MUSIC

One of the definitive albums of 2024, edited and remixed by close pals and admirers; Conrad Pack, ML Buch, Blood Orange, Valentina Magaletti, Lolina, Smerz, Slauson Malone, HVAD and more.

The judicious pick of editors render the downbeat charms and quietly reflective, penetrating lyrics of ‘Great Doubt’ into spaces faithful to, adjacent, and far removed from Astrid Sonne’s beloved originals. Variously teasing its baked in ingredients of chamber music, art-pop, and R&B from curious new perspectives, they range, for example, from the plonging industrial dub rework of ‘Boost’ by Conrad Pack, to a standout 12 minute expansion of ‘Light and Heavy’ along moonlit, Autechrian lines by an ever reliable HVAD, whereas avant R&B star Blood Orange emphasises the breezy soul of ‘Give My All’ is a bright, lustrous overhaul refreshed with tumescent art-pop harmonies, and ML Buch puckers ‘Overture’ to a sparkling whorl that highlights her collaborator’s instrumental tekkerz.

Valentina Magaletti (whose work rate, at this point, makes us wonder if she’s a tulpa) can be counted on for a dusted downbeat take on ‘Everything is Unreal’, and Lolina likewise reliably enhances the oddness of ‘Almost’ in her elusive way, whilst the likes of pop duo Smerz and Slauson Malone amplify Sonne’s infectiouus hooks with a dance-pop appeal.

Primitive Maxi Trial is a time-warped excavation from the archives of Emiliano Pennisi, the Palermo-based producer and underground fixture behind the Paradigma collective (DerFreitag, Algoritmo). Surfacing on the Heat Crimes imprint, this archival transmission feels less like a retrospective and more like a haunted artifact – a fragment of the pre-digital underground rendered in dusty, lo-fi hues.

Drawn from material produced between the late ’90s and mid-2000s, Primitive Maxi Trial occupies a blurred zone where early DAW fetishism meets pirate aesthetics and a scavenger’s ear for pop-cultural residue. Think cracked VSTs (Albino, SubBoomBass), MPC 1000 grit, and CD-ROM sample libraries ripped from Future Music and Computer Music cover discs—long-lost sonic ephemera unearthed like forgotten VHS tapes in the backroom of a failing electronics shop.

There’s an unmistakable hauntological hue here—not in the usual Ghost Box pastiche sense, but something rawer, more regionally specific. These tracks were forged under the looming shadow of the Mafia Maxi Trial, in a city fraught with paranoia, informal spaces, and cultural fragmentation. That tension bleeds into the music: compressed textures, iron-lung atmospheres, and bleakly humorous juxtapositions that wouldn’t feel out of place soundtracking a Mark Leckey installation.

But this isn’t mere nostalgia. Pennisi’s compositions slip between IDM’s jittery melancholy, no-fi techno, ambient detritus, and grotesque rave misfires with an almost outsider art sensibility. Surreal cuts appear like tape-warped memories of nights out you’re not sure really happened. In the best moments, Primitive Maxi Trial feels like music made not for release but for ritual—claustrophobic yet oddly liberating, deeply personal yet disarmingly tongue-in-cheek.

Very different from Biosphere's last AD 93 offering, 'The Way of Time' is a freewheeling set of atmospheric vintage synth jams, dubby ambient techno experiments and decelerated electro workouts that's inspired by American poet and author Elizabeth Madox Roberts' 'The Time Of Man'. Essential listening for fans of 'Patashnik', then.

On 2021's 'Angel's Flight', Geir Jenssen focused his gaze on Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, tweaking and stretching it to tease out its essence. He's on more familiar ground here, using Joan Lorring's voice, from a 1951 radio adaptation of 'The Time Of Man', to guide us through a spruced-up spread of his signature sounds. If you've kept up with his releases, then you'll know that the last few albums have been made with restored keyboards and drum machines - a marked shift from his period using samples and software.

'The Way Of Time' seems to follow the same path: opener 'Time Of Man' is barely more than a brassy analog lead and Lorring's smudgy voice, while the title theme (that repeats in various forms), with its acidic plucks and sequenced repetitions takes us back to Jenssen's milestone album 'Patashnik', when he set the bar for ambient techno. It's a welcome return to familiar sonics; unlike his last couple of synth-heavy albums, that sounded like fun diversions and jams, 'The Way Of Time' holds neatly together as a unit, well braided by its journeyman theme. Lorring's voice is the anchor, and Jenssen's able to refresh his most referenced material with contemporary processes and techniques.

“Horizons” is an album by COMPUMA, developed from his 2023 digital-only “Horizons EP” released via Bandcamp. Inspired by his roots in Kumamoto and the landscapes he encountered during walks in various locations, the album captures the calm and comfort of everyday life. Blending ambient, downtempo electronic, and imaginary environmental sounds, it offers a minimal yet richly atmospheric listening experience.

Taba, the new album from Japanese musician, songwriter and traveller Satomimagae, unfolds as a series of vignettes that document both the personal and the universal, seen and unseen. Observing and absorbing the fleeting scenes and sounds of life flowing outside of her home studio, Satomi sings beyond herself, in an orbit of souls and systems both in the present and in the strange flux of memory, leaving linear songwriting to rest for circuitous stories expanded and expansive in tone and texture.

claire rousay's 'sentiment' gets the remix treatment from Maral, more eaze, Patrick Shiroishi, M Sage, Andrew Weathers, AMULETS and Gretchen Korsmo.

Texas-based mainstay Andrew Weathers is first up, his rework glues all the vocals on the entire 'sentiment' album into a robotic gurgle - it's the most off-track version of the set and immediately stands out. Maral's take on 'ily2' is more restrained, adding a beat and neatly psychedelic back half, while sound artist Gretchen Korsmo turns 'asking for it' into a whisper of the original as if she's turned it inside out, leaving rousay's vocals to harmonize with her tempered drones. AMULETS' rework of 'head' sounds more in-line with the 'sentiment' mood; the Portland-based A/V artist swells rousay's fizzing emo-folk into tape-fucked shoegaze, and it works very well.

Novisad’s second album Seleya, originally released by Tomlab in 2001, is reissued by Keplar with a previously unheard bonus track from 2004 and a fresh cut by LUPO. Produced by Kristian Peters, these thirteen loop-based miniatures evoke a sense of early-2000s digital experimentation—crafted with the rudimentary tools, quirks and limitations of pre-Ableton software and repurposed equipment. Aliased tones, subtle dissonances and quietly colliding loops form a delicate, melancholic atmosphere that’s both intimate and exploratory. Untethered from convention, Seleya documents a moment of sonic curiosity and invention, where imperfection and unpredictability add emotional depth to its fragile beauty.

Editions Mego reissue the 2001 release Asuma by Finnish artist Ilpo Väisänen. Originally released on CD this is the first ever vinyl issue, remastered by Rashad Becker. 2001 is a landmark year for the artist following a wave of success from the notable outfit Väisänen formed alongside Mika Vanio, Pan Sonic (as they were now known then). Following a string of highly acclaimed and influential releases such as “Vakio”, “Kulma”, “A’ and “Aaltopiiri” Pan Sonic had toured the globe extensively leaving a trail of blown expectations and rumours of all manner of objects in venues cracking or falling apart due to the immense sound the duo concocted with their unique instruments.

Taking a break from the ecstatic cacophony of Pan Sonic, Väisänen retreated to work on a solo release which conjured the spirits of the former outfit whilst simultaneously carving out a more personal take on these new electronic forms.

Asuma is a precise study of drones, rhythms, clicks, ambience and gentle confusion. Whilst inhabiting a zone of abstraction the results also move in a natural field as Väisänen’s native Finland permeates these recordings as much as the idea of experimentation itself.

Autioitu 1 opens the album as delicate pinball rhythms bounce across the spectrum as a hairy drone hovers underneath. The mood is both intriguing and unsettling. Tukahduttaja is a delightfully disorientating sound sculpture that is hard to pinpoint what it actually is. Klikki is comparable to a microscopic version of Pink Floyd’s “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict”. Asumaton is a foreboding miniature acting like a segway to Vallitseva which embraces the icy clicks that punctuates much of the Pan Sonic output. Arvioimaton Ongelma is an audio riddle whilst Jaettu jitters around a dancefloor crawl. Autioitu closes proceedings as a gentle ambient thumper. Asuma is awash with contradiction and mystery. This is time wrapped in twisted turns and rewards a neat payoff for those interested in the absolute fringes of electronic ‘dance’ music.

A new age lightness of being guides NNF alum Baptiste Martin to gently optimistic ambient, H-pop and glitching electronica styled results on a debut for Stroom, inseparable from its back story, regaled by the label below:

""I was admitted to Son Llàtzer Hospital in Mallorca on October 1, 2024, following a psychotic shock”.

This could well have been the opening sentence of a confessional novel but it’s not. It’s the first line of an email, which landed in my mailbox seemingly out of nowhere. The words were written by Baptiste Martin, the composer behind Les Halles.

In his letter, sent as a pdf document, Baptiste offered his friends a concise but striking report on his whereabouts from the past months. In brief, Baptiste was lost, found, lost and found again, yet seemingly forever confined to the walls of his cerebral interior. The letter describes a loss of grip and self-control, like a baby water turtle trying to hoist his way out of the fish tank by scratching the glass walls, without any result.

Baptiste is a musician and not a writer. His opening line is thus followed by an album, not a novel. This is the album. Yet, ‘Original Spirit’ doesn’t tell the story of his psychotic shock as a linear nonfiction, it offers a vague resolution to all the mischief in life: the hope for the existence of an original spirit, untainted despite all that might happen during the course of a life.

The album provokes images of what I would perceive as indeed an original spirit of oneself: an abstract nothingness breezing through landscapes of colours, searching for places beyond the boundaries of what we call freedom in the material world. A stream of sound, nostalgic to a time that never existed, a mystical loophole that we know isn’t there yet still crave for. In short: the sound of an uncannily serene feeling beyond hope."

"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

Mammal Hands are a trio of like-minded musicians: Nick Smart piano, Jesse Barrett drums and tabla, and Jordan Smart saxophones. Floa is their second album for Gondwana Records and in the 18 months since their debut, Animalia, they have carved out a growing following both here and abroad for their hypnotic fusion of jazz, folk and electronica: winning fans from Bonobo and Gilles Peterson to Jamie Cullum. Landmark live performances have included shows at King's Place in London and the RNCM in Manchester, as well as a barn-storming debut at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Drawing on a rich well of influences from Sufi and shamanic African trance music, Irish and Eastern European folk music, to Steve Reich and Philip Glass and more contemporary electronica influences, their music is built around deceptively simple sounding ideas that are lent power through the use of repetition and rhythmic loops. They have been compared to both Portico Quartet and GoGo Penguin for the way in which they navigate the choppy waters between contemporary dance music and jazz.

Floa (an old Norse word that means to deluge or to flow) is the sound of a more confident, experienced band: one that has grown together naturally through touring and gigging and through mammoth writing and rehearsal sessions where all three bring rhythmic, improvisational and melodic ideas to the table. Floa was recorded at Gondwana's home from home, 80 Hertz Studios in Manchester, reuniting the band with producer Matthew Halsall and features some of the Gondwana Orchestra strings who played on Halsall's acclaimed album Into Forever. Together they have crafted a wonderful sounding record, the richness of which perfectly illuminates the band's music. Artwork is from Gondwana's in-house design maestro Daniel Halsall whose artwork of symbols created from older symbols perfectly illustrates the creative ideas that drive the band's music.

〈Mille Plateaux〉や〈iDEAL Recordings〉にも作品を残すスウェーデンの電子音楽の名手Andreas Tilliander（TM404）と、ジャズ・トランペッターGoran Kajfešによるコラボレーション作品『In Cmin』が〈Kontra Musik〉からアナログ・リリース！TB-303のベースラインやアナログ／デジタルシンセによる音響彫刻と、Kajfešのトランペットやフルートが交錯し、月面や神話的な風景を想起させる音世界を構築。Terry Rileyの『In C』へのオマージュとして、Cマイナーでの即興演奏を展開しながら、ジャズとアンビエントの境界を越えた新たな地平を切り開いていく一枚です。

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.

Twenty-four years on from its original release, Monolake's seminal Gravity receives its first vinyl pressing courtesy of Field Records. Occupying its own space at the intersection of dub techno, minimal and electronica, it's an ageless album of staggering vision and technological prowess which has matured into an all-time pillar of electronic music. This edition, remastered by the album's key architect Robert Henke, follows on from the recent reissue of Monolake's first album, Hongkong.

Arriving just after the turn of the millennium, Gravity marked a turning point for Monolake. With co-founder Gerhard Behles moving on to other ventures, Henke produced most of the album solo and journeyed deeper into spatial exploration and the dub-informed principles that underpinned their project from the start. Minimalism and negative space run through the whole record, from the keen slithers of percussion pinging through lattices of delay to the hypnotising pulse of subliminal basslines anchoring the tracks. Gravity is a record which hangs on techno's linearity as a form of meditation, but the crystalline clarity of the mix allows every micro-fluctuation in rhythm and sound to cut through.

Compared to a lot of overly sterile digital music released in the early 2000s, Gravity endures thanks to the warmth and texture Henke elicited from his processes — even when leaning into none-more-digital effects like bit reduction. He described the ninth-floor view over Berlin from his studio at night as a key influence on the sound of the record, but the space Gravity shapes out feels thrillingly implacable. Unbound by the standard conventions of time and space, Gravity stands proud as a true original and finally gets the ceremonious vinyl pressing it so richly deserves.

This is the second collaboration on Offen by the French post-industrial experimental artist Thierry Mérigout of Geins't Naït, composer and multi-instrumentalist Laurent Petitgand, and the UK composer and sound designer Robin Rimbaud AKA Scanner, whose prolific catalogue includes scores for dance works by the London Royal Ballet and Merce Cunningham, and who has performed and installed his music in venues ranging from the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow to the Pompidou Centre in Paris and a hospital morgue in Garches.
Vitio is a repository of memory: Coastal plateaus and city streets evoked and cracked open by glowering basslines and jumbled rhythms made for ragged walking. Thierry and Laurent have been collaborating together since 1987, the year after Thierry co-founded Geins’t Naït while at the Architecture School of Nancy. Their work together is dense and textural, influenced by Situationists and Surrealists; the raw loops of Geins’t Naït meeting the musicality of Petitgand, a soundtrack composer for film, dance and theatre who has worked closely with director Wim Wenders. Thierry and Laurent first collaborated with Scanner on OFFEN015, a set of otherworldly collaged slow-mo soundscapes. Here, on tracks like Vitio and Austral, threads of sampled dialogue interweave with melodic fragments or repeating piano lines, like the sun breaking through above a tangle of golden wrack and rockweed. On Acid and 63, divine industrial shoegaze sweeps across the windscreen like water washed from trees. Elsewhere, on SIO, submerged clicks surface amid foghorn-like electrostatic charges, an introspective aeromancy. On J’Appartiens, stabs of samples dart back and forth over the ominous time keeping of a sparse beat and pulsing bass. On Sunday and NNSS, we, the invisible listeners, rise to the surface, where there is rain. Both the sounds of NNSS and the rainfall were installed in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, as captured in a lovely video made by Thierry’s daughter. Beneath the rain, in a building designed by SANAA architects, paving stones can be seen. Beneath the stones - we can only guess - a cloud.

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

On Wednesday June 21, 2023 LA-via-Rio composer Fabiano do Nascimento had organized - with Leaving Records and an ensemble of contemporaries in the local scene - a one-night-only seated concert at a historic venue in Northeast Los Angeles. Do Nascimento and his band set out to perform a curated selection of original music and other favorites from cherished composers.

Behold Solstice Concert - the raw recording of what went down that evening - straight from the board, solstice vibes glistening, full band synchronized, audience stoked. Although unintended to be a full-length album release subsequent to the performance, the tape was indeed rolling however unknown to the band on stage and those in attendance.

On Wednesday June 21, 2023 LA-via-Rio composer Fabiano do Nascimento had organized - with Leaving Records and an ensemble of contemporaries in the local scene - a one-night-only seated concert at a historic venue in Northeast Los Angeles. Do Nascimento and his band set out to perform a curated selection of original music and other favorites from cherished composers.

Behold Solstice Concert - the raw recording of what went down that evening - straight from the board, solstice vibes glistening, full band synchronized, audience stoked. Although unintended to be a full-length album release subsequent to the performance, the tape was indeed rolling however unknown to the band on stage and those in attendance.

"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."

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.

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.

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.