MUSIC

The Gerogerigegege, the Japanese avant-blues music that has been attracting noise music lovers all over the world, is now available on long-awaited vinyl from The Trilogy Tapes, a limited edition cassette released last year by the popular fashion brand CAV EMPT.

This summer, I read Kenji Miyazawa's children's story (illustrated by Takeshi Motai), "Gauche the Cellist" (1934, illustrated by Takeshi Motai, 1956). Just a few days before I made this recording, I was on stage. As a result, I had to be in the same state of mind as Gauche at the beginning of the story. It was not a good feeling, but I knew it was not a coincidence that this book was in my possession, so I read it again and again, looked at Mr. Motai's picture of the raccoon boy again and again, and headed for the park before dawn. The only instrument I used was a Hapidrum, and the sticks were mallets that looked just like the ones the raccoon boy was holding...Juntaro Yamanouchi

"Oblivion Hymns rewrites [Hammock's] script, bringing strings to the fore in a manner that would make composer Max Richter or Hammock’s peers in A Winged Victory For The Sullen proud." —MAGNET "...some of the most blissful music Clash has ever had the luxury of bathing in. [Hammock] has gone on to become one of the foremost purveyors of affecting ambient post-rock on the scene." —Clash Music "Hammock’s music draws out such powerful emotions that one can be blinded with joy even while tears blur your vision."

We’re thrilled to announce NAFF017, “To / Deep”, by Chicago trio Purelink “To / Deep” comprises four tracks, two of which –Maintain the Bliss and Head On A Swivel– were previously released as a digital-only EP in 2021. Here, Purelink return to form with an updated sound, adding crystalline angularity and dialed precision to their warm, enveloping style. Blissed break abstractions flutter and gasp like shifting light through variegated glass. Rhythms arise within rhythms, the breath resounds throughout. “To / Deep” carries the uncanny feeling that home has changed, or that home is change.

Arovane's acclaimed 2004 album »Lilies« has been out of print on vinyl for nearly 2 decades now. It finally gets a well-deserved reissue through the Berlin based Keplar label. The new version has been remastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering and comes with a brand new cover artwork. *2023 remaster* "Lilies" was a follow-up to "Tides" in every sense, exploring a trip to Japan and drawing on shimmering textures and the sort of melodies that you might need some time to recover from. There's a hugely evocative sense to these tracks, emotionally driven, free of complexity or conceit, piano melodies providing the central focus for a twilight cascade of light that seems perfect for the Tokyo skyline - just as the sun sets. It's an album that radiates warmth and vulnerability, fusing the technological might at the heart of each track (and at the heart of the city) with an age-old understanding that certain echoes of sound, small melodic changes and cushioned lullabies can imprint sounds on your mind like childhood memories - remembered forever. Like a dreamlike score, or maybe even an alternate soundtrack to "Lost in Translation" - the sort of music that intertwines with images and stays in your mind indefinately. After coming back from Tokyo and completing the production of "Lilies", Uwe Zahn disassembled his studio in the big flat in an old building in Berlin's Prenzlauerberg district and stored it away in boxes. He needed a break from making music. "Lilies" was the last album prior to a nine-year hiatus for Arovane, ending in 2013 with the release of "Ve Palor".

With Narration, Toki Fuko returns to Affin after a long break. The EP contains 4 stylistically diverse tracks (some of them overlong), which are captivating in their perfection and document the musical versatility of the musician, who skilfully moves between dubby, hypnotic, in-depth techno here.An extremely worthy successor and a grandiose further development of the Astatine EP from 2020. Keplar continue their Arovane reissue program with this long overdue edition of Uwe Zahn's iconic EP collection 'Icol Diston' that features some of his finest productions, all releases by cult legendary label Din (the Hardwax one, not Ian Boddy's label). From the shockingly contemporary rework of Torsten T++ Pröfrock's 'Außen vor' to the itchy industrial grind of 'icol vern', it holds up. After Zahn changed track completely with 'Tides' in 2000, Pröfrock's DIN label assembled the then Berlin-based producer's early 12"s - "i.o.", "icol diston" and "AMX" - into "Icol Diston", closing the book on the first iteration of his sound. Zahn had written the music during a time of unprecedented musical freedom in Berlin, and felt the city's energy seep into ideas he was exploring in his rapidly growing studio. "There was an overwhelming dynamic of liberation reverberating through the city—through the clubs, the arts, the people," he says. During long tram rides, he would dream out the rhythmic sequences he'd reassemble later using a handful of synths, sequences and samplers, recording live in stereo straight to DAT. So invariably, this is some of the most intricate beat oriented material Zahn has ever produced, drawing on the blueprint of Autechre's seminal "Tri Repetae" and fashioned in the shadow of Hardwax and the mighty Dubplates & Mastering, welding dub bass and tekno stabs to skittering IDM repeaters and cycling hats. With the benefit of hindsight, it all makes complete sense. His first release, "i.o." was an attempt for Zahn to map out a process he'd explore further on the following year's "Atol Scrap". These are still some of the producer's most iconic recordings, and show how well developed his sound was even at the very beginning. Gravelly beats immediately push to the front of the title track, steadily overwhelmed by winding, melancholy synth patterns that would become an Arovane staple in the coming years. 'parf' and 'torn' follow largely the same path (the latter being a particular highlight), but it's when Zahn switches things up on 'andar' that the depth of his sound begins to show. Using a rumbling kick and barely-present glitches to provide an almost hip-hop jolt, he concentrates his focus on undulating, dubby atmospherics that allow his signature melodies to poke only half-way through the fog. The EP's follow-up "icol diston" meanwhile is some of the most upfront music Zahn has produced to date, immediately showing his rhythmic advances on the glassy 'yua:e', a self-assured collision of pulsing, stepped kicks, polyrhythmic crunches and euphoric analog washes. Zahn even responds to the rave echoes that surrounded him in Berlin with 'nacrath', contorting 'ardkore stabs into chirpy, hopeful lead sequences that dance through sine pulses, harp-like synth plucks and halfstep bumps. But hands-down our favorite moments come from Zahn's final DIN 12", where he remixed two tracks from Pröfrock himself: Dynamo's 'außen vor' and Various Artists' 'no.8'. The former is legendary around these parts, showing Zahn's skill working in plushest technoid mode as he skips around a squashed deep house template, letting pads slowly affect the flow with distant longing, and the latter is a remodel of Pröfrock's most crushing recording. Zahn takes his friend's smoked-out synth squelches and adds a low, slow beat that comes across like a weightless answer to Timbaland's Missy/Tweet run, dominating the soundsystem with subdued, syncopated force. Both tracks still sound like little else out there, and they haven't aged a day. Massive recommendation, obviously.

Andrea’s second album “Due In Color“ was primarily created in 2020 and 2021. During these crazy and decelerated times he explored more hazy and experimental Jazz, which inspired him to use more acoustic sounds in his productions. Dark loud clubs are in a far away distance, while Andrea takes us to wonderful blooming fields.

Invisible Inc is over the moon to finally be announcing this long-awaited double album of new music by Secret Circuit. Presented here are 21 new pieces (or 22 if you count the bandcamp-exclusive digital bonus) recorded between 2020 and 2022 which capture that spacey, otherworldly quality Secret Circuit is known for but they also very much veer into the warmer, earthier and generally more ambient textural territories of his E Ruscha V and Only Thingz work...an altogether softer sensibility. The fact that the second disc of the double album is primarily ambient further confuses the issue! But Secret Circuit this most definitely is! From a plethora of demos (40+) Invisible Inc label boss GK Machine wanted to distill these down and explore a side of Ruscha's that he felt hadn't been heard before, focussing on Ruscha's more emotive yet at the same time experimental side. Is that a paradox? Well, let's say only very rarely do we hear modular synths doing something so human-sounding, and when these are juxtaposed alongside slide guitars, live bass and vocodered vocals, we have something very special indeed. Then there's the artwork...all lovingly drawn by E Ruscha V himself and landing on our desk long after the record had gone into production and test pressings delivered and approved. The package is made complete with a double-sided colour insert with liner notes and another of Ruscha's mind-warping doodles. Oh and the liner notes are written in reverse so you'll need a mirror to read them. Of course they are! To cut a long story short, everything about this release is archetypal classic Secret Circuit and couldn't be anyone else. A highpoint for the label in 2023, no doubt.

New family members Loris S. Sarid & Innis Chonnel summon a long-overdue return to the 12th Isle with an album built around percussive sounds taken from various mic-ed up objects found in a wood workshop on the East Coast of Scotland. With the pair occasionally leaving said workshop to enjoy some respite in Innis Chonnel’s horse box / studio, the artists hatched a plan to process and program their field recordings, later combining them with improvised synthesiser rhythms and overdubs. The tracks began to materialise over the course of a few follow-up sessions by which time saws sang and flutes flowed through watering cans. Shortly afterwards they found their way to us via carrier pigeon on a CD-ROM that smelt vaguely of soiled hay and we knew we had to act. With the help of an old reel to reel and the tape bounce & mastering work of Murray Collier, we present them here in their final format.

The first Huerco S. album in 6 years, glyding into new territory with a pool of glassy synths, padded subs and cascading arpeggios, pretty much unlike anything Brian Leeds has made under any alias. "His sound palette has broadened to absorb and refine trap’s un-smeared geometrics and drill’s taught rhythms amongst the gaseous bodies and soul-piercing ambience that has garnered such acclaim; Where those previous veins were rooted in the pre-Columbian civilizations of his native Kansas, Plonk reflects the mournful sodium glow of cities at night, street corners that light up with painful moments of clarity you wish would disappear."

Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timbral synthesizer, and field recordings. The following year, upon relocating with his wife (Kranky composer Christina Vantzou) to the cliffside village of Livaniana on the island of Crete, Bennett discovered a method of translating his minimalist lap steel phrases into live MIDI information, which he then used to trigger different waveforms to extend the resonance of the instrument. This multi-layered generative process resulted in a collection as vast and bewildering as the terrain that inspired it: Out there in the middle of nowhere. Opening with the desolate 15-minute “Nowhere,” Bennett’s playing is both glacial and geological, attuned to “the wonder and absolute emptiness” of the Badlands as “an infinite living sculpture.” Notes stretch, shift, and drift into vistas of twilit silence. Footsteps crunch across dry soil and rocky ravines, beneath skies stretching to the horizon. The use of extreme glissandos conjures a sense of windswept plains and winding canyons, primordial and unpopulated. Even outlier “Spectral Valley” – one of the few nods towards Bennett’s work in progressive kosmische trio Forma – unfolds with patient grandeur, rich swells of electronics gleaming in long golden arcs. Closing track “Embrosnerόs” (named for the verdant interior Cretan village where it was recorded) best embodies the album’s cinematic liminality, at the axis of barren and beatific. Gestural breaths of lap steel shimmer in sparkling air, with echoes of both the dusty West and some forgotten paradise. Bennett describes its creation as taking place “mostly during sunset hours, blanketed by waves of cicadas as sheep bells twinkled in the distance.” A micro-tuned DX7 radiates in the periphery while the guitar’s strings hang and reverberate like deepening shadows at dusk.

“Conflict was an album I made during a years long dispute with a loved one. My desired outcome of the argument was that the other person would admit they’re wrong, but upon seeing that wasn’t going to happen, I tried to find a way to exist peacefully in the disagreement. The songs on Conflict try to find the space between right and wrong, winning and losing, etc.

Each song title presents a duality: The pain of a pilgrim’s journey vs. the reward of salvation, the star power of a charming boxer vs. his penchant for violence, the beauty of a battered painting vs. the fight that warped it. The music tries to stay balanced between the two opposites. Each composition starts as a 2 or 4 bar looping piano figure and usually only develops slightly, never changing key or tempo or dynamics. The flute accompaniment improvises on only 3 or 4 possible note choices per song.

This quote by MMA fighter Platinum Mike Perry was often in my head during the recording: ‘Absorb the pain and react smoothly… don’t become distracted by the white noise of possibilities…experience a flow-like state, even an Ultra Instinct.’ Funny enough, there is a bunch of white noise on this record from the DX7 synthesizer and cheap piano mics, but it doesn’t distract from the music.”

A missing link from Iasos meets Visible Cloaks! A prodigy who is also known for releasing from , he has a vision of "Modern New Age", and by actually listening to New Age music, he healed his own depression. New Agers, Matthewdavid. "On Mushrooms EP", which was produced as an introductory work for the album "Mycelium Music" to be released from , which is led by himself, is now available on cassette. An organic and ethereal ambient/drone work in which Sam Gendel's ally Sam Wilkes and labelmate Brin also participated.

A cult work that has been talked about for years by some music lovers in Japan is now officially available for the first time! ethereal, mysterious sound.

A performance of the single-note percussion instrument "quire chime" by 12 users of "Yamato Kogen Taiyo no Ie", a support facility for people with disabilities in Yamazoe-mura, Nara Prefecture. The fresh and transparent tones, played one by one and at random, eventually formed a series of beautiful music. I wonder if there has ever been such pure and unadulterated music. This work is the ultimate improvised ambient that penetrates deep into the listener's subconscious.
Chee Shimizu

A cult work that has been talked about for years by some music lovers in Japan is now officially available for the first time! ethereal, mysterious sound.

A performance of the single-note percussion instrument "quire chime" by 12 users of "Yamato Kogen Taiyo no Ie", a support facility for people with disabilities in Yamazoe-mura, Nara Prefecture. The fresh and transparent tones, played one by one and at random, eventually formed a series of beautiful music. I wonder if there has ever been such pure and unadulterated music. This work is the ultimate improvised ambient that penetrates deep into the listener's subconscious.
Chee Shimizu

A late ‘90s neo-noir ambient jungle masterpiece, Christoph De Babalon’s 'If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It' sounds something like Thomas Köner re-assembling fierce, unrelenting D&B with his frozen gear. Now a quarter of a century old, it still occupies its own distinct notch on the continuum; copied endlessly, never bettered. Christoph De Babalon was a key member of Digital Hardcore, the mutant Berlin-based splinter cell who fused UK rave music with more experimental, Teutonic techno, Ambient and hardedge politics to brutal effect during the mid-late ‘90s. CDB was always somehow on another level to most of his peers and labelmates at DHR, less interested in purely aggy breakbeat energy, his was a sound that also embraced windswept, ice-cold ambient atmospherics and a bleak sort of romance that was at odds with the almost cartoonish “sound terror” aesthetic of the label. For us, ‘If You’re Into It, I’m Out Of It’ really distills a feeling of that era, as the utopian outlook of rave’s early years had given way to something much darker, more maudlin, perhaps symptomatic of an ennui with dance music’s hyper-commercial land grab, a kind of pre-millennial tension. Either way, it provided the perfect soundtrack to ravers who were spending more time developing virtual lives online, or (speaking from experience) who weren’t yet old enough to go raving, but were shelled with media images and 2nd hand impressions of the culture, which had by then morphed into the prevailing trends of garage, trance, and prog house, and was but a ghost of its original, loony self. It’s an album torn between extreme states; on the one hand going harder than the rest in killer rave moves such as the hardcore rattler ‘Dead (Too)’, the epic amen + drone blow-out ‘My Confession’, or the cut-throat beast ‘Water’. But on the other, it gets properly haunting on the remarkable 15 minute opener ‘Opium’, or with the sublime, Gas-like suspension system of ‘Brilliance’, and the funereal, bombed-out bliss of ‘High Life (Theme)’. Christoph De Babalon effectively plotted out terrain that bridged DJ Scud’s rugged jungle breakcore with soundscaping more commonly associated with Thomas Köner or Deathprod, and in the process set the ground for myriad contemporary producers and sounds ranging from Raime and Blackest Ever Black to Demdike, Pessimisst and beyond. ‘If You’re Into It, I’m Out of It’ was, and still is, a deadly statement of intent, with an aesthetic that still strongly resonates and influences today. Classic.

The music on this recording is performed by a kind of fictitious chamber ensemble situated in an imaginary room outlined by textures that alternate between gestural foreground and passive landscape. The three pieces contained within this release are tied together by sharing similar harmonic material and instrumentation and could ideally be perceived as parts of one long performance stretching through the two sides of the record. The textural room in which this musical performance operates is unreliable, unstable, constantly shifting in size and activity from sparse and open to dense and claustrophobic. Inside this non-euclidean performance space a chamber ensemble made up of zithers expanded through analog tape transposition, harmonium and organ, double bass, digital FM, feedback-convolution and Serge modular synthesizer perform a music made from justly tuned intervals arranged in a way that blurs the distinction between traditional minor and major tonal harmony in favor of harmonic progression within an essentially modal framework. In terms of the material used to make these pieces, essentially all non-harmonic sounds are contaminated field-recordings. They have gone through a sort of feedback process between digital and analog, or acoustic, processing where field-recorded material has been edited, processed and re-amplified and recorded again in acoustic spaces that shape the character of the material and imprint acoustic identities on the recordings. The tonal instruments were treated in a process analogous to this - harmonic material built from recordings and digitally generated synthesis was recorded, transcribed, rearranged and overdubbed again with additional electronic or acoustic instruments to form a composite electroacoustic instrumental sound.

An exceptional masterpiece that must be heard by all shoegazing enthusiasts. The 2023 cassette reissue version of the 2021 digital work "_____" by the one-man post-black metal act "Sadness", which is one of the most popular blackgaze acts, will be released from in Italy. Stocked! Sweet and gloomy, aetherial and nocturnal, anthemic and prayerful, a solitary masterpiece in the 2020s! Limited 97 copies.

After their celestial Arcturian Corridor opened proceedings on Quindi, London-based brothers Clive and Mark Ives are back with a new record. When Woo first began recording at home in the early 70s, Clive and Mark were the embodiment of furtive genius. Since re-emerging in 2013, they’ve released scores of albums, collaborated with Seahawks, and have now struck up a productive relationship with Quindi. On Paradise In Pimlico, you’re hearing a very different sound to the one gently creaked out on early classics like Into The Heart Of Love. This is fulsome, contemporary production rich in detail and artful sound design, but crucially, Clive and Mark’s gorgeously melodic approach remains open and inquisitive, even with the sheen and shimmer of modern studio techniques. Woo sound more confident than ever in their composition, too. The crystalline, fragile tones of ‘Cadenza D’Innocenza’ glide through key changes that spell out an engrossing narrative, while the cascading melodies on ‘Moment To Moment’ pirouette across the space between notes with masterful poise. ‘Paradise In Pimlico’ is an illustrious suite of orchestral composition played out with the lightest touch, framed by the slightest of synthesized fauna and topped off with tender sax and flute. Album closer ‘In Case Love Fails’ takes on a subtly cinematic urgency with its undercurrents of walking bass and the strike of the string section (synthetic or otherwise). There’s space for markedly new approaches, too. The rhythm section on ‘The Motorik Mirror’ clunks and pops with a tactile, high-definition quality which teeters between electronic sculpture and clockwork, organic machination. The deft, lightly-brushed drums coursing through ‘Even More Notes’ see Clive and Mark step into a different mood, celebrating the beat as another fluid, tonally-rich texture in the mix and adding a smoky, jazzy hue to the Woo repertoire. It’s far from a drum-focused exercise though. At every turn, you’re confronted with aching beauty and timbral surprises. If there’s one constant throughout Paradise In Pimlico, it’s the omnipresent chimes. These twinkling drops of light scattered throughout are something of a hallmark of Woo, ensuring the lilting, lullaby-like magic of their music persists whichever direction they head in.

Released for the first time in 2009, ‘utp_’ is the third installment of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s V.I.R.U.S.'s series. It was commissioned for the 400th anniversary of Mannheim, Germany. The flowing 10-section multimedia work derives its shape from a rasterized structure of the southwestern city, founded in 1608. The recording documents the work’s debut performed by Ensemble Modern at the National Theatre in Mannheim. The music embraces the electronic, piano-based palettes, an expanded array of avant-garde chamber instrumentation and natural timbres. It combined the digital visual score created by Carsten Nicolai and Simon Mayer, and lighting design by Nigel Edwards.

2022 repress of this deluxe boxset. The first disc is a remastered version of the 1990 Virgin CD reissue of Correlations, recorded and mixed at Panne-Paulsen Studio, Frankfurt, in 1978 by Mick Glossop and originally released by Virgin in 1979. The second disc is the first release of Phantasus, Manuel Göttsching and Udo Arndt's original 1978 recording and mix of the album that was partially re-recorded and totally remixed to become Correlations (Phantasus was Göttsching's intended title, which he changed to Correlations after UK fans told him that the English can't pronounce "phantasus"). The third, fourth, and fifth discs are The Making Of, which includes a 12-page booklet. Performed by Manuel Göttsching (guitar, synthesizer, sequencer), Lutz Ulbrich (guitar, synthesizer, piano, mellotron), and Harald Großkopf (drums, percussion, synthesizer).

With Synthetic Hearts, Tubatsi Mpho Moloi, Msaki and Clément Petit issue an invitation to the listener and lover to journey to another place. Here, hearts, experiences, and sounds meet, shift and evolve across an inventive nine track album. Experimental, playful and complex, the project merges voices, instruments and sounds, across geographies and genres, creating sparse, yet lush atmospherics that spin on the universal themes of love. As skilled musical shapeshifters, Synthetic Hearts melds Msaki and Moloi’s folk sensibilities with electronic elements, as Petit teases out distinct textures from his cello across the record. Together, they look inward, in an introspective and conversational project that teases out emotions held within – towards considering what is shared and private in the messiness of our relationships with ourselves and others. On Synthetic Hearts, love, longing, confusion, sorrow, despondency and queries are opened up and negotiated in songs that vibrate with their naked, honest and tender vulnerability.

Felicia Atkinson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's Limpid As The Solitudes cuts through sound-making techniques to enter a new zone of sonic revelations. The record recalls the turn-of-the-century Mille Plateaux glitch era, the warmth of La Monte Young's drones, acousmatic non-space recordings made by GRM artists, 4AD's floor-gazing guitar sound, and blissfully diverse field recordings. But, one could equally equate it with entirely different recording sources. Limpid As The Solitudes has a widescreen sound that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Warm, comforting and also unsettling in unpredictable ways. Deliberate yet exploratory, it's a record composed of opposites and contrasts, following historical guidelines yet also throwing them out of the window. To describe the album as ambient would indicate passive engagement with the sound; leave it to play in the background and one could miss a lot of the joy. Atkinson and Cantu-Ledesma describe the record as a series of postcards - things and sounds that happen vertically as a slow ascension, vessels communicating in dreams. In this collaborative recording, there is a feeling of "becoming" - a concrete sound turns into a electronic sound that turns into a spiral-like melody which then furls/unfurls at the same time. The album title as well as track titles, are all verses stolen from Sylvia Plath's poems, Atkinson notes, "like dropped pearls from a lost collar." Trying further to capture the record's poetic impulses, it reflects "Empathy to objects and nature's elements, meteorological states, seasons that answer to your heart, granular etchings carved and sustained to create a blurred sentimental landscape. The finale is more optimistic than Plath's poetry. Love and lyricism win, the music soaring from deep water to interstellar galaxies." The cover is another key, an image by Julien Carreyn of a young woman wearing destroyed jeans, playing with bubble wrap. The image is intended to give the viewer an eerie 1990's feeling that echoes the recording and films by Hal Hartley or Wong Kar Wai. Be sure to come back to this record more than once; it's then that it's power will work. Recall the sound of a lover, a garden once walked through, an echo of a record once loved. To be appreciated, "Limpid As The Solitudes" requires immersion as if in a hot spring, letting the sounds float and alter perceptions and memories. Mastered and cut by Helmut Erler at D+M. Printed photographs by Julien Carreyn on glossy inner and outer sleeve.

This is the Italian electronic producer’s debut album for Munich’s Ilian Tape label; for a record coming out of post-industrial Turin, its aesthetic is surprisingly luminous. The roster of Munich’s Ilian Tape may be headlined by locals like the Zenker Brothers and Skee Mask, but the label’s Italian contingent has long been one of its biggest strengths. Turin natives Stenny and Andrea first connected with the crew in 2011, when the former organized an Ilian Tape night and spent a couple of days driving the Zenker Brothers around his hometown. The following year, both Stenny and Andrea debuted on the imprint, and the two have been part of Ilian Tape’s core membership ever since, sharing similar trajectories and helping to solidify the label’s distinct brand of broken techno. In 2019, Stenny leveled up when he released his debut full-length, Upsurge, which impressively brought together angular breakbeats, dalliances with drum’n’bass, and headier ambient sounds. Now it’s Andrea’s turn to tackle the album format, with excellent results. His productions have always fallen toward the dreamier end of the spectrum, and he’s leaned into that here; it’s not often that Ilian Tape releases could be described as shimmering, but the album’s palette is a lot closer to Café del Mar than Cafe OTO. The sparkling arpeggios of aqueous opener “Attimo” and the dreamy synths that idle atop the peppy breakbeats of “LS September” are just two of the LP’s more Balearic elements, but golden hues and languid melodies drift and linger throughout. For a record coming out of a cold, post-industrial corner of northern Italy, Ritorno’s aesthetic is surprisingly luminous. Despite its sunny overtones, there’s plenty of low-end weight in the album’s foundation. The fluttering basslines of “TrackQY”—the LP’s most obviously club-ready tune—sound like something lifted from late-’90s drum’n’bass, while the crunchy wobble of “Liquid” is a classic dubstep throwback. There’s an abundance of DJ material, yet the album is practically devoid of staid, linear rhythms. Cribbing from house, techno, electro, breakbeat, jungle, trip-hop and IDM, Andrea’s hybrid creations have a lot in common with the more intriguing strands of bass music coming from UK outposts like Timedance and Livity Sound. From the soaring jungle mutation “Drumzzy” to the shuffling serenity of “Isabelle’s String,” the drum programming taps into a unique sort of organized chaos, with loose-limbed beats regularly teetering on the edge of collapse but somehow never losing the groove. Ritorno is Italian for “return,” and it’s easy to detect a ’90s vibe in its cosmic inclinations and freewheeling rhythms, which hark back to a sunnier, more lighthearted era when genre lines were less defined and the electronic music world wasn’t quite so balkanized. But Ritorno isn’t a strictly nostalgic effort, and the production is unmistakably modern, even as Andrea criss-crosses through numerous styles and eras. Outside of his long-running affiliation with Ilian Tape, he has never been locked into any particular trend or scene; instead, he has quietly developed his own artistic vision during years spent working in the background. That patience has paid off: Ritorno is a remarkably confident and cohesive work. Nearly a decade in the making, it’s Andrea’s first big statement, and proof that this low-key Italian producer has something valuable to add to the conversation.

теплота is the London-based duo of Grundik Kasyansky & Tom Wheatley. Their work interrogates the haptic, social and liberating relationships with technologies old and new; using feedback synthesizer and computer-acoustic bass, they fuse a spontaneous interplay orthogonally over cyclical structures, with techno as perpetual fulcrum. Following their debut HEAT/WORK on Cafe Oto’s TakuRoku label and the monthly ЭС research series, Skynned will be landing on Accidental Meetings. Half techno, half free jazz, the music is both hypnotic and open-ended, relentless and ephemeral.