MUSIC

”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、スウェーデンの新鋭プロデューサーAndy pls。〈MAD BREAKS〉や〈Lost Frog Productions〉などからの作品でカルト人気を博すブレイクコア作家Aphextwinsucksともコラボレーションしているこの人が、UKのネットレーベル〈FOCUSONTHE〉から8月に発表した最新カセット作品『all my followers are my friends』の最終在庫をストック！〈Mad Breaks〉や〈[REDACTED]〉〈Tsundere Violence〉などが企画した複数のコンピにも参加してきた経歴もある人物。どこか間の抜けた雰囲気のジャケットとは裏腹にシリアスなムードが通底された、実験的なドラムンベース/ブレイクコアのかなりの傑作！savesがラスト曲にてリミックスで参加。版元完売につき再入荷はございませんので、この機会をお見逃しなく

”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、スウェーデンの新鋭プロデューサーHealspirit1。UKのネットレーベルであり、昨今のブレイクコア作家たちの新たな爆心地となっている〈FOCUSONTHE〉から8月に発表した最新カセット作品『prettycrier』の最終在庫をストック！〈official music fan club〉が昨年秋に発表していたアングラなブレイクコア&ドラムンベース系の特大コンピ『We Do A Little Music』（総勢62組！）にも参加していた人物。ポスト・ロックやドリルンベース、Breakgaze的な要素や色彩も織り込まれた、終末的かつエクスペリメンタルなブレイクコアの傑作盤！版元完売につき再入荷はございませんので、この機会をお見逃しなく。

”音割れ”への憧憬のこもった新興ジャンル「HexD」周辺も巻き込みながら、昨今、加速度的に勢いを増すブレイクコア/ドラムンベースの世界から飛び出した、ドイツの要注目プロデューサーStrxwberrymilk。自身がホームとしているUKのネットレーベルであり、昨今のブレイクコア作家たちの新たな爆心地となっている〈FOCUSONTHE〉から11月に発表した最新カセット作品『Eloise』の最終在庫をストック！Roy ↨とNaffyがそれぞれ一曲ずつフィーチャリング参加。ジャージークラブやブレイクビーツ、ディープ・ハウスからの影響も色濃い、ダンサブルにして軽やかであり、重厚なアトモスフェリック・ドラムンベースの秀作！版元完売につき再入荷はございませんので、この機会をお見逃しなく。

Originally released in 2005, Insen is the second collaboration album between Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto and the second installment of V.I.R.U.S.‘s five albums series. Remastered in 2021 in collaboration with Calyx Studio, the album’s recordings are accompanied by an unreleased composition titled Barco. Initially composed for Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2005 Insen tour, the audio material used in this piece is based on the subtle sounds of Barco projectors, whose tonalities served as a ground for the artists’ live improvisation. In Insen, Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto explore the potential for interaction and tension between electronic and acoustic instrumentation. Across eight compositions, the echoes of the cascading piano combine, collide, and dissolve with the tapestry of digital breakages in sheer vibrancy. This relationship lies at the album’s core. It subtly continues Vrioon‘s calm melancholia, becoming a vessel for all the emotions and memories nourished by the listener. As you hear the opening, lonesome notes of Aurora, you realize that the pair have once again conceded an ambition to embed elaborate disciplines into an archetypal sound of soul-searching beauty. Album art designed by Carsten Nicolai Mastering by Bo @ Calyx

Meitei’s 2020 album 'Kofū' was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s 'Kwaidan' and 2019’s 'Komachi'.

All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being washed away – not least by the unforgiving sands of time – through wistful compositions that stretched across ambient music, hauntology, and musique concrete.

When it came to finalizing 'Kofū', Meitei found he was left with over 60 fully realized tracks, bursting with ideas that fired in divergent, curious directions. Meitei was content with the 13 tracks he had selected. But when it came time to begin his next album, he found that it had been sitting in front of him all along. He realized his work wasn’t over yet.

Meitei sounds right at home celebrating the past he first reimagined in his previous work. The merriment is palpable in its first two tracks of 'Kofū II' – a loop of cheery whistling amidst the clanking of wood leads into strings, cricket sounds and flutes, all united in bustling harmony.

'Happyaku-yachō' is where it comes into focus. Pitch-shifted vocal samples roam around in the crowded sonic field. “My image of this music is that it expresses the vibrant mood of Edo's merchant culture,” says Meitei, “where old Japanese dwellings were densely packed together in a vast expanse of land.” The affair becomes bittersweet as the track leads into the desolate 'Kaworu', a compositional piece lifted from his 'Komachi' sessions – a final requiem to his late grandmother.

The album is bursting with spectral vignettes of wandering samurais, red lanterns, ninjas, puppet theatres, poets, even a vengeful assassin ('Shurayuki hime', known to Western audiences as ‘Lady Snowblood’).

'Saryō' is as elegant and refined as you would expect. It induces stillness in its repetition, with each synth note a brushstroke. It was inspired by a Sengoku-era tea house he once visited, designed by national icon Sen no Rikyū. Meitei tied it to the reaction he felt while poring over the ink paintings in his grandmother’s house. “The decayed earthen walls and faded tatami mats gave me an emotional impression,” he says. “And the cosmic flow of time drifting in the small room. I decided to put my impression of this into music.”

In 'Akira Kurosawa', an appropriately thunderous track, Meitei finds deep resonance in his vast filmography, which drew equally from Japan’s rich heritage and troubled circumstances post-WWII.

'Kofū II' is not a leftovers album, nor is it a straightforward companion piece. In this album, Meitei has his biggest reckoning with the Japanese identity yet. Over the years, he has attempted to peel back what he believes has defined Japan and its people. After seeking answers with three full-length albums, his fourth poses more questions.

If his first three albums inspired a sense of longing – or, perhaps inevitably, fed an irreparable nostalgia doomed to history – 'Kofū II' compels us to reassess our relationship with the past. By constantly looking back, are we ever afforded a clearer present? After capturing the “lost Japanese mood”, where does that leave its country in the modern world? Meitei offers no immediate answers with 'Kofū II'. It forces you to sit with its disparate moods, to meditate amidst the textured fragments.

'Kofū II' will be released on 180g LP, CD and digital format on December 10, 2021 (LP expected to land January 28, 2022) via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include a 16-page insert with words in Japanese and English from Meitei, printed on premium paper stock with design by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang, and is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan. 

Linkwood returns to AOTN in 2022 with Stereo, the follow up and part two, to his killer and hyper focussed LP Mono, which turned heads in 2021. All recorded live at the AOTN studio, he's kept the essence of the first LP which worked so well, but moved it on in a much deeper direction. Fusing many of his influences, Boogie, Detroit and early 80's synth joints to name a few, stereo has its own identity and showcases Linkwoods ability to write and produce on the fly but maintain that warm, fuzzy and intricate sound we all love him for.

As the sun sets on a quaint East Nashville house, a young man bares a piece of his soul. Facing the camera, sporting a silky suit jacket/shirt/slacks/fingerless gloves ensemble that announces "singer" before he's even opened his mouth, Lee Tracy Johnson settles onto his stage, the front yard. He sways to the dirge-like drum machine pulse of a synth-soaked slow jam, extends his arms as if gaining his balance, and croons in affecting, fragile earnest, "I need your love… oh baby…" Dogs in the yard next door begin barking. A mysterious cardboard robot figure, beamed in from galaxies unknown and affixed to a tree, is less vocal. Lee doesn't acknowledge either's presence. He's busy feeling it, arms and hands gesticulating. His voice rises in falsetto over the now-quiet dogs, over the ambient noise from the street that seeps into the handheld camcorder's microphone, over the recording of his own voice played back from a boombox off-camera. After six minutes the single, continuous shot ends. In this intimate creative universe there are no re-takes. There are many more music videos to shoot, and as Lee later puts it, "The first time you do it is actually the best. Because you can never get that again. You expressing yourself from within." "I Need Your Love" dates from a lost heyday. From some time in the '80s or early '90s, when Lee Tracy (as he was known in performance) and his music partner/producer/manager Isaac Manning committed hours upon hours of their sonic and visual ideas to tape. Embracing drum machines and synthesizers – electronics that made their personal futurism palpable – they recorded exclusively at home, live in a room into a simple cassette deck. Soul, funk, electro and new wave informed their songs, yet Lee and Isaac eschewed the confinement of conventional categories and genres, preferring to let experimentation guide them. "Anytime somebody put out a new record they had the same instruments or the same sound," explains Isaac. "So I basically wanted to find something that's really gonna stand out away from all of the rest of 'em." Their ethos meant that every idea they came up with was at least worth trying: echoed out half-rapped exhortations over frantic techno-style beats, gospel synth soul, modal electro-funk, oddball pop reinterpretations, emo AOR balladry, nods to Prince and the Fat Boys, or arrangements that might collapse mid-song into a mess of arcade game-ish blips before rallying to reach the finish line. All of it conjoined by consistent tape hiss, and most vitally, Lee's chameleonic voice, which managed to wildly shape shift and still evoke something sincere – whether toggling between falsetto and tenor exalting Jesus's return, or punctuating a melismatic romantic adlib with a succinct, "We all know how it feels to be alone." "People think we went to a studio," says Isaac derisively. "We never went to no studio. We didn't have the money to go to no studio! We did this stuff at home. I shot videos in my front yard with whatever we could to get things together." Sometimes Isaac would just put on an instrumental record, be it "Planet Rock" or "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita), press "record," and let Lee improvise over it, yielding peculiar love songs, would-be patriotic anthems, or Elvis Presley or Marilyn Monroe tributes. Technical limitations and a lack of professional polish never dissuaded them. They believed they were onto something. "That struggle," Isaac says, "made that sound sound good to me." In the parlance of modern music criticism Lee and Isaac's dizzying DIY efforts would inevitably be described as "outsider." But "outsider" carries the burden of untold additional layers of meaning if you're Black and from the South, creating on a budget, and trying to get someone, anyone within the country music capital of the world to take your vision seriously. "What category should we put it in?" Isaac asks rhetorically. "I don't know. All I know is feeling. I ain't gonna name it nothing. It's music. If it grabs your soul and touch your heart that's what it basically is supposed to do."

Gondwana Records and Portico Quartet announce a strictly limited edition collectors-item Featuring an expanded version of their long-form composition Terrain and re-arranged for the Portico Quartet Ensemble and recorded live in Studio One Terrain (Extended) features an expanded version of the composition re-arranged for the Portico Quartet Ensemble – a subtle re-configuration of the band that features a string quartet - and which allowed for the composition's deeper textures and resonances to be fully explored, along the way expanding the dialogue between tranquillity and a subtly unsettling melancholy, that makes Terrain such a beautiful, powerful piece. 9th November 2021 was a very special session. The band (who had first recorded at Abbey Road for their second album Isla back in 2009), brought long-term collaborator, recording and mix engineer, Greg Freeman over from Berlin to work with Abbey Road’s Chris Bolster and the resulting concert film Terrain (Extended) - Live in Studio One An Abbey Road 90th Session received it’s world premiere broadcast on the Gondwana Youtube channel on Thursday 20th October. Now Gondwana Records is super proud to announce the ultimate collector’s edition of this special recording. Limited to just 1500 individually numbered and stamped LPs and 1000 CDs. Recorded live at Abbey Road Studio One. Mixed in Berlin by the band’s longterm collaborator Greg Freeman. Audio mastered by John Davis at Metropolis Studios. Vinyl cut by John Davis at Metropolis Studios Available only on beautiful transparent clear two disc vinyl pressed at Optimal in Germany or on limited edition CD or digital download LP and CD are presented in an uncoated gatefold sleeve printed in Pantone Cool Gray 4 with release details sticker. In addition, the LP features a 12 page booklet with a half front page and translucent paper overlay, glued into a gatefold and the CD features 12-page booklet, glued into a gatefold. Designed by veil projects. Each LP and CD are hand stamped and the LP comes packed in reusable 'Japanese style’ polyprop sleeves - with sealable flap - for protection

mono no aware (もののあわれ) is the first compilation to be released on PAN, collating unreleased ambient tracks from both new and existing PAN artists. Featuring Jeff Witscher, Helm, TCF, Yves Tumor, M.E.S.H., Pan Daijing, HVAD, Kareem Lotfy, ADR, Mya Gomez, Sky H1, James K, Oli XL, Bill Kouligas, Flora Yin-Wong, Malibu, and AYYA, the compilation moves through more traditional notions of what is called ’ambient’, to incorporating wider variations that fall under the term. “Mono no aware”, ‘the pathos of things’, also translates as “an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera”. A term for the awareness of impermanence, or the transience of things. A meditation on mortality and life's transience, ephemerality heightens the appreciation of beauty and sensitivity to their passing. In investigating the passing of time, the boundaries between memory and hallucination become blurred; between fiction and reality. The movement of time transforms into an eternal present. The album is mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, featuring photography by Molly Matalon and design by Bill Kouligas. A limited version of 100 copies will be released as a special art edition in collaboration with Mount Analog for the LA Art Book Fair 2017, going on general release via PAN both physically/digitally on 17th March.

Cole Pulice is a composer, saxophonist and electroacoustic musician from Oakland-via-Minneapolis. Following their debut album "Gloam" and two duo collaborations with Lynn Avery and Nat Harvie, Cole Pulice returns with their sophomore album "Scry". The sound is deeply contemporary, incorporating saxophone/wind synth with live signal processing and modern electronics/software. It drifts between electroacoustic experimentalism and more traditional forms of song-like beauty, casting a wide sonic net that highlights Pulice’s versatility and creativity as both an improviser and composer. From Cole: "Scry is a collection of musics exploring fragmentary or gradient states of liminality – recursive spirals of worlds hidden within worlds, dreams within dreams, sensations of time, and the notion of the past, present, and future all occupying a single point. It’s a record that, for me, resonates strongly with this sort of “between-ness:” it began in Minneapolis, and was finished in Oakland, bridging pre-pandemic life with the “new normal” of current times; being genderqueer and navigating the spaces between and outside of the masculine and feminine binary; wandering through a musical interchange station that is interconnects improvisation, “song,” and collage experiments . . . multidimensional yet woven together by similar aesthetic threads. Whereas my previous record, Gloam, was mostly a series of compositions for a very specific electroacoustic setup, Scry utilizes a series of different hardware/software frameworks and apparatus. Or, to think of it in another way: Gloam was like looking through a kaleidoscope (each turn of the handle giving a different abstract perspective of the same bits of gemstone); Scry is more like a stained-glass crystal ball (a singular sculpture, with each fragment somehow offering an ephemeral glimpse into another world or dimension). Scry is deeply indebted to the electroacoustic works of Pauline Oliveros, David Behrman, Marion Brown, Maggi Payne, Harold Budd, and Jon Hassell - all of whom explored, in their own ways, the interconnectivity between acoustic instruments, interactive electronic signal processing, and improvisation - the crux of ‘Scry’s DNA. To this end: virtually all of the signal processing on ‘Scry’ is done live as I play saxophone/wind synth, either through a hardware setup that I control with my feet as I play, or through software instruments I build which respond live to what I’m playing. Often, both software and hardware processes are being used simultaneously. "To scry" defines the practice of foretelling the future through gazing into a crystal ball or other reflective surfaces. There's a lot to say here regarding the mix of temporalities, timelines, states of being, and so forth, but I mostly just have to give a special thanks to glass artist, composer, and dear friend Sadie Robison. The arcane aesthetics of her technicolor stained glass sculptures were a major influence on the themes of Scry 🧡" —Cole Pulice

Moon Glyph is pleased to present a compilation of new, unreleased tunes from established veterans of the label and newcomers alike. Staying true to Moon Glyph’s transportive aesthetic, “Amethyst” spans across abstract genres from ambient, psychedelia, jazz, electronic, fourth world percussion and more. Across its 17 tracks, you’ll hear Cole Pulice’s hypnotic overlapping saxophones, Vic Bang’s intricate arrangements of micro samples, IE’s patient desert landscapes and Starbirthed’s shimmering celestial guitars. Opening the compilation, Iceblink’s playful and adventurous melodicism morphs into Omni Gardens’ fuzzy synth and vibraphone. SiP expands his songwriting with loose and ecstatic textures and more organic tones. Tracks from Lee Noble, Pulse Emitter and Electric Sound Bath dive deep into all manners of synthesized sounds with abstract, ambient and otherworldly timbres. Nicholas Gaunin’s jungle field recordings and percussion sit comfortably nestled into fourth world zones. Songs from Noah Klein and Mark Tester create ambience with a casual sophistication, melding acoustic instrumentation alongside the electronic. Nuke Watch continues with their unclassifiable jazz with oddball percussion and freeform keyboards. There’s Landon Caldwell’s airy flute, sax, marimbas and wind chimes. And the cascading wash of synth and guitars from Grapefruit. And the trippy full band weirdo psychedelia of American Cream Band. Moon Glyph’s vision for a contemporary record label continues to expand by seeking the adventurous, the weird and the new.

All music written & produced by Belacqua
Mastered by The Bastard

Artwork by DD & DMG

Published by wherethetimegoes
Catalog No. WTTG010

After highly acclaimed releases from OK EG and Donald’s House, Wax’o Paradiso Recordings proudly welcomes Naarm/Melbourne producer Midnight Tenderness (Ryan Hunter) to the fold. Over four tracks the ‘Hydrosphere EP’ continues the label’s narrative of platforming contemporary antipodean psychedelia with three masterful productions and a remix from Boorloo/Perth’s Hame DJ.

As a producer with influences rooted in dub, street soul, boogie and the DNA of UK club music, Ryan draws down on the Middy T sound with the title track ‘Hydrosphere’, a blend of broken machine funk, glistening synth lines and beautiful crisp drum programming. ‘Rain Vibe’ takes the sound palette further adding a hefty wub for good measure. ‘Catamaran’ transports us back to the golden era on the Balearic isles, with the original evoking Ibizan sunset cruises whilst Hame DJ’s remix brings some Madchester chug to the mix.

The vision for this compilation album was to create a collection of tracks that complement each other and are fitting for repeated home listening.   
  
Being somewhat of a conceptual experiment. All the artists on the album were asked to imagine fusing Acid and House with the Virtualsex LP which was released on Buzz in 1993. A 303 sound would be welcomed but not essential with an emphasis on soulful emotion and melody.   
  
We hope you enjoy the results as much as we do.  
  

A1) Postelektrik - SW1  
Niall Minogue is fast becoming Chicago Bee’s jewel in the crown with his vintage sounding euphoric pads and tones. This is his third outing on Chicago Bee and one to watch. Check out: So We Thought We Knew Technology EP on Chicago Bee. 
  
A2) Derek Carr - No Surrender  
Derek Carr needs little introducing. Based in Ireland, Derek is responsible for releasing some of the best produced techno around today and has a musical output spanning over 20 years. With his deep soulful Detroit sound we are flattered to have him on board for the first time. Check out: Warm Machines EP on Revoke/Trident Recordings its masterful!  
  
B1) Type 303 - Stairway to Jupiter 
Another overseas artist, this time from Finland. Dan Kaipio has become a versatile and prolific artist over recent years and this is his second appearance on Chicago Bee. With EP releases on the popular I Love Acid and Downfall Recordings labels to his name, he’s no mug. He nails a vintage acid sound. Check out: Sysi EP on Super Rhythm Trax.  

B2) Monofonix - Omega  
Craig Stainton is better known for his acid productions under the name Mantra and has notched up an impressive back catalogue including releases on Weapons of Desire. He opted to submit a Monofonix track which had fallen under the radar somewhat. We felt it well deserved more exposure and it fits the brief perfectly. Super chuffed to have him on Chicago Bee for the first time. Check out the album: Thirteen Circles on Cataclyst its proper chilled.    

B3) Ivan Golac - Floated 
The mysterious and elusive Ivan Golac is a cover name for an artist who wants to be kept anonymous. Its Their second time on Chicago Bee. Their music has been likened to Liddell Townsell. Check out: The Powers That Be EP on Chicago Bee.  
  
C1) Iron Blu - Valtra  
Mick Clark’s debut was a solo synthesiser album released in Germany. He then relocated to London and joined the British band Naked Lunch formed in 1979. The band were one of the UKs first ever synth-based bands and are highly acclaimed.  
Spin forward 40 odd years and he’s DJing and producing electro / acid and co running the Label Weapons of Desire. Basically, what a legend!  
First time on Chicago Bee. Check out the album: Games on Blubber Lips (1978)  
 
C2) Fear-E - Haven’t You Heard  
Scott McKay is another big hitter from the UK acid scene and this time from north of the border in Glasgow. Very pleased to have him on Chicago Bee for the first time. He’s well known for his work on Dixon Avenue Basement Jams. Check out: Made in the G60 EP on Super Rhythm Tracks, the opening track is a monster of a tune!  

C3) Forgotten Corner , Maen Land
Cornwall based Nick Mackrory and Phil Banks like to produce and play there acid deep and slow. Nick has a diverse
production background including library music releases on KPM with Seahawks. Phil , a keen vinyl spinner, can boast to have played at the I Love Acid club night. Together they make a great team. Very chuffed to get them on board for the first time.
Check out Prosthetic Limbo (Forgotten Corner Records)

D1) iNFO - Dreams of Andromeda  
Sheffield based Michael Robinson is heavily influenced by early Detroit and UK techno.  
His music has slick production and is full of lush pads and strings, so perfect for this album. Another very welcomed first timer on Chicago Bee.   
Check out the album: All Possibilities and Outcomes  
  
D2) A-Eno-Acid - Greek Town Casino  
Apart from his acid outings on Chicago Bee, label owner Mark Churcher is also known for his abstract techno, dub - electronica and ambient on the mid 1990s label Emote. He’s also in a sound art band called Electronic Sound Pictures. Check out the band V- Neck and the Liquid Lunch EP by Send/Return on Emote.  



Much thanks to Kiki Bond for the artwork and Phil Banks for the T Shirts

The 1st album of the legend of Jon Hassell, a masterpiece of ambient / minimal masterpiece selection and a generous compliment to Brian Eno, is finally remastered !!

The memorable debut of the genius Jon Hassell, the masterpiece "Vernal Equinox", which remains in the history of experimental music, will be released on March 20, 2020 (Friday), as the title means "Vernal Equinox". >, The long-awaited recurrence is decided.

Selected as one of the 50 best ambient albums of all time by Pitchfork, this is John Hassell's first official release released on Lovely Music in 1977. At the same time, it is a super important thing that remains in the history of experimental music, which was positioned as the first work of the "Fourth World" series that fused field recording, electric jazz, ambient, and world music with the concept of combining Western and non-Western music. Written. David, an electronic musician known as a pioneer of biofeedback music, and percussion by Brazilian world-famous percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, featuring the sound of a mysterious trumpet processed with acoustic signals, which is also Hassel's trademark. -The supreme ensemble including the synthesizer by Rosenboom creates a quiet, meditative and original acoustic beauty. For this reissue, the sound source will be remastered from the original master tape at that time, and the CD will be commercialized for the first time in 30 years, and the analog record will be commercialized for the first time in 42 years.

Living Room (faitiche 28) is the third solo album by Roméo Poirier and, following his much praised Hotel Nota, his debut for Faitiche. The French musician and producer transforms the layering of different times into a free-flowing pulse that sounds both nostalgic and mysteriously ahistorical. Poirier takes music seriously as a time-based art – not just in the sense of duration, but also in the way time is refracted into autobiographical experience, historical dimensions and stages of evolution. By immersing and reflecting himself in these different layers, he creates a succession of new balances between various tempos, iterations and developments. Poirier’s music emerges from a continual questioning and reformulation of his own oeuvre and thus of his own past, drawing on an ever-expanding archive of self-recorded loops. “I always resample myself, using fragments of a track to make a new one, as an ongoing process,” he explains: “The sound is evolving with me in parallel and the loops carry in their DNA all transformational stages, filled with previous tracks, sedimented.” Originally a drummer, Poirier connects his various sources almost without a clearly identifiable beat. He prefers an organic pulse, mutable like the human sense of time and its fluidity. The aquatic feel of certain tracks on Living Room is no coincidence: among other devices, he uses a waterproof loudspeaker and a hydrophone to play back and rerecord tracks in the bathtub. Drawing on a sample collection assembled by his father, also a musician, the human voice enters Poirier’s music for the first time. But it remains free of overly unambiguous signifiers. Besides its link to time, the fascinating thing about music is that it has meaning without needing to be decoded. Living Room goes back to the private but universal origin of human experience: “I liked the idea that a possible quest for a musician could be echoing the first encounter we had with language, in a prenatal state: its prosody, melody and tones, without being cluttered with meaning.”

Eight distinguished artists wrote and recorded original pieces for this album which joins some dots between vintage, experimental & new ambient, and pays tribute to the relaunched Made To Measure composers’ series

Featuring, by order of appearance:

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, the American modular synth wizard (US)

Christina Vantzou, the Greek-American orchestral composer (US/GR)

Stubbleman aka maverick ambient composer Pascal Gabriel (UK/BE), with Norwegian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær (NO)

Lucrecia Dalt (COL) + Camille Mandoki (MX) + Matias Aguayo (CL/DE), in a special collaboration

Mary Lattimore, the celestial experimental ambient harpist (US)

Inne Eysermans, the front person from Belgian indie band Amatorski (BE)

Félicia Atkinson, the French experimental musician & visual artist (FR)

Benjamin Lew & Steven Brown (BE/US), with their first collab in over three decades

All tracks were made to measure for this album, and revolve around the loose idea of wordless fiction.

Aside from being such a seductive, fascinating collection of tracks and moods, the album is also modestly aiming at joining dots between certain classic ambient composers (represented here by Benjamin Lew & Steven Brown and Stubbleman, whose work has previously appeared in the Made To Measure series), artists who approach experimental ambient from their pop or club background (Lucrecia Dalt, Inne Eysermans, Matias Aguayo), and eminent exponents of the great new generation of ambient music composers (Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Christina Vantzou, Mary Lattimore, Félicia Atkinson).

The cover of Fictions is a reproduction of a painting by renowned Belgian artist Angel Vergara Santiago (two of his paintings were already featured on covers of early Made To Measure volumes, back in the 1980s).

'Fictions' was curated by Marc Hollander.

James Rushford tops over a decade of solo and collaboratibve work with Oren Ambarchi, Crys Cole, Will Guthrie, Graham Lambkin and Klaus Lang on this fathoms-deep, psychedelic treat, a next-level arrangement of microtonal drone, decaying concréte fuzz and windswept, somber melancholia recorded for the Shelter Press label.

James Rushford impressed earlier this year with his excellent Black Truffle collab with Will Guthrie "Real Real World", and he here heads further into the nether-realm on 'Lakes From The Louvers’, an album that draws its inspiration from the interplay of shadow and light he observed on the surface of the lake and through his window while at an artist residency at La Becque on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Rushford's detailed sound particles and concrète world-building echo the tantalising shimmer of light on water, with amplified movements, synthesized squawks, pings and harp notes rippling across the length of each track. It’s music that accurately represents the landscape but is far from ambient - instead Rushford sculpts soundscapes that demand patient, attentive listening. 

The slow-moving, deliberate processes that Rushford has been honing over the last 15 years betray a sensitive ear, swerving pretentious, exclusionary art for arts sake nonsense. This is electro-acoustic experimentation with a beating heart, designed to trigger thought and self reflection. Just clap yr ears around 'Hyaline Apples' as it melts buzzing clouds of synth into jagged harp plucks and woodblock percussion, or standout track 'The Bise' and its disquieting haze of microtonal bliss. When the album comes to a satisfying close on 'Dents Du Midi', it feels like the finale of a muticolored odyssey, as tangled synth notes fold in on themselves like an MC Escher painting. Futuristic and ancient, 'Lakes From The Louvers' is a breathtaking album that unspools with the patience it no doubt took to create.

In 2019, American conceptual artist John Duncan and Swedish noise/future techno duo Saturn and the Sun made a trip to Porto, Portugal for a concert weekend set up by the Materia Prima crew in town. During the gig at the Teatro Rivoli, the artists found that their music touched a lot of common ground. They spoke about recording together. Years later, that was done and the result is this futuristic, raw, rather primitive and psychedelic thing consisting of shortwave radio, no input mixing desk feedback, analogue synths and effects. Joachim Nordwall mixed it at the Gothenburg Sound Experiment and Philip Marshall gave it its iDEAL234 personality! Deep stuff, perfect for driving your car fast in a darkened tunnel with your lights off. JOHN DUNCAN has operated for decades at the cutting edge of performance, video, experimental music, installation, pirate radio and television. He has played a pivotal role in the development of performance art in Los Angeles, of experimental music as a member of LAFMS, of Japanese noise and pirate radio in Tokyo. SATURN AND THE SUN is Henrik Rylander and Joachim Nordwall and they have collaborated since 2005 creating ritual rock music as The Skull Defekts and circular electronic music and noise as Saturn and the Sun since 2015 and with their latest album, tastefully entitled ”The New Age Is Shit”, they have found their place as the link between Robert Hood, Pan Sonic and avant garde noise.

Jon K and Elle Andrews’ MAL imprint returns with a new LP from one of the London experimental underground's best kept secrets, Rory Salter aka Malvern Brume. His music is rare, eccentric and mysterious - somewhere between Coil's bleak ritual magick and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's most experimental, minimal fringes. Malvern Brume operates just beneath the radar, occasionally turning up at Café OTO lineups and on a smattering of releases for Low Company, Alter, Infant Tree and Kasual Plastik - but he’s never one to shout too loudly about his work. ‘Body Traffic’ is his most interesting set to date, laying bare a process melting found sounds, field recordings and spoken word into throbbing, pulsing rhythms. It’s an evocation of a fraught mindset during the early weeks of lockdown in 2020; sequestered in his flat next to a trainline, the infrasonic - and more audible - rumbles of rolling stock and a nagging sense of dread infecting his ambiguously discomfiting recordings. Operating in a headspace that values world-building and vivid, visual emotionality, Salter’s careful melodies are familiar - the distant, weeping melancholia of 1970s British TV hangs off the recordings like net curtains, and his atmosphere loops into experiments that weave through bare traces of industrial music, blank-faced electro pop, and hedonistic Brummie techno, all reduced to a cinder. The mood is set on the bellyaching resonance and crawling walls of the title tune, while 'Through Beaked Fog Horns' is drowned beneath morning mists: lopsided synth drones choke and drift, percussion mutates into inebriated bubbles, and tape-f*cked environmental whirrs create an atmosphere that’s hard to decipher in one take. ‘Moss Spines Clenched’ follows cryptic stains on peeling flocking, and the icy creep of ‘Tense Branches Waver’ quivers beyond a cracked windowpane. The artist’s voice appears from beneath a cardboard box fort in the imaginary world of ‘Cornered Into Sleat’ as a distant drum beats out a marching thud and traffic squeals are sculpted into chirpy whistles, before ‘Bri Dun’ resolves the eerie tension in an OOBE-like ascent above the dado-rail and across the tracks, watching himself fade into a dissociative bliss. "All chatter falls quiet…” Salter murmurs thru saturation and white noise. It’s a sound that’s gonna stick with us for a while.

A deeply confounding trip into the sublime from master of contextual dream-weaving Nozomu Matsumoto on perhaps his most heart-piercingly beautiful work to date, including a 13 minute choral section that might just be the most stunning piece of pseudo-classical/liturgical alchemy we’ve heard all year. Huge recommendation for followers/lovers of Kara-Lis Coverdale, Ryan Trecartin or Mica Levi’s ‘Zola’ score Leading on from his ’Remain Calm’ album to accompany visual components by regular collaborator Nile Koetting, ‘Immunotherapy’ offers therapeutic solace through a personalised form of Japanese environmental music. A conceptual continuation of themes explored on 2018’s ‘Climatotherapy’ and 2020’s ‘Sustainable Hours’; Nozomu’s 3rd solo vinyl release reprises his uncanny ability to evoke a reflective headspace with a blend of classical ambient tropes, text-to-speech synthesis, and a contemporary cinematic vernacular that’s both nuanced and moving. In 2022, against the backdrop of global warfare, a pandemic, and ecological collapse, Nozomu’s work grasps the nettle with a sober lucidity to make time and space for his, and your, wellbeing. ‘Immunotherapy’ carefully evokes its own temporality and atmospheric conditions via a grandiose but intimate palette of strings, keys, blissed chorales, and electronic webbing which provide the bed for narration by Amazon’s vocaloid, Polly. The results create an unusual duality - a human/inhuman intimacy rooted in some uncertain semi-robotic near-future that references the original ‘80s era of classic Japanese ambient music, which itself emerged as a soothing response to the headlong rush of a technologically enhanced/enchanted society. Across six parts in 22 minutes, ‘Immunotherapy’ resolves from the initial inset of a panic attack in public, via passages reflecting on “diseases of affluence” thru to spine freezing synth pads and an extraordinary denouement of emotive Koto and shearing synthesis on ‘Vertigo’ before entering a final state of blissed stasis on that closing 13 minute ‘Filippo Pacini’ section - a haunting ode to the c.19th Italian anatomist that uncannily reminds us of Kara-Lis Coverdale’s collaboration with Yasuaki Shimizu - a sound that feels all-too-human despite it’s synthetic contours. A whirlwind of emotion, right on the cusp of bliss and melancholia.

Long playing second release by the ever busy RS Produções, showcasing an update of the crew's particularly moody dance beats. Their debut "Bagdad Style" featured only the main core of Narciso and Nuno Beats but RS is expanded with Farucox for this album, adding more oblique ryhthms to the whole. The crew seems to be happy the bleakest and most stressful days of COVID are past them, celebrating the fact with a self-evident title and the opening prayer by Narciso, redirecting God's blessings to the whole family of RS DJs and producers. What we experience on the 13 tracks (including interludes) is a burst of energy. If not exactly extroverted, it communicates a commitment to the purest strain of batida and, for those able to detect hidden feelings, this music might convey some melancholic undertones true to this part of the world. Beats and off-beats invite your most abstract dance moves and even the album´s most melodic piece is "headless" (Farucox's spacey afro house "Sem Cabeça"). The slow moving tarraxos are uncompromising but never emotionally detached. "Bolor" by Narciso might be the most demanding moment here, with so many crashing elements that, when reviewing the listening experience, we feel a direct connection to a very unique underground expression of dance music. A good part of its power resides in the dislocation of our senses to a different tuning and the consequent opening up of possibilities. This means access to different territories, vibes and points of view. The idealized way of the world.

Based in the Brazilian capital of São Paulo, the TORMENTA collective has long offered an alternative vision of the city's rich and colorful musical heritage. Operating as an ongoing series of DIY parties, creative agency and record label, TORMENTA has welcomed challenging sounds into São Paulo and released music from a cross section of Brazilian artists, including Fkoff1963, 177th & Digestivo. Their musical output is unrestrained: pop edits and unhinged hard dance rubs against errated heavy metal and lifted ambient drone. Anything's possible, as long as there's a social conscience and a middle finger to expectation. In 2019, TORMENTA put together a short film for the online edition of Nyege Nyege Festival. Since the crew is made up of obsessive horror movie fans, the direction was clear. "O Som do Labirinto" (The Labyrinth's Sound), is a terrifying and psychedelic audiovisual experience that's centered around a journalist attempting to examine a series of mysterious gatherings. Casting a side-eye to VICE's notorious series of fish out of water documentaries, the film drags its protagonist to hell through a series of grueling mental trials, all accompanied by TORMENTA's bloody toolbox of tortuous sounds. This full-length soundtrack finds the collective exposing their deep horror movie knowledge and finally flexing their film score muscle. The crew's ragged club DNA is still present, but mainlined into a Frankenstein's monster of John Carpenter synths, haunted piano loops and gruesome Lustmord-esque dark ambient drones. Alada's 'Running' straps a familiar hoover bass to bloodcurdling low-end rumbles and sparse, propulsive kicks; MTMA's 'O Pesadelo' sounds like broken clocks and music boxes at the "Evil Dead" cabin; 177th's 'Together' is a nightmarish beatless rave anthem that's like Lorenzo Senni on a bad trip; and Bruxax's 'Scream' is a full-on sludge metal freak-out that could sit alongside a Rob Zombie movie. The "O Som Do Labirinto OST" is Brazilian experimental club music in corpse paint holding a jack-o-lantern and weilding a bloody knife. Be afraid.

Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has shared a new single, 'Someone Close' which is out now via Ninja Tune.

Shepherd has also today announced that 'Someone Close' will be released on vinyl alongside the three other new tracks he's shared this year: 'Grammar', 'Vocoder' and 'Problems'. All four will be available on limited vinyl for the first time on 16 December.

'Grammar', 'Vocoder' and 'Problems' were met with widespread praise including a Best New Track from Pitchfork and a glowing review from Resident Advisor describing Shepherd as "one of electronic music's undisputed MVPs". 'Someone Close' changes track completely, something Shepherd has done effortlessly across his career, capping off a run of releases that have showcased the many strings to his bow yet still holds together seamlessly.

Following a summer of festival sets at Glastonbury, Coachella and Field Day, this Autumn/Winter Shepherd will take things back indoors. With an upcoming show on an incredible bill from The Warehouse Project he'll follow up with a marathon open-to- close set at London’s brand new 25,000 square-foot club HERE on New Year’s Day 2023.