MUSIC

After their last album six years ago, "Primal Forms," the new album by Phantom Horse, finally arrives. The German duo of Ulf Schütte and Niklas Dommaschk have long established a reputation for expertly crafted, hypnotically slow-burning electronic music, and we do not hesitate to say that "Primal Forms" stands among the epitomes of their discography. The sequencing of "Primal Forms" cannot be underestimated. It is an album in the classic sense. It demands to be listened to in its entirety, which also points to a closer affinity with Krautrock. Likewise, a touch of dub is perceptible, wafting around the songs, which, as usual, bear clandestine titles. It is not unreasonable to see in these compact compositions a clear statement against multitasking. Phantom Horse are not trumpeters of dystopia. They present themselves resolutely, almost stoically, turned away from the world. This turning away is clearly a statement that can be contemplated in the Mariana Trench as well as in comet belts. In any case, it is best experienced in a space without any human beings. This does not mean that grumpy hermits are tinkering with synths behind closed shutters, armed with wooden walking sticks. This is still open minded music with a connection to current developments. The approach itself is what is audible, and with it, Phantom Horse proves once again that their main connection to time is timelessness. In an age of all-encompassing distraction on every sensory, thematic, and semantic level, Phantom Horse explores the possibilities of reduction, searching for simplified melodic arcs without resorting to the vocabulary of classical minimalism. The overall impression is more electronic; the slowly shifting, polyrhythmic compositions repeatedly lead to a peculiar danceability. However, these are perhaps the dances of mechanical birds, undeterred by anything.

A long-lost vinyl album is back in stock: for the last 20 years, Kosmischer Pitch by Jan Jelinek, originally released in 2005 on ~scape, existed only as a digital download. Right on time for the 20th anniversary the remastered album is available again on vinyl. The digital album includes two previously unreleased pieces from this period. What the press said about Kosmischer Pitch back in 2005: “For Kosmischer Pitch, Jelinek draws from the obsessed-over rock produced by his German countrymen in the 1970s. (…) Trance-inducing repetition is constantly modulated by variations that hover on the threshold of audibility. (…) one of the more remarkable bodies of work in electronic music.” Pitchfork „Like the cosmic compositions it delicately references, Kosmischer Pitch is proof that the higher and lower pleasures can triumphantly combine.” The Wire Magazine “ The old Jelinek approach can also be heard on the new album - not least the “Pitch” in the title, which, as Martin Büsser explains in the info sheet, refers specifically to Wild Pitch House, generally to manipulation/exploitation of the sense of time - but there are striking differences: clear vintage synth, guitar and drum sounds, very subtle club references.” Groove “t's impossible to know how many layers of sound Jelinek has stacked up on any of these eight tracks, but each one seems to take on a shadowy, ghost-like life of its own as it morphs across time and space. Minimalist, yes, in a way, but thick as a wool rug.” AllAboutJazz

The shifting dimensions of Masana Temples, fourth album from psychedelic explorers Kikagaku Moyo,are informed by various experiences the band had with traveling through life together, ranging from the months spent on tour to making a pilgrimage to Lisbon to record the album with jazz musician Bruno Pernadas. The band sought out Pernadas both out of admiration for his music and in an intentional move to work with a producer who came from a wildly different background. With Masana Temples, the band wanted to challenge their own concepts of what psychedelic music could be. Elements of both the attentive folk and wild-eyed rocking sides of the band are still intact throughout, but they’re sharper and more defined.

More than the literal interpretation of being on a journey, the album’s always changing sonic panorama reflects the spiritual connection of the band moving through this all together. Life for a traveling band is a series of constant metamorphoses, with languages, cultures, climates and vibes changing with each new town. The only constant for Kikagaku Moyo throughout their travels were the five band members always together moving through it all, but each of them taking everything in from very different perspectives. Inspecting the harmonies and disparities between these perspectives, the group reflects the emotional impact of their nomadic paths. The music is the product of time spent in motion and all of the bending mindsets that come with it.

Like a long journey this record unfolds itself through many layers.

Fans of Kikagaku Moyo will be comforted by the soft vocals harmonies and warm Sitar but what sets this release apart is the refinement of the band’s songwriting and their delicate execution.

Side A begins with a pair of travelling songs where the interplay between the vocals, guitar, and sitar lift and suspend you on an unexpected journey.

The patient listener is rewarded by tracks like “Trad” and “Silver Owl” that demonstrate the masterful balance the band has between soft and loud; chaos and order, or being both cold and tender at the same time.

“House in the Tall Grass” takes the listener by the hand on a comfortable quest through destinations both familiar and unknown.

It is a natural step forward for the band and perhaps the most refined example of their style to date.

Minami Deutsch is back at it again with their latest LP "With Dim Light". Whilst softening their sound and cushioning the blow, you can expect a more profound diversity in their sound, whilst retaining the principle ingredients that make Minami Deutsch so great such as their signature fuzz, thumping bass and dream like vocals. There is a heavier experimentation in regards to genre exploration. With hints of post punk and nods to late 60s psychedelic rock, this shows that Minami Deutsch is willing to push musical boundaries further whilst retaining a clever songwriting ability to achieve this album Minami Deutsch is back at it again with their latest LP "With Dim Light". Whilst softening their sound and cushioning the blow, you can expect a more profound diversity in their sound, whilst retaining the principle ingredients that make Minami Deutsch so great such as their signature fuzz, thumping bass and dream like vocals. There is a heavier experimentation in regards to genre exploration. With hints of post punk and nods to late 60s psychedelic rock, this shows that Minami Deutsch is willing to push musical boundaries further whilst retaining a clever songwriting ability to achieve this album

Six years have passed since Swiss-based duo Klaus Johann Grobe’s last long player “Du bist so symmetrisch” (2018) and you’ll hear they’ve come a long way. “Io tu il loro”, their fourth album for Chicago-based Trouble In Mind Records was written over two weeks in a cabin at the very end of a remote Swiss valley, where - pretty much at the same place - Klaus Johann Grobe came up with their whole debut full-length “Im Sinne der Zeit” album in 2014. What started out as simply making music again quickly turned into seriously making a new album. Once decided, the whole thing was finished rather quickly and recorded once again at David Langhard’s Dala Studio at the end of 2022. “Io tu il loro” is a record that cannot be done by endlessly fiddling around with hundreds of ideas and sounds. All it needed was a real break (Dani and Sevi didn’t work on any Grobe-related stuff until they met up in the mountains in 2022). It’s an album with a blurry vision and soft limitations. You can somehow feel them looking back on all their work forgivingly and then moving on to what felt right. So here we are with nine tracks full of embracing warmth, so melancholicly welcoming you don’t know if you want to smile or cry. Some might call it timeless, some might call it dad-rock... well, it certainly isn’t disco for the masses, it’s more like, “If I can’t make myself dance after four beers, I can as well go home.” So, no disco? No syncopated synths? No German? No reverb? Where’s The Grobe? Take your time, you’ll notice Klaus Johann Grobe aren’t gone, they just took a turn before driving yet into another unknown.

Originally recorded and released in 1977 on Sky Records, the first collaborative album by Brian Eno and Cluster was the first ambient record produced in Germany, and is considered the seminal, defining work of the genre. Brian Eno was certainly instrumental in creating and popularizing the concept of "ambient music" -- but it was not his invention alone. The German musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (Cluster) were brothers in spirit. As so often in music, the idea of ambient was in the air -- both Eno and Cluster experimenting with the form in the 1970s, rendering any debate as to who influenced who redundant. What is certain, is that Brian Eno attended a Cluster concert in Hamburg in 1975, strategically positioning himself in the front row. Sure enough, he was invited on stage to jam with the band and, after the show, the participants arranged to meet up again. They did so two years later at the Old Weserhof in Forst, the domicile of the German duo. Eno and Cluster spent three weeks in Conny Plank's studio, resulting in two albums: Cluster & Eno and After The Heat (1978). In the liner notes, Asmus Tietchens (who also plays on the record along with Can's Holger Czukay) writes: "Clearly, all three musicians inspired each other during their three weeks together without any clash of personalities. Nevertheless, some tracks sound more like Cluster, some more like Eno. So it made perfect sense to collect the tracks with a Cluster flavor on Cluster & Eno." The importance of this record can never be overstated, nor can its elegance of diverse forms be matched. From Indian sitar and tamboura, to synth warbles and airy tributes to Western groove, it is a rare glimpse at what happens when masters meet.

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Straight out of the local mud of the city of Antwerp comes this next Souvenirs from Imaginary Cities slab of free-flowing bits of electronic wonder : Schönen Abend by Simon B. Just in time to ease you out of this endless winter and right into springtime. Like the previous hit by Purple Uncle, this flower takes some time to bloom and fill up your head and body with it's ear wormy fragrance. It's hazy and cinematic, makes you think of Italian electronic pioneers and their library magic, Patrick Cowley's School Daze and Haruomi Hosono in some kind of gothic manner. It's quite stripped and lush at the same time, rhythms like minimal mechanics make you fly above the river and land just outside reality. It's a nice place where soft jazz tingles right around the dark corner, and that particular mix of exotica and melancholia — the trademark of this port city's best electronic auteurs is definitely in the air. The river still shines, but she’s deeply poisoned. The old town has lost every bit of fresh air but keeps on digging for old gold. This bitter pill is served with delicacy and lightness, the wound is dressed up seductively — feet in the mud, head in the air. Stuff is sensuous, with quiet places reminding of the good side of those times when the big wheel stopped turning ever so madly. A strange quietness whistles through the leaves. Some things take time to unfold. In or out of C. Four years in the making, this is the solo debut LP of Simon B, a longtime contributor to Antwerp's improvised music scene (Groovecats Deluxe, Wij Blij Trio ). Primarily a double bass player, he also has a deep-felt passion for offbeat electronica and the rainbowy side of American minimalism, which takes front here. You can hear the tenor and soprano saxophone of Adia Van Heerentals on 4 tracks, deepening out Simon's naturally flowing compositions and playing around with his melodies. You may know her from Bodem and her strong presence in the Belgian jazz scene lately. The smoky voice on the last track belongs to Nina-Joy Thielemans, she is part of Particals, a trio working with live electronics and field recordings, releasing an lp on Ultra Eczema later this year. Simon's electroacoustic experiments — using a clarinet and some outboard effects — were important tools in finding the very specific colour of this record. There's this airy character, like wind blowing through old layers of bricks and over the river, anchored with a deep sense of bass, gathering ages of dust and memories in these eight elegantly wobbling tracks, forming a perfect whole that’s really coming together in one deep listening from A to Z. The centrepiece is perhaps "Came to Me", instrumental and reprise with vocals, but no fillers on this one. Every part of the mystery is needed to come to its end and back again. It's a record that works in the morning, to open up a day and in the quiet corners of the night, with it's sleazy quirkiness, smiling towards you from the right corner of the eye. A perfect compagnon for your long-form wandering habits, light reflections on a wet surface obsessions, coffee slurping in the morning and the forgotten art of beachcombing. Quite essential these days, witnessing a world going apeshit.

Sensible Soccers x Mad Professor present EP#1 - Dub Versions, a meeting point between Atlantic psychedelia and classic dub techniques. The collaboration pairs the Portuguese trio’s hypnotic grooves with Mad Professor’s deep-rooted studio approach, resulting in a set that moves between dancefloor propulsion and spacious, exploratory textures. ‘Dub de Saia Travada’ and ‘Berlaitada Dub’ lean into heavy basslines and rolling rhythms, built for movement and sound system play. ‘Dub Discreto’ shifts the focus outward, stretching into kosmische territory with nods to Cluster and Klaus Schulze, while retaining the warmth and depth of dub. Bridging styles, scenes and sensibilities, EP#1 - Dub Versions captures a focused exchange between two distinct approaches, reshaped into something fluid and transportive.

Brochure is a new collaboration between Gee Dee, Miles Felix, and Nick Stropko. For their debut release, they opted to cover Joking by Celine Lomez, originally featured in Soft Rock for Hard Times Vol. 7. Drenching the arrangement with synthesizers and opting to record the tune half-time, Brochure recontextualizes the song into a longing ballad. Osprey 2 is the latest nom de guerre of Ryan M Todd aka Paul Atreides, Tom Guycot, Darklord Disco, half of Private Sea, founder of Going Home Records and an instrumental part of Universal Cave productions and parties for well over a decade. Osprey 2's Version Verrückt flips the longing ballad into a funky, driving krautrock number for Side B. The Universal Cave crew offers their Terrace Mix as a digital only bonus track. A stripped-down strummer for the summer, the Terrace mix is scenic overlook gear for the mind's eye. Pre Order includes download and streaming of sides A & B, bonus mix will be released with the 45 in January.

Who would expect that a new Krautrock release on Macadam Mambo would come from a Japanese band called Heavenphetamine?! The duo/couple have been touring all over Europe in the past two years, and started to build a serious fan base, as every performance they deliver is leaving an imperishable memory. This is on a date in Belgrade at Karmakoma that they met with Sacha. They had this album recorded and auto-release on tape but not on vinyl, and it came completely naturally to decide to release it as a LP on Macadam Mambo. The tracks on the album are new versions a bit different from the tape, let’s say a bit more mature and minimal than from the first ones recorded and give the feeling of listening to a masterpiece in the genre. It can be dark and profound but also enough light to bring back this little sun that has trouble to shine in the winter. This album has been highly influenced by their experience with the war in Ukraine, and the friendship they made there, where it has been recorded, and it express this mix of emotions due to the feeling of exasperation and the hope to see someday this conflict come to an end and the relief of the peace…

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages. The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce a tenth anniversary reissue of Oren Ambarchi’s Quixotism, originally released on Editions Mego in 2014. Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Quixotism takes the driving rhythmic aspect of works such as Sagittarian Domain to new levels, with the entirety of this long-form work built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury’s delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, and joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece’s final, beautiful passages. The pulse acts as thread leading the listener through a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of crys cole’s contact-mic textures. Ambarchi’s guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web Ambarchi spins over the piece’s steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O’Rourke’s synth and Evyind Kang’s strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Éliane Radigue and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. At the time of its first release, Quixotism was clearly a summation of Ambarchi’s work in the years leading up to it. Now, listening back a decade later, it also seems like an arrow pointing to the future, suggesting paths that would be explored further in works to come: the pulsating guitar layers of Hubris, the album-length collaboration with Jim O’Rourke and U-zhaan on Hence, Shebang’s joyous layering and percussive drive. Now sounding better than ever in a new remaster by Joe Talia, the time is ripe to rediscover its quixotic charms.

Newly remastered version of Oren Ambarchi’s long out-of-print classic Hubris originally released on Editions Mego in 2016. Expertly remastered by audio wizard Joe Talia who worked with the original mixes, highlighting the myriad details of the audio with forensic precision, previously unheard up until now. From the 2016 press release: Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Ambarchi’s Sagittarian Domain (2012) and Quixotism (2014). Where those records looked to Krautrock and techno for their starting points, the sidelong opening track here begins from the perhaps unlikely inspirations of disco and new wave, drawing particularly from Ambarchi’s love of Wang Chung’s soundtrack to William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. Leaving behind the song-forms of these reference points, Ambarchi weaves a sustained and pulsating web of layered palm-muted guitars from which individual voices rise up and recede, eventually setting the stage for some lush guitar synth from Jim O’Rourke. Arnold Dreyblatt collaborator Konrad Sprenger contributes overtone-rich motorized guitar, pushing the piece into a satisfying intersection of shimmering minimalism and rhythmic drive that smoothly builds up until the entrance of Mark Fell’s electronic percussion in its final section. After a short second part, in which Ambarchi, O’Rourke and crys cole pay tribute to the skewed harmonic sense of Albert Marcoeur with a track built from layered guitar figures and abstracted speech, the long final piece pushes the concept of the first side into darker and denser areas. Joined by electronics from Ricardo Villalobos and the twin drums of Will Guthrie and Joe Talia, the layered guitars of the first piece are transformed into a raw and tumbling fusion-funk groove that calls to mind early Weather Report or even the first Golden Palominos LP. As this stellar rhythm section rides a single repeated chord change into oblivion, a series of spectacular events emerge in the foreground: first, aleatoric synthesizer burbles from Keith Fullerton Whitman, then slashing skronk guitar from Arto Lindsay, until finally Ambarchi’s own fuzzed-out harmonics take center stage as the piece builds to an ecstatic frenzy. Few artists could hope to include such an incredible variety of collaborators on one record and still hope for it to have a unique identity, but Ambarchi manages to do just that, crafting three pieces that emerge directly out of his previous work while also pushing ahead into new dimensions. Players: Oren Ambarchi, crys cole, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie, Arto Lindsay, Jim O’Rourke, Konrad Sprenger, Joe Talia, Ricardo Villalobos, Keith Fullerton Whitman.

Newly remastered version of Oren Ambarchi’s long out-of-print classic Hubris originally released on Editions Mego in 2016. Expertly remastered by audio wizard Joe Talia who worked with the original mixes, highlighting the myriad details of the audio with forensic precision, previously unheard up until now. From the 2016 press release: Hubris continues the exploration of relentless, driving rhythms heard on Ambarchi’s Sagittarian Domain (2012) and Quixotism (2014). Where those records looked to Krautrock and techno for their starting points, the sidelong opening track here begins from the perhaps unlikely inspirations of disco and new wave, drawing particularly from Ambarchi’s love of Wang Chung’s soundtrack to William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. Leaving behind the song-forms of these reference points, Ambarchi weaves a sustained and pulsating web of layered palm-muted guitars from which individual voices rise up and recede, eventually setting the stage for some lush guitar synth from Jim O’Rourke. Arnold Dreyblatt collaborator Konrad Sprenger contributes overtone-rich motorized guitar, pushing the piece into a satisfying intersection of shimmering minimalism and rhythmic drive that smoothly builds up until the entrance of Mark Fell’s electronic percussion in its final section. After a short second part, in which Ambarchi, O’Rourke and crys cole pay tribute to the skewed harmonic sense of Albert Marcoeur with a track built from layered guitar figures and abstracted speech, the long final piece pushes the concept of the first side into darker and denser areas. Joined by electronics from Ricardo Villalobos and the twin drums of Will Guthrie and Joe Talia, the layered guitars of the first piece are transformed into a raw and tumbling fusion-funk groove that calls to mind early Weather Report or even the first Golden Palominos LP. As this stellar rhythm section rides a single repeated chord change into oblivion, a series of spectacular events emerge in the foreground: first, aleatoric synthesizer burbles from Keith Fullerton Whitman, then slashing skronk guitar from Arto Lindsay, until finally Ambarchi’s own fuzzed-out harmonics take center stage as the piece builds to an ecstatic frenzy. Few artists could hope to include such an incredible variety of collaborators on one record and still hope for it to have a unique identity, but Ambarchi manages to do just that, crafting three pieces that emerge directly out of his previous work while also pushing ahead into new dimensions. Players: Oren Ambarchi, crys cole, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie, Arto Lindsay, Jim O’Rourke, Konrad Sprenger, Joe Talia, Ricardo Villalobos, Keith Fullerton Whitman.

For anyone who still associates Oren Ambarchi exclusively with the clipped, bass-heavy tones of solo electric guitar works such as Suspension, this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album-length piece might seem to come out of nowhere. However, listeners who have followed the breadth of his work for the last few years (solo and in projects with collaborators from Jim O’Rourke to Stephen O’Malley and Keith Rowe to Keiji Haino) will have noted how Ambarchi has allowed increasingly clear traces of his enthusiasms as a music listener (for classic rock, minimal techno and 70’s fusion, among other areas) to surface in his performances and recordings, all the time filtering them through his signature long-form structures and psychoacoustic sonics. Recorded in a single inspired studio session, Sagittarian Domain displaces Ambarchi’s trademark guitar sound from the centre of the mix, its presence felt only as an occasional ghostly reverberated shimmer. Endlessly pulsating guitar and bass lines sit alongside electronic percussion and thundering motorik drumming (familiar from his work with Keiji Haino) at the core of the piece, locking into a voodoo groove like Faust covering a 70’s cop show theme. The work is founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre. Cut-up and phase-shifted strings enter around the half-way mark like an abstracted memory of the eastern-tinged fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s classic Visions of the Emerald Beyond, before returning for an extended, stark yet affecting come-down coda, equal parts Gavin Bryars and Purple Rain. While Sagittarian Domain contains traces of a diversity of influences, it mines all of them to uncover something that is clearly an extension of Ambarchi’s own investigations up to this point, exhibiting the same care for micro-detail and surrender to the physicality of sound that are present in all of his work, extending them in new ways to repetition, pulse and rhythm Francis Plagne

For anyone who still associates Oren Ambarchi exclusively with the clipped, bass-heavy tones of solo electric guitar works such as Suspension, this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album-length piece might seem to come out of nowhere. However, listeners who have followed the breadth of his work for the last few years (solo and in projects with collaborators from Jim O’Rourke to Stephen O’Malley and Keith Rowe to Keiji Haino) will have noted how Ambarchi has allowed increasingly clear traces of his enthusiasms as a music listener (for classic rock, minimal techno and 70’s fusion, among other areas) to surface in his performances and recordings, all the time filtering them through his signature long-form structures and psychoacoustic sonics. Recorded in a single inspired studio session, Sagittarian Domain displaces Ambarchi’s trademark guitar sound from the centre of the mix, its presence felt only as an occasional ghostly reverberated shimmer. Endlessly pulsating guitar and bass lines sit alongside electronic percussion and thundering motorik drumming (familiar from his work with Keiji Haino) at the core of the piece, locking into a voodoo groove like Faust covering a 70’s cop show theme. The work is founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre. Cut-up and phase-shifted strings enter around the half-way mark like an abstracted memory of the eastern-tinged fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s classic Visions of the Emerald Beyond, before returning for an extended, stark yet affecting come-down coda, equal parts Gavin Bryars and Purple Rain. While Sagittarian Domain contains traces of a diversity of influences, it mines all of them to uncover something that is clearly an extension of Ambarchi’s own investigations up to this point, exhibiting the same care for micro-detail and surrender to the physicality of sound that are present in all of his work, extending them in new ways to repetition, pulse and rhythm Francis Plagne

The legendary 1975 Fairfield Hall Croydon broadcast now available as a high quality vinyl pressing. Broadcast as part of a short UK tour following the release in 1974 of Autobahn.

Rare and obscure live material taken from the same late 60’s sessions that spawned ‘Psychedelic Underground’. AMON DÜÜL spontaneous jam sessions are essentially instrumental and dominated by repetitive, tribal, savage acoustic percussive pulses, fuzzy psych guitar rythms & leads. A musical trip set to freak you out.

*2025 reissue* Ralf and Florian (original German title: Ralf und Florian) is the third studio album by the German electronic band Kraftwerk. It was released in October 1973 and it saw the group moving toward their signature electronic sound. This work introduces greater cleanliness in the sounds and intensifies the use of electronic instrumentation, namely synths (Mini Moog, the EMS AKS and Farfisa), drum machines and, for the first time, a prototype vocoder. The formation thus approaches the stylistic code of the best-known works, starting from Autobahn, the latter considered to be the true debut of Kraftwerk. In 2008, Fact named it among the 20 greatest ambient albums ever made.

Think about Can as performed by a shaman commune ! Two long LP-side size compositions, focusing on tribal rhythms (without real drummer), heavy-folk and electronic samples and loops. Takahashi Yoshihiro (Brast Burn) was the man behind this cultish project originally released in 1974. Buried deep in time, this obscure artifact is something of a revelation. No group information was ever given, and no production date or location is indicated, however, it would seem that this record and the "Brast Burn" LP (also reissued by Paradigm) are both by the same group of Japanese nutters and that they were both recorded in the mid seventies in Japan. But all you really need to know is that it is stone cold fantastic, a wild and manic trip full to the brim with hypnotic jams constructed from all manner of eclectic instruments.

The tribal blues sound is augmented with fascinating tape experiments, electronics, environmental sounds, moaned (howled) vocals and a host of musical delicacies, as dangerous as they are delicious. The influence of German bands such as Can, Faust and Guru Guru is evident throughout, so too is the influence of the good Captain (Beefheart that is) whose gut wrenching blues dirges find compadres in this unearthed swamp. Deranged psychedelic music for anyone with a passing interest in Kraut rock, the new Japanese psychedelic scene (most of whom owe these pioneers a great debt) or great music from the edge of the solar system. Recommended.<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6kWuJcXCYCM?si=qzWOtQkBPaAemmZ5" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Viva is the second album by the German band La Düsseldorf, realized in 1978 and it is considered its most successful release. Indeed, the album contains both the singles "Rheinita", which was their most successful single, and "Cha Cha 2000"; an expansive and utopian piece that mixes repetition, piano passages, chants, and electronic textures into a kind of dreamlike manifesto for a more ideal society. Probably the band’s most famous song. The album represents a combination of modern electronic textures, pop clarity, and krautrock experimentation which has secured Viva a lasting place in the history of German experimental rock. This vinyl reissue is the first after fifteen years.

Tangerine Dream’s 1970 debut, Electronic Meditation. Standing in stark contrast to their later synth-driven ambient works, this is the chaotic ground zero of Krautrock and experimental rock. A primal, avant-garde departure that captures the raw energy of the Berlin underground.

“Time Code,” the 1983 album by German electronic duo YOU. Drawing from the Berlin School tradition and echoing the analog‑synth textures of Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, this is a hidden gem of early‑80s progressive electronic music.