-human intelligence—not as narrative devices, but as metaphors for attuned listening and pattern recognition. Rather than moving toward resolution, Convergence documents moments of alignment—instances where intention, system, and environment briefly synchronize. The result is a restrained, deeply focused record, less concerned with atmosphere than attention, where synthesis functions as both a grounding practice and a method of inquiry.

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

Dave Huismans (ex_libris, A Made Up Sound) presents In Transit, a self-titled LP of arresting downtempo vignettes, with origins dating back to over a decade ago.

Renowned for some of this century’s most notorious rhythmic advances, the work of Dave Huismans (fka A Made Up Sound and 2562) continues to provide a blueprint for new generations of innovation-obsessives. After a long hiatus from releasing original material, he returned in 2025 with two beloved EP’s as ex_libris. Now he returns to FELT as In Transit, following up on his remix of Civilistjävel! from 2023.

Borrowing its name from the closing dialogue of a novel by Dutch author Hella S. Haasse, In Transit was written in just two weeks in the summer of 2013 on a Korg ESX sampler. Since then, he has patiently refined its constituent parts.

Over the course of 38 minutes across six tracks, In Transit maps out an absorbing vista. The music shimmers with a celestial quality, underpinned by rhythmic stamina and creeping intensity. Tangential to Huismans’ previous work, the beats here are decentred and further scattered, acting as buoys to the constantly evolving and intricate narratives of layered textures.

In Transit marks a fascinating new addition to Huismans’ sprawling catalogue, a truly remarkable racket to be crafted with such humble means, finding a suitable context within FELT’s continued venture into parallel sounds.

Following Music From Memory’s landmark compilation Virtual Dreams—which reframed ambient techno and IDM through a new age lens—comes another groundbreaking survey. Telepathic Fish: Trawling The Early 90s Ambient Underground revisits the legendary early ’90s London ambient party Telepathic Fish. Conceived by Mario Aguera, David Vallade, and Kevin Foakes (DJ Food), the series intersected with experimental spaces like Ambient Soho and Megatripolis, and this release captures that moment in vivid detail. Featuring unreleased and rare material from the likes of Global Communication, Spacetime Continuum, and Nightmares On Wax, the set reflects the multifaceted character of the ambient underground in its formative years. Complete with a 20-page booklet of photographs and archival materials, this is an essential document that reconnects sound with its era and hands the spirit of ’90s ambient and chillout into the present.