MUSIC

坂本龍一とのコラボレーション3曲収録。Lee BannonとしてもNinja Tuneなどで活躍する北カルフォルニアのプロデューサー、Fred Welton Warmsley IIIによる真打ちである、インダストリアル・ミュージックをノイズやポスト・アンビエント、モダン・クラシカルといった現代的かつ先鋭的なアプローチで革新する一大プロジェクト、Dedekind Cutの8年振りとなる待望の新作！
Dedekind Cutによる〈DED〉トリロジーの最終章『Dede-K-Tion』。長い時間をかけて構想・制作されてきたシリーズの集大成となる作品で、これまでの〈DED〉シリーズで展開されてきた音響的探究をさらに拡張し、微細でスピチリュアルな電子音響とミニマリズムが交錯する世界を形成。坂本龍一特有の洗練された静謐さも相まって、Dedekind Cutの新たな領域へ到達した重要作。

In a limited one time only silver foil edition, here we have Harlan Silverman's follow up to his popular Music For Stillness LP! For this one, he's teamed up with violinist Gregory Allison to bring you an absolutely beautiful peaceful record. Just violin and cello! Pretty! Special.

Portland’s Osmosis chart a cross-section of North American-derived electronics, ranging from Priori’s slow techno slug to Ben Bondy & Special Guest DJ's bleep special as Xphresh. The Osmosis party / festival / interdimensional research consortium’s label wing serve ravers of odder persuasions with something to bite into. Priori & wav4ms’s greazy grindr ‘Colossi’ is a big highlight, and wav4ms also lends to another standout, the sloshing gamelan trip of ‘Belladonna’ with local Portland artist, Carly Banton, which shares a fascination for tuned percussions with muck’s subbass-propelled halfstep mutation ’Ugamelon Spirit’. Xphresh, the duo of Ben Bondy & Special Guest DJ, whisk-up the featherlike bleep stepper ‘Burning Sand’, and the restless writhe of ‘Fuul’ from mor-f.

2026年リプレス！ドイツ・ハンブルクを拠点にニューエイジ・リバイバルを牽引したBasso主宰の名門レーベル〈Growing Bin Records〉や、ギリシャ系ニューエイジを掘り起こした〈Into The Light〉などからのリリースや、アンビエント・ダンス・ユニットEarth TraxやPtakiなどの名義でも活動するポーランド・ワルシャワのバレアリック／アンビエント鬼才ことBartosz Kruczynskiによる最新ソロアルバム、今回も凄い才能＆内容！16年リリースの『Baltic Beat』が当店でも大ヒットを記録した人気アクトによる、4年振り最新アルバム！温かみのあるビブラフォン、張り詰めたアルペジオ、重なり合うストリングス、孤独なディレイチェーンなど、アンビエントの重なり合うスタイルに、常に独自のスピンを加えてきた名手による、安定のバレアリック／アンビエント作品！

Takashi Kokubo, one of Japan’s leading ambient musicians and sound designers, is best known for creating sounds such as the Earthquake Early Warning alert and payment confirmation tones. From his “Aeon Series” released in the 1990s, the highly popular title *Wind Oasis II: A Tale of Forest and Water* is finally being reissued!

In August 2022, Australia-based, French born fourth-world music legend Ariel Kalma was invited to participate in BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction series of special collaborations. The program pairs artists who have not previously worked together to create new music cooperatively. Kalma was quick to suggest working with two musicians whom he had never met – International Anthem recording artists Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer, whose critically-acclaimed duo debut 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' had been released just a few months earlier. An invitation was sent to Chiu and Honer, which was received with great enthusiasm, as Chiu had long been a fan of Kalma’s work, even citing him as a major influence on his approach to electronic music composition. The essential structure of the Late Junction collaboration was that the artists would work together to create around twenty minutes of music. They began passing music back and forth, some that Kalma had started, and some that Honer & Chiu had started, with each adding to or editing the track before returning it to the other. The music would only go back and forth a few times before being finalized. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. After meeting their twenty minute goal for the program (four pieces total), the three musicians were satisfied in what they would present and sent along their work to the producers of Late Junction. However, there was a nagging suspicion that this wasn’t the end of the story. There were several pieces that they had nearly completed but that weren’t sent for inclusion in the radio program, and there were many ideas for refining those pieces that had. With this in mind Kalma, Chiu and Honer agreed that they would continue to work together to try to push the music further. The freshly minted trio felt like there was much more to be said and more work to be done. The Late Junction program was broadcast in September of 2022. Simultaneously, Kalma, Chiu and Honer began expanding upon the music they had started for the purpose of the broadcast, working diligently on the music for several months. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Their collective approach to this work was born in improvisation and realized via collage-based editing. The end result brings several distinct musical moments — recorded sometimes decades apart — into conversation with one another, forming new narratives from building blocks of old ones. There are snippets of improvised playing from each musician, edited together with recordings that Kalma had made in the 70s at GRM, and even moments of audio notes — like Kalma explaining his ideas — that would make it into the final mixes. Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” Ultimately, the collection of music highlights the work of all three musicians, intertwining the contextual immersion heard on Chiu & Honer’s 'Recordings from the Åland Islands' with an intergenerational reverence for (and the undeniable presence of) Kalma’s decades-spanning body of work. It is work that has definitively enshrined him as one of the true, transcendent pioneers and sages of new age and fourth-world music. That reverence is affirmed by the album title chosen by the group — "The Closest Thing to Silence" — which is taken from a quote by Kalma included in a documentary by RVNG Intl (as part of their release of the 2014 compendium/retrospective An Evolutionary Music). Perhaps coincidental, Kalma’s quote was a slight modulation of a legendary ECM Records motto, as he said: “Music is the closest thing to silence.” The Closest Thing To Silence is an album-length collaboration between fourth-world music icon Ariel Kalma and the recording duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, which evolved from a twenty-minute selection pieces they recorded in 2022 for BBC Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction’ program as part of a scheme that places together artists who have never worked together before. Chiu and Honer, who both cite Kalma as a huge influence on their work, beautifully fit into Kalma’s vision.

On June 29th, 2023, Jeremiah Chiu walked into the Vintage Synthesizer Museum (VSM) in Highland Park, Los Angeles, with no plan more specific than “let’s fire this stuff up and see what happens.” Exploring the VSM’s vast collection of classic, rare and staple synthesizers, he would sequence, trigger, and layer the machines together with help from VSM founder/curator Lance Hill. Hill recalls: "Jeremiah arrived before the engineer showed up. We talked for maybe 5 minutes before he started programming a sound and sequence into the Gleeman Pentaphonic. By the time the engineer showed up, Jeremiah had built several other parts around the Gleeman that weren't synced by any control method but sounded like they were just calling and responding to each other. They plugged the Tascam 388 into the patch bay, and hit record. Jeremiah played with it, and that was it. First piece written and recorded in under an hour. It felt natural, fun and free. And that's pretty much how the rest of the session went. Constant ecstatic motion. It was the funnest non-HipHop session I've ever worked on." The resulting album – In Electric Time - was recorded in just two days, and edited to completion in the two days following. It was captured fully analog by engineer Ben Lumsdaine, who ​​contributes performances on a few tracks himself. Cooper Crain (of Bitchin Bajas) makes an appearance as well; but ultimately the collection is an intuitive expression of organic electronic music conceptualized and created in-context by Chiu alone, as he calls on a lifetime of work in sound synthesis to paint a fulgent, refreshingly undercut sequence of cinematic sketches and in-process themes. In some ways, In Electric Time reflects the directness of Raymond Scott’s electronic studio recordings — with sharp cuts and room chatter — and, in others, it conjures the in-the-moment magic of Harmonia. About the work, Chiu says: “The approach to the improvisations was to embrace the mixer setups at VSM — where a section of synthesizers are all routed to a single mixer/patchbay — and to start at one end of the studio and work our way around the six different sections. I began with the synths I was most familiar with — or had spent years researching — and was fairly certain I could reign in quickly. When working with vintage gear, there's always a sweet spot where the instrument sings in a unique way. This may be the idiosyncrasies of its filter and how it resonates, the action of the keys, the ability to trigger and use control voltage to sequence, or the unique onboard features. I love finding the moments where a melody or rhythm appears in an unexpected way — at times feeling more like archaeology than sculpture. I was quite improvisatory with the editing as well, often pulling bits from distinctly different sections in dialogue with each other, in order to maintain the raw, spontaneous feeling. I loved hearing moments in the recordings when Ben started or stopped tape, so a take that was running long and beyond its moment would hit directly against a fresh idea.”

Strut presents an exclusive new collaboration between UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian ambient / electronic maestro Gigi Masin on ‘Dolphin’. Recorded remotely during 2021-2022 the album took shape in the form of mutual compositions, gradually developed and embellished online. Final recording sessions took place at the majestic Chale Abbey Studios on the Isle Of Wight with Moses Boyd (drums), Tom Herbert (bass) and Siobhan Cosgrove (flute, clarinet) adding elements to several pieces. Tracks include the reflective, wistful single ‘Viento Calido’ and drifting ambient piece ‘Sabena’, a beautiful tribute to Gigi’s wife who sadly passed away during 2022. Greg Foat has recorded prolifically in recent years for Athens Of The North, Jazzman and Strut including acclaimed albums Symphonie Pacifique (2020) and The Mage (2019). Best known for his 1986 ambient masterpiece Wind and as a member of Gaussian Curve, Gigi Masin has enjoyed a revival in recent years through his Calypso album on R&S’s Apollo label and renewed touring. Dolphin represents Greg and Gigi’s first landmark recording collaboration together. “I first heard Gigi’s album Wind in 2016,” remembers Greg. “I was living in Miami and I heard it playing one Summer evening. Since then, it has always been in my mind to be able to record together.” Dolphin is mastered by Mark Ashfield at Cosmic Audio with newly commissioned artwork by Niul Foat. The LP comes as transparent vinyl in a thick card outer sleeve.

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

An overview of Laraaji’s earliest works, Glimpses of Infinity gathers selections from his 1978 debut Celestial Vibration and six additional studio sessions from the era. Full of discovery and wonderment, Glimpses of Infinity is a miraculous chronicle of new age’s most fabled artist. A condensed version of the 2023's sold out 4xLP Boxset.

Vision Songs Vol. 1 (1984) is the LARAAJI album like no other, located at the intersection of new age and gospel. It is both his outlier and magnum opus, the feel-good DIY tape of the century.Discovered busking in Washington Square Park by Brian Eno in the late 70s, engagement with the eternal flow has led Laraaji to, seemingly by magic, emerge as the most beloved avatar of the unstoppable new age music revival of recent years.Now Vision Songs rewrites Laraaji's musical history. Vision Songs is literally a revelation -- of a master songwriter whose unbelievably catchy best compositions such as "We Shall Be Lifted", "All Of A Sudden", and "Is This Clear?" belong in any great American songbook.Casio synth jams recorded at spiritual retreat guest rooms and a tiny bedroom on the Upper West Side, lysergically-spectacular anthems for a continually arriving new moment, "channeled," as Laraaji states in the album's eloquent liner notes, "from the sky," previously available in an edition of 100 cassettes sold at yoga retreats and on the streets of New York City, Vision Songs is humbly offered on vinyl, CD, and streaming for the very first time.

The first vocal album by beloved Ethiopian nun, composer, and pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru - profound and deeply moving home cassette recordings made amidst political upheaval and turmoil. These are songs of wisdom, loss, mourning, and exile, sung directly into a boombox and accompanied by Emahoy’s unmistakable piano. Though written and recorded while still living at her family’s home in Addis Ababa, Emahoy sings of the heartache of leaving her beloved Ethiopia, a reflection on the 1974 revolution and ensuing Red Terror in her homeland, and a presentiment of her future exile in Jerusalem. In the 21st century, Emahoy has become known worldwide for her utterly unique melodic and rhythmic style. Commonly misinterpreted as “jazzy” or “honky tonk,” Emahoy’s music actually comes from a deep engagement with the Western classical tradition, mixed with her background in Ethiopian traditional and Orthodox music. These songs, recorded between 1977-1985, are different from anything previously released by the artist. Rich with the sound of birds outside the window, the creak of the piano bench, the thump of Emahoy’s finger on the record button, they create a sense of place, of being near the artist while she records. Emahoy’s lyrics, sung in Amharic, are poetic and heavy with the weight of exile. “When I looked out / past the clouds / I couldn’t see my country’s sky / Have I really gone so far?” she asks in “Is It Sunny or Cloudy in the Land You Live?” Her vocals are delicate and heartfelt, tracing the melodic contours of her piano on songs like “Where Is the Highway of Thought?” “Tenkou! Why Feel Sorry?,” a career highlight that closes out her self-titled Mississippi album (MRP-099), is revisited here with vocals. Originally composed for her niece, Tenkou, the lyrics clarify the song title we’ve wondered about for so many years. “Don’t cry / Childhood won’t come back / Let it go with love.” Emahoy dreamt of releasing this music to a larger audience before her passing in March of 2023. We are proud to release this music, in collaboration with her family, now, in what would have been her 100th year. LP comes with a 16-page booklet full-color booklet. Gold cover first edition, pressed in both black and gold vinyl editions.

Since debuting his Khotin project in 2014, Edmonton’s Dylan Khotin-Foote has fine-tuned an impressionistic, dream-like style of music that straddles multiple sonic worlds. His output often sways from gentle synthesized atmospherics to hypnotic, dance-minded frameworks. His self-released 2018 LP, Beautiful You, offered a study on melody and memory; the album’s nostalgia-nudging use of passing environments, voices, and abstractions captivated a cult following, a rare 4.5 review in Resident Advisor and the attention of Ghostly International, who pressed the cassette on vinyl for wider circulation in 2019. Now, Khotin reveals his first collection of new material since the signing. The album is a fluid continuation of his blissful and melancholic songcraft, extended humbly and warmly, Finds You Well.

As tongue-in-cheek as the title may appear, the phrase has haunted the producer for some time. Most often seen at the start of correspondence, the words “I hope this email finds you well” can land with varying levels of sincerity, depending on context and mood. Khotin-Foote started to read the line more ominously during the onset of the pandemic. So, this set of music winks at both possibilities, mixing a platitude’s opaque optimism with lurking uncertainty.

Finds You Well can be heard in near-symmetrical halves: its 10 tracks represent the selections from a bounty of demos that, with less modesty, could have filled two records, one active and the other ambient. The resulting set isn’t an even split but it’s close. The A-side centers on the album’s steadiest sequence of beat-centric material. “Ivory Tower” is inextricably tied to benchmarks set by late ‘90s downtempo forerunners, spilling lucious and narcotic synth modulations across a sprinkler’s spray of breakbeats. Khotin’s sprightly melodic noodling brings that touchstone sound into vogue, bubbling up in free-form spurts. The sequence continues through the propulsive “Heavyball,” into “Groove 32,” which begins with a funky bit-clipped drum and bongo boogie. A tight bass-line plugs into place, building a grid for square-wave pads, shimmering melodic textures, and stuttering vocal samples to percolate in.

Khotin’s tone stabilizes on the B-side, balancing decidedly bucolic terrain with suspiciously eerie melancholy. Voices wander in the sprawling frequency sweeps. Organic textures sizzle and sputter in the clouds. “WEM Lagoon Jump” references local West Edmonton folklore, the time a kid jumped from a shopping mall's second-floor balcony into the main pavilion’s fountain. After the splash, we land in the record’s most satisfying stasis, “Your Favorite Building.” A brittle clave and muffled kick hover in a wobbly mist of organ chords; the building is gorgeous, but seen at night, and empty, and from this angle, those shadows seem to crop up more of those subdued tremors, those nostalgic creeps, those droll musings. From behind a wall of melody, a kid peeks their head and softly sings, “you must love the world because it’s wonderful,” the vocal snippet comes courtesy of Khotin-Foote’s sister, Amaris.

For much of Find You Well’s second half, Khotin dabbles in a dusty and slightly detuned piano sound, revealing an artist unafraid to change shapes but maintain course. This set of chimeric visions sidesteps the subdued bombast that fills the A-side; instead, it suggests a counterpoint emphasizing the uncanny overlap between well wishes and empty promises. 

Written and recorded between 1972 and 1982 in Western Oregon, Back to the Woodlands is a previously unreleased, and nearly lost, album made by Ernest Hood during the same era as his near mythical album Neighborhoods. A visionary combination of field recordings, zithers, and synthesizers, Back to the Woodlands offers an unprecedented depth of access to this singular artistic mind. Working closely with his estate to maintain his original vision, Freedom to Spend has restored and remastered this never before released, lost masterpiece by Ernest Hood from the original tapes. Ernest Hood’s Back to the Woodlands will be issued on vinyl, as well as on CD in combination with its contemporary Where the Woods Begin, with new liner notes by Michael Klausman.

On his standout debut LP, DJ Grzyb marshals a rudely squashed swamp dance at the head of his octet, The Make-Believe Ensemble, landing with early support by Nathan Gregory Wilkins, babyschön, Skyrager (Psychemagick), Tom Ravenscroft, Elena Colombi The lessons of dub, new age ambient and Italian cosmic disco that fed into the proto-Goa melange continue to inspire DJ Grzyb and his band of slow disco marauders on this trippy 14-track journey. Their first venture unfolds as a sort of album-cum-mixtape, all handling a vast array of East-West instruments - from brass and woodwind sections to sitar, tanpura, and trad. Thai khaen, ching, pi phu Thai - in a wandering sort of cinematic, narrative-driven fashion. It’s almost entirely yoked to a purposefully slow pace, but does prang out a sore thumb ‘The Three Deaths’ ft. Naphta, aiming it all squarely at the feet of Vladimir Ivkovic or Andrew Weatherall fiends.

Music From Memory presents Mood Programs – Extended Play, the debut release from LA MARR, a new project conceived by Ron Trent. The first in an ongoing series for the label, it explores Trent’s fascination with mood, acoustics and the emotional impact of sound within physical space.Drawing inspiration from ambient music, dub, New Age, Krautrock, New Wave and HiFi sound system culture, LA MARR channels decades of sonic exploration into a refined contemporary framework. Built from a blend of analogue techniques and modern production methods, the project focuses on depth, warmth and carefully crafted atmospheres.Across the two tracks, 'Good Magic' and 'Clear', shimmering synth patterns, drifting pads, organic percussion and subtle low-end movement combine to create meditative, spacious compositions. Thoughtfully constructed and richly atmospheric, Mood Programs – Extended Play reflects Trent’s ongoing pursuit of sound as an immersive and transformative experience.

The blissed family band is back! TENGGER have always moved together, through time, space & genre. 'SKY' arrives as a new chapter: a little more still, a little more inward, while keeping all the warmth that's always been at the heart of what they do. Embodying the band name meaning "endless sky" in Mongolian and "vast sea" in Hungarian, their 8th album 'SKY' centres on the feelings of boundless, infinite expansion. Conceived as one continuous environment rather than a collection of tracks, the album unfolds slowly through luminous synths, patient drones and Itta's breath-like vocals. Like a soft big sky you can actually float on: 'SKY' is vast, warm, and wide open. "Rather than a specific emotion, we hope the record opens a certain awareness — that the sky is not just something to be seen. Through it, we sense a connection to something much larger — a feeling of being linked to the wider universe. This sense of connection runs through the entire record."

Originally released in the wake of ML Buch's art-pop modern classic 'Suntub', "Suntub Extras" paints in similar shades, fixing up its precision-engineered sketches in a personal space between Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love', OPN's 'Replica' and Cocteau Twins' 'Victorialand'. Without the pop accouterments that made 'Suntub' so tantalizing to the almost-mainstream, Buch's tangled productions lay bare the various ingredients that have shaped her taste over the years. Fleetwood Mac was maybe the most obvious reference back in 2023 and undoubtedly her vocal harmonies and precision songwriting looped right back into the radio rock of the '70s and '80s, but strip the vocal away and something very different emerges. Her repeating guitar phrases - heard so vividly on the gorgeous 'Sway walking' - sound far more meditative and moving when they're isolated, decoupling the music from AOR and jacking it directly into the new age continuum. Here, Buch has more in common with Daniel Lopatin (or even Mark McGuire), playing out familiar riffs but treating them as if they're Reichian iterations. She introduces a larger (laptop-powered) ensemble on 'Suncrumb trail, Staging', providing a virtual tune-up with willowy guitars, boxy drums and that warm fretless bass that was all over 'Hounds of Love'. But as soon as any of these tracks seem to move towards their goal, Buch inevitably cuts away to a different scene. Here, she diverts our ears to alt-rock pastiche 'Growing eyes, Blade of cloud, Rolling chill', caking her Rembrants guitars in tape echo before picking up the thread again on the generous 'Moving Light, Change', a slo-mo reverie that provides the album with its thematic apex. But it's the brief finale that has our hearts; on the impeccably-titled 'Halfdark, Slow blinking', Buch accurately duplicates Robin Guthrie's groggy processes, strumming decelerated chords into cavernous echoes.

Emboldened by the success of the recent reissue of It's Cosy Inside, Mark and Clive had a listen to hundreds of previously unreleased tracks recorded in the 70s and 80s to assemble their first new record in two decades, When The Past Arrives, out in March from Drag City / Yoga Records.

With comparisons to Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Animal Collective, Cluster, and Brian Eno, WOO's profile in the world of atemporal music has been growing for years. For the lucky few who know, like Fela, or Neu!, WOO has their own instantly recognizable vibrantly pulsing sound, a quiet sound of comfort and contentment.

If we got something good happening it would continue into the early hours. I remember one morning waking up still sitting at my keyboard, the phone as my pillow. The woman below us would thump the ceiling with a broom handle when she got sick of the noise, so that influenced a lot of what we could do and how we would work: drums became triangles, clarinets were played real breathy, guitars were plucked, not strummed. Even hitting the keyboard keys were not to be struck too hard. This new album is mainly a result of these late night recordings. Soft melodic compositions created on either piano or guitar, then multi tracked with improvisations and harmonic patterns. -- Clive

When The Past Arrives is a collection of deceptively airy jams, addictive, crystalline. Uncut called It's Cosy Inside "the epitome of domestic bliss," and Pitchfork observed the album "stakes itself on the premise that the most cosmic and revelatory experiences you'll ever have will all happen between your house and the backyard." As if to answer, the Ives brothers selected a vocal track to complete the album, which asks,

"How far out, will you go today
up the garden path?" 

"Nuno Canavarro's Plux Quba hails from three decades in the past, yet the simple profile of its abstract/ambient/cutup collage makes it a record that sits quite comfortably in our IDM-informed future. In 1988, Plux Quba was a primal dark horse in the world of pants-forward electronic music -- an obscurity issued with little explanation from the laid-back west coast of Europe: Portugal, of all places! -- though the casual listener could hardly know that from an examination of the LP jacket. The vanguard of electronics in late-80s Europe was being pushed by organizations like Nurse With Wound, The Hafler Trio, HNAS -- and yet, when Christoph Heemann came across this recording, it struck his ears and the ears of fellow listeners like nothing before. Plux Quba was handed around between the principles of the early '90s A-Musik scene: Jan St. Werner, C-Schulz, Frank Dommert, Georg Odijk, plus interested fellow travelers like Jim O'Rourke, to the intense curiosity of all. To ears that were already saturated with all things kraut, the dark corners of prog and the frontline of experimental and improvised music, it proved elusive. Not simply in how it sounded and how that sound was achieved, but in where it was coming from -- like later Robert Ashley at times; certain stretches of melody recalled some of Eno's ambient pieces -- but mostly, it was a completely alien soundscape! And who was it? Was the band called Plux Quba? The record? The label? These sorts of mysteries are at the heart of records that require close listening and re-listening. As it was absorbed, it grew to be an influence on the Köln sound -- Mouse On Mars, Lithops, and Heemann's many and varied projects -- as well as O'Rourke, Fennesz and many others. Music and sound of this nature have for many years been made available by bands like Autechre, labels like Mille Plateaux -- but for the first ten years of its existence, Plux Quba was rarely heard. O'Rourke reissued it as the first record on his Moikai label in 1998, and it had a good run through around 2005 before the last of the print parts were filled. It's been almost a decade since Plux Quba was available, which is way too long considering that we live in an era where it is necessary to have an LP of this on hand for your contemporary listening distractions. And so, Drag City has stepped in to reissue the Moikai reissue of Nuno Canavarro's classic Plux Quba."

In Cyano, synthesist and composer Emily A. Sprague questions self, other, ecology, and life in a distant realm. Conjured around the idea of an imagined planet whose inhabitants are rebuilding forbidden capacities for expressivity and emotional connection, Cyano is a meditation on visibility, psychic transformation, light transmission, and worlds beyond our knowing materialized through an intuitive use of modular synthesizers and voice.

In Cyano, synthesist and composer Emily A. Sprague questions self, other, ecology, and life in a distant realm. Conjured around the idea of an imagined planet whose inhabitants are rebuilding forbidden capacities for expressivity and emotional connection, Cyano is a meditation on visibility, psychic transformation, light transmission, and worlds beyond our knowing materialized through an intuitive use of modular synthesizers and voice.

“Iker Munduate is an artist and musician who brings a delicate sense of composition and design... Inspired in part by new age music, Its rippling melodies and frictionless glide recall the futuristic utopias of Detroit Escalator Company and the interior reverie of Nobukazu Takemura" - Derek Walmsley Continuing from where he left it 2 years ago after a sold out debut LP released on Hegoa, Iker is back with his follow up “Sinkronia”. A gripping take on Eastern and Western minimalist traditions influenced by the likes of Steve Reich, Suso Saiz or Midori Takada. Transcendental and esoteric rhythmic wonders that take time to unfold. A young percussionist and guitar player with electronic interests displaying a rich sonority and a great sense of structure and arrangements. This record shows the refinement of Iker’s attributes, who initially worked in the noise/punk scene and now is part of the local Free Jazz/Improv landscape of San Sebastian, although he currently lives in New York where he has been playing several gigs including a rendition of Glenn Branca’s Symphony No.13 at Lincoln center with 100 guitarists. For this new album he uses Xylophone, hand drums, electric guitar, synths and percussion instruments that guide us in an energetic way to territories somewhere between Italian avant-garde, Japanese New Age and American Minimalism. Iker Munduate Thusberg is a Basque multi-instrumentalist born and raised in San Sebastian and with strong ties to Mikkeli in Finland, where half of his family are from. A fine arts student at Bilbao’s UPV (Basque university), his interest in sound, art and design has led him to combine all these different disciplines and convey them into his music and his work.

If Surround can be listened to as music that’s as close to air itself, allowing us to enter each listener’s sound scenery, or as something that exists within a new perspective, expanding the middle ground between sound and music, and transforming it into a comfortable space, it would be much appreciated. — Hiroshi Yoshimura Originally released as an album in January 1986, Surround was recorded by Yoshimura as a commission from home builder Misawa Homes, intended to function as an “amenity” designed to enhance the company’s newly built living spaces. In his original notes for the album, Yoshimura recommends that Surround be placed in the same family of sounds “as the vibration of footsteps, the hum of an air conditioner, or the clanging of a spoon inside a coffee cup.” And, as he suggests, “with the addition of city noise from outside the window,” you may hear Surround in a completely new way. A pioneer in the field of environmental music, Yoshimura’s previous works included Music For Nine Post Cards (1982), originally produced to be played back inside a museum space, and designing sound environments for public spaces and subway systems. Surround was recorded almost concurrently with the acclaimed and popular GREEN (1986); the two albums are described by Hiroyoshi Shiokawa in his liner notes as being Yoshimura’s yin and yang. 12月上旬入荷。遂に満を持して登場。あの『Green』を凌ぐ人気を誇る、長年失われていた吉村弘最高峰のアンビエント・クラシックこと1986年作品『Surround』が〈Light in the Attic〉配給の〈Temporal Drift〉レーベルより待望の公式アナログ再発！日本の環境音楽のパイオニアであり、都市/公共空間のサウンドデザインからサウンドアート、パフォーマンスに至るまで、傑出した仕事を世に残した偉才、吉村弘。その最難関の音盤として君臨してきた幻の一枚が、今回史上初の公式アナログ・リイシュー。ミサワホームから依頼されて録音された作品で、これらは同社の新築居住空間をより充実させるために設計された「アメニティ」として機能することを目的としていた環境音楽作品。吉村自身による当時のライナーノーツに加え、オリジナル・プロデューサーであった塩川博義氏による新規ライナーノーツも同封（日／英）。 MASTERPIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!