MUSIC

Following the announcement of his comeback album Syro, Aphex Twin achieved a full-fledged return with two EPs and a revival project under the AFX moniker. This 2018 release features the lead track “T69 Collapse,” which explodes with near-frenetic hyper-speed beats and searing melodies, shocking the world alongside hallucinatory visuals by artist Weirdcore. Throughout the entire album, the complexity of the soundscapes and the precision of the rhythms reach unprecedented levels, where chaos and sensuality, violence and beauty coexist in a delicate balance. This definitive work proves Aphex Twin is a “genius in the making” and further carves out the future of IDM!

After previous sonic impressions of Unguja and Borneo, Gonçalo F. Cardoso continues his meditative travelogue on island life with Impressões de Várias Ilhas, released via Discrepant. This third chapter draws from time spent across three archipelagos in Macaronesia—Azores, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands—melding field recordings with synthesis to explore the hazy border between real experience and remembered sensation.

Cardoso’s diaristic approach captures the resonance of water caves, black beaches, lagoons, and small-town life, processed into impressionistic vignettes that feel both intimate and unreal. These aren’t grand postcard statements but subtle, atmospheric sketches—never lapsing into sonic tourism but instead conjuring fleeting, liminal states.

From the gentle waves and echoing tones of ‘Bufadeiros de São Vicente’—not far removed from Beaches & Canyons-era Black Dice—to the eerie ambience of ‘Noite em Rabo de Peixe’ and the musique concrète-leaning unease of ‘Rãs em Xoxo’, Cardoso moves between warmth, strangeness and nostalgia. The closing ‘Salinas de Pedra Lume’ becomes a quiet epic, full of cracked recordings and spectral tones—less a travel document than a haunted reflection on place, memory and disappearance.

"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is one of those rare albums where a composer provides clear evidence that he or she is in that special class of artistic genius where true originality is possible. I'm not suggesting that this is Aphex Twin's best album, as best work was yet to come; nor am I suggesting that this is one of the greatest electronic albums of all time. Perhaps it is, but the key is its influence. "SAW" is practically synonymous with that early Warp Records sound (although SAW wasn't actually released on Warp). The album is one of the sacred texts of the Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) movement and on this disc, you can hear the ideas that helped make electronic music what it is today. "SAW" dates back to a time when Aphex Twin was using a lot of analogue gear and the tracks have a nice warmth to them. Many of the sounds on this album will already be familiar to most listeners since they entered the canon of electronic sounds long ago. The cool thing is, this album is where so much began.

Imagine it’s late afternoon, you’re outside by the lake, and there’s sunlight on the water. This is the peaceful and contemplative scene that Matt Gold and Resavoir set on their collaborative LP Horizon. Across 10 lush and exploratory tracks, it’s the product of two Chicago-based musicians—Will Miller, the acclaimed trumpeter, composer, and producer who’s worked with SZA, Whitney, and more, and Gold, a seasoned multi-instrumentalist and accomplished guitarist—effortlessly combining their distinct sensibilities for something hypnotic and tangibly inviting. What started as a love letter to their shared admiration for ‘60s and ‘70s Brazilian music evolved into a dynamic and sprawling body of work. These sunny and expansive tunes are as immersive as they are endlessly replayable.

Both Miller and Gold attended Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music together and in the years after graduating, they orbited each other around Chicago’s music communities. “We were showing up for each other as friends and taking an interest in each other's projects, noticing a lot of resonances and similarities working within in our music,” says Gold, who’s collaborated with artists like Makaya McCraven and Jamila Woods and stretched the bounds of jazz and Americana on solo albums Imagined Sky and Midnight Choir. “We had talked so much about eventually working together that it was almost like an ongoing bit at a certain point,” says Miller. Though they had known each other for over a decade, they first had their chance on “Inside Minds,” the breezy lead single on 2023’s Resavoir. While those sessions were remote, two had palpable chemistry.

It wasn’t until Miller left the touring band of the Chicago group Whitney in 2023 that their plans to make music together in person came to fruition. “When I first started Resavoir, I was chasing the desire to produce records and now that I had time to focus exclusively on that, Matt was the first person I called to come to the studio,” says Miller. The two had bonded over an admiration for the Brazilian guitarist Luis Bonfa and songwriter Milton Nascimento, especially the latter’s work with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, so they decided to use nylon string guitar as a starting point for these early sessions. “Canopy,” which opens Horizon, was the earliest track. Kicking off with bright acoustic chords, the song slowly unfurls into a slinking groove, samples, and fluttering leads from soprano saxophonist Tim Bennett.

As these initial experiments proved successful, Gold and Miller felt they could broaden the scope of their vision. “We were initially conceiving of it as this acoustic guitar driven record but eventually we wanted to frame it orchestrally and see how many shades and colors we can bring in around that sound,” says Gold. “Dewy” thrives within this orchestral palette of woozy synths, strings from Macie Stewart, Claire Chenette’s oboe, flautist Wills McKenna, and French horns from Lloyd Billingham. “We discovered that our multi-instrumentalist mentalities—using piano and bass, samplers, drum grooves, guitar ideas all as starting points— nurtured the broad orchestration across this record,” says Miller.

“The LP took about a year with on-and-off sessions,” says Miller. “The songs benefit from letting them ferment for a couple months, coming back to it, and seeing what sort of new flavors have developed.” Co-produced by Miller and Gold (and mixed by Dave Vettraino), Horizon proudly reflects the artists’ vast artistic community and musical network in Chicago and beyond. Along with Gold, Eddie Burns (Clairo), Peter Mannheim (Tony Glausi), and Carter Lang (SZA, Lil Nas X) provide drums and percussion throughout. On the dreamlike single “Diversey Beach,” New York songwriter Mei Semones lends vocals and along with her band members Noah Leong and Claudius Agrippa, collaborated on a mesmerizingly conversational string arrangement. “We wrote "Diversey Beach" on the coldest day of the year watching a blizzard coming down out of the window, where the sounds of the cars driving by sounded like waves crashing on a beach,” says Miller. “I sent it to Mei Semones, who I’ve been a fan of for a long time. She's absolutely incredible and it’s amazing what she did with it.”

Horizon is a testament to the feeling of endless possibilities that come from collaboration. It’s a remarkable synthesis of two artists who share musical community and an artist lineage but have carved their own paths in unique ways. Nowhere is this more evident than “Hazel Canyon,” which boasts Gold’s silky pedal steel and a subtly enveloping arrangement that evokes Erasmo Carlos. “Musically, we're always trying to capture a fleeting moment of infinite expanse, feeling the vastness of things while knowing they'll always change,” says Gold. “This record keeps the light reflecting on the water just a little longer -- our collaborative process running through the backbone of these songs and rippling out in so many beautiful directions..”

‘She who loves silence’.

Founder of KUMP and Meth.O tapes, Lyon’s Marc-Étienne Guibert (AKA Gil.Barte) awakens his new Mert Seger moniker for a shadowy Plaque excursion. Nine slow burners strike from the murk with venomous precision.

"High Contrast used to work in a record shop in Cardiff called Catapult Records. We lived on the other side of the city, but were always in there buying vinyl. Tough Guys Can’t Dance was everywhere, and If We Ever was the anthem. Ahead of summer this year we put together our own version just for fun, and the reaction was so wild, we ended up playing it in every set. Big thanks to High Contrast for this one. It means a lot to us" - OVERMONO

This album is a solo album by SINKICHI, the label owner of MATSUNOMI TO SENSO REC. It is a collection of field recordings made during the lockdown of the COVID19, live to 2 track recordings of improvised performances with hardware equipment, and modular synthesizer performances on the holy mountains and spiritual rivers. Please enjoy. SINKICHI A pioneer ambient DJ in Japan who has been playing at many rave parties since the early 90's. He has participated in many bands such as SOFT, AOA, Based on kyoto, and Churashima Navigator.He has also worked as a mastering engineer on vinyl mastering for 17853 Records and Crosspoint label.

Wax’o Paradiso Recordings continues their exploration of antipodean downtempo sounds with WPR005 - The Perfect Harmony EP. Enlisting Guy contact and Solar Suite, who individually are known for more powerful club fodder across the progressive and trance adjacent sides of the genre spectrum, here we see them trading a few BPMs for a spacious, textural sound across four tracks recorded in 2023 in a shared studio in Naarm/Melbourne.

“Composition い” is a 2005 compilation CD featuring Henri Chopin, Pan Sonic, and Achim Wollscheid. It fuses cold sonic particles with the aesthetics of noise, creating an abstract and poetic soundscape. The cover artwork was created by Tatsuo Ikeda.

For the fifth release on Grand River’s experimental label, One Instrument; synthesizer maestro Donato Dozzy gifts us with an incredible, psychedelic 38-minute journey.

“Slow Train” has been created using the EMS Synthi AKS, an extraordinary and rare portable modular analog synthesizer, first manufactured in 1972.

'One Instrument Sessions - Donato Dozzy' highlights the artist's most experimental side on what will be his 7th studio album. These tracks are the honest outcome from a long and intimate engagement with the instrument which were produced in his San Felice Circeo studio during an “altered state” night in October 2013.

The resulting music is one of fluid continuity; Dozzy’s most extensive, vigorous and determined application of real-time studio recording to date.

The intensity of both parts of “Slow Train” are comparable to a mindfulness experience in which the listener’s perception of reality slows down enabling every small detail of the sound to become alive and increasingly vivid.

Skyapnea’s Giovanni Marco Civitenga - spar of Giuseppe Ielasi as Rain Text - tacks to a sort of illbient dub as Detraex Corp on a fragged-out trip going like a cruddy Wolf Eyes on a hazed jolly.

‘Live at Pompeii’ arrives on the Sagome label after scuzzy aces from The Dengie Hundred and Ssiege with a suitably groggy set of sloshing log drums and briny textures riddled with mycelia-like lines of crooked blooz and jazz. Meditative but not boring, it finds Civitenga hitting a new sort of hobbled stride on nine asymmetric, peg-legged grooves that may take a minute to lock into, but once you’re in there it flows with a naturally offbeat, downtempo quality that's really a mark for seekers of a certain grungy sound.

It’s a grotty pleasure to follow this one for stumbling rhythms and laid-back styles of no-wave steez in procession from the gasping lurch of ‘Tykes of’, thru the squashed drums and 4th world wooze of ‘Myth Prism Strip’, to the squirming jazz spectres on ‘Bullet Holes’, right down the rabbit hole into swilling skronk of ‘Channel 83’ and Werkbund-esue enigma of ‘Mount Point’.

We first became aware of the Florence-based composer Marco Baldini’s work via the incredible Another Timbre label. His albums, Vesperi and Maniera, blew us away. Maniera, Marco’s second album for the label consists of seven chamber works for strings, beautifully played by Apartment House. If for some reason you haven’t heard it go straight to Another Timbre’s Bandcamp and check it out! Vesperi, Marco’s first release on Another Timbre, from around a year before is also absolutely unmissable, it’s comprised of three pieces derived from works by 16th century Italian composers alongside original compositions. Both albums have provided much needed calm in turbulent times. Marco kindly accepted our invitation to compile a mixtape, and here it is! Thank you so much, Marco! Trilogy Tapes

Spanish mystic Dídac pipes up a debut spirit quest of uchronic folklore and imaginary ethnography bending Mediterranean - particularly Catalan & Castilian - tradition into new age ambient modernity via subtle subversions of his Catholic upbringing, arriving somewhere between Luis Delgado and Popol Vuh.

"In between the folds of ceremony and commonality lies a perennial spring of musical expression. A statement along the time continuum, or a testament to the resilient resourcefulness embedded in that truth, forms the philosophical approach of this album – the first outing of Dídac.

Studying an extensive archive of instruments, artifacts, and field recordings at the Musée d’ethnographie de Genève—a space steeped in folkloric gesture – Dídac encountered a cosmos of liturgical music and folk song. Anchored in reverance for tradition and transformation alike, this album navigates the old-world Mediterranean lore through a post-modern ambient lens, threading drone, gentle rhythm, electroacoustic textures and the crude tactility of archival material into one woven tapestry.

Under the guidance of Dr. Madeleine Leclair, Dídac was invited to work within one of the world’s most extensive ethno- musicological archives—L’AIMP. In the saturated basements and tape-lined backrooms of the museum, he submerged himself in the sounds of ritual and rural life: wax cylinders from the Eastern Mediterranean, tapes of liturgical hymn, the worn edges of communal song.

In a makeshift studio on the fourth floor of the museum, he sifted through the hours of material he collected, gradually discovering that the archive was no static source – It did not dictate; rather, it served as a companion—offering not answers, but questions. Not a beaten track, but a cluster of sonic clues and riddles. Samples do appear occasionally, tenderly interwoven into the dialogue of the songs. In Dídac’s self-titled debut, the past is not worn as ornament or kitsch; it is listened to and responded to. The museum, its archives, and the visit to Geneva became a foundational culisse of sorts, igniting a myriad of rough cuts and improvisational outtakes.

Dídac, or Diego Ocejo Muñoz, was born in Madrid in 1994 to a family of both Catalan and Castilian origin.Brought up in a religious household, the influence of the Catholic Church innately shaped the social fabric, schooling and daily life. This lingering dominance led the adolescent Diego into a path of rejection of everything sacramental, promptly resorting to subversion in the shape of grafitti, skateboarding and underground music. Only later in life, after a rigorous venture as an acid and electro producer, the Church re-emerged before him in new light, invoking a deep fascination for its mysticism, iconography and choral tradition.

Spain in general and Catalonia in particular, has long served as a crossroads of the eastern–western Mediterranean continuum, with many of its cultures sharing aspects of way of life and ceremony. At the MEG, Diego found himself puzzled with this realization, resulting in a sonic amalgamation that reaches farther away from the rugged mountains of Catalonia than you might perceive at first encounter. The deeply embedded memory of rite and public ceremony, religious hymn and landscape—sieved through the undercurrent of personal re-emergence, forms the emotional topography of this album. The record does not trace this landscape; it inhabits it. Its repetitive mysticism and ambient, wide-eyed gaze could possibly evoke (perhaps redundant) comparisons to artists such as Dimitris Petsetakis, or Popol Vuh’s late 70’s cinema scores.

The delicate lines between the sacred and the secular – between memory and re-invention – serve as a cipher to understanding this album in its entirety. Titles like Malpàs Mines or Pantocrator’s Portal Outro nudge toward a folkloric and devotional bedrock—places where labor and spirituality coexist, where names preserve both dust and veneration. Nevertheless, this is far from mere nostalgia. It is a reclamation — singing alongside the spirits of the past, nurturing what still hums beneath the soil. It is an intimate reflection on tradition, rebellion, adolescence, ceremony and fantasy – a pastoral contemplation on what once was and what is to be."

Detroit’s baddest yungers get down on their ones with a 2nd self-released volley of modern ghetto-tech and hyperlocal jit, reprising the road-ready sound of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s for new crowds hungry for this shit

Including a killer 2024 single indicative of what to expect in the tabla and jazz key puckered slam of ’SPANK!’, the 14-track ‘Honeypaqq Vol.1’ says its bit in a brisk half hour of scudding subs and sampler chops racked up at 160BPM. The levels are typically up there and lyrically lascivious from the bucking ace ‘Take Yo Panties Off’ to the ruthlessly sped-up R&Bop ‘Freak in Full Effect’, deftly reinterpreting and factoring the groundwurk of DJ/producers Funk, Assault, Rashad and Maaco for 2020s needs.

Since staking their sound with two LPs for Omar-S’ FXHE and a ruck of acclaimed live shows, Hi Tech have become standard bearers for a brand of ghetto house that found international favour some 25 years ago and long since long bubbled away in the background. The trio of King Milo, Milf Melly and 47chops aka Hi Tech are almost single-handedly responsible for renewed interest in this zone, paralleling the pace and intent of Chicago’s renowned footwork sound with similar but distinctively jazzy Motor City tekkerz.

Trust it twerks and fizzes in all the right places. Putative jit and deb dualities juke it out in the itchy but sublime ‘Norf Cold 304’s’, while they balance bebop and crunk in ‘New Jazz Schmell’ and snap to quicksilver electro-soul in ‘Empty Bus Stop’, or push out into that sort of weirdo scuttle that the 313 does so well on the spooked-out ‘Adultswim Doctor Etrange’ or ‘Queenbootyathenaaphrodite’, saving a superb sting in the tail for ’Shadowrealm.’

This collection, featuring seven pieces from 2011 to 2015, celebrates Noah Creshevsky's 70th year with a fittingly life-affirming and masterful verve. An award-winning composer who has studied with Nadia Boulanger and Luciano Berio, he began composing electronic music in 1971, using the power of circuitry, tape and then digital technology to create a "hyperreal" musical world in which recordings of human performers, both vocalists and instrumentalists, are juxtaposed and recombined in compositions which span eras, cultures and genres. His use of expanded musical palettes arises from an aesthetic of inclusion, guided by an open spirit and an expansive musical sense. The combination of the emotional power of human performances with the precision of computers create real-beyond-real super-performances of surprising control and virtuosity, resulting in a hypothetical and yet very real music, full of drama, humor, and tenderness. This CD, Creshevsky's second release on EM, following the 2004 "Tape Music" compilation, gives ample evidence of both his mastery of digital technology and his profound, empathetic musical instincts. His ability to use the computer to highlight the gifts of human performers is displayed on every track, including a piece which focuses on Japanese vocalist Tomomi Adachi.

+ Standard jewel case. 8P booklet.
+ Liner notes in English and Japanese by composer, critic and independent scholar George Grella, Jr.

On the record New Chapter, sound from all directions of the sky is transformed as it flows through the bodies of the musicians. The source material is Viola Klein’s solo record Confidant and the collaboration with the Sabar Ensemble Diop from Saint Louis, titled We. Whodat in Detroit, Kassem Mosse in Leipzig, Nídia in Lisbon, and Viola Klein in Cologne and Dakar reshape the places where Deep House, Leftfield, Kuduro, and Mbalax originated and/or continue to thrive: the USA, Germany, Portugal, and Senegal.

With roots in Sierra Leone and Guinea and now based in New York, experimental sound artist Lamin Fofana has released a string of acclaimed works on forward-thinking labels such as Hundebiss, Avian, Peak Oil, and The Trilogy Tapes. His latest and essential release arrives via Honest Jon’s. Forging sharp-edged treatments and molten sonics, the album resonates like liquid metal, constantly shifting form. Organized in pairs, the tracks collide between cutting blades and softened resonances, weaving in poetry, text, and field recordings to enact a relentless cycle of decomposition and recomposition. Inspired by the words of Suzanne Césaire, this is an otherworldly kosmische statement—an aural manifesto of transformation.

TTT catch Basic Rhythm in neurotic hardstep flow on four cuts of the tightest D&B following his killer mixtape in this mode OG pirate radio DJ for Rude FM in the ‘90s, and multifaceted producer since the 2010s; Anthoney J Hart is a true survivor of the hardcore ‘nuum. ‘The Bounce’ chases up his superb ’23 mixtape, ‘Straight From the Bedroom’ with a high calibre selection of cuts relating to that session, nailing a dead tuff seam of millennium-era pressure that variously plays deep into, and fucks with, its classic form. Living up to his mantle, Hart’s ascetic production values keep everything chiselled and rictus, but with nuff funk in its flex, tying D&B back to roots in the rigidity of OG electro and betraying its foundational links to earliest dark garage and grime. The title tune shadowboxes with clinically compressed snares in dank negative space, and ‘Tubby’ ups the neuro factor with shearing synths and grinding, granite-cut bass wobble. ‘Fists in Pocket’ is pure early ‘00s warehouse menace straight out of a Loxy or Dylan DJ set, and ‘Unworthy’ rudely distorts the structure with noisier, eye-wobbling compression fuckry.TTT catch Basic Rhythm in neurotic hardstep flow on four cuts of the tightest D&B following his killer mixtape in this mode OG pirate radio DJ for Rude FM in the ‘90s, and multifaceted producer since the 2010s; Anthoney J Hart is a true survivor of the hardcore ‘nuum. ‘The Bounce’ chases up his superb ’23 mixtape, ‘Straight From the Bedroom’ with a high calibre selection of cuts relating to that session, nailing a dead tuff seam of millennium-era pressure that variously plays deep into, and fucks with, its classic form. Living up to his mantle, Hart’s ascetic production values keep everything chiselled and rictus, but with nuff funk in its flex, tying D&B back to roots in the rigidity of OG electro and betraying its foundational links to earliest dark garage and grime. The title tune shadowboxes with clinically compressed snares in dank negative space, and ‘Tubby’ ups the neuro factor with shearing synths and grinding, granite-cut bass wobble. ‘Fists in Pocket’ is pure early ‘00s warehouse menace straight out of a Loxy or Dylan DJ set, and ‘Unworthy’ rudely distorts the structure with noisier, eye-wobbling compression fuckry.

After the cult favourite Apron Japan Vol.1 dropped in 2023, we’re back with the next wave!

We’ve expanded our reach beyond Japan — this time diving deeper into the sounds of the East. Featuring a diverse lineup of producers and artists across Asia and the surrounding regions, Apron East Vol.2 celebrates the rawness, late night riddims, and future classics.

FEATURING MUSIC BY:

Benedek, DJ Dreamboy, Hookuo, Isaac, DJ Jeyon, J M S KHOSAH, Kendall Timmons, KO SAITO, Jarren, Steven Julien, and Yuka Sunflora.

Ghanaian hiplife phenom Yaw Atta-Owusu presents charming results of his first studio session since 1994’s sleeper hit ‘Obaa Sima’, which found an overdue, cult audience via the blogosphere as one of Awesome Tapes From Africa’s earliest and greatest drops in 2015. If you weren’t snagged on the ohrwurming keys, vox, and groove of the title tune to Ata Kak’s ‘Obaa Sima’ in 2015, you probably weren’t going to the right clubs and checking the right sites. 10 years later it still kills and is set to be joined by this fresh haul from the Bishop Beatz recording studio in Kumasi, Ghana, where Ata Kak laid down ‘Batakari’, his 1st recordings in three decades, recapturing the moxie of his original sound on six cuts that betray time and space travelled within more ambitious arrangements of signature fast chat factored by layered harmonies and rhythmic variegation. “Honed in studios around Kumasi over the last several years, the songs feature the rapper-singer’s acrobatic rap, signature scatting, dramatic drums and even traditional Akan harp. The compositions are more ambitious than his earlier work, with more complex arrangements and layered harmonies. Ata Kak’s new songs are also the natural expression of a restless artist—he is a prolific poet and author of a half-dozen books, as well as an active gardener and busy painter. Born in Ghana in 1960, Ata Kak wasn’t always involved in music. But his travels and openness to the world lead him into the music industry. While living in Germany, he was invited to play drums in a reggae band and subsequently played in highlife bands in Ontario after moving to the Toronto area. He recorded “Obaa Sima” there at his home studio and released it in Ghana in 1994. He didn’t participate in music much in the intervening years until “Obaa Sima” was reissued in 2015. He started performing his song live with the help of a brilliant cast of London-based musicians and has toured three continents and played to thousands of fans in venues of all kinds.”

Italian ambient producer Gigi Masin, jointly with This Heat's Charles Hayward, released a reissue of his work on the Belgian <sub rosa> label in 1988!A masterpiece, featuring the classic 'Clouds', sampled on Bjork's 'It's in Our Hands', Nujabes' 'Latitude'!

Italian musician Gigi Masin has been increasingly re-evaluated since the 2010s, with the release of the best-of album 'Talk To The Sea' under the supervision of Italian Music From Memory, followed by the successive re-releases of his first albums 'Wind' and 'The Wind Collector'. Gigi Masin is a living legend who continues to work tirelessly, consistently releasing new albums every year since 2018. This is a reissue of the album he released with Charles Hayward of This Heat in 1989, which is regarded as one of his greatest albums!　The A-side of the LP features a piece by Gigi Masin, whose beautiful piano tone is sure to appeal to everyone from haunting ambient/new age to contemporary Balearic/electronica fans!

Japan’s KAKUHAN deliver a futureshock jolt on their incred debut album ‘Metal Zone’ - deploying drum machine syncopations around bowed cello and angular electronics that sound like the square root of Photek’s ‘Ni Ten Ichi Ryu’, Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’, Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Workaround’ and Mica Levi’s ‘Under The Skin’ - or something like T++ and Errorsmith dissecting Laurie Anderson’s ‘Home Of The Brave’, her electric violin panned and bounced relentlessly around the stereo field. It really is that good - basically all the things we love, in multiples. While "Metal Zone" might be their debut, KAKUHAN are hardly newcomers. Koshiri Hino is a member of goat (jp), releasing a run of records under the YPY moniker, and heading up the NAKID label, while Yuki Nakagawa is a well known cellist and sound artist who has worked with Eli Keszler and Joe Talia among many others. Together, they make a sound that’s considerably more than the sum of its parts - as obsessively tweaked, cybernetic and jerky as Mark Fell, frothing with the same gritted, algorithmic intensity as Autechre's total-darkness sets, stripped to the bone and carved with ritualistic symbolism. The album’s most startling and unexpected moments come when KAKUHAN follow their 'nuum inclinations, snatching grimey bursts and staccato South London shakes and matching them with dissonant excoriations that shuttle the mind into a completely different place. It's not a collision we expected, but it's one that's completely melted us - welding obsessive rhythmic futurism onto bloodcurdling horror orchestration - the most appropriate soundtrack we can imagine for the contemporary era. By the album's final track, we're presented with South Asian microtonal blasts that suddenly make sense of the rest of the album; Nakagawa erupts into Arthur Russell-style clouded psychedelia, while wavering flutes guide bio-mechanical ritual musick formations. It’s the perfect closer for the album’s series of taut, viscous, and relentless gelling of meter and tone in sinuous tangles, weaving across East/West perceptions in spirals toward a distinctive conception of rhythmic euphoria with a sense of precision, dexterity and purpose that nods to classical court or chamber music as much as contemporary experimental digressions. Easily one of the most startling and deadly debuts we’ve heard in 2022; the louder we’ve played it, the more it’s realigned our perception of where experimental and club modes converge - meditative, jerky, flailing genius from the outerzone. Basically - an AOTY level Tip.

From the cutting-edge label Principe, which continues to innovate the dance music "Kuduro" originating from Angola in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, comes a huge compilation of 37 unreleased tracks by its crew and related artists! A prayer of rhythm that connects the memory and future of Afro-diaspora. Sharp and flexible beats, irregularly swaying polyrhythms, vocal material and sound effects that cut through the void. While resonating with house and UK funky, the sound pursues the "groove of the black city" to the fullest, transforming from the back alleys at night into a street festival. It is the forefront of modern post-club music and a spiritual archive for the future.

Super Tip! Kali Malone and Drew McDowall have orbited each other's work for over a decade, their individual explorations of sustained tones and harmonic space suggesting an inevitable collaboration. When they finally entered McDowall's Brooklyn studio together, what emerged on Magnetism transcends mere musical compatibility. Malone has spent recent years extending the legacy of Éliane Radigue, redefining what electronic minimalism can accomplish through pipe organ and synthesizer. Her compositions stretch single chords into cathedral-sized architectures of sound, tracing harmonic territories that Radigue first mapped in her pioneering electronic works. McDowall brings a different lineage: as a veteran of Coil, he approaches synthesis with the patience of an alchemist, crafting electronic textures that breathe with unsettling life. Magnetism resolves this apparent contradiction through sonic diplomacy. Malone's melodic sensibilities—those long, searching lines that seem to trace the curvature of space itself—find new expression through McDowall's textural arsenal. Where Malone typically builds with mathematical precision inherited from the Radigue tradition, McDowall introduces the controlled chaos he perfected with Coil: digital distortion that pulses like organic matter, synthesis algorithms that decay at the speed of memory. The album's foundation reveals their shared fascination with the spaces between notes. Karplus-Strong synthesis becomes their primary tool, combined with just intonation tuning systems that allow Magnetism to inhabit frequencies conventional instruments cannot reach. But technique serves expression here, not the reverse. Across four extended movements, repetition becomes meditation, saturation a means of transcendence. There's something ritualistic about how these pieces unfold, their harmonic cycles suggesting ancient ceremonies filtered through electronic consciousness. This is music that operates on geological time while pulsing with digital immediacy. The collaboration marks significant evolution for both artists. Malone embraces the productive friction of working with another creative mind, while McDowall discovers in her melodic clarity a redemptive light reminiscent of Coil's more transcendent moments. Together, they've created something that feels both ancient and urgently contemporary—proof that experimental music's most profound statements emerge when distinct artistic visions recognize themselves in each other.