MUSIC

"Is it too Sam Prekop?", Sam Prekop asked me in an email conversation in which he delivered his wonderful illustrations which would become the front cover artwork. No, it is not too Sam Prekop at all. His drawings as well as the freeform music on this album are subtly different from anything else he has produced in his solo career. Regardless of the style he is working in, Sam Prekop’s music is always imbued with a sense of wide-eyed discovery and unpredictable exploration. On »The Sparrow« Sam Prekop expands his electronic cosmos with a remarkable expression of timeless simplicity and coherent execution. It's deceptively simple music that feels accessible without abandoning the experimental legacy of the Modular hardware system which serves, besides a polyphonic Prophet 5 synthesizer, as the centre piece of this production. The side long title track opens this album with unpredictable synth dissonances and broken step sequenced patterns. »Palm« brings the set to a close with its irregular fragility while »Fall is Farewell« is build around a yearning brassy fanfare which resembles the noir romance theme of Michael Smalls soundtrack for the 1971 film »Klute«. The sparkling essence of »Step and Stair« seems a suitable space for unforgotten summer holidays of our childhood. On his first solo release for Düsseldorfs label TAL, electronic experimentalist Sam Prekop offers his most captivating yet stripped down modular music. All compositions on »The Sparrow« were gradually developed piece by piece. Best known for his jazz-leaning tropicalismo with The Sea And Cake, a key part of the Chicago scene with the likes of Tortoise or Chicago Underground Duo, he has in recent years established himself as a modular synthesist, building his instrument meticulously to create a unique system that allows him to create highly individual music through mechanical patterns, repetitions and chance. In this context his widely acclaimed community forming public tutorials on fb should be noted as well. »The Sparrow« is an exciting new chapter in his development as a constant creative influence. Stefan Schneider, Düsseldorf August 2022

Nachthorn, for midi-controlled organ Nachthorn takes its name from one of the 78 stops that make up the main organ in St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf. This instrument, equipped with a system developed by the German company Sinua, offers the possibility of controlling all of its keyboards and timbres via a computer. The organ thus becomes a powerful synthesiser. This set-up allowed me to fulfil an old dream of mine : to create an entirely acoustic dance music piece with the organ as sole actor. Oscillating between dub techno, harmonic locked grooves or after-hours pop, Nachhorn proposes a hypnotic music piece whose lines sketch the outline of an imaginary warehouse.

A double shot of Y2K digi thrillers from Sydney via Bromley electro-dub producer Jeff Dread. Part of the city’s burgeoning network of blunted bass and sound system culture, Dread worked in parallel with the likes of Sheriff Lindo, Andy Rantzen and Ali Omar, issuing two dynamite albums on Creative Vibes in 1999 and 2001. Utilising the Atari 1020 Ste, Dread would frantically live mix up to 9 tracks direct to CD-R, echoing the same rough and ready low tech intuition as Jamaican trailblazers King Tubby, Scientist and Jack Ruby and their UK-based disciples Jah Shaka, Adrian Sherwood and Mad Professor. While unmarked discs of his indulgently durational sessions litter the archives, this plate showcases versions immortalised by two crucial compilation CDs. Wicked stepper ‘Dub The Farmer’s Daughter’ burrows the ear canal with its addictive melodica and tightly coiled acid synth lines, edited for high impact by Sheriff Lindo for his volume of Dub For the Masses (Dread would curate its successor), while ‘Out On A Limb’ hails from Just Is, a double album sequenced by legendary Sydney queer party crew Club Kooky. A bass bin creeper that was extended with horns for his second longplayer Return From Alpha One, it’s this unembellished work in progress that really stings. With Dread’s allegiance to local sound system heavyweights Firehouse, these totally brained studio jams are tried and tested weapons, finally blasting on the sacred 7” format.

この界隈の重要作家が一挙参加したショーケース的1本！”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、カナダの新鋭プロデューサー「lhk」。『We Do A Little Music』や『[REDACTED] 001』といった特大コンピにも参加していたこの人が、UKのネットレーベル〈FOCUSONTHE〉から8月に発表した最新リミックス・アルバム『5D TETRIS MIX & REMIX』のカセット版最終在庫をストック！Aphextwinsucks、healspirit1、saves、Andy pls、SeyNoeらレーベルメイトを中心とした面々がリミックス参加した特大盤！実に10組もの豪華ゲストを起用したフリーフォームなブレイクコア/ドラムンベース作品。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、オランダの新鋭プロデューサーsaves。11月には名門〈MAD BREAKS〉の傑作コンピ『Jersey Club Epic Fail Compilation』にも参加したこの人が、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『Trac7』の最終在庫をストック！同レーベルからは2作目となるカセットEP！Andy plsとdj dream diaryがラスト2曲にてリミックスで参加。スムースで夢見心地なブレイクビーツ&ドラムンベース・サウンドを堪能できる好作！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。

”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

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.”

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.

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.