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Horse Vision - Another Life (LP)
Horse Vision - Another Life (LP)Scenic Route
¥4,587
The latest album from Horse Vision, the experimental indie rock unit based in Stockholm and crafting music across Europe, now arrives on vinyl. Positioned at the intersection of pop/indie sensibilities and dreamy electronic ambient, the record quietly dwells on themes of “everyday fluctuations and the slippage of memory and emotion.” Its intimate, introspective sound—shaped by post-rock and emo influences—feels attuned to the stillness before dawn or the moments when city lights continue to flicker. A graceful work where rich imagery emerges through resonance and ambiguity, filling the quiet spaces within the listener.
DEEPCHORD - LUXURY 1 & 2 (12")
DEEPCHORD - LUXURY 1 & 2 (12")Soma Records
¥3,233
Detroit dub techno and ambient dub legend Rod Modell returns with a reissue of his 2014 Deepchord masterpiece on Soma Quality Recordings. Across two weighty yet spectral cuts, the release embodies his lineage to Basic Channel while expanding into a uniquely immersive emotional space. Rarely has Modell so explicitly foregrounded spectral vocal textures, marking this as a work that broadens his expressive scope. A true masterstroke—poised between meditation and the club, equally attuned to the shadows of the midnight city and the depths of inner emotion.
Little Annie meets Night Foundation - Inertia (7")Little Annie meets Night Foundation - Inertia (7")
Little Annie meets Night Foundation - Inertia (7")Noir Age
¥3,331
Veteran avant-garde artist Little Annie teams up with South Florida producer Richard Vergez’s project Night Foundation for Inertia, a 7-inch release on Noir Age. A distinctive dark ambient single where their sensibilities subtly intersect, the A-side layers smooth bass and sustained tones with Annie’s restrained vocals, evoking an urban desolation, while the B-side offers a dub-inflected counterpart, steeped in reverb and spatial treatments that extend the track’s afterglow. Mastered by none other than KRAMER, famed for his work with Daniel Johnston, the release is further elevated by its visual and physical presentation: limited art editions, silkscreen packaging, and inserts that merge sound and image into a singular experience. Strictly limited to 300 copies.
Koss - Ancient Rain (2LP)Koss - Ancient Rain (2LP)
Koss - Ancient Rain (2LP)Mule Musiq
¥4,695

romantically, otherworldly floating introspective ambient: kuniyuki takahashi, one of japan’s most prolific contemporary musicians, was always an artist for deep sensual expressions.

especially under his anonym koss he explores profound electronic ambient sounds enlarged with ingredients of house, minimal, idm and what he calls a “‘new oriental sound”, a style, that translates traces of ancient asian music traditions into modern realms.

in particular his fourth koss album “ancient rain”, released in 2008 as cd only, was an attempt to meld old melodic traditions with textural layers of modern electronic frequencies without losing a distinct human touch.

now mule musiq releases his nine compositions for the first time as a double lp, rendering his poetic, slow burning melodic drifts and rhythmical shifts into the richness of the vinyl sound. all music was produced in-depth in his very own private studio while using music making computer software, a roland system-1, jupiter-8 and the dynamic percussion synth korg wavedrum.

besides the short tune “dream (real world), that features suavely absorbing oriental harp sounds, all compositions vibrate six to ten minutes long. an epic format, that goes hand in hand with kuniyuki’s extemporaneous work ethic, in which every moment of creating gener-ates a unique unknown poetic universe.

“it's an endless continuing journey” he states and points out to what listeners will experience while wandering off in his subtle expanding layers of sounds and electronic modulations. sometimes his favorite instrument, the piano, is hanging dulcet above the frequency alterna-tions.

also restrained house grooves actuate the cautious chord progressions and environmental sounds deepen the sublime listening experience. those who dive into “ancient rain” of the reel, will experience a seamlessly shadowy ambient drift, in which every detail is given space to breathe in order to entrap heedful spirits into a preternatural never-never land beyond space and time.

Externalism - False 03 (LP)
Externalism - False 03 (LP)False Aralia
¥4,678

The Peak Oil-affiliated False Aralia return with a class 3rd session in transit from Sade-esque holographic dub soul to rugged experiments in compression a la Torsten Profrock and Topdown Dialectic.

In the glistening wake of their first batch of 12”s by Zero Key & Selfsame, the label double their tally with two sterling new works swimming in refined space between deepest ambient soul and rudely tactile delicacies. Label bosses Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Kranky) and pal Izaak Schlossman keep the vibe meticulously on course with the first introduction to Externalism, whose sound palette suggests it may well be the same character behind Topdown Dialectic, but could be a collective for all we know - and that enigma is a key part of the pleasure of these EPs.

Comparisons with Sade are kinda inevitable in a standout first bit of soulfully blissed syllables swirled on a bassline straight out of the Rhythm & Sound playbook, suspended in thizzing contrails- pure hair-kissing styles - whilst the rest of the EP appears to be progressively smudged versions of that opening gambit, blurring the vox into the dub aether on the 2nd, and dialling up the bass in gritty Dynamo/Various Artists/T++ offbeats in the 3rd, and ultimately into shifty, subaquatic coruscations on the 4th. Magic.

Tip!

Zero Key - False 01 (LP)Zero Key - False 01 (LP)
Zero Key - False 01 (LP)False Aralia
¥4,645

in the middle of it we instantiate false aralia: a series of recordings growing in all directions, cataloging the work of a group of north american collaborators centered around the studio practices of izaak schlossman (of aught, s transporter, loveshadow etc.) and facilitated by brian foote (of peak oil, kranky, etc.). with this outlet we hope to provide useful tools for dance and avenues for intentional listening.

the first release, ‘zero key’, explores valences of an idea as it slips, as would a thought or a cloud, into something else entirely across its four tracks of recursive microhouse rhythms and hallucinated dub spatializations. foregrounding its most melodic state, its most percussive, and two points between, the versions cut an indeterminate and continuous process into discrete objects that invite repurposing, layering, and other nonlinear methods of evaluation. played through, it may be interpreted as an emerging, or a coming-to-light, as a soft vocal figure develops a tougher rhythmic architecture that eventually occludes its prior form entirely. each of zero key’s facets spurs a parallel investigation into its internal logic of patterning and form.

Alien D - For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom (LP)Alien D - For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom (LP)
Alien D - For the Early Hours of a World in Bloom (LP)Theory Therapy
¥4,546

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.

Yetsuby - 4EVA (LP)Yetsuby - 4EVA (LP)
Yetsuby - 4EVA (LP)Pink Oyster Records
¥4,696

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。

Froid Dub - Synch Unity (LP)Froid Dub - Synch Unity (LP)
Froid Dub - Synch Unity (LP)DELODIO
¥4,367
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.
Jonnnah - Me, With You (LP)Jonnnah - Me, With You (LP)
Jonnnah - Me, With You (LP)co:clear
¥4,579

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 - AT US (CS)Keigo Tatsumi - AT US (CS)
Keigo Tatsumi - AT US (CS)Mystery Circles
¥2,067
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!
LF58 - Radials (LP)
LF58 - Radials (LP)Astral Industries
¥4,597
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.
Lucid Dreams (2LP)Lucid Dreams (2LP)
Lucid Dreams (2LP)Astral Industries
¥4,597
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 - FS001 (2LP)Katatonic Silentio - FS001 (2LP)
Katatonic Silentio - FS001 (2LP)Fleur Sauvage
¥5,599

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.

Okkyung Lee -  Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities (LP)Okkyung Lee -  Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities (LP)
Okkyung Lee - Just Like Any Other Day (어느날): Background Music For Your Mundane Activities (LP)Shelter Press
¥3,741

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.

Joanna Brouk - The Space Between (White Vinyl LP)Joanna Brouk - The Space Between (White Vinyl LP)
Joanna Brouk - The Space Between (White Vinyl LP)Numero Group
¥3,487
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.
Yutaka Hirose -  Voices (2CD)Yutaka Hirose -  Voices (2CD)
Yutaka Hirose - Voices (2CD)WRWTFWW
¥4,272

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.

横田進 Susumu Yokota - Acid Mt. Fuji (Remastered 30th Anniversary Edition) (3LP)横田進 Susumu Yokota - Acid Mt. Fuji (Remastered 30th Anniversary Edition) (3LP)
横田進 Susumu Yokota - Acid Mt. Fuji (Remastered 30th Anniversary Edition) (3LP)Musicmine/ Sublime Records
¥7,156
“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.
Any -  Mega Mercy (LP)Any -  Mega Mercy (LP)
Any - Mega Mercy (LP)sferic
¥4,839

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.

grimwig - The Third Place (CS)grimwig - The Third Place (CS)
grimwig - The Third Place (CS)Good Morning Tapes
¥2,998

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.

Ariel Kalma & Asa Tone - ◯ (LP)Ariel Kalma & Asa Tone - ◯ (LP)
Ariel Kalma & Asa Tone - ◯ (LP)Good Morning Tapes
¥4,867

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.
 

Ultravillage - Pensive Percussion (CS)Ultravillage - Pensive Percussion (CS)
Ultravillage - Pensive Percussion (CS)Good Morning Tapes
¥2,998

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 - Frog is God (CS)Misha Hollenbach - Frog is God (CS)
Misha Hollenbach - Frog is God (CS)Good Morning Tapes
¥2,998

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.

Laraaji - Bring On The Sun (2LP+Obi)Laraaji - Bring On The Sun (2LP+Obi)
Laraaji - Bring On The Sun (2LP+Obi)All Saints Records
¥5,658

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

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