MUSIC

Minecraft - Volume Alpha is the work of German composer and musician Daniel Rosenfeld. Using C418 as his moniker, Rosenfeld crafted the sweeping soundtrack and vibrant sound design which helped breathe life into Minecraft's voxel-based universe. Fans and critics were universally enamored with his beatless, nuanced electronic pieces upon release. Popular gaming site Kotaku named it among The Best Game Music of 2011, calling the music "remarkably soothing," and The Guardian has compared Rosenfeld's delicate piano and sparse ambient motifs to legendary artists Erik Satie and Brian Eno. In an interview feature with C418, Polygon distilled Volume Alpha to its essence: "It's not bound by the retro aesthetic of Minecraft's graphics. It transcends them. The album is an attempt to uplift the combined game/music experience into the sublime."

Morphing between the sensory and the suppressed, Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Frédéric D. Oberland’s debut album summons a poetic musical proclamation of transfigured reality and social amnesia. These seven tracks evolved collaboratively over two years, beginning as a series of duets that Moumneh instigated at Montréal’s Hotel2Tango studio in summer 2023. The Arabic title of Eternal Life No End translates more literally as "A dark, cursed night, like the seekers themselves" and the album is an outcry amidst the oceans of injustice flooding the SWANA region, haunting the lives and visions of vast populations.

Like Dante and Virgil in Dante’s Inferno, Oberland and Moumneh’s compositions chart an emotional vortex, as dream-time seeps into trancelike percussion and hypnotic melodies, channeling collective urgencies that ripple through the currents of Radwan’s voice and Arabic lyrics. Oberland’s passages of saxophone and clarineau evoke shamanic exhortations of evil, while Moumneh’s buzuk strums and swarms, often through electronic processing, with tempestuous mourning about unfolding tragedies. An array of instrumentation fleshes out the wider soundscapes: daf (a Middle Eastern frame drum) and bongos, a modified electric rababa, shuddering bass and other synthetic filigree from Oberland’s Buchla and Deckard's Dream synths.

"It's a healing process in a way," says Oberland about the work. "Since the genocide started, I’d had a complete artistic block and the inability to articulate what people are living through" explains Moumneh, who ultimately packed his instruments and gear and flew to Paris in the summer of 2024 to work on the album in earnest with his long-standing friend. The two had collaborated on multiple previous occasions, with Oberland’s primary group Oiseaux-Tempête, and through Moumneh's work as Jerusalem In My Heart and as a producer/engineer on various other projects. Eternal Life No End builds on their abiding allyship as Oberland and Moumneh navigate energies and emotional shifts in newfound ways, merging their sensibilities and uncovering deeper resonances. “We worked day and night together and made clear decisions collectively” states Oberland, who nonetheless also took the lead in positioning Moumneh’s voice to shine through these compositions—there is singing on four of the album’s seven tracks. The duo played reverse roles of a sort and ventured new creative processes, as Moumneh openly took direction from Oberland, setting aside his usual lead-producer role as steward of Jerusalem In My Heart.

"Squeal of Swine" and "Dagger Eyes" open the album with dual gut punch, as hand percussion, low end synth tones, and ricocheting buzuk and rababa set the stage for Moumneh’s keening Arabic singing, reflecting a sea of sickness currently drowning the state of humanity. On the instrumental track "A Dream That Never Arrived", a lo-fi dancehall-inflected beat anchors otherworldly melodic lines set against electroacoustic sound design in spatio-temporal displacement. Eternal Life No End is accompanied by an audio-visual essay for the electronic (and vocal) song "The Serpent", assembled by Oberland and shot on Super 8mm camera in Montréal, Paris and Beirut, including footage of Gaza protests in Paris, and of the Frequent Defect event at Irtijal Festival’s 25th anniversary edition in Beirut. Lebanese graphic designer, printmaker, and calligrapher Farah Fayyad provides talisman-like artwork of entwined serpents, similarly inspired by this centerpiece album track.

'Dear Children of Our Children, I Knew: Epilogue' is a new EP by Alabaster DePlume, recorded during the middle of his March 2025 US tour. DePlume had been playing shows with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Tcheser Holmes, performing music from his critically acclaimed album 'A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole' (released March 2025). The trio’s onstage rapport was so immediate and strong that, on an off day in Brooklyn, DePlume chose to capture that connection, recording this collection of instrumental pieces shaped by the experience of performing, sharing, and improvising off the music of A Blade for audiences across the US.

DePlume says: “Meeting with you all at the shows I sensed that you felt voiceless, on this ethical issue that also spelled out what we’re seeing today, in the form of ICE. That experience with you is etched into me, like graffiti or a poster on the wall. It’s my job to deliver your voice, and that’s what this record is. And to take action. That urgency compelled me to record then. And now here we are. As we said, this world is awakening to the reality it was already living.”

Dear Children serves as an epilogue to A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole, and as a companion bookend with his October 2024 EP 'Cremisan: Prologue to A Blade'.

As with almost everything that DePlume has put forth in recent years, the connection of all these works to Palestine is deep. The Cremisan EP itself was recorded in Palestine. Dear Children incorporates field recordings and samples of children playing and of normal life in the West Bank, and its cover art depicts wheatpaste posters of a drawing made by a 13-year-old boy from Gaza (used with permission). The inscription on the cover art says, in Arabic, “Dedicated to the mother of the martyr/witness Obaida Ahmed al-Qiram. May you rest in peace. From your student, the artist, Hasan Jawad Abudayyeh.”

Mario de Vega - El Llamado (Der Aufruf) (LP) A whistle is one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication. A summons. A signal thrown across space, hoping for a reply. Mario de Vega takes that elemental premise and stretches it to global proportions. El Llamado (Der Aufruf) began as a performative work for solo or multiple voices, commissioned by the Maison des Arts Georges & Claude Pompidou in 2020. The raw material: whistles sourced from seventeen countries - Austria, Germany, Italy, China, Spain, Greece, Hong Kong, Portugal, France, India, Mexico, the United States, Poland, the Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, Nepal. Each instrument carries within it a different pitch, a different cultural memory of the human breath shaped into signal. On this fixed LP arrangement, de Vega layers these dispersed voices into a composition of austere and uncanny precision, accompanied by an outdoor activation performed by Yann Leguay at Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, France. The open air enters the record without warning - a sudden rupture of context that clarifies everything. Born in Mexico City in 1979 and working between Berlin and Mexico, de Vega has long explored the limits of sound as political and physical event - using frequencies that induce visceral reactions, making the negotiating process with institutions an integral part of the work. Here the approach is stripped back to something almost naked: breath, wind, the ancient act of calling out across a distance. The result is concentrated and disquieting, a study in how a universal gesture fractures into dozens of cultural particulars. Limited edition of 250 copies.

dj echotree arrives on ZitStill with a singular artefact shaped by excavation and instinct. Built from fragments of found footage, spoken word and drifting jazz, the record unfolds as a seamless collage — guided by the steady pulse of the MPC and a commitment to human touch over polish. Emerging from noisy experiments and captured in a single twenty-four-hour immersion, the album carries the scent of spiritual jazz in the lineage of Sun Ra, grounded in lo-fi textures and presence. What remains is the lone preserved take: raw, immediate, and uncorrected. Pressed on one side only, the reverse is left blank save for a handwritten note from the artist — an intentional space that frames absence as part of the work. The sleeve artwork, assembled from roadside magazine cutouts, quietly reconfigures discarded images into something tactile and open-ended. This is less a product than an offering: a textured, gapless transmission best absorbed whole.

With centuries of history, traditional instruments carry physical vibrations shaped by human breath and touch. In contrast, electronic music generates vibrations through inorganic principles such as electrical signals and circuits. When the subtle tremors of traditional instruments resonate with the intricate tones of electronic sounds in an improvised dialogue, performers from distinct realms expand each other’s languages, creating a new sensory experience.

The project album Ancient Moment marks the first collaboration between the Korean contemporary music ensemble WhatWhy Art and the Seoul underground electronic music collective vurt.. It is a record of a free journey where two different worlds collide and merge, breaking cultural boundaries and dismantling aesthetic hierarchies.

In Part 1 of the album, you will hear boundless performances by daegeum player Hong Yoo with electronic musician Unjin, and gayageum player Hwayoung Lee with ambient duo Hosoo.

The recording was done in an improvised one-take format at STUDIO Y in Seoul, and Giuseppe Tillieci mastering enhanced the sonic quality.

The digital release will be available on vurt.’s Bandcamp on August 31, 2025, followed by an LP release in Europe and Asia in December.

With their self-titled release on Titrate Records, Post Coma presents two twenty-minute passages shaped by a winter improvisation. What surfaces is a sense of detachment — at times even dissociation — treating the improvisation as a shared descent into the inner psyche. Listening as much to each other as to the remnants of their own decisions, the music emerges as a kind of cognitive experiment — a document of mutual attunement and the debris that gathers in its wake. The result lies suspended between motion and conclusion, leaving space for what lingers beyond.

Several years after the release of ‘Metamorphosis’ (with Sid Hille), Multicast Dynamics (Samuel van Dijk) reemerges on Astral Industries with ‘Circles’ - an enchanting two-part work venturing into deep unconscious realms. Sonic landscapes unfold in a sequence of hidden spaces and intimate revelations, featuring detailed sound design and rich thematic content.
 Circle One initiates the process, opening gently with glassy drones and the patter of distant voices. A faint light shimmers through swirling pools of liquid memories and melting forms. The atmosphere builds, and everything is engulfed in the act of transfiguration. 
 Passing through the threshold, Circle Two traverses further into cavernous territories. Boundless drifting soon becomes a gravitational pull toward something deeper. Submitted to the powerful undercurrent, incoming primordial pulsations signal a quest that reaches its fated culmination. Perhaps the revelation of something long-lost, entering the Circle eludes to that which on the surface remains hidden, yet its rediscovery inevitable.

A collection of tracks from the iconic bassist, producer and composer Jah Wobble (P.I.L.) that are from the early 12" singles he released between '83 and '86 on his own LAGO record label.

The source material for 'Layering Buddha' are samples derived from a 'Buddha Machine' - an audio artwork by the Chinese/Canadian artist duo FM3. These are cigarette package sized, battery powered sound playback devices, containing nine short musical loops. Due to manufacturing imperfections, individual machines play those with a slightly different sound, pitch and duration. The built-in playback circuit, with its low sampling rate and bit resolution, produces a very rough sound, similar to ancient computer games or talking toys. Rich textures and moving echoes occur when many of these machines are played at the same time, distributed in space.

Pianeti Sintetici presents AI-37, entitled ‘Space Opera’. Conceived by Italian artist Davide Perrone, the Pianeti Sintetici (“Synthetic Planets”) project hypothesises the creation of future synthetic worlds as told through sound. Although split across two parts, the album is a singular organism that narrates a journey of boundless cosmic exploration. A sonic tapestry woven of intergalactic atmospheres, Space Opera’s imaginative sound design contributes to a richly spatial and haptic experience. Taking place in the dimly lit crevices of deepest space, a swirling pool of chemical abstractions and extraterrestrial transmissions spumes out from the darkness. Elements weave through broad washes of drones and scintillating textures, contrasting a sparse backdrop with dense and multilayered passages. Composed with the use of modular synthesisers and intense audio manipulations, ‘Space Opera’ comes to life as an entity that transports the listener on an immersive journey into the mysteries of alien worlds.

AI-32 signals the arrival of ‘The Fifth World Recordings’, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music. Hassell’s ‘Dream Theory in Malaya’ forms a touchstone to Hanyo van Oosterom’s musical journey, which soundtracked long, deep and reflective periods living in the cave of the Kallikatsou (Patmos, Greece) back in the early 80s. This period resulted in Hanyo’s track as Chi - ‘Hopi’ - in 1984. Hanyo met Hassell shortly after in 1987 at his “The Surgeon in the Nightsky” concert in Rotterdam - it wasn’t until twenty years later that Hanyo invited him for two magic nights of “Instant Composing Sessions” with the Numoonlab Orchestra (with a host of other artists) at the LantarenVenster, the very same stage where Hassell had performed in 1987 and also where Chi did their first live performance. Dreamful, mysterious, prophetic, the Fifth World Recordings features the quiet yet elaborate sound of Chi awash with rich instrumentation, field recordings, and old stories by the firelight. Sketches were created with drones, loops, and soundscapes, with which Arthur Flink (also a member of the Numoonlab Orchestra) jammed on trumpet. Channelling Hassell’s idiosyncratic style, floating melodies and lyrical improvisations are parsed into the mix, where Hanyo has processed and manipulated the recordings, also referencing Hassell’s exotic scales and unique harmonics. Additionally, the wah Bamboo flute at the closing piece is an homage to the works of Chi co-founder Jacobus Derwort (1952-2019). For this piece Hanyo used his first bamboo flute he made at the cave of the Kallikatsou in 1984. Arthur Flink answers in counterpoint with the wah trumpet, almost like the intuitive communication of the nightbirds...

On Repetitive Music vol. 1, Misha Panfilov strips things back to synth and piano, threading slow‑turning patterns and hushed harmonies through Tallinn and its outskirts like illuminated loops traced in winter air. Recorded between 2020 and 2021 in Tallinn, Vaskjala and Vääna‑Jõesuu, Repetitive Music vol. 1 presents Misha Panfilov working at his most distilled, circling a small set of ideas until they glow. The title is both a statement of method and a gentle misdirection. These pieces are built on repetition, but not the mechanical, grid‑locked kind; they move like breathing or walking, with small irregularities and shifts that keep the patterns alive. Synthesizers and piano are the only protagonists, yet the music feels quietly orchestral in its emotional range, expanding and contracting around a few carefully chosen motifs. Across the collection, Panfilov treats repetition as a way of listening more closely rather than of zoning out. Short figures on piano or synth are set spinning, then nudged, reharmonised or slightly offset rhythmically, so that over time they seem to change colour without ever quite abandoning their original shape. The electronic timbres tend toward the warm and tactile - rounded oscillators, softly pulsing basses, grainy delays - while the piano provides a grounded, human touch: hammers, pedal noise, the faint resonance of the rooms in which the recordings took place. The combination creates a sense of intimacy, as if each piece were being assembled in real time just a few feet away. The locations matter. Tallinn’s urban stillness, the quieter outskirts of Vaskjala, the coastal air of Vääna‑Jõesuu all inflect the pacing and atmosphere. Some tracks feel like interior meditations, close‑mic’d and introspective, while others carry a wider sense of space, as if written with a distant horizon in mind. Yet the through‑line is consistency of tone: a calm, inquisitive mood that never lapses into sentimentality or pure ambient drift. Panfilov’s background in groove‑oriented and cinematic music is present here only in trace form - a sensitivity to contour, an instinct for when a pattern has yielded enough and needs to be gently retired. Repetitive Music vol. 1 ultimately plays like a sketchbook of focused studies, each track testing how much feeling and movement can be coaxed from limited means. It is experimental in the truest sense: not bombastic, but patient; less about showcasing technique than about seeing what happens when a simple idea is allowed to persist in slightly changing conditions. As the pieces accumulate, they form their own quiet world, one in which time blurs and the distinction between background and foreground listening starts to dissolve.

Siren Selector presents the first voyage of Remy Solar, as the producer takes a break from composing sound system exclusive dubs to expand his horizons with this by-turns lush, textured, menacing and plaintive album. Heavy Terrain emerges from the depths of a lifetime inside the dub fraternity: reared on a potent diet of Lee Scratch Perry and Augustus Pablo, The Disciples and Digital Mystikz, it’s an album which stuck its head in a bass bin in an abandoned bingo hall in north London before striking out on a musical road-trip to imbibe sounds and rhythms from further afield. The album opens with the militant drums and ethereal pads of 'Sound in the East' before being bookended by two mixes of 'Star Trail', where unformed musical space and time cross uncharted distances to coalesce into the beginning of direction and rhythm. The lush deep house chords and drilling synths of 'Lila #3' summon ghostly presences, while in its counterpart 'Lila #7' layers of melody rise and hang like mist before dissipating in percussive heat. 'Dakhla's swelling and retreating drones fade into swirls of drums. In the eponymous 'Heavy Terrain', off-beat keyboard chops respond to each other from uncertain depths while electronic horns pulse across miles of open space. 'Empty City' sees walls of sound coalesce and fragment, falling into bursts of white noise. Remy Solar explores a deliberately constrained hardware set-up to create the primordial conditions of trance, locking down a rhythmic foundation while semi-improvised excursions form and reform above it. It’s an album that takes the listener on a journey between order and chaos, past and future, all the while underlaid by a counterpoint of cavernous basslines and echoing percussion, yang and yin, shade and light.

After nearly five decades of relentless innovation, Truus de Groot's Plus Instruments project shows no signs of slowing down. The ninth album, Unnoticed, finds the dutch Pioneer diving deeper into the experimental synthesiser palette than ever before, delivering 12 tracks of minimalist, analogue noise and her signature vocals. Recorded at The Ranch in Escondido, Unnoticed showcases her continued evolution as an artist. Often referred to as the "Queen of the Dutch Underground," de Groot is a stalwart of the experimental underground music scene since establishing Plus Instruments in 1978 in Eindhoven. Her journey has taken her from the punk rock explosion of the late '70s Netherlands to the No Wave scene of early '80s New York, where she collaborated with Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo and drummer David Linton on the cult classic "Februari-April ’81.” "It always comes from my own initiative; I decide who to play with. I believe that gives it new life each time," she explains. "I was always more into improvisation with a minimal approach, less structured, more groove.” The Plus Instruments project has always been characterised by its ever changing nature and collaborative spirit. She has worked with an impressive roster of artists over the years , spanning continents and genres, including James Sclavunos (Nick Cave), Jim Duckworth (Gun Club), most recently, Miguel Barella and Cosmo Vitelli, who co-writes, produces and adds programming to standout track "Sexy Machine." This creative partnership has opened new avenues for de Groot's explorations, as she continues to plough yet another field of creativity. “My path has been a long and winding road around the world, collaborating with all types of people in a variety of genres and cultures," de Groot reflects. "I am always looking for a new challenge, as I continue to seek exciting ways to express myself creatively through music, words, photography and film.” Now based back in the Netherlands, she continues her work while maintaining the core elements that have made Plus Instruments a touchstone for electronic music innovators. Her influence can be heard in everything from Electroclash to Cold Wave, with younger artists regularly seeking collaboration with the veteran experimentalist. Unnoticed arrives as de Groot enters her sixth decade of music-making, proving that true artistic vision only grows stronger with time.

Aspen Edities is pleased to present Aerial, the third album of the experimental quartet Oker. Whereas their album debut Husene våre er museer (2018) and its follow-up Susurrus (2021) focused on collective and individual compositions, Aerial features two longform pieces of fully improvised music, sculpted from the recognizable acoustic sound palette that the quartet has developed across a decade of extensive touring. The titles, Aerial, Equinoctial Tide and Crepuscular Rays refer to meteorological and planetary phenomena, and in Oker’s interplay we hear light, wind, clouds, and tidal cycles transpire as shimmering, roaring, rubbing, coalescing and diverging environments of sound. The sonic stoicism and minimalism in their expression is challenged by frictioning micro-chaoses, combining to create calm, winding paths of musical detail and form. Echoing our planet and its meteorological reality, Aerial yields both consistency and perpetual change.

A masterpiece released by Metasplice on The Trilogy Tapes in 2018.

The long-awaited CD version of the album includes two newly remastered bonus tracks that were only included on the cassette tape version! Japan’s KAKUHAN deliver a futureshock jolt on their incred debut album ‘Metal Zone’ - deploying drum machine syncopations around bowed cello and angular electronics that sound like the square root of Photek’s ‘Ni Ten Ichi Ryu’, Arthur Russell’s ‘World of Echo’, Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Workaround’ and Mica Levi’s ‘Under The Skin’ - or something like T++ and Errorsmith dissecting Laurie Anderson’s ‘Home Of The Brave’, her electric violin panned and bounced relentlessly around the stereo field. It really is that good - basically all the things we love, in multiples. While "Metal Zone" might be their debut, KAKUHAN are hardly newcomers. Koshiri Hino is a member of goat (jp), releasing a run of records under the YPY moniker, and heading up the NAKID label, while Yuki Nakagawa is a well known cellist and sound artist who has worked with Eli Keszler and Joe Talia among many others. Together, they make a sound that’s considerably more than the sum of its parts - as obsessively tweaked, cybernetic and jerky as Mark Fell, frothing with the same gritted, algorithmic intensity as Autechre's total-darkness sets, stripped to the bone and carved with ritualistic symbolism. The album’s most startling and unexpected moments come when KAKUHAN follow their 'nuum inclinations, snatching grimey bursts and staccato South London shakes and matching them with dissonant excoriations that shuttle the mind into a completely different place. It's not a collision we expected, but it's one that's completely melted us - welding obsessive rhythmic futurism onto bloodcurdling horror orchestration - the most appropriate soundtrack we can imagine for the contemporary era. By the album's final track, we're presented with South Asian microtonal blasts that suddenly make sense of the rest of the album; Nakagawa erupts into Arthur Russell-style clouded psychedelia, while wavering flutes guide bio-mechanical ritual musick formations. It’s the perfect closer for the album’s series of taut, viscous, and relentless gelling of meter and tone in sinuous tangles, weaving across East/West perceptions in spirals toward a distinctive conception of rhythmic euphoria with a sense of precision, dexterity and purpose that nods to classical court or chamber music as much as contemporary experimental digressions. Easily one of the most startling and deadly debuts we’ve heard in 2022; the louder we’ve played it, the more it’s realigned our perception of where experimental and club modes converge - meditative, jerky, flailing genius from the outerzone. Basically - an AOTY level Tip.

Kakuhan, a unit of Hino and Hiroki Nakagawa, has released a self-released CD, which has been sold exclusively at live venues, on "Nakid," a hot label run by Koshiro Hino, who is also well known for his activities with goat and YPY and for running "birdFriend," and has released such powerful artists as Keith Fullerton Whitman and Mark Fell & Will Guthrie. The CD is a self-released CD by Kakuhan, a unit consisting of Hino and Hiroki Nakagawa, which has been sold exclusively at live venues and has won critical acclaim!

The CD includes a live performance by KAKUHAN, a unit consisting of YPY, Hino Koshiro, and cellist Nakagawa Hiroki, at the "Feldman meets freq 2022" event held at Kyushu University in February 2022.
KAKUHAN's first album "Metalzone", released at the end of 2022, was voted the 5th best release of 2022 by Boomkat and the 5th best album of the year by Music Magazine in the best electronic music category. The CD contains a total of six songs, including the previous night's "Prototype," a song from the same album, and includes a song that can only be heard on this CD.
As the unit name suggests, the various elements of both artists' activities-"electronic music/strings," "contemporary/club music," "traditional/contemporary," "physical/metaphysical," "composition/improvisation"-are literally "stirred" in the performance. It is highly recommended to listen to it together with "Metalzone"!

Two turntables and a microphone. There is a truth in the clarity of that simple coda, a truth that also belies the breadth of what is possible within its confines. Sometimes you gotta get reminded. I Guess U Had To Be There, the new album from NYC rapper ELUCID and veteran producer Sebb Bash, is one of those ones. So fresh it sounds like it was made tomorrow, but bet money you could put this on in '89 and get heads bopping.

There are moments in music when masters of their craft cross paths at the height of their respective powers - records like Madvillainy, Liquid Swords, Dr. Octagonecologyst, and Hell Hath No Fury - where the result is more than the sum of its parts. ELUCID and Sebb Bash find themselves in this heady, seemingly effortless ephemera on I Guess U Had To Be There. Everything is both familiar and groundbreaking. The beats shift and flip under ELUCID's feet but he tightropes it all, delivery nimble as a mountain goat, producer and rapper moving in perfect synchronization. Some shining stars make memorable appearances: billy woods, Breezly Brewin, Estee Nack, Shabaka Hutchings. But this is a two-man show, and the duo keep the spotlight where it belongs. I Guess U Had To Be There is a captivating, convention-defying listen and a high-water mark for two of the best artists in the genre.

Two turntables and a microphone. There is a truth in the clarity of that simple coda, a truth that also belies the breadth of what is possible within its confines. Sometimes you gotta get reminded. I Guess U Had To Be There, the new album from NYC rapper ELUCID and veteran producer Sebb Bash, is one of those ones. So fresh it sounds like it was made tomorrow, but bet money you could put this on in '89 and get heads bopping.

There are moments in music when masters of their craft cross paths at the height of their respective powers - records like Madvillainy, Liquid Swords, Dr. Octagonecologyst, and Hell Hath No Fury - where the result is more than the sum of its parts. ELUCID and Sebb Bash find themselves in this heady, seemingly effortless ephemera on I Guess U Had To Be There. Everything is both familiar and groundbreaking. The beats shift and flip under ELUCID's feet but he tightropes it all, delivery nimble as a mountain goat, producer and rapper moving in perfect synchronization. Some shining stars make memorable appearances: billy woods, Breezly Brewin, Estee Nack, Shabaka Hutchings. But this is a two-man show, and the duo keep the spotlight where it belongs. I Guess U Had To Be There is a captivating, convention-defying listen and a high-water mark for two of the best artists in the genre.

Yep, it’s a compilation. A marker for the first year of Short Span and a road map into the future maybe. Featuring a mix of artists already heavily involved in the label who’ve had releases out this year. As well as those with future material prepared and awaiting careful hands plating them to metal under the shadow of ski village in Sheffield and then wax in East Lothian some time in 2026. Plus a wider net of friends and admired artists making contemporary music that feels closely connected to the label right now.

There’s a lot of different narratives, meanings, and histories backwards and forwards contained on these two discs and its tempting as the compiler to dig deeply into those and write an accompanying essay...

About how the entire compilation was born from Conna sending over his tune that had started as a playful chop and screw of a Mammo track from General Patterns. How the a.m.p tune has Ben from Purelink loosely playing the keys over it during a party session.

That the Klaus and Mount Kimbie one has been sat travelling from hard drive to hard drive for years with the hope it could be released one day at the right moment. That intermountain is a freshly minted alias for IS and the False Aralia ecosystem. That I reached out to caitlin c harvey after being introduced to her wonderful music via the inspiring Submerge Sessions compilation, which recently collected work from a new school of Detroit music formed in community and tutored by some of the Underground Resistance crew…

But in sum total its just Short Span setting out its table and focusing in on publishing new music. Interesting music. Dialling in on dub and ambient and techno in different forms and qualities that hope to catch the ear and the heart. With some of the most interesting and exciting artists and tune-makers of the moment featuring in here. And a couple of geographic focal points of creativity and shared musical language coalescing in amongst that.

Two discs, two sequences you can listen through in entirety or split into listening sessions. I tried to sequence things so that it flows nicely and suits different moods. A bit of a mixtape.

Open Space is proud to present our first ever full-length LP by LA’s newest chillout band, Puli. Some words from our dear friend Matt McDermott below: In recent years, a cadre of musicians from the east side of Los Angeles have reestablished the city of angels as the first city of Balearica. Alex Ho’s “Move Through It” followed in the lumbering footsteps of Project Sandro’s “Blazer.” Now, there’s a new landmark for the floating west coast sound. Swirling, the first album from LA supergroup Puli. If you’ve got your ear to the ground you know the names involved here. Drummer and producer Damon Palermo’s pedigree stretches back a good 15 years or so, starting off with dub punks Mi Ami. Phil Cho is one of the busiest DJs, musicians and advocates for the deep stuff in LA, throwing legendary hillside parties under the Third Place banner. John Jones, the preternaturally talented guitarist and electronic tinkerer, records as AV Moves, is a key member of the Suzanne Kraft and Baba Stiltz live configurations and plays in The Trilogy Tapes-affiliated act Geo Rip. But this listing of personnel and credentials puts too fine a point on it. Puli are three close friends who go to parties, DJ and get tacos together, repairing to their Chinatown studio a few times a week and coming out with remarkably textured, idiosyncratic downtempo jams. Building off the solid foundation of their 7-inch of heavyweight dubs for Melbourne’s Constant Delay, Swirling is an exploration of new horizons in chill out. “Ramona” acts a statement of purpose—with halftime/double-time dub-tinged rhythms, hazy yet bright synth motifs and atmospheric guitar from Jones, not terribly far from the expansive approach of Japanese dub aesthetes Pecker. “Cloudy,” meanwhile, is a sort of deconstructed and bittersweet Balearic pop featuring Cho’s ethereal vocals. “Bongo Springs” is steppers’ house not far from close LA peer Benedek or the Mood Hut crew up north. But what truly sets this record apart is the space and layers in the production—while it’s nominally an electronic record, Puli is a band that has slowly crafted these songs in the rehearsal space. “Havana Jam” cruises along a sliding roundwound bass guitar take with dubby chords and textural guitars. Palermo’s hand drums and live percussion enmesh perfectly with icy pads on “Leech Seed Dub.” Cho is back on the mic for the gorgeous closer, “C.S.B.”, underpinned by breakbeat and trunk-rattling sub bass. Puli doesn’t sound like anyone else, and is ultimately reflective of the city itself. Listening to Swirling feels like navigating a warren of side streets in the eternal sunshine. Take the drive and dive.

Following Music From Memory’s landmark compilation Virtual Dreams—which reframed ambient techno and IDM through a new age lens—comes another groundbreaking survey. Telepathic Fish: Trawling The Early 90s Ambient Underground revisits the legendary early ’90s London ambient party Telepathic Fish. Conceived by Mario Aguera, David Vallade, and Kevin Foakes (DJ Food), the series intersected with experimental spaces like Ambient Soho and Megatripolis, and this release captures that moment in vivid detail. Featuring unreleased and rare material from the likes of Global Communication, Spacetime Continuum, and Nightmares On Wax, the set reflects the multifaceted character of the ambient underground in its formative years. Complete with a 20-page booklet of photographs and archival materials, this is an essential document that reconnects sound with its era and hands the spirit of ’90s ambient and chillout into the present.