MUSIC

Terekke drifts gracefully onto Music From Memory with a long player of looping ambient pad pressure...BIG TIP!'The recording of Improvisational Loops began in 2012 during yoga classes at Body Actualized Center in NYC. In the spirit of past ’New Age’ or Minimal music, it aims to open up a space within the room giving the listener a chance to explore inward or outward. It was recorded using a digital synthesizer, reverb, and looper." Terekke, January 2018'

The first LP reissue of "Indigo Dreams", a masterpiece album released in 1995 by Steve Shehan, a percussionist based in France since the 1970's.
"This album was inspired by a night when I fell asleep and dreamed of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray," -Steve Shehan 

The album was inspired by a dream I had one night when I fell asleep and dreamt of The Indigo Night, a novel by Satyajit Ray. In the dream I was in the world of the novel, living and tending an indigo plantation. The dream was so intense that I decided then and there to make an album dedicated to Satyajit Ray. I was also strongly influenced by Satyajit Ray's 1958 film The Music Room.

The album was also created in collaboration with a number of guest musicians, who traveled around the world for sessions and were sometimes invited to the studio in Paris, where the band is based. Compared to "Arrows," the songs are shorter, and it was a challenge for me to achieve the same depth of expression in that length of time," says Steve. The environmental sounds recorded in the Amazon, the U.S., Canada, and France are another element of the album. I hope that you will lose yourself in these tones and travel with me through the world of dreams.

NTsKi. Nom de musique of Japan-based vocalist/songwriter/producer; pronounced n-t-s-k-i. "Calla" is her 2nd album, a unified statement of her musical vision at this point in her development, with all-new songs melding her breathy and intimate voice, singing in Japanese and English, with organic acoustic sounds and distinctive electronic colors. NTsKi possesses a charming melodic gift as well as a distinctive production style, giving "Calla" a cohesion and subtle momentum, with relaxed tempos, interesting arrangements and intriguing melodies fusing into a focused musical statement that is refreshing, charming and forward-looking, underpinned by a sense of wistfulness, nostalgia and melancholy. As with her 2021 "Orca" release, co-released on EM Records and Orange Milk, NTsKi is joined by engineer Illicit Tsuboi and British musician/producer Dan Shutt. The songs here are lovely, concise gems, warmly glowing, gently sparkling, evocative and moving. Available on LP and DL, with a Japanese and English lyric sheet. Cover art drawing: Ellen Thomas.

Good Morning Tapes with a vinyl pressing of Gi Gi’s blissed Ambient-Jungle session ‘Sunchoke’, cycling thru feathered permutations of New Age and dubwise styles thru richly-textured delicacies and sunkissed Trip Hop signatures, tipped if yr into classic Sabres of Paradise, Art of Noise, Future Sound of London, Terre Thaemlitz, William Orbit, The Orb. Easy on the ear and with overflowing levels of serotonin, Gi Gi is a snug fit for the label; sanguine but just the right side of soporific, with a vibe that dials up echoes of classic downtempo Balearic crossed with turn-of-the-century trip hop somewhere between Olive’s ‘You’re not Alone’, William Orbit’s once ubiquitous ‘Strange Cargo III’ album and early Terre Thaemlitz - with a sound sensitive soulfulness and warmth. Jazz drums, guitar and midi-flute conjure bright blue skies and cirrus streaks in ‘Dawn Song’, while ‘two ones’ doubles the tempo on a swaying jungle flex that also perfuses the hazier hues of ‘Ambergris (Blue)’ and dances around the links between deep house, ambient and D&B like Terre Thaemlitz’s classic ‘Tranquilliser’ (1994) in the lilting congas of ‘Asp’, caressing strums of ‘Lisle’, and the piano-led ambient blues of ‘Sunchoke.’ The last gasp of summer, right here.

Recorded and released in 1987, the original cassette bore a minimalist plum tree design on the cover and music soothing to match. There are only 2 confirmed copies of the original cassette, one of them was used in the restoration and revival of this classic new age album. 

Five years after the New Age cult-classic album Music For Massage hit the shelves, it’s sequel was silently released. Never intended for consumer sale, Music For Massage II was only known to a select few masseuses and tape collectors. The very definition of esoteric. Musically, it’s both an homage to how far the genre had come in those five years and served as a predictor of what was to come. Comprising elements of Folk, Drone, Ambient, Ethereal, Minimal, Modern Classical, the recording is quintessential of all things New Age. These are sounds meant to induce healing, therapy, and relaxation. Hand crafted by Ric Kaestner and inspired in part by an encounter with one of the fathers of modern music, John Cage, for actual massage or for casual listening, it holds its own almost four decades later. 
 

Ritmiche Italiane transports the listeners through an anomaly in the fabric of musical space-time, connecting the distant past with the modern era and the plains of a lost continent with the cities of the Italian peninsula. The artists featured in the compilation strongly believed in the absence of barriers and conventions between genres, fully able to effortlessly put together West-African influences, World music, Jazz and crime movie soundtracks to achieve a boundless, meditative and hypnotic kind of music that still feels relevant today.

Pacific Rhythm is elated to present a grounding offering from Oakland's Space Ghost entitled Private Paradise as our first release of 2022. The LP is an ode to Space Ghost's time spent at Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast, a place he and his partner visit to refresh their spirit and regain optimism and enthusiasm for the outside world. Private Paradise possesses a rare ability to restore, rejuvenate, and inspire through each listen and is something we've only grown more and more fond of during the unforeseen complications we encountered during its release over the past two years. It's a piece of music that feels like a perfect nod to where we've been musically for the past 8 years and where we see ourselves heading in the future. Deep, contemplative, and uplifting audio that compels its listeners to focus on the positive forces in the world and the power of being present in a moment.

Sunergy brings together synthesists Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.’s intergenerational collaboration series. Revisited and expanded for a radiant, radical 2023 edition, the Pacific Coast’s panorama provides the place and head space for a musical appreciation and consideration of the ocean’s life-giving form, vast and volatile with change. Sunergy brings together synthesists Suzanne Ciani and Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith for the thirteenth installment of FRKWYS, RVNG Intl.'s intergenerational collaboration series. For this expanded edition, a panorama of the Pacific Coast provides the place and head space for exploratory Buchla synthesizer passages that meditate on a life-giving form vast and volatile with change. This Pacific Blue color edition includes bonus track "Retrograde" and a printed insert with photographs and artist essays.

Japan's composer and sound artist Yui Onodera and Grammy-nominated Takashi Kokubo are visionaries who are celebrated for their ability to cook up immersive soundscapes that captivate your attention despite their minimalist designs. Kokubo's traditional Japanese instrumentation defines the work as it sweeps you up and transports you to someone that is serene and introspective. Across four pieces here they do just that - each one unhurried and vast in sci, with delicate keys tinkling above yawning chords and spring day energies on 'Thousand Bells 1'. The second piece is a little warmer, with synth smears and distant breezes bring in all manner of elegant percussive sounds. Side two continues the exploration of the Far Eastern countryside on a sunny day in mesmerising and soothing fashion.

"Oscillation" of space and life.
A timeless masterpiece in the history of Japanese ambient/minimal music, reissued as a 2-disc set with unreleased sound sources!

Distributed in 1984 by "Sound Process Design", a company founded by Satoshi Ashikawa, a pioneer of Japanese environmental music, the full picture of the work, which has been shrouded in a mysterious veil to this day, is finally revealed. A thoughtful response to the work of great artists such as Eric Satie, Claude Debussy, John Cage, Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Haruomi Hosono and early 1980s King Crimson. A re-performance of "Nocturne", which is the key to the album, and the unreleased recording and chamber music arrangement version of the sequel "Nocturne II" will be recorded for the first time on Disc 2.

・Limited Pressing for one time
・Including the liner notes
newly written for this reissue by Yuji Shibasaki
・Coming with Obi strip
・Remastered for vinyl by Kuniyuki Takahashi
・For fans of Ambient, Minimal & Modern Classical Music

■Track list (*Recorded songs are different from the original LP)
33rpm
A1. Homme
A2. Nocturne
B1. Circling Air

45rpm
C1. Nocturne - New Recording
C2. Nocturne Ⅱ - Take2
D1. Nocturne Ⅱ - Take1
D2. Nocturne Yakyoku

LP + 12inch 2 disc set specification

Double-LP version. The musical vortexes of Caterina Barbieri rewire time and space. Listening to the Italian composer and modular synth virtuoso has felt like traveling at light-speed and slow-motion all at once since 2017's breakthrough Patterns Of Consciousness. 2019's acclaimed Ecstatic Computation pushed even further with the lead single "Fantas". Far beyond any new age trope or modern synth trend, her music stands alone in its ecstatic intensity and cataclysmic emotional impact. Marking the debut album on her new label light-years, Barbieri now delivers her most profound work yet -- a journey through inner-space as vast as a universe and as intimate as a heartbeat. Spirit Exit is Caterina Barbieri's time machine, primarily composed with a modular synth rig she thinks of more like a mechanical fortune teller. Whereas previous releases were constructed on lengthy tours, capturing only snapshots of continually evolving works, Spirit Exit represents the producer's first album fully written and recorded in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It was during this extended isolation she found inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time, but united in their strength at cultivating vast internal worlds. St. Teresa D'Avila's foundational 16th century mystical text The Interior Castle, philosopher Rosi Braidotti's posthuman theories and the metaphysical poetry of Emily Dickinson act as thematic anchors throughout Spirit Exit. Spirit Exit crystallizes Barbieri's densely layered, blindingly bright synth arrangements while introducing stunning new elements that feel as if they've always belonged. Strings and guitar flawlessly thread into the composer's web of modular patches, while her revelatory singing voice often cuts right through them. Melodies remain Barbieri's great passion and obsession and on Spirit Exit they grow as large as planets before cracking into atoms. The sweeping "At Your Gamut" perfects the producer's dramatic, slow-burning openers, but in her first ever use of sampling, it later gets crushed, accelerated and unrecognizably transformed into the ghostly hook surging through "Terminal Clock". As the album closes on "The Landscape Listens" -- a song that approaches death with all the gentle grace of Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)".

Pleasure For Music present a reissue of Gail Laughton's Harps of the Ancient Temples, originally released in 1969. Gail Laughton, born Denzil Gail Laughton (1921-1985), was an American jazz harpist. He worked in Hollywood, playing on many film and cartoon soundtracks. Originally released in 1969 on the small imprint Rapture the record has been produced by famous sound engineer Paul Beaver (Beaver & Krause, Lalo Schifrin & Orchestra) the man who introduced the Moog to Stevie Wonder and Frank Zappa. Standing on the verge of both modern classical and space age, the record featured the track "Pompeii 76 A.D." as heard on the movie Blade Runner (1982). Gail Laughton can easily be considered a forerunner of new age, as documented on the highly influential compilation I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age Music In America, 1950-1990 assembled by project manager Patrick McCarthy for Seattle based Light In The Attic. "The shimmering, ethereal quality of the harp sings out under [his] loving care."

RAMZi is returning home with these eight sonic quests, reanimating the dormant FATi Records, Phoebé’s own label. Feu Follets (Fire Sprites) are fireflies, flickering balls of light dancing in the dark shadows, found in fields, forests, chaparral, and scrublands, the many different landscapes of RAMZi’s whimsical adventures.

Music From Memory are excited to present 'hyphea', a new album by Montreal based artist Phoebé Guillemot aka RAMZi. Featuring ten mind-melting tracks ‘hyphae’ is RAMZi’s latest sonic quest and is based around sketches she originally made as a score for a documentary about mushrooms called 'Fun Fungi' (directed by Frederic Lavoie). Recorded between November 2021 and May 2022, writing 'hyphea' began as an attempt to transcend boredom and frustrations imposed by severe restrictions during the pandemic. For Phoebé the album was a way to reconnect with her alter ego RAMZi; who's energy brought her back to uniquely mystical feelings and hope for future magical adventures. RAMZi is a wild spirit from the forest and refers to a parallel autonomous world that keeps evolving. In Phoebé’s own words: “The music remains as a doorway to that world. It has never been about me, I always see that entity bigger than myself. The process of writing 'hyphea' was rather intuitive. I don’t think about styles of music before producing tracks. Those are more like an adventure in itself, each one set in a different ecosystem.”

Having crested the west coast modular-ambient wave in just a few releases- including 2018's Sharing Waves on the influential LA experimental imprint Leaving Records- Sean Hellfritsch has swapped the mossy analog synth improvisations of his prior output for refined melodic arrangements dressed in sprightly dawn-of-digital textures. Big Earth Energy plumbs the depths of Hellfritsch's multimedia mind and naturalist heart, spinning an impressionistic narrative world off of cultural touchstones like the PC game MYST, and the work of Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi. Inspired by the aforementioned, and guided by Hellfritsch's experience as an animator and filmmaker, Big Earth Energy is the soundtrack to a hypothetical video game with a pointedly ecological premise, and a twist of psychedelic charm. In Hellfritsch's imagined virtual journey, the player assumes the perspective of a treefrog sixty-five-million years ago, hopping epochs with each new level, forming a comprehensive picture of the massive hanges the planet has gone through over the eons. The ultimate goal of the game is not to amass resources, defeat enemies, or gain power, but to fully witness the unfolding of one of the biggest systems of energy imaginable- or as the album's creator puts it- "to explore the incomprehensibly vast energetic expression and mystery that is Earth." Big Earth Energy is steeped in exploratory RPG intrigue, possibility, and contemplation, lovingly overlaid with Miyazaki-an sentiments and aesthetics. The through-composed, organic, meandering synthesis heard on previous Cool Maritime albums has been fully replaced by meticulous polygonal arrangements that recall the computerized sheen of late 80s work by composers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, and Yoichiro Yoshikawa- using true-to-period gear no less. Even given it's referentiality, Big Earth Energy comes off as forward-facing where so much reminiscent music remains fixed to a bygone moment in pop culture. Hellfritsch has created a musical world where the endless verdancy of the biosphere finds it's parallel in the golden age of early 1990s video games, and late 80s Japanese environmental music, all while pointing to a hopeful planetary and artistic future that vindicates the motives of all of these muses.

As one of the very few true 'Godfathers' of Ambient Music, Laraaji has forged a unique path forward (always, always forward) since his groundbreaking 1980 LP for Eno's Ambient label, "DAY OF RADIANCE'. It remains one of the eternal pillars of the genre. His extraordinary contributions to modern music over the course of four decades highlight his lifelong dedication to the belief that Peace can be achieved through audio serenity. Kramer's work in Ambient Music is less universally known, but no less pioneering. His most recent Shimmy-Disc LP, 'Music For Films Edited by Moths', suggests that his immersion in the genre is now complete. Cerebral yet simple, intoxicating yet tranquil, Kramer's newest and more elusive body of work gently heralds what lies ahead. His commitment to quiet music is complete. LARAAJI & KRAMER - "AMBIENT SYMPHONY #1" is the first window into their collective muse - a collaborative LP of shimmering clarity and vision, defying all expectations for the fans of each of these two diversely pioneering artists. Containing three 'Movements' (along with an additional 4th Movement on the digital release), this first Ambient Symphony is a beatific exercise in the sublime, unfolding dreams to waking life. Quiet music has never been so colorfully detailed, or so nakedly honest. Ambient Music has a new beginning.

180 gr. ltd edition 500 copies, fully licensed ! Little we know about this long lost gem coming from the outskirts of the Commonwealth. But as far as we know, magic lies inside. That is the case of the sole album of mysterious australian band Extradition. Released in a small run on local independent label Sweet Peach in 1971, the self titled album stands as one of the most accurate acid folk rendition outside the UK realm. Formerly a three piece Extradition struggle on their personal behavior forging a rural set up that pursue the ‘think green’ revolution. It could be the English folk revival or the West Coast flower power, but the album introduce a different state of mind, far away from the chaotic suburbs of the counter culture. Lost on the isle, the acoustic set up of the band brings joy and happiness, a new age that reflects the multiple essence of the four elements. While the opener ‘ A Water Song’ brings to mind the course of a small river ‘A Love Song’ sets the mood for a long lost medieval folk tale. Acoustic guitar, small percussion, natural found sound and the celestial voice of Shayna Carlin (also member of cult band Tully, a weirdo surf-psychedelic affair) all of the elements above literally conjure for an ambient album before the definition was fully embraced by a massive audience.

Under the production moniker of Material Things, 12th Isle co-founder Stewart Brown unveils a part debut album part compendium of musical collaborations spanning from 2015-2020. Some recordings began as long, one-take improvisations (How's Life, Peckham) spliced together and revisited years later. Others were based upon chance opportunities to record with musicians operating a long way from the parameters of 12th Isle. Cult private-press loner folk guitarist Bob Theil, whose 1982 album So Far counts as one of the Scottish greats of the era, is at the heart of 'Westway'. Synth and guitar fragments recorded by the pair in Stewart's family home one summer form a low-key conclusion to the collection, whilst London based percussionist Pike Ogilvy brings an array of drum sounds and natural percussion to 'No Direction'. Regular 12th Isle affiliate Vague Imaginaires also features heavily, contributing synth work on Grenoble and his own extended digi bonus remix of 'How's Life'. As a collection, the 8 tracks show a studious, concise vision and combine influences from minimalism, concrete and avant-garde jazz and techno yet also embrace friendship, experimentation and curiosity whilst capturing 5 years of the artists own personal life. Some of the tracks have been circulating in various versions for a number of years now, with DJ support from Bake, Ivan Smagghe, Optimo, Lena Willikens, Huntley & Palmers, Orpheu The Wizard and, of course, 12th Isle.

Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series continues with Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990, an unprecedented overview of the country’s vital minimal, ambient, avant-garde, and New Age music – what can collectively be described as kankyō ongaku, or environmental music. The collection features internationally acclaimed artists such as Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi, as well as other pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Yoshio Ojima and Satoshi Ashikawa, who deserve a place alongside the indisputable giants of these genres.

In the 1970s, the concepts of Brian Eno’s “ambient” and Erik Satie’s “furniture music” began to take hold in the minds of artists and musicians around Tokyo. Emerging fields like soundscape design and architectural acoustics opened up new ways in which sound and music could be consumed. For artists like Yoshimura, Ojima and Ashikawa, these ideas became the foundation for their musical works, which were heard not only on records and in live performances, but also within public and private spaces where they intermingled with the sounds and environments of everyday life. The bubble economy of 1980s Japan also had a hand in the advancement of kankyō ongaku. In an attempt to cultivate an image of sophisticated lifestyle, corporations with expendable income bankrolled various art and music initiatives, which opened up new and unorthodox ways in which artists could integrate their avant-garde musical forms into everyday life: in-store music for Muji, promo LP for a Sanyo AC unit, a Seiko watch advert, among others that can be heard in this collection.

Kankyō Ongaku is expertly compiled by Spencer Doran (Visible Cloaks) who, with a series of revelatory mixtapes as well as his label Empire of Signs (Music For Nine Postcards), has been instrumental in shepherding interest in this music outside of Japan. Together with Light In The Attic’s celebrated anthologies I Am The Center and The Microcosm, Kankyō Ongaku helps to broaden our understanding of this quietly profound music, regardless of the environment in which it’s heard.

new age album that draws as much from ethno-groove, Chicago house, and G-funk, as it does from primitive percussion and ’80s library music. Relaxing, gentle, and warm, the 10-song ambient suite was made for a multidisciplinary modern dance performance described as “Neo-Paganism, Pop Divas, YouTube, Yoga, and Death Metal side by side in a live performance that searches for transcendence in the most unlikely places.”

Innervzm II, a companion to 2022’s Innervzm, is a sprawling, meditative collection from Los Angeles-based producer, drummer, and sound architect, Raays. The EP’s title derives from a conversation between Raays and Leaving labelmate Deantoni Parks regarding “archeology of self” as a creative methodology. Innervzm, as a concept, connotes the kind of soul work that necessarily precedes and renders outward action possible, meaningful, and effective. The Innervzm II EP blends musique concréte, field recordings, and improvisational synthesis, documenting Raays’ methodical, ritualistic, and materially grounded approach to composition. Each of the EP’s six tracks was seeded by a discrete instance of deep listening (of the Pauline Oliveros variety) in environments ranging from Raays’ own backyard of Ernest Debs Pond to the thundery night time forestscapes of Michoacán. If regarded sincerely as the ever-present music of this world, how might a listener interpret the spatial and melodic interplay of, say, birdsong and the distant hum of traffic? And how might that same listener respond, musically? Innervzm II provides one such example: a keen spirit, intermittently (generally for no more than ten minutes at a time) tuning into the sonic chaos, deciphering the elements (for it is only ever really seemingly chaos), then immediately distilling this experience into song. Aided by an hourglass (as much a talisman as an actual timekeeper), and abiding by a sort of “first thought / best thought” approach to completing a track in a single sitting, Innervzm II constitutes a snapshot of an artist in an especially fruitful and transitory period of exploration. As a self-described “optimistic futurist,” the tapestry Raays weaves is indeed soothing and consoling, deftly melding the organic and the analog. A persistent albeit oscillating flutter on “Beneath Your Surface” suggests the slow-motion beating of a hummingbird’s wings. The subtle warble hidden within the EP’s opener, “Equiinox” conjures the rainbow artifacts of a VHS sunrise. Though “textural message” is the title of track five, these pieces might very well all be considered textural messages, replete as they are in soil and static, dredged (lovingly) from some place just beyond the frame of knowing. Innervzm (dubbed “Full of vibrant life” by New Age luminary Laraaji) will be paired with Innervzm II for a joint physical cassette release in June, and Raays will soon join longtime experimental/ambient luminary, The Album Leaf, as an opener and drummer on a global tour. Which is all to say, Raays is diligently tending the garden, to our collective benefit.

Lionmilk, the primary solo project of Los Angeles musician/composer/producer, Moki Kawaguchi, for some time now, operates in an explicitly therapeutic mode. 2021’s I Hope You Are Well was originally self-released during the onset of the pandemic as a limited run of home-dubbed cassettes, which Kawaguchi hand-delivered to loved ones’ mailboxes in a sort of guerrilla care campaign—a modest attempt to mitigate the sudden, profound alienation that prevailed during those early lockdown months. When Lionmilk and Leaving Records later collaborated on an official release for I Hope You Are Well, this once humble project’s impact grew exponentially, with countless fans (old and new alike) granted access to the warmth and beauty of Lionmilk’s inner circle. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222, out March 17, 2023 on Leaving, presents the listener with yet another opportunity for deep cosmic healing. When discussing Lionmilk, Kawaguchi regularly foregrounds the absolute necessity of music-making as a form of self-care. First and foremost, he produces sounds and songs that provide him with some modicum of solace — “music to feel less whack to.” One gets the sense that he’d be doing exactly what he’s doing (exactly the way he’s doing it) even if he was the last man on earth. But he isn’t. And, in fact, one of Lionmilk’s primary concerns—evident across track titles, as well as the sung and spoken words that dot his releases—is community, or more specifically, what it means to exist and act in his community. Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 ventures deeper into the paradoxes explored to great effect on I Hope You Are Well. How might we transmit our solitudes via music and to what extent? What does a shared solitude sound and feel like? And, in the context of this transaction, what novel relationships arise between the recording artist and the listener? The record begins with a radio transmission from the depths of Lionmilk’s celestial innerspace— “Hello. Is anybody out there? This is Lionmilk speaking, and you are tuned into the Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222. Standby. We are commencing broadcast” — a retro sci-fi movie motif that recurs throughout Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222’s 26 tracks. But space travel here functions more-so as a metaphor for deep soul work, for journeying inward, through the vast unknowns of one’s own consciousness. What follows is an intimate, diaristic song suite, grounded in the struggle to keep our hearts alive and open amidst an onslaught of daily indignities. Tracks like “daily i dream,” “lover’s theme,” and “hopeful i can change,” function as brief, instrumental meditations on those moments when hope suddenly, inexplicably eclipses despair. The soulful standout “treat yourself like a friend” contains perhaps the lyrical apotheosis of Lionmilk’s current iteration: “...I get up / to pee and drink water / treating myself a little bit softer / you do your best / today will be better / I’ll do my best / I’ll do my best / I promise.” Composed of loops, sketches, improvizations, and voice memos recorded directly to a single cassette tape, Intergalactic Warp Terminal 222 flutters, warbles, and lilts along seamlessly — an hour-long, lo-fi and jazzy paean to compassion, while clearly indebted to the ambient idiom, nevertheless constitutes some of the most politically engaged and energizing music yet from Lionmilk.

Both a marketing firm and metaphysical mission, Valley of the Sun synthesized style and spirituality to produce an extensive catalog that at once defines and defies new age music. Founder Dick Sutphen worked with tireless devotion to spread a message he believed could change the world for the better. This 18-track overview of VOTS’ fertile 1977-1990 period includes music from Upper Astral, Robert Slap & Steve Powell, David Naegele, David Storrs, Steven Cooper, and Gloria Thomas, a 24-page booklet with extensive liner notes, J-card scans, and a hint of Sedona sand. Subliminal hypnosis likely.

The diminutive Peter Barclay was that guy in early ’90s Oakland, the eccentric with the most style, the most talent, the local magician. This self-taught musical wizard recorded at home and produced two barely-released albums, 1990’s dreamlike Acceptance and 1992’s synth pop What Kind Of World, winning over the few who heard them. But fame outside his small circle was not to be, and Barclay was lost in the late-’90s crest of the AIDS epidemic. Rediscovered for a new generation, this is queer music at its finest… Welcome to the world of Peter Barclay.