MUSIC

DOWN 2 EARTH, which was established by Toshio Nakanishi as a "Nagomimono" music line within the Major Force label, has finally released the album of the group of gods, known as the pinnacle of exotic music, on analog. !

An exotic work that can be said to be an extension of the Watermelon Group, Toshio Nakanishi, Masayuki Kudo, steel guitar player Genichi Tamura, who is also known for activities such as Little Tempo, and Shunji Mori of Natural Calamity gathered in Bali to record. This album is an exotic sound that has been consistently slowed down in line with the label's concept.
A work that can be said to be the highest peak of domestic exotic music.
Works in 1992

Tracklist:
Side A
1.BEYOND THE JUNGLE (there’s something)
2.MOON HOTEL

Side B
1.DEATH A GOOD ADVISER
2. NUMBERS
3.WHEN THE SKY FALLS

DISC 2
Side C
1.MOVING WATER (GET HOT, GET WET)
2.SLACK BABY SLACK

Side D
1.THUNDER ISLAND
2.SPACE COWBOY
3.VOICES

Living Room (faitiche 28) is the third solo album by Roméo Poirier and, following his much praised Hotel Nota, his debut for Faitiche. The French musician and producer transforms the layering of different times into a free-flowing pulse that sounds both nostalgic and mysteriously ahistorical. Poirier takes music seriously as a time-based art – not just in the sense of duration, but also in the way time is refracted into autobiographical experience, historical dimensions and stages of evolution. By immersing and reflecting himself in these different layers, he creates a succession of new balances between various tempos, iterations and developments. Poirier’s music emerges from a continual questioning and reformulation of his own oeuvre and thus of his own past, drawing on an ever-expanding archive of self-recorded loops. “I always resample myself, using fragments of a track to make a new one, as an ongoing process,” he explains: “The sound is evolving with me in parallel and the loops carry in their DNA all transformational stages, filled with previous tracks, sedimented.” Originally a drummer, Poirier connects his various sources almost without a clearly identifiable beat. He prefers an organic pulse, mutable like the human sense of time and its fluidity. The aquatic feel of certain tracks on Living Room is no coincidence: among other devices, he uses a waterproof loudspeaker and a hydrophone to play back and rerecord tracks in the bathtub. Drawing on a sample collection assembled by his father, also a musician, the human voice enters Poirier’s music for the first time. But it remains free of overly unambiguous signifiers. Besides its link to time, the fascinating thing about music is that it has meaning without needing to be decoded. Living Room goes back to the private but universal origin of human experience: “I liked the idea that a possible quest for a musician could be echoing the first encounter we had with language, in a prenatal state: its prosody, melody and tones, without being cluttered with meaning.”

This is one of the best long-lost treasure from the 80s – and it's one long composition filled with raw sounds from the jungle, natural objects and electronic treatment. The idea to evoke a deep journey in the Amazon rainforest has affected various musicians in the history of popular and experimental music, but comparing to other works this rare Amazonia 6891, released only on cassette in 1986, appears as totally original and extreme in his conception. Here, the interest in ethnomusicology of the expert Walter Maioli (mind of Aktuala and Futuro Antico projects) is linked to a precise and comprehensive ecological, botanical, ethological and ethnographic perspective. In fact, starting from the sound recording of the ethnographer Pit Piccinelli's collection of natural objects, the collected material for this work is re-elaborate in different times by the anthropologist and electronic pioneer Fred Gales and by Maioli him-self. The result of this multi-disciplinary approach its 'a long concrete poem of plant organisms, fields recordings of verses and calls of tropical animals futuristically mixed with electronic sounds, as already happened for the great experimental trials of Futuro Antico and Ariel Kalma's Osmose. Listen this imaginative collage look like to entering in a precious cabinet of antiquities and curiosity whose wonders of multi-coloured cellular fragments are shaped in the synthesis of a single universal sound matter. The merger between the wild jungle, the mysterious voices of the Indians and the oscillation of the electronic waves creates a spasmodic tension between amazing and heavenly moments that leaked also obscure paths and alien sequences. So, Amazonia 6891 it's a magic trip into the unknown wild, into abyss of creation of kaleidoscopic floras and faunas, simply a proposal for a synesthetic experience and multi-sensory.

Jon K and Elle Andrews’ MAL imprint returns with a new LP from one of the London experimental underground's best kept secrets, Rory Salter aka Malvern Brume. His music is rare, eccentric and mysterious - somewhere between Coil's bleak ritual magick and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's most experimental, minimal fringes. Malvern Brume operates just beneath the radar, occasionally turning up at Café OTO lineups and on a smattering of releases for Low Company, Alter, Infant Tree and Kasual Plastik - but he’s never one to shout too loudly about his work. ‘Body Traffic’ is his most interesting set to date, laying bare a process melting found sounds, field recordings and spoken word into throbbing, pulsing rhythms. It’s an evocation of a fraught mindset during the early weeks of lockdown in 2020; sequestered in his flat next to a trainline, the infrasonic - and more audible - rumbles of rolling stock and a nagging sense of dread infecting his ambiguously discomfiting recordings. Operating in a headspace that values world-building and vivid, visual emotionality, Salter’s careful melodies are familiar - the distant, weeping melancholia of 1970s British TV hangs off the recordings like net curtains, and his atmosphere loops into experiments that weave through bare traces of industrial music, blank-faced electro pop, and hedonistic Brummie techno, all reduced to a cinder. The mood is set on the bellyaching resonance and crawling walls of the title tune, while 'Through Beaked Fog Horns' is drowned beneath morning mists: lopsided synth drones choke and drift, percussion mutates into inebriated bubbles, and tape-f*cked environmental whirrs create an atmosphere that’s hard to decipher in one take. ‘Moss Spines Clenched’ follows cryptic stains on peeling flocking, and the icy creep of ‘Tense Branches Waver’ quivers beyond a cracked windowpane. The artist’s voice appears from beneath a cardboard box fort in the imaginary world of ‘Cornered Into Sleat’ as a distant drum beats out a marching thud and traffic squeals are sculpted into chirpy whistles, before ‘Bri Dun’ resolves the eerie tension in an OOBE-like ascent above the dado-rail and across the tracks, watching himself fade into a dissociative bliss. "All chatter falls quiet…” Salter murmurs thru saturation and white noise. It’s a sound that’s gonna stick with us for a while.

A deeply confounding trip into the sublime from master of contextual dream-weaving Nozomu Matsumoto on perhaps his most heart-piercingly beautiful work to date, including a 13 minute choral section that might just be the most stunning piece of pseudo-classical/liturgical alchemy we’ve heard all year. Huge recommendation for followers/lovers of Kara-Lis Coverdale, Ryan Trecartin or Mica Levi’s ‘Zola’ score Leading on from his ’Remain Calm’ album to accompany visual components by regular collaborator Nile Koetting, ‘Immunotherapy’ offers therapeutic solace through a personalised form of Japanese environmental music. A conceptual continuation of themes explored on 2018’s ‘Climatotherapy’ and 2020’s ‘Sustainable Hours’; Nozomu’s 3rd solo vinyl release reprises his uncanny ability to evoke a reflective headspace with a blend of classical ambient tropes, text-to-speech synthesis, and a contemporary cinematic vernacular that’s both nuanced and moving. In 2022, against the backdrop of global warfare, a pandemic, and ecological collapse, Nozomu’s work grasps the nettle with a sober lucidity to make time and space for his, and your, wellbeing. ‘Immunotherapy’ carefully evokes its own temporality and atmospheric conditions via a grandiose but intimate palette of strings, keys, blissed chorales, and electronic webbing which provide the bed for narration by Amazon’s vocaloid, Polly. The results create an unusual duality - a human/inhuman intimacy rooted in some uncertain semi-robotic near-future that references the original ‘80s era of classic Japanese ambient music, which itself emerged as a soothing response to the headlong rush of a technologically enhanced/enchanted society. Across six parts in 22 minutes, ‘Immunotherapy’ resolves from the initial inset of a panic attack in public, via passages reflecting on “diseases of affluence” thru to spine freezing synth pads and an extraordinary denouement of emotive Koto and shearing synthesis on ‘Vertigo’ before entering a final state of blissed stasis on that closing 13 minute ‘Filippo Pacini’ section - a haunting ode to the c.19th Italian anatomist that uncannily reminds us of Kara-Lis Coverdale’s collaboration with Yasuaki Shimizu - a sound that feels all-too-human despite it’s synthetic contours. A whirlwind of emotion, right on the cusp of bliss and melancholia.

Before his prolific activity in the field of music therapy, Agostino Nirodh Fortini also embarked on his own path in electronic music. In the early eighties he was a close collaborator of Walter Maioli and Fred Gales, at the time of the pioneering label Sound Reporters. “Suoni Immaginari”, released only privately on cassette in 1988, contains a wide range of keyboards and lots of ethnic field recordings assembled with an absolutely modern praxis ahead of its time. Nirodh imagines his planetary odysseys as a complex of harmonic devices, nebula storms, glassy explosions and gravity-free falls. His operational horizon reflects further cultural ideas and suggestions; not only the artifice between natural sounds and the programmed machine but also the intrusion of arabesque dreams and jungles contaminated by invading insects and mad pipers. These are spectral symphonies which can have analogies with the fourth world of Hassell and Eno.

Based in the Brazilian capital of São Paulo, the TORMENTA collective has long offered an alternative vision of the city's rich and colorful musical heritage. Operating as an ongoing series of DIY parties, creative agency and record label, TORMENTA has welcomed challenging sounds into São Paulo and released music from a cross section of Brazilian artists, including Fkoff1963, 177th & Digestivo. Their musical output is unrestrained: pop edits and unhinged hard dance rubs against errated heavy metal and lifted ambient drone. Anything's possible, as long as there's a social conscience and a middle finger to expectation. In 2019, TORMENTA put together a short film for the online edition of Nyege Nyege Festival. Since the crew is made up of obsessive horror movie fans, the direction was clear. "O Som do Labirinto" (The Labyrinth's Sound), is a terrifying and psychedelic audiovisual experience that's centered around a journalist attempting to examine a series of mysterious gatherings. Casting a side-eye to VICE's notorious series of fish out of water documentaries, the film drags its protagonist to hell through a series of grueling mental trials, all accompanied by TORMENTA's bloody toolbox of tortuous sounds. This full-length soundtrack finds the collective exposing their deep horror movie knowledge and finally flexing their film score muscle. The crew's ragged club DNA is still present, but mainlined into a Frankenstein's monster of John Carpenter synths, haunted piano loops and gruesome Lustmord-esque dark ambient drones. Alada's 'Running' straps a familiar hoover bass to bloodcurdling low-end rumbles and sparse, propulsive kicks; MTMA's 'O Pesadelo' sounds like broken clocks and music boxes at the "Evil Dead" cabin; 177th's 'Together' is a nightmarish beatless rave anthem that's like Lorenzo Senni on a bad trip; and Bruxax's 'Scream' is a full-on sludge metal freak-out that could sit alongside a Rob Zombie movie. The "O Som Do Labirinto OST" is Brazilian experimental club music in corpse paint holding a jack-o-lantern and weilding a bloody knife. Be afraid.

Early Basinski works, released on professionally pressed CDs (not CDR's!) for the first time. Minimal packaging in the style of the original release (from 2003). These works have been spoken of in hushed tones for a few years, as they have never been widely available. But the Basinski legends grows as the full catalog becomes accessible. "The first two discs of the 9 month generative ambient experiment conducted over the turn of the century. Very tranquil and soothing. Remastered and now available on CD in C-shell." "A one-hour track entirely composed on a Voyetra synthesizer, Water Music is a perfect antidote to the saccharin-drenched ambient cakes released nowadays by hundreds of self-producing wannabes. It's a never-too-present low humming lullaby, caressing the brain and the ears and slowly developing from silence. Comparisons could be made with some of Eno's best old releases, but please be advised this is not Music for films 2002 -- instead, the author gets right to the point with a simple idea, a small plant that needs to be growing in the semi-obscurity of your deep feelings. What a nice sensation." -- Massimo Ricci

MUSIGUE PAR TIMO VAN LUIJK ET ANDREW CHALK ENREGISTRE : KULTA SAHA 2017

recorded in 2012 at Impression Lointaine

Over the 23 years since Loren Connors’ Airs was first published, it has drawn a thick circle of fans. Gently recorded to cassette tape in 1999, (with wonderfully subtle multi-tracking), Airs is comprised of a series of brief electronic guitar poems. Intimately composed with the patience and purposeful hesitation we have reverently come to expect from Connors. Lyrical melodies recur in different forms throughout the LP, as shifting figures in a dream. Shadowy and sunken, the tone evokes an overcast seascape. The album feels singular; woven along as one flowing piece. 

Airs is perhaps the most approachable and beautiful in all of Connors’ catalog, seducing strangers and familiars just the same. Forlorn wonderment; a human quality that makes this such an enchanting record. It is the humble simplicity and the directness of the guitar inflection that conveys such truth. The stark grace of Connors’ playing resonates here for all to embrace.

A first new solo album by Andrew in five years, completed in 2022 at Impression Lointaine and released by ICR. Thirteen beautiful melodic tracks that weave in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory manner, evoking many different moods and emotions.

OrganumのDavid JackmanやNew Blockaders、Giancarlo Toniuttiといったノイズ・レジェンドたちとの仕事でも古くから知られる、英国にて孤高にドローンを造り続ける巨匠。Christoph Heemannとの伝説的プロジェクトMirror（1999-2004)の活動でも知られている重鎮Andrew Chalkの2022年10月発表の最新アルバム『The End Times』がColin Potter主宰の〈ICR〉よりCD&カセット・リリース。幻想的な郷愁と温かなアンビエンス息づく彼岸の地の音楽が全13曲収録されています。Denis Blackhamによるマスタリング仕様。

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Recital, we present Autumn Fair. A group LP comprised of 44 guest players (full list below), curated and edited together by Sean McCann. Autumn Fair aptly embodies the feeling of Recital as a record label; the infusion of abstract sound art and sentimental beauty – performed by both younger and older generations of artists. Oren Ambarchi - guitar, Ed Atkins - paper shredder, Jason Bannon - family, Derek Baron - keyboard, Karla Borecky - upright piano, Andrew Chalk - guitar, crys cole - birds, Loren Connors - guitar, Philip Corner - grand piano, Maxwell August Croy - whistle, Sarah Davachi - electronics, Aaron Dilloway - SFX, Delphine Dora - voice, Giovanni Fontana - voice, Scott Foust - trumpet, Peter Friel - impression, Malcolm Green - camera, Judith Hamann - cello / voice, Mark Harwood - speech, Forest Juziuk - voice, Johnny Kay - tapping, Kajsa Lindgren - hydrophone, Rob Magill - guitar, Lia Mazzari - whip, Molly McCann - flute, Sean McCann - editing / voice, Nour Mobarak - voice sampler, Azikiwe Mohammed - interview, Charlie Morrow - MIDI piano, Kiera Mulhern - SFX, Zachary Paul - violin, claire rousay - SFX, Michel Samson - violin, Troy Schafer - strings, Eric Schmid - tone generator, Ben Schumacher - SFX, Tom James Scott - keyboard / SFX, Asha Sheshadri - reading, Patrick Shiroishi - winds, Sydney Spann - voice, Matthew Sullivan - instruments, Flora Sullivan-Kelly - percussion, Connor Tomaka - SFX / synth, Alex Twomey - upright piano. I wont go into too much detail on the album itself, but after many twists and turns, the album concludes with “Recital Program,” an intense track that manically collages two-second excerpts from every Recital album to date. I extend a sincere ‘thank you’ for all the incredible support for Recital over the past decade.

Smoke Point is a duo composed of Brian Foote (Peak Oil, Leech, Kranky) and Sage Caswell (Spring Theory). With their self-titled debut LP on Geographic North, the Los Angeles-based duo takes a captivating cruise through heady ambient drifts and ruthlessly rhythmic loop dreams. Foote and Caswell first teamed up to create a series of improvisational atmospherics throughout a multi-room art gallery. The pair conceived of a sprawling, dynamic experience with tones, rhythms, and textures that varied from room to room, yet were inextricably tuned and melded together. Visitors could serve as a sort of human crossfader, moving through the gallery and dialing up or down aural aspects as they pleased. And although the collaboration came together to create music for a specific physical space, the concept was never fully realized until what is now the duo’s first record. Smoke Point brings five extended, cruise-controlled exercises that calmly violate the Venn diagram's overlap between boundless dance music and unfathomable ambiance. But beyond the boundaries of an album as a set of songs, Foote and Caswell cracked things wide open and recontextualized the album as an actual DJ tool onto itself; ambient leaning and melodically focused. To achieve this, Smoke Point offers a bounty of loops in the form of endless locked grooves on the vinyl edition and brief but equally utilitarian snippets on the digital edition of the LP.

Andrew Chalk is known for his work on the legendary project Mirror (1999-2004) with Christoph Heemann, and is a master of building drones from England. The long-awaited analog reissue of the extremely rare work "Higan/Sad Distribution", which was voluntarily released in 2016 as a limited edition cassette of 100 copies and sold out immediately.

Tetsu Umehara was born in Yokohama, Japan, but spent much of his childhood in Dusseldorf, and it was in the western German city that his nascent interest in architecture first blossomed. His debut album, Handwritten, is a personal journey that explores the intersection between architectural urbanism, acoustic ecology and human emotion. Formed from a diverse range of sounds created from field-recordings taken in, and inspired by, various cities and urban settings, Handwritten pairs guitar, piano and angular percussive elements to create a rich world of aural depth and intricacy. “If music is a site-specific culture, then the process of making music is nothing more than creating an imaginary place within oneself.” Whilst Tetsu learned to play music from a young age, architecture always remained a driving passion and he would go on to study architectural design at Tokyo University of the Arts. His studies have continued to create an inner dialogue around sound and space, imagining music for specific sites and visualising architectural designs in his own sonic creations. Handwritten is an ode to the diverse styles of architecture that have influenced Tetsu. From the modern urban planning of Yokohama’s harbour to the inorganic sprawl of Berlin, Tetsu sees the fluid hand of the artistic creator in a building’s immobile geometry. In an attempt to mirror the disciplined complexity of a city within music, Tetsu has found a way to talk about the interaction of spatial and auditory dynamics. “It is important that the Handwritten be a record of my musical journey. For me, making the album was like a short trip through the landscapes of my memory.” Handwritten is released by Métron Records on 08/06/22 with the album’s artwork a collage of various sketches taken from Tetsu’s time studying. A portion of profits will be donated to Human Rights Now (HRN), a Japanese organisation looking to improve human rights around Asia.

Original shoe gazer-turned-ambient electronic explorer E Ruscha V meets Arthur Russell collaborator Peter Zummo on a lush suite of cosmic harmonic projections for back of eyelids and astral armchair flight a la Jon Hassell... “'Thinking A View is a collaboration between E Ruscha V (Secret Circuit) and Peter Zummo, a fourth world meeting of electronics and wind instruments. A joining of East and West. This 14-track soundscape oscillates between ambient, psychedelic, electronic, spiritual and jazz, taking the listener to imagined realms. The sequence flows effortlessly for listening sessions, though each track is cut for DJ use.' Eddie Ruscha on synthesizers, keyboards, drum machines, vibes, tapes, clarinet, various percussion instruments and Mario C. instruments. Peter Zummo on trombone, cornet, euphonium, tuba, conch shell, plastic funnel horn, didgeridoo and voice.”

Big-bottomed techno and ambient steppers from the Rasmus Hedlund, chasing his Dialog turn on Astral Industries with a set of full sunken productions for the deep ends of the club. Working a vein of Scandinavian and Finnish atmospheric steppers pressure shared by Vladislav Delay, Andreas Tilliander and Liima, the 5th Hedlund LP in a decade stretches out on an hour of proper bass weight and reverberating echo chamber dubbing. His seven tracks balance the sort of atmospheric content found in Dialog’s recently issued ambient 2LP with the kind of effortless, durational, grooving structures caught in Sasu Ripatti’s work with MvO Trio on the brilliantly supple ‘Rytmisk’ and the buoyant, toes-off-the-floor styles of ‘Kalla Vindar’ and the lushly convective ‘Verners Funk’ with its plumply rounded subs. He sinks into pure Rhythm & Sound-via-Tilliander ambient dub weight in a radiant ‘Chords Galore’, developing in Kompakt-like Pop Ambient scaping, and ‘Bappa’ pulls it farther out in Vladislav Delay or DeepChord zones with overlapping echo chamber FX o mess with your balance, locking it off with ‘Vila Du Lilla’ on the lushest beatless tip.

Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work. Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria. This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting.

On November 11th the widely-loved electronic maestro Gigi Masin returns with ‘Vahinè' – a mini album of beautiful and distinct music that is unmistakably his, sounding better than ever. Masin always pours his heart into composing, but here it takes on a potent new level of heavy emotion – as it’s a tribute to his late wife, who sadly passed away last year. “There is a Tahitian dance called ‘Aparima’. It consists of graceful, sinuous and fascinating movements, which tell you stories and legends about love or tradition. The ‘Vahinè' are now dancing, the Tahitian females, with smiles and gestures that could be symbolic or descriptive but are always gentle, harmonious, charming. I was watching this documentary, it was almost 4 in the morning, but I couldn't sleep; I was in front of the television for hours, my wife had passed away the day before, and I was watching hands and arms swaying. I told myself that maybe it’s so, at the end of the road it’s possible to realize dreams, and I’m sure that she is finally able to dance like never before, and is able to move without any impediment, with no suffering, free to make all the movements that she couldn't make for so long, turning to me with a smile and a wink. So, in the clouds, you will discover and see an extraordinary 'Vahinè', because she will move and dance and smile until the end of time.” Gigi Masin A future-retro dreamscape where stripes of early evening sun pour through partially closed venetian blinds; kalimba, piano and steel pans meet on the incredibly evocative ‘Marilene (Somewhere in Texas)’. The Balearic/Italo house heart of ‘Barumini’ throbs throughout a celestial epiphany, whilst ‘Shadye’ is a sun blinded ambient mirage where angelic voices and electric guitar intertwine, before more heavenly music ensues on the trance-like ‘Malvina’. A heart-wrenchingly beautiful evocation of transitioning to the other side, ‘Valerie Crossing’ is Gigi’s compelling and inspirational take on death, with a vivid evocation of something spiritual, existential and metaphysical. His exemplary approach shows decease not as a cause for despair, but a philosophical and poetic exploration of where souls go, when they leave their earthly bodies. Masin closes with ‘Vahinè' – a twitchy, levitational piece of sublime deep techno, which transmits high strength vibrations of powerful emotions. On both this track, and the album of the same name, there’ s no pseudo intellectual ambient posturing with cod academic angles tagged on; This is music of real substance, coming from a real place. It’s saturated with feelings, but turns mourning into affecting art, and even a beacon of hope. Helmed by the deftly talented Alessia Avallone, Language Of Sound is new record label which marks ‘Vahine’ as its maiden voyage. Language Of Sound is also a management company founded in 2017, with singular talents Ron Trent, Lyra Pramuk, Huerco S, Carmen Villain, Gigi Masin, Paquita Gordon and Soundwalk Collective on their impeccable roster. Dedicated to facilitating ideal conditions for artists to flourish, where appropriate Avallone also collaborates creatively, including the video for Gigi Masin’s ‘Marilene (somewhere in Texas)’ which she produced and directed.

For Balmat’s fourth release, we turn our attention close to home: to the Mallorca-born, Barcelona-based artist Nueen, aka Nacho Pezzati.

Nueen has been developing his highly personal style of blissfully Balearic ambient over the past few years, with releases on labels like Quiet Time Tapes and Good Morning Tapes. On Diagrams of Thought, he explores new depths in his sound. His atmospheres remain bucolic, but there’s a disturbance at work, a hint of uncertainty swirling beneath seemingly placid pads.

While Diagrams of Thought retains the ambient (or at least ambient-adjacent) focus of all Balmat’s releases so far, the album also marks new frontiers for the label; the album’s first half is graceful and largely beatless, but the mood grows murkier with the foggy drones of “Dome” and the intimations of liquid drum ’n’ bass on “Maxima”; “Veta,” meanwhile, might just represent the most forceful rhythm to appear on a Balmat release yet. 

Despite the album’s considerable range of moods, tones, and textures, it’s all tied together by a singular preoccupation, says Nueen: 

“Lately, I’ve become conscious of my fascination for the notion of the break, on a conceptual and musical level. What’s temporary and what’s permanent. Thinking and making out of what isn’t there, yet is. Some people would call it silence, but it could also be a skip of the needle, an ellipsis. Something very basic—or Basic Channelesque. A set of sounds and silences, structuring just a hint of rhythm. Sounds that become silences, and silences that become sounds. 

The other day, I was saying to someone that for me, the sound of electric current running through the power lines above the train tracks is the most ambient sound there is. That infinity in which you never quite grasp all the harmonics and reverberations. It’s a form of time detained or expanded. Recently, I’ve been rereading Morton Feldman—you can tell, right? Vertical time, the silence that sounds. A sort of sacredness. My mind is blown every time I walk into a church, for whatever that’s worth.” 

Yokobue (transverse flute) player Michiko Akao's 1983 release "Yokobue: The World of Michiko Akao" is being reissued for the first time! Produced with Shigeaki Saegusa as composer and arranger, this is a new age work that goes far beyond the realm of pure Japanese music. This is a definite recommendation for listeners who are following the current new age/ambient music.

Yara Asmar is a 25 year old multi-instrumentalist, video artist and puppeteer currently living in Beirut with her cat, Mushroom. Hive Mind are thrilled to be working with her and to bring you this wonderful debut album of music she recorded at home on cassettes and a mobile phone over the past few years. On it you'll hear her play a range of instruments including the piano, her grandmother's old accordion which she found in the attic of her grandparent's home in Lebanon, the metallophone, synth, and various deconstructed and disassembled toy pianos and music boxes. You'll also hear her field-recordings of hymns sung in churches around Lebanon which Yara has turned into waltzes. These beautifully melodic works contain recognisable elements of classical music wrapped in layers of tape hiss, synth wash, reverb and delay and disturbed by the metallic percussive sounds of the dissembled music boxes. The atmosphere of melancholy that pervades the album should be familiar to anyone living in the 21st Century.