MUSIC

"Eau" is the lovely new album from aus, the solo project of Tokyo-born composer and producer Yasuhiko Fukuzono, who has gained attention, in Japan and overseas, for his thoughtfully paced and sensitively skillful music as well as his intriguing sound design for exhibitions and experimental cinema. Having worked primarily with keyboards and electronic sound up to this point, "Eau" is a slight yet fascinating shift for aus; the album, while still primarily an electronic work, revolves around the sonic world of a stringed acoustic sound source, the koto, that most characteristically Japanese of musical instruments. The very accomplished Eden Okuno provides the delicate-yet-rich koto sounds on offer here; Fukuzono, in the liner notes, acknowledges the importance of Okuno’s artistry to the project.

The compositions on the album are designed to balance the sound of the koto, with its subtly variable attack and flickering resonance, with the timbre of other instruments. The delicate decay and metrical flexibility of the koto is enveloped by sustained synthesizer sounds and contrapuntally constructed piano melodies, creating a flowing ambience with absorbing undercurrents, a languid and liquid quality that reveals the suitability of the title.

Avid fans of contemporary Japanese music might hear the influence of pioneering works such as the the 1979 Hiroshi Yoshimura composition “Clouds for Alma", realized by koto player Tadao Sawai, and the 1993 album "Koto Vortex I: Works by Hiroshi Yoshimura" which featured performances of Yoshimura's works by the Japanese koto quartet Koto Vortex. These works attempted to remove the koto from its traditional context and place it within the context of ambient and techno. "Eau" is available on CD/LP/cassette/digital, with E/J liner notes by aus. "Eau" is the first collaborative release by EM Records and FLAU, the label run by Yasuhiko Fukuzono (aus).

Since 1992, Robin Storey (founding member of the pioneering post-industrial band Zoviet*France) has been creating innovative and thought-provoking music under the Rapoon moniker. Drawing inspiration from his early days with Z*F, he continues to push the boundaries of ambient, industrial, and world music genres, earning him a dedicated following across the globe.

Originally available in 1994 as a limited-edition DAT tape through Staalplaat Records, Cidar was later included as a bonus CD in the reissue of another Rapoon classic, Fallen Gods. Now, after years of anticipation, fans can experience this mesmerizing work as a stand-alone release—remastered and expanded with three previously unreleased tracks from the original 1994 recording sessions.

Cidar showcases Robin’s signature sound - a seamless blend of Z*F-inspired drones and loops intertwined with vibrant African percussion and hauntingly beautiful Asian string instruments. This combination creates an immersive, trance-like atmosphere that transports listeners into a world of meditative sonic exploration.

With its enchanting rhythms and deeply textured layers, Cidar stands as a testament to Robin's unparalleled ability to craft music that defies genre boundaries while remaining instantly recognizable. Fans of both Zoviet*France and Rapoon will find themselves drawn into the hypnotic sounds of this timeless masterpiece.

The standalone release of Cidar marks an important milestone in the history of experimental music, offering audiences worldwide the opportunity to rediscover or experience for the first time one of Robin Storey's most influential works.

Since 1992, Robin Storey (founding member of the pioneering post-industrial band Zoviet*France) has been creating innovative and thought-provoking music under the Rapoon moniker. Drawing inspiration from his early days with Z*F, he continues to push the boundaries of ambient, industrial, and world music genres, earning him a dedicated following across the globe.

Originally available in 1994 as a limited-edition DAT tape through Staalplaat Records, Cidar was later included as a bonus CD in the reissue of another Rapoon classic, Fallen Gods. Now, after years of anticipation, fans can experience this mesmerizing work as a stand-alone release—remastered and expanded with three previously unreleased tracks from the original 1994 recording sessions.

Cidar showcases Robin’s signature sound - a seamless blend of Z*F-inspired drones and loops intertwined with vibrant African percussion and hauntingly beautiful Asian string instruments. This combination creates an immersive, trance-like atmosphere that transports listeners into a world of meditative sonic exploration.

With its enchanting rhythms and deeply textured layers, Cidar stands as a testament to Robin's unparalleled ability to craft music that defies genre boundaries while remaining instantly recognizable. Fans of both Zoviet*France and Rapoon will find themselves drawn into the hypnotic sounds of this timeless masterpiece.

The standalone release of Cidar marks an important milestone in the history of experimental music, offering audiences worldwide the opportunity to rediscover or experience for the first time one of Robin Storey's most influential works.

Aleksandra Ionowa (1899–1980) was a Finnish-Russian artist, mystic, and largely self-taught pianist whose music feels like a transmission from another realm.

Her artistic life began in 1946, after what she described as a mystical experience of heavenly union—“Heaven was in me, I was in heaven.” In its wake, she began to draw obsessively, eventually creating thousands of visionary works that she considered guided by the Theosophical Masters. The same experience also led her to start improvising on the piano, shaping music that, for its time, was unusually free and abstract.


Recorded on a November day in 1978, when Aleksandra Ionowa was 79 years old, Improvisations on the Grand Piano is a meditative and deeply intuitive album, shaped more by timbre and tone than by melody. Her shimmering playing unfolds like flashes of light through leaves, or sunbeams playing on rippling water: a music of transience and transformation, yet carrying a timeless stillness at its core. To today’s listener, her pentatonic piano stylings might feel kindred to the spiritual intimacy of artists like Laraaji and Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, while remaining wholly her own.

Originally self-released on vinyl and cassette, the album is reissued for the first time in co-operation with Ultraääni Records and Puro Recordings. This new edition is available on standard black 180g vinyl and a limited splatter-colored 180g version. The release also includes additional artwork and a newly commissioned essay by Samuli Huttunen, offering historical and spiritual context for her work.

If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated. — Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces. In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds “as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup.” And, as he suggests, “with the addition of city noise from outside the window,” you may hear Surround in a completely new way. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura’s previous works included Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular GREEN (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura’s yin and yang. 12月上旬入荷。遂に満を持して登場。あの『Green』を凌ぐ人気を誇る、長年失われていた吉村弘最高峰のアンビエント・クラシックこと1986年作品『Surround』が〈Light in the Attic〉配給の〈Temporal Drift〉レーベルより待望の公式アナログ再発！日本の環境音楽のパイオニアであり、都市/公共空間のサウンドデザインからサウンドアート、パフォーマンスに至るまで、傑出した仕事を世に残した偉才、吉村弘。その最難関の音盤として君臨してきた幻の一枚が、今回史上初の公式アナログ・リイシュー。ミサワホームから依頼されて録音された作品で、これらは同社の新築居住空間をより充実させるために設計された「アメニティ」として機能することを目的としていた環境音楽作品。吉村自身による当時のライナーノーツに加え、オリジナル・プロデューサーであった塩川博義氏による新規ライナーノーツも同封（日／英）。 MASTERPIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

«The project “a sad song for A.” was born from an insight Stefano Gentile had, driven by his moods and, in particular, a regret he had experienced in the past. It all began almost by chance, one evening, during an informal conversation. Stefano suggested that I narrate what I was experiencing most intensely at that moment: anxiety.

After thoroughly analyzing this emotional state, he asked me to translate it into words, to write texts that could give voice to the emotions surrounding it. From there, came the idea of dividing the emotional journey into four stages that, in one way or another, we have all experienced: Panic, Anxiety, Light, and Dream.

This is how Stefano involved me in this project, which combines writing, photography, and music with a specific goal: to make people feel less alone, creating an invisible thread of empathy through words, images, and sounds. In this way, “a sad song for A.” came to life and taught us – and continues to teach us – to feel closer to one another, to strike common inner chords, to remember that no one is truly alone when going through darkness, and that it is essential to never stop dreaming.» Giulia Dal Vecchio

In addition to Stefano Gentile and Giulia Dal Vecchio, “a sad song for A.” also features Gigi Masin, Fabio Orsi, Anacleto Vitolo, and a new multimedia project called Hiseka (Stefano Gentile and Giulia Dal Vecchio with various guests).

“a sad song for A.” is released as a deluxe box set containing four CDs and four 12-pages booklets, 17x17cm in size. The box is limited to 300 hand-numbered copies. Each musician worked on a phase of anxiety, creating a dedicated and original work. Stefano created the images and Giulia wrote the texts. Each of the four parts was given a title that is also the title of the sound work.

Anacleto Vitolo: Falling into a vortex of sick stars (for Panic)

Hiseka: Drowning in a sea of dust (for Anxiety)

Gigi Masin: Imploding in a blinding darkness (for Light)

Fabio Orsi: Listening to the sound of sunflowers (for Dream)

Gigi Masin's work is also available as two separate vinyl records, which feature two additional extra tracks not included in the CD version contained in the box set. In addition to the standard black vinyl edition, the two records are also released on clear vinyl in a limited edition of 200 hand-numbered copies each.

Four videos (one for each CD) are also available for streaming on Silentes’ YouTube channel, one made by Francesco Giannico and three made by Francesco Paladino.

Joanna Brouk's most ambitious recording, Sounds of the Sea is a concept album full of mystery and eroticism. A conch shell bookends this journey into the deep, going down and down and down further, never reaching bottom. Drawing inspiration from various legends of mermaids and sailors, Brouk weaves circling flutes, vocals, drones and whale songs to describe a sense of unfathomable longing more clearly than words could ever express. Sounds of the Sea is a hypnotic and profound achievement by one of new age's greatest composers.

Prajñāghoṣa's debut ambient album on Into The Deep Treasury is a narrative, a musical poem, an attempt to share the story of a transformative odyssey — an outer and inner journey marked by higher aspirations, spiritual growth, and a profound connection with the world.

Coming with a 8 pages booklet

Ambient Warrior return with Warrior Voices, the long anticipated vocal companion to their mid 1990s cult project Dub Journey’s, reissued by Isle of Jura in 2021.

Recorded between 1993 and 1995 by producer Ronnie Lion with multi-instrumentalist Andreas Terrano, Dub Journey’s blended reggae, dub, ambient, latin, and jazz into timeless soundscapes that set it apart from the UK reggae scene. Warrior Voices completes this original vision, adding full vocal versions to the ambient dub foundations, while standing as a fully realised album in its own right.

The LP features a remarkable lineup of legendary reggae vocalists, including Roy Shirley, often called the “High Priest of Reggae” and a pioneering figure in rocksteady; the Twinkle Brothers, one of Jamaica’s longest standing roots reggae duo’s known for their spiritually conscious songs; Joseph Cotton, whose distinctive voice helped shape dancehall; and Ricky Ranking, celebrated for his collaborations with Roots Manuva. The album also includes the original 1995 7" vocal version of My Island I Will Never Forget by Greekie, a deeply moving song in Greek that reflects on Turkey’s 1974 occupation of northern Cyprus.

The set is rounded out by an unreleased track from the Ambient Warrior DAT archive, Marine Steppers, offering listeners a fresh perspective on the project nearly thirty years after it was first conceived.

With deep basslines, spacious production, and stirring vocal performances, Warrior Voices transforms the instrumental originals into fully realised songs, offering a fresh perspective and revealing new layers of emotional depth. The album is essential listening for fans of reggae, dub, and Balearic-inspired music, offering a companion to Dub Journey’s while also standing confidently on its own.

We Do Recover, the new album from Powell and his first album proper on his own Diagonal Records, is a vitalising record of recovery and a statement of reassurance. The music is intensely emotional and lean, and forms a uniquely expressive story that opens up new ground in the artists's bizarre continuum of synthesised sound — this time triggered by experiences of grief and addiction.

The suicide of one of his life-long friends in 2024 was a life-changing loss which eternally altered Powell's life, and consequently his music. A period of recovery followed, one accompanied by the assembling of this album from hours of music made between 2018 and 2025. "After my friend's death I felt I went into a tailspin, but really, I was already in one," he says. "I found myself unable to handle anything – my way of coping was always to run away and escape. I realised it was going to kill me, so I made some changes. It made me see the music I had been making through a different lens, one that mirrored my experience of recovery. It's not linear, it's often difficult, but there is beauty there if you look hard enough. I wanted it to be a message of hope, if only for myself."

Powell has existed of late in an intensive mode of creation that utilises stochastic processes (probabilistic events) and a particular sonic palette. But where previous releases – such as the many prongs of his a ƒolder project, or the hyper-synthetic Piano Music 1—7 on Editions Mego – interrogated and developed formal processes for synthesised sound, on We Do Recover the processes are subsumed as tools for expression. What unfolds is an extended suite of minimal music that articulates and traces an intensive period of upheaval, pain, and hope; tight envelopes of sonic architecture are led astray; energies explode beyond bounds previously set. We can feel the collapse of control, and an overflowing sense of something starting anew. It is, in turn, surprising, baffling and beautiful.

The story begins with the radiance and glittering synthetic tones of 'All These Feelings'—like looking up into the vastness of the night sky. By track seven the wonder has become unsteady, with wayward keys, stochastic shapes, brittle fizz and hurried words emerging, unprompted, from the stillness. There is percussive brutalism in 'Relapse', and 'Afterlife' brings weight and solemnity in its funereal refrain. Four-to-the-'floor 'Newborn' turns the lights on as an equilibrium of sorts is sought and wrestled with, before 'So Rivers Plunge' sings like nobody's listening — a MIDI orchestra warming up in the box while the laptop remains asleep. Closing track 'The Bitter End' is no ending at all, instead promising a future in shimmering torques, caught on the wind of hope. It returns to us, with renewed awe, the starlight we began with.

WDR is the first full-length solo album Powell has ever released on his own label Diagonal – all other releases have been EPs, 12"s, or collaborations — and so it represents a landmark in his catalogue in more ways than one. "I nearly added a question mark to the album title," he says. "Recovery is a long process, and the album reflects that. There's a lot of short termism in the world right now, but recovery, in whatever guise, is the opposite of that… It takes time."

Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based artist working across sound, drawing, installation, and video. His practice finds generative potential for music in life's fleeting incidents, etching meaning from unassuming spaces and resonances. With releases on 12k, LAAPS, IIKKI, and The Trilogy Tapes, Sano has steadily carved out a distinctive voice within minimal and experimental music - one that privileges attentiveness and patience over spectacle.

"To Material Past", Sano's debut for SWIMS, carries this thread with a 30-minute expedition built solely using glockenspiel tones and field recordings from his local neighbourhood. This is a night walk with no map or end point; Sano follows irregular, coiling fragments that extend to form a tessellating luminous whole - like a subliminal mass of tree roots quietly shifting the concrete slabs beneath our feet.

Under this faded gauze of gestures and interactions, Sano's glockenspiel interjects like a grandfather clock, softly marking the partitions that make up a day's collected experience; clicking and chiming like the sleeping brain, as it sifts and catalogues a lifetime's ephemera of thoughts, faces and puzzles.

This was his first studio album in four years since his last album, "Endless Talking", and the first release since moving to EPIC/SONY RECORDS. This work was the result of sessions and collaborations with Arabian musicians, with an inclination towards the 'world music' that was gaining attention at the time. Deployed often in pop culture as punchline, Hosono takes such sight-seeing and transforms it into a metaphor for sample-heavy electronic music, drawing from various cultures and weaving them together into a new holistic vision. Omni Sight Seeing is the clearest iteration of this concept, as he alights on Algerian raï, Martin Denny exotica, and acid house, too. It’s one part Jon Hassell-esque Fourth World, one part Duke Ellington “jungle music,” with Hosono’s singular outlook running through it all.

Fennesz, who creates unique electronic sounds with guitars and computers, has released his first album in about five and a half years, "Mosaic." It is an unparalleled masterpiece with incredibly beautiful sound images constructed with incredible precision.

This is Fennesz's most introspective album to date. It was written and recorded at the end of 2023 and finished in summer 2024. Fennesz opened his third new studio space in the last four years. Without any immediate plans, this time he started from scratch with a strict working routine: wake up early in the morning, work until noon, take a break and work again until the evening. At first, just collect ideas, experiment and improvise. Then write, mix and revise. But the title was decided early on: Mosaic. It reflected an old-fashioned image-making technique, where elements were placed one by one to build a whole picture, before pixels could do it in an instant.

Mosaic, as its name suggests, is a delicate and intricate album, stitching together sonic fragments into something vast and immersive. Fennesz constructed the work layer by layer in a meticulous, almost meditative process, as if restoring forgotten memories or constructing a sonic monument.

Mosaic is a cinematic, deeply engaging and beautiful score with diverse influences and multiple possibilities to be explored by the listener.

With Mosaic, Fennesz proves once again that he's not just a musician, but an architect of sound, crafting a world for us to inhabit before dissolving, if only for a moment, into the ether. An album where science meets dreams, precision meets poetry, where sound itself becomes an ancient language that invites us to rediscover it. A real gem!

“i ai e.p.” by GEZAN with Million Wish Collective is a genre-blending 12" release that merges alternative rock, ambient textures, and experimental soundscapes. The A-side features the emotionally charged title track “i ai,” while the B-side offers a sprawling 18-minute remix by COMPUMA. Originally composed as the theme for the film i ai, the EP reflects GEZAN’s signature fusion of chaos, spirituality, and sonic exploration.

Much of the Collide's sound is derived from an old Aria Pro II electric guitar from Leif’s childhood, scratched up with damaged and unpredictable electrics.

The record leans into this sense of things being broken or damaged - and how sometimes things need to break in order for us to make sense of them- revelling in, rather than resisting, unpredictability.

Lush textures traverse us across unexpected terrains.

“Tunggak Semi” is the third album from Indonesian musician and producer Bambang Pranoto. Originally released in 2000, it’s an exemplary slice of what has become his signature style, a dream-like meditation on aspects of nature, combining elements of accordion, acoustic guitar, flute and percussion. The compositions cross eastern and western notation to inhabit a world of their own, a world between worlds, where harmonies reflect the beauty and joy of nature.

Bambang had a rather atypical entry into music, and studied electronics and telecommunications, before he took advantage of the wave of computer software like Cubase and Protools in the 1990s that enabled him to set about recording his own compositions and soundscapes. After playing in groups, he developed his own approach to constructing his productions. He invites musicians to record interpretations of his themes, which he then pieces together in Protools like a jigsaw puzzle. “The musicians have never even met!” he chuckled on a Skype call.

“Tunggak Semi” refers to the giant trees that appear all over Bali, and their process of renewal and regeneration. “If you cut the tree, and leave the roots, they will grow again. Everytime we cut, they grow again. It’s limitless. This philosophy means there’s always something new coming, whether an idea or music, anything.” This approach has grown out of Bambang’s studies into meditation, including Indian and Chinese scriptures, also Balinese and Indonesian religions. Music, like meditation, is a daily practice, and acceptance of the music and its ‘unfinishedness’, forms a central part of the process.

“We must not just think, but we must also feel, and we must accept that feeling,” explains Bambang, and that’s a step of opening one’s mind to possibility. It seems in keeping with two of Bambang’s musical inspirations, namely Ryuichi Sakamoto and Peter Gabriel, both known for their love of world folk music, and fusion of musical traditions. That’s mirrored in Bambang’s own collage-like approach, recording elements and piecing them together to make something unimagined. While the acoustic sound palette for “Tunggak Semi” is rooted in live recordings, Bambang is not afraid to put the digital technology to good use.

“We have to use the computer as a tool in the best way we can,” Bambang says. “Sometimes people say music is made by people, not by the computer, but it’s just another piece of equipment. What can we compose from this equipment? It’s technology music!”

Written and produced by Bambang Pranoto at interactive garden studio, Depok, Bogor between September and December 2000. 2025 version remastered by Wouter Brandenburg at Brandenburg Mastering.

This record draws inspiration from the railway jingles of the Keihan, JR, and

Hankyu lines connecting Kyoto and Osaka. These sonic motifs, first explored

and then transformed through the prism of our collective memory, culminated in

a one-hour live performance. It extends my research on the function of memory:

are our memories faithful to reality or reconstructions adapted to our personal

narrative?

"For A Fleeting Moment" is the result of the dialogue between the Swiss photographer Simone Kappeler and the Japanese musician Tomotsugu Nakamura initiated by IIKKI, between March 2023 and May 2024.

the complete project works in two physical imprints:

a book and a disc (vinyl/cd)

it should be experienced in different ways :

the book read alone

the disc listened to alone

the book and the disc read and listened to together.

___________________________________________________

Tomotsugu Nakamura is a musician and graphic designer residing in Tokyo, Japan. His primary artistic practice is to compose music with some fragments of minimal acoustic and electronic tones and some field recordings. In Concert, he he has played with various genre of musicians and his works have been released by Kaico, Audiobulb Records, and more recently by the French label LAAPS.

After studying photography, music, drawing in a Fines Arts school, David Nissen changed direction to get involved in cinema where he works there as director of photography for feature films or advertising, without ever forget about photography. French photographer David Nissen takes us on an atmospheric journey through fog, rain and fading lights. Explaining that he enjoys being in a contemplative state, he says he enjoys walking, driving, listening to music, which inspires him a lot. He is looking for a strong, powerful light, an atmosphere that can tell a story, which will be an invitation to travel through his images. With a background in cinema, it makes sense for him to approach photography like a director in search of the perfect location… the result is broody, sublime, as well as cinematic. His shoots in France and abroad are opportunities to exercise his photographer's eye, to make such personal and intimate series of photos during solitary wanderings in places that each have their own story to tell or to invent. The rare human beings who appear take on the appearance of movie characters whose enigmatic thoughts we would like to know...the visual strength of certain places or architectures, under singular light atmospheres, takes the visitor into a fiction in which he himself becomes an actor is an exchange of glances. Also photographing through impurities or raindrops, his search for materiality gives a thickness that we encounter in painting, his approach to photography is deliberately pictorial and emotional.

For him, cinematography and photography are two passions that merge and feed off each other: Write a story with Light.

« If cinema and photography have a marked tendency to intersect, it is because there are affinities and contrasts between them that bind them by nature. The photographic image being consubstantial with the cinematographic image, there are relations of opposition at the level of the modes of existence of their images for a spectator: on the one hand the animated images, in sequence, projected, temporalized... other, the single fixed image, printed, not temporalized. As a result, everyone can try to approach the other, cinema proves the experience of photographic fixity with the freeze frame, while photography experiences the experience of cinematographic sequentiality with the representation of movement with the effects of shake or spinning in his photos.

A brief historical and technical reminder makes it possible to establish that the similarities are due to the fact that photography is the fundamental material element at the base of cinema: the cinematographic photogram is by nature a photographic image. With the photo, the spectator generally has a close relationship, which allows him to enter into a relationship with it by sight and touch: the photograph is an image that the spectator can hold in his hands to look at it, he is somehow physically "attached" to the image. This attachment is physical, allowed by the small size. With the cinema, the spectator has a relationship of relative remoteness and comes into contact with him by sight and hearing. This distancing, this physical detachment, this border between the viewer and the film that the large format facilitates, the viewer's gaze "plunges" into the image. For the photo, this place is above all a private, intimate, enlightened environment in which it has an assigned place, arranged, collected, hung... the viewer does not really have to move, he can freely choose the moment of reading and manipulate the photo, the viewer has a certain hold over the photo. For the film, the place is often a public space, specially designed and dark, the spectator must move, "we are going to the cinema" take his place and a seated position, motionless, passive. The moment of reading is programmed, the viewer has no control over the film. » David Nissen

Nobody brings the ruckus quite like the Japanese. IKKII records invited Masaya Ozaki & Kaito Nakahori to join forces with visual artist Erwan Morère to create a hazy landscape of distorted violins on one of 2017’s most trying ambient noise efforts. Mythologies is limited to 300 copies, all fitted with beautiful hand-made artwork. Highly recommended for those who love drones in all colors of noise.

Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based music artist who has recorded since 2019 several albums on labels such as Important Records, IIKKI, and recently 12K among others. Working with electronic, instrumental, and concrete sounds, he crafts immersive assemblages of long overlapping tones and blurred resonance, cut through with textural crunch and hiss.

Aiko Takahashi is a Nova Gorica-based musician, a spirit that has released albums on various labels. Just like the line that separates the two cities where Aiko lives, Gorizia and Nova Gorica, divided between two countries yet united as one, Aiko’s music exists on a boundary. A line that separates silence from peculiar, almost imperceptible sounds. Too quiet to be Ambient, too Ambient to be Sound Art.

Two years ago, after a first complete release on IIKKI with "It Could Have Been A Beautiful", Aiko Takahashi comes back with a second complete album, this time, on LAAPS.

"This album is a delicate, meditative collection recorded between March and November 2024 in Aiko's former studio, a secluded spot near the River Isonzo, between Gorizia and Nova Gorica in Slovenia. The Grass Harp was made specifically for LAAPS, who asked Aiko to create a new complete piece of sounds. As always, it was largely recorded using dense layers of manipulated loops that weave in and out of the recordings, shaping them in a singular way through effects pedals, tape decks, and tape loops. The Grass Harp is a meditation on decay and silence, blending warm soundscapes with soft, playful melodies. That’s Aiko’s signature sound."

Tomotsugu Nakamura is a musician and graphic designer residing in Tokyo, Japan. His primary artistic practice is to compose music with some fragments of minimal acoustic and electronic tones and some field recordings. In Concert, he has played with various genre of musicians and his works have been released by Kaico, Audiobulb Records, and more recently by the recent label LAAPS.

’’Nothing Left Behind’’ is his second release on LAAPS after his well acclaimed album "Literature" released in July 2020.

A Day of the Sun is a spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz. They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but without the eyes and ears of these two artists, the mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation that only certain artists are able to recreate together, would never have given rise to this music. The album is based on Togashi's drums/percussion and Suzuki's bass, with occasional changes to cello and piano/synths, and is skillfully performed by just the two of them, creating a unique worldview; a performance that far exceeds expectations. The mystical melodies of the East, earthy percussion, and the sensibilities of the two intertwine to create a unique groove, resulting in a universal masterpiece that will never fade away and connects with today's sound makers and DJs. Top sound quality from original master tapes. Includes 4-sided insert with a very interesting interview at the time with the two musicians regarding the record.