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studio mule is proud to announce the latest release from one of japan’s most respected producers and musicians, kuniyuki takahashi.
this new single was created with the atmosphere of our listening bar studio mule in mind, and showcases kuniyuki’s unmatched ability to bridge dance music with sophisticated musical expression.
the a-side, “open window,” is a modern classical piece inspired by the light and breeze flowing into his sapporo studio—an uplifting, deeply moving composition. on the b-side, “tobira” offers a dreamlike journey of ethnic new-age jazz, evoking the sensation of stepping into a new world.
kuniyuki is a rare artist who has continued to push boundaries across genres, and this release is no exception—a future classic in the making. the artwork has been designed by yoshirotten, a leading figure in tokyo’s contemporary art scene.
with this release, studio mule delivers an inspired response to the timeless legacy of ecm, while continuing to explore new musical horizons.
A meeting of two uncompromising sound artists, New Music fuses pulsating electronic rhythms, immersive drones, and abstract textures into a vivid, physical listening experience. Rising from the outer fringes where abstract techno, noise, and electro-acoustic composition converge, both artists channel their distinct sonic vocabularies into a shared space of tension and transformation. Giffoni’s deep synth drones collide with Nordwall’s ritualistic sense of structure and rhythmic, creating a sound that feels at once mechanical and organic, grounded and cosmic. Moving between dense rhythmic sequences and vast stretches of tonal drift, New Music unfolds like a continuous exploration of energy and decay - music that challenges the boundary between motion and stasis, chaos and control.
For listeners of forward-thinking electronics, this collaboration stands as a compelling testament to the power of sound and the unique chemistry that emerges when two creative worlds intersect. Nordwall explains: “Even though we spent a lot of time together, we never really talked about making music together. But when Carlos visited Sweden, I asked if he’d be into it, as I felt our recordings were starting to sound like they came from the same planet. He kindly agreed and sent me a batch of files to work on. That became New Music - our music, our shared sound.”
Carlos Giffoni is a Venezuelan-born experimental musician and composer known for his visceral approach. A central figure in the 2000s New York noise and experimental scene, he founded No Fun Fest and has collaborated with artists such as Merzbow, Prurient and Jim O’Rourke.
Joachim Nordwall is a Swedish artist and musician exploring industrial, drone, and minimalist, repetitive electronics. As head of iDEAL Recordings and a member of projects like The Skull Defekts and Organ of Corti he remains a key force in Sweden’s experimental music landscape.
A bridge between generations of ambient exploration, this split release unites two artists connected through mood, texture, and introspection: Enno Velthuys, the late Dutch composer and visual artist whose melancholic ambient works defined a quiet corner of the 1980s cassette underground and Paul Riedl, best known as the creative force behind visionary metal band BLOOD INCANTATION, who here reveals a parallel world of deep ambient sound. Together, these recordings form a contemplative journey across aesthetics: a meeting of two artists who, though separated by time, share a commitment to sound as emotional architecture.
Velthuys’s contributions are drawn from the EXART vaults and carefully selected by Hessel Veldman to serve as an appetizer for an upcoming LP of more unreleased material on Stroom Records. Across four cassettes, Velthuys crafted a deeply personal sound - minimal, dreamlike and steeped in solitude - that would later come to be recognized as a cornerstone of European ambient music. The pieces presented here continue that fragile lineage: meditative, intimate and quietly transcendent.
Flipping over the record, melancholy turns into total darkness and time seems to stand still. Massive slabs of sound and tar-coated melodies emerge from the depths. In contrast yet in harmony, Riedl’s side of the album presents archival recordings that explore a fascination with cosmic sound and isolation. While known for exploring the outer reaches of metal, Riedl has long been devoted to ambient and experimental composition. His selections for this release, curated to complement the music of Velthuys, trace a dialogue between decades and sensibilities, blending analog warmth and deep atmospherics with a sense of timeless drift.
Roman Hiele (1991) is a Brussels-based musician and composer whose work explores the boundaries between improvisation and electronic composition. His music unfolds as a living system of shifting harmonies, fractured rhythms, and unexpected turns.
At the core of Hiele’s practice lies a deep fascination for contrast, where his soundscapes act as both anchor and disruption, sharpening the emotional depth of images and spaces, a sensibility that extends into his collaborations with filmmakers, visual artists, and designers.
His new album, Emo Inhaler, on Stroom is an emulsifying force, blending these threads into a single, fluid whole. The record condenses compositions born from improvisatory explorations and electro-acoustic experimentation. Recorded and concluded across various studios and train coupés, Emo Inhaler is expansive, yet tightly woven, creating a singular sonic identity that explores Hiele’s own world of musical off-key vignettes, balancing between light and sinister. With Emo Inhaler, Hiele reaffirms his place as one of Belgium’s most adventurous and distinctive contemporary voices.
Kunsthaus Bregenz presents Wish You Were Gay, a major exhibition by Anne Imhof that gathers new sculpture, painting, sound and six video works never before shown. The show reflects on the artist’s formative years while extending themes that have defined her practice from the beginning.
Imhof revisits early recordings from 2001–03, a period when her life and work overlapped to the point of being inseparable. Using handheld camcorders – then a new technology that allowed the screen to flip – she performed directly to the lens, testing gestures, movements, and songs with guitars, amps, and her close circle of friends and collaborators. These raw documents, urgent and improvised, form the foundation of her later explorations of presence, absence, chance, and fate.
Across the exhibition, Imhof transforms this material into a language of repetition, doubling, and variation, situating the body as a central medium. Figures slow into moments of suspended tension, or erupt with sudden force, echoing her distinctive performance works. Biographical in tone and steeped in the realities of queer community and chosen family, Wish You Were Gay is both intimate and expansive, drawing threads from past to present in a charged meditation on life, art, and endurance.
Call Super revives the endangered art of the mix CD with a fluid, technicolour hour of elegantly advanced club music featuring a striking assembly of emergent artists.
Since their first releases in the early 2010s, Joseph Seaton has been a many-sided artist balancing expressive electronics with organic instrumentation. Their background in jazz has informed ambient and experimental albums, but they've proven to be just as comfortable tackling all shapes and speeds of impactful club music. This extends to their practice as a DJ, regularly surfing the slipstream of the club and festival circuit with a sensitive, seductive instinct for the movement of a dancefloor.
Seaton set out to make ARPO — an acronym for A Rhythm Protects One — to honour the meaning of mix CDs in a world drowning in online DJ streams. Part of the generation raised on seminal series like the metal-tinned fabric and fabriclive (which Seaton themselves contributed to), they cast back to the lasting impression of landmark sessions like Coldcut's 1995 opus Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes Of Madness. These were mixes to absorb over and over again, where every deeply considered track and transition became lodged in your psyche.
As a DJ, producer and composer with a reputation for distinctive, head-turning musicality, Seaton puzzled out a selection for ARPO that bristles with invention. Every track feels like a moment, loaded with motifs and loops that gently impose their presence across an ever-shifting, intricately woven tapestry of dancefloor psychedelia (not to be confused with any genres with 'psy' in the name).
As well as exclusive new material under their Call Super and Ondo Fudd aliases, Seaton seeks out uncanny talent from breakthrough artists in tune with their creative vision. In terms of slinky 4/4 groove and mid tempo pace, you might locate the likes of Conny Slipp, Scarletina and Clam1 on the wilder fringes of minimal tech house, but their productions teem with textural depth and melodic subtlety that reach past that scene's typically functional tendencies. Curveballs abound, and Seaton relishes in the chance to divert into dramatic workouts like their own 'Limelight' and 'mothertime' or strip everything down for the striking, swooning poetry of Malgo & KVS' 'The Argosy'.
Way beyond neatly boxed-off club styles, the individual tracks have their own unique qualities that hold space within the mix as a whole — memorable hooks that burrow in deep, sequenced as a complete and immersive whole to carry with you through life. As Seaton puts it themselves:
"There is a line in the Malgo & KVS track that goes, 'I must be the place where the storm catches breath.' The line captures that feeling of the best of times in a club, where everything slips away in terms of time and you feel like you’ve reached a place beyond the outside world, a place of your own that is somehow communal with those around you. The mix was meant to be an honest reflection of those moments for me as a DJ. The zones that somehow encapsulate the physical and mental harmony you feel in that place. This is a mix for that zone."
Of course, the importance of a mix CD is also rooted in its physicality. Seaton thought back to some of their favourite CD packaging, landing on the iconic pill box that housed Spiritualized's 1997 space rock opus Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. The original designer and manufacturer of that packaging, Daniel Mason, was sought out and enlisted to collaborated with Dekmantel's Jan Tomson. They created a triple-gatefold digipak that centres on figures and a typeface created from dance notation, and a volvelle — a rotating circle dating back to the middle ages originally used to calculate the phases of the sun and the moon. In ARPO's packaging, it acts as a key to detail the artists and track names that feature on the mix. It's a lovingly thought-out, unique piece that further cements Seaton's offering as a memorable entry into the mix CD canon.
Originally out as a free Net-7inch on Jahtari in 2008 to pay respects at the shrine of arcade machine fighting games, these undying hiphop-infused martial arts Dubs by disrupt are finally reaching their intended destination: white blood-splattered 7inch vinyl (attention: not actual blood!).
"Samurai Showdown" (which eventually became Solo Banton's classic "Kung Fu Master", from his Music Addict EP in 2010) is taking place at sunrise, of course, when two master swordsmen are matching blades in a battle to the death. Can the wave-cutting technique of the Jahtari-school prevail?
The B-side is the meditation after the battle, mentally re-creating the epic struggle move by move and in slow motion...
So draw your Katana and prepare for beats as sharp as a battle sword, deadly moves of Ninja swiftness and basslines coming straight from the six paths of hell.
Strictly one-time pressing, 300 copies only!
"Sametou Sawtan translates from the Arabic to “I Heard A Voice”. Spooky or spiritual, however one reads the phrase, it speaks to the ability of sound and language to cause pause, steal attention, and open us to the moment. Likewise, the music of SANAM blurs tender frenzies and fire-scorched ballads, collapsing free-flowing rock and jazz frameworks into deeply rooted Arabic tradition. To hear them in full flight is to be held in the present and reorientated towards an open horizon.
The record processes feelings of distance and dislocation. Whether in the yearning ballad “Goblin” or the slow-burning, autotune-doused freakout of “Habibon”, Sametou Sawtan captures the striving for stable ground in a world seldom capable of offering it. It rides the mesmerizing intensity of the SANAM live experience while affording their music nuance, depth, and tremendous dynamic range.
Like their debut, lyrics for many tracks are borrowed, words placed into new contexts to process the present. “Hamam” reinterprets an Egyptian folk song. In “Hadikat Al Ams”, the cracked hard-rock stomp propels text by contemporary Lebanese writer Paul Shaoul. And both “Sayl Damei” and the title track use poems by twelfth century Iranian poet and groundbreaking mathematician Omar Khayyam."
KontaktAudio presents the first-ever official release of the ultra rare and sought after B-Semi Live 24/5/1984 cassette, a rare and explosive document capturing a crucial moment in Japan’s underground noise and industrial music scene. Recorded at the legendary B-Semi venue in Tokyo, this performance brings together three pioneers - Merzbow, Null (K.K. Null), and Nord - delivering a raw, unfiltered onslaught of early Japanese noise music in its most intense form.
This historic recording showcases the primitive power and experimental spirit that defined the early Japanese noise music scene, sitting alongside the abrasive intensity of Whitehouse, the industrial ritualism of SPK, and the mechanical destruction of Throbbing Gristle. A sonic time capsule of Japan’s most groundbreaking sound revolutionaries, B-Semi Live 24/5/1984 is an essential piece of noise history.
Jezgro is proud to present the second release by the almighty god of noise Merzbow. "Torus" is bleak, twisted and uncompromising EP, that has a tendency to disturb and sooth, both at the same time, your inner dark parts and make you question your moral.
Spanish producer and composer Pedro Vian and Japanese noise legend Merzbow join forces once again for A Wheel of Mani, a singular work set to be released exclusively on 12” vinyl on June 4, 2025, via Modern Obscure Music. This collaboration follows in the footsteps of their previous joint effort, Inside Richard Serra Sculptures, released last year, where they explored the intersection of sonic abstraction and dense textural landscapes. With this new release, the two artists push even further into the spiritual and abrasive corners of their sound, merging ethereal atmospheres with the raw intensity of extreme noise, shaped by
glitch techniques and digital experimentation.
The album serves as a meeting point between seemingly opposing sonic worlds, now interwoven in a fascinating synergy. Vian contributes his sensitivity for hypnotic pads and enveloping ambiances, while Merzbow amplifies the experience with his signature saturation and searing textures. The result is a composition of stark contrasts and unexpected harmonies, inviting the listener into a sensory journey where mysticism and chaos coalesce into a singular experience.
The decision to release A Wheel of Mani on vinyl underscores its physicality, emphasizing the tactile experience of sound, where each groove reveals unexplored tonal dimensions. Vian and Merzbow eschew conventional approaches, dissolving boundaries between the ambient and the abrasive, the meditative and the cathartic. This is not an album that seeks easy resolutions but one that thrives within the tension between harmony and noise, where texture takes precedence and time becomes elastic. A work designed as much for deep contemplation as for total immersion in its expansive sonic universe.
Mike Majkowski makes his debut on Hands in the Dark Records with Invisible, a selection of six moody and mysterious pieces produced between 2019 and 2025.
The prolific Australian double bassist and music maker has been involved in a diverse array of contemporary and experimental music since the early 2000s. This time, the Berlin-based artist is venturing deeper into downtempo, meditative and hypnotic minimal electronic realms.
While time and space are constraints, they also define our identities, creating inexplicable bonds with others flowing through shared moments and shared places. The state of being invisible obliterates these confines, allowing one to return to their pure essence. In this setting, Majkowski’s compositions display a discreet and profoundly emotional language characterised by vulnerability, darkness and confusion, while also embodying hope, soothing and resilience. A dim light, transcending love, space, memory and time.
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.
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
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.
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