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This is NEW MANUKE's first album. Shake your hips, shake the world, keep on movin', Maximum volume!
Retrieved from long-forgotten reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes, this collection of prehistorical traces unveils some of the meanders which eventually led to the inception of legendary experimental pop outfit Aksak Maboul, founded in 1977 and still active in 2025.A bildungsroman of sorts, the story begins in 1969, when 19-year-old Marc Hollander and Paolo Radoni form a band to play a strange mixture of psych rock and free jazz. Called Here and Now (no connection to the later UK band of the same name), the band soon becomes a wild tentet and, after winning an amateur contest and being involved in the whirlwind around the mythical Amougies festival, lands a record deal with then-prestigious French label BYG Records (but ends up not releasing anything).More musicians join the collective (including future Aksak Maboul members Vincent Kenis and Denis Van Hecke), which dissolves in 1972.From 1973 to 1977, Marc Hollander engages in a series of solo recordings and collabs, in which further threads which will make up the fabric of Aksak Maboul’s music are explored.In the course of seventeen tracks and 80 minutes* of music nurtured by the fertile upheavals of that era, we are taken for a stroll through moments of free rock, improv, quasi-kraut, modular and ambient electronics, piano pieces, percussion and various experiments and sketches, which hint at what Aksak Maboul later became, and at what it has not (but could have) become…*on the digital and CD versions. Two tracks, as well as the two additional excerpts of a 1969 live set by Here and Now, are left out of the vinyl format.All tracks recorded in and around Brussels, 1969-1977Assembled & edited by Marc Hollander, 2025Restored and mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung MasteringFeaturing Marc Hollander, Vincent Kenis, Paolo Radoni, Chris Joris, Pico Berkowitch,Denis Van Hecke, Stefan Liberski, Somore Sainte-Jules, John Van Rymenant and others.
Post-classical composer, sound artist, and curator Matthew Patton returns with his second album as Those Who Walk Away. Afterlife Requiem is an elegy to friend and collaborator Jóhann Jóhannsson. Drone, electroacoustics, and near-silences extracted from unfinished recordings on Jóhannsson hard drives, underpin two string quintets—Ghost Orchestra (Reykjavík) and Possible Orchestra (Winnipeg)—processed and erased in a doleful durational work. Patton also works again with Andy Rudolph (Guy Maddin) and Paul Corley (Sigur Rós, Ben Frost) on co-production and sound design, to forge a simmering physicality that juxtaposes roiling low-end with haunting movements of ghostly strings.
“Everything I have ever written is a Requiem. Everything an ending. Death is smeared all over this music. My work is about disappearance—of the present, the past, of everything. Afterlife Requiem gets slower and slower over its duration, it is one huge ritardando, time is not just slowing down—it is disappearing. Without even thinking, two related tragedies occurred and came to the surface organically while I was writing, recording, and working: the death of my mother and the death of composer and friend Jóhann Jóhannsson. When I start writing, I am not thinking of anything in particular, I am just writing, composing, recording, and listening… but something always makes itself apparent or pushes itself through in an unforeseen way. After my mother’s medically-assisted death, in clearing out her apartment, I realized that I was also erasing the physical manifestation of her world—and that I was doing the exact same thing with the music I was writing and recording. During this time, Jóhann’s death also kept making itself apparent.
For Afterlife Requiem I have taken short abandoned fragments from Jóhann Jóhannsson's hard drives and placed these disembodied audio ghosts in alternating sections within my own music, leaving them impure—and in the process blurring the distinction between making and un-making. After his death, I had been given these hard drives from Jóhannsson's Berlin studio to listen to. This music was abandoned, in various states of formation and dissolution: an index of decayed and dead memories, forgotten and now existing only within a series of interlocking mechanical parts which in time will themselves fail and disappear, like everything else. For months, I listened to these remains of Jóhann’s music obsessively, trying to discover clues about Jóhann before he died. Many times I would find that he had left the recording device going long after the recorded music was over. He seemed to be unaware that the music had ceased or didn't register this was the end of the music or maybe he was distracted by something else. But I found these long silences profoundly emotional and touching.
The disappearing elegies of Afterlife Requiem are not so much music as they are the remains of music. In this way I always work towards the subtraction of meaning. The music is distant and smeared, damaged, ghost-like and haunted, only hinting like a half-forgotten memory of what once existed; a condensed depiction of decay and erasure. I have underlaid the whole of this new piece, from beginning to end, with these disembodied silences from Jóhann’s own work, space, and time. Now gone forever, his recorded silence remains; a monumental vacancy lost to the world. Throughout the piece, and especially in the ‘Memorial Environment’ sections, I also incorporate countless natural-world sounds, everything from volcanic lava to freight elevators to human blood flow to turbine hiss to suicide injections.
Artist Robert Smithson said decades ago: ‘It is the dimension of absence that remains to be found’. For me, this music also measures how time runs out. In fact, time already has run out. Eternity has already begun.”
– Matthew Patton (Those Who Walk Away)
PULSE DEMON probably is the most iconic, most representative and best known album in the JAPANOISE scene and MERZBOW discography.
This is the edge of music and sound, here you enter a new dimension made of POWERFULL NOISE.
Recorded in 1995 and first released in 1996 on the US label REPLAPSE, this album was re-released several times in both, CD and Vinyl formats.
This is first time in which album was completely re-mastered by Masami Akita for CD re-release with the addition of an exclusive bonus track taken from the original PULSE DEMON recoding session (the original DAT) and never used up to now.
Album comes in a six panel digifile presenting the lavish original and very psychedelic holographic-waves-art-work.
PLAY VERY LOUD AND MERCILESS!
*300 copies limited edition* A sporangium (from Ancient Greek sporá 'seed' and angeîon 'vessel') is an enclosure in which spores are formed. It can be composed of a single cell or can be multicellular. Virtually all plants, fungi, and many other groups form sporangia at some point in their life cycle. Sporangia can produce spores by mitosis, but in land plants and many fungi, sporangia produce genetically distinct haploid spores by meiosis.
Sporangium is brand new "merzsoniks"! Equipments used by Masami: handmade instruments / contact microphones / various fuzz / distortion / glitch pedals / synthesizer... And many other soft & hard-ware to be discovered...
First time on CD for this classic Merzbow duo album from 1983...
......Material Action is a favorite among early Merzbow free-music, junk-noise workouts. Psychedelic improvised instrumental energy abounds on this essential early recording that is PURE MERZ.
Masami Akita plays tapes, percussion, electro-acoustic noise, organ
Kiyoshi Mizutani overdubs tapes, synthesizer, violin, machine noise
Black Editions present the first vinyl reissue of Keiji Haino's stunning debut album Watashi Dake?, originally released in 1981. This first ever edition released outside of Japan features the artist's originally intended metallic gold and silver jacket artwork. Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances, Haino has staked out a ground all his own, creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over. Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision -- stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark silences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat, and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot -- Haino's vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920s blues and medieval music -- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Produced in close cooperation with Keiji Haino and legendary photographer Gin Satoh. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging, featuring the now iconic cover photographs by Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement. Housed in custom printed deluxe Stoughton tip-on jackets, including black on black inserts, extras, and hand-colored finishes; Remastered by Elysian Masters and cut by Bernie Grundman Mastering; Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI; Includes download code.
Retrospection is rare for HTRK, the Melbourne-based duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, who marked their 21st year as a band in 2024 with a series of performances, installations, and long-overdue catalog represses. But back to the present, before more tour dates in 2026 and on the heels of their first new songs in several years (Summer 2025’s “Swimming Pool” b/w “Puddles On My Pillow”), HTRK close this chapter with String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK), the first full-length collection of HTRK covers and remixes from friends and contemporaries. Across two decades of music, HTRK have risen slowly to become your favorite artist’s favorite artist. The Guardian posits, “Few Australian bands have been as influential…with their idiosyncratic mix of atmospheric electronic and guitar-based squall for the past 21 years.”
Amidst the reissues, including the newly announced Psychic 9-5 Club, HTRK revisits their body of work and grapples with notions of legacy and lasting expression. They turn to some of their biggest fans for answers. String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK) invites new interpretations from Coby Sey, Double Virgo, Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley, Laura Jean, LEYA, Liars, Loraine James, NWAQ, Perila, Sharon Van Etten, and longtime collaborator, Zebrablood. The contours of HTRK’s singular, smoldering songcraft extend and distort in the hands of others, part peer tribute, part fun-house reflection; the effect is befitting of a band devoted to raw emotion, self-discovery, and unrestrained creative vision.
Maybe the most unexpected pairing, beloved songwriter Sharon Van Etten takes on “Poison” from Work (work, work) (2011) in her inimitable style. A cult favorite from the band’s darkest period, defined by sludgy 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, and vaporous guitar noise, “Poison” remains just as urgent and piercing here. “My little oxide joyride / Plastik pick me up / Where we gonna go / You decide…” Van Etten delivers with a pinch more clarity, underscoring the romance beneath Work’s bleakness.
Loraine James, HTRK's Ghostly labelmate in her Whatever The Weather alias and a past collaborator with Standish (James' 2019 Nothing EP), re-examines "Dream Symbol" from 2019 LP Venus In Leo. The original track found Standish revisiting her childhood home in a recurring dream, craving afternoons of innocence and the way the sun kissed her skin. James' glitchy treatment adds more dust and static to the scene, as well as her own voice, to Standish's verses, creating a doubling, duet-like feel.
The immensely talented duo of Kali Malone & Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))) encircle “Siren Song” from Rhinestones, the revelatory 2021 album that drew cues from the intimacy and brevity of Western folk, skewed through a narcotic, nocturnal lens. While the original was obscured in transition, a stark 49-second vignette of finger snaps and riffs, Malone and O’Malley stretch the moment to nearly six minutes suspended on organ drone and the trance-inducing mantra.
Double Virgo, Sam Fenton, and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi of post-punk outfit bar italia, tackle Marry Me Tonight’s "Rent Boy." The 2009 track found HTRK at their heaviest. Double Virgo strips it all back to strings, chimes, and strums as the two voices riff on Standish's wordplay. Alexandra Zakharenko, aka Perila, smoothes out the industrial edges of "HA", another cut from Marry Me Tonight; the hushed and hazy rendering allows various lyrical layers to seep into the echoed mix. Experimental legends and fellow Aussies Liars reimagine MMT's "Waltz Real Slow" as an outsider ballad or a tender Western drift; alien-like vocals cross stately chords that unravel to feedback in the final march.
Zebrablood gives “Soul Sleep” (Psychic 9-5 Club) a shuffling and blurry breakbeat remix, and Dutch dub techno fan favorite NWAQ deepens the drone of rarity “Female Jealousy” (Lilac EP). Rhinestones’ "Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings" becomes otherworldly in LEYA’s harp-backed version, while “New Year’s Day”, another standout from Venus In Leo, is mainlined into a folk standard by fellow Melbourne native Laura Jean.
Coby Sey reinvents Leo’s “Mentions”, lending his airy, soulful cadence to lyrics that outline a lack of physical intimacy in the social media age. Regarding the track, the acclaimed British musician adds that he first came across HTRK during the Myspace era, “My love for HTRK's music has existed for a long time.” This may be the case for many. HTRK’s indelible impact on underground music spans far beyond its initial reception. The ripples permeate time in such a way that they have positioned the band as a perfect candidate for the present round of renewed appreciation.Retrospection is rare for HTRK, the Melbourne-based duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, who marked their 21st year as a band in 2024 with a series of performances, installations, and long-overdue catalog represses. But back to the present, before more tour dates in 2026 and on the heels of their first new songs in several years (Summer 2025’s “Swimming Pool” b/w “Puddles On My Pillow”), HTRK close this chapter with String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK), the first full-length collection of HTRK covers and remixes from friends and contemporaries. Across two decades of music, HTRK have risen slowly to become your favorite artist’s favorite artist. The Guardian posits, “Few Australian bands have been as influential…with their idiosyncratic mix of atmospheric electronic and guitar-based squall for the past 21 years.”
Amidst the reissues, including the newly announced Psychic 9-5 Club, HTRK revisits their body of work and grapples with notions of legacy and lasting expression. They turn to some of their biggest fans for answers. String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK) invites new interpretations from Coby Sey, Double Virgo, Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley, Laura Jean, LEYA, Liars, Loraine James, NWAQ, Perila, Sharon Van Etten, and longtime collaborator, Zebrablood. The contours of HTRK’s singular, smoldering songcraft extend and distort in the hands of others, part peer tribute, part fun-house reflection; the effect is befitting of a band devoted to raw emotion, self-discovery, and unrestrained creative vision.
Maybe the most unexpected pairing, beloved songwriter Sharon Van Etten takes on “Poison” from Work (work, work) (2011) in her inimitable style. A cult favorite from the band’s darkest period, defined by sludgy 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, and vaporous guitar noise, “Poison” remains just as urgent and piercing here. “My little oxide joyride / Plastik pick me up / Where we gonna go / You decide…” Van Etten delivers with a pinch more clarity, underscoring the romance beneath Work’s bleakness.
Loraine James, HTRK's Ghostly labelmate in her Whatever The Weather alias and a past collaborator with Standish (James' 2019 Nothing EP), re-examines "Dream Symbol" from 2019 LP Venus In Leo. The original track found Standish revisiting her childhood home in a recurring dream, craving afternoons of innocence and the way the sun kissed her skin. James' glitchy treatment adds more dust and static to the scene, as well as her own voice, to Standish's verses, creating a doubling, duet-like feel.
The immensely talented duo of Kali Malone & Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))) encircle “Siren Song” from Rhinestones, the revelatory 2021 album that drew cues from the intimacy and brevity of Western folk, skewed through a narcotic, nocturnal lens. While the original was obscured in transition, a stark 49-second vignette of finger snaps and riffs, Malone and O’Malley stretch the moment to nearly six minutes suspended on organ drone and the trance-inducing mantra.
Double Virgo, Sam Fenton, and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi of post-punk outfit bar italia, tackle Marry Me Tonight’s "Rent Boy." The 2009 track found HTRK at their heaviest. Double Virgo strips it all back to strings, chimes, and strums as the two voices riff on Standish's wordplay. Alexandra Zakharenko, aka Perila, smoothes out the industrial edges of "HA", another cut from Marry Me Tonight; the hushed and hazy rendering allows various lyrical layers to seep into the echoed mix. Experimental legends and fellow Aussies Liars reimagine MMT's "Waltz Real Slow" as an outsider ballad or a tender Western drift; alien-like vocals cross stately chords that unravel to feedback in the final march.
Zebrablood gives “Soul Sleep” (Psychic 9-5 Club) a shuffling and blurry breakbeat remix, and Dutch dub techno fan favorite NWAQ deepens the drone of rarity “Female Jealousy” (Lilac EP). Rhinestones’ "Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings" becomes otherworldly in LEYA’s harp-backed version, while “New Year’s Day”, another standout from Venus In Leo, is mainlined into a folk standard by fellow Melbourne native Laura Jean.
Coby Sey reinvents Leo’s “Mentions”, lending his airy, soulful cadence to lyrics that outline a lack of physical intimacy in the social media age. Regarding the track, the acclaimed British musician adds that he first came across HTRK during the Myspace era, “My love for HTRK's music has existed for a long time.” This may be the case for many. HTRK’s indelible impact on underground music spans far beyond its initial reception. The ripples permeate time in such a way that they have positioned the band as a perfect candidate for the present round of renewed appreciation.
Meditations is a set of 8 works based on the experience of meditation practice. Music made for both meditation and reflecting the realities of a life of daily practice. The breath, the quietness, the listening, the distracted dissonant and consonant thoughts that pass through. The texts throughout the pieces are fragments of the Buddhist Heart Sutra, the shortest and created from a mixture of traditions and sources, produced long after Buddha's death and meant to be chanted or sung as a ritual and personal meditation. The experience of meditation, so often covered in mythology and one dimensionally peaceful symbols, is in fact a complex set of traditions in all cultures and has roots in indigenous cultures world wide and involves the limitations of thought as well as the quietness of the mind as a source of understanding and health.
The Buddhist teachings that are in focus in this album are in a sense a sequel to the record Rituals of 2015 in that they are adapted as Meditations that cross and combine traditions with any attempt consciously to synthesize them into a new whole. A conversation between traders, in the form here of musicians , languages, sound sources and the peace and struggle of maintaining a real meditational practice and living in the chaos and violence of society as well as accepting the world as it is, with all of the internal conflicts and release and rise of tension.
The musicians on these pieces also are recorded live in a group setting listening to each other with a shared space and character I create and through this listening the connections that form the final piece are made.
The Heart Sutra which I read in the last piece of the 8 is a translation which has been collaged by many schools and cultures that adapted the teachings to their indigenous religions. Most likely first traded along the Silk Roads , and internet of its time 3000 years would have been written in Pali, a pan-asian language and transcribed from Sanskrit and Hindi sources and later translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and eventually Greek, Arabic, Latin and global languages in the 20th century.
The bonus track is a live mix (called a Metta Mix) of a performance and collage of all this material and other new pieces, performed in a virtual avatar world called Second Life for a live audience who listens and. attends in their own avatars, as I stream the concert. This music is closer to my personal experiences of meditation, with a collage of ideas passing through me, returning to the breath or vocal tones , distractions, physical pain , internal quiet, increased listening and sensory focus that moves from imagined , real and virtual connections with the technology. All pieces on this set of recordings are a version of this in some ways, with the mix being something both from me and for those that listen.
Meditations is both a document of practice, past and present and an experience of listening, both personal and the connective mix of us and all the things that are not us.
Japanese bamboo flute maestro and goat (JP) cohort Rai Tateishi makes an impressive debut statement with his holistic attempts to transcend the limits of ancient instruments to reveal gently delirious insights comparable with Jon Hassell, Phew, Bendik Giske, FUJI|||||||||||TA.
‘Presence’ is a triumph of improvised, elemental musicality that distills aspects of myriad folk traditions in pursuit of the artist’s own truth. For 40 minutes of singularly weird, locked-in performance, Rai Tateishi diverges his formative training in the shinobue (a bamboo flute) to applications for its elder sibling, the shakuhachi, and its distant relatives in the khene mouth organ of Northeastern Thailand and Laos, and even the Irish flute, with remarkable results returned from each.
Piece to piece, Tateishi adapts a spectra of unusual and extended instrumental experiments to articulate uniquely animist sound arrangements, with judicious use of a ring modulator and delay effects only subtly altering his sound in real-time, gelling the harmonics and smoothing off its contours. Some 15 years of studies and accreted knowledge of histories, timelines, and spirits are deftly tattered in the air and rebound in precisely complex ribbons that become all the more impressive by virtue of its in-the-moment recording.
Presented with no overdubs, the six works were recorded by label head and KAKUHAN/goat lynchpin Koshiro Hino across three days of adventurous improvisation capturing the breadth of Tateishi’s vision in a mix of succinct flights of fancy and one durational wonder where he really cuts loose. An opening piece of rapid percussive fingering and rasping sets the tone for increasingly intricate explorations of the shinobue, and bluesy cadence of a reedy Thai khene - antecedent of the shō - whipped into headier harmonic overtones, whilst his 5th piece for Irish flute best recalls Ka Baird or Michael O’Shea’s lysergic impishness, and a 13 minute closing piece most boldly fucks with folk and jazz traditions, in-depth and with the genre short-circuiting audacity of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Landing in the wake of prism-shaking works by Will Guthrie & Mark Fell, goat (jp) and Kakuhan; Tateishi’s ‘Presence’ more than lives up to NAKID’s impressive levels, unflinchingly operating by its wits with a verve and dare-to-differ moxie that gets at it from the first hit to the last, harnessing the kind of skill and ingenuity that’s distinctive but still strikingly minimal and overwhelmingly physical. It's a remarkable achievement.
'Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity' is a poetic inversion of Muzak’s traditional role in stimulating seamless productivity in the workplace. Beginning as a pre-radio music distribution network (1934, U.S.), Muzak was transmitted along electrical wires with the intention of being at once ubiquitous and indiscernible, always present yet easily ignorable. As a pseudo-science the aim was to capitalize on the potential of music to have a psychological effect on listeners, and with the goal of maximum productivity, was employed as a sonic disciplinary force in the work place.
Previously installed for Dystopia Sound Art Biennial (2024), at the Amazon Packing Station located before HAUNT-Frontviews in Berlin, Muzak for the Encouragement of Unproductivity sonically addresses utopic notions of seamless, efficient productivity, inherent to capitalist cultures, and their very real dystopic effects from labour exploitation to the impacts of over-production on the environment. This poetic inversion, further developed as an album, is not meant as a kind of melodic control but rather a reflective space in which to consider the benefits personally, globally and environmentally, of slowing down.
Reverb, essential to the Muzak aesthetic, is programmed (using convolution reverb) with the dimensions of the Berlin Amazon fulfillment centre, DBE2. Amazon fulfillment centers are global contemporary factories, promising a consumer utopia of next day delivery of almost any product imaginable. Inspired by Sam Kidel’s concept of “mimetic hacking”(1), the reverberation characteristics of the DBE2 facility perform a symbolic sonic break-in to the guarded Amazon fulfillment center, a trespass to the flow of production.
Guffond’s ambient Muzak with its drifting horn, clarinet and synth-like modulations is just too down-tempo for upbeat spending. If this is Muzak it is possibly Muzak for the end of the world, thoughtfully seeking transcendence through implied questioning after all avenues for shopping have been exhausted.
The rhythm ensemble "goat," formed by Osaka-based musician Koshiro Hino a.k.a. YPY, has released its third album "Joy In Fear," its first in eight years!
This is the new album by "goat," which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. The album is released on Hino's own label, NAKID. Artwork is by Tomoo Gokita, recording by Fumiaki Nishikawa, and mastering by Rashad Becker. Each instrument is constantly pursuing and playing with an irregular groove involving polyrhythms, irregular time signatures, and syncopation. The gongs and flutes (flutes) give the album a new bewitching quality that makes it different from its predecessor. The seven tracks also show a unique approach to minimalism/tribalism.
Sound Reporters was a Dutch publishing company that specialised in anthropology, religion, and history, releasing unique documents of the cultural multiplicity of human societies and their importance. These recordings were originally released on cassette in 1988, and consist of field recordings made on the Greek island of Amorgos, part of the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea. The release was jointly credited to the painter Harry Van Essen, who lived for several years on the island and recorded its soundscapes, and also to the ethnomusicologist and founder of Sound Reporters, Fred Gales, who mixed the recordings.
The recordings consist of sketched amalgams of local sounds from Egiali, a port in the northeast of the island. The first half is a soundscape deeply rooted in the island people’s daily lives, alternating sounds of the sea with popular music, recitations of poetry, the sounds of fishing boats, people playing boardgames, a party. The second half takes us out of the village and into the mountains, unveiling the island’s unadorned natural environment: the sounds of cicadas, the buzz of honeybees, the bells of the large herds of goats left out to pasture, etc.
Space in the Sun was one of Akio Suzuki’s major sound projects, a unique construction completed in 1988 and located on the merdian line, which took around 18 months to build. Its purpose was to allow Suzuki to spend one day, on the autumnal equinox, purifying his sense of hearing in nature. This release comprises a 44 page book containing plans and materials from the time alongside texts, and two CDs of environmental recordings created on site at Space in the Sun. To date only tiny fragments of the recordings made between those massive clay brick walls have been used in performances and no environmental recordings of the objective of the project, i.e. the space itself, have been released. The first disk consists of the first release of “person-less” field recordings made at the same spot that Akio sat at during the event (recorded in 1993, 60 minutes). The second disk consists of a performance that took place in the space. Space in the Sun’s earthen walls have since been demolished, so these recordings represent a return to life of their soft echo, an experience accessible nowhere else.
From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality recording of water droplets that he created in the studio using his own self-created suikinchiku system. This reissue recreates the original LP, using special paper to create beautiful packaging and duplicating the original, ultra-transparent vinyl. The reissue includes newly penned, detailed liner notes by Tomotaro Kaneko (owner of the Japanese Art Sound Archive).
Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
The LP jacket is made from two layers of chipboard cardboard and washi-like "shindanshi" paper that reproduces the feel of the original. The LP also comes with two postcards and a 20-page A4 booklet (Text in Japanese and English),a download code.
From the 1950s, Masaaki Takano (1927-2007) worked as a freelance "sound planner," mainly creating sound effects for stage productions. In the mid-1980s he began performances called "Sound Play" where he would perform on his own self-created sound instruments and his collection of ethnic instruments. Growing out of his work with sound effects, he became obsessed with the recording of natural sounds from the 1970s onwards, and this album "Shizukutachi" is a record of a high-quality recording of water droplets that he created in the studio using his own self-created suikinchiku system. This reissue recreates the original LP, using special paper to create beautiful packaging and duplicating the original, ultra-transparent vinyl. The reissue includes newly penned, detailed liner notes by Tomotaro Kaneko (owner of the Japanese Art Sound Archive).
Remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
The LP jacket is made from two layers of chipboard cardboard and washi-like "shindanshi" paper that reproduces the feel of the original. The LP also comes with two postcards and a 20-page A4 booklet (Text in Japanese and English),a download code.
A pure shakuhachi work by Katsuya Nonaka, a shakuhachi player and organic rice farmer whose deep relationship with nature forms the very foundation of his musical express
Having studied under Takehisa Kosugi in 1975 and participated in the legendary improvisation group East Bionic Symphonia, Tomonao Koshikawa—now also a member of Marginal Consort and an artist who performs experimental music, jazz, rock, Indian classical music, and even Kanze‑school Noh chanting—presents his second solo work, following his ato.archives debut Footprint
The latest cassette release from Tokyo‑based electronic musician and painter Akhira Sano. Evoking the stillness of late‑night hours and the lingering echoes of memory, it’s a work whose delicate details reveal themselves more and more with each listen.
following the success of their 2024 PPU EP "ramble in the rainbow", TAMTAM returns to their studio "where they dwell"
Hylic by J.TRIPP distills post-millennial tensions, taking us to the edge of unfamiliarity and then pushing us back, inward, to find comfort in artificial intimacy. At first, it awakens a sense of disorientation - as if there were something we can’t quite grasp. As the listening deepens, the album begins to feel like the cohesive soundtrack to a metropolitan simulation - one where reality as we know it morphes into something new. At some points, soft and expansive; at others, sharp and distorted. Although its sonic world echoes urban landscapes, folk and pop sensibilities start to emerge - the human-like nature of the music feels suspended, while voices thread indistinct, siren-like messages, anchoring us to a melody that guides us through a hostile environment. Laic (feat. Lutto Lento) is our portal - we stomp into a dusty land without gravity, metallic sand in our eyes and mouth, and an echoing, child-like song in our ears. Static shocks propel us toward the next space, Gelid, a sparring between bells-loaded guns with no winners. The pace speeds up, then stretches down again, warping the walls around us in Skirr. We’re running inside a factory - machines pumping steam, shiny drops falling from the ceiling - until we stop again, feeling our heartbeat racing, head turning. Wend takes us back to the hazy atmospheres of Laic: a slow-motion, romantic dance in the quicksands. Then Comesss (feat. Enhancement), with its sticky textures and choir of mellifluous, distorted vocals and the odd bass slap, slashes and reverses reality. In contrast, Melic is a balm - the otherworldly lullaby, backed by the cooing of synthetic doves, is enchanting but wicked. We hesitate to indulge in it for long and step into Lithic, an endless ascension built on electric keys, strings and stomping beats, before entering the almost-fantastic realm of Whilom again - where a waterfall of dissonant flutes decompose into buzzing synths under the rumble of fake thunder. The conclusion of this lucid vision is Thole, where rattlesnakes slither at our feet - or is it the steam pushing through the underground’s iron grates? - and the memory of a song brings us back to a pop idea of emotions. Across nine tracks, Hylic reminds us that we’re already living the future we have been raving about - and that, perhaps, it’s already slipping away.
A sequel. An escalation. Pressure spikes from bar one: future-facing, low-latency. A firmware update for the body. Cuts bite into cuts. Fragments swarm, collide, die out. Drums stumble until they speak; samples crop up without names and leave without warning. Momentum is the one and only rule. Unpredictable, gridless, post-genre. From TikTok feed to vinyl: born digital, cut for the floor. The glitch grows a body, develops a nervous system. Match it or get out of the way. Damned be the ones that are stuck on tradition.