MUSIC

Legendary producer Ant, best known for his work with Atmosphere, proves once again how irreplaceable he is with Collection of Sounds: Vol. 4. This latest release showcases the lifetime of dedication behind his craft, blending his unparalleled skills with a fresh, expanded vision.

With previous volumes in the Collection of Sounds series, Ant has traced his musical evolution, spanning hip-hop, funk, reggae and more, all influenced and inspired by extensive travel dating back to his youth. Vol. 4 deepens this exploration, introducing rock-inspired elements—guitars that wail, gnaw, and groove—while maintaining his signature sound.

Despite these genre experiments, Vol. 4 is firmly grounded in hip-hop. The opening track, “Hearing In Dark Colors,” sets the tone, evoking long drives up desolate highways in the dead of night. Tracks like “Created With a Heavy Brush” and “Just Another Three A.M.” reveal a mastery of diverse soundscapes, while the triumphant “Day After 2010” takes listeners on an unexpected journey. As the album circles back to hip-hop on tracks like “A Pinch Brighter” and “Prelude Revisited,” it leaves listeners transformed, further solidifying Ant’s status as a visionary artist.

Across a remarkable run of releases in barely half a decade, London’s Loraine James has established her identity through a blend of refined composition, gritty experimentation, and unpredictable, intricate electronic programming. While titles released under her given name on the esteemed label Hyperdub tend toward IDM-influenced, vocal-heavy collaborations, James reserves her alias, Whatever The Weather, for a more impressionistic, inward gaze. On Whatever The Weather II, rich worlds of layered textures flow seamlessly from hypnotic ambience, to mottled rhythms, to cut-up collages of diaristic field recordings. The result is a uniquely fractured beauty, born from a compelling union of organic and human elements, processed through a variety of digital and analogue methods.

James titled Whatever The Weather pieces based on an innate sense of their “emotional temperature” at the time of recording, but she notes that often, upon revisiting them, they will feel somewhere else entirely on the thermometer; such are the whims of the environment. Compared to the album’s predecessor and its Antarctic imagery, though, Whatever The Weather II is a warmer outing, as signaled by the desert clime of its cover photo which is once again shot by Collin Hughes, and the package designed by Justin Hunt Sloane. Also common to both albums is the mastering work of friend and collaborator Josh Eustis (aka Telefon Tel Aviv), who lends his keen ear to James’ complexities, to craft a strikingly three-dimensional sonic experience.

“1°C” opens the album with James speaking through thick static, idly pining, “Bit chilly, innit… Can’t wait for it to be summer,” as a bed of granular tones and scattered vocal samples emerges. This ineffable mood carries through “3°C”, where high-frequency oscillations flutter across the stereo field, a vigorous, minimal kick rattles through a broken speaker cone, and spacious synth harmonies burst and fade into mist. “20°C”, the longest entry in the collection, daydreams through a din of conversation and minor-key chords, before blossoming into a series of glitchy, staccato percussion patterns. “8°C” rides a sole, wandering keyboard line adorned with minimal counterpoint. In these moments, James effortlessly draws order from a diffusion of ideas, and an air of playful spontaneity creates the common thread.

In discussing this project, James notes that the first Whatever The Weather LP (Ghostly, 2022) was created concurrently with Reflection (Hyperdub, 2021), and that there was some degree of stylistic cross-pollination between her two musical frames of mind. At the time, she shared her feelings on genre with Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne, noting, “Yeah, I might look different from most people who make IDM, and I’m from a different time period, but I don’t really care about the term being negative or positive. I feel my music is IDM and I do my own spin on it, being inspired by other stuff and fusing it all together.” This go around, she dedicated several months of focused energy to the alias, and to the development of its distinctions: no collaborators, fewer beats, and a process based primarily on instinct and improvisation.

The album’s singular sound arises from James’ favoring of hardware over software, as her battery of synths is modulated, transformed, and reassembled through an array of pedals with few or no overdubs, effectively anchoring each arrangement to its precise moment of creation. The greatest effort in post-production was given to sequencing, on which the artist places the utmost importance; taken as a whole, the suite ebbs and flows with a fitting sense of seasonal flux and naturalistic grace.

The final act of Whatever The Weather II offers some of its most affecting moments, beginning with “9°C”, where the haunting echoes of children on a Tokyo playground break through intermittent bursts of static, steeped in a bath of off-kilter, bubbling tones. Here, James displays one of her many strengths: a fearless approach to sonic collage, elevated by ambitious experimentation and pacing that manages plenty of surprises. Never content to remain in the same sonic space for too long, “15°C” follows with soft pads and glistening countermelodies, abruptly joined by a jarring, cyclical rhythm that mimics a loose part inside a whirring machine. Like much of James’ work, it bears an internal logic that only makes sense in her hands.

Closing track, “12°C”, drifts from bustling human spaces into a concrete groove, weaving melody and texture into a truly unusual, soul-stirring fullness. In its final moments we hear, for the first time, a languid acoustic guitar and gentle, finger-tapped beat over her pitch-shifted voice, a callback that ends the album with wry ambiguity, and a hint of more to be found beyond the horizon. Whatever The Weather II is full of such passages, where formal composition appears like a film in negative, and conventions are upturned with wit, intelligence, and skill.

A Strangely Isolated Place presents a long-lost collaboration between Polish artists Olga Wojciechowska and Tomasz Walkiewicz as Monoparts—a partnership formed many years ago that resulted in an album once destined to remain unreleased.

Olga Wojciechowska, known for her modern-classical masterpieces such as Infinite Distances (2019) and Unseen Traces (2020), as well as her 2022 collaboration with Scanner, breaks all known expectations with Soothsayers. In a dramatic departure, Olga unveils a new and unexpected side, debuting her haunting vocals—a delicate, spellbinding performance that recalls the golden era of trip-hop, and comparisons to the sounds pioneered by Tricky, Massive Attack, and Martina Topley-Bird.

With Tomasz adding layers of depth through intricate beats and electronics, Olga’s voice becomes the emotional core of the record, conjuring an intimate and nostalgic atmosphere.

In Olga’s own words: "This album is like becoming one with the earth itself—feeling the rawness of the wood, tasting the earth in your mouth, and sensing the presence of ancient spirits. The music carries a deep, primal energy, like being part of the forest, with creatures watching you from the shadows."

To complete the journey, ASC lends his signature touch with a stunning drum’n’bass reinterpretation, amplifying the album’s nostalgic essence. Soothsayers emerges as a spellbinding ode to times gone by, in more ways than one. 

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg – Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb – drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, where they won two “grammys” at the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2019: New artist of the year and Composer of the year.
Drawing on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, including Nils Frahm, Esbjörn Svennson and Jan Johansson’s landmark recording Jazz På Svenska, their music is an exquisite and joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay, all underwritten by the sheer joy of playing together. Following on from their Gondwana Records debut 'Over Tage', 'Superkilen' their forthcoming album, is named after a public park in the ethnically diverse Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. This erstwhile strip of waste ground was repurposed by the Superflex art group in the early 2010’s to bring together immigrants and locals in a mood of tolerance and unity. Its title feels emblematic of their music, which, equally inventively, creates space and serenity as a tonic within the tense and cluttered environment of 2020’s living. In the same way that the regeneration project has transformed that neighbourhood, Svaneborg Kardyb have drawn on that positive energy to help instigate changes in their own music.

"Combining steppy dance music, lush detail and a diaristic tone, Jack Chrysalis’ debut album dials between music that is destined to catch the ear of the club-goer and the heart of the dreamer, his signature propulsive mutations of organic techno and UK garage sounding strongly in tracks like Another Year and Coldharbour. Between these, Chrysalis threads in more introspective moments. Tracks formed by running a hand along piano keys in improvisation, or made in recollection of Koji Kondo’s clear bright musical palette for Zelda. They lend a sense of atmosphere and a deeper running mood to the album’s overworld, heightening endorphin hits from the garage swing and affording a little more bittersweetness to its textures and secrets. Whether in rush or retreat, each track on this album emerges with its own emotional resonance. There’s a sense of seasons turning, or a twilight quality that’s hard to fully pin down. “Owl music” became shorthand for Jack’s tunes, a way for Mana to capture a prescient, nocturnal flight within their environment."

Loraine James has processed the last two years of turbulence through her art. The North London producer started a monthly show on NTS radio, shared several projects on Bandcamp, and recorded two Hyperdub releases, the Nothing EP and Reflection, the proper LP follow-up to her 2019 breakthrough, For You and I (which landed James, then a teaching assistant by day, the top spot on year-end lists by Quietus and DJ Mag). She also returned to a distinct creative terrain uncharted since her teenage years. In contrast to her club music sensibilities, this mode embraces keyboard improvisations and vocal experimentation, foregoing percussive structure in favor of shaping atmosphere and tone. From this divergent headspace emerged new coordinates and climates, a new outlet: Whatever The Weather. A longtime fan of ambient-adjacent Ghostly International artists such as Telefon Tel Aviv (who she’d ask to master the album), HTRK (whose singer Jonnine Standish features on Nothing), and Lusine (whom she remixed at the start of 2021), James saw the label as the ideal home for this eponymous album of airy, transportive tracks as they began to formulate. The titling on Whatever The Weather works in degrees; simple parameters allowing James to focus on the nuances as a mood-builder. Her suspended universe fluctuates; freezing, thawing, swaying and blooming from track to track. James describes her jam-based approach for the sessions as “free-flowing, stopping when I felt like I was done,” allowing her subconscious to lead. The improvisations have an intrinsic fluidity to them, akin to sudden weather events passing over a single environment — the location feels fixed while the conditions vary. The album opens at “25°C,” a sunshower of soft hums and keys. As the longest piece, it serves to establish stability, the inflection point where any move above or below this temperate breeze breaks the bliss. Given James’ proclivity for organized chaos in her production, this scene is fleeting, naturally. From that utopia, we plummet to the most melancholic read on the meter, “0°C,” its isolated synth line traversing a hailstorm of steely beats and static. Next, the dial jumps for the propulsive standout “17°C.” Like a timelapse of springtime in the city, the single accelerates across a frenzy of frames; car horns, screeching brakes, and crosswalk chatter fill the pauses between rapid jolts of multi-shaped percussion. For portions of the work, James leans neo-classical, rendering pensive vignettes of cascading piano keys and warm delay. “2°C (Intermittent Rain)” ends the A-Side on a short and stormy loop; a resulting sense of reset permeates the B-Side’s opener, “10°C.” The producer mingles intuitively on echoed organ, locking into and abandoning atypical rhythms that suggest her jazz-oriented interests. “4°C” and “30°C” display the range of James’ vocal experiments. The former chops and pitches her voice to a rhythmic, otherworldly effect, the latter reveals James at her most straightforward (she cites Deftones’ Chino Moreno and American Football’s Mike Kinsella as inspirations), singing tenderly and unobstructed for nearly the duration before beats collide in the climax. Whatever The Weather closes at “36°C,” while a sweltering heat by any standards the track eases along comfortably on a chorus of synth waves, acting as an apt bookend for this evocative, sky-tracing collection that started in a similar state. Cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable, true to its namesake.

light decline is mostly built from manipulated samples. The lyrics are inspired by and addressed to those who have pissed me off. Bass is the only played instrument.

The songs sound sad, even though ‘sad’ has no real existence - it’s just a sensation produced by atoms ricocheting off each other mechanistically in an otherwise empty void. However this record has a natural tendency towards sad, and it’s worth recognising the significance of that.

On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. - A Polaroid. Still life with tangled leads and consumer electronics, late twentieth century. Black and various shades of dirty white are the dominant non-colours. The image’s spatial depth remains diffuse, the links between its elements speculative. A note stuck to the wall (a legend, perhaps, or an all-explaining blueprint in text form?) is impossible to decipher. You can’t see what connects the picture’s signs. You have to hear it. farben says: Every sound is a text. A bearer of meaning in search of a reader. Hoping the ideas inscribed in its autonomous existence will be understood as intended. While its beauty lies precisely in misunderstanding, in reading the coded message a new way every time. A thousand colours of sound, a thousand different ways to hear, to see, to understand. On textstar+ Jan Jelinek brings together the material from the CMYK series, four EPs he released between 1999 and 2002 under the pseudonym farben (the German word for both colours and paints), on a vinyl double LP for the first time. The selection of tracks has been remastered from the original tapes, joined by two additional pieces that appeared on compilations during the same period. Another new element is the Polaroid, showing the origins of a world: Jelinek’s home studio in Berlin at the time. farben says: Move your body! The project has its roots in Jelinek’s love of house as a reductionist vision of soul. Of four to the floor as a proposition that can be accessed anywhere. Of electronic dance music as a realm of possibility that can be continually expanded. farben was written as contemporary house music. As a text about excitement and euphoria. The arrangements were made directly while recording to DAT, on a twelve-channel mixing desk. Several track titles suggest a link to live concerts, coupled with the context of machine music and bedroom recording. Others affirm pop music’s most extravagant stock phrases about various states of love. Jelinek produced the tracks with the aim of making music for dancefloors. An idea that failed very productively. In the locations to which it was originally addressed, the project barely figured. But people did listen, and they listened all the more closely to this music that opened up new acoustic and associative scope for house. farben is the opposite of genre: a music spawning new terms (clicks & cuts, micro-house) that never manage to fully capture it. farben says: Signifiers. The four CMYK EPs are designed as a network of references that cannot be missed but that can also never be precisely deciphered. The vectors of sound, word and image point to Isaac Hayes and Ornette Coleman, to Detroit and the first generation of the Red Army Faction, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. So multifarious that they are distorted to the point of recognition. Overall we hear sonic docufictions whose appealing vagueness derives precisely from this oscillation between clarity and ambiguity, which is also the source of their poetry: the lyricism of the pure circulation of signs. The artwork is based on photographs of former Red Army Faction members, broken down into the four colours of the CMYK model. The motifs dissolve into individual dots of a single colour, so close to the faces that their expressions are only hinted at. Taken together, the individual colours compose a new whole out of fragmentary material, defying definition and thus maintaining their vibrancy. The same occurs on the level of sound. The sampler Jelinek used for these tracks had to be fed with floppy disks, imposing a memory limit of 1.44 megabytes per audio quotation from soul or jazz records. As a necessary consequence of this, the individual references, like the dots of colour, are dissolved into details and abstractions. They appear as splinters that recombine in new ways to create new meanings. The joy of collapsing metaphors. farben says: New departures. Even two decades after its original release, textstar+ does not come across as an epitaph to the modern era. Instead, it appears as a euphoric affirmation of the utopias of the twentieth century, translated into new sound texts via the aesthetic strategies of abstraction, collage, networking and speculation. 1.44 megabytes of history, one thousand signifiers, one album. From “Live ...” to “... Love”.

Early electronic music composer Raymond Scott will have a treasure trove of essential and extremely rare recordings collected on this new release Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, 1961-1971. From having his music adapted for Warner Bros. cartoons to inventing early electronic music instruments to releasing the classic (and recently reissued) Soothing Sounds For Baby series, Scott’s electronic music was famously ahead of its time and touched on sounds like techno and ambient music decades before those terms even existed. Many of the tracks feature Scott’s own inventions such as the Electronium and Clavivox instruments and capture a musician unimaginably ahead of his time.
Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, 1961–1971, represents the second anthology of pioneering electronica by Raymond Scott. The album contains 61 previously unissued gems, many featuring hypnotic rhythm tracks played by Scott’s Electronium — an invention which composed and performed using programmed intelligence. Three Willow Park reveals that Scott was producing beat-oriented proto-techno before the 1970s explosion of electronic music and rhythms on the pop charts, a significant achievement that should not be overlooked.

In 2000, Basta issued Manhattan Research Inc., a 2-cd set of 69 tracks recorded 1953–69, spotlighting Scott’s groundbreaking electronica — a gallery of strange sounds seemingly beamed down from UFOs. MRI also presented some of the earliest TV & radio commercials to feature electronic music, as well as early film soundtrack collaborations with Jim Henson. Three Willow Park presents the next stage in assuring Scott’s place in electronic music history.

Willow Park Center was an industrial rental complex of offices and warehouses in a Long Island suburb. Following his 1965 marital breakup, Scott set up shop at WPC. He operated a musical lab — researching, experimenting, testing, and measuring. He twirled knobs, flipped switches, and took notes. He installed equipment and machines, and used them to build new equipment and machines. This makeshift compound remained Scott’s workspace and bedroom until 1971, when he decamped for L.A. to work for Berry Gordy at Motown.

Scott was a highly qualified engineer who also happened to be a conservatory-trained (Juilliard) musician. He could compose, arrange, perform, improvise and edit, but given a shelf of hardware and a soldering iron, he could also rig an appliance to further his musical aims. Like many visionaries, Scott foreshadowed the future. He developed technological processes which were pivotal in the evolution of the fax machine. He composed a “silent” piece years before John Cage‘s 4′ 33″. He predicted (in 1944) that composers would someday reach audiences via thought transference. He applied for and was awarded numerous patents. Foremost, he developed electronic and automated sound-generating technology to craft the elements of pop music at a time when circuit-made sound was largely a novelty, used in “serious” works, or cranked-up for special effects in science fiction films.

In 1946, while still leading jazz bands, Scott established Manhattan Research, Inc., billed as “Designers and Manufacturers of Electronic Music and Musique Concrète Devices and Systems.” By the 1950s, he was using his inventions to produce commercials with electronic soundtracks, as well as developing automated sequencer technology. His friend and colleague Bob Moog said, “Scott was definitely in the forefront of developing electronic music technology and using it commercially as a musician.”

Besides the Electronium, sounds heard on Three Willow Park were generated by the Circle Machine; Clavivox; Bass-Line Generator; Bandito the Bongo Artist (a drum machine); tone, melody, rhythm and sound effects generators (some controlled, others random); oscillators, sequencers, and modulators; tape montages; and acoustic instruments and voices. These recordings, like those on MRI, define and establish Scott’s legacy in electronic music history.

Official reissue supervised by the artist Sourced from the original masters A rare and sought-after item among collectors and enthusiasts of early Japanese electronic music Never released on vinyl before Club is a stunning and timeless collection of avant-garde electronica, proto-techno, mecha-ambient, and ear-pleasing experimentations from the master behind Music for Spiral and producer of Hiroshi Yoshimura’s Pier & Loft, Motohiko Hamase’s #Notes of Forestry, and Satsuki Shibano's iconic Rendez-Vous Experience the roots of Japanese electronica

Six years after the release of the “A Parade, In The Place I Sit, The Floating World (& All Its Pleasures)” EP on anno Records, Brian Leeds, aka Huerco S., returns to the Loidis project with his debut album “One Day” on Incienso.

A classic. Boards of Canada's 1998 masterpiece, their first album.

The most important compilation in the history of electronic music "Artificial Intelligence" will be reissued on vinyl for the first time in 30 years! ! Includes valuable early recordings from Aphex Twin, Autechre, Richie Hawtin, Alex Peterson, and more! !

Many cutting-edge artists such as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Flying Lotus, and Oneohtrix Point Never have been produced. A reissue of the legendary compilation "Artificial Intelligence" released 30 years ago by , a label that continues to make immeasurable achievements in history!
Released in 1992, this compilation features Aphex Twin's The Dice Man alias, Autecha and Richie Hawtin Up! (UP!), B12's Musicology, Alex Peterson (The Orb) and Jimmy Cauty (The KLF).
This work is the first work of the "Artificial Intelligence" series released from 1992 to 1994 by , and from the series, "Surfing On Sine Waves" under the name of Aphex Twin's Polygon Window, Black. Dog Productions' Bytes, B12's Electro-Soma, Richie Hawtin's F.U.S.E. Dimension Intrusion, Speedy J's Ginger, Outeka's Incunabula and Artificial Intelligence II were released. rice field.
The gatefold sleeves have been reimagined by The Designers Republic and cut in classic black wax by Beau Thomas of Ten Eight Seven Mastering.

＜Tracklist＞
01.The Dice Man - Polygon Window
02.Musicology - Telephone 529
03.Autechre - Crystal
04.I.A.O - The Clan
05.Speedy J - De-Orbit
06.Musicology - Premonition
07.UP! - Spiritual High
08.Autechre - The Egg
09.Dr Alex Paterson - Loving You Live

A gas generator, a hi-fi system, a semi-abandoned house, and 20 hastily printed flyers. That's how, almost without realizing it, Lapsus was born in 2004.

Over the course of two decades, we've ridden a rollercoaster of emotions: from soaring epiphanies, convinced that nothing could stop us, to moments of near defeat when we almost threw in the towel. Let's be honest: Making a career out of music is not exactly choosing the easy path.

But epic tales aside, today we look back with pride at having created something that, in our humble view, is genuine. To celebrate Lapsus' journey and what lies ahead—and also keeping an eye on what is yet to come—we've gathered some of the artists who have joined us along the way, musicians we consider friends and for whom we have the deepest admiration. In a way, VINT (Catalan for “twenty”) is like a sonic photo album, a tracklist that tells our story better than we could ourselves, a collection of unreleased music that celebrates the fact that we've made it this far.

Leading this outstanding compilation are forward-thinking producers, with contributions from some of the most respected names in cutting-edge electronic music (A-Z): CLARAGUILAR, GAZZI, Kettel, Kode9, Le Motel, Lord Of The Isles, Marina Herlop, naemi, Nueen, Pépe, Plaid, Seph, Simo Cell, Suzanne Ciani, Wordcolour, and µ-Ziq.

VINT is our way of thanking you for your unwavering support over these 20 years. We hope you enjoy it! 

"Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music -- an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places! -- though the casual listener could hardly know that from an examination of the LP jacket. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS -- and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early '90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O'Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from -- like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno's ambient pieces -- but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape! And who was it? Was the band called Plux Quba? The record? The label? These sorts of mysteries are at the heart of records that require close listening and re-listening. As it was absorbed, it grew to be an influence on the Köln sound -- Mouse On Mars, Lithops, and Heemann's many and varied projects -- as well as O'Rourke, Fennesz and many others. Music and sound of this nature have for many years been made available by bands like Autechre, labels like Mille Plateaux -- but for the first ten years of its existence, Plux Quba was rarely heard. O'Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It's been almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which is way too long considering that we live in an era where it is necessary to have an LP of this on hand for your contemporary listening distractions. And so, Drag City has stepped in to reissue the Moikai reissue of Nuno Canavarro's classic Plux Quba."

Strange Meridians is an album by multidisciplinary artist upsammy. It is released by adventurous electronic music label topo2 on November 22, 2024. The record is pressed on 180 grams of ICCS-certified bio-vinyl, housed in a heavy full-colour sleeve, and comes with a download-code to the full release. Mastering is done by Isabel Schröer at Scape Mastering and artwork by courtesy of Thessa Torsing and Kees de Klein. Poetry by Thessa Torsing with editing by Eelco Couvreur.

'Science, Art And Ritual' is a story of ‘process'. Growing up in Harrow (a then quiet suburb of London) in the 70’s and 80’s from the age of about 10, Kingsuk Biswas aka Bedouin Ascent's ears opened up to sound as he scanned the airwaves. The undeniable righteousness of 80’s dub via David Rodigan’s Roots Rockers shows was the first prominent influence he received, and with punk roots —and his burgeoning record collection— became exposed to the breathless post punk experimentation that followed in the early 80’s sweeping up free jazz, noise, dub and much more. Throughout though, he maintained his fascination with Indian Classical music which was a mainstay in his parent’s house and spoke with the same infinite space as Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures', and King Tubby’s Studio dispatches. Through those teens he assembled and de-assembled, knocking about with fellow travellers —punk bands, garage, space rock, noise. Something was happening. On-U Sound, ECM, Factory Records kept him plugged in and sane. At that time Kingsuk's core studio setup revolved around his vintage Gretsch, Fender Jazz, Moog, TR-606 and rudimentary FX. He added congas, folk instruments, pipes, hand percussion, gongs, and jammed out shards of funk, noise, jazz fusion, electro and ambience into his hungry Tascam Portastudio. By 1987 these had morphed into what we’d now refer to broadly as techno, but the genre didn't exist beyond the reverberating walls of his bedsit, and he hadn’t yet plugged into the global conversation. 'Science, Art And Ritual' was released in 1994 by Rising High Records and was presented as Bedouin Ascent's debut album, although 'Music for Particles' (released in 1995, again on Rising High) was recorded even before —'SAR' sessions span from 1992-1993, whereas 'Music for Particles' were earlier from 1989-1992, with some older 4-track references from about 1986 too. Weaved in throughout the album are subconscious references to music that Kingsuk heard in the past that still remained within sight as companions. The opening track "Ancient Ocean III", referencing the extinct ocean Tethis, unapologetically channels Tackhead, Colourbox, Mantronix and Lee Perry. The style was also deliberately juxtaposed to the prevailing sound in techno at the time, which had locked onto a rigid form of symmetrical kicks and light snare drums. Elsewhere 80’s soul and funk are frozen and captured in fragile glass lattices. Electric pianos resound throughout, such as in "He Is She", probably a half-memory of 70’s MOR radio from childhood sleepy night drives. A duel between kick drums from three generations of Roland drum machines —TR-808, TR-707 and R-8— is a central theme in "Transition-R", all in conversation, calling and responding. These were not just machines to Bedouin Ascent, but part of an extended family, with heart and soul. Three decades after seeing the light, Lapsus is proud to present a special 30th anniversary reissue of this left-field techno gem in a repackaged and redesigned edition. All pressed on a deluxe 3LP marbled vinyl and including a limited lithographic insert print of the original album cover. All tracks have been restored and remastered directly from the original DAT tapes, and the album also features previously unreleased tracks such as "In the Clouds" and "Thru Water" —regularly performed live at that time and produced in the same period as the album sessions in 1993. 'Science, Art And Ritual’ may refer to esoteric traditions in Indian philosophy, but equally embodies the collision of the science, the art and the ritual that is at the core of being immersed in a deep musical journey.

Sweden's worldwide acclaimed composer, producer, DJ and pianist, Rasmus Faber, reveals his first album of ambient / neo-classical work, 'Where Light Touches' [A NIMA Story]. The album is inspired by, and in collaboration with, Los Angeles based illustrator Ross Tran (RossDraws), as an audio interpretation of his highly praised book, 'NIMA'. Crafting a fully immersive listening experience, Rasmus paints stunning audio pictures with delicate melodic hues, abound with atmospheric conversations between emotive pianos, soothing strings and sophisticated electronica that gracefully flow through this enchanting body of work. Composed, arranged and produced entirely by Rasmus, and conceived and mixed using Atmos surround sound, the album was recorded with a full orchestra in Stockholm and fused with contemporary electronic elements from Rasmus' rich musical heritage. 'Where Light Touches' [A NIMA Story] began after Ross contacted Rasmus to make music for one of his projects. They immediately found admiration and kinship in each other's work. Ross sent Rasmus his new illustrations book entitled 'NIMA', which served as the perfect catalyst for a musical idea Rasmus had - to make an album of subtle beauty and immense production and technical dexterity. Rasmus became absorbed in the characters and worlds in the 'NIMA' book, encouraging him to match his composing and production skills with Ross's otherworldly illustrations and boundless talent. The result is something quite extraordinary and beautiful that can be enjoyed accompanying the 'NIMA' book, or purely as an audio gift for the senses. Rasmus Faber started his career as a Jazz musician and house DJ, touring the world, performing to fans of the melodic side of electronic music over the last two decades. His success as an artist in Japan, and being fan of Anime and Manga opened the doors to becoming a composer (one of the only non-Japanese) of music for Anime. He's composed music for the Meta Quest VR platform, AAA games such as Metal Gear Solid and is behind an almost constant stream of music releases under aliases and his on name garnering hundreds of millions of streams.

Dettinger’s Intershop and Oasis have long been held, by many fans of ambient and electronic music, to be some of the finest albums in their field. Produced by the mysterious Olaf Dettinger, about whom not much is publicly known, they were some of the earliest full-lengths released by the then-nascent Kompakt, and in many ways, they both articulated and defined the sound that would come to be known as Pop Ambient, while also existing, somehow, to the leftfield of any clearly recognisable genre. Beautiful, sui generis works, it is a rare pleasure to see them being reissued on vinyl for a new generation of listeners to embrace. Originally released on CD only in 1999, Intershop was Kompakt’s first artist full-length. The music here simmers and broods, with opulent banks of tone marking out territory for rhythms that seem to be built from the clacking detritus of technology – hisses, thunks, knocks. Bass is deployed carefully, each drop a dubbed-out depth charge; drones spin and spiral, warping and weaving between the beats. Oasis, released in 2000, refined the palette that Dettinger had explored on its predecessor. A blurred crusade of ambient texturology, its unassuming patterns, and subtle, incremental dynamics, admit to real beauty, and a kind of abstract sensuality that you don’t often experience with music that is, perhaps, similarly tooled, but not as poetic. Through seemingly simple gestures – whether lushly expansive repetitions, hyper-acute tremolo tones, or ear-tickling rhythms – it builds complex emotional resonance. It’s no surprise to discover Oasis is held in high esteem by artists like Panda Bear of Animal Collective, who once said of Dettinger, “For us, he was the dude.” There is, of course, other music to know Dettinger by, too – his three excellent EPs for Kompakt, Blond (1998), Puma and Totentanz (1999), the latter of which, Michael Mayer once argued, “invented dubstep.” There is also a small, yet graceful run of compilation contributions, many of which can be found on Kompakt’s Total and Pop Ambient series. All this music has plenty to recommend it, sharing a clarity of purpose, and a rare, human warmth and depth. But Intershop and Oasis are the releases that distil Dettinger’s singular vision, and allow him, should he wish, to claim his place as a modern master of ambient and electronic music.

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

boycalledcrow is the alias of Chester-based sound artist Carl M Knott (Wonderful Beasts, Spacelab). Knott, a former folk musician, uses his myriad acoustic influences to create unique, strange and beautiful compositions. We're excited to be able to bring you the latest wonderful album from Chester's boycalledcrow, after some superb releases for labels such as Mortality Tables, Waxing Crescent Records and Subexotic Records. Knott's music doesn't sit easily in any pre-existing genres, being at once strange and experimental, yet melodic and somehow comforting. His music is intimate and evocative, deeply personal, and manages to be both bucolic and yet totally 21st century, like Kraftwerk's robots dreaming of sheep. The songs and sounds on “eyetrees” are inspired by a rich family life and the wonderful times spent with his wife and kids, both at home and out in nature. Knott said of the album and its inspirations: “We enjoy spending time in the woods with our young children, creating stories about the "eye tree”. This tree, with thousands of eyes, watches over us and cares for us like family. We make fox medicine and cherish these blissful moments. The music reflects these times, seen through the colors of an old, fuzzy reel—orange, red, and yellow with blurred edges, like an old photo scorched by the sun. I feel a deep spiritual connection to the countryside; the hands of Arcadia cradle me when I feel sad. Some of the album was created during times of sadness when I felt death was close and the lines between worlds were blurred. This feeling—that anything can happen and that life is delicate and can be taken away in a flash—permeates the music. The song titles are stories and memories of my family, filled with hazy pinks, yellows, reds, and oranges. Wonky acoustic guitar, broken electronics, and a warm, otherworldly space."

In 2007 an Italian film festival invites Mouse on Mars to score a film of their choice. The organizers claim to be able to clear the rights for any movie the band chooses. Werner Herzog’s fictional documentary Fata Morgana, which merges footage of several desert explorations by Herzog and his team into one continuous association, has long been a band’s favorite. The film comes with a soundtrack by Mozart, Leonard Cohen, Third Ear Band and field recordings. Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner are sent a DVD to Düsseldorf and start working. The idea is to score the film in real time so instrumentation has to be readily at hand: guitar, percussion, electronics, mouth harp, pedals, software, tapes, samplers. Once the arrangement for the three-part film is sorted Mouse on Mars bring their score to stage. Herzog Sessions is performed twice: first when the band still thought the rights had been cleared, and a second time at London’s Southbank Center knowing that Herzog had never approved a new score.

Portico Quartet announce Monument, the electronic driven follow-up to their acclaimed ambient-minimalist suite Terrain, presenting the band at their most direct. It's rare that a band releases two albums within six months of each other, rarer too that while both are so different, they are both as epochal in terms of the band's output as Terrain and Monument are to Portico Quartet. The irony is that Monument, a stripped-back, intentionally direct album, was the album that the band set out to write in May 2020, before the dream like long-form Terrain came into focus. Briefly they were two halves of the same record, but the band ended up developing these two distinct bodies of work concurrently. And although they were written side-by-side and recorded at the same sessions, they are records best understood as distinct from each other, each with opposing ideas and forms. Monument is one of Portico Quartet's most accessible, direct records to date. If Terrain addressed the darker side of how Duncan Bellamy and Jack Wyllie made sense of the pandemic, then Monument resonates as an ode to better times. If not quite a dance record, it nonetheless pulses with an energy, radiance and a scalpel sharp focus. Jack Wyllie explains: "It's possibly our most direct album to date. It's melodic, structured and there's an economy to it that is very efficient. There's not much searching or wastage within the music itself, it is all finalised ideas, precisely sculpted and presented as a polished artefact." Bellamy expands "Monument sits somewhere between our albums Portico Quartet and Art in the Age of Automation. It has perhaps a more overtly electronic edge to its sound – there are more synthesisers and electronic elements than we have used before and the music is often streamlined and rhythmic". After the ethereal, stage-setting of Opening, the album kicks into overdrive with Impressions, a short energetic track that pairs a club influenced groove with hang drum and close, delicate saxophone. It's the balance between these elements that push and pull the track through a selection of melodic and rhythmic re-configurations, contrasting human touch with a machine-like focus. Ultraviolet is a kaleidoscopic, krautrock inspired track with a haunting introduction and an insistent pulse. The wistful Ever Present builds from a simple piano refrain; a nostalgic melody line floats over the top as drums and bass groove insistently underneath, before reaching a euphoric peak. The title track Monument builds around a looping vocal sample, drums and an enigmatic melody, the ending giving way to a gauzy, weaving synth line. The power here is in its economy and luminosity. AOE flips back and forth, like a dial that's been switched. Mining the tension between a pastoral inflected cello and saxophone melody, with an abrupt shift to jilted live drums, wailing delayed saxophone and a flickering synth line. Warm Data comes straight from the same Portico Quartet tradition as older tracks like Current History and Laker-Boo. It's a marriage of instrumental minimalism with drum machines and synths. Finally, the album closes with On The Light, a track that transmits a sense of suspense and freedom, driven by the twitching drums of Bellamy and evocative sax of Wyllie. It offers the perfect bitter-sweet and evocative ending to Portico Quartet's latest Monument. Mastered by John Davis at Metropolis. Artwork by Duncan Bellamy for Veils Project.

“Portico Quartet stake claims to territory occupied by Radiohead, Cinematic Orchestra and Efterklang”. The Guardian ***** Mercury Prize-nominated Portico Quartet has always been an impossible band to pin down. Sending out echoes of jazz, electronica, ambient music and minimalism, the group created their own singular, cinematic sound over the course of three studio albums, from their 2007 breakthrough ‘Knee-Deep in the North Sea’, and 2010 John Leckie produced ‘Isla’, to the self titled record ‘Portico Quartet’ in 2012. Now rebooted as Portico Quartet after a brief spell as the three-piece Portico, the group are set to release their fourth studio album Art In The Age Of Automation this August on Manchester’s forward thinking indy jazz and electronica label Gondwana Records. It’s an eagerly anticipated return, with the band teasing both a return to their mesmeric signature sound and fresh new sonic departures in their new music. So much so that their four-night run at Archspace E8 (June 22-25) sold out in less than an hour as fans from around the world scrambled for tickets to hear the return of Portico Quartet. Recorded at Fish Factory Studios in London at the beginning of the year and mixed at Vox studios, Berlin, Art In The Age Of Automation finds the band building on the sound world they first explored with their eponymous 2012 release Portico Quartet, mixing the cinematic minimalism, that first made their name, with electronic and ambient textures alongside a welcome return for Jack’s ethereal saxophone and Duncan’s unique mixture of live and electronic drums as well of course as the band’s signature sound, the chiming other worldy tones of the hang drum. It’s hard music to define, as Jack acknowledges. “Our sound falls between many genres, jazz, electronic music even minimalism in places, but naturally it’s an amalgamation of everything we’ve listened to”. And as you would expect from a band that have evolved with each recording, this is no barren retread of the past, instead it represents another step forward sonically and musically in the band’s ongoing evolution, as Jack explains. “We’ve really gone into detail with the sounds and production, building dense layers and textures but retaining a live, organic feel to it. We wanted to use acoustic instruments but find ways in which they could interact with more modern production techniques and technologies to create something that was identifiably us but sounded fresh and exciting, futuristic even.” Its an ethos that also informs the album’s title and the distinctive artwork by Duncan Bellamy (under his Veils Project identity) that adorns the album’s cover “The artwork came about when I started to explore the idea of scanning moving images. The resulting image is exactly that - a film playing on a tablet whilst the scan is in action. So the image is something created by the scanner itself, and in this way it establishes a relationship with the title of the album”. And it’s the mix between the human and the electronic that makes the music on AITAOA so fresh and exciting as Portico Quartet one again evolve their music into the future. The album opens with insistent, catchy Endless, which references the classic Portico Quartet sound, but expands outwards into a hypnotic, blissful collage of strings, hangs, electronics, saxophones and Bellamy’s unique drumming. It’s a sound that permeates the whole record, feeling both familiarly Portico Quartet, but transformed into something bold and new, sounding somehow bigger than ever but even more detailed. Elsewhere Rushing draws on the bands love of minimalist music, a repeated piano motif merges with a contorted vocal sample that twists its way through juxtaposed spaces to reach an uplifting resolve. Meanwhile the title track offers a moment of down-tempo respite: the hang drum is joined by a full horns and string section, culminating in a orchestral outro where cellos and violins blend with saxophones and hang drum to form a densely layered blanket of sound. The sound of strings are prevalent on much of the record, and as Jack explains they add an extra layer of humanity to the music “It’s exciting working with a string section and to hear the ideas you sketch on a computer being played on acoustic instruments, then being able to direct them in a way in which is just not possible on a computer, it brings a real emotional depth and nuance to the record”. On A Luminous Beam an infectious drum grove drives the piece while synths, flutes and strings are layered with the saxophone floating freely over the top. Beyond Dialogue is classic Portico Quartet, exploiting the ethereal, otherworldly timbre of the hang drums and Jack’s saxophone to create a hypnotic track that references minimalism and ambient music to create something beautiful and new. Current History has nods towards more electronic and urban music as drum machines underpin a collage of hang drums and saxophones. The album finishes on the aptly tilted Lines Glow, the saxophone weaving its melody over an organ and string section culminating in an epic, euphoric moment of release. It’s a fittingly uplifting way to end an album that announces the return of one of the UK’s most singular, and influential bands, one that a decade from their founding are still pushing the boundaries of their music into the future and still sound like nothing you ever heard before.