MUSIC

RAW SPACE" is rooted in chaos and chance, sensuality and intensity - it's an album that's able to sound alarmingly freeform and tightly controlled simultaneously. Already established as a genre-disrupting DJ, and even dubbed "demon of the Nile" by Ugandan politicians after an exuberant performance at Nyege Nyege festival in September 2019, Kampala-based sonic hypnotist Authentically Plastic brings a digger's literacy, an activist's intent, and an artist's playfulness to their jagged debut album. As both a DJ and a producer, Authentically Plastic is drawn to the idea of chance as a creative tool - to push against the idea of the all-knowing genius, and approach artistry instead as a facilitator, unraveling parallel mismatched rhythmic events. Their musical process is to start with chaos, then attempt to mold those fleshy structures into polyrhythmic mutations, pulling influence from East Africa's innovative musical landscape and augmenting it with an exploratory sense of surrealism. On opening track 'Aesthetic Terrorism', rough-hewn industrial rhythms chug mechanically against course, dissonant synth blasts and acidic arpeggios. There's a faint sparkle of Detroit's chrome-plated Afro-futurism, but bathed in neon light, reflecting Africa's contemporary electronic revolution. Authentically Plastic's productions have a sense of thematic coherence, but their myriad influences are torched into cinders, leaving inverse impressions and ghost rhythms: the tuned overdriven clatter of 'Anti-Fun' echoes Ugandan kadodi modes, yet simultaneously mirrors the rugged out-zone grit of Container or Speaker Music; standout centerpiece 'Buul Okyelo' meanwhile is as rhythmically cross-eyed as Slikback or Nazar, but juxtaposes kinetic dancefloor thumps with chaotic microtonal ritual cycles. Writing "RAW SPACE", Authentically Plastic found themselves fascinated by sonic flatness. They realized that in Western art, there's an obsession with depth of field that carries into music, robbing it of intensity. The album is an example of the power that can be reclaimed when you let go of depth, letting sounds rub together carnally and spawn something fresh and unexpected

Speed, Glue & Shinki's last album is a gorgeous, faithful reproduction of the original, including a full-wrap-around band! Released in 1972. The second and last album of Speed, Glue & Shinki, released in 1972. Famous for its tiger jacket. This album has many songs that seem to be mainly by Joey Smith, but like the previous album, it is full of bluesy rock. Some of the songs are lyrical, but the medley on the D-side makes extensive use of the Mogg synthesizer, which was still very valuable at the time. Guests include Michael Hanopol [ba etc.], Shigeki Watanabe [key], and Hiroshi Oguchi [drums]. The analog version uses a 96khz 24-bit sound source that was mastered in 2017. Jackets include two single jackets, full-length wraparound obi, lyric card, and others. The original has been reproduced as much as possible.

A+A is Anunaku and Avalon Emerson. Their first EP features four tracks of melodic club music, made together while in London and on tour. Mastered by Matt Colton Cover photograph taken by Suleika Mueller Design by Noah Baker

Big or profound sensations from small gestures which are carefully arranged. Using a mixture of sacred and profane, or classical and prosaic sound sources, knitted into intricate, fleet-footed compositions that virtually spring into the ear. Profondo Rosa is composer Ailin Grad’s first vinyl album following years embedded and loved in the Argentinian experimental music scene, with past treats on labels Krut, Sun Ark, Orange Milk Records and her own label Abyss, devoted to ‘connecting Latin Juke with the world’. There’s a playfulness at the heart of Profondo Rosa that’s immediately charming, with a sense of scale and spatialisation in the sounds being toyed with, exploring the strange pleasures and satisfaction in her approach to delightful and fresh feeling sound design. Aylu is known to be as likely to deploy the sound of a finger click, a fizzy drink being cracked open, or a fly buzzing past the ear, as she is drawn to sampling gorgeous strings or instrumentation. Her debut album for Mana constantly builds territories that tug at your heartstrings and then have you grinning five seconds later. This versatility and acceleration has often resulted in her music being compared to footwork, alongside collaboration with other producers experimenting in that sphere; in 2017 she and Foodman put together a dizzying hour of sounds for NTS. Her miniaturisation of rhythm and ringtone-like sample size could also bring to mind SND circa their warmer softer glitch Tenderlove phase, or perhaps the approach that Teenage Engineering take to designing tools for music making. Each are deriving pleasure from small and satisfying shapes, as well as advocating an object-oriented philosophy and minimalisation in their work that sidesteps a draining of colour. Sound is fun, and in Profondo Rosa it sounds like Aylu has that at the forefront of her mind. Her hyperreal sound and its link to the languages of electroacoustic or computer music are clear, but she outmanoeuvres many of the overly-academic and formless examples of those genres. Profondo Rosa’s skeletal assembly of objects becomes tunes in an elegant, almost understated way; tactile elements quickly combine and roll into deeper and persuasively emotional places. These compositions give off an air of being very free, very experimental, despite being meticulously artful and studied arrangements on precise and nimble coordinates.

»Herbstlaub,« the first full album by Marsen Jules after 2 digital only mini-albums, was both introspective and visionary, modest and ground-breaking. Blending elements of classical music with electronic textures, the German artist created six pieces that draw on the power of repetition, yet are full of internal tensions and sweeping dynamics. Now, Keplar makes it available again on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 2005. This version, remastered by Stephan Mathieu and with a new artwork by Umor Rex’s Daniel Castrejón, shines a new light on a record that paved the way not only for the artist’s later work, but also further developments in electronic and ambient music more broadly. »The noughties were a special time,« says Marsen Jules today. »It felt like there was a new tool made available practically every day that allowed you to create new musical worlds on your computer.« Hence, this prolific phase saw the emergence of a plentitude of genres and styles that can be traced back to individual records—»precious gems that opened up new possibilities and anticipated a lot of what later would be picked up on,« as he describes them. »Herbstlaub« surely falls into this category, having paved the way for a distinct approach to combining elements from classical and electronic music. While Wolfgang Voigt was focusing on the marriage of romanticism and techno with his Gas project at the same time, the six pieces on »Herbstlaub« follow a very different concept. Through repetition and reduction, Marsen Jules threw any sense of time out of joint while also inserting an emotional component into the music. »What would remain if you abstract musical contents to this degree, how much of your personality would still resonate in it,« he sums up the questions that shaped his approach. »When will reduction result in monotony, and how could unique, magical moments created through repetition?« More than one and a half decades later, »Herbstlaub« seems both melancholic and brimming with excitement. This is the sound of an artist experimenting freely with the sounds and structures of two supposedly irreconcilable musical traditions with new and exciting tools, creating something previously unheard of in the process.

Rainbow Disco Club and Rush Hour, a long-standing friendship that transcends continents! House, disco, new wave, Caribbean, rare groove, leftfield.. Antal compiles the second release on "Beyond Space And Time", loaded with personal choice cuts. Internationally recognised and much-loved festival from Japan, Rainbow Disco Club’s offshoot project "Beyond Space And Time" record label presents their sophomore release! Following the work by DJ Nobu, their second compilation has been compiled by none other than Antal. Also known as the festival's headliner and the man behind Amsterdam record shop/label Rush Hour, all 8 tracks are selected by Antal in a 2 x 12-inch format. From newcomers to '80s Japanese cult music, rare grooves to danceable house music, and rare Caribbean soul, this compilation is a portrait of music enthusiast Antal Heitlager’s enormous collection and 30-year DJ career, a work of art that can be enjoyed by all music fans! An afro electronics track recommended by South African collector DJ Okapi, who co-produced the masterpiece compilation "Pantsula!: Rise Of Electronic Dance Music In South Africa: 1988-90" released in 2017, which brought Kwaito back onto the map. A-1 Improvisation Organic Deep House track by New Zealand’s newcomer. A-2 A rare breezin' boogie by Larry Heard’s alias Trio Zero from 1989. Highly sought after by all collectors as a cult Balearic track. Previously unreleased version. B-1 From the 2015 album by L.A. funk maker DAM-FUNK on the prestigious Stones Throw label. LO-FI beats and synthetic breakdowns that are reminiscent of early Rush Hour works and ‘90s house. B-2 The debut single of Japanese idol unit, Shohjo-Tai. Haruomi Hosono also produced some of their tracks later on in their career. Japanese new wave disco from 1984. C-1 The soundtrack from the Japanese manga "Touring Express". RDC fans will recognize this track from the final hours of the festival. A nostalgic oriental disco from 1985. C-2 80s Silky Mellow Soul by Connecticut jazz vocalist Dianne Mower who also contributed to the re-press of the prestigious Numero Group. D-1 The original version is a masterpiece from 1983 by Zouk singer Jocelyn Mocka of French Guadeloupe. This edit still very much emphasizes an emotional mid-tempo Caribbean soul, nicely reconstructed by Rush Hour's Bonnefooi. D-2 A total of 8 tracks from all types of genres and generations, a true masterpiece and representation of Rainbow Disco Club’s vision “Beyond Space And Time”. Bringing you the love from Amsterdam to the world!

"may vast blessings of peace seek you. x many thanks to wildflower, santi, and villi" all music production and vocals - victoria m. 'what a joy' mastered by brandenburg mastering <3

Andy Stott’s radical 2011 bonecrusher returns on its first new pressing for almost a decade, still screwing the dance and heads like nothing else with its lo-sprung suspended takes on boogie dub and claggiest rhythmic thumpers.
The sludgy, slow-motion slug of ‘Passed Me By’ marked a pivotal point when Stott swam against the grain of prevailing currents of the post-dubstep era’s turn toward garage-techno and UKF- inspired percussive house. Working loosely adjacent to a then emergent witch-house sound, Andy screwed templates associated to Salem and Holy Other into a more muscular, thrumming style
of drug chug more in key with early Actress, arriving at his own distinctive sound that sent us reeling.
Between the intoxicating, syrupy gnarrr of ‘New Ground’ with its Proustian vocal motifs, and the head-wobbling Pennine weather system compressions of its titular curtain closer, it’s a stone cold classique; eliciting heads-down, wall-banging reactions in the side-chained thrum of ‘North To South’ and a lip-biting MDMA-buzz come up with the Thriller funk of ‘Intermittent’, while sore thumb ‘Dark Details’ gives shivering flashbacks to warehouse brukouts and ‘Execution’ curbs the high with a K-holing drag.
Delivering a narcotic, keeling dose of nostalgia that slings us back to late hours in the office
and blunted afters with the goodest kru, ‘Passed Me By’ was one of those records that made us reassess pretty much everything else around at the time, practically forcing us to play other stuff on the wrong speed if we wanted to DJ with it, or more simply letting it run and and slowly shift temporal perceptions and paradigms in the process. Ye ye we’re biased and all, but it’s the fucking GOAT.

Mark Fell & Gábor Lázár’s masterclass in shearing computer hyperfunk is one of its decade’s best; a peerless exploration of displaced dancefloor meter and warped chromatic tone, with mind and body-bending results. Finally re-issued in new artwork to sate demand. Still in a zone of its own, ‘The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making’ is the result of Mark Fell’s trip to Budapest in 2014, where he and his acolyte, Gábor Lázár practically unravelled the vernacular of contemporary computer and club musics and re-stitched them into brilliantly new & devious designs. Decimating elements familiar to 2-step, footwork, electro, flashcore and f*ck knows, they arrived at a mutual conclusion of sleekly turbulent minimalism in 10 jaw-dropping permutations that dance in the integers of rave music. In the process they effectively re-programmed limbic and motor systems in-the-moment with a wickedly diffractive sense of rhythmic anticipation and shockingly crisp sound for a pinnacle of modern experimental dance music. With benefit of hindsight, we can now hear this album as a watershed moment for both artists, and this style of production. Since its release, Mark has notably moved away from the sound to work with acoustic instrumentalists, while Gábor has firmly picked up the baton and run with it on the likes of 2018’s ‘Unfold’ album, and more recently ‘Boundary Object’ with Planet Mu. It’s not hard to hear it as a logical peak of Mark’s practice in this mode, solo and with SND, as much as a springboard for Gábor’s future work, while also catalysing a new wave of operators ranging from Rian Treanor to Kindohm, Kirk Barley’s Church Andrews, and Rhyw, who’ve all harnessed these sort of energies to their respective wills. No doubt the tunes still scare the shit out of DJs with their spasmodic flux, but brave cnuts will recognise the genius on show and let instinct kick in, finding proper club shockers in the slippery 2.1 step whorl of ‘Track 2’ and the scudding dancehall accelerationism of ‘Track 6’, while advanced adventurers will get theirs in the greased straightjacket laser-intensity of ‘Track 7’ or the devilish dexterities of its closing 12 minute zinger. It’s all just blindingly strong stuff for insatiable ravers and computer music neeks alike, properly future-proofed by its makers’ unyielding tenacity and visionary ingenuity.

Andy Stott’s ultra-classic bout of screwed, knackered House is a shapeshifting, hardy perennial whose crushing traction and atmospheric grip has only deepened in the decade (+1) since it was first issued, as part of a now notorious one-two in 2011 beside ‘Passed Me By’. Out of print for almost a decade, it’s now finally available again in a new edition that’s still sounding unlike pretty much anything else we’ve heard in the intervening years. ’We Stay Together’ was a proper watershed moment for Andy Stott in the nascent phase of an inspirational stylistic arc. While he’d spent the previous six years constructing everything from warehouse-shuddering deep house and dub techno to bare-boned dubstep, the arrival of a new decade paid witness to Stott turning inward, collapsing what he’d learnt from late night sessions with the Modern Love crew into a radical new sound that was arguably without precedent in its field. The simple move of screwing the tempo to circa 100BPM would, in turn, open out his sound, prising room between the rhythms which he coloured with a palette of particularly bruised, processed outside-the-box textures gleaned from an array of guitar pedals and endlessly churned samples. There were, of course, parallels in DJ Screw’s codeine-infused treatments of classic rap and soul, and their influence on the contemporaneous “witch house” style, but few, if any, were doing it within a techno and club music context that hewed so close to the darker, gristlier underbelly and animus of Manchester’s warehouse heritage. This style of viscous, cranky chug proved fertile ground that would be explored in-depth over the next decade - you can hear traces of it on everything from Overmono’s sludge to Low’s acclaimed 'Double Negative’ - and trust when we say it’s the source of it all. But, still, nothing twats quite as smart or heavy as ‘We Stay Together’. From an opening that uncannily echoes the rinsed-out empty warehouse scenes in the closing stages of ‘Fioriucci Made Me Hardcore’, the serotonin-depleted ’Submission’ triggers a side-chained momentum that helplessly drags users thru the gnarly mire of ‘Posers’ to the zombied lurch of ‘Bad Wires’ and its title tune’s ket-legged strut. He pushes the aesthetics to asphyxiating degrees on ‘Cherry Eye’, but not without a glimmer of hope in its underwater choral motifs that always buoys his best bits from utter doom, before ‘Cracked’ stresses the metallic tang of his textures with a bloodlust and vital, systolic throb whose effect has only been galvanised with age. With the benefit of hindsight, ‘We Stay Together’ surely ranks among the best of its strange, pivotal decade. There’s really nothing else quite like it.

As we continue with our 7" series and for the 6th edition we welcome back the Dublin native Sabab in quick succession with 'Spirit Of Sewa' b/w 'Empty Pocket Dub'

We are putting 3 past albums by Detroit dub techno artist Deepchord onto Bandcamp. Here we have 'Auratones' - a foray into deep, organic, cinematic dance music. Shimmering, watery, brain hemisphere synchronization tones caress and melt stress away. Dance floor friendly tracks that work equally well in one’s private listening space. Synesthetic sounds trigger sensory experiences in cognitive pathways other than hearing…smells of perfumes, thoughts of colours, and altered perception of time and space. Psychoacoustic, cerebral, electronic listening music for those wanting a different experience than the current harsher, darker dance trends are offering. Recorded during April - June 2016 in Barcelona Spain, then further mixed / processed / assembled in Port Huron Michigan early 2017.

NAFF013 ∞ the Pearl ∞ Sensational x Planteaterz The Pearl is a collaboration between Planteaterz and the mercurial NYC rap-mystic, Sensational. The EP features four songs recorded in the winter of 2021 with Sensational on the mic and eaterz on production, and is accompanied by instrumentals and killer remixes by Maara, J. Albert, and Lowjack. The Pearl is a sound, a world, and definitely a vibe. We’re pleased to share the fruits of this collaboration with you here.

Just one week after the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987, Riad brought his sisters Hanan, Alia and Nariman together in their living room and began recording The Intifada album on equipment he had made himself. One of these was co-written with their friend, the acclaimed Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish. Riad printed 3000 copies of the cassettes which he began distributing in the Old City of Jerusalem and across the West Bank. The Israeli Army immediately confiscated all the copies they could find, the vast majority of which remain in the military archives to this day. Riad was arrested, interrogated and detained for several months. Straight after his release, he formed a band, Palestinian Union, and put out a new album. He then founded a school, offering kids in the West Bank an alternative musical education, teaching them how to create their own electronic equipment. In 2005, Riad was tragically killed in a car accident. His legacy lives on through his family, his timeless music and his powerful story, which continues to inspire 34 years on from the First Intifada. *** During the first lockdown of 2020, artist and music collector Mo’min Swaitat was in Jenin, in the north of the West Bank, when he met up with a family friend and former record label owner, whom he remembered from childhood. The family friend told him he no longer ran the label and that all his cassettes were now in storage and had not been played for decades. Mo’min purchased over five thousand cassettes from him, amongst them a large collection of music from the First Intifada. One of these was The Intifada album.

Oddball Fantasies is more than pleased to welcome Cheb Runner for its second release. His Moroccan roots remain omnipresent in this perfectly balanced blend between traditional Raï elements & the irresistible sound of the 80s underground. When old meets new, those who resist to dance, shall be few!

Is this recording an environmental activist art statement or ambient spa music? Maybe both? The fourth release from São Paulo label Lugar Alto is not a Brazilian production but it still has strong ties to the country, it is the psychotomimetically heuristic ambience of The Dreambird by Mitar Subotić (Suba) & Goran Vejvoda. The album was produced in Paris in 1987 and 5 years later was the first release by Suba in Brazil as a limited edition CD put out by the Brazilian Catholic label Paulinas COMEP. Listening to The Dreambird is a deeply immersive organic experience. It is ambient music that actually integrates with your environment. Bird calls and shrieks intertwining with lush synth tones, imagine late seventies Tangerine Dream in a tropical hothouse while sliding into a floatation tank located in the Amazon, an environment of rich and strange sounds. The Dreambird harks back to a time when environmental recordings were being discovered as forms of music, as David Toop writes in his book Exotica “... some recordists stuck to the idea of birdsong as music, a notion that is surely as old as music itself”. The album was made while Goran Vejvoda was living in Paris. Relaxed days were spent sitting around, tinkering with sounds, going out, having lunch, coming back and playing some more. Pascal Humbert, bass player from the French band Passion Fodder, joined the duo for a day. Goran had a Japanese field recording CD called Bird Island Seychelles that contained the exotic bird sounds and sea waves used to create the organic textures of the album. Suba left with the 8-track tapes and rough mix cassettes and adapted the music for a sound art installation/happening by the Danube in Novi Sad where The Dreambird was played, climaxing with a laser show. In the early nineties Suba moved to Brazil, and together with André Geraissati, was one of the producers of Nina Maika, an album by the Brazilian musician, Edson Natale. The album was recorded at the COMEP studio, renowned at the time for having one of the best audio production structures found in Brazil. Edson and Suba got on well with the studio crew and in 1992 proposed the simultaneous release of Sol de Inverno, an album by Edson Natale and Alex Braga, and The Dreambird. In return, COMEP provided studio hours for them to use on further projects. Suba used these hours for the production of Memória Mundi (otherwise known as Oharaska), an extensive musical project that he worked on with influential percussionist João Parahyba, but which was never finished. From this project the track “A Fábula”, with the participation of the singer Natália Barros, came out on the compilation from the Music From Memory label, Outro Tempo II. According to João, Suba managed to convince the nuns who ran the label that The Dreambird was a recording for meditation, which may have caused him to adapt the name and “conception” of the album, adding another intriguing facet to this production. The Dreambird was actually only known by that name in Brazil as the record was never actually intended to be public. The names of the tracks released back then were different from those used on this release, which are taken from the masters maintained by Vladimir Ivković. Moreover, the tracks released on the CD in Brazil were shortened and only 4 of the 6 original tracks were on the CD. This release contains the 4 tracks released in Brazil in their original full-length form, plus the two never released tracks that are available exclusively in digital format. Included as a bonus are Goran Vejvoda’s liner notes translated into French, German, Serbian and Portuguese. New artwork, with drawings by Arthur Longo, a French snowboarder and artist, was commissioned for the album and was conceived by the design studio Sometimes Always, who have worked with Lugar Alto since their first release. Mitar Subotić aka Rex Illusivii aka Suba, was born in 1961 in Yugoslavia. A renowned innovator in his home country but is best known in Brazil for his 1999 CD São Paulo Confessions, a hugely important release that effortlessly walked the line between modern MPB and 90s electronica, influencing a whole generation of Brazilian music makers. Tragically, he died just after it was released and could never benefit from its critical acclaim and success. The Dreambird was recorded in Paris one year before “In the moon cage”, a similar project using the pseudonym Rex Illusivi. This was a recording of exuberant synth scapes, ambient guitar and Yugoslavian folk which was awarded the International Fund for Promotion of Culture from UNESCO, and included a three-month scholarship to research Afro-Brazilian rhythms in Brazil. The album was released in 2015 by Ivković’s Offen Music. In 1994 Suba resuscitated his Serbian band, Angel’s Breath, with Milan Mladenović, and it became a psychedelic samba-rock project with a line-up of Brazilian musicians including João Parahyba and Fabio Golfetti, there were also contributions from Taciana Barros and, implausibly, eventual soap-opera star, Marisa Orth. Key track “Metak” is an unlikely mix of burundi drumming, post-punk, electronics and samba. “Wayang”, his global music project from 1995, further demonstrated his work with textures, loops and samples, and was recorded in Wah Wah Studios in São Paulo. This was also released by Offen Music in 2018. The prolific producer and music critic Carlos Eduardo Miranda, described Suba’s appeal best when he said “He came from the other side of the world and understood everything about this mess”. A hugely in-demand producer who was about to become a key player in the internationalization of Brazilian music. Goran Vejvoda is a multimedia artist born in London. After studying music in Belgrade he’s believed to be the guiding hand behind important releases from the early eighties Serbian scene. After moving to Paris he became a guitarist in various bands and worked with renowned comics artist Enki Bilal. Goran has released several solo albums in Japan, "Fruit Cloud" and "Harmonie". Other records include "Mikro-Organizmi" with Rambo Amadeus and "What" with ZerOne. Goran’s writing can be found in magazines such as The Wire and Vibrö. He has exhibited his art since 1981 and has performed at Beaubourg and Palais de Tokyo and participated in the exhibition "Off The Record" at the Musée D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. More recently he has been working on and showing video art that is a reaction to the covid pandemic, as well as the All Sounds Considered film, which explores the state of sound and silence. It’s challenging to trace the story of this project precisely, very little information is available and what we have are diffused fragments of memory from different actors. So, we return to the initial question: what is The Dreambird? It doesn’t matter if it is either an environmental statement or simply relaxing spa music, what it does is evoke sensations that elevate your mind to a higher and more emotional plane and from there you can travel wherever you like.

Lavender Palace is a portrait of a process more than a place – the result of a creative headspace San Francisco producer (and Silva Electronics boss) Michael Claus describes as “dropping out of the world and entering a flow state.” That heightened sense of spatial focus, dilated and dialed in, colors the collection in subtle shades of dream house, dub techno, and liquid downtempo. Recorded before and during the strangest days of peak lockdown, Claus found himself drawn to sci-fi notions of fantastical cities and mythic landscapes, hazy realms in the horizon of the mind’s eye. Further inspired by a new and improved studio arrangement in the city, the sessions unspooled in long, low-slung voyages of texture and pulse, restlessness and reverie, “yearning for a better tomorrow.” It’s music of empty streets and guarded hope, percolating at the precipice of futures too real to recognize.

Multi-media mystic Andro Gogibedashvili aka Saphileaum’s latest slate expands his “spherical ambient” lexicon into increasingly celestial terrain, inspired by visions of galactical oases, sparkling starscapes, and elemental serenity. Ganbana takes its title from a Georgian word for ‘cleansed by water,’ which aptly characterizes the album’s six liquid-tribal compositions. Rolling oceans of hand percussion flow below soothing swells of electronics, streaked with ocarina, insects, and sitar. Snippets of mantric voice occasionally cut through the devotional trance but otherwise Saphileaum’s world is one of solitude and ascent, attuned to a time and space outside our own, where “a second is a century, and a century a second, as the waterfall of cosmic nectar is poured over your being.”

Companion offering to the recent LP, Aquarealm: Sub-Aquatic Compilation interweaves an array of new album tracks with a selection of discography deep cuts for a one-hour saga of shape-shifting aquatic bliss. Drawing on the classic X.Y.R. palette of Formanta Mini, Korg M1, FX, a loop station, and field recordings, the mix’s 16 songs slipstream seamlessly despite being sourced from across a decade of work – testament to the constancy of its creator’s vision and the renewable vastness of his muse.

Yamaguchi electronic landscaper Tomokazu Fujimoto aka Multi-Surface returns from an eight-year hiatus with a slow-blooming suite of radiant terrains and looping lullabies, named for a geometric technique utilized in Japanese gardening: Aesthetics of Inequality Triangles. Prior tapes for Lillerne and Patient Sounds explored parallel spheres of smeared tranquility, but his recent work skews even more sun-flared and crystalline, percolating patterns of texture, melody, and circuitry into states of suspended transience. The album’s 10 tracks lull, unspool, and refract, lapping like waves against aerial shores, flickering rainbows glimpsed in raindrops. The titles offer further clues, mapping a morning walk beneath too blue skies along a path lined with ceramics and stones, pastel flowers gently billowing in a breeze blowing from tomorrow.

As the latest work of Ricardo Villalobos, the double EP "Agglomeration Of Atomised Souls" is a collaboration work with producer/DJ Ferro (Jasper Verrijzer), who is also known as the co-organizer of VBX Music, a popular collective/record label in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.・Pack is analog release! A powerful board containing 4 songs of hypnotic minimal techno with an experimental and strong skeleton. I'd love to!

Human Pitch is proud to welcome Seoul-based duo Salamanda to the label for the release of their third LP ashbalkum - a portal into unseen worlds, enchanting stasis, & laughter in the face of our evolving realities. Across an effervescent 39 minute runtime, ashbalkum provides a spellbinding view into how we interact with the world around us - one where one’s own being, language, & nature itself are all rendered infinitely mutable.

Written during the surrealist landscape of summer 2021 somewhere between a sweet dream & a beautiful nightmare, ashbalkum accesses a playful tranquility that mirrors our tumultuous present - distantly intimate, static & constantly changing, moving while standing still, all the while narrowly evading the pressures of our pre-apocalyptic world looming just overhead. Through their collaborative energy steeped in joy, friendship, & experimentation, Salamanda transports us towards even further surreality - taking their sound to wholly new frontiers  while aiming to just have fun creating together & living presently.

ashbalkum’s namesake stems from symbolic & phonetic reinterpretation - specifically, a Korean phrase for the realization that what you’ve been experiencing as “reality” is actually a dream. The transmutation of this humorous existentialism into new meaning forms the core of ashbalkum - blissfully maneuvering through life, basking in irreverent states of lucidity, & attuning all frequencies to fellow dreamers within the dream.

Do dreams always reflect what we think? Is what we feel within dreams real?

Ultimately, Salamanda don’t seek to answer these questions, so much as revel in the delightful liminality of it all.

The first full-length vinyl collection by Tokyo-based producer Zefan Sramek aka Precipitation crystallizes his evolving synthesis of new age ambience, tape hiss, and house music into a riveting suite of motion and mirage: Glass Horizon. Conceived and recorded between two formative trips to Sado Island in the spring and late summer of 2020, the album feels both insular and infinite, threading paths through wet grass, along isolated coasts. Field recordings of tidepools, birds, and cicadas crossfade into fluid mandalas of bass, keys, and drum machinery, while synths glide and glisten, rising like heat off sand. Sramek speaks of themes of escape and estrangement, solace and desolation, visions of azure waters lapping empty shores. Weeks spent sleeping in a hammock attuned him to the extrasensory; melodies and memories materialized from the foliage, suffused with ocean air and placeless melancholy. All seven tracks swoop and swirl with patience and precision, grid-mapped golden dawns and gradient sunsets mixed live and captured on cassette. This is dance music as portal and pilgrimage, spiral environments for a refracted age.

Strawberries ripen in the spring. Or so they used to, in a more reliable world, one that seems to be rapidly receding in our collective rearview mirror. Presently, “spring” is a troubled concept — fraught with anxiety. Our seasons, if they are seasons at all, are paradoxical. Crops fail, or they ripen prematurely, all at once, and into a burst of rot. Impossibly, somehow, the supermarket shelves stay stocked (mostly, for now at least), and there are buckets of strawberries on every corner. But, of course, their nature is suspect. And they don’t taste like they used to. Or maybe that’s just ruinous nostalgia. But somewhere along the way we certainly lost something. Everybody knows. Strawberry Season (Leaving Records, November 9 2022) responds tenderly to this sorry state of affairs, not with false comfort — nor escapism. Rather, the album conveys, often wordlessly, that there remains an abundance of sweetness amidst our increasing unease. While much of twentieth century American popular and folk music may have dwelt on the beauty and plenitude of the prairie, More Eaze applies a similar Romantic focus to the small bursts of fecundity that now hide in plain sight. Blending found sound, generative music, a knack for elegant, classically-informed melodic arrangement, and a sort of Liz-Fraser-by-way-of-hyperpop approach to vocals, Strawberry Season offers unique solace — providing an occasion for the kind of deep listening that our overstimulated and undernourished spirits require if there is to be any hope at all (and of course there must be hope). More Eaze (serving as composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and sound artist) guides us incrementally to this locus of attentiveness. Strawberry Season begins with the softly sweeping gentle pets. Early intimations of Velvet Underground give way, indeed, to a string arrangement that John Cale might have saved for Paris 1919. The second track, Suped, features a kaleidoscopic swirl of grocery checkout scanners that eventually coalesce and release with the subtle strumming of a harp. On known, in the midst of a nearly elegiac outflow of feeling, a shower starts to run. Someone steps inside, pulling the curtain back, sending the plastic rings clattering. Moments later, the unmistakable sound of the showerer blowing their nose — an inclusion that is at once light-hearted and jarringly, movingly intimate. Strawberry Season’s second to last song, low resolution at santikos, serves as a sustained meditation on all that has come before it. Building slowly throughout its nine minutes, teetering, at times, on the edge of danceability, it dissipates suddenly, and Strawberry Season concludes with the rustling of clothes, snippets of distant conversation, creaking floorboards, an exhale and a sniff. There is a feeling of having arrived, of temporary reprieve in the face of uncertainty. A hint of a season yet to come, or one that is perhaps only now accessible in dreams.