MUSIC

A 4-hour work recorded at Steamroom (composer’s studio) between 2017 and 2018.
Detailed and delicate electronic layers, processed instruments, and ambiguous field recordings come together in a slow-moving, fascinating kaleidoscope with multiple reflections and wrong turns, always in constant state of flux. The finely crafted art of subterfuge.
“To magnetize money and catch a roving eye”, four CD’s – a hypnotic, multi-faceted, labyrinthine piece which flows as slowly as a river while speeding back through memory, and shows all the talent of Jim O’Rourke.
Composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist, born in Chicago in 1969, Jim O’ Rourke is a veritable chameleon, working at the frontiers of very diverse musical genres.

It’s hard to tell on first listen, but the L.A.-based Gendel made every sound on his new album using his alto saxophone. “Pass If Music” is hardly a solo jazz album, though. Rather, the musician harnesses his horn in service of ambient tones and experimental works that reside outside genre distinctions. “East L.A. Haze Dream” floats like an amorphous cloud of vapor as Gendel layers gently blown notes with the occasional brief sax run. “Trudge” is a darkened mantra featuring lower-register hums and a minimal rhythm that marches with determination. In notes, the artist writes that it and the other eight pieces were inspired by the motion picture “The Labyrinth & the Long Road,” [directed by Daniel Oh] for which Gendel contributed the score, and that makes sense. It’s an atmospheric work that evokes its own brand of drama.” –Randall Roberts for the Los Angeles Times

Constructive are proud to announce the release of the original soundtrack for the British film 'Surge' by Tujiko Noriko and Paul Davies. Directed by Aneil Karia and starring Ben Whishaw, the film is set in London over twenty-four hours and is a stripped back thriller about Joseph. A man who goes on a bold and reckless journey of self-liberation.The album consists of sixteen tracks and presents the soundtrack in a non-conventional form. Sound design and composition are presented side by side as equal components in the score. The album consists of sixteen tracks and presents the soundtrack in a non-conventional form. Sound design and composition are presented side by side as equal components in the score. The album starts with Davies’ piece ‘TV Dinner’ where shifting plates of aqueous white noise finally give way to a hint of tonality. Tujiko on ‘Broken Glass’ develops the tonality further adding bells, sliding tones and slithers of brass. This alternating of sound design and composition and the blurring of its source material continues throughout the album. Except for the three tracks where they both collaborate on the writing, as on the delicate ‘Empty Rooms’. The music conveys polar extremes at the same time. Ethereal and urban, delicate yet powerful, juxtaposing the internal landscapes of the film's protagonist against the environmental sounds of a city. Highlights include the unconventional beauty of ‘Children’, the deconstructed jazz of ‘And then to Home’ by Tujiko and the powerful Deathprod-like tectonic plates of sound by Davies on ‘In Street after First Robbery’. An album of music and sound that works alone away from the film and rewards with repeated attention and deep listening.

In 2003, Pisco Crane assembled a six-piece band from motivated and talented like minds in the Kinshasa slums where he grew up. Pisco had been involved with a handful of local rap acts when he was younger, but after meeting legendary instrument builder Bebson De La Rue, he was inspired to follow a new path. He set about building instruments from the discarded trash that surrounded his city: bits of old computers or oil cans were fashioned into bass guitars and drums, and keyboards were bashed together using springs, metal pipes, and offcuts of tubing.If there was a core philosophy that guided Pisco at this stage in his journey, it was that everyone should have access to instruments, no matter where they come from or what their budget might be. And following in the footsteps of Bebson, Pisco locked into a Congolese tradition that touches on the eccentric genius of globally lauded artists like Konono Nº1 and Staff Benda Bilili. Over the years, Fulu Miziki's notoriety grew in the Kinshasa underground – their utopian vision of the future was infectious. Eventually, they were joined by performance artist, sculptor and fashion designer Lady Aisha, who offered the band unique colour and a soulful central focus.Influenced by Kinshasa's street performance scene, Aisha helped the band devise vivid masks and costumes that were as electric and singular as the instruments they played, and the scene was set. In 2020, as the world was plunged into lockdown, footage of Fulu Mziki went viral and their star began to grow exponentially, with a video of the band preforming the track ‘Tikanga’ racking up millions of views on Facebook. The band used this opportunity to work on documenting their sound, and shored up at the Nyege Nyege studios in Kampala for a year to assemble a definitive album. Recorded by HHY & The Macumbas' Jonathan Saldanha, this record captures the band's furiously innovative mixture of industrial sonics, spiritual jazz, punk, and Congolese soukous pressure.At their best, Fulu Mziki sound almost completely out of time, curving pounding rhythms around microtonal clanks, rousing chants and spiky sonics. On 'Mutangila', there's a hint of disco in the 4/4 stomp, but it's been shifted into a post-punk ritual, adorned with complex bell percussion and overlapping vocals. 'Congo' is even harder to define; electrified buzzes form a bassline, but it's the mindboggling rhythms that shuttle the track into psychedelic realms, led confidently by Lady Aisha's limber rhymes. Fulu positively slither on the sultry, industrial-influenced 'Sebe', while 'Tikanga' reminds of Congo's rumba-derived soukous traditions, materializing the sounds into the future with tight, pounding percussion and head-melting fx.The story of Fulu Miziki is sprawling and complex and constantly evolving, with various offshoots and band iterations. Two members left the band in 2016 to form KOKOKO! with French producer Débruit. Not long after they recorded this magnum opus album, several other original members left to form a similarly named outfit currently based in Europe. This other incarnation recently released an EP of electronic productions without the band founder Pisko Crane and lead vocalist Lady Aicha, on the UK based Moshi Moshi records. Pisco and Lady Aicha currently lead a different outfit in Kinshasa made up of completely new musicians. This full-length is the remaining proof of Fulu Mziki at their most vital and most complete – it won't be repeated – and can never be recreated. It's an essential portrait of one of the Democratic Republic of Congo's most innovative contemporary outfits, and some of the most surprising hybrid music you're likely to hear.

As a Londoner, Scratchclart has always embraced the city's melting pot of influences that seep into the city from around the globe. And just as Detroit techno and Chicago house fused with Jamaican dancehall to splinter rave into a spectrum of microgenres in the 1980s and '90s, African sounds - from Afrobeats to gqom - are currently reprogramming the DNA of British dance music, whether it's drill, grime or breakbeat. This conversation is evident on Scratchclart's visionary "DRMTRK" series of EPs, and solidified more readily on last year's "Afrotek", where he collaborated with South African producer Mxshi Mo and Baltimore beatmaker :3LON. On "Scratchclart & Menzi", he progresses further, linking with one of Durban's most celebrated, and most outward looking dance music pioneers - Menzi Shabane. Cutting his teeth as part of early gqom duo Infamous Boiz, Menzi has produced for some of South Africa's most prominent stars, including Babes Wodumo, Moonchild Sanelly, Mahotella Queens, Zolani Mahola and Zakes Bantwini. His sound has always been hard to pinpoint, simmering between kinetic taxi techno and expertly engineered cinematic club music without pausing for breath. "Scratchclart & Menzi" is a fluid back-and-forth between these two musical vanguards that excavates commonalities in their approaches and exploits sonic loopholes, reworking their respective sounds into an energetic fusion of android diasporic bass pressure. First, Scratchclart strips Menzi's 'Shandis' down to its bare bones, channeling the spirit of RnG into a syrupy and soulful cybergqom shiver of elegiac pads and rattling Durban toms. Menzi's deconstruction of "DRMTRK EP III" banger 'Drm Walk' is equally as mindbending, swinging Scratchclart's rhythm and submerging it in rainfall and siren blares, slowly reassembling it into a downtempo sub-heavy groan. The duo's head-to-head 'Q' is even more impressive, opening in a fanfare of cinematic strings before dissolving into a tweaky froth of clicking drums, square wave synths, vocal cuts and woozy atmospheres; it's pure tension, never offering us the conclusion it threatens, but keeping us on our toes. Menzi's delirious remix of 'IC3' (the "DRMTRK EP VII" track that evolved into Lady Lykez' anthemic 'Muhammad Ali') might be the EP's most upfront floor-filler, repositioning the original's pneumatic bump on a warehouse floor of chants, cybernetic squelches and echoing fx. But the most unexpected turn is a fresh version of Scratchclart's grimey 'Nasty Nasty Nasty', that interrupts the cheeky bassline with amapiano-influenced machine-gun toms, and rocked-powered zero-g sound design. "Scratchclart & Menzi" is futuristic music from beginning to end that rips through established genre logic, emerging with concepts that lodge themselves not in South Africa or London, but somewhere beyond the solar system. We're not worthy.

Musician and sound/video installation artist Steve Bates presents a striking solo ambient/noise album of melodic smear, radiostatic blur, panoramic noise clouds and dissolving tones. Made primarily with the self-imposed limitation of a Casio SK-1, All The Things That Happen showcases the more deliberate, intensive, maximalist side of Bates' wide-ranging sonic aesthetic and practice. An isolation record (like so many), it combines an ineffable melancholy with claustrophobic tension and simmering political rage. Constructed from layers of glistening distortion-drenched melody, pulsing and droning oscillation, bursts of blown-out chords, sweeps of static and sheets of crackling hiss, Bates has made a dynamic, ardent, iridescent noise album of impressive depth and underlying devastation. "This was supposed to be an ambient record; quiet, minimal and sad. These tracks all started off that way but I kept reaching for more texture and noise. Somehow the noisier the record got, the less sad it was also. I was listening to, and loving, a lot of music by Andrew Chalk and I had finished a year-long run of listening to Eno’s Ambient 1 and 4. I prefer On Land to Music for Airports although I love both. On Land just has a darkness and uncertainty that appeals to me. Adding more noise also got me excited about ways this material could be played live even though it also felt like that could never happen again. In 2022, I opened for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Saskatoon to give it a try and was pleasantly pleased to hear it all live and loud." A fixture of Winnipeg's burgeoning anarcho-punk and social justice community in the 80s-90s, Bates played in hardcore and indie rock bands (XOXO, Bulletproof Nothing) while contemporaneously continuing to fiddle obsessively with the shortwave radio his father bought him as a child — sensibilities that continue to meld and inform his sound work to this day. Bates founded the Send + Receive Festival in 1998, a crucial development in putting Winnipeg on the map for avant music and experimental sound art, which he helmed for seven years. Moving to Tiohti:áke/Montréal in 2005 he took on the Sound Coordinator position at Hexagram (Concordia University), released solo and duo work on ORAL_records and two albums with his Black Seas Ensemble on The Dim Coast, while pursuing myriad other ongoing audio research, installation and collaborative projects. His exhibition and site-specific works have been presented throughout North America and Europe, Chile and Senegal. Bates relocated to Treaty 6/Saskatoon in the fall of 2019, a return to the Canadian Prairies just before pandemic that also profoundly shaped the solitary, immersive, assiduous practice that yielded All The Things That Happen: his most purposive, powerful, purely ‘recorded’ work. Thanks for listening.

Dewa Alit, Bali’s master of contemporary Gamelan composition, returns to Black Truffle with Chasing the Phantom, presenting two recent works played by the composer’s Gamelan Salukat, a large ensemble that performs on instruments specially built to his designs, using a unique tuning system that combines notes from two traditional Balinese Gamelan scales. Alit explains that the ensemble’s name suggests “a place to fuse creative ideas to generate new, innovative works” and both compositions demonstrate the composer’s ability to wring stunning new possibilities from variations on the traditional Gamelan ensemble. While using familiar elements of Balinese Gamelan music, such as unison scalar melodies and stop-start dynamics, Alit’s music is overflowing with harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral inventions, the latter often facilitated by unorthodox playing techniques. “Ngejuk Memedi”, an English translation of which gives the LP its title, results from Alit’s reflection on the complex relationship between tradition and modernity in Balinese culture, particularly in the way that belief in the phantoms or spirits known as ‘memedi’ are shared through social media using digital technologies. Embodying this uncanny co-existence, the opening passages of the piece are at once immediately recognisable in their use of the metallophones of the Gamelan ensemble and strikingly reminiscent of electronics in their timbre and movement. At points, what we hear seems to have been fragmented with digital tools, or even to originate in some incessantly glitching DX7. Short melodic figures loop irregularly, with the ensemble splintering into polyrhythmic shards before unexpectedly recombining for intricate unison passages. After several minutes of this manically tinkling metallic sound world, the metallophones are joined by drums for a meditative passage of lower dynamics, as the uniformly high pitch range explored in the opening sections gradually opens up to include resonant low gong hits. Recovering some of the manic energy of the opening, but now enhanced with the full range of percussion, the piece weaves through a series of tempo changes to a stunning passage of rapid-fire melodies and ringing chords that sweep across the metallophones, their unorthodox tuning creating complex clouds of wavering harmonies. “Likad”, written during Covid-19 lockdowns, channels anxiety and uncertainty into musical form, resulting in a piece that, even by Alit’s standards, is stunning in its complexity and the virtuosity it demands of Gamelan Salukat. Its opening section is perhaps most remarkable for its mastery of texture, with rapid transitions between dry, muted strikes and metallic shimmers calling to mind the use of filters in electronic music. At points, the complex irregular repetitions of short melodic patterns, where the music seems to get stuck or be suddenly interrupted by a skip, recall the mad sampler works of Alvin Curran or the skittering surface of prime period Oval more than anything familiar from acoustic percussion music. Moving through a dizzying series of twists and turns, the piece ends with a majestic sequence of chords possessing an almost hieratic power. A major statement from a radical contemporary composer, one cannot help but agree with Alit when he sees Chasing the Phantom as an answer to the “question of the future of Gamelan music”.

IS THERE ANYTHING AFTER NOTHING IF EVERYTHING IS ALREADY HERE IN A VIBRATION OF A FEEL STRING “SPACE IS AIR I BREATHE” SHE SAID BODY NARRATING MEMORIES THERE IS NO GOOD OR BAD ANYMORE ONLY WHAT IT IS HEAR ME HEAR THE WIND HEAR THE GRASS DANCING ONE BIG PAINTING CALLED LIFE FROM ONE TO ANOTHER GIVING FROM OTHER TO SELF CARE HOLDING FOAM OF DAYS IS PRECARIOUS CAN BE PRECIOUS FENCE UP AND WATER THE GARDEN LAST CALL LASTS FOREVER GROW GONE WILD INTO CRUMBLES OF TIME CAR ROOM WITH A VIEW REMEMBER HOW A NIGHT COULD BE A DAY … AREN’T WE ALL HERE TO EXPERIENCE SOMETHING WE HAVEN’T

First ever reissue of an influential and much sought-after norsk drone masterpiece originally self-released in 1996 in an edition of just 108 copies, tipped by all the people you ought to be taking tips from, most notably Jim O'Rourke and Oren Ambarchi. Deeper than deep, it's a durational masterwork that connects ley lines between Ramleh, Stephen O'Malley, My Bloody Valentine, Deathprod, When and Antena, taking unexpected turns and sounding better than ever on this new edition, mastered by Lasse Marhaug and finally available for wider public consumption. Selected by Jim O’Rourke for his Tone Glow list of 25 albums that “never got their due”, Org was founded in the early 90’s by Espen Jensen and Kjetil D Brandsdal who would later go on to variously record as Elektrodiesel, Noxagt and Ultralyd in the swirl of the highly active Norwegian underground. “Org" was the only album the pair recorded as a duo, pressed in a meagre edition of just over 100 copies which disappeared almost as soon as they were made, lodged in the memory of the select few who have managed to hear it in the years since. Made up of three long tracks, the near 20-minute ‘001’ opens the album with an extended organ zone-out matched with scraping factory machinery saturated into a dense cloud of harmonic fuzz. There's something transcendental about the sound that intersects with microtonal Alice Coltrane (particularly the unfairly maligned organ-only edition of "Turiya Sings"), as well as Pauline Oliveros and Ramleh. It’s music that pulls you in subconsciously; before you know it, you're fixating on the uncomfortable grind of metal on metal, buried mechanical rhythms and liturgical organ vamps that wind between industrial cacophony and sacred ritual music. For its last few seconds, we go into a full death metal tearout that fades out before it takes full flight, a glorious wtf. ‘002’ connects between minimalist drone styles and shoegaze, distorting fuzzed organ into pliable, dreamlike warbles that end up sounding like Kevin Shields' ‘Loveless’-era glides, or even Sunn O))) at their most devotional. Never losing the numbing overdriven mettle, its a piece that sounds spiritually entwined with Matthew Bower's Skullflower - a minimalist re-reading of high-contrast guitar music that takes all the psychoacoustic power and none of the annoying posturing. For ‘003’, subaqueous organ is joined by synth and drum machine, sounding like the inspirational spark for Religious Knives' screwed 'n chopped cosmic psychedelia. The choice of sounds links it to Antena's foundational electro samba recordings too, but the overwhelming drone - a constant on all three compositions - connects the music to minimalist spirituals that have simmered beneath the DIY/avant garde for decades. ‘Org’ sits heavy on the nerves with overproof levels of mulched amp worship and ungodly, palms-down organ chords and wheezing, bezonked lines of melodic thought. 25 years out of sight and marinading in the archives, with the benefit of hindsight we can better understand the role these sounds played in the development of music in the contemporary sphere. It’s an important piece of the puzzle, one that makes valuable connections that, over time, have looked progressively more faint.

Good Morning Tapes back at the deep end on this new album from Josiah Wolfson’s X Or Size project, all washed out and reverberating dub in a mode you’ll want to sink into if you’re into Actress, NWAQ, Huerco S, Ulla. X Or Size throw just the right amount of darkened ambiguity into proceedings to render the sound at its most compelling, borrowing from the classic dub techno playbook with wave after wave of luxurious, eroded dub chords and fractured percussion somewhere between vintage Chain Reaction and the more contemporary wave of late night zoners as best exemplified by Actress’ ghost-in-the-machine productions, Huerco S’s comedown vapors and Ulla’s dreamtime logic. On DÆZI the ominous spirit of Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas enters the fray, albeit with more optimistic shading, while Whirled Why is pure rhythm & sound, like some alternate version of ‘Roll Off’ with a creeping bass drum added for the pure, slow skank. The title track closes the set with the album’s most club sharpened moment, taking the trace echos of Chicago House and wrapping it in so much delay and reverb that you no longer know where the hook begins and where it ends - like some malfunctioning looper finding its own fuzzy logic. The strongest release on GMT in a while - tipped to the deepest heads.

Romance's debut album proper 'Fade Into You' is a mesmerising journey through the emotions of love and heartbreak, with a masterful blend of symphonic textures and collaged samples into ethereal studies in sound. Loosely inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s acidic 1975 melodrama ’The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant’ an unforgiving dissection of the toxic relationship between a haughty fashion designer and a beautiful but icy ingenue, it’s a story where elegant surfaces hide tooth-and-claw instincts. 'Fade Into You' is a deeply textured and beguiling album that transports the listener to that world of faded glamour, desperate longing and narcissistic fantasy. The swelling orchestral arrangements, cathartic cadences and bejewelled sound collages create a sense of nostalgia cut with glazed neurosis, providing a lush and cinematic backdrop that soundtracks the wrenching intimacy and mysteries of love. Following on the promise of 2022's iconic Celine Dion sampling 'Once Upon A Time’ and a brace of thrilling collabs with Lynch protege Dean Hurley and the mythological Old Testament ambient 'Eyes Of fade' collab album with Not Waving, 'Fade Into You’ provides a definitive and essential statement on the Romance sound.

Don't DJ is back with his new album sampler to teach the imitators how it is done. Leftfield tribalism at it's best, with a pinch of Martin Denny and Les Baxter exotica for some flavour and a little bit of Zoviet France fourth world voodoo for the 5am crew that wants to get hazy in the dance. Florian knows how to incorporate percussion sounds that at first you think that they wouldn't work but it always works and this is only a taste of what is gonna come with the release of his album (soon come). Morgan Buckley of the mighty Wah Wah Wino crew, takes this deep and intense trip and he goes ballistic while he is playing a live Bodhran to invoke the ancient spirits of Ireland. If the essence of a remix is to keep the original vibe of the tune and add a different flavour to it then Morgan Buckley nailed it in a big way. Two drum wizards at their best and it's an honour to have them together in one record.

Franco-Swiss composer François J. Bonnet, aka Kassel Jaeger, returns to Shelter Press with his new solo album, Shifted in Dreams. Over the years, Bonnet has been working closely with Shelter Press on different projects, whether as a musician (Zauberberg, Swamps / Things), a theorist (The Music To Come) or as Director of parisian institution INA GRM (SPECTRES, Recollection GRM, Portraits GRM). The common axis of all these actions is the exploration of the deep causes of music, its own potential and its possible appearances. Shifted in Dreams is a continuation of such research but takes a somewhat deviated path. If we use the metaphor of music as a paradoxical mountain — an unreachable "Mont Analogue", then this record tries to opens up a way that at first seems simpler and marked out by the distinct presence of familiar harmonic and temporal elements. This path, however, is simple only in appearance, for soon it becomes less clear: its contours get blurred, drowned in the mist. Silhouettes form in the distance, like uncertain shadows. We grope our way forward, in this infra-sensitive thickness of the world outside of signs. The recognized markers disappear, giving way, at best, to reminiscences, but increasingly making way to qualities, occurrences, events. We leave the known world of musical codes to join that of sound apparitions, their memorial imprints and the impressions they produce. Following a compositional approach stemming from the musique concrète tradition, without adopting a structuralist aesthetic, Shifted in Dreams explores a wide range of instruments and techniques, going seamlessly from instrumental improvisation to field recording, via micro-editing and asynchronous looping. Mixing the electronic waves of an ARP 2500 synthesizer with the acoustic drones of a positive organ, articulating guitar layers with resonances of a Cristal Baschet, bringing together recordings of slamming windows and sounds produced by complex modular synthesis patches, among other things, Bonnet offers a rich and generous palette of sounds, inviting a constantly renewed sonic investigation. Shifted in Dreams, despite its title, is not a dreamlike record. The dream here does not designate the symbolical space of interpretation and reinterpretation of reality through cultural patterns. It designates the intermediate, blurred and uncertain state where the reality of signs loses its consistency, while, paradoxically, the reality of senses and impressions becomes imperative, obvious. The reality of demons.

Lolina’s Relaxin Records serve proper synth-pop peaches from London’s fuzzy underbelly by the mysterious Great Area, set to pique attentions of Bar Italia, Broadcast, Carla Dal Forno, Victor De Roo or Susu Laroche fans... Puckered with instantly memorable hooks and subtly shimmering with micro-dosed textures, ‘Follow Your Nature’ is one for connoisseurs of lokey pop with a contemporary but knowingly retro slant. Indicative of a wider subculture that’s back-pedalling into the present future, Great Area’s 2nd album follows introductions made on the xquisite releases label in ’21, and a song on the Left Alone label’s compilation ‘Everything Was Supposed to Be So Easy’ with their most substantial - if exactingly succinct - suite of songs for modern dreamers and pop music cherry-pickers. With no one song ever outstaying its welcome, the elegant effortlessness of ‘Follow Your Nature’ betrays a mind for fine-tuned songwriting under the hood. Classic synth-pop levels of efficiency are evident on every tune, with the cantering title song measuring distance between The Raincoats, Broadcast, and Carla Dal Forno via uncanny traces of smeared electronics, and ‘everytime’ recalling the off-the-cuff style of Relaxin Records’ label boss Alina Astrova (aka Hype Williams’ Inga Copland) as much as Bar Italia’s baroque indie pop or the new-old lustre of Victor De Roo’s Kontakt Group delicacies. One listen to the loping goth-pop jangle of ‘so very’ or the wrong-end-of-telescope grand sashay to ‘dust’ and the Eastern-facing ’shipping’ will either have you properly snagged or shrugging, there’s no mid ground.

Acclaimed DJ/producer Elena Colombi compiles an ambitious, multi-faceted tribute to Bell Hooks’ writings on love, heard via exclusive music from Christos Chondropoulos, Laurel Halo, upsammy, Coby Sey, Solid Blake, Brainwaltzera and many more... The 21 track, 92 minute results of this first part selection place Colombi’s curatorial tekkerz at the service of world building and allusive narrative navigation, pairing her selection of artists in an immersively quizzical session that questions cross-gender solidarity through art and music with a richly engrossing flow of material that jogs the imagination along its axes. Resembling a radio play or deeply personal mixtape, the mix follows a thread from the tensions of opposites in Olivia Salvadori’s angelic cooks and Coby Sey’s spoken word on ‘With all the Senses, Su Di Te M’Infrango’ thru absorbingly textured vignettes by Christos Chondropoulos unique to the set (‘The Spell’ and ‘Love Song’), and some breathtaking works by Laurel Halo on ‘Waves Goodbye’, to sidewinding sorts of Drexciyan electro-techno that each embody her thoughts in their own ways. The tape's conceptual thrust gives ample food for thought, but it’s just as well enjoyed on its musical merits, covering ground between the peal of Ben Bertrand’s solo sax ‘What To Do With My Male Body’ and muscular variations of dance music, and highlight to our ears a number of new artists such as Galina Ozeran with the Drexciyan enigma of ‘DVizhenie’, or the skulking beatdown of Frank Rodas on ‘Dial Up’, to see more established ones like Solid Blake flexing their experimental side. Really good.

British musician, multi-instrumentalist, producer and DJ cktrl returns with the release of his new EP ‘yield’. Born from a desire to change the narrative around contemporary Black British music, the boundary-pushing musician aims with this project to prioritise the art of bonafide musicianship. A stark departure from cktrl’s previous work, ‘Yield’ is a celestial and palpably more inward body of work that harkens back to the pre-electric age of modal jazz while simultaneously pulling in elements from the disciplines of classical and baroque music. Speaking on the project’s sonic identity, cktrl says: “I want to be able to show that you can make things from scratch again that have that feeling and beauty without having to sample an old record. Even though that’s an art-form within itself, I want to show raw orchestration and instrumentation can be the sole source” The origins of the title came from a period where cktrl was looking to find solace in himself after an introspective period of grief and heartbreak. As an intentionally instrumental project with minimal vocals, cktrl wants prospective listeners to see these new songs as guided meditations where they can wholly insert themselves in it. Eliciting and reaping whatever feelings come to the fore. Speaking on what ‘Yield’ means to him as a concept, cktrl explains: “Some people who I've asked to define the word ‘yield’ have looked at it from a harvest point of view, whereas others have seen it as something to submit to, to render, like you're giving up yourself. I see it as a barometer for how you feel - no matter if you're at your lowest or your highest vibration, you still need to show up for yourself. You still have to be present. It’s about getting the best from yourself no matter where you are in life” The new project is the follow up to last year’s ‘Zero’ which featured collaborations with esteemed contemporaries like the GRAMMY-nominated Mereba and anaiis. Upon the project’s release, it was met with a plethora of critical acclaim from highly regarded publications and platform such as British Vogue, Dazed, CRACK Magazine, Resident Advisor, NOTION, Harper's Bazaar and ES Magazine for its sprawling and experimental scope, spanning avant-garde jazz, classical music, alternative R&B and electronica. Moulded by a unique blend of his West Indian heritage, years of classical training in both the clarinet and saxophone, cktrl strives to do what hasn’t been done before. His approach to creation is decidedly wide-ranging and broad. In fact, where sonic descriptions might fail to encompass the breadth of cktrl’s scope, three words surface when he unpacks his musical aims: freedom, range and feeling. Elsewhere, throughout his career, cktrl has been recognised and heralded by fashion and film VIPs as he firmly embeds himself within the black cultural renaissance emerging here in Britain. Acquiring a global network of creatives that include the late Virgil Abloh, Bianca Saunders, Tremaine Emory, Saul Nash, Maximilian Davis, Ahluwalia, Stephen Isaac Wilson, Sean Frank, Campbell Addy, Ib Kamara and Jenn Nkiru who secured him a cameo in Beyoncé’s ground-breaking film ‘Black Is King’.

Quiet Voices is a collaborative musical and sound art project, mixing ambient & electronic music, cinematic atmospheres & spoken word, founded by Jean-Yves Leloup, featuring musical pieces he composed with Hélène Vogelsinger, Villeneuve & Morando, Wild Anima, François-Eudes Chanfrault and Maxence Cyrin. Most of the composers involved in this project are all working in the field of cinema, composing music using electronic and acoustic instruments. All these musicians are also working in the field of modern classical, ambient and electronic music. Through the use of spoken voices (some of them coming from films), the Quiet Voices project can be heard as a tribute to the power and emotion of cinema. Each track can be heard as a short film, or a scene, fostering the listener's imagination. All the pieces from the record are dealing with the themes of time, memory, death or loss, and often dealing with the idea of an imaginary intermediate dimension between life and death. Jean-Yves Leloup is a Paris-based french sound artist/DJ, curator and music writer. He is the curator of various music exhibitions (Electro at Paris Philharmonie, London Design Museum and Düsseldorf Kunst Palast) and the author of various books such as " Digital Magma ", " Global Techno ", " Techno 100 ", " Music Non-Stop " and t " Ambient Music : avant-garde, new age, chill-out & cinema " (2021). He teaches sound in cinema at Paris Esra cinema School, and has released four albums with the RadioMentale duo.

After two 12 inches, the legendary Mick Harris (Scorn, Napalm Death,Lull) steps up with his first full length double lp for L.I.E.S. under his FRET moniker. Over 10 tracks, "Because of the Weak" displays Harris in his most intense sonic form to date, blasting through the red with reckless abandon and destroying all weakeners and sound systems in his path. This is the definition of black hole industrial techno and while it's completely pulverizing, Harris' heavy trademark dubstyle elements are strongly present, coupled with deeply psychedelic textures swirling within the deadly onslaught of this album. While others have softened up through the years, Mick has upped the ante, staying true to the unrelenting intensity he pioneered behind the drum kit back in the 80s. Turn on the TV, witness the demise of humanity, put this album on and watch it all fall to pieces minute by minute. Never more could music of this magnitude be more relevant. Not recommended for those with medical conditions!

From the viscerally punishing and nerve wrecking, to the wistfully sublime, Kevin Drumm‘s work often yield a ferocious intensity through the timbres of minute details. On ‘Battering Rams’, sinister forces interlope with sanguine glimmers of respite and contemplation, while recurring drones ceaselessly crescendo to near paralysing effect, only for the album's final moments to offer a lofty reprise of boundless oscillation, dispelling all the pent-up tension into a sanguine state of bliss. Once again, underpinning Kevin Drumms’ genius of transforming seemingly trivial sounds into elongated microtonal worlds that stay etched deeply in your conscious, often long after the work's final reverberations have subsided. Now, throughout this series of archival works dating from 2000 to 2022, his mastery is once again on full display and available via two new remastered formats.

Recorded in Lary 7’s legendary apartment studio Plastikville over nearly a decade, Larynx is the first full-length retrospective of the East Village icon’s hybrid music and engineering practice. The record mobilizes 7’s array of homemade instruments, which he ‘frankensteins’ together from offcast and outmoded bits of technology. An ode to the long-lost Canal Street junk shops he frequented in the 1970s and ’80s, Larynx brings together numerous thrift finds and sonic inventions used in his theatrical performances and installations. To play “le concretotron,” a board covered with twenty years worth of unspooled magnetic tape, 7 runs a tape head topographically over the flattened strips, picking up snippets of their recorded contents. The spring tree, another of his contraptions, is simply turned on and left to its own devices; feedback loops cause the amplified coils to resound in space and slowly increase in volume. The track “Mechano-Bleep” features a pattern generator constructed from a telephone sequence switch, 150 oscillators from an electric accordion, a sewing machine motor, and an early computing system called a “select-a-board.” Meanwhile, antiquated electronic instruments abound—7 employs the Ondioline, a precursor to the synthesizer; a Philicorda organ; and a homemade Trautonium, among other gadgets. Following Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Raymond Scott of Manhattan Research, 7 adopts a painstaking editing process that is entirely analogue. With lacquer cut directly from reel-to-reel and mastered by Paul Gold, Larynx is, in 7’s words, “the sound of the twentieth century going haywire.”

Guitar and bass duo Gong Gong Gong (工工工) charge out from Beijing’s underground scene with a distinct vision and uncompromising sense of purpose. The duo taps into a wavelength uniting musical cultures, drawing on inspirations ranging from Bo Diddley to Cantonese opera, West African desert blues, drone, and the structures of electronic music. Gong Gong Gong’s debut LP, Phantom Rhythm, is their mission statement: between the locomotive chug and banjo twang of Tom Ng’s guitar and Joshua Frank’s thumping bass harmonics, an aura of ghostly snare hits and timpani overtones emerges. Over Frank’s enigmatic melodies, Ng sings in Cantonese, piecing together abstract tales of absurdity and doubt, desire and lust. Formed in 2015, the band’s earliest shows were in Beijing underpass tunnels and DIY spaces. Ng and Frank are both outsiders who call the city their home: Ng, who was born in Hong Kong, defiantly sings in his native tongue, while Frank, originally from Montreal, has lived in Beijing on and off since childhood. (He is the English translator of Ng’s lyrics, adding another layer to the duo’s close collaboration). A compact, almost telepathic unit, Gong Gong Gong use their minimalistic tools and idiosyncratic playing style to challenge the notions of rock n’ roll, stripping the form down to its bare essentials: rhythm, melody, and grit

She's back with yet another masterpiece album, overflowing with emotions, musical ideas and mysterious atmospheres. With Halo, Juana Molina picks up where she left off with her previous acclaimed album Wed 21, and shows once more that she really is "on an evolutionary journey of her own devising" (Pitchfork), which has brought the "eerie, hypnotic" music on each of her albums "to increasingly haunting heights (Spin).

Halo is Juana Molina's seventh album, it contains twelve songs and was recorded in her home studio outside of Buenos Aires, and at Sonic Ranch Studio in Texas, with contributions by Odin Schwartz & Diego Lopez de Arcaute (who have both been playing live with Juana for a number of years), and Eduardo Bergallo (who has taken part in the mixing of her previous albums), with Deerhoof's John Dieterich making a guest appearance in a couple of tracks.

Soave Records dusts off in limited edition the psych/synth album by Doctor Steven T. Birchall recorded in 1973 in Indiana, U.S.A. with the following equipment: VCS-3 (The Putney) by EMS, Ampex MM-1000 16 trk, dbx noise reduction, SpectrasSonics Console, Studer A80 Recorder, Eventide Clockworks, Instant Phaser, Cooper Time Cube, EMT Reverb. The absolutely penetrating high tones of the opening track 'Music Of The Spheres' announce us that we are on board, passengers in the hands, or perhaps better to say in the mind, of Birchall who aims to go beyond those "normal" boundaries that we call reality. It is a new world of music that still amazes after half a century. A higher stage of truth projected into the cosmos. Cover art by Earl. E. Hokens..

Vladislav Delay presents the second EP in his "Hide Behind The Silence" series with five 10" releases coming throughout 2023. Intuitive and raw music, momentary and reflective, released on Ripatti's own label "Rajaton". Stillness is a myth. Consider concepts such as ”still water”, or ”still air” for that matter. Go to a restaurant, ask them for a glass of still water, hold it against the light and see where we’re at. Even though the water itself has been captured and imprisoned in the glass, it never stops breathing. It’s filled with tiny particles, dancing. Everything can be explained on a molecular level, but since we’re not scientists – and even if you happen to be – it’s the natural world of perception that moves me. Still air is very similar. A hot summer’s day with zero wind feels completely still. It’s the closest I have felt to complete stillness. Or for a more urban adaptation, imagine the same vibe inside a normal apartment. In those moments, revelations and mind- blowing experiences can be had with experiments in stillness. Try this: Just sit down for a minute on a sunny day, making sure there’s enough natural light. Do absolutely nothing. Try not to breathe for a bit. (If you need a mental anchor, you can play Cage’s 4’33” in your head but nothing else.) Watch the tiny dots of dust dancing :..’ ̈.:; ́ ́*°.,’:,. ̈ ̈ ̈ ̈:,.’ The movement is crazy, but the feeling of stillness comes from witnessing how subtle it is. In (perceived) complete stillness, every act of microscopic mobility seems to speak volumes. Yet, it feels both reassuring and oddly threatening that the stillness is never complete. What if we would need absolute stillness? Or is it just enough that we can perceive something as such? Extremes attract, so for both water and air, extraordinary movement is equally fascinating. That is also a luxury item of sorts. For us to enjoy a very ”loud” body of water or air, we need to be safe, in enough control of the situation. So when you are, it’s worthwhile to pay attention and take it all in. A rapid flowing free with extreme strength and just barely in control. Look at that water go! No still water on this one, only ”sparkling”. A windy day when birds seem surprised how hard it is to fly, but in the end they make it. Trees bend but don’t break. The wind shows you its movement but doesn’t hurt you. It feels friendly, like a big clumsy dog that doesn’t quite understand its size. It’s beautiful to be a guest of the elements, but not at the mercy of them. A new kind of dialogue forms. **Q&A with Sasu Ripatti:** *1) Tell us something about the EP series ”Hide Behind the Silence”, what’s the idea and what can we expect?* Exploration of inaction. Of many kinds. In arts and in personal life, or at bigger and more serious levels. Questioning myself as a human being as well as an artist. Acknowledging the growing activism all around, and the very clear need for it, and how it reflects my own inaction. Musically speaking, after Rakka, Isoviha and Speed Demon, I finally found some relief, but more importantly lost the need to go musically ever more outward and intensive. I felt quite strongly certain periods/moods from the past and they made me revisit some musical ideas or states of mind I was exploring early on. It’s about live moments being captured, not much premeditation or editing. More intuitive and raw, even though the end result (to me) feels and sounds quite introspective and calm. It’s not very ambitious. Momentary and reflective. *2) Your music doesn’t sound very silent. Does it come from somewhere behind the silence?* Oh, this time to me it sounds quite quiet and playing with space if not silence. I don’t know what’s actually behind silence, but I think silence is the source of everything. We just don’t understand it yet. *3) What kind of thoughts or experiences gave inspiration to this series?* Writing this in Nov ’22, it’s not a stretch to say the world has been really unwell. Sometimes, like Mika Vainio put it, the world eats you up. I feel a bit like that. And I try to hide in my studio and stay away from it all, but it’s getting harder by the day. I’ve been questioning myself and thinking if what us artists are doing is worth anything, and whether it’s just a selfish thing I’ve been doing for the past 25 years, running away from everything. I haven’t come to a conclusion yet. *4) Is it easy for you to be in silence, or around silence?* Absolutely. I not only hide behind silence but I also love silence. It’s only since I started going back to nature as a grown-up person that I sensed and was enveloped by silence, true silence. I have begun to appreciate it a lot. I think all the people should spend more time in silence.