MUSIC

In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.

Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.

Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.

Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.

Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.

As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.

Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.

Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.

In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.

Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.

Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.

Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.

Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.

As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.

Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.

Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.

A classic. Boards of Canada's 1998 masterpiece, their first album.

Japanese edition inc. the sticker. A classic. Boards of Canada's 1998 masterpiece, their first album.

Geogaddi is the second studio album by Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada, released on 18 February 2002 by Warp Records.

The Campfire Headphase is the third studio album by Scottish electronic music duo Boards of Canada. It was released on 17 October 2005 by Warp Records.

Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood. "She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest. Booklet notes by Robert Ashley.

Music From Memory returns with their penultimate release of 2016, this time bringing together a compilation of works by the Italian composer and musician Roberto Musci. While studying guitar and saxophone in his hometown of Milan, Musci developed a deep fascination for non-western music and set out to travel across India, Asia and Africa, which he would do extensively between 1974-1985. During his many journeys Roberto would become deeply embedded in each unique world of rhythms, scales and approaches to making and performing music. Throughout this period of travel he would make many field recordings as well as collect and study many traditional and indigenous instruments that he would then later combine with synthesizers and electronics on his return to Italy.

Combining personal documents of music and sounds deeply connected to the history and cultures of those lands, with his own explorations and experiments with cutting edge sound technology Roberto Musci would develop through his music a very unique and at times wholly mystical space, where ancient and modern would evolve into a new musical language.

As well as making his own music, during the 1980’s and 1990’s Roberto would also regularly broadcast radio shows of experimental and indigenous music on Italian radio stations such as Rai and Radio Popolare. Deeply connected to the arts he would also compose and perform numerous pieces of music for theatre, dance and performance art pieces as well as soundtracks for film and television.

‘Tower of Silence’ brings together a double LP of material from Roberto Musci’s solo recordings commencing with the Loa of Music sessions from 1984 up until later very recent works. The compilation also includes a number of collaborative pieces, many performed and written in collaboration with Giovanni Venosa, such as material taken from their ‘Water Messages On Desert Sand’, which as an album was Grammy-nominated in in the UK in 1987. A unique and at times intensely mesmerising musical world ‘Tower of Silence’ offers an introduction to the work of a unique and visionary artist.

On June 3rd Gondwana Records present ‘Next Time Could Be Your Last Time’ – the debut album by Forgiveness, AKA Jack Wyllie, JQ and Richard Pike. Described as “not really jazz, not really new age, not really ambient or electronica”, instead they welcome you into a synaesthesia-inducing technicolour fantasy, full of wondrous emotive beauty. This genesis began with the sharing of music, burgeoning friendships, and the mutually-inspirational benefit of the collective power of a group dynamic, with each spurring the next on to heighten their already expansive skills. Intertwining the acoustic, electric and digital, utilising instruments and tools from across the decades, their synthesized Shangri La is a place where craftsmanship meets musicianship, even including sections notated on sheet music. The mood whilst recording, however, was one of loose freedom and enjoyment, with parts displaying a light-hearted playfulness. A world where shiny electronics meet flute and sax motifs, subverting them into something new. Jack Wyllie is best known for his work with Portico Quartet, Paradise Cinema and Szun Waves as well as collaborations with artists such as Luke Abbott, Adrian Corker and Charles Hayward. Whilst JQ has released on Boxed and Lo Recordings, with his music also remixed by Loraine James, Sun Araw and Foodman. Richard Pike has had multiple records on Warp as a member of PVT, collaborated with Modeselektor and Ital Tek, recorded under his alter-ego Deep Learning, and founded the tape label Salmon Universe, all whilst composing scores for TV drama. Wide-ranging influences on the LP include 70s era ECM and Miles Davis, Spencer Clark/Star Searchers, Ansel Adams, Steve Reich, H Takahashi, Don Slepian, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’, Michael Gordon’s ‘Rushes for 8 Bassoons’, Sir Simon Rattle’s documentary ‘Leaving Home’, Horoshi Yoshimura, Ulla Strauss and Disasterpeace, plus new developments in vaporwave and software experimental. Hitting the centre at the ven diagram of these interests, the record converges the trio’s individual sound worlds into something singular. Primarily purveying a sense of endorphin-flushed tranquillity, they build synthetic, bucolic, lysergic landscapes, which although imbued with processed plasticity also contain multi-stranded depths of textural field.

A classic. Boards of Canada's 1998 masterpiece, their first album.

The album was released in 2013, following the immortal albums "Music Has the Right to Children" (1998), "Geogaddi" (2002), and "The Campfire Headphase" (2005). Written, recorded, produced, and artwork designed by members Mike Sandison and Marcus Ion, the album is entitled "Tomorrow's Harvest".

Music Promenade (1964–1969), 20’29


Electroacoustic Music
World premiere for the Théâtre de la musique, March 16, 1970
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Permanent version for four stand-alone tape recorders. A series of colliding realistic sounds and sonic images. Whilst walking, a man is struck by the violence of his surroundings.
 Nature has disappeared in a whirlwind of warfare and industry in the midst of which he encounters a dying folklore and a lost young girl.

The "Installation" version is used to sonify a place in which walkers are free to choose their musical itinerary.

Unheimlich Schön (1971), 15’40


Musique concrète made in 1971 in the studios of the Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden.
Voice: Ilse Mengel.

“How does a young woman breathe when thinking about something else ?”
To be listened to at a low volume.

Black Truffle is thrilled to announce Spilla, the second album from Nantes-based Ensemble Nist-Nah, 48 minutes of music for Gamelan, drum kits, wood and metal percussion instruments, and plucked strings that will surely count as one of the most electrifying records you hear this year. Founded by the Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie in 2019, continuing the explorations begun in solo form on Nist-Nah (Black Truffle, 2020), the ensemble (eight or nine core members with occasional guests) has been consistently active in the half-decade since: composing, rehearsing, recording and touring Europe (with a mass of equipment in tow) to great acclaim. Spilla tracks the continuing evolution of the project since the recording of their first album, Elders (Black Truffle, 2022). The two sides of this record document two different iterations of the group, and the members' compositional input has increased: each side contains one piece by a member other than Guthrie. It has become clearer than ever that Ensemble Nist-Nah is not an attempt at a European Gamelan ensemble but rather a hybrid percussion ensemble that uses instruments from a Javanese Gamelan alongside other percussion to perform original music informed by a variety of South East Asian music but also by everything from free jazz to contemporary hip-hop: while Nist-Nah and Elders both featured traditional Javanese pieces, on Spilla the only tune not generated by a member of the group is by Guthrie’s long-time musical hero and occasional collaborator Roscoe Mitchell.The two short pieces that open the record could almost be the two sides of a wild 7” selected to show off what the Ensemble can do. On opener ‘Gerak Maju’, intricately skittering open-snare patterns bounce over clanging metal, chiming bell-like tones and deep gong hits, adapting the rhythm-register connections heard in traditional Gamelan musics—where the lowest pitched sounds are heard least frequently—to a cut-up breakbeat straight off Feed Me Weird Things. ‘Strollabout’ then moves into an entirely different realm of meditative repeating patterns, performed entirely on Chinese, Javanese and Vietnamese gongs. The remaining seven pieces, ranging from three to twelve minutes, offer up a wealth of different percussive, compositional and arrangement possibilities. On ‘Ghostly Klang’, two drumkits mirror each other’s moves, bouncing hats and snares across the stereo field in a way that recalls On the Corner and the jittering hi hat patterns of trap, while slow moving melodies on the tuned instruments add a sense of majesty contrasted by scurrying details in resonant wood. The epic closing track presents a take on Roscoe Mitchell’s ‘Uncle’, performed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago on their classic Urban Bushmen live album. Where the Art Ensemble used Mitchell’s dirge-like melody as a jumping off point for virtuosic improvisational flights, Ensemble Nist-Nah rethink the piece as a near-static dialogue between the monumental, slow-moving sequence of unison tuned percussion notes and a textural cloud that grows in richness and intensity from whispering cymbal rolls into a mass of gong overtones and bowed metal.Beautifully recorded and mixed, Spilla arrives in a sleeve decorated with core member Charles Dubois’ drawings of cymbals and gongs. Against the backdrop of a wider musical landscape dominated by over-produced electronic slop and bland harmonic wallpaper, Ensemble Nist-Nah stands out as a reminder, vital and unpretentious, of the joys and possibilities of human beings playing instruments together.

Ryuichi Sakamoto's sixth solo album, “Esperanto,” a 1985 masterpiece dedicated to a performance by avant-garde New York choreographer Molissa Fenley and featuring reevaluated Japanese percussionists Yas-Kaz and Arto Lindsay from the new age revival side, has been reissued in analog format. Esperanto”, his sixth solo album, is now available as an analog reissue! Originally released on the label under the Midi Inc., this is one of the most avant-garde albums of his career, yet it has never been released overseas! After the international success of his soundtrack for the 1984 film “Merry Christmas at the Battlefield” with David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto returned to his roots in left-field music. This is a masterpiece album produced under the title of “imaginary folk music,” a mix of early electronica, ambient, and even synthpop!

The strength of the Akira soundtrack lies in its unique blend of traditional Japanese instruments and futuristic electronic sounds. Shoji Yamashiro weaves together an eclectic mix of influences, creating a sonic landscape that mirrors the dystopian and cyberpunk themes of the movie. The use of traditional chants, taiko drums, and Shakuhachi flutes alongside electronic synthesizers and orchestral elements generates a hauntingly mesmerizing atmosphere that perfectly complements the visuals on screen. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of Akira.

The decision to assemble a boxed set titled Luc Ferrari, l’œuvre électronique [Luc Ferrari, Electronic Works], defining the word electronic in the widest sense possible, meant bringing together an essential part of the composer’s work: tape music without any classical instruments.
From Étude aux accidents (1958) to Arythmiques (2003), the 31 works in this compilation will help the listener to discover all the facets of his art based on “captured” sounds. He tried and tested all the different techniques of studio work: brilliantly elaborated electroacoustic works, radiophonic story-telling or Hörspiele, which he particularly relished, or other semi-improvised works.
This editorial choice is not a way of drawing a hierarchy between on the one hand so-called mixed music (with instruments), which he excelled at, and on the other hand the type of music published here, which only includes recorded sounds. On the contrary, what we aimed to do was to show the strong links he drew between natural sounds and the way he scored them. On this subject, Pierre Schaeffer often talked of the necessary balance between sounds and musicality. The power of recorded sounds alone (voices, landscapes, strange sounds, everyday scenes, etc.) without formal mastery is not enough to hold the listener’s attention for long.
From that point of view, each work of Ferrari’s is a discrete lesson in music. Ferrari was always very lucid when he claimed that a composer was a little like a “journalist” who, through his compositions, witnessed the state of the world while at the same time creating a work of art.
This is another aspect of this edition: as we listen and in filigree, half a century unfolds before us. A committed artist bears witness to technological progress, political awareness, reports and crucial encounters. More than an essential compilation, this boxed set reflects the personality of a diverse, inventive and extraordinarily musical man.

Daniel Teruggi / David Jisse, 2008

Joshua Abrams’ Chicago-based avant-garde collective Natural Information Society, also known for their collaboration with Bitchin Bajas, return with a long-awaited repress of their 2024 masterpiece Since Time Is Gravity on eremite records. Anchored by the deep pulse of the guimbri and the sustained tones of the harmonium, the music interweaves heavy rhythmic foundations with the spiritual cry of the saxophone, uniting minimalism and spiritual jazz. The expanded ensemble surges in spirals or drifts in hushed stillness, creating an immersive experience that seems to transform time itself. Rooted in the traditions of Chicago jazz, infused with the trance-like mysticism of North African folk, and sharpened by a contemporary minimalist sensibility, this album stands as a pinnacle of truly living music.

We Release Whatever The Fuck We Want Records is thrilled and honored to announce the first ever official vinyl pressing of the soundtrack for Mamoru Oshii's critically acclaimed and all around legendary science fiction anime film GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995), adapted from Masamune Shirow's groundbreaking manga series of the same name.

Cut from the original master reels at Emil Berliner Studios (formerly the in-house recording department of renowned classical record label Deutsche Grammophon), the album comes as a LP accompanied by a bonus one-sided 7" housed in official Ghost in the Shell artwork sleeve with silver gilt printing and a Japanese obi, and contains extensive 24-page liner notes.

The haunting score is composed by Kenji Kawai, one of Japan's most celebrated soundtrack composers, alongside Joe Hisaishi and Ry?ichi Sakamoto, whose work includes Hideo Nakata's Ring (1998) and Ring 2 (1999), Death Note (2006), Hong Kong films Seven Swords by Tsui Hark (2005) and Ip Man by Wilson Yip (2008), and countless others. Kawai's compositions see ancient harmonies and percussions uncannily mesh with synthesized sounds of the modern world to convey a sumptuous balance between folklore tradition and futuristic outlook. For its iconic main theme "Making of Cyborg", Kawai had a choir chant a wedding song in ancient Japanese following Bulgarian folk harmonies, setting the standard for a timeless and unparalleled soundtrack that admirably echoes the film's musings on the nature of humanity in a technologically advanced world.

Ghost in the Shell is widely considered one of the best anime films of all time and its influence has been felt in the work of numerous movie directors, including James Cameron (Avatar), the Wachowskis (The Matrix), and Steven Spielberg (AI: Artificial Intelligence).

Meitei’s 2020 album 'Kofū' was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s 'Kwaidan' and 2019’s 'Komachi'.

All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being washed away – not least by the unforgiving sands of time – through wistful compositions that stretched across ambient music, hauntology, and musique concrete.

When it came to finalizing 'Kofū', Meitei found he was left with over 60 fully realized tracks, bursting with ideas that fired in divergent, curious directions. Meitei was content with the 13 tracks he had selected. But when it came time to begin his next album, he found that it had been sitting in front of him all along. He realized his work wasn’t over yet.

Meitei sounds right at home celebrating the past he first reimagined in his previous work. The merriment is palpable in its first two tracks of 'Kofū II' – a loop of cheery whistling amidst the clanking of wood leads into strings, cricket sounds and flutes, all united in bustling harmony.

'Happyaku-yachō' is where it comes into focus. Pitch-shifted vocal samples roam around in the crowded sonic field. “My image of this music is that it expresses the vibrant mood of Edo's merchant culture,” says Meitei, “where old Japanese dwellings were densely packed together in a vast expanse of land.” The affair becomes bittersweet as the track leads into the desolate 'Kaworu', a compositional piece lifted from his 'Komachi' sessions – a final requiem to his late grandmother.

The album is bursting with spectral vignettes of wandering samurais, red lanterns, ninjas, puppet theatres, poets, even a vengeful assassin ('Shurayuki hime', known to Western audiences as ‘Lady Snowblood’).

'Saryō' is as elegant and refined as you would expect. It induces stillness in its repetition, with each synth note a brushstroke. It was inspired by a Sengoku-era tea house he once visited, designed by national icon Sen no Rikyū. Meitei tied it to the reaction he felt while poring over the ink paintings in his grandmother’s house. “The decayed earthen walls and faded tatami mats gave me an emotional impression,” he says. “And the cosmic flow of time drifting in the small room. I decided to put my impression of this into music.”

In 'Akira Kurosawa', an appropriately thunderous track, Meitei finds deep resonance in his vast filmography, which drew equally from Japan’s rich heritage and troubled circumstances post-WWII.

'Kofū II' is not a leftovers album, nor is it a straightforward companion piece. In this album, Meitei has his biggest reckoning with the Japanese identity yet. Over the years, he has attempted to peel back what he believes has defined Japan and its people. After seeking answers with three full-length albums, his fourth poses more questions.

If his first three albums inspired a sense of longing – or, perhaps inevitably, fed an irreparable nostalgia doomed to history – 'Kofū II' compels us to reassess our relationship with the past. By constantly looking back, are we ever afforded a clearer present? After capturing the “lost Japanese mood”, where does that leave its country in the modern world? Meitei offers no immediate answers with 'Kofū II'. It forces you to sit with its disparate moods, to meditate amidst the textured fragments.

'Kofū II' will be released on 180g LP, CD and digital format on December 10, 2021 (LP expected to land January 28, 2022) via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include a 16-page insert with words in Japanese and English from Meitei, printed on premium paper stock with design by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang, and is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan. 

When words trail off at the beginning of claire rousay’s “everything perfect is already here,” ornate instrumentation is waiting to fill a void left by the breakdown of language. Yet it becomes clear as we trace rousay’s collaged sonic pathway that breakdown, of meaning and also of melody, is also a place to rest. everything perfect… is made up of two extended compositions that cycle between familiarity and unknowing. There are seemingly infinite ways to feel in response to these pieces of music, which shift tone across their languid duration, earnest like a familiar song but unbound from the emotional didacticisms of lyrical voice and pop form. rousay builds a fluid landscape around the acoustic contributions of Alex Cunningham (violin), Mari Maurice (electronics and violin), Marilu Donovan (harp), and Theodore Cale Schafer (piano), whose respective melodies weave gently in and out, sometimes steady, sometimes aching, sometimes receding altogether in deference to less overtly musical sounds. That is, percussive texture in the form of unvarnished samples and field recordings: the rattle and rustle and the stops and starts of life unfurling, voices sharing memories nearly out of reach, doors closing, wind against a microphone. Everything comes from somewhere in particular, possessing the veneer of the diaristic, but sound’s provenance is secondary here and so these details become tangled and fused. On this release I hear such details not as individual ornaments or stories but the collective architecture of the greater composition. It’s an architecture that is not quite formed and thus full of openings out to the world unfolding. “The world unfolding,” that’s a kind way of saying change, movement, loss, transformation. Things rousay here indexes, not without shards of desire or pain, still somehow what I hear is coarse peace in the in-between. These two pieces sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Where am I now? What is different outside of me? What is different inside of me? Um. I think. everything is perfect is already here, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways. The music guides a certain experience of the world around. In claire’s music there is this marriage—not just a pairing or juxtaposition but an interrelationship, an eventual confusion—of song/texture, narrative/abstraction, figure/ground. Everything comes from somewhere in particular but not just the voices, the field recordings, the what is being said or meant, what matters is “the where you are now.” There are so many ways of anchoring oneself in the present, some have to do with fantasy or storytelling and some with accepting what is. These two compositions find peace between these modes. They sweep you away and then bring you to earth, but which is which, anyway? Their mode of feeling is inquisitive. Where am I now? What has changed outside of me? What has changed inside of me? The music, like the answers to these questions, is loose and beautiful in surprising ways.

Green-House's latest EP is a collection of unheard & rare recordings from 2021 & 2022. Imaginary department stores, Wendy Carlos-infused virtual classical, soundscape slices and bonus tracks are all situated radiantly along the spectrum of Solar Editions.

Mong Tong's latest album, "Tao Fire 道火", not only continues the idea behind their previous work, "Indies 印", but also incorporates more local elements such as gamelan music, phin guitar, tabla drums, and Taiwan sisomi. While sampling more sounds from the street of Southeast Asia, including weddings, funerals, and traditional celebrations, Mong Tong again explores different folk sounds around Austronesia. Different to their last Guruguru Brain release "Mystery 秘神", "Tao Fire 道火" will take us to a land that is both familiar and fresh. Feel the hot, the crowd, humidity, and ecstasy. This time, welcome to Mong Tong's subtropical world.

"People who are sort of more the outcasts of society tend to tell it like it is" – Scott Seskind, 2015. Sky Girl is a mysteriously unshakeable companion, a deeply melancholic and sentimental journey through folk-pop, new wave and art music micro presses that span 1961-1991. A seemingly disparate suite of selections of forgotten fables by more or less neverknowns, Sky Girl forms a beautifully coherent and utterly sublime whole deftly compiled by French collectors DJ Sundae and Julien Dechery. From Scott Seskind's adolescent musical road movie to Karen Marks' icy Oz-wave, the charming DIY storytelling of Italian-American go-getter Joe Tossini and the ethereal slow dance themes of Parisian artists Nini Raviolette and Hugo Weris, Sky Girl resonates on a wide spectrum historically, geographically and stylistically. It unites in a singular, longing, almost intangible ambience. If the names sound wholly unfamiliar that doesn't matter, the nature of the compositions swiftly nurtures an intimacy with these lonely, poignant, openhearted wanderers. Most were available in a very limited capacity at the time of their release, some were never really released at all - Gary Davenport declined to release Sarra after he split with the girl for whom the track is named - years later a friend convinced Davenport to allow him to put 100 copies online to sell and DJ Sundae was quick enough to snare one. Beyond their scarcity, these tracks are bound together by a certain raw beauty that's achievable when music is made and no one is listening. Sky Girl comprises of fifteen officially licensed songs, a two year international scavenger hunt through long-folded home label operations, the depths of internet forums and traceless acetates. Both compilers are well trained record sleuths - DJ Sundae's labels Hollie and Idle Press have reissued Arthur Russell affiliate Nirosta Steel and DIY relic Pitch, while Julien Dechery previously compiled 'Fire Star', a retrospective on Tamil film composer Ilaiyaraaja, for Bombay Connection. Released by Noise In My Head offshoot Efficient Space, Sky Girl is enriched with artwork from Perks and Mini mutant Misha Hollenbach and appropriately elegant sleeve notes courtesy of Ivan Smagghe.

“Things fade into obscurity when a populace has no interest” - Meitei / 冥丁

Meitei considers himself an old soul, often preoccupied with the customs and rituals of the past. Recently Meitei lost his beloved 99-year-old grandmother, a woman who he considered to be one of the last remaining people to have experience and understanding of traditional Japanese ambience. His music and art is driven by a desire to cast light on an era and aesthetic that he believes is drifting out of the collective Japanese consciousness with each passing generation, what he calls "the lost Japanese mood". He chose to dedicate Komachi to his late Grandmother.

“I want to revive the soul of Japan that still sleeps in the darkness” - Meitei / 冥丁

Haunting and delicate, distant and timeless, Komachi is awash with white noise, complex field recordings and the hypnotic sounds of flowing water. Though confidently contemporary, like a bucolic J-Dilla, Komachi’s lineage can be traced back to the floating worlds of Ukiyo-e and Gagaku via the prism of 80s Japanese ambient pioneers, and 90s pastoral sample-based artists such as Susumu Yokota and Nobukazu Takemura.

Composed as individual sonic dioramas, each of the twelve tracks have been crafted to not only evoke feelings of nostalgia but to also explore the dichotomy of ancient and new in modern Japanese society. This pervasive narrative runs throughout, calling to mind the work of authors Yasunari Kawabata and Natsume Soseki, as well as the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Hayao Miyazaki, artists similarly fascinated by the reflective tranquillity that permeated traditional Japanese domestic life.

The limited vinyl release, produced in collaboration with label and distributor Séance Centre, includes a super limited special edition complete with beautiful twelve-page booklet featuring a number of prints in the Ukiyo-e style, a traditional style of woodblock print that dates back to 17th century Japan. The images were chosen by Meitei to showcase the old style Japanese sentiments that form a core inspiration to his musical output.