MUSIC

Adroit jazz guitar, prog rock fantasia, and Japanese environmental music all rest comfortably behind Leo Takami's Next Door. The follow up to the acclaimed Felis Catus & Silence, Next Door finds Takami ruminating on passages — of time, seasons, consciousness. Through music, Leo contemplates daily events and finds beauty in ordinary moments. He also seems to be questioning the value of being stuck in the world, allowing his mind to wander towards something beyond it. His music is earnest, deeply personal and introspective, and is sort of akin to Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker or Kenji Miyazawa’s Night on the Galactic Railroad. On “As If Listening” Takami takes inspiration from a Van Gogh art show organized chronologically, articulating the sense of “enlightened resignation” that is intrinsic in the act of creativity. “Beyond” is a dream of otherworldly nostalgia, a watercolor of past lives. His music is a hazy cinema of memory, the soundtrack to a cherished memory that may have never really happened, but still radiates in the mind like the sun on an unusually warm winter day.

reissue of the 1976 historic collaboration between producer instrumentalist Augustus Pablo and dub engineer King Tubby.

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.

Known for the meditative ambient jazz masterpiece "Natten"! This work is also outstanding! The prestigious label "Luaka Bop" presided over by David Byrne of Talking Heads has announced the latest work "Kosmos" by Bremer McCoy, a noteworthy jazz unit from Denmark consisting of keyboardist Jonathan Bremer and acoustic bassist Morten McCoy.

Saxophonist, flautist Chip Wickham takes us to Cloud 10 with his most soulful and lyrical album to date Chip Wickham is a jazz musician and producer who divides his time between Spain, UK and the Middle-East and who has made a name for himself with a series of beautifully crafted solo albums that draw equally on the hard swinging spiritual jazz of Roland Kirk, Yusef Lateef and Sahih Shihab, alongside the music of British jazz legends such as Tubby Hayes and Harold McNair and the more contemporary sounds of Jazzanova, Kyoto Jazz Massive and Robert Glasper. Originally from Brighton, Chip studied in Manchester and became involved in the 00's UK jazz, soul. trip-hop and funk scenes, working with the likes of The Pharcyde, The New Mastersounds and Nightmares On Wax as well as playing with Matthew Halsall's Gondwana Orchestra. And his relationship with Gondwana Records goes right back to the very beginning as he played on Halsall's 2008 debut Sending My Love. Cloud 10 is his debut album for Gondwana Records (following a 12" of Lonnie Liston Smith covers in May) and it is a wonderful, timeless, lyrical, slice of hard-hitting, soulful, spiritual jazz and modal hard-bop with a distinctly UK flavour - driven by Chip's deftly funky flute work and hard-hitting tenor. Underpinned by Chip's restless energy and driven by his desire to connect with the listener on a deeper level. "My albums are my legacy. Each one is a statement to the world of music and my contribution to its growth, its energy and ultimately it's history." Cloud 10 features pianist Phil Wilkinson, vibes player Ton Risco, bassist Sneaky and drummer Jon Scott (all veterans of previous albums) together with harpist Amanda Whiting and percussionist Jack McCarthy whom Chip met touring in the Gondwana Orchestra, and rising star Irish trumpeter Eoin Grace who also doubles on flugel horn. The album was recorded at the legendary all analogue Estudios Brazil in Madrid, with the band spending a week at Chip's house in the mountains just outside the city, eating and drinking together, listening to music till the small hours and recording all day. It was a magical time and the positivity seeped into the recording. "It was a beautiful week of pure music and joy, I think you can hear it in the recording and that's the inspiration for the title: Cloud 10 is a place of a great happiness, way out beyond Cloud 9!" And it is that purity, energy and joy, that makes Cloud 10 such a life-affirming recording and makes Chip the perfect addition to the Gondwana Records family. Lean in, you'll be on Cloud 10 too!

consciousness through ecstatic dance. Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were a world unto themselves.

Despite featuring an extraordinary cast of musicians (with credits including Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Miles Davis, Santana, Stevie Wonder, Milton Nascimento and much more) and selling hundreds of thousands of albums, the music of Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors remains largely unheard beyond their sphere. Conceived as live, improvised soundtracks to Roth’s transcendental dance workshops, musical acclaim was never on the agenda.

Instead, for a passionate dancer and spiritual polyglot like Gabrielle Roth, movement was a means through which to channel a wide spectrum of teaching, from experimental psychology to psychedelic counter-culture. It was from this heady mix that she devised a movement meditation known as 5Rhythms, which came to define her life’s work.

As “guide and catalyst”, Roth would dance to inspire the percussion-led instrumentals that would in turn fuel her 5Rhythms workshops, stimulating a secular form of ecstatic dance with roots in Native American shamanic traditions, Afro-Brazilian Candomblé and Yoruba drumming.

Using anything from a Sioux pony drum to East African kihembe and Japanese Kabuki drums, Gabrielle’s lawyer-turned-drummer husband Robert Ansell set the foundational rhythms for The Mirrors’ recordings, each of which would then feature a rotating cast of friends and professional musicians.

“The secret of everything we’ve done is that we never told anybody what to play,” Robert shares. “Instead of our albums being a musical vision of one person like me or Gabrielle, they were the musical vision of a whole bunch of people.”

At times the recordings have a Middle Eastern flair, at others, West African and spiritual jazz modes come to the fore. Hints of kosmische musik, proto-house and electronic ambience are laced like LSD through the organic rhythmic structures. This was kaleidoscopic ambient music to stir the body and free the mind.

In practice, the task of synthesising these different elements fell to Scott Ansell, Robert’s son and a recording engineer whose credits now include Nile Rogers, Duran Duran, Grace Jones. With meticulous attention to detail he captured and translated the dynamic energy of each drum onto record. Their sessions became legendary, and with access to the best studios in the NYC, The Mirrors sparkled.

Despite being initially overlooked by the burgeoning ‘80s New Age market, which preferred pipes and gongs to The Mirrors’ heavy-grooving drums, Robert Ansell set up Raven Recording to self-release the music, creating a vast sonic archive of sixteen albums over almost forty years.

The breadth of Raven’s catalogue is such that curator Pol Valls had to cut an initial selection of sixty-six tracks down to the eleven featured here. What crystallises is a stunning, mind-altering collection which spans, in Pol’s words, “a variety of genres, styles, and vibes within their catalogue, whether it is emotional, esoteric, spiritual, melancholic, hypnotic, dark, or at times a combination of these elements together.”

Music for immersive and intimate environments, Gabrielle Roth & The Mirrors were born from the dance. In the hands of the right DJ, at the right time, in the right place, they might just return there.

Originally released on CD in 2000 from South Indian Carnatic music label and reissued on vinyl and digital first time in 2019 by Time Capsule. New 2024 repress vinyl has different tracks on the B side and it still remains as the reverse cut as the 2019 version.

⚠️Reverse Cut Vinyl ⚠️

This record plays from the inner groove to the outer groove. You don’t need to change any settings on your turntable; Just place the needle where the record usually finishes and play normally.

A long-playing record like this (over 20 minutes long) tends to have lesser dynamics and sound quality when it’s closer to the center of the record due to the progressive reduction of linear resolution as the record progresses to smaller diameters. Since this music starts quietly at the beginning and then has greater dynamics and volume towards the end, this way of cutting vinyl yields superior results.

2024 new vinyl press tracklist

A1 : Sada Bala (Slokam)
A2 : Bhajeham Bhajeham
B1: Keshvaya Namaha
B2: Raghavam

MINOS CIRCUIT Minos Circuit is the resonance of a double exploration, that of an instrument, the bassoon - an instrument dear to Dafne Vicente-Sandoval - and that of a listening, of a gaze, almost. The first exploration deconstructs the instrument, tearing it apart, reducing it to an archipelago of sound bodies stimulated by an electro-acoustic device that generates feedback and infiltrates each part of the bassoon, in order to carry out a methodical, systematic examination. The second exploration is the inner one of attention and listening, the one that measures, at each moment, the necessity or not of an intervention in the very act of the musical work, of this subtle balance that is established between composition and observation, between action and contemplation. Minos Circuit est la mise en résonance d’une exploration double, celle d’un instrument, le basson — instrument cher à Dafne Vicente-Sandoval — et celle d’une écoute, d’un regard, presque. La première exploration déconstruit l’instrument, le met en pièce, le réduisant en un archipel de corps sonores stimulés par un dispositif électroacoustique générateurs de larsens qui vont s’infiltrer dans chacune des parties du basson, pour en faire l’examen méthodique, systématique. La seconde exploration, c’est celle, intérieure, de l’attention et de l’écoute, celle qui mesure, à chaque instant, la nécessité ou non d’une intervention dans l’agir même de l’œuvre, de cette bascule subtile qui s’établit entre composition et observation, entre action et contemplation. — TRANSFIGURATION 4 Both a “meditation on musical ruins” and “a study of the material of Richard Strauss’s Metamorfosen”, Transfiguration 4 works on the musical fragment as an expressive and poetic possibility that can be deployed below or beyond simple musical syntax, a syntax that is still too often equated with music itself. What Lars Petter Hagen highlights in this remarkable work is that the power of music lies at its fringes, that is, at the edge of its own disappearance. Transfiguration 4 floats in a particularly moving way in these troubled lands, where nothing is ever resolved, and where everything, however, is suspended, like a stream of blurred memories that memory would summon to form an intuition. A musical intuition. A la fois « méditation sur les ruines musicales » et « étude du matériau de Metamorfosen de Richard Strauss », Transfiguration 4 travaille le fragment musical comme possibilité expressive, poétique, pouvant se déployer en-deçà ou au-delà de la simple syntaxe musicale, syntaxe encore trop souvent assimilée à la musique même. Ce que met en lumière Lars Petter Hagen dans cette œuvre remarquable, c’est que la puissance de la musique se situe à ses franges, c’est-à-dire aux lisières de sa propre disparition. Transfiguration 4 flotte de manière particulièrement émouvante dans ces contrées troubles, où rien jamais ne se résout, et où tout, pourtant, se suspend, comme un flux de souvenirs flous que la mémoire convoquerait pour former une intuition. Une intuition musicale.

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.

All My People (self-released on 1 March 2019 and distributed by Rush Hour)

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 14-disc box set tracing the discography of Eliane Radigue, the Tibetan-meets-electronic music guru, is now available Box with a gorgeous booklet! Having studied at RTF Studios in France under music concretists such as Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, Eliane Radigue has been creating profound electronic music for decades, and now her historical archive is here! This 14-disc box contains many of her masterpieces released in CD format, including some that are now hard to find, and even includes Metamkine's mini-CD "Biogenesis.

An ambient work by Okinawa‑based musician and producer harikuyamaku, created for a resort hotel in Okinawa. The music captures the island’s atmosphere and quietude as if translating the very air and stillness of the land into sound.

AI-32 signals the arrival of ‘The Fifth World Recordings’, by Son of Chi (Hanyo van Oosterom) and long-term collaborator Arthur Flink. A tribute to the late Jon Hassell, who passed away in 2021, the album connects a deep running thread that goes back to the source of Chi project. Carrying on from where Hassell left off, the album takes inspiration and references from his Fourth World music concept and the ancient Hopi tradition of Native America. Illuminating the subliminal space of the arising Fifth World, Son of Chi pays respects to an inimitable force in contemporary music. Hassell’s ‘Dream Theory in Malaya’ forms a touchstone to Hanyo van Oosterom’s musical journey, which soundtracked long, deep and reflective periods living in the cave of the Kallikatsou (Patmos, Greece) back in the early 80s. This period resulted in Hanyo’s track as Chi - ‘Hopi’ - in 1984. Hanyo met Hassell shortly after in 1987 at his “The Surgeon in the Nightsky” concert in Rotterdam - it wasn’t until twenty years later that Hanyo invited him for two magic nights of “Instant Composing Sessions” with the Numoonlab Orchestra (with a host of other artists) at the LantarenVenster, the very same stage where Hassell had performed in 1987 and also where Chi did their first live performance. Dreamful, mysterious, prophetic, the Fifth World Recordings features the quiet yet elaborate sound of Chi awash with rich instrumentation, field recordings, and old stories by the firelight. Sketches were created with drones, loops, and soundscapes, with which Arthur Flink (also a member of the Numoonlab Orchestra) jammed on trumpet. Channelling Hassell’s idiosyncratic style, floating melodies and lyrical improvisations are parsed into the mix, where Hanyo has processed and manipulated the recordings, also referencing Hassell’s exotic scales and unique harmonics. Additionally, the wah Bamboo flute at the closing piece is an homage to the works of Chi co-founder Jacobus Derwort (1952-2019). For this piece Hanyo used his first bamboo flute he made at the cave of the Kallikatsou in 1984. Arthur Flink answers in counterpoint with the wah trumpet, almost like the intuitive communication of the nightbirds...

Spiritual flute jazz by the mastermind Antti Vauhkonen. Limited edition lathe-cut 10'', 20 copies exist. Cover art silkscreened on recycled cardboard-sleeves. Artwork by Arsi Keva. Mastered by Samuli Tanner. ”Wow where did this come from??!? Raw and essential outsider jazz which will be whispered about for years to come…” -Matti Nives / We Jazz Linernotes: ”On Working Alone The first person to create something one may classify as instrumental music was probably alone. The mind tingles when imagining the prehistoric moment when, for the very first time, a member of what then was the human race grabbed something and used it to make a purposeless series of sounds. Even if some of his fellow beings had been present at the time, would they have understood anything of it? Would they have taken interest in it and stopped to listen, or would they have demanded something easier to dance to? The leap from vocalizing or clapping to a form of expression produced with instruments may have taken a long time, perhaps even a thousand years. The same goes for the fabrication of such instruments. Human communities were small, and influences spread slowly. We do know, however, that the first discovered instruments date back to 43,000 years ago and took the form of flutes made from the bones of mammoths and birds. Researchers believe they played a role in religion and in entertainment – in this sense, very little has changed. The wildest theories claim that music was one of the factors that gave us, the Homo sapiens, a competitive edge over the Neanderthal: music helped foster deeper cooperation between individuals. In any case, however, the ones who decided to hollow out that bone and find out what kind of sound you could get out of it were individuals, and this brings us back to our theme of working alone. The modern solo musician enjoys a much greater sense of liberty than our distant forefathers. Multi-track and recording technology freed us from our physical constraints and allowed us to imagine ourselves as a multiplicity. Everyone could, in the comfort of his home, be his own one-man band without having to strap an array of instruments onto his body like carnival musicians or Rahsaan Roland Kirk used to. This is the frame from which A. E. Vauhkonen and Oiro Pena spring from. Vauhkonen’s hands simultaneously summon up brass, flutes, keyboards, drums, stringed instruments and all sorts of percussion. The sound is firm and slightly cosmic, like early Sun Ra Arkestra at its heartiest. But that’s enough about the music, listen for yourself.” – Markus Karlqvist

In 2023 Jon Hopkins alongside Icelandic film composer Biggi Hilmars scored the soundtrack for acclaimed documentary, Wilding. The documentary follows the story of farmers Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell who embarked on an environmental project which aimed to breathe new life into the failing 400-year-old Knepp Estate in the Southeast England. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrusted its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It was the beginning of a grand experiment that has become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe, and they’ve been able to promote new biodiversity, regenerating and transforming a previously over-farmed, degraded part of the land. Hopkins and Hilmars have created a soundtrack which perfectly accompanies the Wilding documentary, it’s full of organic textures, strings, vocals and piano as they channel the pulse of the natural world into a living score.

Carrying on a string of stunning archival releases from major figures of Indian classical tradition (including releases from members of the Dagar family and Amelia Cuni), Black Truffle is pleased to announce an unheard recording from tabla master Kamalesh Maitra (1924-2005). For over fifty years, Maitra devoted himself to the rare tabla tarang, a set of between ten and sixteen hand drums tuned to the notes of the raga to be performed. While the tabla tarang has its origins in the late 19th century, Maitra was the first to recognise its potential as a solo concert instrument, using the set of tuned drums to perform full-length raags. Seated behind a semi-circular array of drums, Maitra produced stunning waves of melodic improvisation enlivened with the rhythmic invention of a master percussionist. Across his career, Maitra performed in ensembles led by Ravi Shankar, collaborated with George Harrison, and led his own East-West fusion group, the Ragatala Ensemble. However, it is in the solo setting that his remarkable artistry and the otherworldly timbral qualities of the tabla tarang are most strikingly on display. Recorded during the same 1985 Berlin sessions that produced Maitra’s self-released solo LP Tabla Tarang: Ragas on Drums, on Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang we are treated to Maitra stretching out for over forty minutes on the late night Raag Kirwani, accompanied by Laura Patchen on tabla and Mila Morgenstern and Marina Kitsos on tanpura. The performance begins with the traditional free-floating exposition section, where Maitra’s spacious melodic improvisation at times almost resembles a plucked string instrument (like the sarod, which Maitra also played). For the listener unaccustomed to the tabla tarang, the sound of these microtonally inflected melodic patterns played on drums has a magic quality. As Maitra begins to imply the rhythmic cycles more strongly, Patchen joins on tabla, beginning half an hour of rhythmic-melodic exploration, where virtuosity sits side by side with delicacy and meditative attention. Accompanied by beautiful archival images and extensive liner notes from Laura Patchen, for many listeners Raag Kirwani on Tabla Tarang will be the perfect introduction to the magical world of Kamalesh Maitra, released to coincide with the hundredth anniversary of the master musician’s birth.

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.

New album of peaceful explorations by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. This, their second record, maintains the space and long tones that made their debut, "All Is Sound" a successful anecdote to the loud and fast times we live in. It also expands their musical palate with powerful rhythmic elements.

The Cosmic Tones Research Trio have been breaking new ground with healing / meditation music that also honors their roots in Gospel and Blues...and hints at forward looking Spiritual Jazz. Through their Cello, Saxophone, Piano and Flute playing they bring a new sound to the table. Ancient to the future.

A key work from the golden era of Impulse! Records, Love in Us All is a 1974 masterpiece by spiritual jazz seeker Pharoah Sanders, now reissued on vinyl. As the title suggests, this album is a sonic journey of devotion and transcendence toward the “love within us all.” A powerful balance of mysticism and compassion, chaos and serenity—this is truly music shaped by love and the cosmos. An eternal resonance, more vital now than ever.

An amazing document of the life experiment that was the Organic Music Society. This super quality audio, recorded by RAI (the italian public broadcasting company) in 1976 for television, documents a quartet concert focused on vocals compositions and improvisations. Here, Don Cherry and his family-community’s musical belief emerges in its simplicity, with the desire to merge the knowledge and stimuli gained during numerous travels across the World in a single sound experience. Don's pocket-trumpet is melted with the beats of the great Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, the Italian guitar of Gian Piero Pramaggiore, and the tanpura drone of Moki. A pure hippie aesthetic, like in an intimate ceremony, filters a magical encounter between Eastern and Western civiliziations, offering different suggestions of sound mysticism: natural acoustics in which individual instruments and voices are part of a wider pan-tribal consciousness. A desert Western landscape marries Asian and Latin atmospheres. Indigenous contributions with berimbau explorations find fossil sounds of rattles and clap-hands invocations. Influences of Indian mantra singing are combined with eternal African voices or with folkish-Latin guitar rhythms , while flute and drums evoke distant dances. In the Organic Music everything becomes an act of devotion and love, an ecstatic dwell in the dimension of a sacred free-rejoice.

The explorer Walter Maioli makes his most amazing adventure, the journey to the center of the Earth. Retracing the exploits of the Platonic demiurge, he identifies in the cave the deepest meaning of myth. Primordial sounds, not shadows, are at the center of this magical path straddling geology and Paleolithic polyphony. The recordings between 1985 and 2002 capture the sonic imperceptibility of the great subterranean womb, investigate the secret dialogue between the trickling of pond waters and the faint percussive reverberation of stalactites and stalagtites. Rocky sediments are played as tubular organs, glockenspiels, xylophones or stone marimbas. Crystalline timbral variations and subtle microtonal passages recall the chimes of Tibetan gongs and bells, of the scales of Java and Bali. Amidst muffled pauses and silences, trills and rings, echoes and tremolos, hisses and pops of vibration, Maioli builds his most imaginative niche of sound, a magnetic and telluric chant that is pure symphony and archetypal synaesthesia. Co-produced with Holidays Records.

*200 copies limited edition* Renowned Italian ambient composer Gigi Masin returns with his latest immersive creation, Imploding in a Blinding Darkness, Pt. 2. This new release deepens the evocative soundscapes and emotional textures that define his groundbreaking work. Blending ethereal melodies with rich ambient layers, Masin invites listeners on an intimate journey into mystery and introspection. The album continues the exploration initiated in the first part, delivering a captivating fusion of warmth and shadow. Each track unfolds like a meditative reflection, gracefully balancing light and darkness through seamlessly crafted synths and organic sounds. Imploding in a Blinding Darkness, Pt. 2 confirms Gigi Masin’s place as a visionary artist in contemporary ambient music, offering a profound listening experience that resonates deeply with both longtime fans and newcomers.

*200 copies limited edition* Italian ambient pioneer Gigi Masin returns with his captivating new album, Implodendo In Una Accecante Oscurità, Pt. 1. The title, which translates to "Imploding in a Blinding Darkness", hints at the immersive sonic journey within—a delicate balance between light and shadow, stillness and movement. This record showcases Masin’s signature blend of ethereal melodies and textures, weaving intricate soundscapes that echo the vastness of inner emotional landscapes. With subtle synths, gentle piano, and mesmerizing atmospheres, it invites listeners to dive deep into a reflective and transformative experience. Recognized for his influence on the ambient and electronic music scenes worldwide, Masin continues to push boundaries, crafting soundtracks that resonate with both intimacy and expansiveness. Implodendo In Una Accecante Oscurità, Pt. 1 is a profound meditation on emotion and space, perfect for introspective moments and immersive listening.