MUSIC

Robin Carolan’s latest soundtrack for Robert Eggers’ highly anticipated Nosferatu is a haunting, gothic-infused and meticulously crafted work that draws from a vast palette of sounds, instruments, and inspirations. Following their successful collaboration on The Northman, Carolan reunites with Eggers to bring the legendary tale of Nosferatu to life, infusing the film with a score that is as complex and nuanced as the story itself. With Daniel Pioro, one of Britain's most exciting young classical musicians, at the helm as the orchestra leader and first chair for a vast majority of the recording, the soundtrack features a vast orchestration, including 60 string players, a full choir, various horns and woodwinds, a harpist, and two percussionists. Despite the grandeur of the orchestration, one of the most challenging pieces was the music box used at the film's beginning. Carolan and Eggers struggled to perfect its sound, a process marked by their meticulous attention to detail, which Carolan describes as almost telepathic. Set in the 1800s, Nosferatu allowed Carolan to incorporate contemporary instrumentation, though he made a deliberate effort to ensure the score didn't sound overly modern. Letty Stott, who also worked on The Northman, contributed ancient horns and pipes, enhancing the soundtrack’s eerie atmosphere. Additionally, percussionist Paul Clarvis custom-built a toaca-like instrument for added authenticity. Carolan’s inspirations for the soundtrack were as eclectic as they were profound. He frequently drew upon the works of Bartok and Coil, while films like The Innocents, Angels and Insects, and Eyes Wide Shut provided cinematic inspiration. Additionally, he explored the more obscure side of Hammer Horror soundtracks and found a deep connection to the music of the Ukrainian film The Eve of Ivan Kupalo, which helped shape the score’s otherworldly tone.   Carolan intentionally moved beyond the typical horror score, focusing on capturing the tale's melancholy and tragic elements while weaving in a sense of warped romanticism. The result is a soundtrack that not only complements the film but also stands on its own as a testament to Carolan’s artistry and the enduring power of collaboration.

Edward Artemiev's re-recording of his score to Andrei Tarkovsky's classic 1972 film Солярис (Solaris), reissued on 180-gram vinyl. When Artemiev recorded this score in Moscow in 1989 and '90, there was no legitimately available releases of the original soundtrack. Artemiev chose to fill that void himself with this recording, released on Torso Kino in the Netherlands as part of a 1990 double-LP set also containing re-recordings of Artemiev's scores to Зеркало (Mirror) (1975) and Сталкер (Stalker) (1979). This set is now long out of print, and Mirumir is pleased to present the collection on two separate LP releases, remastered, with new artwork, and officially licensed by the artist himself.

When KMRU accessed the sound archive of the Royal Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, it catalysed an auditory response in the form of the album Temporary Stored. The album listened back to listen forward – to reckon with the collective inheritance of colonial (sound) archives. Temporary Stored II serves as an artistic and curatorial extension of the original album, inviting other artists to lend their critical ear to museum archives holding recordings of African songs, traditions and practices. With KMRU, Aho Ssan, Lamin Fofana, Nyokabi Kariũki and Jessica Ekomane draw upon their listening experiences as global contemporaries navigating a world in flux – ecologically, economically, and politically. Each artist brings a selection of sonic fragments out of dormancy, channelling (in)audible traces into a contemporary cultural and political paradigm. Temporary Stored II sensitively responds to historical archives whose sounds have been restored and made more accessible through digitalisation, despite still being the copyrighted property of European institutions. It develops an emergent language to engage with the vocal, rhythmic and syllabic intelligence rooted in these sonic repertoires, grounded in reimagination of sonic records as seeds for a sounding future. Listening back to these recordings is one way to recover the loss of listening traditions, orality and modes of transmission. In these sonic mediations, Lamin Fofana, KMRU, Jessica Ekomane, Nyokabi Kariũki and Aho Ssan account for the archives with care and criticality. Inscribed in this album are “black waveforms as rebellious enthusiasms”, which in the words of Katherine McKittrick “affirm, through cognitive schemas, modes of being human that refuse antiblackness while restructuring our existing system of knowledge.” The album asks us to listen to colonial pasts and imagine the sound of our epistemological futures. It is a sonic retort; a playback to history and its colonial processes of extraction and accumulation. Temporary Stored II is a reminder that the labour of listening back is a continuous process of reassessing what has been lost, captured and refused.

Edward Artemiev's re-recording of his scores to Andrei Tarkovsky's classic films Зеркало (Mirror) (1975) and Сталкер (Stalker) (1979), reissued on 180-gram vinyl. When Artemiev recorded these scores in Moscow in 1989 and '90, there were no legitimately available releases of the original soundtracks. Artemiev chose to fill that void himself with these recordings, released on Torso Kino in the Netherlands as part of a 1990 double-LP set also containing re-recordings of Artemiev's score to Солярис (Solaris) (1972). This set is now long out of print, and Mirumir is pleased to present the collection on two separate LP releases, remastered, with new artwork, and officially licensed by the artist himself.

It is with great pride Miasmah announces the posthumous release of this double album of the final work by experimental composer Marcus Fjellström, titled The Last Sunset of the Year. Collected by Marcus’ friends and colleagues Erik K. Skodvin and Dave Kajganich, this release brings together music written and produced during Marcus’ tenure as composer for the first season of the AMC anthology series The Terror, which told the story of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage. That said, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR is, by design, not a soundtrack to the show. Dave Kajganich writes in the album’s liner notes: “Some of the pieces will be familiar to those who know The Terror (though in some cases in different forms), but many other pieces are being made available here for the first time. The selected pieces have a unity unto themselves, and we feel strongly that this release should be taken not as a companion to the show, but as Marcus Fjellström ’s final album, on its own terms. We’ve presented these pieces without titles, except for titling the four movements of the journey they suggest. It is a journey that evokes the mystery, grandeur, and desolation of the Arctic, and articulates the spiritual and existential implications of traveling there. In many ways, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR goes further, and deeper, than the show ever could, presenting a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death—and even to a final vista beyond death.” Kajganich reached out to begin discussing the idea of this release with Skodvin, back in 2017, after Marcus’ death, but before the series had premiered. In the years since, Dave and Erik have Zoomed and emailed back and forth hundreds of times, studying all seventy-five of the pieces Marcus wrote for the show in all their forms (as many as six or seven versions to a piece), to winnow down a final list of pieces to include. The most difficult phase of the process, Kajganich reveals in the notes, was understanding the best way to sequence the tracks. It required listening to many different track orders and paying close attention to how each order created a slightly different identity for the album through their specific juxtapositions and dynamics. “In a way I can’t fully articulate, it was very much as though Erik and I were having a final, deeply felt and joyous conversation with Marcus himself about the interior lives of these pieces,” Kajganich says. The album’s title comes from a moment in the show when a group of Victorian sailors who are trapped in winter pack ice, suffering dwindling psychological resources and supplies, stand on the deck of one of the doomed ships to watch the sun rise above the horizon for a moment, and then immediately set in the last sunset of the year before six weeks of darkness, an event which, even through the lens of their inevitable coming losses, could still be viewed as something astonishing and beautiful. None of those men could know, nor can we, what waits for us across the line of death, but in The Last Sunset of the Year, Marcus seems to have had a notion.

Throbbing Gristle revisits TGCD1, long out of print, now available on vinyl for the first time ever via Mute. This release includes the original sleeve notes by all the members of the band, uncovering the story and ethos behind TG’s independent record label, Industrial Records. Formed in 1975, Throbbing Gristle, aka Chris Carter, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson (1955-2010), Cosey Fanni Tutti, and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (1950- 2020), fully delivered on punk’s failed promise to explore extreme culture as a way of sabotaging systems of control. Their impact on music, culture, and the arts has been immeasurable and still felt today. Originally released on Mute’s imprint, The Grey Area, in 1986, TGCD1 comprises forty-two minutes of studio recordingscaptured at their own Industrial Records Studio on a TEAC 8-Track in 1979. Initially serving as an exclusive piece of unreleased material for TG’s first-ever CD release, the record’ dark and harsh droning sound stands as a significant chapter in their discography, showcasing the band during, arguably, their most formative era. TGCD1 is reissued alongside The Third Mind Movements - both vital additions for dedicated Throbbing Gristle and industrial music fans.

Raising Earthly Spirits was conceived as a ritualistic, shamanistic album centred around the concept of transcending this level of consciousness and existing mindfully in multidimensional space and time. It draws heavily upon the sacred ideas and practices of many indigenous peoples from this earth and how they communicate and interact with their ancestors and how they see themselves in relation to this world. It was made with respect towards these beliefs. - Robin Storey/Rapoon

Raising Earthly Spirits was conceived as a ritualistic, shamanistic album centred around the concept of transcending this level of consciousness and existing mindfully in multidimensional space and time. It draws heavily upon the sacred ideas and practices of many indigenous peoples from this earth and how they communicate and interact with their ancestors and how they see themselves in relation to this world. It was made with respect towards these beliefs. - Robin Storey/Rapoon

Genius Loci exorcises the ghosts and spirits residing in the former munitions factory Het Hem, in Zaandam, Netherlands in the latest release on A State Of Flo. In contemporary usage, ‘genius loci’ refers to a location's distinctive atmosphere, or a "spirit of the place"... Genius Loci is a new album by sound artist Brian d'Souza (fka Auntie Flo). Genius Loci references the notion of the protective 'spirit of place' from ancient Roman times, d'Souza used a vintage accordion to capture the acoustic properties of the Het Hem building in Zaandam, Netherlands - enabling him to travel through time using sound. In this music, you can hear ghosts from a previous, more sinister time - the paranoia of cold war panic - echoes of misfiring bullets ricocheting around the 200m subterranean shooting range and the overwhelmingly vast vibrations of the main expo space. The music also instills a sense of hope, a wistful desire for a brighter and more peaceful future where the spirits are vanquished. Are we there yet? A former munitions and gun testing factory, Het Hem is a space full of character made up of a range of rooms that each hold a different acoustic property. On Genius Loci, d'Souza is interested in the connection between sound, space and time. He uses an accordion as a drone instrument to capture a variety of resonances using microphones placed around each room to tell a unique story in each song. The results are released as a vinyl 12” and digital download on d’Souza’s new A State Of Flo label and as part of an audiovisual interactive website which incorporates generative audio technology developed by d'Souza's Swell Studio in collaboration with The University of Arts in London. Recorded & mastered by Karl Choueiri at Modular Mind Studio Artwork and commissiong by Orpheu De Jong Visuals by Simon Dirks

Acclaimed UK electronic musician Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug, King Midas Sound) releases a stunningly powerful rescore of Andrei Tarkovsky’s seminal 1972 movie Solaris on Phantom Limb. In May 2020, British musician Kevin Martin was invited by the Vooruit arts centre in Gent, Belgium to compose a new score for a film of his choice. Having been long inspired by pioneering Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, Martin tells us that his 1972 masterpiece Solaris was the “natural choice”. The film is an unattested giant, not only of science fiction and Soviet film, but also in the annals cinematic history. And its original score, composed by regular Tarkovsky collaborator and early Soviet electronic musician Eduard Artemyev, is a magnificent work of haunting majesty, a key element to the film’s brilliance. Martin’s challenge was great: “it was with a certain amount of trepidation I stepped into such large footprints,” he writes. The results - Return to Solaris - are breathtaking. The film is intense, psychologically devastating and bleakly compelling. Interweaving themes of love, horror, sorrow, nostalgia, memory and dystopia, Martin’s score expertly mirrors this expansive breadth of psychic weight, from existential dread to heartbreaking poignancy, with immense emotional gravity. Drawn to its “narrative struggle between organic, pastoral memories of a lost past, and the harsh, dystopian realities of a futuristic hell,” Martin employs atonal noise, simmering waves of distorted synthesis, undulating drones and otherworldly, astronomic sound-design to crushing effect. Subtly submerged recurring motifs - reflections of individual characters - rise and fall amidst the fog, occasionally illuminating the doom like motes of starlight, before settling back into the density of space. Tarkovsky’s Solaris won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival and was screened for an incredible fifteen years uninterrupted in the Soviet Union. It is placed highly in “greatest movies of all time” lists published by Empire and the BBC, among others. Steven Soderburgh directed a Hollywood remake in 2002, starring George Clooney, and scored by Cliff Martinez.

Kato Hideki’s Statement: “ The Walk is the first collaboration between me and my brother from another mother, Kramer. We started working together in the late summer in 2023, discussing the thematics and the sonic palette of the album. We shared strong connections with the writings by Robert Walser and Basho - both of them walked, dreamed, lived and died on the road. Ambient music was our natural plane for us to transduce the power of their literature into our music as signifiers. Neither of us imagined just to make “another ambient record”, nor a direct translation of their writings. My instinct was to use various modal colors with modulation - slow yet structured music that sounds deceivingly similar to ambient music. Kramer’s genius was apparent to me: his ability to elaborate the music as a composer / musician with his keen ears; to frame the album conceptually, sonically and musically as a producer. What you hear in this album is a true collaboration between two artists who trusted each other to let the music transcend. Here you have it, enjoy YOUR walk - dream, live and die well! ”Kato Hideki - Brooklyn, NY on April 3rd, 2024 Kramer’s Statement: “Sometime in the latter 20th Century, I became aware of the art of The Brothers Quay, two American animators living in London and making the most beautiful works of art I’d ever experienced in cinema.I noted that some of their work was inspired by… “the writings of Robert Walser”. Fast forward to 2024 and I have now read every word there was to read (translated into English) by this unique Swiss-German writer. I’d waited decades to find the right ‘environment’ in which to create music in dedication to this great prose writer and poet, and in 2023, I found that it was not ‘the right environment’ that I’d been waiting for, but rather, the right collaborator. Kato Hideki and his extraordinary work as composer for film, dance and just about every other creative discipline you can imagine, was equally as inspiring to me for this project as the words and worlds of Walser and Basho. Our journey in collaborative composition began all over the global map, but arrived at the same physical endpoint, and at the very same point in time. I’m not sure that I would even be interested in music at all, unless there were other artists to partner with as I worked. Working alone means Nothing to me. This months-long act of co-creation i have shared with Kato for “THE WALK” has made me as happy to be alive as Walser and Basho were so happy to be alive while on their walks, as evidenced by their extraordinary descriptive powers, knowing that the world around them - so simple yet so very complex - made life so wondrous, and so well worth the sometimes seemingly insurmountable struggles of finding a way to survive Today, so that we might try again Tomorrow.”-Kramer, April 9, 2024 (Asheville, NC)

Through the eye of the pinkish gate... Soft lights... cool evening breezes, toxic fumes, burnt champagne and supper for one... love and longing...disenchantment... and the murky meanderings of Pinkcourtesyphone. It is impossible for us to supply all the recipe ingredients needed for this, the sounds of soured romance, but we can at least dish up the musical setting on a deluxe digital porcelain platter (with a just few hairline cracks)... but only for an hour. A gourmet offering befitting a pall party without compare. Attempts have been made in this collection of recordings, obdurate and diegetic, to express anxiety, always, often, and sometimes. 'Arise in Sinking Feelings', an unmistakable pinkcourtesy mood, simply combinations of magic and memory that spin out within moments before our delighted senses... a fanciful flight of neurosis. No one who is anyone has heard it and even they were met with incomprehension. "A Stunning Blandness!" read the headlines. This album includes a printed insert of inspiration. Use it to gain maximum benefits from your study of Pinkcourtesyphone. Read and imbibe the insert while you listen to the recording. The Room40 Media Institute recommends the ‘Double Sensory’ method of absorbing sonic information. Its consistent use will greatly increase your powers of concentration and retention. Let your feelings sink as you let Pinkcourtesyphone sink in... its secret can destroy you in its unyielding grasp.

Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents an electro-acoustic adaptation of one of their favourite stories, which has haunted them for many years. Wat gebeurde er met sergeant Massuro (What Happened to Sergeant Massuro) is a little-known tale written by master storyteller Harry Mulisch, in which he has thoughtfully succeeded in interweaving strong anti-colonial ideas with mythical elements. In letter form, the story recounts the fate of Sergeant Massuro, who, during a mission in the former Dutch colony of Netherlands New Guinea, slowly but surely turns to stone under mysterious circumstances. It appears that certain unspeakable actions of his past may have brought this fate upon him... Wat gebeurde er met Sergeant Massuro, published in 1957, is a rarity in Dutch literature, as there was little critical writing during the time when New Guinea was still under colonial authority of the Netherlands. The Dutch retained sovereignty over Western New Guinea until 1962. Drawing upon a vast array of electronic and acoustic instruments, alongside archival and field recordings, Wanderwelle expanded the story's horizons with a sonic dimension, making it accessible to a new generation of listeners and readers. The artists consulted the author's estate, his publisher, and literary scholars during the creation of the album to fully grasp the extent of the author's intricate writing and thoughts. Given the deeply personal significance of Harry Mulisch’s story to the artists, this record serves as the inaugural release for their label. Maalstroom is not your usual label. It is a public archive that will feature some of Wanderwelle’s most personal projects. Harry Mulisch (1927-2010) is considered one of the most prolific writers of Dutch post-war literature. He wrote more than eighty novels, plays, essays, poems, and philosophical reflections. A frequent theme in Mulisch’s work is the Second World War, and he often incorporated ancient legends or myths, drawing on Greek mythology, Jewish mysticism, urban legends, and politics. The artists would like to express their sincere gratitude to the Stichting Vrienden van het Harry Mulisch Huis and Cultuurfonds, without whom this project would not have been possible. In remembrance of Harry Mulisch (1927-2010)

Pianeti Sintetici presents AI-37, entitled ‘Space Opera’. Conceived by Italian artist Davide Perrone, the Pianeti Sintetici (“Synthetic Planets”) project hypothesises the creation of future synthetic worlds as told through sound. Although split across two parts, the album is a singular organism that narrates a journey of boundless cosmic exploration. A sonic tapestry woven of intergalactic atmospheres, Space Opera’s imaginative sound design contributes to a richly spatial and haptic experience. Taking place in the dimly lit crevices of deepest space, a swirling pool of chemical abstractions and extraterrestrial transmissions spumes out from the darkness. Elements weave through broad washes of drones and scintillating textures, contrasting a sparse backdrop with dense and multilayered passages. Composed with the use of modular synthesisers and intense audio manipulations, ‘Space Opera’ comes to life as an entity that transports the listener on an immersive journey into the mysteries of alien worlds.

Twin heavyweights Kevin Richard Martin (The Bug) and Joseph Kamaru (KMRU) unite for Disconnect, a powerful study of dread, hope, and profound sonics that marries depth-trawling dub with Kamaru’s voice, ambient sensibilities, and negative space. Kevin Martin first became aware of Kenyan ambient musician KMRU “watching the short 2020 documentary Under The Bridge,” he tells us. “Which, aside from immediately finding Joseph's approach to sound and music so instantly impressive, I also found his spoken voice possessed a captivating, lilting, tonal quality, with his soft-spoken accent.” Following this, Martin dug into Kamaru’s records, and found not only a kindred spirit in skillful exploration of sonic space, but also a fan of The Bug. So began a mutually respectful relationship, initially held in Instagram DMs and reciprocal admiration for each other’s work and eventually blossoming into an invitation sent by Kevin to Joseph to collaborate on a new album. The results - debut collaboration album Disconnect - collect a back-and-forth creative dialogue that started life in Martin’s studio. “I think I surprised Joseph by suggesting he contributes vocals,” Martin tells us. This ability to identify, isolate and exploit the nonstandard is a trait shared by both musicians and employed to devastating effect on Disconnect. Its vocals, sitting somewhere between intonation and spoken word, capture the ear and fizz with simmering power. They are indeed a surprise, coming from a musician specialising in instrumental, field recording-laced ambient musics, but tell intensely evocative stories, weaving poetry into the pair’s grandiose greyscale musical architecture. The record is just as deep, expressive, and arresting as we can expect from Kevin Richard Martin, following his acclaimed rescore of Solaris (released in 2021 on Phantom Limb) and a handful of self-released solo albums that explore a sound just as heavy as The Bug but at a menacingly slower pace. And it is just as evocative and unique as Kamaru’s KMRU canon, each object delicately and purposefully placed so the timbral mosaic builds with shimmering and hypnotic beauty.

More than 20 years after its release, the 2001 OVA work “Nekojiruso”, based on the “Nekojiru” manga by Tatsuo Sato and Masaaki Yuasa, continues to gain a cult-like fan base. The soundtrack work by Yutoro Teshikai, which had been extremely difficult to obtain, has been reissued on CD/LP for the first time!

2023 RSD item. The mysterious electronic musician Ooyamada Daisanmyaku has arrived at music as "efficacy" in his third album. "Zolpidem", a sound-wave sleeping pill that Ooyamada Daisanmyaku himself prepared to help him fall asleep. A mysterious work that coexists with calmness and disquiet, which makes you want to describe it as "Eric Satie, an insomniac who suffers from the Caretaker-like nightmare." Completely limited production.

The cassette tape of this work released in 2022 from the label landscape plan sponsored by Taika, a two-person rock band that continues to release works with a Fourth World sensibility, sold out in a blink of an eye, and since then, ele-king vol. 30 Selected as one of the 50 must-listen albums of electronic music in the 2020s.

Like Eric Satie, who suffers from insomnia, was haunted by a care-taker-like nightmare and twisted it. contains

The binding, designed by Mr. Y Inoue, the central figure of the rock band kumagusu, which is active mainly in Tokyo, gives the work a texture like the white outer skin of a pill, and makes you want to take it out every night and take it. It will induce an addiction to such "Zolpidem".

'Persistent Repetition Of Phrases' success comes from the attention it pays to the function of 'the loop', not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it's as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby's labyrinth of faulty remembrances, pointing their way towards the peculiarities dictating the manner by which the mind stores and attempts to recover information.

AI-36 comes from Ear to Ear - the debut collaboration between label regular Samuel van Dijk (Multicast Dynamics) and Ukrainian artist Yevgen Chebotarenko. Taken from a series of live recording sessions, the album explores in four parts a markedly darker realm of soundscape music. A cornucopia of abstract morphing scenes and heady synesthesia, the album brims with rich sonic detail and evocative gestures. Deftly blending organic sound textures with an experimental austerity, ‘Live Recordings’ displays potent and accomplished storytelling. The album opens to a grey overcast vista, a natural landscape that slowly melts into a descending chasmic dysphoria. The mood transitions to a drone-based piece on the B-side, characterised by a more psychologically suspenseful framework and exotic blend of sound design. The atmosphere lightens, yet equally pensive as side C takes on a more elemental form, invoking water and its array of microbial and metabolic ecosystems. Brief cathartic moments in the final section pave the way for deeper wayfaring on the D-side. Stray signals and unknowable artefacts skitter across a vast subaqueous domain, a fathomless womb of potentialities that ebbs into eternity.

Mark Van Hoen's long-running Locust project arrives on the New York label Mysteries of The Deep with The First Cause. Across the album, Van Hoen deftly balances tough, fuzzy, crunching and distorted sounds with spectral vocal loops and ethereal atmospheres - channelling the ghosts of jungle, techno and trip-hop. The crushing bass weight and gloom never become oppressive as slivers of light illuminate the darkness.

Acclaimed guitar duo Loren Connors and Alan Licht celebrate their 30-year collaboration with release of their eighth album — At The Top Of The Stairs.Across the decades, their improvisations turned increasingly abstract and atonal, while still maintaining complex, ethereal arrangements. The harmonious blend of Licht's meticulously crafted feedback and harmonic patterns with Connors' ghostly blue tones remains the core sound of this partnership. At The Top Of The Stairs was recorded live in 2018. Across two side-long pieces, the duo ascends slowly, through layers of atmospheric tension punctuated by thunderous waves of Connors' effects.For fifty years, Connors's adaptation of acoustic Delta blues has transmuted into miniature gray scale compositions and howling riffs. His collaborators include Oren Ambarchi, Keiji Haino, and Kim Gordon. Rock/experimental musician Alan Licht was a member of the bands Love Child, Run On, and Lee Ranaldo & the Dust, and has released a range of acclaimed rock and experimental albums. He is an author with books published by Rizzoli, W.W. Norton, Faber & Faber and Blank Forms.

First compiled as a double CD in 2002, 'Moon’s Milk (In Four Phases)' is a suite of four EPs that Coil released seasonally via their in-house Eskaton imprint across 1998. The line-up for these sessions were John Balance, Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, Drew McDowall, and William Breeze. Recorded primarily at their home studio in Chiswick, London on the eve of a permanent relocation to the small seaside town of Weston-Super- Mare, the collection has long loomed as a pivotal and pinnacle work in the group's discography, but has never been officially reissued, or repressed on vinyl. Time has only ripened its tapestry of regal strangeness. Arranged sequentially in tribute to the equinoxes and solstices, 'Moon's Milk' captures Coil at a revelatory crossroads, leaning deeper into improvisation, spontaneity, and sound design. "Moon's Milk or Under an Unquiet Skull" initiates the proceedings on 'Spring Equinox', a two-part netherworld organ séance woven from vocal drones, cathedral keys, seasick strings, and opiated undertow. From there, 'Summer Solstice' skews lighter but no less incantational, with Balance embracing his voice- as-instrument across lucid dream torch songs ("Bee Stings"), purgatorial spoken word ("Glowworms/Waveforms"), sultry chamber pieces ("Summer Substructures"), and falsetto ravings ("A Warning From The Sun (For Fritz)"). 'Autumn Equinox' exudes more of a pensive and twilit mood, from the Rose McDowall-sung neofolk ballad "Rosa Decidua" ("I hear your voice sing near to me / I've put away the poisoned chalice (for now) / And lie down amongst the flowerbeds") to hall-of-lords hallucination "The Auto- Asphyxiating Hierophant” to the liminal string-plucked classic "Amethyst Deceivers," featuring excellent alien guitar by Breeze layered with Balance’s oft-quoted couplet: "Pay your respects to the vultures / For they are your future." The album’s final chapter, 'Winter Solstice', is its most swooning, remote, and ceremonial. Opener "A White Rainbow" stirs strings, layered choral vocals, and shivering rhythm into an imploding burial hymn. "North" oscillates bleakly, a ghost in the machine murmuring opaque prophecy ("This black dog has no owner / This black dog has no odour"), while "Magnetic North" is its inverse, a guided meditation of gently flickering software and surreal chakra poetics ("Red rose filling the skull / Yellow cube in the lower pelvis / Silver moon crescent below the navel"). The suite fades to grey with a traditional English carol ("Christmas Is Now Drawing Near"), rendered like an executioner's song by Rose McDowall’s doomed, beautiful voice. The Dais box set includes the entirety of the rare 'Moon's Milk Bonus Disc' CD-R / 2019 Threshold Archives Copal CD, which includes three collaborations with Thighpaulsandra. This material is as rich and intoxicating as the previous four phases, ranging from electro-acoustic singing bowl rituals ("Copal") to dissonant electronic recitations of visionary Angus Maclise poetry ("The Coppice Meat") to ominous classical melancholia ("Bankside"). Once again, Coil confirm the vastness of their confounding, infinite alchemy, explored and refined across decades of experimentation – both sonic and bodily. From post-industrial to post-everything, theirs is an art untethered, in the wilds of its own design.

CORRUPTED is a mysterious Japanese doom metal band, formed in 1994. Immensely downtuned guitar and crushingly slow bass are shrouded under deep layers of feedback. They are rightly hailed as one of the heaviest and darkest doom metal bands of all time.

"Humankind's folly it its continuing idiocy. This is the beginning of the "Hollow" series. The schoolyard of the school was buried in the mountains of radioactive contaminated rubble. We cannot hear children's voices from anywhere. I hear it is the world of sound of only footsteps and the warning sound of the Geiger counter..." (Chew Hasegawa)

This record isn't your standard doom fare. The title-less tracks are to be played at either standard vinyl speed. Therefore (and at the band's request), no samples or download code.

Originally released in 2016 as a tour-only cassette, 'Origo' is the first recorded evidence of Timo Van Luijk (Elodie) and Bart De Paepe's Ilta Hämärä project, a heady, hallucinogenic psych-drone jammer that's been bumped up with an extra cut from the same era. Ilta Hämärä is the outlet for Van Luijk and De Paepe's smokiest, dankest material - sessions that thrum at their own pace, tickling the pineal in the process. If you can remember Brooklyn's Religious Knives, or Kiwi skronkers Pumice, you'll have a good idea of where Ilta Hämärä are headed. The opening side's 'Ilma' pits organs against blunted drums and swirling pads, before we lurch into the atmospheric 'Vesi', a soupy zoner that's carried by lysergic axe tweaks and gurgling synths. On the second side, the mood continues with the grim, green-hued 'Vesi', but it's the previously unheard 'Eetreni' that has us most captivated. While it was recorded around the same time, it's markedly different gear, a long-form, mostly beatless Alice in Wonderland thriller that sounds as if it was pruned from a long-lost Czech or Hungarian new wave movie. Flutes and dulled oscillations wind around each other in the first stretch, but when the drums begin to surface they attack like a death rattle from another reality, spplintering out into serrated, saw wave noise and ritualistic crashes...