MUSIC

It's time for the 5th album of the Long Trax series, featuring six new tracks produced in an A/B style, cut onto 3 vinyl records and compiled onto a single CD. Staying all-hardware, with drooping synth pads and Rhodes piano, rhythm machines, space echo and spring reverb, and featuring 3 new narrators here to put us in our place. Stay independent, and anti-AI. All music by Will Long Artwork by Tsuji Aiko Mastered by Stephan Mathieu A Long Trax Productions release

It's time for the 5th album of the Long Trax series, featuring six new tracks produced in an A/B style, cut onto 3 vinyl records and compiled onto a single CD. Staying all-hardware, with drooping synth pads and Rhodes piano, rhythm machines, space echo and spring reverb, and featuring 3 new narrators here to put us in our place. Stay independent, and anti-AI. All music by Will Long Artwork by Tsuji Aiko Mastered by Stephan Mathieu A Long Trax Productions release

More top tier biz from a resurgent Scenic Route label, this time in a more bare-boned and classic sounding singer-songwriter mode courtesy of Oakland-raised and Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ivy Knight, produced by Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) and tipped if you’re anywhere on the line from Joanne Robertson to Sam Amidon, Dagmar Zuniga to Mark William Lewis. "Ivy Knight’s songs reflect a city dreamer creating a new world to sink into: across Iron Mountain, she conjures imagery of barren Southwest American landscapes as she recounts memories that feel beamed from generations past, channeling folk melodies and old trail ballads of the late 50s and early 60s. Much of her work has been created both within, and in reference to the Hudson Valley, where she met frequent collaborator Deer park (fakemink, Ecco2k, evilgiane) who produced and engineered."

Originally released in 1999 on the German sound‑minimalism stronghold ~scape, Kit Clayton’s debut album Nek Sanalet stands as a landmark work of minimal dub and clicks & cuts.

"Linear ancient voltage-controlled sound rituals. Alien liturgical tones" Convergence is an ambient album formed through a series of morning rituals during rehabilitation following a severe medical event and an extended hospital stay. After weeks immersed in the constant alarms, beeps, and environmental signals of medical equipment, the act of listening itself became recalibrated. The music was performed and assembled using glass marimba, flute, and analog synthesizers, with each instrument treated as a source of resonance and gradually dissected through spectral analysis—allowing melody to emerge from fragments through repetition, attention, and daily practice, where synthesis functions not as traditional composition but as an exchange of signals. Working slowly and intuitively, Stardust Multiplier approaches sound as a communicative medium between humans, the natural environment, and non-ordinary states of perception. Motifs evolve through repetition and subtle variation, informed by ceremonial music, mythic structures, and speculative communication frameworks associated with non-human intelligence—not as narrative devices, but as metaphors for attuned listening and pattern recognition. Rather than moving toward resolution, Convergence documents moments of alignment—instances where intention, system, and environment briefly synchronize. The result is a restrained, deeply focused record, less concerned with atmosphere than attention, where synthesis functions as both a grounding practice and a method of inquiry.

This 7'' record sprouted spontaneously like a bouquet of poisonous mushrooms after the rain. The first encounter between Felix Kubin and Bound By Endogamy dates back to 7 March 2024. An evening dedicated to the label Bongo Joe was held at Petit Bain in Paris. BBE performed live their debut LP, which had been released on the label three months earlier. Felix, meanwhile, presented his project Cell, which he shares with Polish drummer Hubert Zemler. Later that same year, the two duos found themselves on the lineup of the Kalabalik på Tyrolen festival in Sweden, which focuses on electronic post-punk music. The four musicians had the chance to share an exquisite breakfast the following morning at the countryside hotel in Alvesta, where all the festival’s artists were staying. There must have been around thirty crows in the buffet room, uniformly dressed in black as if an exclusive dress code were required to gain access to a cup of coffee and a bowl of cornflakes. Lost in all that darkness were also one or two « regular » families, wondering what the fuck they were doing in the middle of this convention of decadent depressives (the scene could have been straight out of a Roy Andersson film). Between bites of toast, Felix, Kleio, and Shlomo continued a discussion they had started in Paris about their musical references and discovered that they shared many tastes in common. The following year, in April 2025, Felix invited BBE to perform at the Papiripar Festival, which he curates in Hamburg.Then, in November 2025, he in turn was invited to spend a month in Geneva for an artistic residency, a lecture and a couple of events focused on his work. Felix took this opportunity to pay a courtesy visit at Shlomo's, where BBE’s home studio is located. When he rang the doorbell, he had two flight cases tucked under his arm containing a Pulsar-23, an old keyboard sampler, and a battered MS-20 (his signature synthesizer). The three musicians spent the evening trying to synchronize their instruments, twisting knobs and recording their improvisations while drinking natural wine. A few weeks later, back home, Felix cut and pasted the recorded material and edited two instrumental drafts, which he dispatched to Geneva by carrier pigeon. BBE reworked certain tracks and recorded vocal parts to season the whole thing. A few back-and-forth exchanges between Hamburg and Geneva followed, against a backdrop of merciless negotiations over the final shape of the pieces. After a month of labor, the 7’’ was ready to be mastered by Gavin Weiss. The first track, Stück I, deals with the failures of a mechanical woman who dreams of becoming an infallible humanoid machine. Unless it is the other way around. The second track, Stück II, is a prayer glorifying pesticide products and the agrochemical companies that generously dispense them for the good of Humanity.

Simeon ten Holt's landmark minimalist opus Canto Ostinato has a known magnetism. The piece's captivating harmony and winding structure prove an adventurous enterprise for any like-minded players embarking down its path, and it was at this very threshold that Metropolis Ensemble's Andrew Cyr, musician/composer Erik Hall, and the members of Sandbox Percussion all found each other. Their ensuing undertaking marks a world-class collaboration that yields an expansive and beautifully detailed new presentation of ten Holt's iconic work. In 2023 the New York Times shined a light on Simeon ten Holt, the late Dutch composer mostly unknown to the American contemporary classical audience. Featured in the story was Erik Hall in his Michigan studio, whose enthrallment with Canto Ostinato had resulted in his acclaimed solo recording on the label Western Vinyl. Taking notice was Metropolis Ensemble artistic director/conductor Andrew Cyr. He promptly relayed the album to Sandbox Percussion—each of them GRAMMY-nominated ensembles sharing over a decade of work together—and invited Hall to join them in re-orchestrating the piece for an outdoor summer solstice performance at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Now jointly feeling the piece's pull, the team crafted a sweeping new large-ensemble arrangement over six months, bringing into its orbit The New School's Sandbox Percussion Summer Seminar, as well as composers David Leon, Ben Wallace, and Ledah Finck and the Bergamot Quartet. The result was a luminous adaptation of the score, complete with mallet percussion, woodwinds, strings, and piano, garnering a recommendation from NPR's Morning Edition and culminating in sunrise and sunset performances for an enchanted audience. The project's momentum carried straight into the studio, as a new recording became imperative—a permanent document of the team's collective ardor for the composition. Spearheaded by Metropolis Ensemble, produced by Cyr and Hall, and arranged by Hall, Leon, Wallace, and Sandbox Percussion’s Jonny Allen, the interpretation extracts and reframes every line, motif, and arpeggio from the original score, expanding ten Holt’s piano manuscript into a prismatic chamber array. Recorded by GRAMMY-winning audio engineer Mike Tierney, the performance was captured in New York, 2025. Sandbox Percussion's array of mallet instruments maintains a unified and gracefully athletic expression of the piece's duration, while David Leon's octet of woodwinds overlay a kaleidoscopic tapestry. Eighteen strings—led by award-winning violinist Kristin Lee—provide cinematic, otherworldly depth. And Erik Hall's concert grand piano threads through it all, a passionately reverent preservation of the piece's keyboard origins. Altogether, a breathtaking new form for Simeon ten Holt's already-monumental opus, each element serving the whole while driving towards a rapturous resolution. Canto Ostinato, long beloved in its native Netherlands, is still a flame just beginning to burn in the US; a world just beginning to be discovered. But its gravity is certain. And the cohort of Metropolis Ensemble, Erik Hall, and Sandbox Percussion is honored to bear the torch and help continue to draw listeners everywhere to Simeon ten Holt's masterpiece of minimalism.

Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts is the definitive recorded collection of living Chicago DIY legend, Dr. Charles Joseph Smith. Born on Chicago's southside in 1970, Smith is a lifelong resident of the Beverly neighborhood who went on to earn 3 degrees in piano (Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctorate) and perform as a concert pianist in 5 countries (USA, Italy, Germany, France and Hungary). The album also marks the first archival release from Chicago’s Sooper Records.

All of the music here is being made widely available for the first time. This 90-minute collection is compiled from 30 years of Charles’ self-released original music spanning concert piano, electroacoustic experimentation, electronic beats, free improvisation, and two instrumental sketches of his evolving sci-fi opera, War of the Martian Ghosts (a 2023 electronic realization, and a 2018 piano realization). This double Vinyl / Triple CD Collector’s Edition comes with an extensive Insert Booklet containing 9000 words including poetry, interviews, quotes, 30 archival photographs, and extensive liner notes on the life and work of Charles Joseph Smith written by Sooper co-founder Glenn Curran (edited by Sadie Dupuis). This is a piece of Chicago music history.

Dr. Charles Joseph Smith’s remarkable story begins with a mute child’s gift for music, and the purposeful way he nurtured this talent to become both life practice and raison d'être. Charles recounts this artistic journey in his autobiography, The 88 Keys that Opened Doors, a self-published book that chronicles a life in which music was (and still is) the primary key to overcoming immense challenges posed by Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

His career as a musician starts in the church, reaches into the international concert piano circuit, and eventually settles to bear strange fruit in Chicago’s experimental underground. Along the way, Charles Joseph Smith’s compositional voice absorbed and metabolized popular music spanning pop to jazz, the gospel of the church, the canon of the classical conservatory, modern dance scores, and the rule-shattering experimentalism of his city’s DIY subculture, where he has been a mainstay for over 30 years. Since the mid-1990s, Charles has been performing, dancing, and selling his self-published musical and written works in person, often at the local shows he frequents. He is known around Chicago as a living symbol of the power of music, and of the beloved spirit of community at the heart of DIY. This is the definitive collection of his original recordings—though it would be impossible to ever encompass the galaxies of music, poetry, and prose penned by the prolific Dr. Charles Joseph Smith.

The music on Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! feels both impossibly detailed and eminently human. The album’s twelve pieces are layered and interwoven, tonally and rhythmically complex––moiré-like patterns of interaction and tessellation that play out for both mind and body, full of sonic warrens with an inescapable groove. An electrifying leap forward for the band’s shared language, Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! aims to liberate the listener into a spiritual, ecstatic, and utopic dimension of sound.

Gondwana Records is pleased to announce ‘Interlude’, the second album from Estonian-born, London-based composer and pianist Hanakiv. Showcasing an expanded sound, the compositions trace a journey of overcoming the past, unfolding into a seductively unconventional style imbued with hope and a therapeutic quality. Existing in a liminal space between genres, Interlude , the second album from composer, pianist and now singer Hanakiv is as mysterious as it’s seductively unconventional, with piano, often prepared, only one of its elements, both analogue and electronic. First inspired by “those crystallised moments where time almost stands still, pain hasn’t yet fully set in, and happiness is still just a glimpse,” it provides, all the same, “a sense of hope that standing still is part of living.” Interlude’s range is further intimated by its contributors, including Portico Quartet’s Milo Fitzpatrick, who, as well as playing double bass throughout, co-wrote the refreshed long-term live favourite, ‘Intro’, and the eloquent closer, Stillness’. Also present are saxophonist Pille-Rite Rei, cellist Joanna Gutowska, violinist Gabriel Green, and PIKE on drums, helping capture the instances Hanakiv calls “in-betweens”. Unpredictable, unfathomable, candid and carefree, Interlude embodies flaws embraced as well as senses regained. This record is a product of creative and personal revelation, earned only when one’s true self.

Continuing its faithful documentation of the early years of Monolake, Field Records proudly present the first-ever vinyl pressing of seminal 1999 album Interstate. In a kaleidoscopic lattice of micro-rhythms and exquisitely dynamic textural work, Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles fully collaborated for the final time on this record — and created an electronica landmark in the process.

Monolake's evolution from their earlier dub-techno-tinted works saw their exploration of Max/MSP go further out. The duo yielded greater complexity in the behaviour of their sound palette to achieve an organismic quality that remains an enduring influence on so many strands of experimental electronic music today. Interstate is a vivid record that builds up eight different ecosystems of sound and subtly threads elegant grooves through their root structures.

There's a house-like undulation to the low-end driving 'Tangent-I' and 'Tangent-II', but the infinitesimally detailed layers of sound on top swoon from techno synth shimmers to trickling waters, snaking delay trails and pin prick percussion. You can hear the unmistakable, snappy rhythmic thrust of drum & bass driving 'Ginza', but here it's used as an engine for the crispest array of designer percussion and dub-soaked synth chirrups. Across every track, Henke and Behles demonstrate a potent combination, both groovily instinctive and eternally fascinating to try and pick apart.

After Interstate, Behles departed to focus entirely on the development of Ableton Live and Henke steered Monolake towards a leaner — but no less pioneering — sound. Every Monolake record has its own unique context and sound, and the circumstances of Interstate could never be repeated. Capturing the leaps in progress that were being made in digital music production at the end of the millennium, it's an information-rich document of a moment in time that still sounds wildly futuristic 27 years later.

Dewa Alit, master of radical Balinese gamelan, returns to Black Truffle with Baur Bentur."Genetic (2020) introduced international listeners to the magical sound-world of Alit’s Gamelan Salukat, who perform on instruments tuned to a unique scale derived from modified versions of two traditional Balinese scales. The two pieces heard on Chasing the Phantom (2022) further demonstrated his radical fusion of tradition and experimentation, with passages where unorthodox techniques make the acoustic ensemble resemble glitching electronics. Baur Bentur now highlights another aspect of Alit’s work, presenting pieces composed in 2024 and 2025 where Gamelan Salukat performs alongside virtuoso pianist Sri Hanuraga.Alit’s music is grounded in deep reflection on the tradition of Balinese gamelan and its place in the contemporary world. His title, ‘Baur Bentur’, which translates as ‘mixing and smashing’, points to his embrace of the intercultural mixture of Eastern and Western elements in the search for innovation. Against the calcification of Balinese music into tourist entertainment, Alit poses his searching, experimental work, which celebrates the communal values and performance practices of traditional gamelan while pushing into startling new directions.‘Sukat Tacara’ is a study in layered tempos, meters, and polyrhythms, a constantly shifting dialogue between piano and the instruments of Gamelan Salukat. It begins close to a traditional concerto, pairing a brisk sequence of melodic variations from the piano with a spare but propulsive accompaniment of drums and hanging metallophone tones, punctuated by low gong strikes. The piano builds in volume and density across a rapid succession of fragments, at points recalling George Antheil’s ticking wind-up machinery, though Hanuraga’s jazz background shines through in the fluidity with which he navigates the complexities of the score, where chromatic movement co-exists with bluesy phrases. An abrupt change in the piano to patterns of dense clusters introduces a new episode, during which the metallic instruments of the gamelan enter the foreground. The piece dazzles with its inventive rhythms and dynamics, building to a stunning passage featuring the signature heavy muting technique of the Gamelan Salukat metallophones in kinetic patterns that would be at home on a Príncipe release.The title piece begins at high intensity and rarely lets up, working through bracing unison ensemble melodies and punctuation points where piano and gamelan together seem to become a single, thudding drum. For much of the piece the piano is tightly integrated into the ensemble, the harmonic extensions of the melodic line subsumed into a moving cloud of complex overtones generated by the gamelan instruments. Wildly kinetic on the rhythmic level, the piece swarms with microscopic movements of beating patterns generated by the ‘blend and crush’ of three simultaneous tuning systems: the equal temperament of the piano and the saih cenik (small scale) and saih gede (big scale) used by the gamelan instruments. Accompanied by the composer’s thoughtful liner notes and images of the musicians, Baur Bentur is a stunning next step in Alit’s radical combination of tradition and innovation."

アルバムについて I first encountered Pascal Comelade’s music thirty years ago—and nothing has sounded quite the same since. I was immediately captivated: he is an artist like no other, whose sincere and selfless love of music is always evident, especially in his tender reworkings of other people’s songs. Comelade seems to work like a watchmaker: meticulous, precise, and obsessive—yet always drifting into something dreamlike. His music opens hidden doors, telling strange and beguiling stories filled with obscurity, kindness, and reserved humour. Back then, my fascination was instinctive. Today, with a few more words at my disposal, I look to this exceptional 70-year-old French musician and feel exactly the same pull. Métaphysique Du Hit-Parade is the first vinyl compilation devoted to Pascal Comelade’s favourite cover versions. It spans a forty-year career and traces sixty years of rock and roll history along the way. “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker” becomes a soft, soothing lullaby that may well have made the Ramones weep. Then there are his idiosyncratic tributes to Jonathan Richman (“Egyptian Reggae”) and The Kinks (“Sunny Afternoon”), alongside nods to formative heroes such as The Gun Club, Captain Beefheart, and MC5. Two exclusive recordings stand out particularly: Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” and Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”—a song that shaped my early youth. Both were recorded especially for this release. Jan Lankisch, January 2026

with his third album “vin ploile” the bucharest, romania based producer, musician and dj petre in-spirescu captured a whole new audience in 2015 and reached out with minimal leftfield ambient sounds to music loving folks, that are not part of the world-wide dance music universe.

well known as one of the key figures of the romanian electronic dance music scene since his first ep “tips” on luciano’s label cadenza, inspirescu stepped away from club sounds that made him famous due to releases on labels like vinyl club, lick my deck or amphia.

also his two solo albums “intr-o seara organica...” and “grădina onirică“, both released on [a:rpia:r], the record label he initiated with his buddies rhadoo and raresh in 2007, do not have much in common with the sound of “vin ploile” - a mesmerizing deeply musical album that he only tuned in with some elements of piano, string and wind instruments as well as analogue electronics.

at the end of 2015 his nine slow swinging arrangements where celebrated in many polls and now, just a bit more than one year after the release of “vin ploile” petre inspirescu delivers “vîntul prin salcii” – another longplayer enlarged with seven, up to epic twelve minutes long arrangements, that continue where “vin ploile” ceased.

they all listen to the name “miroslav” and only differ numerically in their title. you can call them ambi-ent. you can call them minimal music in the sense of classic compositions by steve reich or terry riley. they groove – sometimes more, sometimes less. and they spread the sounds of flutes or saxophones, delicate piano figures, organic jazz drumming, arpeggiated analogue synth-lines, mesmerizing strings, choral singing, alienated looped vocals and spaced out new aged spheres.

what unites them all is the way, the melodies dance upon and in each single tune. their beautiful tex-tures ensnare and they are continuously engaged with experimentation. a mystical album full of evolu-tionary music to which each listener is able to paint his very own emotional picture. moody, dark and at the same time light-flooded shape-shifting compositions - made for those who love to surrender them-selves to a gentle dance between experimentation and attractiveness.

the cover artwork for petre inspirescu’s album was made again by the illustrator and photographer julian vassallo, who’s artistic works fascinate with a touching spirit of distance, that captures the truth in each single motif. just like petre inspirescu’s music, only that his art grooves with notes that tell somehow: there is no truth. there is only perception.

s i n c e h i s f i r s t e p t i p s o n l u c i a n o s l a b e l c a d e n z a i n 2 0 0 7 p r o d u c e r a n d d j p e t r e i n s p i r e s c u e m e r g e d i n t o o n e o f t h e k e y f i g u r e s o f t h e r o m a n i a n e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c s c e n e . s o f a r h e r e l e a s e d m u s i c o n l a b e l s s u c h a s v i n y l c l u b , l i c k m y d e c k o r a m p h i a . t o g e t h e r w i t h h i s b u d d i e s r h a d o o a n d r a r e s h h e a l s o l a u n c h e d i n 2 0 0 7 3t h e l a b e l [ a : r p i a : r ] - † a p l a t f o r m w h e r e h e , h i s t w o f r i e n d s a n d m a n y p r o d u c e r s f r o m r o m a n i a a n d a b r o a d r e l e a s e d d e t a i l e d g r o o v i n g h o u s e a n d t e c h n o , t h a t s t a n d s o u t w i t h d e l i c a t e s t r u c t u r e s a n d o n e - o f - a - k i n d g r o o v e s . b o t h o f h i s m o r e d a n c e f l o o r o r i e n t e d s o l o a l b u m s " i n t r - o s e a r a o r g a n i c a . . ." a n d " g ra d i n a o n i r i ca" f o r [ a : r p i a : r ] a r e e n l a r g e d w i t h m e l o d i e s , s o u n d s a n d h a r m o n i e s t h a t g o b e y o n d t h e u s u a l c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f a d a n c e a l b u m . f u r t h e r m o r e h i s l o v e f o r c l a s s i c m u s i c i a n s l i k e m i l y a l e x e j e w i t s c h b a l a k i r e v , a l e x a n d e r p o r f i r y e v i c h b o r o d i n o r o r n i c o l a i a n d r e j e w i t s c h r i m s k y - k o r s a k o w c a n b e f e l t i n t h e a l b u m " pa d u r e a d e a u r ( o p u s 2 i n r e m a j o r )" a n d t w o m o r e e p s t h a t h e r e l e a s e d u n d e r t h e a l i a s e n s e m b l e o n t h e r o m a n i a n l a b e l y o j i k c o n c o n i n o r d e r t o u n i t e c l a s s i c a l s p h e r e s w i t h a n a l o g u e e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c p r o d u c t i o n . i n f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 3 h e a l s o r e l e a s e d h i s h i g h l y a c c l a i m e d f a b r i c m i x c d t h a t o n l y f e a t u r e s d a n c e f l o o r l e a n i n g m u s i c p r o d u c e d b y h i m s e l f . w i t h "t a l k i n g w a t e r s" h e p u b l i s h e d i n l a t e 2 0 1 4 h i s f i r s t 1 2 i n c h o n m u l e m u s i q t h a t i s n o w f o l l o w e d b y t h e f u l l - l e n g t h a l b u m " v i n p l o i l e" w h i c h h e p r o d u c e d w i t h o u t t h e i n t e n t i o n t o e n t e r t a i n w i t h e a s y t o h o o k u p r h y t h m s , m e l o d i e s a n d h a r m o n i e s . e v e n t o u g h h e e s t a b l i s h e d h i m s e l f a s a i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y p l a y i n g h o u s e d j t h a t r e g u l a r l y p e r f o r m s a t a l l m a j o r c l u b s , f e s t i v a l s a n d o t h e r p a r t y d e s t i n a t i o n s a r o u n d t h e g l o b e : a s a m u s i c i a n p e t r e i n s p i r e s c u a l w a y s t r i e s t o e n t e r n e w t e r r i t o r i e s t o e x p l o r e w i t h a h e a r t f e l t h u m a n t o u c h t h e i n f i n i t e s p a c e o f s o u n d . f o r h i s l a t e s t a l b u m t h e m a n t h a t o r i g i n a l l y c o m e s f r o m t h e e a s t e r n r o m a n i a n t o w n b ra i l a s t e p p e d a w a y f r o m h i s f o r m e r e x p e r i m e n t s o f m e l t i n g c l a s s i c a l s p h e r e s w i t h e l e c t r o n i c m u s i c . i n s t e a d t h e 3 6 - y e a r s o l d m a n f r o m b u c h a r e s t o n l y u s e d s o m e p i a n o , s t r i n g a n d w i n d i n s t r u m e n t e l e m e n t s a n d a n a l o g u e e l e c t r o n i c s t o a r r a n g e a g r a c e f u l l y d e e p o c e a n o f s o u n d . a l l s l o w g r o o v i n g t r a c k s s p r e a d t h e a t m o s p h e r e o f l i v e i m p r o v i s e d s e s s i o n s t h a t a r e e d i t e d , t w e a k e d a n d m i x e d t o p e r f e c t i o n . i n - t h e - m o m e n t m o o d s o f s t r a n g e a n d u n u s u a l a n a l o g u e s y n t h s o u n d s g r o o v e i n a f l u i d q u a l i t y w i t h s u b l i m i n a l b a s s s h a p e s , l a t i n a t e p e r c u s s i o n s , j a z z r h y t h m s a n d a c o u s t i c m e l o d i e s . t o g e t h e r t h e y c r e a t e a g a s e o u s k i n e t i c a t m o s p h e r e f u l l o f t a n g i b l e r h y t h m p a t t e r n s , d e l i c a t e c h o r d s a n d g h o s t l y m o d u l a r s y n t h p a d s a l l m i x e d s u b t l e t o c r e a t e s p a c e f o r t h e t o n e s b e t w e e n t h e t o n e s . y o u c a n c a l l i t a h y p n o t i c a f t e r h o u r a l b u m f o r a f t e r h o u r s t h a t a r e d e d i c a t e d t o a d e e p l i s t e n i n g e x p e r i e n c e . y o u c a n t a g h i s a r r a n g e m e n t s a s b r i l l i a n t l y t e x t u r e d a n d m u s i c a l l y s u p e r - c h a r g e d a m b i e n t , w h i c h g o e s b e y o n d t h e u s u a l d e f i n i t i o n o f t h e g e n r e . a l l n i n e s u s p e n s e f u l c o m p o s i t i o n s s e d u c e w i t h a d e e p m e l o d i c s e n s i b i l i t y , h a r m o n i c a d v e n t u r e s a n d a n o v e r a l l r h y t h m i c a m b i a n c e o f f r e s h n e s s a n d l a i d b a c k e n t h u s i a s m . t o g e t h e r t h e y r e p r e s e n t a c h a l l e n g i n g a u d i t o r y e x p e r i e n c e t h a t w i l l r e s o n a t e i n y o u r m i n d l o n g a f t e r t h e m u s i c h a s f i n i s h e d.

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.

La Düsseldorf's debut album, formed by Klaus Dinger after the dissolution of NEU!, sublimated the experimental nature of Krautrock into a pop sensibility.

The tracks "La Düsseldorf," "Silver Cloud," and "Time" create a hypnotic and celebratory atmosphere through their repetitive motorik beat and shimmering synthesizers. The album is marked by the energetic vocals of Klaus Dinger and a sense of openness within its minimal structure.

Transcending the boundaries of German rock, this work radiates a genre-crossing appeal, where an art-rock perspective fuses with a DIY spirit. It stands as a symbol of Krautrock's evolution, continuing to shine brightly with a freshness that influenced later new wave and techno music.

Originally released on Philip Glass's own Chatham Square label in 1971, 'Music with Changing Parts' is a minimalist set text, a work for multiple electric organs and woodwind that deserves to be filed alongside Terry Riley's 'A Rainbow in Curved Air' and Steve Reich's 'Four Organs'. Glass suffers from discography bewilderment - he's released so much that it's hard to know exactly where to go. Do you opt for his soundtrack to 'Koyaanisqatsi', his prophetic pseudo-opera 'Einstein on the Beach' or go for something even more widely known? He's one of those artists who's understood more as a reference; someone you've heard, whether you're aware of it or not. And listening back to 'Music with Changing Parts', it's quite clear that he's had an overwhelming impact on so much experimental music, especially as we hit the twilight of the organ revival. Riley and Reich, who was long Glass's sparring partner, often take the critical flowers and yet, listening back to this one you can hear just how it's Glass's melodic sensibilities, the ear that got him a seat at Hollywood's top table, that ripple throughout so much contemporary avant-garde music. 'Music with Changing Parts' is an early example of Glass's very specific brand of minimalism, where interlocking repeating melodies create eerie phasing patterns, leading to psychoacoustic phenomena that would become hallmarks of the wider "new age" genre. Glass was inspired after a rehearsal of his 1969 piece 'Music In Similar Motion' where he noticed the rhythmic pulses were creating the illusion of sustained tones. So writing this one, he concentrated on the keyboard patterns, varying their rhythm while accepting that the three Farfisas and electric piano would create phantom sounds. There are no solos, exactly, and as the hour-long piece evolves, Glass coolly adds woodwind, electric violin and voice to reinforce the psychoacoustic elements, creating a haunting flux that's still rarely been bettered. Listening back 55 years later, it's alarming how perfect it sounds having absorbed so much that's been directly and indirectly inspired by its lattice of electronic chimes. Even if you think you've got a handle on Glass's output, this is an album every enjoyer of minimalism - whether it's Steve Reich's 'Music for 18 Musicians', Kali Malone's 'The Sacrificial Code' or Charlemagne Palestine's 'Strumming Music' - needs to own.

As Brian Eno told us last week, “Leenalchi has changed the way I think about music, dancing and Korea. I have never heard anything quite like this.” There’s so much to say to you about this amazing band—but what will get you to listen? Is it that they play addictive psych pop? Or that they sound like animals talking to each other over tripped out bass lines? They have a new single out today called HERE COMES THAT CROW, which, like all of Leenalchi’s songs, is a chopped and screwed version of a pansori tale (a traditional form of storytelling from the 17th century). Based on a story about the warlord Cao Cao, the song is an allegory about life’s precariousness. The band wrote a poem to explain: Doyung doyung goes the small boat floating down the river. Whether the chased or the chaser, no one can stop—just beneath the boards lies the underworld!

Ondanaconda does not compose with the jaw harp, but through it. For their self-titled debut album, the quartet turns this lamellophone, often perceived as archaic, into the record’s sole sound source. Found for centuries across continents, from Asia to Europe, the jaw harp is played against the teeth, using the mouth as a resonating chamber, shaping sound through breath and bodily movement. Here, amplified, prepared and sometimes pushed to its limits, it becomes percussion, bass, drone and texture — a true mouth synthesizer with vast possibilities. Between performance and trance, Ondanaconda crafts an unidentified sonic object, somewhere between collective ritual and raw electroacoustic experiment. Each piece emerges from specific combinations of instruments, exploring timbral affinities and rhythmic or harmonic potentials, while leaving room for drift and improvisation. Repetition acts as an unstable engine, bending patterns until they morph into something else. Together, Laurent Bruttin, Antoine Läng, John Menoud and Daniel Zea weave a dense, shifting mass where individual voices dissolve into an organic, almost hallucinatory polyphony. Conceived as a continuum, the album unfolds as a hypnotic flow, a physical and immersive music that moves from mouths to bodies, saturating the surrounding space. A radical UFO, at the crossroads of concert, performance and sound installation.

With Flame Folclòre, Cocanha continues reclaiming Occitan folklore as a living, political and embodied space. For Lila Fraysse and Caroline Dufau, folklore is neither decoration nor nostalgia. It is a site of struggle, where narratives, identities and imaginaries are constantly renegotiated. Drawing from fragments of traditional Occitan music, the duo composes, reshapes and rewrites. Ancient melodies intertwine with original texts in a contemporary language that echoes both subversive Occitan memories and present-day struggles. The voice becomes a chronicle of now, a way of inhabiting the present. Driven by hypnotic polyphony and the deep pulse of stringed tambourines, the album embraces a minimal, physical and grounded aesthetic. Repetition acts as propulsion, dance as function. Cocanha’s practice is collective by nature: to gather, to move, to fuel a joyful struggle around reclaiming the commons. This album marks a turning point in the group’s approach, with the emergence of a resolutely collective form of creation. Cocanha’s musicians, Lila Fraysse and Caroline Dufau, led the pre-production alongside Catalan producer Raül Refree, with whom they had worked on their previous record Puput. Together, they shaped the album’s sonic identity, co-arranged Cocanha’s compositions for the studio, and invited Italian musician and producer Walter Laureti (known for his work with Davide Ambrogio) to record the album. Paulin Courtial (from the Occitan rock duo CxK) joined them to record two additional tracks. But the collective momentum doesn’t stop there. In order to fully realise this shared vision, the group invited friends and collaborators Audrey Ginestet, Arthur Ower, Jules Ribis and Johann Levasseur to take part in the mixing process, joining Raül Refree, Walter Laureti and Paulin Courtial in shaping the record through a truly multi-handed approach.

The music on Horse Lords’ Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! feels both impossibly detailed and eminently human. The album’s twelve pieces are layered and interwoven, tonally and rhythmically complex––moiré-like patterns of interaction and tessellation that play out for both mind and body, full of sonic warrens with an inescapable groove. An electrifying leap forward for the band’s shared language, Demand to Be Taken to Heaven Alive! aims to liberate the listener into a spiritual, ecstatic, and utopic dimension of sound.

Following The Pocket of Fever, Ambient Sans presents the second part of Masahiro Sugaya’s visionary collaborations with avant-garde performance group Pappa TARAHUMARA, founded by Hiroshi Koike in 1982. The company fused dance, theatre, music and visual art into abstract stage environments, with Sugaya’s music serving as their emotional and conceptual core.

Music From Alejo was his first full score for the troupe—a refined work where repetition and silence mingle with luminous synthesizers and drifting melodic fragments. More structured than The Pocket of Fever, it balances modern composition with subtle inflections of Japanese tradition, evoking a sense of movement suspended between dream and reality.

Reissued for the first time on vinyl, the album includes a printed insert with an exclusive interview and photographs from Sugaya’s home in Japan. A vital rediscovery for admirers of Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada and Brian Eno, it captures a quietly radical moment in Tokyo’s 1980s experimental scene.

Budapest-based concept label, Blue Sun is launching their new line of vinyl focused releases, aimed primarily on DJs and collectors: the Blue Series. A counterpart to the Orange Series launched last year that showcases a more upbeat side of the label, the new collection presents a darker, more experimental, and introspective musical vision.The first release in the Blue Series is a six-track EP by Budapest based multimedia artist, Virág Réti. Choosing her legal name as her artist persona (“Flower of the Meadow" in Hungarian) also with the track titles capturing the folk names of local fauna, Peremidő evokes the artist's innate connection to nature as a place of refuge from the noise of Eastern European urban life.The EP’s motifs point back to early memories of sitting by a river, simply observing time flowing by. The arc of the songs follow the passage of a day, beginning with the hesitant sounds of early morning, gradually moving on toward more defined, rhythm-driven forms. As the airy textures slowly give way to structure and percussion comes to the forefront, the sense of direction becomes clearer, letting moments of gentle disorder and unexpected sounds to surface.Virág previously appeared on the label’s Blue Sun VA II compilation with her track Bíbic. Since launching her ambient music project in the fall of 2024, she has become one of the promising newcomers in the Hungarian experimental electronic music scene. Her debut EP, Minden Ami Megmaradt (All That Remains), was released last November as the final offering of temporary nites label (2023–2025). She is also the founder and organizer of the Budapest-based experimental electronic event series Still Places.