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Gigi Masin - Talk To The Sea (2LP)Gigi Masin - Talk To The Sea (2LP)
Gigi Masin - Talk To The Sea (2LP)Music From Memory
¥5,592

Part of only a small and very much underground music scene in his hometown of Venice, Gigi Masin self released two modestly pressed LP's 'Wind' (1986) and 'Wind Collector' (1991) and appeared along side Charles Hayward for the Sub Rosa compilation LP "Les Nouvelles Musiques De Chambre Volume 2" (1988).

Having met with little commercial success in Italy at the time, Gigi Masin's solo albums remained for the most part totally unknown. His music has though in recent years, and seemingly by pure word of mouth, developed almost something of a cult following.

Gigi Masin's uniquely intricate and at times deeply emotive compositions take the listener into a realm of contemplation, a spellbound mind state where time and space appear to dissolve. His sparse and hypnotic often loop-based compositions seem to draw parallels with Detroit Techno's earliest beginnings, all at once conjuring those same feelings of both melancholic longing and ecstatic joy.

With access to Masin's large body of work, far greater than that of the handful of released recordings, Music From Memory's new compilation covers a period of over 30 years, from the mid 1980's up until recent works . Including seventeen compositions, most of which have remained unreleased or unavailable until now, 'Talk To The Sea' aims to shine a light on Gigi Masin's unique and heartfelt talent. This is electronic music from the soul."

Grouper -  A I A : Alien Observer (LP)
Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer (LP)Kranky
¥4,989

2025 repress. "Out-of-print LPs from the critically acclaimed electronic experimental singer/songwriter. Unavailable since 2012.'This sound / synapse transposition is as haunting as it is beautiful -- surely Grouper's best.' --Tiny Mix Tapes. 'If past Grouper releases have inhabited abyssal trenches and damp backwoods, here Harris takes us journeying across constellations and stars. Two of the most beguiling albums of the year, exquisitely realized and singularly evocative.' --The Quietus. 'This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them.' --Pitchfork. 'Harris finds a way to dive deeper in simple and unassuming ways.' --NPR."

7038634357 - Neo Seven (LP)7038634357 - Neo Seven (LP)
7038634357 - Neo Seven (LP)Blank Forms Editions
¥3,871
Neo Gibson records, performs, and produces under the alias 7038634357. Their music is characterized by its formal precision, melodic structure, and an idiosyncratic emotional tenor. Up until this point, it has been primarily self-released on small-batch CD-R’s and performed in intimate settings. Synthesized and recorded entirely on their computer, Neo Seven is their first vinyl record, and perhaps their seventh release depending on where you begin amidst their prolific and fluid output. Within a runtime of just over thirty minutes, Neo Seven contains a spare, beautiful, and raw journey through the artist's emotive, psychologically-charged ambient songwriting. The album’s seven tracks bleed into and out of one another, continually forming and deforming between soundscape, song, and silence. The record opens slowly with Winded, as brief intervals of soft noise, nearly indistinguishable from dust breeding on the turntable, gradually become the ground upon which harmonic form is built. As tones subtly shift across regular lulls of sound, one gets the sense they’re traveling amidst a pulsar in deep space. Neo’s heavily-processed melodies, gated regularly by silence, form the heartbeat of the record, creating an expansive field in which an interior, subjective journey takes place. Square Heart utilizes this motif to rhythmic ends, in what surprisingly develops into an achingly tender pop song, albeit one in which Neo’s robotic, heavily vocoded voice is distant, sullen, and mixed low. As each track explores its own interior logic, complex forms emerge out of simple structures, and layers of oscillations commingle and build upon one another. Rhythmic cuts of compressive texture begin to feel like meteors burning up in the atmosphere or hail upon the windshield. The record begins and ends with Neo’s slowly built-up waves of ambient harmony being cut by grating digital noise. On the final track, Perfect Night, beneath the thrashing, a song-form appears nearly inaudibly. Hidden beneath the noise, Neo’s voice bears a clarity and a softness that is revealed only momentarily, when the noise flitters out cinematically toward the end of the track.
Patricia Wolf - Hrafnamynd (LP)
Patricia Wolf - Hrafnamynd (LP)Balmat
¥4,789
A leading figure in the current ambient/experimental scene, Portland-based Patricia Wolf delivers her second release on Balmat with a soundtrack for a documentary set in Iceland. Centered around the UDO Super 6 synthesizer, and incorporating guitar, mallet percussion, and field recordings, it carefully maps the intersections of landscape and memory. Avoiding overtly dramatic swells, its sustained layers shift subtly, allowing traces of childhood recollections and Nordic folklore to emerge with quiet beauty. A work where Wolf’s meticulous sound design and lyrical sensibility converge, standing as a defining statement in her career.
Steve Reich - Six Pianos / Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (Mint Vinyl LP)
Steve Reich - Six Pianos / Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ (Mint Vinyl LP)Klimt Records
¥3,865
Six Pianos is a minimalist piece for six pianos by the American composer Steve Reich. It was completed in March 1973. Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ – again – emerged in the same year. The piece is scored for glockenspiels, marimbas, metallophone (vibraphone without resonator fans), women's voices and organ. The piece is in four sections, played without a break, marked off by changes in key and meter.
Arvo Pärt - Für Alina (LP)
Arvo Pärt - Für Alina (LP)Mississippi Records
¥3,521
Compilation of our favorite Arvo Part pieces. All sparse and beautiful arrangements. Some solo piano pieces, some duets with piano, violin cello and viola and one string quartet. The pieces on this record are all unique to the style of Arvo Part – deceptively simple compositions that force you to live in the moment you are listening to them. A Part quote from the back of the record – “You can kill people with sound. And if you can kill, then maybe there is also the sound that is opposite of killing. And the distance between these two points is very big. And you are free—you can choose. In art everything is possible, but everything is not necessary.”
Heith - Escape Lounge (LP)Heith - Escape Lounge (LP)
Heith - Escape Lounge (LP)PAN
¥3,439
Heith's music has always been infused with sacred mystery, striking a delicate balance between lived experience and imagination. On Escape Lounge, his second full-length release for PAN, Heith draws inspiration from contemporary digital spirituality and interpretations of experience that are crossing over from cultural niches into the mainstream – including internet-based conspiracy theories and psychological operations. The album presents a sonic diary recorded across Milan, Berlin, London, and Stockholm, crafting a post-informational folklore while exploring new territories in personal songwriting. The title Escape Lounge, inspired by airport waiting areas, serves as a metaphorical waiting room of the mind. Its hidden passages can lead either to peril and loss or to enlightenment and kaleidoscopic mental landscapes. This liminal space echoes the mysterious realms of Twin Peaks or the viral "Backrooms" phenomenon. Within it, contributing musicians – including frequent collaborators Leonardo Rubboli, Aase Nielsen, and 33 drummer Alexander Iezzi – move like ethereal presences, creating intangible soundscapes that leave traces of post-hypnotic melancholia. Notably, the vocal contributions from Price and James K enhance the otherworldly atmosphere, their multifaceted timbres adding layers of intentional ambiguity. Throughout the album, Heith masterfully blends acoustic instruments, human voices, and digital technology along an uncharted path that references the experimental pop of 90s trip-hop, 2000s indie-folk songwriting, and lush Mediterranean psychedelia. The sounds are meticulously crafted, combining synthesizers with guitar-based compositions in a computational songwriting approach that creates a collage across eras and landscapes. Each track unveils new dimensions of this delicate hallucinogenic narrative, delivering an immersive listening experience. As reality continuously shifts, Escape Lounge emerges as both sanctuary and confinement – a space of momentary connections and endless potential. In 2025, Heith will debut a new live show and audiovisual collaboration titled 'The Talk' with James K and Günseli Yalcinkaya, commissioned and premiering at Sonar Festival, Terraforma, Nuit Sonores, and Reworks.
PRAJÑĀGHOṢA - FLOW OF ADHIṢṬHĀNA (LP)PRAJÑĀGHOṢA - FLOW OF ADHIṢṬHĀNA (LP)
PRAJÑĀGHOṢA - FLOW OF ADHIṢṬHĀNA (LP)INTO THE DEEP TREASURY
¥4,398

Prajñāghoṣa's debut ambient album on Into The Deep Treasury is a narrative, a musical poem, an attempt to share the story of a transformative odyssey — an outer and inner journey marked by higher aspirations, spiritual growth, and a profound connection with the world.

Coming with a 8 pages booklet

Woo - Into the Heart of Love (CD)
Woo - Into the Heart of Love (CD)Emotional Rescue
¥2,296
Absolutely essential. Deluxe 2LP edition of this impeccable album from 1988. The spot glossed Gatefold jacket features artwork including archival photos & drawings from Woo’s archives as well as liner notes by Clive Ives (one half of the band). Issued for the first time in its entirety on vinyl, spread over two LPs, and remastered from newly discovered hi-quality DAT sources, we’re thrilled to present the definitive version of Woo’s most fully-formed album. A cosmic testament to the healing power of love, utilizing vocoded clarinets, pastoral guitars, homespun folk lullabies, and lilting electronics, coalescing into a an hour plus long journey through their otherworldly soundscapes. A prime entry point to Woo’s sound, containing some of their most beloved songs, such as ‘Make Me Tea,’ ‘It’s Love,’ ‘Hopi’ and many others, and also including a never-before heard bonus track – the vocal version of ‘It’s Love.’ Into The Heart Of Love was originally self-released on cassette in 1988, with a wider cassette release in 1990. Compiled from home recordings from the preceding years, and released during a transitional point for the band, the Ives brothers see this album as their most complete work, offering space to the listener to stretch out and immerse themselves into the warmth of their sound. Woo is the uncategorizable project of Clive and Mark Ives from Brighton, UK. Since the 1970s, the duo have been recording a plethora of eclectic sounds, most falling under the blanket genre of new age, but spiraling out toward notions of ambient sounds, jazz, and other spiritual takes on modern music. They received some acclaim for their early releases, including 1982's Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong and 1989's It's Cosy Inside, but their work began to receive renewed appreciation during the 2010s, when labels such as Drag City and Palto Flats reissued the band's albums. The brothers remained active all the while, digitally self-issuing material.
Ben Bondy - XO Salt Llif3 (LP)
Ben Bondy - XO Salt Llif3 (LP)3XL
¥5,077
Featuring contributions from Nick León, More Eaze, and Ultrafog, Berlin-based producer ben bondy—a key figure in the post-“dubient” underground alongside peers like Exael and Ulla—unveils his latest work, XO Salt Llif3, now issued on vinyl via 3XL. A fragile sound-poem adrift in the fissures of emotion, the album layers microscopic textures, whispered vocals, and fragmentary lyrics. On “Bend,” the refrain etches the resonance of broken love and resignation, while hazy synths and grainy noise sketch out blurred contours. Tracks like “Ur Ghost Is My Shadow” and “Flood” summon waves of introspection and gloom that rise and recede like tides. Neither blessing nor refusal, XO Salt Llif3 stands as bondy’s latest statement—an inquiry poised at the edge of existence itself.
CazU-23 & Sinkichi - 今出川銀河|IMA DE GAWA GINGA (CS+DL)CazU-23 & Sinkichi - 今出川銀河|IMA DE GAWA GINGA (CS+DL)
CazU-23 & Sinkichi - 今出川銀河|IMA DE GAWA GINGA (CS+DL)MATSUNOMI TO SENSO REC
¥1,886
Shipping begins September 21: an improvised ambient/experimental document born in Kyoto’s Imadegawa. The collaborative work IMA DE GAWA GINGA by CazU-23 & Sinkichi now arrives on cassette. CazU-23, an artist who has explored a unique sonic world through solo and band activities, employs guitar and monosynth to striking effect, while Sinkichi—a veteran DJ/producer active since the dawn of Kyoto’s club scene—works fluidly with modular synths and field recordings. Recorded in a single, unbroken session at Softribe Studio, the album interweaves the plucked tones of a 1970s Teisco guitar, shimmering modular layers, and environmental sounds gathered from the city, achieving a quietude and spaciousness akin to the night air. Subtle noise and breath-like resonances evoke layers of time and fragments of memory, with a sense of prayer offered as homage to the late ambient DJ OPERON. A meditative minimal new age/ambient work, where city and nature, present and memory converge into a small yet luminous galaxy.
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Heith  - X, wheel + The Liars Tell... (2LP)Heith  - X, wheel + The Liars Tell... (2LP)
Heith - X, wheel + The Liars Tell... (2LP)PAN
¥4,200 ¥8,923
Heith is the alias of Milan-based artist and musician Daniele Guerrini who crafts a mesmerising and ritualistic subterranean soundscape, a resonant and eclectic collage of distinct sonic elements: from celestial percussion intertwined with jarring, mechanical oscillations to haunting vocals atop murky dubbed-out beats. Exploring the textures of consciousness through research into the ritual animism, he kept an omnivorous and universalist approach to cultural and sonic influence. This is central to X, wheel, Heith’s debut album and first release on PAN. It’s a deep dive into his creative and spiritual practice, one where art and life are inextricable. The Liars Tell..., on the other hand, feels like a kind of respite, a moment of meditation and pause from the fatigue of dimension-hopping. As if the traveller dismounted their carriage and, standing puzzled on a crossroad, listened to the echoes of distant places. Occupying a liminal space and letting thousand of contradictory tales form the lyrics to one unfathomable song.

The Kyoto Connection - Four Seasons in Kyoto (LP)
The Kyoto Connection - Four Seasons in Kyoto (LP)Temples Of Jura Records
¥4,251
‘Four Seasons in Kyoto’ marks the final chapter of The Kyoto Connection’s Ambient Japanese trilogy, following Postcards (2018) and The Flower, The Bird and The Mountain (2022). Like its predecessors, this album pays homage to the pioneering ambient and environmental music movements of 1980s and 1990s Japan. The album unfolds as the imagined soundtrack to life in a quiet rural village, where nature and tradition shape the rhythm of everyday existence. Across 15 evocative compositions, The Kyoto Connection captures the essence of Japan’s ever-changing seasons, weaving together delicate melodies and immersive soundscapes. With contributions from friends and fans in Japan, Four Seasons in Kyoto is both a tribute and a transportive listening experience from producer Facundo Arena, the composer and producer behind The Kyoto Connection. With Four Seasons in Kyoto, Facundo Arena continues his deep exploration of Japanese ambient and environmental music, blending his long-standing admiration for Kyoto’s cultural heritage with a sound that feels both nostalgic and timeless. While Postcards was an instinctive homage and The Flower, The Bird and The Mountain drew from real Kyoto field recordings, this final chapter in the trilogy leans further into the imagined, an intimate portrait of an unseen yet deeply felt Japan. Organic soundscapes and drifting melodies mirror the slow change of seasons, evoking the impermanence central to Japanese aesthetics. The result is a record that seamlessly bridges the natural and the synthetic, memory and imagination, a fitting conclusion to a journey that began with an algorithmic discovery and blossomed into a rich sonic world of its own. 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of The Kyoto Connection and also their first tour of Japan where they will be visiting Tokyo, Okinawa and of course Kyoto collaborating with local musicians and playing live. The album is pressed on heavyweight 180 Gram Vinyl with sleeve design by Bradley Pinkerton.
静香 Shizuka - Glass Night at U.F.O. club (CD)
静香 Shizuka - Glass Night at U.F.O. club (CD)UFO CREAtions
¥4,296
A long-lost live recording from 2005 by Shizuka, the legendary psychedelic band led by doll artist Shizuka Miura—whose cult popularity has only grown since her passing—and her husband Maki Miura, renowned guitarist of Les Rallizes Dénudés, Fushitsusha, and Ookami no Jikan. Released by UFO CREAtions, a new Beijing label carrying the spirit of P.S.F. into the present alongside imprints such as Black Editions, An’archives, and Eschogras Records. Captured at Tokyo’s Koenji U.F.O. Club in 2005, this long-hidden performance is an essential document for fans. Fragile gothic atmospheres, doll-like dreams steeped in girlish decadence, smoke-shrouded psychedelia in the direct lineage of Les Rallizes Dénudés, rustic incantations, and dreamgaze-like weightlessness intertwine to conjure a snowfield of phantom suns—nowhere and everywhere at once. Lo-fi yet radiating an uncanny beauty, this is a true hidden gem of neo-psychedelia. Limited to 100 copies.
水晶の舟 Suishou no Fune - The Sound of Release 自由楽 (2CS BOX)水晶の舟 Suishou no Fune - The Sound of Release 自由楽 (2CS BOX)
水晶の舟 Suishou no Fune - The Sound of Release 自由楽 (2CS BOX)UFO CREAtions
¥4,569
Suishou no Fune, the solitary psychedelic band whose works have graced Important Records, Holy Mountain, and Japan’s avant-garde stronghold P.S.F. Records. True to their name—taken from a classic song by The Doors—they have long spun visionary and transcendent sound worlds. Now in stock: their 2024 double-cassette box set. Released on Love Share Dopamine (L.S.D.), a sub-label of Beijing’s rising UFO CREAtions, carrying forward the devotion to P.S.F. alongside imprints such as Black Editions, An’archives, and Eschogras Records. Recorded live at the sacred venue Kuroneko Sabō in Asagaya in April 2024, the performance moves from pitch-black P.S.F.–to–Ftarri-like free improvisation and silence, through the smoke-shrouded, decadent psychedelia in the lineage of Les Rallizes Dénudés, to drifting slow-psych like ripples across water, and even slow psychedelic shoegaze recalling Hallelujahs and Nagisa ni te. A definitive document of dense, multifaceted visions. Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies.
Oren Ambarchi & Fredrik Rasten - Dragon's Return (LP+BOOKLET)Oren Ambarchi & Fredrik Rasten - Dragon's Return (LP+BOOKLET)
Oren Ambarchi & Fredrik Rasten - Dragon's Return (LP+BOOKLET)Viernulvier Records
¥4,553
Praised by The Wire as “mystical, expansive and serene.” Oren Ambarchi—renowned Australian experimentalist, head of the influential imprint Black Truffle, and long-time collaborator with Jim O’Rourke, Keith Rowe, and Keiji Haino—joins forces with Norwegian guitarist Fredrik Rasten, known for releases on Edition Wandelweiser, Sofa, and Meenna, for this striking 2025 collaboration. Released on the adventurous Belgian label VIERNULVIER (home to Claire Rousay, Hieroglyphic Being, and Miaux), the album offers a newly composed score to Eduard Grečner’s 1967 Slovak cult film Dragon’s Return. Recorded live at the Videodroom Festival during Film Fest Ghent in 2024, where the score was premiered alongside the screening, the performance captures a singular moment of improvisation between sound and image. Interweaving 12-string guitar, voice, flutes, percussion, and shells, Ambarchi and Rasten conjure a soundworld at once folkloric and contemplative, suffused with the aura of ritual prayer. The result is a breathtaking evocation of a forgotten myth reborn in the present.
Spool (LP)Spool (LP)
Spool (LP)Somewhere Press
¥4,969
The self-titled album by Spool, the collaborative project of Berlin-based sound artist and ambient composer Florian T M Zeisig—known for his deeply moving Music For Parents, dedicated to his insomniac parents—and performer/artist Angel Paradise, has arrived via Somewhere Press. Glassy, delicate particles of sound drift like snowflakes through a quiet winter night, casting a gentle, ethereal glow. Layers of piano, field recordings, and microscopic synth textures unfold into a sound world suspended between memory and dream. Warm, intimate drones align with the rhythm of breath, while faint melodies linger like whispered thoughts. At times naïve, at times reverent in their embrace of emptiness, these eight tracks resonate with a profound introspection. A crystalline embodiment of contemporary ambient aesthetics—where silence and tenderness converge.
Grouper - Shade (LP)
Grouper - Shade (LP)Kranky
¥4,786

The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning fifteen years. She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How one frames themselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames themselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping a connection to place -- 'an ode to blue / what lives in shade.' Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation -- a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of rivermouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria. Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away -- 'Echoing a lighthouse, burying the faults of being human / Into things that we project upon the sky at night.

Grouper - Ruins (LP)
Grouper - Ruins (LP)Kranky
¥4,786
Ruins was made in Aljezur, Portugal in 2011 on a residency set up by Galeria Zé dos Bois. I recorded everything there except the last song, which I did at mother's house in 2004. Iʼm still surprised by what I wound up with. It was the first time Iʼd sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage. Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track ,Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasnʼt recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path woundthrough the ruins of several old estates and a small village.The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in.

Milan W. - Leave Another Day (LP)Milan W. - Leave Another Day (LP)
Milan W. - Leave Another Day (LP)STROOM.tv
¥4,844
Am I ever gonna be the one? Do I ever wanna be with someone? Am I ever gonna be the one? Will I ever end up being someone?

Rafael Toral - Wave Field (2025 CD Edition)
Rafael Toral - Wave Field (2025 CD Edition)DRAG CITY
¥2,296
Wave Field, released in 1995, was a departure from the first album into new composition methods involving the dirty textures of rock guitar, sounding in the open ears of many listeners (like Jim O'Rourke, who issued the disc in the US on dexter's cigar) as a synthesis of disparate elements — a nexus where Alvin Lucier, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and Eno blend together. Here, the clangorous potential of the guitar was emphasized, giving a metallic edge to the two extended pieces and "radio edit" coda. The jacket paid subtle tribute to My Bloody Valentine, which, along with the radio edit, suggested a harmony between musical directions as wildly disparate as minimalist experimental and rock. Today, such a paradoxical intent is more widely considered as a part of the artist's purview.
Ai Aso - Lone (CD)
Ai Aso - Lone (CD)Ideologic Organ
¥2,544
2024 Repress. Tokyo's Ai Aso is a Japanese psychedelic pop singer-songwriter whose work has a whisper-thin acid-folk quality to it. She started performing as a solo singer around 2000. Her solo work, infrequent collaborations with White Heaven members You Ishihara and Michio Kurihara, Yurayura Teikoku, and Boris bring a level of fragility and hypnotism to the stage, recalling lost memories, small flavors of Coil, and serial playing on the verge of evaporation. As for her recent activities, she has performed on bills together with Sunn O))), Boris, Masaki Batoh (Ghost), Touri Kudoh, Kim Doo Soo, Mark Fry, Simon Finn, etc. Cut by CGB at Dubplates & Mastering.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri -  I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon (Transparent Blue Vinyl LP+DL)Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri -  I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon (Transparent Blue Vinyl LP+DL)
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Emile Mosseri - I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon (Transparent Blue Vinyl LP+DL)Ghostly International
¥3,297
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Emile Mosseri, and Ghostly will be making a donation from today’s Bandcamp Friday sales of their collaborative album, I Could Be Your Dog/I Could Be Your Moon to support reproductive rights via Noise For Now. "His music filled me with the urge to connect with the world," Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith says of Emile Mosseri. She first heard his work while watching the 2019 film The Last Black Man In San Francisco; just minutes in, she paused it to look up who did the score and wrote to him immediately. "I love Emile's ability to create melodies that feel magically scenic and familiar like they are reminding you of the innocence of loving life.” Those talents saw recognition in 2020 with an Oscar nomination for Mosseri’s original score to the film Minari. He was already a fan of Smith’s and became increasingly intrigued by her impressionistic process as they started to talk. "The music feels so spiritual and alive and made from the earth," Mosseri says. "I think of her as the great conductor, summoning musical poetry from her orchestra of machines." I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon, their two-part collaborative album, introduces an uncanny fusion of their sonics. Constructed using synthesizer, piano, electronics, and voice, this soft-focus dream world is lush, evocative, and fleeting. It finds two composers tuning their respective styles inward as an ode to mutual inspiration, a celebration of the human spirit and its will to surrender to the currents of life. Early into their correspondence, Smith and Mosseri realized they were neighbors in Los Angeles and met up for a few hikes. Their conversations led to a musical exchange over email. The exercise became a sketch, the start of their first song together, "Log In Your Fire,” with Mosseri finding flourishes in Smith’s cathartic synth lines to intonate and harmonize alongside. Lyrically, it's a beautiful, open-ended sentiment. "Being a log in someone's fire, to me, means letting go, and surrendering to that feeling," says Mosseri. From there, the pair composed a series of musical foundations, trading files from afar, nurturing the eventual expansion as the remote days of 2020 set in. Smith likens the collaborative experience to the exciting uncertainty of starting a garden, "doing what I can to facilitate growth while enjoying the process of being surprised by what will actually grow." In the summer of 2021, the duo finished work on the sequel, I Could Be Your Moon, expanding their musical language as the first part reached its September release. Songs from these more recent exchanges find them even more synced, forging into percussive and harmonic experiments, leaning further into their “unused musical muscles,” as Smith and Mosseri put it. A unified vocal presence emerged. “As the friendship grew I think we both learned how to support each other more and musically that was communicated through singing together,” adds Smith. Now taken as a full album set, I Could Be Your Dog / I Could Be Your Moon moves fluidly from track to track, panning through textural vignettes. Two roughly 17-minute halves, the set evokes the bittersweet sense of something too bright or rare to last, a short-lived glimpse into a golden hour. "Moon In Your Eye" sends a choral refrain skyward; we stay behind, watching it haze away in the heavens. "Brush" bubbles with Smith's characteristic wonder and curiosity, expressed in a flutter of horn-like sounds, leading into the album's central expression, its titular track. Above pulsing harmonies, in his tender falsetto, Mosseri repeats variations of the mantra, "I don't want to feel / lost anymore /I can’t make you what I am." He says the idea they are reaching for is more abstract and universal, "It could mean I could be your friend / buddy, I could be someone / something else, I could transform, I could be your companion, etc. What I like about it is it could change based on what that means to you, or what the word dog means to you." The orchestral march of 'oohs and ahhs' on "Blink Twice” could register as both triumphant and tragic. "Moonweed," strays closer to the latter, with low and slow piano keys guiding the alien hums of a starlit goodbye. I Could Be Your Moon, the second installment and side B of the record, opens with the striking “Green To You.” Depicting a dream or a need for renewal — to be new in the eyes of another, all excitement of seeing and being seen as imagined, idealized versions of ourselves — the song unveils the duo’s newly fused voice. “I only want to be green to you,” they sing, as an organ phrase swirls underneath. There’s a wistful sense that bleeds into instrumental “Amber” and continues across “Standing In Your Light,” a piano ballad-turned-mini-symphony that traces over feelings of remorse (“I was distracted / overreacted… come to your senses”). “Shim Sham” starts woozily in anticipation before flipping on a drum break, becoming the collection’s energetic apex; their hums dance with the beat, wordless yet undoubtedly expressive. Once introduced, the percussion stays and syncopates for “Golden Cow,” another radiant duet that reads like a playful plea, or a reminder to their creative selves (“slow down / be careful now / you’ve done this one before”). The record ends inside “Radio Replacement,” a swan song in the lineage of somber album outros; lyrically they reflect on past loves and the passage of time, personifying the music (“I would really love to be / your favorite melody / for a while”). There is a dreamy, elemental intention to this music, which Smith and Mosseri say came naturally, as they both embraced intuitive interplay throughout their creative back-and-forth. The stylistic threads of each composer are recognizable yet become more ambiguous as the album progresses, sewn into a singular vision. "I'm so grateful that my musical ideas could dance with hers with some grace and harmony," says Mosseri. Smith adds that this experience helped her "remember that music can be a connecting layer of friendship, especially in a time when the usual ways were out of reach."
E.S. Island - 南風 from Hachijo / Southwind From Hachijo (2LP)
E.S. Island - 南風 from Hachijo / Southwind From Hachijo (2LP)Forest Jams
¥5,726
FJLP-05 continues with Forest Jams recent trend of Japanese re-issues from the 90’s. This one is E.S. Island’s “Southwind from Hachijo” a deep ambient exploration that is more tribal and spiritual than prior E.S. Island releases. This was recorded on Hachijo Island featuring several traditional instruments with the bulk of the music being played by Eisuke Takahashi (R.I.P.) and Nene Sanae. Limited copies.

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