MUSIC

Alien D, aka Daniel Creahan, is a staple in the NYC underground, known for his releases on labels including Lillerne, 1432 R and Banlieue Records. On his latest album, For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom – his first for Theory Therapy – Creahan takes us deeper into the dubby landscapes of his previous work, with a renewed focus on groove and movement.

Where Lillerne’s Spiritual World leaned toward ambient abstraction, Early Hours pulses with kinetic energy, with tracks like “Soil Dub” and “Sleepy’s Gambit” propelling us forward with dubwise rhythms crafted for the dancefloor.

The album thrives on its infectious, steady groove, with repeating phrases and subtle shifts that keep the music in constant motion. Nowhere is this more evident than on the gentle roller, “Breather.” Over 13 minutes, Creahan lets small variations in tone and a propulsive low-end evolve gradually alongside Ben Seretan’s guitar.

While Early Hours embraces a more rhythmic direction, it still retains the eccentricity and atmosphere that defines Alien D’s sound. Conceived in the first days after the COVID lockdown, there’s a hopeful quality to the music – flickering tones, soft percussive elements and organic textures that hover just behind the beat – making it feel both intimate and expansive. It’s as though Creahan has bottled those transcendent moments that can occur during the early hours of a party, when everything feels suspended in a state of potential.

大人気ユニット、Salamandaの片翼！韓国・ソウルを拠点に活動するプロデューサー／DJ、Yetsubyによる最新アルバム『4EVA』が、UK新興レーベル〈Pink Oyster〉の第1弾として登場。ブレイクビーツ、フットワーク、ジャングル、IDM、アンビエント、クラブ・ミュージックを自在に横断しながら、デジタル／アナログ／アコースティックの音響を緻密に編み上げた全10曲。遊び心溢れるサウンド・デザインと、内省的かつ親密なムードが共存する、Yetsubyのソロ作品として極めて完成度の高い一枚です。限定300部。

French synth-dub duo Froid Dub continue their blast of organic and digital material on this brand new 6-track album. Pushing the clash between synth wave and dub even further, the electronic beats of the TR-808 are more than ever engulfed in the slow motion vibes of the digi-bass echoes.French synth-dub duo Froid Dub continue their blast of organic and digital material on this brand new 6-track album. Pushing the clash between synth wave and dub even further, the electronic beats of the TR-808 are more than ever engulfed in the slow motion vibes of the digi-bass echoes.

co:clear is overjoyed to welcome Jonnnah to its fold, with a new long-form 12” edition. Featuring Pavel Milyakov (aka Buttechno) right off the bat, ‘Me, With You’ is an album that grips its listener tight with gleaming electronica, off-kilter trip-hop and swampy bass.

With past offerings to Soleil Rouge and Second End Records – a label which he heads – there's a thread that laces all of Jonnnah’s work. Although never sticking to a definable bracket, the Lyon-dweller effortlessly floats through various tempers, peddling impeccable electronics as equally suited to colossal sound systems, as they are to solitary early morning walks in headphones. It's ambient for the foreground that surprises with flurries of two-step and amen breaks – present-day sonics that doff their cap to what’s come before.

Keigo Tatsumi, also known as the bassist of Never Young Beach, a central figure in the Japanese indie rock scene, has released his first solo work, "AT US," on cassette. This original soundtrack was produced after he was in charge of the music for photographer Tomohiro Takeshita's photo exhibition "Across the United States." Drummer/percussionist Kazuhiko Masumura, known as a former member of "Mori wa Ikiteiru," participated as a percussionist. Takuro Okada, also of "Mori wa Ikiteiru," was in charge of mixing/mastering, making this a work with perfect backup!

For AI-38 Italian duo LF58 (Giuseppe Tillieci and Filippo Scorcucchi) present ‘Radials’. A site-specific concept piece that was recorded live on location in Venice, Radials showcases the powerful and transportive sound world which LF58 have become known for. Radials takes its name from the homonymous exhibition created by the Roman artist group Sbagliato, for the 2023 Biennale Architettura of Venice. Following a landmark renovation of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi by renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, Sbagliato proposed the spatial transformation of the historic sixteenth-century building that would blur the lines between fiction and the real. The concept, to create unexpected “voids” within the fixed order of architecture, prompts the observer to question the fleeting and subjective nature of the reality that surrounds us. The building’s main loggia – a series of five archways exposed to the Canal Grande – take on a theme of reproduction and multiplication, giving rise to infinite perspectives in a dizzying mise en abyme. Through the portal-like potentialities of the loggia, the visitor enters the gateway to a fluid realm of distorted time and space. LF58 arose to translate the visual concept of Radials into sound, delivered through a special quadraphonic concert performed at the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in October 2023. Quadraphonics, with its four distinct audio channels, were used in direct correlation with the visual elements of the installation to immerse the audience in a dreamlike, multisensory experience. The opening scene of running waters and the cacophony of the bustling city streets quickly dissolves under the chiming of nearby bells, as hidden liminal spaces become revealed. It’s not long before all remnants of the ordinary are left behind, as the listener is submerged into the shimmering frequencies of parallel dimensions. A spatial soundscape of ever-moving forms and colours, Radials descends into ever-deeper waters. As the facade of what was once known falls away, a transportive journey of mind-body alterations begins.

AI-28 arrives as a double-12” reissue of an album titled “Lucid Dreams”. Formerly released in 1996 as a CD on the now defunct UK imprint em:t, the album now becomes available for the first time on vinyl. Produced collaboratively by Chris Allen, David Thompson (both co-founders of em:t), plus label affiliates Tom Smyth and Will Joss, the record features outlier academic and philosopher Celia Green narrating passages of her classic book “Lucid Dreams” (published in 1968), seamlessly embellished with atmospheric soundscapes throughout. Brooding amorphously on the cusp of the unknown, the music captures the quintessentially mysterious quality of dreams and dreaming. Layer by layer, the listener is submerged deep into the subconscious stream. The record curls and unwinds with bewildering influence whilst exploring key themes of Green’s studies, with topics covering hallucinatory states, apparitions, out of body experiences, and extrasensory perception. The collaborative handling of samples and sound material comes together powerfully to create a piece that is both artistically theatrical in flavour and sumptuously immersive – a true documentary for the ears and imagination.

Katatonic Silentio makes her Fleur Sauvage debut with a live recording captured in the Hypnose Room at La Nature 2023—a raw, improvised performance split into four parts across two 12”s. Moving between abstract electronics, textured noise and cinematic ambient, the set balances low-end weight and grainy chaos with fleeting moments of stillness. Tension underpins the entire performance, occasionally boiling over into jagged peaks of intensity. Rather than simply documenting a performance, this release preserves a ritual: unstable, embodied, and elemental. As ever with Katatonic Silentio, the sound is not merely heard—it is lived in.

Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, Okkyung Lee returns to Shelter Press with Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities, a deeply intimate body of recordings at the juncture of ambient music, minimalism, and the baroque, that stands as radical intervention with what experimental music can be, and the place that organisations of sound occupy in our lives.

For more than two decades, Okkyung Lee has stood at the forefront of the most radical trajectories of experimental music: a virtuosic cellist and improviser, renowned for her creative rigour and emotive depth. Particularly noteworthy for her range, dexterity, and adaptability, over the last five years Lee’s output has revealed unexpected shifts and developments that move far afield from the realms of free improvisation for which she is most well know. 2020’s Yeo​-​Neun, a heart-wrenching, ambient chamber work - drawing inspiration from the Korean popular music of her youth - was issued by Shelter Press to great critical response, followed closely by Teum (The Silvery Slit) - one of a series engrossing electroacoustic works created at Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris - on Portraits GRM, and then 나를 (Na-Reul) in 2021, regarded by Lee as a closing statement of more than two decades living in New York, which set the precedent of her allowing her emotions to fully occupy the forefront of the music for the first time. Marking her return to Shelter press, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities, encounters Lee upturning the apple cart once again, weaving a profoundly intimate artistic statement on completely unexpected terms.

Like its three aforementioned predecessors, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) belongs to broadening shift in Lee’s approach to composing that roughly aligns with her return to her native South Korea, having lived in the United States since her late teens. Infused with a deep reengagement with her own culture and relationship to memory, it is equally a response to those critical challenges and questions provoked by significant life change. Worked on in isolation, and continuously returned to, over the course of four years, the album’s nine pieces began with a simple recognition that experimental music is not always what we imagine it to be. It is a practice and a pursuit - a music for which, at its inception, the outcome is unknown - rather than an idiom defined by certain syntaxes, approaches, and qualities of structure and sound. From this departure point, Lee began to inquire after the utility of music itself: what is it for, what does it do, and what place does it (or can it) occupy in our lives?

This solitary and durational journey, each composition gradually moving through different phases and evolutions over years, led Lee toward uncharted ground: a music that is not only playful, introspective, and seductive, but also intended to provoke a relationship to experimental music beyond its normative expectations. Rather active or deep listening, it pursues passive listening. Rather than a grand statement, it is discreet. Rather than virtuosity, it embraces the elegant and direct. Even more strikingly, for the first time, the music of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) encounters Lee leaving the cello entirely behind.

Created at home on keyboard, computer, and an inexpensive cassette recorder, Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) presents a remarkable form of ambient music - organisations of sound that become their own environment, to be occupied - intended, as the album’s subheading infers, as Background Music For Your Mundane Activities. An expansion of the creative pathways opened by the Korean pop imbued compositions of Yeo​-​Neun, aspects of electronic process explored by Teum (The Silvery Slit), and the emotive foregrounding of 나를 (Na-Reul), each of the pieces presented across the two sides of Just Like Any Other Day (어느날) implies something far greater than the limits of its own temporarily: a mood, provocations of memory and place, mirrors for the solitude within which it was made, and palpable emotion lingering just out of grasp. For Lee, each of the album’s compositions could be continued or looped for an indeterminate duration: straddling a ground between the minimal and the baroque, enveloping the listener in endless cycles of appreciating, repetitive and rhythmical notes, flirting with the melodic and implying a disembodied imagism that borders on the profound.

Remarkably beautiful and direct, Okkyung Lee’s Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities represents a radical reconfiguration of experiential music, stripped to its bare essence in defiance of the widely presumed aesthetic signifiers. Unlike anything we’ve heard from her before, this immersive body of intimate recordings not only reveals new dimensions of Lee’s striking range as an artist, but also of how we might regard and occupy music itself: an ambience to lived and felt like a second skin.

Previously issued on three rare cassette-only editions, Joanna Brouk’s 1980 sophomore album The Space Between has finally been given spacious LP quarters. The side-long title track, performed by Brouk’s Mills College instructor and sometime-lover Bill Maraldo is among the deepest and most distinctive pieces in the new age canon, while side B’s three cuts expand the theme in hypnotic new directions.

A surprising suite of new material from popular kankyō ongaku vanguard Yutaka Hirose, 'Voices' is a chaotic collage of field recordings, rickety beatbox loops, rough-textured samples and psychedelic synths - ambient it ain't. It's fascinating to hear 'Voices' because when you've not seen much new material emerge from an artist since their classic era, the expectation is that they've simply stopped producing. Hirose is best known for his 1986-released 'Nova' album, a record commissioned by the Misawa Home Corporation for use in their prefab houses and rediscovered online (like Midori Takada's 'Through the Looking Glass' or Hiroshi Yoshimura's 'Green') decades later. WRWTFWW Records already reissued that record, bundling it with almost an hour of extra material, and followed it up with an additional archive of Hirose's '80s recordings, but 'Voices' brings us right into the present. So it shouldn't be too surprising that the album is markedly different from its predecessors. You'll get a good idea of what to expect with the 12-minute opener 'Library', a track that sounds like Hirose is scrubbing through his archive of sounds, layering public transport ambiance with movie samples, off-hand vocal takes, radio chatter, jazz stems and squelchy back-room rhythms. Like Akira Umeda's similarly spannered 'Gueixa', it's a head-melting stream-of-consciousness experience, not really music so much as a vortex of sound. Hirose's four 'The Other Side' tracks are more straightforward balearic techno experiments offset by peculiar environmental recordings, and these are peppered through the album - no doubt to lighten the mood. Elsewhere, Hirose gets into grinding, ritualistic IDM on 'Uprising', and threads brittle beats and acidic synths through a dense fog of bird calls and chat on 'Mixture'. He's been busy.

“A mesmerizing Japanese ambient techno masterpiece that that completely rewires how you perceive music” Electronic Beats A Mountainous Masterpiece. A powerful testament to rave culture’s establishment and the birth of a new scene in Japan emerging in the mid ‘90s. One of Yokota’s most celebrated work that merges Japanese new age and minimal techno. Alex From Tokyo Prat (Japan Vibrations, world famous, Paris) On July 26th Susumu Yokota’s venerated 1994 classic ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is reissued in expanded, deluxe fashion, as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the label that originally presented it. Japan’s Musicmine – specifically it’s electronic subsidiary Sublime – released the album on June 29th 1994, simultaneously with Ken Ishii’s ‘Reference To Difference’, as their inaugural joint offering. ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is an enchanting mix of mystical ambient acid and futurist minimal techno, taking the listeners on a psychedelic pilgrimage, where 303, synths and electronic percussion are scented with reverb, echo and forest recordings. Merging Japanese new age and sparse electronica, the recording is free, organic, and energized – proffering a unique blend of early 90s western styles and the essence of his home country. Yokota originally planned an ambient record, but ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ evolved into a concept work featuring the Roland TB-303, which he recorded live at home alongside a sampler, yielding experimental and innovative results. The long player found its muse in the famed 18th-19th century artist Hokusai’s red rendition of Mt. Fuji, known as ‘Red Fuji’ or ‘Akafuji’. Part of the painter’s renowned ‘Thirty Six Views of Mt. Fuji’ series from the 1830s, ‘Red Fuji’ depicts the iconic sacred mountain aglow in red at dawn, symbolizing spirituality and creativity. With references to Japanese folklore, nature and shrines, tracks like ‘Kinoko’ and ‘Meijijingu’ invite the listener to immerse themselves in the album’s spiritual depths. Yokota’s own homage-to-Hokusai drawing graces the record’s cover, and was inspired by the concept of wa (harmony) – highlighting his diverse skills not only as a musician, but an artist and designer too. ‘Acid Mt. Fuji’ is a powerful testament to the establishment of rave culture in Japan, which rapidly developed within just two years, from 1992 to 1994. Largely due to praise for the breathtaking originality of the LP, within this burgeoning national techno scene, Yokota rose to prominence as one of its key figures. He then became one of the most renowned artists to emerge from his homeland and enter the global electronic pantheon. He inspired a new wave of Japanese producers and DJs, contributing significantly to the growth of the techno movement in Japan. Yokota was a solitary figure, an artist who expressed his life through the continuous creation of music. For those seeking something different; mystical, soothing, pristinely ergonomic and uniquely Japanese, this record stands as iconic as Mt. Fuji itself. - This triple vinyl Deluxe Edition includes the original album’s eleven tracks alongside five raw and jacking rare gems, available on wax for the first time, which were previously included only in the Japanese 2016 Deluxe Edition CD. There are also two digital-only bonus tracks. One is a live performance by Yokota, titled ‘Live at Shibuya Beam Hall’, which was recorded at Sublime Records’ label launch party, held in September 1994. It was previously only released on the aforementioned 2016 Japanese CD edition. This event, titled ‘Sublime Records Presents New Style of Electronic Ambient Party’ featured performances by Susumu Yokota, Ken Ishii, Yoshihiro Sawasaki, Speedy J and DJ Wada. This ten minute long, rare live recording captures Yokota playing a dynamic, fast paced acid house live jam, using two TB-303s and a drum machine. The other digital only bonus track is an alternative version of ‘H’, which was discovered recently whilst excavating a DAT. The liner notes are written by DJ/producer Alex From Tokyo, who was a good friend of Yokota, and experienced the 90s Tokyo club scene first-hand as an insider. His compilation ‘Japan Vibrations Vol. 1’ captures this golden era, and features music by Prism (Susumu Yokota), Ryuichi Sakamoto, Haruomi Hosono, Yasuaki Shimizu, Quadra (Hiroshi Watanabe) and more.

Manchester’s Sferic label (Space Afrika, Jake Muir, Bianca Scout, Roméo Poirier++) return with a fire debut from ungoogleable Greco-Canadian anomaly Anastasia Patellis, aka Any, featuring additional instrumentation and co-production from Klein/Lolina cohort LA Timpa. It's a set of "squat pop" experiments that thread nocturnal soundscaping and pop hooks through hallucinated outlines written on harp and broken synth, highly recommended if you’re into Astrid Sonne, Tirzah, Nala Sinephro.

Greco-Canadian artist Any was bedding down in a Cretan squat when the album's title, μέγα ελεός in Greek, boomed from loudspeakers next to a bonfire, courtesy of a midnight Orthodox church sermon. Moving to the sunny, ancient island had provided her with an escape from big city burnout, but she ended staying far longer than expected - years rather than months. It’s this prolonged sense of suspension that provides the album with its wandering spirit, using harp as an emotional core.

Listening to Breton music made on the Celtic harp from artists like Kristen Noguès and Alan Stivell, Any sketched out song outlines that were then tweaked by Lagos-born, Toronto-raised journeyman LA Timpa, who flew out to Crete last summer to put his idiosyncratic stamp on the record. Like the dusty songs on Astrid Sonne's 'Great Doubt, ‘MEGA MERCY' sounds as if its drum line was duped on dictaphone from an old beat tape, then spliced with field recordings and vocals.

Half sung, half spoken, she murmurs around the beat, not exactly over it, adding circuitous, boss-tuned harp twangs when necessary. It's music that's spartan rather than lo-fi; a sort of bare-bones reaction to electroacoustic experimentation and outsider folk. It makes perfect sense that an artist as thematically on-point as LA Timpa is involved - Any's instrumental vamps are roughly pasted around pinprick boom-bap snaps and crunchy foley denouements, eventually cooled into contemplative Nala Sinephro-esque meditations.

Sections bring to mind Tirzah's most psychedelic early excursions, with dry asides set against a slurping, off-axis beatbox loop and distant, barely-audible synths. The record is tied up on 'WEATHER LIKE TIDE', an instrumental callback to the opener, book-ending the album with a melancholy, humid kinda ambient folk, purposefully melting the timeline.

Good Morning Tapes call on grimwig, aka Ali Safi of the Marionette label (Pretty Sneaky, Khôra, Francesco Cavaliere & Tomoko Sauvage++) for a 90 minute exhalation of tripped-out DMT synths and deep, sublimated atmospherics. Aye it’s a good one.

‘The Third Place’ presents a revision of a mix initially cooked up for Marionette’s 10th anniversary session at Cafe Oto and perfectly encapsulates ethereal, transcendent dream-weaving with cherry-picked slices of ambient, 4th world, field recordings and wafts of meditative flute, sitar and snatched conversations, seamlessly slanted to the supine.

Inspirations from Indian classical and kosmische seep into lysergic West Coast sentiments and subby, weightless futurism with a cinematic grasp of sound design that hews to a path that patently aligns with Good Morning Types core interests. Where the label usually deals in more overtly sunny strains of this vibe, however, Grimwig takes us to more dappled territory with passages of post-industrial murk, Malibu-esque silhouettes and slow-pulsing drums elevating the 4th world topography into something much more nuanced - and all the better for it.

Paris-born electronic music pioneer and 1970s GRM alumni Ariel Kalma joins with multinational New York trio Asa Tone (Kaazi, Melati ESP, Tristan Arp) for a series of intergenerational, electro-acoustic studio conversations, exploring elasticity within rhythm and winds… or as one early listener observed “space and time.”

Following a chance encounter at Ariel’s studio in the Australian rainforest during the pandemic, Melati & Kaazi began recording long live takes with Kalma, weaving in bioluminescent synth improvisations from Tristan Arp remotely. Revisited a few years later between the members of Asa Tone’s respective homes in New York & Indonesia, “○” is the document of a significant moment in the lives of all the album’s players; an ode to memory and connection in an era of crisis, illuminated via flickering fragments of steel flute, kantilan, modular synthesizer, xaphoon, tenor sax, EWI, field recordings of the surrounding rainforest, and the human voice.

Recorded, written and produced by Asa Tone & Ariel Kalma.
Ariel Kalma: Western Concert Flute, Xaphoon, Tenor Saxophone, Voice
Melati ESP: EWI, Kantilan, Voice
Kaazi: Hydrasynth, Opsix, Percussion
Tristan Arp: Modular Synthesizer, Moog Sub37, Percussion
Additional percussion on *3 by Miles Myjavec

Mixed by Tristan Arp, Kaazi and Ariel Kalma.
Mastered by Jose Arentes at GRAMA, Porto.
Art Direction & Layout : Melati ESP, Kaazi, Biscuit.
 

The latest title from Good Morning Tapes, the cult-favorite cassette label known for its extremely unique catalog, is a mixtape by New York-based new age archivist Mark Griffey (aka Ultravillage) that draws from his vast collection of US cassettes from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, presenting obscure ambient, minimal, progressive rock, electronic, and new age music. This mixtape features obscure ambient, minimal, progressive rock, electronic, and new age music from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s on cassette from the United States. A wonderful selection of light rhythmic and melodic charms woven together over the course of an hour.

Misha Hollenbach, a Melbourne, Australia-based DJ who has previously released excellent mixtapes on Good Morning Tapes, is part of the fashion, art, and design label/publisher P.A.M., which he co-founded with his wife and creative partner, Shauna Toohey, He is also a member of P.A.M, a fashion, art, and design label/publisher co-founded with his wife and creative partner, Shauna Toohey.

A collection of brand new studio recordings, recorded by Davey Jewell (Peaking Lights/Flaming Lips) and mixed by Carlos Niño (Leaving Records). A magical mixtape of tracks that run the full gamut of ‘Laraaji music’, from blissed-out percussive jams to reflective vocal hymnals to trance-inducing drones. A perfect Laraaji entry-point on his never-ending creative journey through inner light.

Praise for Bring On The Sun:

“Shimmers and glistens and throbs in all the right places.” - The Guardian

“It’s minimalistic and trance-like, made for headphone listening and intimate spaces, but in no way does it fade into the background” - Pitchfork

“Spontaneous yet cohesive; intimate yet spun-out, this is some of Laraaji’s finest work. He is finally getting the recognition for being the singular visionary that he is” - Future Music

“A remarkable, transcendental journey into the clouds” - Electronic Sound

“Some much needed waves of cosmic sunshine for our currently troubled times” - The Wire

“An uplifting transcendence that’s simply a joy to hear” - Prog Magazine

“A sprawling collection, encompassing everything from euphoric zither washes to jazzy beat poetry, without ever losing sight of its mood of sunny positivity” - Uncut

Internationally acclaimed harpist Alina Bzhezhinska and Ibiza-based producer Tulshi announce their collaborative album ‘Whispers of Rain’

The album delves into the architecture of memory and human emotion, using rain as a central metaphor for life’s cycles: the cleansing of loss, the blossoming of renewal and the profound inner strength cultivated in moments of serene introspection. To celebrate the release, Alina will be hosting a listening party at Brilliant Corners, London on Monday 23rd June, followed by an album launch show at The Vortex, London on Monday 7th July. The live performance will feature Tulshi, Tony Kofi & Ni Maxine.

With album singles “Whispers of Rain” and “Across the Sea”, this LP expands on the pair’s seamless fusion of organic and electronic elements. Alina’s expressive harp, deeply rooted in jazz and classical traditions intertwines with Tulshi’s inventive production, drawing from ambient deep tech and dub-inflected electronica.

“Journey Home”, is a poignant meditation on closure and self-discovery. It mirrors the arc of the album, bringing the listener full circle, both thematically and sonically. Reflective and expansive, the track captures the emotional weight of returning to a place that has changed, while questioning if home is truly a destination or a state of being.

Born from a shared creative vision on the tranquil side of Ibiza, ‘Whispers of Rain’ was shaped by the island's natural beauty and a deep connection to the life that surrounds us. After years of travel, both Alina and Tulshi found inspiration here, turning movement into stillness. In 2022 Alina and Tulshi were introduced by a mutual friend, their first session was entirely unplanned, an afternoon of spontaneous improvisation in Tulshi’s home studio in Ibiza. “It was a beautiful sunny day and my three-year-old was playing outside while Alina and I jammed inside,” Tulshi recalls. “Her harp was running through granular effects and large reverbs and the result was “Child’s Play”, you can even hear the children’s voices in the background if you listen closely.”

That improvisational energy became the foundation of the album. Tulshi initially experimented with house beats but ultimately stripped everything back to allow Alina’s harp to lead the way. “I always say as a producer, you have to sit back and let the music tell you what it wants to be,” he explains. Alina adds, “I loved the way Tulshi felt the music, we instantly had a strong creative connection. Our collaboration was built on trust, we each understood how to complement the other’s sound without overpowering it.” Their process was supple, allowing the compositions to evolve organically into a body of work that feels deeply personal, yet universally resonant.

The album’s narrative deepens with tracks like “Nomad’s Nocturne” which introduces darker, restless energy, reflecting themes of displacement and the uncertainty of movement, with Alina’s bold harp clusters and Tulshi’s live tabla guiding the piece. “Whispers of Rain” emerged from a moment of sunlit rain in Ibiza, where Alina and Tulshi found themselves in a state of pure flow, translating the rhythm of falling droplets into sound. “Warm Days, Cold Nights” juxtaposes earthy folk and blues tones with a brooding synth pad, expressing the emotional contrasts of a traveller’s path; “Starling” dissolves the boundaries between harp and synth, creating a soaring, immersive soundscape; “Across the Sea” explores the bittersweet experience of finding a new home while feeling the pull of what’s been left behind. Tulshi’s glitch-infused production mimics the fizz and crackle beneath ocean waves, as Alina’s fluid glissandi mirrors the movement of the tide.

Celebrated new wave compilation from Japan reissued for the first time on vinyl. A much-cherished gem from the 1980s underground Japanese music scene returns as Soft Selection 84 is reissued by Glossy Mistakes for its 40th anniversary. Originally released on DIY label Soft, the compilation sees 13 tracks from nine acts spanning minimal, ambient, zolo and more for a beguiling listen. The result is a charming time capsule of eclectic creativity in which nothing sounds dated. Take La Sellrose Can Can, whose two party jams predate Kero Kero Bonito's hyperpop by decades. In addition, an impeccable remastering from the original master tapes adds to the "could have been recorded yesterday" feel of the collection. Soft Selection 84 also includes the eccentric Picky Picnic. One of the few featured artists with recordings beyond the anthology, the trio is an essential act for those curious about Japanese art pop of the era. There is also new wave introspection from Name, whose "Do We All Need Love" plays out as a sensual nod to John Lennon. In a similar vein is Clä-Sick, the recording name of Goro Some, the compilation's original producer and founder of Soft. The record's rerelease comes with Some's blessing, along with his original artwork and photography. Ultimately, the listener is left tantalised by his selection and its bold excursions into no wave, synth pop, radioplay and bizzaro house. Most of the artists on this release would fade into obscurity, but the transient nature of the potential showcased has helped cement the compilation's reputation over the years. Soft Selection will be released on vinyl LP by Glossy Mistakes on March 2024, with a remastering from the original master tapes. Notice: SC Ruch on unit 25 are thinking noise. You don't care, please. Note II: Artwork was restored from a folder copy that had a gorgeous blue grading/fading, we kept it that way on the reissue.

A stunning new cassette release from Yama Yuki—head of Tokyo-based label 〈ato.archives〉, known for reissuing key works by Masami Tada (East Bionic Symphonia, Marginal Consort) and Masahiro Sugaya—now arriving via the esteemed 〈Kankyo Records〉. Blending a uniquely Japanese sensibility toward nature, local spirituality, and the vacant textures of urban space, this ambient gem weaves a delicate yet intricate soundscape. Rooted in the lineage of environmental music, minimalism, and post-New Age ambient, it offers a quiet prayer in sound—an auditory landscape you can almost touch.

Bitterviper is the brand-new quartet of Nikos Veliotis (cello), Taku Unami (synthesizer), Sarah Hennies (percussion), and David Grubbs (guitar, piano), four individuals who separately are responsible for some of the most striking and wildly idiosyncratic music of the past couple of decades -- not to mention the duo collaborations between Grubbs and Unami (the albums Comet Meta and Failed Celestial Creatures) and Veliotis and Grubbs (The Harmless Dust). Athens-based Nikos Veliotis set Bitterviper into motion with four overdubbed pieces of dense psychoacoustic marvels on the cello; Grubbs responded with characteristically subtle tracery on piano, guitar, and lap steel; Unami weighed in electronically from Tokyo to mysteriously thicken both the plot and the low end; and Hennies applied her compositional gifts to structure the whole thing with an Occam's Razor approach to percussion. But once you drop the needle on Bitterviper, its origin story becomes ancient history; you're suddenly in the presence of an ensemble that sounds like no other and for whom there are no false steps. It's all fair game when this is how you choose to play; Bitterviper is a salvo of confidence and conviction, and this is only the beginning. David Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He was a member of Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Luc Ferrari, Will Oldham, Loren Connors, Jan St. Werner, The Red Krayola, and many others. Sarah Hennies is a composer and percussionist based in upstate New York whose work is concerned with a variety of musical, sociopolitical, and psychological issues including queer and trans identity, psychoacoustics, and the social and neurological conditions underlying creative thought. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Bard College. Taku Unami's work is influenced by science fiction, supernatural horror and weird fiction. He's the composer of film scores for directors including Isao Okishima and Takeshi Furusawa, was half (with Toshiya Tsunoda) of the group Wovenland, is one-third of the group Hontatedori, and has collaborated with, among others, Annette Krebs, Radu Malfatti, Jean-Luc Guionnet, Jarrod Fowler, and Graham Lambkin. Nikos Veliotis founded Mohammad with ILIOS and Coti K. (renamed MMMD in 2015). In the 1990s he developed an experimental practice, exploring image and sound, mainly through the cello; he also performed in numerous groups, most notably CRANC (with Angharad and Rhodri Davies) and Looper (with Ingar Zach and Martin Küchen)."

Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.

Interior” was formed by Daisuke Hinata and Hideki Nonaka, who were alumni of the Berkeley College of Music. Their first album “Interior” was released in 1982 on Haruomi Hosono's label, Yen Records. Their musical style of instrumental synth-pop with an emotional flavor based on “ambient music” and “environmental music” style is one of the most popular styles in the new age music scene in the U.S. Windham Hill Records, one of the leading new age music labels in the U.S., has also taken notice.