MUSIC

Come Back Down, the new album by Nashville experimental-pop duo Total Wife, was born from the edge of sleep. When composer and producer Luna Kupper would begin to fall asleep during late-night mixing sessions, the songs would follow her into the halfway place between dream and lucidity. Like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, she’d wake with a new perspective on the puzzle she was piecing together. “I’m a psychological mixer — I’m trying to think of how someone’s experiencing the sound, versus getting stuck in trying to make all these different tones and using all this gear to make something sound a certain way,” Kupper says. And like a spiral from waking life into dream, the songs on Come Back Down are endlessly self-referential, building whole universes from a single point. Kupper sold all of her synths to make rent before she started working on the album, and so every inorganic sound is instead built from samples of the band’s own work. A guitar on one song may be reprocessed and used as a synth on the next, while everywhere on the album vocal samples are taken from a single unreleased cover of Elliott Smith’s “Between the Bars.” In tribute to this process, the album was almost named The Julia Set after the mathematical equation which feeds into itself again and again, creating beautiful fractal images. The intention was to create something complex but accessible; experimental, yet precise and without abstraction. In her lyrics, too, main vocalist and co-composer Ash Richter is as straightforward as she’s ever been. She drew on her experience of pandemic isolation to write about connection and disconnection, using her lyrics as a tool for the communication that was missing in everyday life. On the soaring, shoegazey track “peaches”, a storm that forced the cancellation of a recording session became a metaphor for emotional distance. “still asleep” chronicles Richter’s euphoria after Total Wife’s first tour, and watches it begin to curdle into paranoia. “Thank the full moon, my heart is overflowing,” she sings, before: “Is there such a thing as too happy?” The experience of isolation was prompting Richter to think back to her childhood, a time marked for her by solitude and natural play — climbing trees, making mud pies, getting lost in the woods. On tracks like “in my head” and “second spring”, she uses the imagery of nature to recall that time and forge a connection with her lonely inner child. “I feel connected with transcendentalist writing and magical realism — trying to convey things in a concrete way, but with that element of psychology and mystery,” she says. Richter and Kupper, friends from high school, formed Total Wife in 2016, relocating from Boston to Nashville in 2020. Both are visual artists as well as musicians, which they incorporate into their work with Total Wife via layered and purposeful visuals. A DIY streak underpins everything that they do — from handling their own artwork and music videos to recording their own music, releasing tapes through their label Ivy Eat Home, and hosting house shows in the basement they’ve christened Ryman 2. In Nashville they’ve settled into a weirdo scene living under the record industry’s floorboards, a hive of collaborative and creative energy that has made them excited to call the city home. They also assembled a live band for the first time shortly after moving to Nashville, consisting of Ryan Bigelow, Sean Booz and Billy Campbell — injecting their creative process with a jolt of spontaneity and aliveness that has fed back into Come Back Down.

Second solo LP by Princ€ss member + Maria Somerville and Mel Keane collaborator Finn Carraher McDonald aka Nashpaints - via new Dublin label Mirror World.

"Nashpaints is Finn Carraher McDonald from Dublin. Following up his debut album "Blindman The Gambler”, recent activity as a member of Princ€ss and production on Maria Somerville’s “Luster” & Mel Keane’s “Airs”, Nashpaints releases his second album "Everyone Good Is Called Molly” via Dublin label MirrorWorld.

"standing so close to someone else vision becomes touch

Standing with ɘnoɘmoƨ, looking at each other in the mirror and not recognising th - htiw gnidnatS

Apparently,

Three people will lie while listening to this album..

Zzz….they will endup in the same place

Generally, this song will be played but,

here is a guy watery eyed on the train"

Nashpaint’s releases his second album

EveryonegoodiscalledMolly. NOT ALL MOLLYS, Never anything else"

One part THC and two parts MDMA; the first offering from DIIV chemically fuses the reminiscent with the half-remembered building a musical world out of old-air and new breeze. These are songs that remind us of love in all it’s earthly perfections and perversions. A lot of DIIV’s magnetism was birthed in the process Mr. Smith went through to discover these initial compositions. After returning from a US tour with Beach Fossils, Cole made a bold creative choice, settling into the window-facing corner of a painter’s studio in Bushwick, sans running water, holing up to craft his music. In this AC-less wooden room, throughout the thick of the summer, Cole surrounded himself with cassettes and LP’s, the likes of Lucinda Williams, Arthur Russell, Faust, Nirvana, and Jandek; writings of N. Scott Momaday, James Welsh, Hart Crane, Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin; and dreams of aliens, affection, spirits, and the distant natural world (as he imagined it from his window facing the Morgan L train). The resulting music is as cavernous as it is enveloping, asking you to get lost in its tangles in an era that demands your attention be focused into 140 characters.

Winston Hightower “100 Acre Wood” [klp315/prnl65] Winnie’s world hasn’t always been easy Some say he could have been famous but there were complications. He had a brush with success but life got in the way. “Some people care too much. I think it’s called love.” So it was up to Winston Hightower to grab it, hold it and make himself heard One man in love with the sound of American lofi. What is in the ashtray of Winston Hightower’s ‘Day in the Life’? 14 songs that give carefree camouflage to a wistful heart - it's radiant throughout. 33RPM

Big Crown Records is proud to present the sophomore full-length from Les Imprimés, Fading Forward. Spearheaded by self-taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Morten Martens, the album explores mortality, escapism, and a myriad of experiences associated with love.

Martens made a tremendous impression with his highly acclaimed 2023 debut Rêverie and has since cultivated a diehard fanbase whose demographics are as wide-ranging as the influences that shape his music. He mixes tones from ’60s and ’70s soul with arrangement nods to doo-wop records, takes drum energy from hip-hop, and covers the whole thing with vocal stylings drawn from ’90s and 2000s alternative. But it is Martens’ lyrics, emotion, and delivery that truly bring everything together and help him stand out from his peers. There’s an infectiousness and pop sensibility in the writing, executed with the utmost class and taste, giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens with repeat listens.

Hailing from Kristiansand, Norway, Martens plays nearly every instrument on Fading Forward, produces and arranges the album, and of course sings. “It’s soul music, but I don’t exactly have the soul voice,” Morten explains humbly. “But I do it my own way, in a way that’s mine.”

Album opener “You & I” is Morten’s homage to his partner, who sticks it out “through the chaos and the blunders” with him. Punchy drums and cascading pianos make this one a proper two-stepper and an anthem for those lucky enough to find someone who understands them and helps them through the parts of life where they need it most. “Again & Again” slows the pace and deals with the heavier side of love and life, as Martens professes his resilience through the mishaps, heartbreak, and letdowns of love affairs gone wrong. “Untainted Love” brings the sweet side of new love center stage with a tune that plays on the title of the Gloria Jones classic. “Get Lost” leans into the metaphysical with an invitation to leave reality behind and spend time with Les Imprimés, where there’s room to dream. “Only Love” is built over a gritty drum break, with a chorus that is simple yet profound, and an arrangement that gives it the energy of a mantra. The album turns to the dancefloor on “With You,” an uptempo, uplifting tune about a fleeting encounter that leaves you pining for more. Martens longs for her, but joyfully—as if simply remembering that such a connection is possible is exactly what he needed. Martens is joined by guest vocalist Ama Li on “Miss the Days,” a slow-burning ballad that reckons back to simpler times when love felt easier. Fading Forward closes on a wholly somber note with “Paradise,” a tune that wishes freedom and peace to a friend who passed away.

In the small town of Kristiansand, Norway, there is a huge talent who spent much of his life laying low and playing in the background. Signing to New York’s Big Crown Records inspired Morten Martens to begin sharing his own music. The response to his debut Rêverie pushed him out of the studio and onto the stage, serving as inspiration to push his artistry to new heights—heights that are fully realized on Fading Forward.

The complete studio recordings from The American Analog Set's second chapter. Destroy Destroy Destroy gathers the Texas slow-krauters Know By Heart, Promise Of Love, and Set Free LPs, Everything Ends In Spring EP, and an additional two discs of singles, B-sides, alternates and outtakes. Accompanying 36-page booklet is flooded with photos and handwritten scraps from the band's dreamy post-Y2K era. Punk as fuck, for real.

lovesliescrushing's Bloweyelashwish is an ambient masterpiece, originally recorded in 1992 with a 12-string guitar, 4-track recorder, looping pedal, and boundless reverb. Scott Cortez’s project, alongside the haunting vocals of Melissa Arpin Duimstra, transformed bedroom daydreams into a serene, moonlit journey on a timeless sea. This expanded and remastered double album features five additional tracks, each distortion-laden and hypnotic, alongside lyrics and a replica postcard to guide listeners deeper into its world. Blindness, not eyewash, is the intended experience.

Netherlands-based artist Jonny Nash returns to Melody As Truth with his new solo album, ‘Once Was Ours Forever.’ Building on 2023’s ‘Point Of Entry,’ this collection of eleven compositions draws us further into Nash’s immersive, slowly expanding world, effortlessly connecting the dots somewhere between folk,

ambient jazz and dreampop.

While ‘Point Of Entry’ was characterised by it’s laid-back, daytime ambience, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’

arrives wrapped in shades of dusk and hazy light, unfolding like a slow-moving sunset. Built from layers of gentle fingerpicked guitar, textural brush strokes, floating melodies and reverb-soaked vocals, moments come and go, fleeting and ephemeral.

From the cosmic Americana of ‘Bright Belief’ to the lush, layered shoegaze textures of ‘The Way Things Looked’, Nash’s versatile guitar playing lies at the heart of this album, gently supported by a cast of

collaborators who each add their unique touches. Canadian ambient jazz saxophonist Joseph Shabason makes a return appearance, providing his delicate swells to ‘Angel.’ Saxophone is also provided by Shoei Ikeda (Maya Ongaku), cello by Tomo Katsurada (ex-Kikagaku Moyo) and Tokyo acid folk artist Satomimagae (RVNG) lends her haunting multilayered vocals to ‘Rain Song.’

As with much of Nash’s work, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ deftly finds an equilibrium between softness and weight, offering the listener ample space to interpret and inhabit the music on their own terms. Through his uncanny ability to blend the pastoral and the profound, the idyllic and the insightful, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ arrives as a tender and understated offering, infused with warmth and compassion.

following the success of their 2024 PPU EP "ramble in the rainbow", TAMTAM returns to their studio "where they dwell"

A four-piece band based in Tokyo.
Initially playing reggae/dub music, the band gradually developed into an innovative fusion of diverse musical influences, such as jazz, soul, psyche pop, new age, and exotica.
The sound is based on groove and euphoria, with nostalgic melodies.
They have performed at iconic events in Japan such as Fuji Rock Festival, and also have been looking overseas since they performed in Canada(Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver) in 2019.
The new EP "Ramble In The Rainbow"(2024) is their first international release on the US label Peoples Potential Unlimited.
The work shows their musical maturity, drawing inspiration from Sun Ra, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Yasuaki Shimizu.

What happens when a band makes two brilliant albums and disappears for decades? Music finds a way, with both Current Joys and Beach Fossils discovering these slacker anthems long after dial-up's demise. LA's Current Joys tackle "Cooking" from Contemporary Movement, reimagining the San Jose trio's lo-fi couch potato slouch as a treadmill-ready, jangly power pop ripper. On the flip, Brooklyn's Beach Fossils gives "Inside Out" a facelift, tightening up the original's loose folds while staying true to its curves and freckly stardust. Housed in a full color sleeve, with a nod to Stratosphere photographer Sam Erlich, this limited edition double-sider is a crucial add to any aspiring collector of the Dusterverse.

MJ Guider returns to Modern Love’s fantasy jukebox series with a fog-bound piece of nu-gaze that blurs dream pop sweetness with rough-edged texture. New Orleans artist Melissa Guion builds the track from chugging, re-amped goth guitars, blown-out drums and suspended, diaphanous vocals, as if a classic shoegaze sound were viewed through thick frosted glass. The result echoes the blurred intensity of My Bloody Valentine, the sleek gloom of Curve, and the hazy atmospheres of Cocteau Twins, while retaining MJ Guider’s own nocturnal mood. The flip moves into more abstract territory: slow, humming waves of harmonic noise drift like a hymn before a powdery rhythm gradually unsettles the calm, hinting at the dub-tinged ambience of Bowery Electric.

The Thinking of the World Began Pounding in Our Ears the Moment We Hit Shore is a studio-constructed album developed as a project rather than a band.

Created by Florian TM Zeisig between 2022 and 2025, the record draws on sessions and material contributed by a small group of collaborators. Recordings were gathered across different contexts and brought together through an extended studio process, with writing, production, arrangement, and assembly treated as a continuous activity.

The album took shape gradually through selection, editing, and re-placement of material over time. Individual pieces were revisited, reshaped, and recontextualized until they formed a unified body of work.

Contributions to the project include work by Mari Rubio (More Eaze), Róisín Berkeley, Don Lyons, Cal Fish, K, Seán Being, and JQ. All tracks were produced, written, arranged, and mixed by Florian TM Zeisig, with co-songwriting contributions noted per track.

Feed Like Fishes is Should's first full-length record — an album of noisy, sedate, and minimal pop songs. Falling somewhere between shoegazer, slowcore, and postrock, Feed Like Fishes is a wonderfully complicated record that echoes the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Bedhead, and Galaxie 500. The album also includes Should's take on The Wedding Present song "Spangle."

The album begins with "Fish Fourteen," a fuzzed-out lo-fi instrumental inspired by Colin Newman's instrumental solo record, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish. "Sarah Missing" fits perfectly with the work on Should's A Folding Sieve album, with its unforgettable vocal chorus awash in shoegazing delight.

"It Still Would" and "It's Pull Is Slight" are moderately-paced indie rock tunes that bring to mind Bedhead, the latter song featuring a parade of bells throughout its extended coda.

"Memdrive" encircles whispered vocals with gliding bass and guitar lines in the spirit of Main's early work. Should also explore Apollo-era Brian Eno on "Inst2" substituting heavy analog-delayed guitar notes for Eno's keyboards.

"Both Eyes Open" ends the record with a nod to the melodious, delicate side of Yo La Tengo with Marc and Tanya's coupled vocals going down as sweet as sugar.

Farming, often associated with toil and drudgery, can also be a surprisingly sensual and playful activity. The rhythm of the seasons, the tactile experience of working the land, and the shared sense of accomplishment can all contribute to a heightened sense of intimacy and pleasure. Consider the act of planting seeds. The gentle touch of fingers on delicate seedlings, the anticipation of growth, and the nurturing care required can create a deeply satisfying and sensual experience. Harvesting, too, can be a sensual affair, as one plucks ripe fruits and vegetables from the earth, feeling their warmth and succulence. Beyond the physical aspects, farming can also foster emotional intimacy. Couples can work together in the garden, sharing laughter, sweat, and a sense of shared purpose. The feeling of accomplishment that comes from growing one's own food can also strengthen bonds and create a sense of shared pride.

Set your shoes to gaze mode and rip into this king size cloud of ethereal dream pop. Inspired by the spate of Brits leaning into swirling distortion and punishing volume, San Jose's Ozean played just two shows in their brief existence, dissolving before the Scene That Celebrates Itself ever broke the silicon barrier. The quartet’s 1991 self-titled demo cassette has been remastered and pressed at 45RPM, a timeless document of late adolescent wonder and experimentation.

Majesty Crush are a Detroit based shoegaze band from the 90s, but lightyears ahead of their time. They released their first and only studio album Love 15 on Dali Records, which was a subsidiary label of Warner/Elektra but folded shortly after its release. The album offers listeners a dreamy, guitar-driven sound that blurs the lines between indie rock and pop - something that is a defining feature of Majesty Crush.

French-Algerian writer and composer LÉO LA NUIT presents a work of psychedelic folk devotion with Le Don Des Larmes, released on vinyl by Amsterdam’s forward-thinking label Knekelhuis. Dedicated to his newborn child, the album retraces memories of Kabyle lullabies and the popular chaâbi songs of his youth, weaving them into a sound where intimacy and folkloric spirituality converge. Minimal guitar and spectral vocals form textures that envelop the listener as if revealing hidden layers of time, resonating like a prayer reborn in the present. A rare and solemn masterpiece, born from the overlap of distant traditions and deeply personal memory.

Forthcoming 7" from Tokyo's TAMTAM.. Including a favorite of Kuro's, "花を一輪 - Hana Wo Ichirin" which was featured on Dublab Japan's -resilience- A Charity Compilation in Aid of the 2025 LA Wildfires. Also available at Dublab.jp digitally. Flip for the Magic Hour DUB version.

New York based artist James K returns with Friend.

"Friend: The rupture is filled with sounds and a translation is made from blazing starlight to harmony and weather. Laid down in our silken dreams, the tripped out flows in the dubbed footpath, and with our hands wet, we root down. Her voice fades and gathers from this place, where we hold the water of our bodies against the speaker of time, and let the ripples give us pleasure and vision. Spin slowly around the open air room, dripping with the undertone of two hearts, to hear the warming of her sun come across our deep cold space.

She flies out from the vapor whirlpool feeling the celestial breakdown rise and slip, making room all around for singing out, signaling the days to come and go in peace. And still we find that heaven and earth don’t ever mean enough, even when they speak the same. It’s in these distilled moments we construct a reality, learning to listen quietly for the voices and call out in return. A kiss, a friend, a hand in hand, continuing until things disappear. In the metronome of the cat’s tail, erasing and mending, we find reasons for love and for life.

Riffs of glory and bitter-sweet chorals, trilling and resonant, source from the sub-zeit; it's a deeper sense of emotion that we travel through this space with. And with the blissful sequencing in reverse, we recognize the sonic vistas to come through us. It’s all smiling and sliding in the backwards, floating in the drift of cricket circuitry, when you say to me “is it real?” She leaves us where sounds flicker into taste and touch, where shadows sparkle into color, where star-kissed clouds come down like doorways."

“The silence is burning… ignited by a melody”

Going back to sleep… a lovingly gathered suite of windswept, heart-bursting DIY indie-pop and folk-indebted songs from an ensemble of contemporary luminaries. Centred around a node of antipodean artists predominantly recording and performing in intimate spaces, its ambition and sentiment extends to likeminded souls around the world.

The opening strum by Glenn Donaldson's The Reds, Pinks and Purples sets the breezy yet bittersweet atmosphere, its lavish tones and textures swirling beneath one of contemporary indie's most distinct voices. "There was a light in my head / wanted to die but I burned instead", he laments with a soaring baritone to revelatory effect. His Fruits and Flowers companions The Gabys, a low-key UK-based duo who first landed in our orbit with their self-titled cassette in 2021, follow with a burst of combustible energy. Despite being predominantly instrumental - untuned, overdriven riffage the order of the day - there lies an unshakable melodic impulse.

Devotees of Dutch group Lewsberg will recognise immediately the voice of frontman Arie Van Vliet, who appears here as new duo The Hobknobs with Yaël Dekker. The interplay between Van Vliet's and Dekker's voices works unexpectedly well, striking the perfect balance between heartfelt tenderness and the wry matter-of-factness that Lewsberg fans have come to love. New kids on the block Who Cares? were our most cherished discovery last year, their sound encapsulating a woozy pastoralism and their lyrics a sense of something deeply sinister yet darkly humorous: "you got your feet chopped and I’m here to stay, estranged, on this sunken rock..."

The Sprigs, Chateau, I Can I Can't and the Volcanic Tongue-backed Drunk Elk are evergreen exemplars of DIY primitivism and their songs are the fruits of impulsive budget recording. Act now, think later. From the uncanny gonzo-folk of 'Leagues of Marsh to Swallow Towers' and 'How Long on the Platform' to the reckless yet brutally tender 'Personal Favourite' - "recorded in the dark sometime around 2009" and released under a working title, for it was never meant to see the day - a sense of nervy sleep-deprivation and self-destructiveness emerges. Controlled chaos that culminates in the void-dwelling rush of 'Euros', a propulsive meditation on momentary hues and everlasting greys: "make it happy, make it sad / your gift is all I ever had".

The prolific David West returns under his Rat Columns guise with a ballad that feels like reconnecting with an old friend, a voice you've known your entire life. A balmy autumnal breeze that perfectly compliments the subdued elegance of The Lewers, who make their first appearance since their rapturous 518A debut, and who's lyrics perfectly capture the compilation's sentiment: "the wound that never heals / so deep but hard to reach". Time stands still with the arrival of Daily Toll, their bruised yet ultimately optimistic meditation on love and loss a weightless, atmospheric masterpiece. Lead Kata Szász-Komlós looks inward during a sublime instrumental section before a painful confession: "writing names across your neck / made it home but now I am a wreck".

Concluding the suite is Carla dal Forno's first single since Come Around (2022). An effortless, elegant reverie daubed with cautious desire, her voice soars over a delicate Foresteppe instrumental and was recorded during rehearsal sessions for her forthcoming album. A testament to chance and an unexpectedly beautiful moment during the songwriting process.

These songs capture a feeling of introspection that seems impossible to achieve when recording for anyone but yourself. We see it as a traversal through the now wonderfully diverse international pop underground, but more simply, a group of wide-eyed yet world-weary music makers performing on our imaginary stage.

Sakura is without doubt the most loved and lauded entry in Susumu Yokota’s catalogue.

The music unravels like cascades of petals falling from the eponymous cherry blossom trees. Yokota intended to ‘express ki-do-ai-raku (the four emotions; joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness) through music’, and throughout Sakura, the effect fluctuates between profound tranquillity, hesitation, melancholy and joy with ease, addressing the fickle nature of human emotion, while transcending the inclination to label moods entirely.

Sakura became Yokota’s best selling album. It was greeted with universal acclaim, lauded by Philip Glass and Brian Eno and launched Yokota internationally.

‘A bittersweet beauty, heightened by the sadness that all things must one day end.’ - Martyn Pepperell

A long-lost live recording from 2005 by Shizuka, the legendary psychedelic band led by doll artist Shizuka Miura—whose cult popularity has only grown since her passing—and her husband Maki Miura, renowned guitarist of Les Rallizes Dénudés, Fushitsusha, and Ookami no Jikan. Released by UFO CREAtions, a new Beijing label carrying the spirit of P.S.F. into the present alongside imprints such as Black Editions, An’archives, and Eschogras Records. Captured at Tokyo’s Koenji U.F.O. Club in 2005, this long-hidden performance is an essential document for fans. Fragile gothic atmospheres, doll-like dreams steeped in girlish decadence, smoke-shrouded psychedelia in the direct lineage of Les Rallizes Dénudés, rustic incantations, and dreamgaze-like weightlessness intertwine to conjure a snowfield of phantom suns—nowhere and everywhere at once. Lo-fi yet radiating an uncanny beauty, this is a true hidden gem of neo-psychedelia. Limited to 100 copies.

" dean blunt & Elias Rønnenfelt - lucre LP. Single-sided, 180g vinyl "