MUSIC

Light in the Attic Records proudly presents Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996—the first comprehensive collection of Ukrainian music recorded prior to, and immediately following, the USSR’s collapse. From subtly dissenting Soviet-era singles to DIY recordings from Kyiv’s vibrant underground scene, the compilation chronicles the development of Ukraine’s rich musical landscape through rare folk, rock, jazz, and electronic recordings. “This record is a labor of love and a long time coming,” says label owner Matt Sullivan. Over the course of the last five years, Sullivan, alongside producers David Mas ("DBGO”), Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and Ukrainian label Shukai Records worked tirelessly to compile a carefully curated, chronological playlist. But behind the scenes, ongoing war & politics would shape the evolution of the tracklist, which originally featured both Ukrainian and Russian artists. “We found ourselves in the midst of a larger political issue; what began as a broader overview of a sonically underrepresented region suddenly became quite the controversial project,” Sullivan continues, “so we decided to pivot and focus only on Ukrainian music. There were times when it felt impossible to bring this project to fruition, so to be sharing it with the world today is truly humbling and long overdue.” Guiding listeners through the physical editions of the album are insightful liner notes and track-by-track details by Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi—a Kyiv-based filmmaker, DJ, and writer. The 2xLP is housed in a beautiful gatefold package showcasing Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko’s beloved and iconic folk paintings. The vinyl edition features a 20-page booklet with artist photos & liner notes in both English and Ukrainian, pressed on Clear Blue Sky & Sunflower Yellow wax; the CD edition features bonus content housed in a deluxe, 64-page hardbound book. Light in the Attic will donate a portion of proceeds directly to Livyj Bereh, a Kyiv-based volunteer group working to rebuild in the regions affected by ongoing war in Ukraine. “Music has always pulled Ukrainians out of the abyss,” writes Vitalii “Bard” Bardetskyi in his liner notes for Even the Forest Hums: Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996. “When there is no hope for the future, there is still music. At such moments, the whole nation resonates under a groove. Music, breaking through the concrete of various colonial systems, is an incredible, often illogical, way to preserve dignity.” While the songs collected in Even the Forest Hums were recorded during periods of immense societal and political upheaval—and certainly reflect the resilience of the Ukrainian people—they are rooted in the universal spirit of exploration: from post-war teenagers seeking fresh rhythms and artists experimenting with DIY recording technologies to an entire nation being introduced to decades-worth of previously-embargoed albums. Yet, until now, it has been nearly impossible for anyone outside Ukraine to explore the country’s flourishing music scene for themselves. Much of this can be attributed to Soviet-era restrictions. Music, much like any other commodity, was tightly controlled before the fall of communism. “Only state-authorized performers who had gone through hellish rounds of the permit system could record at the few monopolistic, state-run studios,” explains Bardetskyi. While many of these compositions were released and performed to mass audiences, however, they weren’t necessarily what they seemed. “Some of the artists managed, even under difficult ideological circumstances, to build a whole aesthetic platform which was essentially anti-Soviet.” Bands could slide under the radar by changing the lyrics of rock songs to reflect Soviet ideals or by performing traditional folk music with subtle outside influences. “This resulted in a whole scene that combined central-eastern Ukrainian vocal polyphony, Carpathian rhythms, and overseas grooves,” writes Bardetskyi, who refers to this era of music as “Mustache Funk.” Examples featured in Even the Forest Hums... include 1971’s “Bunny” by Kobza. While the folk-rock group was known for their polyphonic vocals, this particular composition is an instrumental waltz, which blends elements of traditional Ukrainian music with progressive rock, British beat, and jazz-rock. Another example of “Mustache Funk” comes from the latter half of the decade, with the Caribbean-influenced “Remembrance” by Vodohrai. While the group—which included some of the best jazz musicians in the country—had a multitude of traditional hits, inspired jams like this one could, for a lucky few, occasionally be heard live. While the 70s proved to be a golden age for Ukrainian music (complete with pop stars, large-scale tours, and legions of adoring fans), the excitement was short-lived. “The Soviet system finally understood that funkified beats quite strongly contradict[ed] [its] principles,” notes Bardetskyi, who adds that by the 80s, “The once prolific scene was almost completely colonized, appropriated, and largely Russified; the state radio and TV waves were occupied by banal VIAs and cheezy schlager singers.” With tighter restrictions, however, came the rise of the underground. While the decade leading up to Ukraine’s independence was marked by great turmoil—including the political reform of Perestroika in the USSR and the Chernobyl disaster—it also marked a time of incredible creativity. Mirroring global trends, the first half of the decade found many composers and producers experimenting with electronic music. Among them was Vadym Khrapachov, whose scores have appeared in over 100 films. His moody, Moroder-esque “Dance” (written for Roman Balaian’s iconic 1983 film, Flights in Dreams and Reality) is notable in that it was recorded on the USSR’s only existing British EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer. Producer Kyrylo Stetsenko, meanwhile, was reimagining traditional songs for the dancefloor. Among them is 1980’s “Play, the Violin, Play,” by Ukrainian pop star Tetiana Kocherhina. Stetsenko, who produced the album for Kocherhina, created a hypnotic remix of the folk tune that was fit for a disco. Stetsenko is also featured here with 1987’s “Oh, how, how?,” in which he transforms a melancholic ballad by Natalia Gura into a synth-forward, breakbeat jam. As the fall of communism approached, the scene continued to diversify—particularly as music from around the world became increasingly available. Kyiv, in particular, became an epicenter of creativity. In the early days, bands like Krok offered a preview of what was to come. Described by Bardetskyi as “The first real Kyiv supergroup,” Krok was led by guitarist Volodymyr Khodzytskyi and featured musicians from local Beat bands. In addition to backing the biggest pop acts of the day, the versatile collective explored a spectrum of styles in their own recordings, including fusion and electro-funk. They are represented here with the mellow “Breath of Night Kyiv.” By the late 80s, Kyiv “was buzzing like a beehive,” recalls Bardetskyi. “It was a period of very active socialization and exchange of musical information and ideas; local musicians evolved with supersonic speed, absorbing decades of the world's musical background and transforming it into their sound.” While rock bands comprised much of this era’s first wave, artists continued to expand their repertoire as new influences pervaded the scene. The global rise of DIY recording technology and electronic instrumentation, meanwhile, also contributed to the growing sonic landscape. Highlights from this period include the avant-garde improvisations of violinist Valentina Goncharova. Recordings like 1989’s “Silence” were created by a series of layered tracks and custom pickups. Similarly, composer Iury Lech paints a warm ambient soundscape with 1990’s “Barreras.” On the other end of the spectrum is the industrial “90” by Radiodelo (the project of Ivan Moskalenko—aka DJ Derbastler), which combines frenetic drum machine beats and haunting, reverb-soaked instrumentation. Post-punk was also thriving, with acts like Yarn (a large, loosely based collective) dominating the scene. “The interests of [Yarn’s] members extended all the way to medieval chamber music, which would clearly be noticeable in ‘Viella,’” writes Bardetskyi. The track features two of Yarn’s co-founding members: multi-instrumentalist and graphic designer Oleksander Yurchenko (who became a significant figure in modern Ukrainian music) and Ivan Moskalenko. Yurchenko is also represented here as part of Omi, a parallel project by the chart-topping electronic group, Blemish. 1994’s dramatic “Transference” (which features contributions by legendary Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and American singer-songwriter Diamanda Galas) serves up horror-movie-soundtrack vibes, particularly with the addition of eerie vocalizations. Cukor Bila Smert’ (which translates to “Sugar White Death”) were also major players in the Kyiv underground. Interestingly, Bardetskyi notes, “In the reality of the general dominance of post-punk, the aesthetic message of Cukor Bila Smert’ was countercultural to the countercultural process itself.” For their contribution to the compilation, the experimental quartet provides 1995’s “Cool, Shining.” In the years following Ukraine’s independence, Kyiv’s underground scene continued to flourish, particularly as Western trends became more accessible and Ukrainians found themselves at the forefront of their own cultural output. While the country’s music would largely evolve in new directions throughout the 90s, the final entry on Even the Forest Hums... provides a glimpse at what the future held. The album closes with 1996’s “Lion,” by Belarusian transplant German Popov, whose project, Marble Sleeves, was “one of the few Kyiv formations that tried to master jungle/drum-n-bass,” per Bardetskyi. Though this compilation only scratches the surface of Ukraine’s vast and diverse music scene, Even the Forest Hums offers an in-depth overview of a significant period in the country’s cultural history and unites a number of influential figures in the same collection for the first time. As Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Schegel writes in the foreword, “This is our Ukrainian treasure. It is impossible to lose and impossible to win.”

Following the release of the well received Rave ‘Till You Cry compilation of unreleased versions from the vaults in 2019, Disciples follow it up (a mere 5 years later!) with a new album from Rephlex alumni Bogdan Raczynski, complete with another manifesto style title: You’re Only Young Once But You Can Be Stupid Forever.

A collection of warmly melodic electronic sketches, with tracks alternately drifting beatless on the breeze or underpinned by lo-fi drums, sometimes barely held together with a delicate construction of odd synth patches and ping-pong percussion. Each piece is short and to the point, a record of perfect miniatures. Whilst this description may sound utopian, the album is conceived around themes of late stage capitalist brutality, hyper consumerism, online doom and alogorhithmic apocalypse. Beauty in the face of planetary collapse and 24/7 livestreamed genocide. The theme summed up by the front cover which just features a giant (readable) QR code, that most ubiquitous of modern symbols. We’ve asked Bogdan on several occasions for more background information on the creation of these tracks, but received a different answer each time. One of the below statements might be true, though it’s equally possible that none of them are, just like the real news.

1) All these tracks are a result of Bogdan asking AI to make an EDM album.

2) These tracks originated in a desperate bid by Bogdan to crack the lucrative mood / chill / coffee / gym algorithmic playlist market.

3) All of these tracks were commissioned for a Tesla infomercial but rejected when Elon Musk heard them.

4) The music on this album is over ten years old.

5) The music on this album was made in a furious weekend of creative inspiration in early 2024.

The QR code on the cover takes listeners to an ever-evolving page on Bogdan’s website which may delve into some of these theories in more detail, or ignore them completely.

We leave you with Bogdan’s text in the booklet that accompanied Rave ‘Till You Cry as the closest we may ever get to some kind of logical reasoning:

“Burn the damned art labels. Ambiguity is wonder. Information is an affront to expression, a death knell to spontaneity. For if an explanation is required, then a connection has failed to be made. Art should be like an overtone, resonating invisibly with your history to form an ethereal experience. Either it hits you or it’s wrong time, wrong place. To hell with the dawdling interviews and vanity shots. One turns to music precisely because it least resembles what’s in the mirror. Put away the arrogance and pride, and boast and bias. With each word uttered, your mystery wanes. Your shimmer dims. In my nostalgia, your light show is drowned out by the ricochet of soundwaves. Art is best when all else is drowned out. Black as though the moon forgot to come out. Let the night cover my flailing humanity like a veil. Gangly arms tangled, feet aflutter, yet all but silent against the din. This is not an escape. This is me screaming, happily, inside, out through my fingertips. This is my beck and call. Carefully assembled to drw forth some other form of you. May we partake in this moment together, for just a little longer.” 

Mirae Arts is thrilled to announce the release of "The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn," the debut album from Katsunori Sawa under his new KWARP alias. This six-track album marks a significant evolution in Sawa's musical journey, blending his experimental roots with fresh, vibrant textures.

"The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn" reflects on the fleeting nature of youth and the aspiration to maintain a childlike curiosity, while also acknowledging the fatigue that comes with aging. Mostly produced with modular synthesizers and analog equipment, the album takes listeners on an auditory adventure through a series of imaginative soundscapes.

The album opens with "Frog FM," a track characterized by forward-driving hi-hats and alien voices echoing and clashing, reminiscent of a scrambled FM frequency or a child playing with an analog radio dial. "Light Dash" follows, placing the listener in the cockpit of an unknown vehicle emitting reverberating artificial sounds. Side A closes with "The Spectator," featuring voices from above and creatures talking with one another.

Side B begins with "PlayStation," evoking the sounds of a gaming console booting up. "Metal Gear" reflects the inner metallic workings powering our entertainment. The album concludes with "Ultra," a track filled with belching aggression and mechanical expressions, almost as if the music itself is trying to escape the speakers.

KWARP's "The Way I Am and The Way You Yawn" is a testament to Katsunori Sawa's innovative spirit and his ability to push the boundaries of electronic music. The album's artwork and illustrations are done by the talented Jesse Osborne-Lanthier, adding a visual dimension that complements the auditory experience. The mastering and lacquer have been precisely crafted by Beau Thomas. 

その圧倒的なまでにオリジナルなサウンドでゼロ年代を代表するアーティストとして君臨するBurialと〈Hyperdub〉主宰にして、エレクトロニック・ミュージックの最前線を常にひた走る重要人物Kode9 が、2024年6月にデジタルでサプライズリリースしていたスプリット・シングルを数量限定12インチで発売！

Miraculous reissue of a Japanese 80s new age - ambient masterpiece! The spiritual sound spun by the original composition of synthesizers and live sounds such as flute, oboe, guitar, and percussion!

After a classical career as a flutist, Matsuzaki became a composer/arranger in 1982, and from 1985 to 1987, she worked as a studio musician and tour support member as a flutist, synthesizer/keyboardist mainly in London, gaining a high reputation overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene. Yuko Matsuzaki, who was highly acclaimed overseas without passing through the Japanese music scene, has decided to reissue "Raden no Hako (Box of Raden)", an extremely rare album she produced in 1985 before moving to the UK in a limited edition of 100 copies/LP only! The spiritual and fantastic sound with a hint of Japanese taste in many places was inspired by Simon Jeffs of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, who heard this work and decided to participate in "Pink, Blue and Amber" by Roderius, a German electronic musician and pianist known for his work with Cluster, Harmonia, and others. This album is a world-standard masterpiece that was born in Japan during the late 80's, when ambient music was expanding globally along with the rise of house and techno music!

Finally…Terre Thaemlitz saves the most sought-after cuts of her debut LP ‘Tranquilizer’ for the third and final of its 30th anniversary, first-time vinyl editions, including that stunning Memphis rap x proto-dubstep dedication to MLK - 100% essential ’90s ambient bass, oneiric concrète and breaks driven deep house for the heads. Frankly unmissable if even just for the album’s opening killer ’040468’ - named for the day MLK departed - which sounds better than ever on its sumptuous vinyl cut, ‘Tranquilizer EP3’ is the one the stans have been eagerly awaiting. It brings to a close a necessary reissue series for a prized totem of‘90s ambient music, conceived in the wake of the KLF’s inspirational ‘Chill Out’ album, after Terre had laid deep roots in NYC’s queer deep house club scene, and began to seed one of the most distinctive catalogues in contemporary electronic music. Semi-autobiographical and coloured with an inherently political take on ambient music, the album can be heard to reference their background in the US Midwest via the track titles and aesthetic inference of wide open spaces at night, as in ‘2am on a Silo’, and on thru their formative journey of self-discovery in downtown NYC, where they took up residency at a queer bar playing earliest deep house to sex workers during the years of devastation from the AIDS pandemic. While that would be expounded more explicitly in their later albums as DJ Sprinkles, on ‘Tranquilizer’ it’s implied by a deep sense of melancholy and longing. ‘Tranquilliser EP3’ pretty much distills and triangulates the album’s most salient points in a discrete story unto itself. Her politics are writ in a titular nod to the day Martin Luther King died on ’040468’, which we’ve long marvelled at as a remarkable prototype for both booming Memphis rap instrumentals, and the mid ’00s halfstep dubstep sound, due to its sweeping subs that go all the way down, and then some, under a blanket of starlight twinkles and bluest pads. An absolute all timer - trust. The nocturnal is also evoked in the wheezing electro-acoustic rawness and plangent beauty of ‘2am on a Silo’, like the soundtrack to a memory of a dream, and perfectly characteristic of a sound sensitivity that became Terre’s calling card, whilst ‘Raw Through a Straw’ offers the most tangible bridge between her deep house background and the emergent ambient house sound in its mingling of gorgeous organ ruminations rolling out into Dennis Coffey’s ‘Scorpio’ break, a cornerstone of hip hop deployed in deadliest deep house style. Finally we can rest easy knowing this one’s on wax.

The second in a series of EP's from Terre Thaemlitz, 1994, with almost half an hour of gorgeous, bleary-eyed dreamweaving that slots in the all-time sublime alongside The Art Of Noise’s ‘Moments In Love’, here pressed up on vinyl for the very first time, in two extended versions. EP2 in the ‘Tranquilizer’ reissue series gives new afterlife to the curtain closer of Terre’s debut album with a previously unheard extended mix, and that gorgeous Art of Noise style version that also recalls SAW II-era AFX x Bryn Jones on a deep one. Both sides scroll right back to a nascent Terre, sensitively feeling out a sound between the tumultuous summer of ’93 and spring of ’94, in the years after she’d carved a name for herself as an influential deep house DJ in Manhattan’s queer bars and clubs. Terre’s debut album ‘Tranquilizer’ would emerge as a reflective antidote to club pressures with a lushly melancholic, deeply atmospheric suite intended to cushion bodies and minds in a vein spawned by the dreamy collages of The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ album in 1990, and further developed by a rhizome of international artists including Terre’s Instinct labelmate Dave Moufang (Move D), and the likes of The Orb, AFX, and many others whose work endures to this day. ‘Fina-Departure (Original Long Version)’ extends the balmy, beat-less scene of woozy keyboards, cicadas and swooping crop-duster planes to twice as long, with what we detect as a personal frisson of melancholy/nostalgia for the Midwest planes of Missouri, Kansas, where Terre grew up. The flipside’s ‘Fina’ feels like a hidden level addendum to the album, where night settles on the plains as distant drumming mingles in the hot air to form an utterly timeless scenario reminding us of the stark drum passages of Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works’ or the kind of ritualistic ambient pursued in Stroom reissues of ‘90s Pablo’s Eye. Aye, it’s a special one. Some words from Terre: Up until 1984 or so, there used to be a Fina gas station on North Glenstone Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. Sitting on the floor inside was a cardboard box filled with records for $1.00. It was a way station for unwelcome electronic music in a town of bluegrass, gospel and rock'n'roll. Neuromantic by Yukihiro Takahashi, Vapor Drawings by Mark Isham, Vistamix by Bill Nelson.... Albums that had strayed outside their intended distribution systems, only to get lost on old Route 66. I was a faggy, gender-bending teen similarly stranded in that town ironically nicknamed the "Queen City of the Ozarks." Daily life consisted of being ritually bashed in public, and defeated by psychotic family dynamics in private. With nowhere to go, I drove aimlessly in a 1960 Ford Falcon woven of rust, dents and torn upholstery. Baby blue, four door, three-on-the-tree manual transmission. A little-old-church-lady car with a color coordinated baby blue rosary hanging from the rear view mirror. On the back seat sat a boombox for playing home recorded cassettes. I checked in on the box at Fina whenever possible, offering records a chance to depart. Between the gas and music, the kindly staff at that fueling station variously offered me the same. At the end of the day, that was our unspoken agreement.

Terre Thaemlitz’s precious 1994 debut album finally makes a vinyl appearance of sorts 30 years later, hailing its sublime downbeat highlight in three different versions that come with highest recommendations if you’re into classic Mo’ Wax, The KLF’s Chill Out, Urban Tribe, Blue Lines-era Massive Attack, DJ Sprinkles! Tranquilizer’s mesmerising centrepiece ‘Hovering Glows’ is here deployed in 3 different versions totalling almost half an hour of amniotic bliss. The original 9 minute depiction of crepuscular Midwest ambience and dusted dub is beloved of anyone acquainted with the album over the years, finding Terre’s feel for electro-acoustic sound sensitivity flooded with a rarified sense of deep blue soul distilled to near-perfection. It mines a similar path to Future Sound of London productions of the same era, and in its moody abstraction foreshadows 4hero’s ‘The Paranormal In 4 Forms’ that would follow a couple of years later. The OG is joined on by two alternative versions: a ‘Little Guy Mix’ that swerves the few minutes of sensuous atmospheric foreplay to slip right into the pendulous swing; and a longer ‘Vinyl Mix’ that duly opens out the intro with Terre’s unique grasp of subbass and tongue-tip atmospheric suss. Collected, they supply an extended session of beatdown ecstasy to discerning, romantic listeners who’ve awaited this release for decades, ‘cos as Comatonse fiends know, their releases always sound especially exquisite on vinyl.

Demdike Stare’s DDS label kicks off a new series of limited edition 12”s with the return of Shinichi Atobe, offering a slow evolution of his inimitable deep house, finely balanced with a new found sub-heavy bias while unlocking extra space in the upper registers.

 

 

Atobe’s third 12” since debuting on Chain Reaction in 2001 marks a subtle but crucial development of his style, leaning towards classically deep, dub house templates. On both sides he adds supple flesh and hypnotic emotive pathos to his stripped formula, resulting in some of the most immediate and enduring work in his canon thus far. It coincidentally also marks a decade since he first graced DDS with his debut album ‘Butterfly Effect’, followed by a tranche of cultishly acclaimed albums in the years since.

 

 

On the A-side pearl ‘Ongaku 1’ he steps out with a shimmering take on the effortless gait of M-Series blueprints, as derived from the deepest NYC house, delicately ornamented with cascading levels of detail. Precision-tooled kicks precipitate Prescription-via-Maurizio feathered dub chords, interlaced with a frisson of darker strings and synth melodies for the full goosebump. ‘Dub 6(six)’ on the flip whisks up a psychedelic lattice of arps and synth voices with ruder bass ballast, taking its sweet time before the kicks come to swing the ‘floor deep and wide. 

 

 

Straight bullets, no messing.

</p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kB71TeOPVRc?si=Quma1D_FpEXaGCz2" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OwvltlSAiJE?si=l59StSHIHTnfA_Hf" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Starting from a tiny inspiration, looping and expanding until the music grows completely and autonomously, these achievements are faithfully recorded in "Motivations TO-GO". In this album, CHILLGOGOG cherishes every motivation. We aim to make an "album that can represent the group", but we do not preset the completed form of each track. At the beginning, it is just a drum set, a loop, a sample, and an idea. Under the dual perspectives of the producer and the listener, we act according to the frequency we hear. The final work is more the result of the mutual selection of sounds. We are also very fortunate to be the first witness of this organic journey.

CHILLGOGOG is a production duo that grew up in Shanghai, and its members include LATENINE6 and FunkeeCookee. Influenced by many old, new, unique, and fusion styles and musicians, various interesting ideas continue to inspire the group's creation. After releasing a series of singles and EP works, we set out to complete the album "Motivations TO-GO" in 2024.

When we were conceiving the album, we found these two words that fully condensed CHILLGOGOG's creative concept. “Motivations” represents our interest and respect for small things, even if it is just "a short musical inspiration, a few prominent patterns that are reproduced repeatedly, and a piece of music composed of a small number of notes"; “TO-GO” is a synonym for self-motivation. Any motivation needs a practical driving force to go further. It also represents the relaxed state that we want to present when facing more listeners. There is no sitting upright in the music world of CHILLGOGOG. We have prepared this take-out meal, and you can choose to enjoy / listen it in any scene.

As CHILLGOGOG's first official album, we present as many different creative tendencies as possible on the background of free growth, and boldly integrate them based on electronic music production, making it difficult to accurately define the style of most of the works. The production techniques of the ten tracks are not limited to the combination of midi sound sources. Some of the performances and recorded instrumental clips are raw but vivid. The looming and interesting sampling spans from childhood to contemporary internet memories, waiting for someone to discover the same frequency surprise. The vocal recording part is also more from sudden inspiration: the first song directly explains the album's "motivation", "Beach Burger Music Fest" imitates Prince and SpongeBob's improvisation at the same time, and "The Legend of Salima" is a fantasy of the adventure between aliens and African natives... These clips jump out of the "singing" framework and become a way for CHILLGOGOG to tell stories.

At the same time, we hope that this album can embody a certain kind of civilian "Chinese style" in terms of details and sound combination concepts. Through the fragmentary recording of the past and present language, we can trace where we come from and show some local sound characteristics that have not yet been clearly tagged to listeners around the world.

Start with a small playback motivation, please feel free to develop your "Motivations TO-GO" listening experience.<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2824916570/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://chillgogog.bandcamp.com/album/motivations-to-go">Motivations TO-GO by CHILLGOGOG</a></iframe>

After his participation in a masterpiece such as Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra, in the early 1980s Klaus Wiese produced a series of seminal works in the field of ambient-drone and healing music. The first of these, Baraka, was released on tape by Acquamarin in 1981, and already contained all the aspects of his future research into the mysticism of sound. Wiese shares the path with other German explorers such as Hamel, Fricke, Micus or Deuter, but he focuses his attention on the most essential nature of sounds, on their acoustic purity, which is always infinite spiral, vortex of frequencies and cosmic bath. It takes only a few means (zither, tampoura, cybals, singing bowls) to reach the absolute through vibration. Like the archaic mood of a great universal harmony, the sound suggests a complete state of otherworldly meditation, an enveloping cloud of peace in the eternity of the present. The musician is only the one who distributes and directs the thickenings of ethereal matter, microtonal agglomerates, cascades of celestial harmonics and emotional floods, petals and stems of devotion.

Few groups in recent history forged as confounding and alchemical a body of work as Coil, the partnership of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and John Balance. From album to album and phase to phase their recordings spelunk perplexing depths of esoteric industrial, occult electronics, and drugged poetry, both embodying and alienating parallel currents of their peers. The late 1990's in particular were a fertile era for the duo, embracing chance, chaos, and collaboration, enhanced by recent advancements in synthesis and sampling. Fittingly, at the summit of the decade's long, intoxicated arc, their divergent strains of interstitial ritual congealed into one of Coil's most celebrated and hallucinatory creations: Musick To Play In The Dark.

Convening at Balance and Christopherson's vast Victorian house / studio in the coastal town of Weston-super-Mare, they began a series of ambitious sessions aided by inner circle associates Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall. Although the creative process was admittedly “iterative” and “a bit of a drug blur,” the results are astoundingly inventive and well realized, winding through shades of divination dirge, wormhole kosmische, noir lounge, ominous humor, and black mass downtempo, guided by Balance's cryptic lunar muse, which he announces on the opening track: “This is moon musick / in the light of the moon.”

What's most remarkable about the album 20 years after its release is how brazen, insular, and unpredictable it still feels. The songs follow an allusive, altered state logic all their own, warping from microscopic ripples of glitch and breath to widescreen warlock psychedelia and back again, as much hyper-sensory as inter-dimensional. Even within a catalog as eclectic as Coil's, Musick is a mystifying collection, oneiric evocations of desire, decadence, dinner jazz, and dietary advice, far beyond the pale of whatever gothic industrial ambiguity birthed such a journey.

The record closes with a slow, starlit shuffle, bathed in seething sweeps of spectral texture and high cathedral keys, like approaching the altar of some arcane temple. As the trance thickens Balance's voice rises, processed into an increasingly eerie, gaseous haze, but he resists these unseen forces, intent on delivering a final sermon: “Through hissy mists of history / the dreamer is still dreaming / the dreamer is still dreaming.”

Reissued for the first time in over 20 years, now on double vinyl LP with the complete, unedited versions of each song and an exclusive "D-side" vinyl art etching. Packaged in a sturdy matte jacket with embossed lettering and spot-gloss design elements. The compact disc version mirrors this design, and comes housed in thick tip-on "LP style" packaging. Both formats are completely remastered by engineer Josh Bonati with restored artwork and layout by Nathaniel Young - all under the project supervision of Drew McDowall and Thighpaulsandra. 
credits

Meditations bestseller! An encounter between an illusionary ambience that lets you experience an organic space and a classical house that shines deeply. The style is different, but the content is quiet, spatial, and artistic, and it is a universal content that is similar to Larry Heard's world view. It's a deep and radical masterpiece that silently tells us that house is an art and a noble message. A folded poster is attached to the PVC sleeve.

Thus far, Zach Saginaw's releases as Shigeto have been fragments, albeit singularly satisfying fragments--EP-length glimpses into the Brooklyn producer's creative psyche. After filling two EPs on Ghostly International, Shigeto's lush, sumptuous take on instrumental hip-hop has fully materialized. Full Circle, the artist's first full-length album, completes the journey begun with Shigeto's Semi-Circle EP, synthesizing the drummer/producer's signature themes of family, continuity, and musical boundary-pushing into a vibrant, fully unified artistic statement. The sounds on Full Circle come from four years of obsessive field recording and collaboration. Saginaw brought his Tascam mini-recorder with him everywhere, capturing the "glasses, chains, breathing, children, family meals, monks singing in cathedrals, walks in the south of France, and good friends offering their musical skill" that would all find homes in the record's compositional nooks and crannies. As a result of Saginaw's constant documentation, the songs on Full Circle play like chapters in an ongoing story--as in "Escape from the Incubator", whose initial rhythmic claustrophobia opens up into a boom-clap nocturnal chase, or "French Kiss Power Up", whose romantic digital strut gives way to discord and fragmentation as the waves of synthesizer give way to a shaky, neurotic coda. Full Circle is framed by the "Ann Arbor" diptych, a pair of beat suites named after Saginaw's hometown (one featuring a sample of Detroit MC SelfSays), all double-thick synths and triple-strength kick drums. Saginaw plays the majority of his rhythms by hand, and Full Circle's consistently deep pocket is the record's secret weapon, thumping and breathing like a living being. Having set the stage with Semi-Circle and What We Held On To EPs--twin treatises on Saginaw's Japanese grandmother's escape from a US internment camp--Shigeto is clearly ready to draw the tale to a close and take center stage. "This release represents the end of the beginning--or perhaps that there is no end and no beginning at all," says Saginaw. Regardless, Full Circle is the start of something great.

Tomoyoshi Date, a physician and musician known for his releases on prominent ambient labels such as 12K (US), LAAPS (France), and QuietDetails (UK), will release his piano trilogy, created between 2021 and 2024, on November 10 via Bandcamp in a limited edition of 150 cassettes.
This trilogy includes 438Hz, As it is, As you are, released by LAAPS and selected as one of Bandcamp’s Best Ambient albums in January 2023; Tata, composed for Silver Gelatin’s exhibit at Tata in Koenji, Tokyo; and Requiem, a piece dedicated in memory of a close friend who passed away too soon. All three albums are packaged in special jackets featuring found photographs curated by Silverわ Gelatin and are being released simultaneously.
Created with the theme of “objects and the passage of time,” this trilogy is characterised by elongated, repetitive piano motifs, microsound elements, and organic electronics, aiming to blur the line between rhythm and melody. Recently, Date has been working on a world-first program that auto-generates pure-intonation music (www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1BNEjMtL1o). This trilogy serves as a culmination of Date’s past compositions in equal temperament.

Tomoyoshi Date, a physician and musician known for his releases on prominent ambient labels such as 12K (US), LAAPS (France), and QuietDetails (UK), will release his piano trilogy, created between 2021 and 2024, on November 10 via Bandcamp in a limited edition of 150 cassettes.
This trilogy includes 438Hz, As it is, As you are, released by LAAPS and selected as one of Bandcamp’s Best Ambient albums in January 2023; Tata, composed for Silver Gelatin’s exhibit at Tata in Koenji, Tokyo; and Requiem, a piece dedicated in memory of a close friend who passed away too soon. All three albums are packaged in special jackets featuring found photographs curated by Silverわ Gelatin and are being released simultaneously.
Created with the theme of “objects and the passage of time,” this trilogy is characterised by elongated, repetitive piano motifs, microsound elements, and organic electronics, aiming to blur the line between rhythm and melody. Recently, Date has been working on a world-first program that auto-generates pure-intonation music (www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1BNEjMtL1o). This trilogy serves as a culmination of Date’s past compositions in equal temperament.

Tomoyoshi Date, a physician and musician known for his releases on prominent ambient labels such as 12K (US), LAAPS (France), and QuietDetails (UK), will release his piano trilogy, created between 2021 and 2024, on November 10 via Bandcamp in a limited edition of 150 cassettes.
This trilogy includes 438Hz, As it is, As you are, released by LAAPS and selected as one of Bandcamp’s Best Ambient albums in January 2023; Tata, composed for Silver Gelatin’s exhibit at Tata in Koenji, Tokyo; and Requiem, a piece dedicated in memory of a close friend who passed away too soon. All three albums are packaged in special jackets featuring found photographs curated by Silverわ Gelatin and are being released simultaneously.
Created with the theme of “objects and the passage of time,” this trilogy is characterised by elongated, repetitive piano motifs, microsound elements, and organic electronics, aiming to blur the line between rhythm and melody. Recently, Date has been working on a world-first program that auto-generates pure-intonation music (www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1BNEjMtL1o). This trilogy serves as a culmination of Date’s past compositions in equal temperament.

The latest album by Melbourne, Australia-based experimental unit CS + Kreme, "The Butterfly Drinks The Tears Of The Tortoise", will be released on vinyl by the renowned London label, The Trilogy Tapes, run by Will Bankhead!

After delivering one of this decade’s early classic LPs, Naarm’s brilliantly incomparable CS + Kreme morph into modal jazz electronic mutations on a deadly cool but restless new album exploring the fissures of Detroit beatdown, early ‘00s electronica, contemporary midnight jazz and ambient rituals, featuring contributions from Bridget St John and James Rushford. Adored around these parts since their 2016 debut 12” with Total Stasis, Conrad Standish & Sam Karmel’s duo really dominated our listening lives during the pandemic with ’Snoopy’, a heady elision of downbeat styles that crossed borders between lysergic Coil rites and illbient trip hop with a snug intimacy and emotive grip that rewarded deeper with every listen. One of their last live shows before the pandemic was held at The White Hotel in Salford, where the formative, physical experience of performing their music on a finely tuned sound system stuck with the duo as they caught one of the last flights back to Australia, where they endured one of the harshest lockdown protocols in the world; not allowed to travel more than 5 miles from home, and only for limited amounts of time. During lockdown the residual glow of the preceding months buoyed their spirits and prompted a new slant on CS + Kreme music, urging them to get deeper into it, with melody taking more of a backseat to texture and groove as the recordings manifested a more built-in, metaphoric and circular, organic quality that feels very much in-the-present, but also gently dissociative, evoking the interstitial states of mind of natural highs and nostalgic reminiscence ‘Orange’ arrives as the ideal sibling to ’Snoopy’, blessed with a touch-sensitive emotional intelligence and sensuality that oozes therapeutic vibes. The swirling energies of their first LP here feel settled into a quietly profound psychedelic experience, with longer track lengths allowing their feelings to grow and slosh over the senses with a groggier suspension of disbelief from the snaking rustle of ‘Baseline’ thru the extraordinary 20 minute depths of oily ambient invocation to ‘Storms Rips Banana Tree’ featuring James Rushford on portative organ, Wurlitzer and harpsichord. The spirit of Arthur Russell's "World of Echo" looms over 'Shred', as moody, viscous strings roll over reduced, machine-gun drum machine patterns and deranged lite-jazz electric piano. Any links the mind makes are inevitably blotted into surreal shapes almost immediately; just as you think you have an idea of where the track's coming from, bizarre vocals and unsettling flute blasts wrench you into a different locale. Even on the relatively austere 'Voice of the Spider', what starts as a baroque minimal techno slowly mutates into glassy FM modernism, with vocal chants and delirious, curvaceous instrumentation that plays like Kemetrix and Detroit Escalator Company on a dank one. If there's one element that lashes each disparate composition together, it's CS + Kreme's use of voices. On each track there's inevitably a wordless breathiness that roots us in the duo's sonic philosophy; their instrumentals might flutter between vastly different forms of expression, but their transient principles are moored by the most human expression of all. The whisper turns into a murmur (sung by legend Bridget St John) on 'Would You Like a Vampire', and lyrics form a near-song, sounding like Hood's rainy electro-indie variations supplanted into CS + Kreme's psychedelic headspace. It's as close as the duo get to pop, and they follow it by embarking on the album's most uncompromising moment, a 20-minute finale that lurches from transcendent ritual drone into jerky electronics, freeform doom jazz and growling basement noise. If you've made it this far then you've been initiated into Standish and Karmel's musical coterie, and this final mutated gesture feels like a gift from the duo to their most dedicated listeners.

"Yesterday it started to rain… The smell of damp tarmac rising up through open windows, a smell which is uniquely evocative for us all depending on our individual histories: a suburban pavement, a school playground, a basketball court. The rain cut through a band of low pressure that had been lying over the city for days, pinging rhythmically off metal, causing rolling tyres to hiss and spit. The music that soundtracked this meteorological shift was the debut full length from Rain Text (Giuseppe Ielasi & Giovanni Civitenga), simply titled III. Scattered throughout the nameless eight tracks there are moments of low-end pressure relieved by the fizz and clatter of metallic rhythms; there is static, there is discord, there is release. The individuals comprising Rain Text have a long history of manipulating sounds for evocative ends, Giuseppe Ielasi has been making music as one half of Bellows for many years, each album stretching and destroying their sound in beautiful increments. He has also released reliably inspirational music either solo or in collaboration for the likes of Editions Mego, Shelter Press and Faitiche. His sensitive ears are also in high demand as a mastering engineer. It is worth perusing the 800+ releases he has technical credits for on Discogs: from classics of the avant-garde to the freshest faces of the Swedish underground, the chances are some of your favourite albums are included. Giovanni Civitenga helms the SKYAPNEA long-running NTS show. Joining him, you can enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of deep listening through shows that flit between the industrial and the devotional, a space that is fully explored on III. The album was recorded quickly over three fertile days in Ielasi’s studio in Monza, but of course results like this can only be achieved at such a pace by spending a lifetime obsessing over the mechanics and possibilities of sound. Those who are enamoured by the rain—who are returned by it to the surfaces, smells and sounds of a lost and idealised youth; who feel themselves restored—are known as ‘pluviophiles’. Their response to rain may well have a biological explanation: when rain hits tarmac negative ions are released into the air, which are thought to result in feelings of wellbeing and positivity. All the more reason, then, to return to the vivid ecosystem that Rain Text has so carefully cultivated for III." Words by The Dengie Hundred – August 2024

UK hip-hop artist Roots Manuva's two classic albums Roots Manuva's two classic albums are reissued by Big Dada to commemorate the 25th anniversary of their release.

kaoru inoue is a japanese veteran producer and dj since late 90’s. he has been releasing from his own label “seeds and ground” and some other labels like mule musiq,groovement. the original release of this album was released in 2013 in only japan. it’s a very own style mix of world music, field recording, ambient and electronic music. the album is started by minimal gamelan ambient “malam”,the second track “selva” is minimal afro brazilian house which reminds us early luciano or villalobos. third track “kamui fuchi” is electric jazz fusion house, fourth track “sphere” is like joan bibiloni in late 80’s. on b side,”etenraku” is avant-garde tribal break beats,”she was in ecstasies”&”escape dub” are typical his style balearic slow house. the album is closed with beautiful melancholic new age music “healing force”. this album is a timeless masterpiece for us.

Rausch with no name / My beautiful shine / You are the sun / This is where I want to be /
Rausch with no morning / This is where we burn / The Stars sparkle / In a sea of flames /
Horns and fanfares / Fanfares of joy / Fanfares of fear /
The wine we drink through the eyes / The moon pours down at night in waves /
Careful with that axe Eugene / Personal Jesus / No beginning no end /
Eighteenth of Oktember / The night falls / The king comes / The hunt starts /
Freude schöner Götterfunken / The long march through the underwood / Trust me there’s nothing /
Once upon a time there was a bandit / Who loved a prince / That was long ago /
Spring Summer Fall and Gas / There is a train heading to Nowhere /
Drums and Trumpets / Future without mankind / Warm snow / Alles ist gut /
The bells toll / You are not alone / The murmur in the forest / The murmur in the head /
Light as mist / Heavy as lead / Music happens / To flow like gas /
A clearing / Heavy baggage / Debut in the afterlife / Death has seven cats /
World heritage Rausch / Finally infinite

The second album from Noda & Wolfers on NIghtwind Records is here!!! With EVIL FADES IN ECHO the Japanese dub melodica virtuoso Takafumi Noda aka Mystica Tribe meets up with Danny Wolfers Legowelt again for an unique concoction of digital dub acid hall with raw lo-fi synth wave. 

Buckets of echo, crumbled tapes, Mind altering phasers, luring spring reverbs, sloppy hythm boxes, HEAVY INTENSE BASS and the ever mystifying melodica playing from Noda bring this project to a new level.</p><iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 373px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1093018074/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://legowelt.bandcamp.com/album/evil-fades-in-echo">Evil Fades in Echo by Noda &amp; Wolfers</a></iframe>