MUSIC

ノスタルジックな深夜の音楽。20世紀前半のギリシャで流行した大衆歌謡であるレベティコの偉人であるGiorgos Katsarosによるスティール弦ギターとヴォーカルによる、時代を超えた魅力を放つ素晴らしい演奏をコンパイルした画期的編集盤が〈Mississippi Records〉と〈Olvido Records〉の共同でリリース。Katsarosの現存する初期の64の録音からリマスタリングされた貴重な10曲をセレクトした一枚。催眠的なメロディーが、親指で弾くベースラインの反復に支えられ、その深く悲しげな声が響き渡っています。

Considered by the Chicago Reader to be "one of the most gifted and innovative guitarists of the decade," Rafael Toral has developed a unique sound world, having been as influenced by Alvin Lucier and Brian Eno as by Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine. Using the guitar as part of a complex electronic instrument, Toral has collaborated with Jim O'Rourke, John Zorn, Sonic Youth, Rhys Chatham and Phill Niblock and played in many European countries. He's also a member of MIMEO, the electronic orchestra featuring Keith Rowe, Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Kaffe Matthews, and many others. Violence Of Discovery And Calm Of Acceptance is a collection of ten small pieces crafted by Toral with extreme precision and care through the last 7 years. Using guitars and analog technology, it can be described as Toral's best work, embodying all the directions he explored in his previous critically-acclaimed records, Sound Mind Sound Body, Wave Field and Aeriola Frequency but taking them into new dimensions. The highly evocative, intricate and subtle guitar drones are captured in the beautiful photography of Heitor Alvelos, a Portuguese artist, and in the artwork of Jon Wozencroft. The background noise on track 10 is a recording of silence during a Space Shuttle mission real-time webcast. All other sounds were made by electric guitars. The album was recorded between 1993 and 2000 and mastered at Noise Precision, Lisbon.

A 2026 release from Japanese sound artist Chihei Hatakeyama. Spanning six tracks and roughly 43 minutes, the album unfolds without dramatic shifts, letting subtle fluctuations and delicate changes in texture gradually expand across each piece.

A 2026 release from Japanese sound artist Chihei Hatakeyama. Spanning six tracks and roughly 43 minutes, the album unfolds without dramatic shifts, letting subtle fluctuations and delicate changes in texture gradually expand across each piece.

lovesliescrushing's Bloweyelashwish is an ambient masterpiece, originally recorded in 1992 with a 12-string guitar, 4-track recorder, looping pedal, and boundless reverb. Scott Cortez’s project, alongside the haunting vocals of Melissa Arpin Duimstra, transformed bedroom daydreams into a serene, moonlit journey on a timeless sea. This expanded and remastered double album features five additional tracks, each distortion-laden and hypnotic, alongside lyrics and a replica postcard to guide listeners deeper into its world. Blindness, not eyewash, is the intended experience.

Awesome Tapes From Africa the label began over 10 years ago with the reissue of Nahawa Doumbia’s Vol. 3. The recording kicked off a successful run of classic and new recordings from artists across Africa, being made available for the first time in the international marketplace. ATFA makes it possible for artists to expand their fanbases and revenues streams with legally licensed recordings and a 50/50 profit split. For its 50th release, ATFA presents iconic Malian singer Nahawa Doumbia’s beloved Vol. 2. Released on LP in 1982 and unavailable outside Mali until now, Vol. 2 is an intimate yet powerful document of the early efforts of one of Mali’s most enduring voices. Four decades of worldwide acclaim later, Doumbia is still touring the world blowing minds with her achingly emphatic singing backed by her partner guitarist N’gou Bagayoko. Vol. 2 is stark in its instrumentation—simply featuring voice and acoustic guitar—but massive in its sonic impact. Painstakingly extracted and remastered from LP by longtime ATFA audio engineer collaborator Jessica Thompson, this is the first time this recording has been cleaned-up for wider release. The master recording no longer exists and the original was pressed at relatively inferior quality, heightening the difficulty of presenting Vol. 2 with clarified audio. The historic recording was worth the effort. Doumbia’s voice soars above Bagayoko’s guitar as she lays out her plaintive approach to expressing relevant topics of the day. The room sound could be considered the third instrument as its shape and sonic affect is vibrantly apparent throughout. And the simplicity of this recording only enhances the immediacy of these four songs. As a bookend to both Doumbia’s long career and ATFA’s growing catalog, Vol. 2 is a grand yet unpretentious encapsulation of the energy behind this decade-long collaboration between artist and label.

Grady Steele (Formant Soundsystem) debuts on FELT with the tender spectre of Nausea, poignant patterns captured through the dusk-hued window pane. Co-founder of the Formant Soundsystem, a travelling rig that’s powered forward-thinking dances in London and Paris, Grady Steele has championed both experimental and club music at the cutting edge. Concurrently to this, he debuted his own productions back in 2024 for Archaic Vaults. Uniquely intimate, his music shone lowkey and warm with an assured glow. It’s no surprise then to find his inimitable sounds land neatly on Fergus Jones’ FELT imprint. Nausea extends across seven movements, narrating sentimental parallels of familiarity. Grady posits concentrated pangs of post-rave nostalgia with rich melodic sustenance, a vivid introspection tempered with field recordings and live instrumentation. Strummed guitars and aching pads move purposefully with the suspended pace, an immersive beatless vista from its opening quiet moments through to the guttural noise-laden finale. It’s a brief, beautiful collection from Grady Steele and another string to FELT’s unpredictable bow.

Netherlands-based artist Jonny Nash returns to Melody As Truth with his new solo album, ‘Once Was Ours Forever.’ Building on 2023’s ‘Point Of Entry,’ this collection of eleven compositions draws us further into Nash’s immersive, slowly expanding world, effortlessly connecting the dots somewhere between folk,

ambient jazz and dreampop.

While ‘Point Of Entry’ was characterised by it’s laid-back, daytime ambience, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’

arrives wrapped in shades of dusk and hazy light, unfolding like a slow-moving sunset. Built from layers of gentle fingerpicked guitar, textural brush strokes, floating melodies and reverb-soaked vocals, moments come and go, fleeting and ephemeral.

From the cosmic Americana of ‘Bright Belief’ to the lush, layered shoegaze textures of ‘The Way Things Looked’, Nash’s versatile guitar playing lies at the heart of this album, gently supported by a cast of

collaborators who each add their unique touches. Canadian ambient jazz saxophonist Joseph Shabason makes a return appearance, providing his delicate swells to ‘Angel.’ Saxophone is also provided by Shoei Ikeda (Maya Ongaku), cello by Tomo Katsurada (ex-Kikagaku Moyo) and Tokyo acid folk artist Satomimagae (RVNG) lends her haunting multilayered vocals to ‘Rain Song.’

As with much of Nash’s work, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ deftly finds an equilibrium between softness and weight, offering the listener ample space to interpret and inhabit the music on their own terms. Through his uncanny ability to blend the pastoral and the profound, the idyllic and the insightful, ‘Once Was Ours Forever’ arrives as a tender and understated offering, infused with warmth and compassion.

A sequel to last year's sublime 'Spectral Evolution', 'Traveling Light' is a suite of weightless, uncannily beautiful jazz standards, transformed into orchestral drones and electronic chirps by Toral and his virtual band. It's flawless material that draws a clear line from Billie Holiday through Clara Rockmore, Fripp & Eno and Alvin Lucier to MBV and Gastr del Sol and beyond. Unmissable gear, from one of the scene's unassailable legends. Culture never emerges from a vacuum. It accumulates and evolves, building on what occurred before and gleaning influence from what happened nearby; the more cultural threads converge, the more complex, nuanced and developed the resulting braids become. Toral acknowledged this fact quite brazenly on last year's 'Spectral Evolution', bringing over a decade of impenetrable off-world experimentation to a halt and shoving his bare hands into the creative soil that inspired iconic tomes like 1995's 'Loveless'-inspired masterpiece 'Wave Field' and the meditative Éliane Radigue-cum-Rhys Chatham 'Violence of Discovery And Calm of Acceptance'. Taking a dip in the pool of concepts that eddy underneath rock music's labyrinth of caverns, he referenced Duke Ellington and George Gershwin, turning vintage progressions into idiosyncratic contemporary gestures. And on 'Traveling Light' that basic theme is expanded again; here, Toral takes six recognizable early 20th century standards and applies a very similar treatment, augmenting them with additional "canonical jazz sounds" from clarinetist José Bruno Parrinha, tenor saxophonist Rodrigo Amado, flügelhorn player Yaw Tembe and flautist Clara Saleiro. Playing guitar and bass with his self-built ensemble of electronic devices (that includes a modified theremin), Toral lets his influences float even closer to the surface here, picking out familiar jazz and exotica flourishes, early electronic echoes and organ-esque polyphonic sustained tones that stretch across hundreds of years of musical history. On opener 'Easy Living', a Ralph Rainger composition from 1937 that's been recorded by Billie Holiday, Bill Evans and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, among others, the original chord sequence is slackened by Toral's sustained guitar tones and sine waves, but not blurred completely into impressions. This time around we're treated to more tangible shapes: Toral's cheeky, expertly rendered riffs, horizontal exotica-inspired rhythmelodic chimes, intimate woodwind breaths that pull us back to the '30s and squealing pitches that can't help but remind us of Clara Rockmore's Robert Moog-produced milestone 'The Art of the Theremin'. It feels like being chucked in the American cultural petri dish while new organisms mutate around you - everything's recognisable somehow but novel, peculiar. Lovingly valve saturated strums, bent by Toral's whammy, introduce 'Body and Soul' (a 1930 standard that's best known for being recorded by Frank Sinatra) before they're met by alien chirps from his arsenal of generators. But it's the willowy harmonies that buoy this one, echoing the haunted choral drones that prop up centuries of European sacred music. Toral's very specific with his references; when Amado's tenor moans whisper around the dense polyphonic hums, there's a tacit acknowledgement of the enduring influence of African American spirituals and gospel on folk, blues, jazz, country, rock 'n roll and R&B. The album's most affecting segment comes at the conclusion though, with 'My Funny Valentine' and 'God Bless the Child', easily two of the most conspicuous compositions of the era. On both, Toral hovers between clarity and abstraction, overlaying bone-dry fingerpicked improvisations on the former that scrape over Chicago's musical timeline, from "hot jazz" to post-rock, and finishing the album with Fennesz-like distortions that crack and dissolve into Saleiro's levitational flute tones. It's astonishing stuff, honestly - maybe not as immediately startling as 'Spectral Evolution', but refined, polished and concentrated in every way. You're unlikely to find a more moving set this year, that's for sure.

Released in 1983 on a miniscule run of 300-self-financed LP’s, Dennis Taylor’s ‘Dayspring’ remains a lost masterwork of transcendental instrumental guitar. An important missing link between the 60’s folkloric experimentalism of John Fahey and Robbie Basho, and the new age atmospherics mined by William Ackerman and Michael Hedges in the early 80’s. Though Taylor’s guitar playing remains crisply unadorned on these 10 tracks, his technique and his compositions stretch beyond the folk roots of the genre. He crafts a soundworld that is both immersive and familiar. His pastoralism has a spaciousness - a pianistic drift - that feels truly timeless. Taylor cut his musical teeth through the 60’s and 70’s playing with garage rock bands, and later finding his footing in the world of jazz/folk fusion. Sometime in the early 70’s, Taylor found his most profound inspiration to date when he witnessed a live performance from Takoma Records luminary, Leo Kottke. Enraptured by Kottke’s ability to fill the room so completely, with the sound of just one instrument, Taylor was determined to follow a similar path. Thus, he began composing music for solo guitar. He spent nearly a decade writing and honing his pieces, finally entering a studio in 1982 to commit them to tape. Taylor likened the recording experience to “a living room concert.” He recorded each song in a single take, in the order they appear on the album. Paying out of pocket for the recording sessions, studio time was at a premium, so Taylor had arrived prepared. And the results speak for themselves. Dennis Taylor’s guitar playing is clean, precise, and masterfully proficient. And yet, ‘Dayspring’ is not merely a document of technical ability. His compositions are deeply expressive. Taylor’s deft fingerpicking is married to achingly beautiful melodicism. His arpeggios chime and roll with painterly expression. Across the breadth of ‘Dayspring’, Dennis Taylor strikes a perfect balance between wistful nostalgia and bold expansion. Though Taylor initially hoped to release his album with new age progenitors Windham Hill, he ultimately decided to release the album on his own. He self-financed a pressing of 300 LP’s, which were largely distributed locally in his hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. And now, Morning Trip is supremely proud to bring this album back to light. An important missing piece in the expansive tapestry of instrumental guitar music, finally restored on its original format.

Dog’s light, dog’s light… a product of the fog itself. Illuminated mists flicker in the fog, swallowed by bells, skin torsion and finger squeaks. Here, mud made a rhapsody of distortion and sand. Dunes, where raised magnets at the dusk hour, receive textures and hints of country melodies, melodies mostly generated by limbs. Anon mists form a curtain hovering above the suburb of sand.

At the end of June 2025, the Krakow-based label Instant Classic will release the album "Bura" by Raphael Rogiński and the group Ružičniak Tajni, which includes Serbian artists: Svetlana Spajić, Marina Džukljev and Tijana Golubović. The album also features guest appearances by Piotr Zabrodzki (LXMP, Mitch & Mitch) and Mila Gavrilovič. Ružičniak Tajni is a unique meeting of Polish and Serbian musical traditions, the result of cooperation between artists seeking new forms of expression based on the cultural heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. The initiator of the project is Raphael Rogiński - a Polish guitarist, composer and researcher, known for his experimental approach to traditional music and his love of improvisation. In the project, he is accompanied by three outstanding Serbian artists whose work is a conscious combination of local traditions and modern expression: Svetlana Spajić – a renowned ethnomusicologist and singer, specializing in old vocal techniques and archaic song forms. Her interpretations combine authenticity of message with sensitivity to the contemporary context. Marina Džukljev – a pianist moving in the area of ​​improvised and experimental music, known for deconstructing harmonic and rhythmic structures. Tijana Golubović – a violinist and vocalist, drawing from folk performance practice, while simultaneously exploring new sonic narratives. Their collaboration resulted in the album “Bura”, recorded in Serbia in November 2024. The title refers to the characteristic wind from the northern Balkans, symbolizing both the forces of nature and the cultural tensions shaping the identity of the region. The album is a musical encounter of traditional Serbian songs – reconstructed on the basis of oral traditions and archival materials – with modern means of expression. Another key element are Raphael Rogiński’s original compositions, inspired by Sufi poetry, which was translated into Serbian in the 19th century. The sound layer of the project is based on the dynamic interaction of voice, stringed instruments and piano. Spajić brings the depth of archaic vocal techniques, Golubović combines the violin idiom with the vocal one, Džukljev creates complex harmonic structures, and Rogiński transforms the guitar tradition, enriching it with microtonality and modality. The Ružičniak Tajni concert tour will take place in May and June 2025, covering five Serbian cities. The inaugural concert is scheduled for May 16 in Belgrade. The project was created with the support of the Polish Institute in Belgrade. The concert tour is carried out in cooperation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the cultural programme accompanying the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2025.

Melody As Truth founder Jonny Nash returns to action with his first solo album in four years. Point of Entry, the Gaussian Curve member’s sixth solo set, builds on Nash’s recent forays into folk traditions (2020’s Poe, made in collaboration with Teguh Permana, and 2021’s Suzanne Kraft co-production A Heart So White), while delivering a clear musical evolution. Over the course of eleven mesmerising tracks, Nash points the compass gently inwards, casting aside any conceptual frameworks in favour of exploring an imaginative and idealised “personal folk music” that combines elements of traditional acoustic music with the producer’s richly immersive interpretation of ambient, a sound he has been developing for well over a decade. The album was created using a stream of consciousness approach to writing and recording, with Nash utilising his favoured instrument – the guitar, often doused in atmospheric effects – as a starting point. Throughout, his delicate and evocative playing takes centre stage, its melodic lines and finger-picked refrains painting aural images that resonate with positive yet contemplative energy. From the smudged acid-folk bliss of ‘Theories’ and ‘Eternal Life’, to the layered acoustic guitars of ‘All I Ever Needed’ and the delay-soaked, Durutti Column-esque ‘Light From Three Sides’, a wide variety of musical textures weave their way throughout the album. Point of Entry is much more than a mere ‘guitar album’ – it draws on a rich and diverse palette to achieve its purpose. The delicate saxophone work of ambient-jazz contemporary Joseph Shabason swells on ‘Ditto’ and ‘Light From Three Sides’. Cascading piano lines ripple through the crystal clear sonic waters of ‘Face of Another’, whilst echoes of Nash’s work with Gigi Masin and Young Marco as Gaussian Curve appear in the dancing synth sequences of ‘Ditto’ and ‘Golden Hour’. Nash’s reverb-laden voice also appears for the first time since 2016’s critically acclaimed Exit Strategies, used delicately throughout the album to conjure up a world of dusk and golden light. Combining the delicate human touch and naivety of earlier Melody As Truth releases with widened scope and vision, Point Of Entry is arguably Nash’s most complete work to date – an album that’s as much a statement of his “personal folk” vision as a future ambient classic.

Point/Wave represents a rare confluence of precision and open inquiry, as Catherine Lamb’s composition for Cristián Alvear translates the enigmatic condition of sound into tactile experience. Commissioned by Alvear and realized on Another Timbre, Lamb’s score meditates on her signature just intonation, deploying the Secondary Rainbow Synthesizer to generate four environmental chords that breathe around the guitar’s modally tuned strings. The electronics hum and fade - reflecting timbral shifts from the ambient world even as their cycles remain unpredictable to the performer. What takes shape is both spectral and grounded. Lamb’s deliberate exclusion of fifth-based harmonics yields a palette unrecognizable to most ears: intervals built from the 3rd, 7th, 11th, and 31st harmonics inhabit the margins of conventional tonality, producing subtle microtonal undulations. The guitar, tuned to ratios outside standard temperaments, carves out harmonies less from assertion than from emergence, as each elongated cycle hints at an absent fundamental, which may manifest only in the mind of the listener. The score directs Alvear through open-string harmonics and sparse fretted notes, creating a microtonal lattice whose contours morph subtly with every gesture. Interaction with the electronics - sometimes sourced from processed field recordings - ensures that each performance is unique, anchored in dialogue with the environment. The result is a form Lamb calls “the long introduction,” reminiscent of alap in Indian classical music, yet in Point/Wave, there is no destination - only continuous unfolding. Produced by Giacomo Fiore and Lanier Sammons in a San Francisco studio, the recording prioritizes live interaction, using amplifiers to really make the electronics vibrate in space. Listeners are drawn into a quietly radical exploration: time dilates, the ear adjusts, and focus deepens as acoustic detail and ambient drift intermingle. Point/Wave stands thus as a testament to Lamb and Alvear’s devotion to the possibility that, as form recedes from necessity, attention alone can become an instrument of transformation.

Connecting Wasulu hunter music, griot praises, Senufo pastoral dances, Fula and Mandingo repertoire alongside Western psychedelia, blues and afro-beat, Zani Diabaté’s Super Djata Band was among Mali’s top orchestras of the 1980s. On their 1982 album, Diabaté enshrines himself within the pantheon of mythical West African guitarists, hypnotically picking through eight vivid compositions on his path to godhead status.

After decades spent shaping the sound of southern Madagascar, Damily returns with Fanjiry, his most intimate and focused record to date. A key figure in tsapiky as a guitarist and composer, and a driving force behind a genre he helped define, Damily has long expressed himself through the voices of the singers accompanying his bands. With Fanjiry, he takes a singular step forward: for the first time, he carries his compositions himself through singing — not by claiming the role of a singer, but as a natural extension of his playing and personal storytelling. Known for igniting village ceremonies and carrying the fever of Toliara far beyond Madagascar’s shores, he makes a shift here — not away from trance, but deeper into its core. Recorded and mixed in just three days at Studio Black Box with analog sound engineer Peter Deimel, Fanjiry reduces tsapiky to its essence: a single guitar and a single heartbeat. Damily plays alone, yet fills the entire space — bass, rhythm, melody, breath and pulse merging into a dense, vibrating and constantly moving sound. Each riff becomes architecture, each harmonic opens a door onto memory, childhood landscapes, and those nights when music heals, connects, and pushes back the dark. Free of nostalgia and frozen folklore, Fanjiry unfolds as an intimate territory where tsapiky naturally converges with memories of village life in the 1980s — the Pecto, Radio Mozambique, East African 7-inch records, Malagasy national hits — alongside possession rituals and the practices of local healers. Added to this is a second life lived far from Madagascar, which has allowed Damily to explore the depths of his guitar more freely, pushing his sound further, beyond constraints. Raw and precise, suspended between earth and sky, the album is born from gesture and necessity. Its title — the last star visible before dawn — captures that fragile moment when a single guitar can hold an entire world and still move forward. With Fanjiry, Damily does not step back — he opens the horizon. A solitary record reaching toward others, where intimacy becomes universal and the dance begins again, softly, before sunrise.

After decades spent shaping the sound of southern Madagascar, Damily returns with Fanjiry, his most intimate and focused record to date. A key figure in tsapiky as a guitarist and composer, and a driving force behind a genre he helped define, Damily has long expressed himself through the voices of the singers accompanying his bands. With Fanjiry, he takes a singular step forward: for the first time, he carries his compositions himself through singing — not by claiming the role of a singer, but as a natural extension of his playing and personal storytelling. Known for igniting village ceremonies and carrying the fever of Toliara far beyond Madagascar’s shores, he makes a shift here — not away from trance, but deeper into its core. Recorded and mixed in just three days at Studio Black Box with analog sound engineer Peter Deimel, Fanjiry reduces tsapiky to its essence: a single guitar and a single heartbeat. Damily plays alone, yet fills the entire space — bass, rhythm, melody, breath and pulse merging into a dense, vibrating and constantly moving sound. Each riff becomes architecture, each harmonic opens a door onto memory, childhood landscapes, and those nights when music heals, connects, and pushes back the dark. Free of nostalgia and frozen folklore, Fanjiry unfolds as an intimate territory where tsapiky naturally converges with memories of village life in the 1980s — the Pecto, Radio Mozambique, East African 7-inch records, Malagasy national hits — alongside possession rituals and the practices of local healers. Added to this is a second life lived far from Madagascar, which has allowed Damily to explore the depths of his guitar more freely, pushing his sound further, beyond constraints. Raw and precise, suspended between earth and sky, the album is born from gesture and necessity. Its title — the last star visible before dawn — captures that fragile moment when a single guitar can hold an entire world and still move forward. With Fanjiry, Damily does not step back — he opens the horizon. A solitary record reaching toward others, where intimacy becomes universal and the dance begins again, softly, before sunrise.

Welcoming elusive Japanese guitarist, Kouhei Fukuzumi, for his 3rd solo full-length as Ultrafog. ‘A Replica Screams’ emerges as a collection of drifting memories, a chain reaction of unique combinations of elements already present in the World. It embraces the idea that existence itself is positively shaped by serendipity and meaningful coincidences, and that we are all falling together, in time, and on time.

The vinyl edition contains an original artwork poster presenting João Bragança Gil’s ‘The Origin’ (On & On), an installation on synchronicity and fossils, which materialized in conjunction with Ultrafog’s live show at Ufonic (Lisbon, September 2024).

Sakamoto on Guitar LP by Jonathan Bockelmann In Wishlist view x Share Tweet Share on Tumblr Embed this albumsmall medium large Email supported by Greg thumbnail dbp thumbnail alojlo thumbnail Raznat thumbnail Alexander Hine thumbnail Michael Gallagher thumbnail Kevin Burns thumbnail mattbenard thumbnail Cybershaman thumbnail Etienne B thumbnail Roygbiv thumbnail musicistheanswer thumbnail Bruce Levenstein thumbnail raffaele melina thumbnail Tseld thumbnail dasd thumbnail Bethlem thumbnail fulemin thumbnail wilb thumbnail Ian Reagan thumbnail Arthur LORENTE thumbnail alifetimeaway thumbnail ryryryryryryryryry thumbnail NAOKI WATANABE thumbnail Aoneko No Torso 00:00 / 02:13 Streaming + Download Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Download available in 24-bit/96kHz. €9 EUR or more Record/Vinyl + Digital Album package image package image package image package image package image 180g vinyl, first pressing comes with an embossed art print Includes unlimited streaming of Sakamoto on Guitar LP via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Download available in 24-bit/96kHz. ships out within 10 days €27 EUR or more 1. Aoneko No Torso 02:13 2. Dream 01:15 3. Bibo No Aozora 03:20 4. Blu 02:58 5. A Flower Is Not A Flower 03:12 6. 20220302 02:41 7. Opus 05:21 8. Dancing In The Sky 01:03 9. Suite for Krug in 2008: I. Movement 06:31 10. Suite for Krug in 2008: II. Movement 07:10 11. Suite for Krug in 2008: III. Movement 05:13 about Jonathan Bockelmann is a classical guitarist and composer based in Munich who first made waves in 2023 with his debut album ‘Childish Mind’. His entry into composing were arrangements he had made of pieces by Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Some of these have been released digitally in three editions and are now available on vinyl for the first time. The record comes in high quality packaging with an embossed art print and features both some of Sakamoto’s lesser-known works like the ‘Suite for Krug’ as well as iconic pieces like ‘Bibo No Aozora’. "I have always been fascinated with the music of Sakamoto. He manages to communicate his musical ideas with only a few notes - something that merely a handful of composers are capable of doing. And no matter what instruments he writes for, you can always hear an underlying constant, a signature in his sound. It was a revelation to me when I finished my first transcriptions of his music and realized how incredibly well they actually work on the guitar. Somehow this instrument is suitable for capturing the spirit of his compositions and I think it's because of the unique and colorful tone of the instrument. It even f e e l s great to play those pieces. Sometimes I spend so much time studying them that they start to sound to me as if they were originally written for guitar. During the transcription process I had to take on different challenges. When the original score was available it was much easier to transcribe a composition because I had different instrument sections separately - like the string section of ‚Blu’, for example. This way I could figure out how and where to play it on the guitar. For some pieces though, like 'Dream', there was no score available and I had to figure out the notes by ear. In the end the whole process gave me so much joy and inspiration, not least because I felt that I have created a whole new repertoire for the classical guitar, one that is wonderful to listen to and a joy to play." - Jonathan Bockelmann

studio mule announces the first-ever vinyl release of shinsuke honda’s banka (1991)

known as the guitarist of the legendary band hachimitsu pie, shinsuke honda—whose album silence is celebrated as one of the most remarkable achievements in japanese ambient guitar jazz—sees his 1991 cd-only masterpiece banka finally released as a double lp from studio mule.

carrying forward the spirit of silence while reaching new levels of refinement and depth, banka presents a collection of beautifully crafted ambient jazz pieces that reveal honda’s distinctive musical vision.

Now available for the first time on Vinyl, Sittin' By The Road Captures Blaze Foley on his earliest known recordings. Simple, straightforward and strong, the album contains a dozen tracks recorded during Blaze's 'treehouse' days in Georgia. Recorded in the mid-1970s on a home reel-to-reel machine, these songs showcase Blaze's talent in early form. Includes many of Foley's classic tunes plus three songs that did not appear on previous albums.

Fred Frith is simultaneously a singular musical figure and a collection of musical lifetimes. He‘s the composer who wrote fragile avant-garde music in the tradition of John Cage and Earle Brown, the innovator who created new concepts of underground rock with his colleagues in the band Henry Cow, and the improviser who developed his very own language on the guitar. The many facets of Frith‘s musical oeuvre shimmer in vibrant and unique colors, but stand as one rainbow monolith of musical creation, never disintegrating into esoteric eclecticism. Always musically curious and unbiased, he develops his ideas in the moment, demonstrating in real time how his creative process, while free of old hat conventions and tricks, creates an immediate yet unrandom and committed music. At the core is his unique guitar playing, which is on full display across these two records. His debut, "Guitar Solos" (1974), opened up a space beyond rock and improvised music, and now, 50 years later comes "Fifty" (2024), a new solo guitar album that sounds completely different and yet familiar, that adds to his monolith of musical creation with another new vibrant color.

Atsushi Tsuyama is a legendary guitarist representing the Japanese underground, known for his work in various bands, including the mind-bending duo Omoide Hatoba with Seiichi Yamamoto. He was also a founding member of Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO, a group that conquered the world and even graced the cover of the UK's WIRE magazine before his surprising departure. In recent years, he's been active in projects like Psyche Bugyo, which champions "samurai rock," and a traditional duo with Tomomi Nagano from Kyoto.

"Guitar Solo North of Latitude 30°" is an acoustic guitar solo album that captures Tsuyama's raw, unvarnished style. Released exclusively on vinyl with a limited run of 200 copies, the jacket features a photo of him in the mountains, printed on a shimmering silver sheet. For over 50 years, Tsuyama has also been a dedicated caretaker of the mountains in Nagano Prefecture, running a mountain hut and rescuing hikers, literally protecting the mountains of the Ina Valley.

lovesliescrushing's Bloweyelashwish is an ambient masterpiece, originally recorded in 1992 with a 12-string guitar, 4-track recorder, looping pedal, and boundless reverb. Scott Cortez’s project, alongside the haunting vocals of Melissa Arpin Duimstra, transformed bedroom daydreams into a serene, moonlit journey on a timeless sea. This expanded and remastered double album features five additional tracks, each distortion-laden and hypnotic, alongside lyrics and a replica postcard to guide listeners deeper into its world. Blindness, not eyewash, is the intended experience.