MUSIC

Electronic musician nthng presents his fifth album, Last Light of the Sun, his debut release on topo2. Renowned for his meticulous productions and quietly distinctive artistic voice, nthng continues to move effortlessly between ambient, IDM, dub techno, and drum & bass without ever feeling bound by genre. Last Light of the Sun shows that the album format is a natural home for nthng's expansive musical vision. Throughout its ten compositions, the album moves gracefully between dreamlike melodic passages, restrained, fragile 4/4 structures, melancholic drum & bass punctuated by vintage house vocal fragments, and spacious ambient compositions that feel unmistakably his own. The double LP is released by adventurous electronic music label topo2 on October 2, 2026. The record is pressed on two 180-gram discs of ICCS-certified bio-vinyl and housed in a heavyweight full-colour gatefold sleeve. Mastered by Isabel Schröer at OLO Mastering, with artwork by Alyssa Warren and Raen Coplin. Additional contributions include bamboo flute on "Flutter" by Temple Rat and typewriting by Karina Rovira.

Recomposed by Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald is an extraordinary album that combines classical music and electronic sound art in a fascinating way. The two electronic music pioneers draw on recordings of Ravel’s Boléro and Rhapsodie espagnole, as well as Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, conducted by Herbert von Karajan and performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, and use them to create an original, cohesive musical work. In doing so, Craig and von Oswald do not simply juxtapose classical and electronic music. Instead, they break down the source material into short sequences, individual tracks and patterns, and use these to develop a fascinating musical work that balances abstraction and groove, austerity and grace. Ravel’s atmospheric soundscape meets electronic textures, whilst Mussorgsky’s emotional drama forms a surprising connection with the Detroit sound. A bold and impressive album that casts familiar works in a completely new light.

Carmen Villain ponders the significance of reflection in all its forms on 'Memoria', overdubbing flutes, strings and trumpet (supplied by Johanna Orellana, André Bratten, Ole Henrik Moe and Eivind Lønning) with vanishing, effervescent rhythms and spiritual dissonances. It's her weightiest transmission to date, a properly focused fusion of deep listening, dub techno and fourth world jazz that's essential listening FFO Actress, Pole, Jon Hassell, Laurel Halo. There's a scene in Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 'Memoria' where Tilda Swinton's character is sitting with a sound engineer, trying to describe a mysterious booming sound she heard during the night. He scrolls through samples - a meme-able moment that'll be familiar to even the most casual producer - until her memory is triggered and she can make a connection. Carmen Hillestad assumes that role on her fifth album, considering the cultural significance of memory but neatly avoiding nostalgia, something she discerningly refers to as solipsistic introspection. Hillestad posits that deep listening is a way for us to relate more profoundly with our surroundings, using sonic triggers to provoke a cosmic level of contemplation that should be familiar to anyone who stuck around long enough with Weerasethakul's film to catch the blink-and-you'll-miss-it finale. We get a brief taster of what that might mean with opener 'Labour of Imagination', when Orellana's flutes and Hillestad's own clarinet are reshaped into cloudy atmospherics, one part sublime ambiance, one part hallucinogenic free jazz. The album's aesthetic backbone is revealed on 'Entre Nosotros', a slithering, decelerated monster of a track that fogs its Andy Stott-style chug with circuitous piano improvisations that only become properly visible after a few plays. The crucial moment comes when the beat disappears completely and what's left isn't silence, but tape hiss, echo trails and dissonances from Hillestad's processes. As the track draws to a close, the piano dissolves completely; listen in the background and you won't catch it, zoom in a little and you'll be hypnotised, we promise. And on the title track, we're served with an expansion of the themes Hillestad introduced us to on that genius 'Holding a Shape' 12” a few weeks back. Referencing Pole, Torsten Pröfrock, Rhythm & Sound and Mille Plateaux's 'Clicks & Cuts' anthologies, she uses our associations with dub and the glitch aesthetic to guide us to a false conclusion. The beat never really comes, instead a loose rhythm forms from vibrating subs and vertiginous, whooshing echoes. Hillestad buries her concept in the details: the ghost rhythms that manifest and vanish like electrical interferences and the weightless drone that flickers unsteadily in the backdrop until the track's final, profound moments. In a way, it's the antithesis of the "power ambient" sound - just when you think it’ll all get steamrolled by distortion, Hillestad pulls back and reveals a different emotional layer instead. Honestly, we hear more jazz in this than what gets passed off as ambient these days. Like its predecessors, 'Memoria' is still shepherded by the influence of Jon Hassell's fourth world - just check the shimmering 'Hope Synapses', for example - but at this stage in her career, Hillestad has made it entirely her own. Her music isn't reducible to a single element or single inspiration, it's a deeply personal alloy of philosophies and ideas that she's considered and refined over the course of five albums and a handful of EPs and singles. And the more attention you give it, the more you’ll discover.

Another late night oooooze from short span, this time from NYC’s Eden Aurelius doing that sticky, hazed thing you’ll love if you’ve a feel for False Aralia, 3XL, Emer… "A beautifully poised collection for Short Span. A gorgeous showcase of her singular talent within a sparkling scene. Recorded in Brooklyn, NY, this is an innovative, and graceful body of music that feels truly contemporary. This album felt important for us to have out in time for summer. Emerging out of the heat, a feeling brought alive with the sun. Music that evolves throughout seasons and carries a spectrum of emotional range. Entre Nous is tight, but expansive. Its depth and complexity is languid but has gravitational pull. Like much of her work, this record feels so refreshing because its tracks are both sensory and illusory tones built in gossamer and transitory layers of satin. They have a remarkable sense of presence and pressure - floating rhythmically without sharp edges. There is guidance and gentle control that lead throughout the record. The B side opens with “Ion” featuring Pontiac Streator. The song is formed out of a textural haze. A glistening, iridescent light appears, broken through fabric, projecting a blurred image onto the surface nearby. A hypnotic and evocative collaboration. The shared connection between the two artists’ command of rhythm and ambient language. Mastered and cut by Mike Grinser at Manmade.

Originally released on Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald's Chain Reaction label in 1999, Hallucinator's Landlocked is compiled onto a 2LP for the first time. Created by London trio Anna Piva, Edward George and Trevor Mathison, the album became a quietly influential early dub techno release, built from deep bass, echo, fractured rhythms and carefully sculpted space. Across twelve tracks, sounds fade in and out with hypnotic precision, creating an atmosphere that values silence as much as texture. Beneath its abstract surface sits a dedication to the memory of Stephen Lawrence, lending the music a lasting emotional resonance. More than 25 years on, Landlocked remains a distinctive work of immersive, minimalist electronic music.

Chicago’s excellent, shapeshifting Kino Disk chase 8004’s ace dub abstractions with Eustress’ actions in familiar meadows of overgrown FX, farming post-dub techno landscapes highly tipped FFO Vladislav Delay, Echospace, False Aralia. Peripheral to the Windy City’s fecund undergrowth, Indianapolis-based Heath Gillespie aka Eustress practises forms of dub techno at gauzy arm’s reach from the OG source. On the six tracks of ‘Exit’, his 2nd release for the label, he distorts familiar tropes to taste, diffusing a palette of windswept dub chords and unanchored bass in space crackling with an iridescent grayscale filament. His approach broadly swerves dub techno’s club momentum in favour of soothing meditation, letting everything hang out and slosh, loosely suspended in gritty yet lush amniotic plasm with an effect calling to mind the etheric depths of Echospace or even Werkbund’s atmospheric enigmas. A hands-on background as mixing engineer comes to the fore in his work’s sensory tactility, convecting minds from a slow tempest to beatific bliss-out, rumbles of distant dub chord thunder and carpet rolling gouch-out, ultimately stranding up on the 8 min peninsula of ‘Exit 6’, under a borealis play of smudged, harmonised light, nerves combed into the breeze.

A massive personal favorite of Demdike Stare's, Shinichi Atobe's 2001 Ship-Scope 12" was the Chain Reaction label's penultimate release, and, with the benefit of hindsight, also one of its most sublime offerings. This necessary 2015 reissue arrives in the wake of Atobe's much-loved archival salvage, Butterfly Effect (DDS 010CD), which caused quite a ripple upon its release in 2014. Notable for its unusually sweeter, dreamier ambient tone, especially when compared with the rest of Chain Reaction catalog, this is a must-have for followers of the romantic streak in Ross 154, Convextion, and classic Chain Reaction.

Shinichi Atobe has managed to stay off the grid since he made an appearance on Basic Channel's Chain Reaction imprint back in 2001. He delivered the second-to-last 12" on the label and then disappeared without a trace, leaving behind a solitary record that's been selling for crazy money and a trail of speculation that has led some people to wonder whether the project was in fact the work of someone on the Basic Channel payroll. That killer Chain Reaction 12" has also been a longtime favorite of Demdike Stare, who have been trying to follow the trail and make contact with Atobe for some time, whoever he turned out to be. A lead from the Basic Channel office turned up an address in Japan and -- unbelievably -- an album full of archival and new material. Demdike painstakingly assembled and compiled the material for this debut album. And what a weird and brilliant album it is -- deploying a slow-churn opener that sounds like a syrupy Actress track, before working through a brilliantly sharp and tactile nine-minute piano house roller that sounds like DJ Sprinkles, then diving headlong into a heady, Vainqueur-inspired drone-world. It's a confounding album, full of odd little signatures that give the whole thing a timeless feeling completely detached from the zeitgeist, like a sound bubble from another era. This is only the second album release on Demdike Stare's DDS imprint, following the release of Nate Young's Regression Vol. 3 (Other Days) (DDS 007LP) in 2013. Who knows what they might turn up next? Mastered by Matt Colton at Alchemy.

The Story Behind "Rhythm Matter” The origins of Rhyth Matter trace back to 2011, shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake. While visiting Yony in New York, the artist Marter recorded a series of demos. When Marihito heard these recordings, he immediately saw the potential for a full-length project and envisioned a concept centered on "Live Dub" with a distinct Basic Channel influence. Over several years, the project evolved through a rigorous analog process. The multi-track recordings—originally captured on cassette tape, 4-track, 8-track, and reel-to-reel—were eventually digitized into Pro Tools to be meticulously shaped into the final album. At the time, Marihito was releasing an album through Bill Laswell’s label. When he shared the works-in-progress with Bill and asked if M.O.D. (Laswell's label) would be interested, the answer was a definitive yes. Initially, the album was set for release via a licensing deal with M.O.D. However, complications during the vinyl production phase at M.O.D. led to the difficult decision to scrap the record release. Refusing to let the vision of a physical LP die, Marihito took the project back to his own label, Personal Affair, finally releasing it on both vinyl and digital formats as it was always meant to be heard.

Sa Pa launches Dub Techno For Life: a dedicated outlet for the artist’s more dancefloor-focused material - work that has largely sat outside the conceptual frame of his previous releases. The label’s first release, Girls on Tour EP, opens with “Mokira Ultra Dub”, a 10-minute club rework of Mokira classic “Manipulation Musik”. Originally produced alongside an ambient version commissioned for Kontra Musik’s 2016 Kontra X compilation, the dancefloor mix was ultimately shelved until now. With Andreas ‘Mokira’ Tilliander’s blessing, it finally surfaces as a standalone Sa Pa production. A track too banging to go unreleased. “Waiting For You” traces back to Sa Pa’s orbit around the giegling ecosystem via FORUM. Once lined up for an official release on the parent label before plans stalled, the track slipped into the archives. Buoyant and disarmingly pop by Sa Pa standards, it finds its place here as the A2 - tuned to the collective memory of mid-2010s German house music. Harnessing the spirit of Chain Reaction from the abandoned patches and borrowed machines of a rainy night’s recording in Taipei, the B-side’s “Modular System” captures a late-night, one-take modular jam. A broken yet hopeful “World Saving Banger” closes the EP with some raw and IDM-leaning force, showcasing Sa Pa’s new label - and the Girls On Tour EP - as a space for neo dub techno ideals to take shape.

“Live (At Open Ground)” by While My Sequencer Gently Bleeps is being released on Funkscapes as a cassette tape and documents a one-hour live set that offers a dense sequence of deep basses, clever drum patterns, and sparkling melodies. Recorded during a Funkscapes night at Open Ground in Wuppertal, the tape brings together well-known pieces as well as several previously unreleased tracks and conveys the immediate flow of the performance on cassette. At the center is Stefan Schwander’s project While My Sequencer Gently Bleeps, whose work is characterized by a playful combination of bass-focused drive, quirky bleeps, and warm harmonies. Schwander, also active as Harmonious Thelonious, A Rocket In Dub, and Antonelli Electr., uses the Elektron Monomachine as his main instrument and pushes its sequencing and sound capabilities to the limit. This approach shapes the characteristic sound of the set, in which loops, modulated bass lines, and pinpoint synth accents interlock organically. As a documentary live release, the cassette captures both the improvisatory energy and the meticulous sound shaping: stripped-down rhythms meet dub-like depth, while melodic fragments lend the set a surprising lightness. “Live (At Open Ground)” thus offers a focused glimpse into the project’s current musical self and its fusion of club aesthetics and experimental sound design.

Khadim is a stunning reconfiguration of the Ndagga Rhythm Force sound. The instrumentation is radically pared down. The guitar is gone; the concatenation of sabars; the drum-kit. Each of the four tracks hones in on just one or two drummers; otherwise the sole recorded element is the singing; everything else is programmed. Synths are dialogically locked into the drumming. Tellingly, Ernestus has reached for his beloved Prophet-5, a signature go-to since Basic Channel days, thirty years ago. Texturally, the sound is more dubwise; prickling with effects. There is a new spaciousness, announced at the start by the ambient sounds of Dakar street-life. At the microphone, Mbene Diatta Seck revels in this new openness: mbalax diva, she feelingly turns each of the four songs into a discrete dramatic episode, using different sets of rhetorical techniques. The music throughout is taut, grooving, complex, like before; but more volatile, intuitive and reaching, with turbulent emotional and spiritual expressivity.

Not that Khadim represents any kind of break. Its transformativeness is rooted in the hundreds upon hundreds of hours the Rhythm Force has played together. Nearly a decade has passed since Yermande, the unit’s previous album. Every year throughout that period — barring lockdowns — the group has toured extensively, in Europe, the US, and Japan. With improvisation at the core of its music-making, each performance has been evolutionary, as it turns out heading towards Khadim. “I didn’t want to simply continue with the same formula, says Ernestus. “I preferred to wait for a new approach. Playing live so many times, I wanted to capture some of the energy and freedom of those performances.” Though several members of the touring ensemble sit out this recording — sabar drummers, kit-drummer, synth-player — their presence abides in the structure and swing of the music here.

Lamp Fall is a homage to Cheikh Ibra Fall, founder of the Baye Fall spiritual community. The mosque in the city of Touba is known as Lamp Fall, because the main tower resembles a lantern. Soy duggu Touba, moom guey séen / When you enter Touba, he is the one who greets you. After a swift, incantatory start Mbene sings with reflective seriousness. Her voice swirls with reverb, over a tight, funky, propulsive interplay between synth and drums, threaded with one- two jabs of bass. Cheikh Ibra Fall mi may way, mo diayndiou ré, la mu jëndé ko taalibe… Cheikh Ibra Fall amo morome, aboridial / Cheikh Ibra Fall shows the way forward, he gives us strength, he gathers his disciples… Overflowing with grace, Cheikh Ibra Fall has no equal.

Interwoven with Wolof proverbs, Dieuw Bakhul is a recriminatory song about treachery, lies, and back-biting. Over moody, roiling synths and ominous, lean bass, Mbene throws out fluttering scraps of vocal, as if re-running old conversations in her head. The music shadows her despair to the verge of breakdown, at one moment seemingly so lost in thought and memories, that it threatens to disintegrate. Bayilene di wor seen xarit ak seen an da ndo… Dieuw bakhul, dieuw ñaw na / Stop judging your friends and companions… A lie is no good, a lie is ugly.

Khadim is a show-stopper; currently the centrepiece of Ndagga Rhythm Force live performances. The song is dedicated to Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba, aka Khadim, founder of the Mouride Sufi order. Serigne Bamba mi may wayeu / Serigne Bamba is the one who makes me sing. The verses name-check revered members of his family and brotherhood, like Sokhna Diarra, Mame Thierno, and Serigne Bara. Though Islam has been practised in Senegal for a millennium, it wasn’t until the start of the twentieth century that it began to thoroughly permeate ordinary Senegalese society, hand-in-hand with anti-colonialism. The verses here recall Bamba’s banishment by the French to Gabon, and later to Mauritania, in those foundational times. During exile, his captors once introduced a lion to his cell: gaïnde gua waf, dieba lu ci Cheikhoul Khadim / the lion doesn’t budge, it gives itself over to Cheikh Khadim. Deep, surging bass, steady kick-drum, and simple, reverbed chords on the off-beat lend the feel and impetus of steppers reggae. A reed plays snatches of a traditional Baye Fall melody; the dazzling polyrhythmic drumming is by Serigne Mamoune Seck. Mbene compellingly blends percussive vocalese, narrative suspense, exultant praise, introspection, and grievance.

Nimzat is a devotional tribute to Cheikh Sadbou, a contemporary of Bamba, buried in a mausoleum in Nizmat, in southern Mauritania. Way nala, kagne nala… souma danana fata dale / I call upon you and wonder about you… If I am overwhelmed, come to my aid. The town holds special significance for Khadr Sufism. An annual pilgrimage there is conducted to this day. The rhythm is buoyantly funky; the mood is sombre, reined-in, foreboding. Punctuated by peals of thunder, Mbene sings with restrained, intense reverence; huskily confidential, steadfast. Nanu dem ba Nimzat, dé ba sali khina / Let us go to Nimzat, to seal our devotion.

At the latest with the release of the albums "Zauberberg" and "Königsforst", in the mid-1990s, one associates GAS, Wolfgang Voigt's very own artistic cross-linking of the spirit of Romanticism and the forest as an artistic fantasy projection surface, with intoxicatingly blurred boundaries of post-ambient infatuation and the impenetrable thicket of abstract atonality. The distant, iconic straight bass drum marching through highly condensed, abstract sounds taken from classical music by the sampler or modulated accordingly, and the enraptured gaze through pop art glasses into the hypnotic thicket of an imaginary forest, manifested over the years this unique connection of audio and visual, which to understand fully, then as now, would be neither possible nor desirable.

Quite the opposite. The album GAS - DER LANGE MARSCH once again invites us to follow the deep sounding bass drum, to give in to its irresistible pull into a psychedelic world of 1000 promises. In the process, the journey leads us past stations of memories sounding from afar, from "Zauberberg" to "Königsforst" and "Pop", from "Oktember" to "Narkopop" and "Rausch", back and forth, now and forever.

Way. Destination. Loop. Forest loop.

OKTEMBER is the second EP release under Wolfgang Voigt’s mythical GAS project (it follows "Modern“ on Profan, 1995). The 2 compositions were originally released in 1999 on Mille Plateaux, and then reissued partially in 2016 on GAS “BOX”. OKTEMBER is finally released on Voigt's own label KOMPAKT, pressed on 180 gram vinyl in its original artwork.

This reissue features “Tal ‘90“ (instead of the original A side) – a predecessor to the GAS project originally recorded in 1990 under the alias TAL, it was released as a part of the Pop Ambient 2002 collection. With its sampled strings, horns and guitars, "Tal 90” soundtracks a more uplifting side to what is typically accustomed to being the sound of GAS. The title track “Oktember” is a dense, hypnotic affair that conjures a unique vision of dub techno that few have been able to replicate.

A monumental soundtrack to uncertain times.

A milestone in the history of ambient music! GAS, a very popular ambient project by Wolfgang Voigt of the famous KOMPAKT, released their masterpiece album "POP" on Mille Plateaux in 2000. From the depths of the ocean to the heavens... GAS's mystical ambient sounds move powerfully in a microcosmic soundscape with deep reverberations, a milestone album that fully demonstrates a solitary view of nature.

Field Records proudly presents the first complete vinyl edition of Monolake’s seminal excursion into experimental dub techno, Hongkong. Originally released on the now-classic Chain Reaction label in 1997, this collection of early singles by Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles has gone on to become a vital listening experience in its own right - a genre classic alongside the other groundbreaking works from the likes of Porter Ricks and Vladislav Delay. The tracks which make up Hongkong were made while Henke and Behles studied computer science and immersed themselves in Berlin’s techno scene. Their early forays into computer-based music production were enabled by the use of the Max/MSP programming environment, forming a backdrop to the landmark work they would undertake in developing the Ableton Live DAW. Henke and Behles travelled to Hong Kong in 1996 to attend the annual International Computer Music Conference, and while there recorded extensive field recordings. These recordings became the glue that pieced together their collaborative tracks into a fluid listening experience for a CD-compilation at Chain Reaction’s request. While absolutely rooted in the embryonic sound of European dub techno, Monolake’s early work possesses a back room, headphone-ready demeanour which lends itself to the album listening experience. In the cascade of rhythms created by precision engineered delays and subliminal, expansive spatial world building occurring throughout Hongkong, the stage is set for a full and thorough immersion. Before the Monolake sound progressed into a more pointillist form of computer music as Henke’s solo project, Hongkong presented a gritty, grainy sonic still tied in some way to the traditional methods of techno production, even as the artists’ ideas were sending the sequencing and arranging in exciting new directions. Remastered and presented for the first time as a complete double 12” package, this is the definitive edition of an essential work in the evolution of experimental techno. As Henke himself explains, “twenty-five years later, this record still holds immense value to me in many ways.”

Much needed reissue of Stephen Hitchell’s sleepwalking dub house trips, faithfully remastered by Pole for posterity and optimal immersion. FFO Maurizio, GAS, Shinichi Atobe. Echospace’s Stephen Hitchell is in his element as Intrusion on two durational treks deep into the studio haze. Also found in much longer versions on original release, back in 2015, ‘A Gentle Embrace’ appears here thru13 min timeframes ideal for long blends in-the-mix, or more simply enjoyed on their own, floating and soporific terms. The original puffs up a sublime architecture of diffused fumes and rolling, velvet-coated bass that yearns upward, outwards with a gorgeous sense of deferred gratification that he tempers to an even more light-headed feel in the B-side reduction, whisking the choral pads and chords to cirrus wisps and beatific harmony.

Sturdy dub techno pressure by Detroit don Stephen Hitchell [Echospace] in cv313 mode, freshly presented in faithful remasters by Pole and ready to deflate 2nd hand prices. 2015’s ‘Fading Lights’ finds Hitchell aiming for the midst of the ‘floor with a strikingly heavy yet elegant grasp of Detroit x Berlin tekkerz comparable to Maurizio as much as Mike Huckaby, but still stepped in signature layers of electroacoustic FX. The title track lays down quaking kicks under shuddering metallic chords with a propulsive muscularity clearly intended for the club, rather than home listening, reserving extra layers of thicc subs for when the pressure demands. ‘Magenta’ is likewise helmed by a massive, shuddering bass drum buried deep under a murk that builds with natural stealth to a sort of amniotic sublime offset with a frisson of storm-building threat.

2nd wave dub techno staple Stephen Hitchell meets new wave producer Federson in a back ’n forth of timeless originals and versions. San Francisco’s Chris Kelly, aka Federsen’s Alt Dub label hosts this passing of the baton/torch with CV313 and Echospace figure Hitchell a sits 2nd release after the ‘Positive Charge’ EP christened the vessel in earlier ’24. Federsen fronts the session with a smoky, night-driving dub of CV313’s ‘Skycrossing’ in properly classic Maurizio style, especially that scooping bassline, whilst shutting it down with the more air-stepping levity of his dusted congas and distant dub chords to ‘Skyway’. CV313’s original ‘Skycrossing’ places his mastery of constantly shifting, ever the same, dynamic within its unfurling envelopes, alongside a remix of ‘Skyway’ that plunges upward, outward into billowing electro-acoustic dub techno dimensions.

Infant crafts eight immersive dub pieces built from echo-laden rhythms, shimmering ambient textures and spacious production. Drawing on Detroit techno and sound system culture, the album unfolds with patience and depth, favouring mood over momentum, with blissed soundscapes that ripple and refreact like liquid metal. Recommended for fans of the ambient side of echospace [detroit] axis.

Superb, revered version-excursion in the grand tradition of Tempo Explosion. Willie Williams kicks off imperiously, on a classic Rhythm & Sound rhythm adroitly evoking Niney’s way with horns. Sugar and Tikkiman take a turn, besides Berlin faces like Cotton and Rod Of Iron. No one puts a foot wrong. More than twenty years ago now, this LP was cut ‘hot’, for maximum dynamic range, and deadly bass. With all copies since then derived from the same cut, many turntable set-ups may experience slight skipping at moments, especially during side 2. In addition, there are very occasional, scattered pops and crackles; for vinyl lovers nothing out-of-the-ordinary.

Sa Pa explores the murkier edges of dub techno and deep house on Rhythm From Ambient, the second release on his Dub Techno For Life label.The title track rolls through heavy dub pressure and gravelly percussion, while ‘Rhythm’ reworks an industrial techno piece originally intended for Sa Pa’s 2015 MDR EP. ‘Last Dance’ stretches into deep house territory with a slow-burning, dubbed-out pulse, before ‘Bo Riddim’ closes things down with deep sub-bass, heavy drums, loose percussion and fragmented melodies. Another experimental outing from Sa Pa, moving between dub techno, house and stranger electronic terrain.

cv313’s Altering Illusions returns with five signature cuts alongside a rare, otherworldly dub from the elusive Radius project. Mixed and recorded in Detroit, the collection distils cv313’s deep, reductionist techno into long-form, analogue meditations. Remastered by Stefan Betke (Pole) at Scape Mastering, the sound is given renewed depth and clarity without losing its raw, submerged character. This edition also introduces an additional piece drawn from the interpolation tapes series, pushing further into cavernous low-end and hypnotic repetition. Across its runtime, Altering Illusions moves with patience and weight, built from sub-bass pressure, minimal structure, and finely tuned atmospherics—hallmarks of cv313’s enduring approach to dub techno.

Following the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto in early 2023, Richard Pike turned to the piano as a daily ritual of improvisation – or, as he frames it, real-time composition. The result is [album title], a suite of intimate pieces for piano and looping textures that explore cassette sound sources, minimalism, harmony, and the fragile acoustic artefacts that surface from the process. Pike’s method was simple and disciplined: gather tape loops and sonic beds in the studio each morning, then move to a 1950s Eavestaff Minipiano in the living room to record melodic responses over them. These performances were captured quickly and left largely unedited, allowing instinct, error, and texture to dictate shape and direction. The music reflects a fascination with earthy, worn sound worlds, drawing on influences such as Romeo Poirier, Deepchord and early musique concrète, as well as Pike’s own history with the tape-scarred aesthetics that informed his early work with Warp-affiliated band PVT. This is a quietly expressive record of repetition, decay and emergence – a document of daily practice finding form almost by accident.