MUSIC

California-based keyboardist and composer Nico Georis, known for his ambient works created with biofeedback devices and intended “for plants,” returns with a luminous new album via Leaving Records, the spiritual heart of the West Coast’s independent scene. Delving deep into celestial realms of modern classical and new age, this album radiates with grace and compassion. Gently resonant piano tones, softly undulating synth layers, and reverberations that dissolve into space—each sound arrives as a prayer, a blessing, or the ripple of a memory devoted to someone unseen. A profound sense of calm and care pervades throughout, as if tending to the quiet growth of plants or listening closely to the cosmic order itself. A radiant and healing work of meditative beauty.

Green-House's latest EP is a collection of unheard & rare recordings from 2021 & 2022. Imaginary department stores, Wendy Carlos-infused virtual classical, soundscape slices and bonus tracks are all situated radiantly along the spectrum of Solar Editions.

A must-have for fans of Japanese environmental music such as Hiroshi Yoshimura, Satoshi Ashikawa and Yutaka Hirose! Organic new age music that is swallowed by the beauty of nature that sways gracefully! Leaving Records is proud to present the debut EP by Green-House, a project by local artist Olive Ardizon. "The six tracks are based on the concept of "communication between plant life and the people who grow it. Based on field recordings that capture the sounds of water and the voices and movements of plants and animals in nature, this is a superb new age/ambient work that breathes an aesthetic synth sound that encompasses the beauty and serenity of the pull that is common in Japanese environmental music. Artwork by Michael Flanagan.

In an era of rampant, man-made climate chaos, “solastalgia” (the longing and distress experienced by individuals as a response to environmental change/degradation) has emerged as a useful, semi-viral concept — a catch-all term for the pervasive sense that the world as we know it is far from well, and only growing less so. But, for many of us, a problem, a trap, an ineffable hollowness, exists at the very crux of this concept/premise: how can we mourn (or even sense the loss of) that which we have never known? Especially for lifelong urbanites estranged from nature, who nevertheless grasp the severity and complexity of the problem—how might they remember? How might they mourn? Perhaps indirectly—that is to say, in an exploratory and non-dogmatic fashion—Green-House, a project birthed by Olive Ardizoni and now officially a duo project featuring long-time collaborator and confidant, Michael Flanagan, seeks to address this gap in understanding. Six Songs for Invisible Gardens, the debut Green-House EP whose 2020 release coincided with the depths of Covid-19 “lockdown,” responded to the rampant heartsickness of human and plant life, especially in non-rural areas. The packaging of the cassette release famously included wildflower seeds for the listener to scatter. This gesture (at once simple and daring, especially when one considers the logistical element) exists as testament to the sincerity and seriousness of Ardizoni’s convictions. Music for Living Spaces, the first full-length Green-House LP, followed in 2021— a refinement of the formula that enshrined Six Songs as a cult, eco-ambient hit. Out October 13, 2023 on Leaving Records, they have returned with the LP A Host For All Kinds of Life, a third entry in a series of releases whose titles have incidentally all revolved around the “for” construction: an unofficial canon of offerings, or maybe rather instructions as to how the music contained therein might, could, and should operate in/on the listener’s life and “living space(s).” Decidedly the most expansive Green-House release — one need only consider the LP’s title and the kaleidoscopic, fractal cover art designed by Flanagan—A Host For All Kinds of Life troubles the very notion of “ambient music,” a category with whom Green-House has always existed in some degree of tension. What if a song’s seeming softness constitutes its biting edge? What if easeful, contemplative pleasure can radically alter our mindset? Our very role as worldly subjects? Drawing on the works of Lynn Margulis and our burgeoning understanding of the evolutionary role of biological mutualism (associations between species in which both species benefit), A Host For All Kinds of Life is a deeply entrenched and politically grounded song suite. And there are indeed discrete songs here, with defined structure, momentum, and sway; see the gilded, sixties-evoking melodic arabesque of the record’s ninth and penultimate track, “Everything is Okay” (which incidentally ends with the release’s only human voice—a tender message left for Ardizoni by their mother). In conversation, Ardizoni speaks often of the centrality of joy—that Green-House’s very existence can be traced to a conscious decision they made to not only choose joy as an act of rebellion, but to find that joy in whatever plant life they could access in their immediate environment. In this sense, all of Green-House’s releases (and A Host for All Kinds of Life especially) embody a radicality that may elude the casual or first-time listener. To choose, model, and express joy in an ailing world requires courage, a courage that must be jealously guarded and constantly replenished. A Host For all Kinds of Life encourages the listener to slow down, take stock, tune in to the more-than-human world around them, and gather their courage and joy in light of the uncertainty to come.

In an era of rampant, man-made climate chaos, “solastalgia” (the longing and distress experienced by individuals as a response to environmental change/degradation) has emerged as a useful, semi-viral concept — a catch-all term for the pervasive sense that the world as we know it is far from well, and only growing less so. But, for many of us, a problem, a trap, an ineffable hollowness, exists at the very crux of this concept/premise: how can we mourn (or even sense the loss of) that which we have never known? Especially for lifelong urbanites estranged from nature, who nevertheless grasp the severity and complexity of the problem—how might they remember? How might they mourn? Perhaps indirectly—that is to say, in an exploratory and non-dogmatic fashion—Green-House, a project birthed by Olive Ardizoni and now officially a duo project featuring long-time collaborator and confidant, Michael Flanagan, seeks to address this gap in understanding. Six Songs for Invisible Gardens, the debut Green-House EP whose 2020 release coincided with the depths of Covid-19 “lockdown,” responded to the rampant heartsickness of human and plant life, especially in non-rural areas. The packaging of the cassette release famously included wildflower seeds for the listener to scatter. This gesture (at once simple and daring, especially when one considers the logistical element) exists as testament to the sincerity and seriousness of Ardizoni’s convictions. Music for Living Spaces, the first full-length Green-House LP, followed in 2021— a refinement of the formula that enshrined Six Songs as a cult, eco-ambient hit. Out October 13, 2023 on Leaving Records, they have returned with the LP A Host For All Kinds of Life, a third entry in a series of releases whose titles have incidentally all revolved around the “for” construction: an unofficial canon of offerings, or maybe rather instructions as to how the music contained therein might, could, and should operate in/on the listener’s life and “living space(s).” Decidedly the most expansive Green-House release — one need only consider the LP’s title and the kaleidoscopic, fractal cover art designed by Flanagan—A Host For All Kinds of Life troubles the very notion of “ambient music,” a category with whom Green-House has always existed in some degree of tension. What if a song’s seeming softness constitutes its biting edge? What if easeful, contemplative pleasure can radically alter our mindset? Our very role as worldly subjects? Drawing on the works of Lynn Margulis and our burgeoning understanding of the evolutionary role of biological mutualism (associations between species in which both species benefit), A Host For All Kinds of Life is a deeply entrenched and politically grounded song suite. And there are indeed discrete songs here, with defined structure, momentum, and sway; see the gilded, sixties-evoking melodic arabesque of the record’s ninth and penultimate track, “Everything is Okay” (which incidentally ends with the release’s only human voice—a tender message left for Ardizoni by their mother). In conversation, Ardizoni speaks often of the centrality of joy—that Green-House’s very existence can be traced to a conscious decision they made to not only choose joy as an act of rebellion, but to find that joy in whatever plant life they could access in their immediate environment. In this sense, all of Green-House’s releases (and A Host for All Kinds of Life especially) embody a radicality that may elude the casual or first-time listener. To choose, model, and express joy in an ailing world requires courage, a courage that must be jealously guarded and constantly replenished. A Host For all Kinds of Life encourages the listener to slow down, take stock, tune in to the more-than-human world around them, and gather their courage and joy in light of the uncertainty to come.

Leaving Records presents Music For Living Spaces, the debut LP by non-binary Los Angeles-based artist Green-House. Olive Ardizoni helms the project, which made its debut with the charming 2019 EP Six Songs for Invisible Gardens. Music for Living Spaces represents an evolution of its predecessor’s minimalist compositions into songs that move with winsome melodies and emotional arcs. Though recorded during a pandemic, the transporting nature of Music For Livings Spaces offers a remedy for dreariness. Ardizoni states, “I’m trying to hit that part of the brain that’s affected by the emotional state that you’re in when you perceive something as cute.” 
 
Music For Living Spaces' first single “Sunflower Dance” sports a breezy, bucolic vibe. The track is intended to invoke the whimsical image of hamsters happily dancing in a field. Ardizoni brings an intentionality to these playful atmospheres. They state, “In our culture, we prioritize profound artistic expression through emotions like sadness or aggression, but cuteness, silliness or fun, are the things that we trivialize in our culture. We say that they’re childish and it gets invalidated.” The complex and radiant productions on Music for Living Spaces counter this view. Ardizoni continues, “Cuteness and joy are gateways to compassion. It’s the gateway to empathy and activating the network in your brain that boosts moral concern for other people in the world around you.” Despite its general sunniness, Music For Living Spaces does not solely rely on exuberant, colorful moods. “Royal Fern” is a sophisticated composition of voices calling and responding to each other in rippling waves, while towards the closing of the album we hear Ardizoni’s ethereal voice for the first time that carries a nuanced, contemplative aura that defies categorization. 
 
Music For Living Spaces is a step forward for Green-House. Ardizoni states, “The intention of this project is to facilitate the connection between humans and nature. Instead of perceiving nature as something that's separate from us, or outside of our homes, we can recognize nature as something that is within us and in everything we do in our daily lives. You don't need to have access to the great outdoors to feel connected to the environment.”

LIMITED JAPAN EXCLUSIVE "Asagao" EDITION. Flora is an album that is listened to perpetually,
Passed on from one listener to another,
And the charm of the sound- and music-loving figure 
known as Hiroshi Yoshimura,
Just might come drifting through.
Like the scent of a small flower.
—Junichi Konuma

Announcing the worldwide reissue of Flora, Hiroshi Yoshimura’s underrated work originally recorded and completed in 1987 and first released on CD in 2006, three years after his passing in 2003.

Flora is chronologically and stylistically a follow-up to Hiroshi Yoshimura’s acclaimed 1986 works Green and Surround, wherein Yoshimura continues to play with the ambience of sound and the sound of ambience, underscoring his mastery in the field of environmental music. Listening to Flora is like taking a stroll in a park, absorbing the colors and textures of the natural environment—flowers, insects, the swaying of the leaves—as Yoshimura often did at his beloved Edo-era park near his home in Tokyo. As Junichi Konuma describes in his liner notes, Yoshimura’s music “only begins to emerge as it exists at the intersection of passive and active.” Yoshimura's approach to sound and melody invites the listener to hear the intricacies of the music with intent, while simultaneously allowing the aural textures to exist as part of the background of our everyday life.

This reissue marks the first time the album will be available on vinyl (2LP, 45 rpm) and cassette, and includes liner notes written by music scholar Junichi Konuma and remastered audio by Grammy-nominated engineer John Baldwin. Reissue design and layout was handled by Tiffanie Tran. 

Masahiro Sugaya, a Grammy-nominated composer whose works have been featured in the Japanese ambient compilation "Kankyo Ongaku" by the US label "Light In The Attic," has received remarkable acclaim from overseas in recent years. The world's first reissue and first LP of the stage music "Sea Zoo" (1988), created for a stage performance by Papa Tarahumara, a performing arts group to which Sugaya belonged at the time!

Masahiro Sugaya has been active as a composer since the early 80's, studying under eminent composers such as Shigeaki Saegusa, Joji Yuasa, and Teizo Matsumura, and also worked as an arranger for NHK Educational TV's "Diary of a Junior High School Student" and for the guitar duo "Gonchichi". This album was produced for the stage performance "Sea Zoo" by the performing arts group "Papa Tarahumara," for which he has worked as a composer since 1987, and was released only in CD format at the time. This album was released only in CD format at the time, and its tracks were included in the Grammy-nominated Japanese new age/ambient compilation "Kankyo Ongaku" by the US label Light In The Attic, and the compilation "Horizon Vol. 1" was released by the US label Empire of Signs, which also reissues leading Japanese ambient artists such as Hiroshi Yoshimura and Inoyama Yamaland. Although there have been reissues of single tracks, this is the world's first reissue of an album, and the first release in LP format! The album includes "Grains of Sand from the Sea" (M2), which is a mixture of delicate piano and soft electronic sounds from "Kankyo Ongaku", and "To the End of the World" (M7), which is full of floating feeling with minimalist soft sequences from "Horizon Vol. 1", This is a historical masterpiece that evokes the essence of Japanese ambient music, which has been reevaluated worldwide in recent years!

“Morning Picture”, the work of 1984, became the pioneer of the trend of ambient music that flourished in the mid-1980s.

This work, in which he knitted all the songs by himself and confined a beautiful melody, was released by Klaus Schulze’s “Innovative Communication”at that time, and Floating Points picked it with his own DJ MIX, both domestically and internationally. It is being evaluated.

In recent years, the long-awaited recurrence of the masterpiece, which is recognized as a masterpiece of high-purity modern new age-ambient, and also as a representative work of Japanese Balearic.

Regardless of the confluence of events that led to this dream pairing, there’s a strong hint of clear-minded innovation to Promises. The debut collaboration LP from electronic musician Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points and legendary saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, backed to a lavish fullness by The London Symphony Orchestra, feels like the murmurs of an entirely new language for jazz, quite distinct from either participant’s prior output — in fact, it seems to illuminate a hidden lexicon we didn’t know either artist had in the first place.

We say jazz, but Promises truly defies categorisation with its moody atmosphere and indeterminate music-like patience. The nine movements of the LP gently cradle a circular note pattern in the way of a minimalist classical piece, as a flood of synth and string drones gradually fill the empty spaces in-between. As this deep meditation progresses, Sanders recalls his adventurous past work with the Coltranes by undergoing his own inner journey, his sax flitting between conversational licks, esoteric mouth sounds and white-hot fury, bobbing against the rising tide of electronics, organs and orchestra swells.

Bifuu_ZONE, translated loosely as “a zone of gentle breeze,” is a concept drawn from Tsudio Studio’s personal vocabulary rather than a strict linguistic equivalent. While liminal spaces are often framed through unease, Bifuu_ZONE reimagines them as sites of quiet comfort, restoration, and slow transformation. The project centers on impermanence, erosion, and the subtle ways time reshapes even the most solid structures.The West takes its title literally, drawing inspiration from buildings and environments located west of Osaka. Each track is composed with a specific architectural space in mind, allowing tone, texture, and resonance to emerge from imagined structures rather than narrative progression. The result is a site-responsive ambient work that listens closely to stillness, weathering, and spatial openness. Saxophonist mori_de_kurasu appears on three tracks, introducing breath and human fragility into the album’s restrained sonic palette.This perspective is deeply informed by a Japanese sensibility toward impermanence, an acceptance of loss and change not as absence, but as gentle continuation. Rather than positioning liminal space through anxiety, Bifuu_ZONE gestures toward what lingers quietly after the dream has ended.Beyond the album itself, The West also marks a point of convergence within Tsudio Studio’s broader practice. In March, he will present an exhibition and live performance at Gallery SHUTL in Higashi-Ginza, Tokyo, centered on the idea of “post-liminal space.”Under his primary name, Tsudio Studio has released work through Media Factory, Local Visions, and ULTRA-VYBE, collaborating across Japan, Europe, and the United States. In 2022, the compilation OACL, which he contributed to and mastered through Local Visions, reached #2 on Bandcamp’s global charts. The West is a focused ambient work shaped by space, time, and quiet transformation.

The latest cassette release from Tokyo‑based electronic musician and painter Akhira Sano. Evoking the stillness of late‑night hours and the lingering echoes of memory, it’s a work whose delicate details reveal themselves more and more with each listen.

Tidal Perspectives is an album by Giovanni Di Domenico, Pak Yan Lau, and John Also Bennett. Recorded across a single afternoon in Brussels, Belgium, the album’s four parts are a rippling alchemy of processed Rhodes piano, sizzling ceramics, and liquified bass flute, a rare meeting of three unique voices from the contemporary music landscape that manages to flow with the effortless inevitability of the oceanic tides. Giovanni Di Domenico, an accomplished composer and prolific collaborator who has released albums with Jim O’Rourke, Eiko Ishibashi and Akira Sakata, among many others, initiated the collaboration with Bennett after the two met at a record fair in Saint-Gilles, Belgium and bonded over a shared inquisitiveness for unconventional sonic combinations. Along with Pak Yan Lau, a Belgian-born sound artist and improviser who has developed her own rich and unique sonic footprint, the trio entered the studio with little, if any, discussion beforehand, jumping right into playing without preconceived structures. The resulting recordings had a depth of sound and emotional resonance surprising even them, with finished pieces emerging from single live takes and minor edits. Bennett, known for his solo work as well as his collaborations with Christina Vantzou as CV & JAB, gives us here a taste of his bass flute in free flowing form. Unconstricted by concept, joyfully and lazily bouncing off the melodic shimmers of Di Domenico’s Rhodes, Bennett uses his flute’s pitch information to trigger long tones that emerge like rays of light piercing through low hanging clouds - moments of clarity among a clicking world of sonic stimuli. Meanwhile, Lau’s crackling and sometimes dissonant contributions on prepared piano, live hydrophone, and custom ceramic sound objects balance out the triangle, adding a sense of microcosmic intrigue that allows the music to seamlessly ebb and flow between moments of comfort and foggy uncertainty. The album’s title track and climax, the eighteen minute “Tidal Perspectives”, drifts in with some kind of clarity, Lau’s glinting tonal waves edging in just beyond the horizon lines drawn by Di Domenico’s Rhodes and Bennett’s bass flute. But like the tidal flows of the Atlantic that inspired its title, just as you begin to perceive what’s happening, the currents have already taken you out to sea.

Sublime ethereal minimalism from Hiroyuki Onogawa on this retrospective compilation album for Mana, the first dedicated release and remaster of his soundtrack compositions. The album August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005 plots a decade of Onogawa’s compositions for films by the renowned filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii (formally known as Sogo Ishii). Ishii’s left-field and trailblazing cinema has proven highly influential - Crazy Thunder Road (1980) is frequently cited as the starting pistol for the Japanese cyberpunk genre [1] - and unfathomably difficult to source outside of Japan. This, coupled with the mysterious and artistic nature of the films, has seen him build a cult-like following. Most of his oeuvre remains undistributed outside Japan, though Third Window Films has recently taken great strides toward making some titles available internationally. This retrospective publication, sequenced into an album by Onogawa himself, spans a fertile period of collaboration with Ishii, through soundtracks for three remarkable films: August in the Water (1995), Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), and Mirrored Mind (2005). Each feels texturally and sensually linked with the spiritual, ambient, dreamlike quality that lingers in Onogawa’s music. The sound Onogawa conjures for these films is elegant and patient, often minimal or essential in form, but saturated in a poetic emotion and atmosphere that feels strange and otherworldly, touched by the metaphysical in subtle ways. Boundaries are crossed between New Age and science fiction, locating a blissfulness, melancholy and paranoia within the same spectrum, and moving toward an enchanting sense of mood and colour. It’s notable that the compositions on this album straddle the millennium, and the mix of divine and uncertain themes in the music carry that currency. New listeners might hear links to Mark Snow’s compositional work for the X-Files and Millennium, or other celebrated future-facing and future-fearing Japanese anime or cyberpunk. Onogawa’s music adds great depth and tenor to the sensory experience of the films themselves, but it stands just as strongly as a listening experience on its own terms, a virtuosic example of ambient that changes in hue when turned in the light. Remarkably, and in similar circumstances to Ishii, Onogawa’s work has never been widely available outside of (always highly enthusiastic) underground fan posts, usually sourced from extremely limited and private CDs limited to Japan. This retrospective seeks to remedy that, and hopes to achieve recognition for Onogawa as one of the great composers of the last three decades. Onogawa continues to work in film, both in the creation of soundtracks, and now as a producer and director. He composed the music for Koji Fukada’s Harmonium (2016), which won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as for Fukada’s A Girl Missing (2019). As a director, he received the Grand Prize for Best Short Film in the Noves Visions category at the Sitges Festival in 2022 for Flashback Before Death (Guu) [2], co-directed with Rii Ishihara. This release includes liner notes specially commissioned by writer Tony Rayns, and words by Gakuryū Ishii.

Lost Coast: Some Visionary Music from California (1980-1992) assembles little-known sounds from California’s metaphysical underground. Each recording is stylistically different—dream pop, guitar soli, fourth world, avant-electronic—but they are held together by a regional ethos of the “visionary.” This is music that sees through the mind’s eye and conjures new worlds.

Some people say that California is where “the nuts stop rolling”—where those too eccentric to fit in elsewhere often find themselves. What was meant pejoratively is easily reclaimed as a celebration of the free-thinking and the freely-freaking. Until the turn of the millennium, all manner of seekers rolled westward until they hit the pacific. Stationed along this edge, music was a way to roll still further, imagining territories unencountered and wavelengths as yet unheard.

Lost Coast is a commemoration of the people who made these journeys and a resurrection of recordings they made little effort to broadcast. While some pieces were originally released with modest distribution, others were only shared among friends or never shared at all. All tracks were found on cassettes in flea markets, barn sales, rural thrift stores, and even stranger places—outside a gem and mineral shop, for example, and on the ranch of a retired mescaline dealer.

Regardless of their obscurity, these recordings are eminently listenable. California, after all, is a place where the strange and the pleasurable are frequent bedfellows.

In the midst of a series of great domestic new age/ambient reissues this year, including works by Mkwaju Ensemble, Motohiko Hamase, and Joe Hisaishi, here comes the long awaited pure ambient masterpiece! The monumental 1983 debut album by Inoyama Land, a synthesizer unit formed by Makoto Inoue and Yasushi Yamashita, former members of the still active techno-pop and avant-garde group Hikashu, has been digitally mixed down from the original multi-track tapes. The original 1983 album was digitally mixed down from the original multitrack tapes and reissued for the first time in 35 years.

The original 1983 album was released on MEDIUM, a subsidiary of the YEN label hosted by Haruomi Hosono. The original version of the album was released in 1983 on MEDIUM, a YEN label owned by Haruomi Hosono. The original version was known to be one of the most sought after by enthusiasts around the world, and both the LP and CD versions were extremely expensive. The origin of the album title comes from a childhood memory of Yamashita's friend playing with the song "Dan jin dan posidon! The title of the album was taken from the scene where Yamashita's friends used to play while saying "Dan jin dan posidon! The album was recorded using the "Water Delay System," a method devised by Hosono in which microphones and speakers are installed in a tank of water to create a unique, crystal-clear sound. From the ambient sounds colored by meditative synth layers, to the lovely home recordings, to the premature electronica feel, to the occasional avant-wave appearance, this is a masterpiece of originality and a playful piece of work. This is the pinnacle of unique music that lies somewhere between new wave and ambient. This is a masterpiece that is highly recommended for all environmental music and new age fans, including Hiroshi Yoshimura, Midori Takada, Yumiko Morioka and others!

In the 1980s, there was a unique music in between new wave and ambient. In the 1980's, there was a unique music between new wave and ambient, and Japanese music released in that period is now being heard around the world. Inoyamaland is one of the rarest of them all, and has not been forgotten. I was still involved in the release of the album 35 years ago, but the submission of the lost homework was a fresh surprise. The strange comfort of the region called Inoyamaland, like listening to a weather report, has not changed.
Harumi Hosono, July 11, 2018

WRWTFWW Records is very happy to present a new collaborative album by Japanese ambient/environmental legend Takashi Kokubo (Ion Series) and Italian & Swiss trombonist Andrea Esperti (Esperti Project): MUSIC FOR A COSMIC GARDEN. Recorded during the heights of the pandemic and completed in February 2021, the splendid ethereal soundscape created by Kokubo and Esperti is available in limited double LP, digipack CD, as well as digital. Takashi KOKUBO is a Japanese environmental musician who produces healing music that gently resonates with people’s hearts. He has recorded “sound scenes from nature” in countries around the world using a binaural “CyberPhonic” microphone of his own invention, and incorporates these dimensional sounds of nature in his work. The founder of Studio Ion, he has released more than 20 albums that include the highly sought-after Ion Series. His track "A Dream Sails Out to Sea, Scene 3" was featured on Light in the Attic’s Grammy-nominated Kankyō Ongaku compilation. Andrea ESPERTI is a Swiss trombonist and composer originally from Puglia (Italy). He plays in multiple genres (classical, pop, world, electro, jazz) in an eternal approach of exchange and encounters. He travels the world, listening to others and interacting with their cultures, crystallizing his globe-trotting emotions through music projects. More info at andreaesperti.bandcamp.com For fans of environmental, ambient, cosmic escapes, meditative atmospherics, and gardening in space.

WRWTFWW Records is proud to announce the worldwide reissue of Midori Takada’s solo album from 1999, Tree of Life, available on vinyl for the first time ever in a new audiophile mix by the Japanese percussionist herself, and in full half-speed-mastered glory. The 180g LP comes in a heavy sleeve with a beautiful design by Kohei Sugiura. Tree of Life is also available in CD (digipack) and digital formats. Originally recorded in September 1998 at legendary Ginza (Tokyo) studio Onkio Haus (founded in 1974 and where Ryuichi Sakamoto’s "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence" and many more were recorded) and released on CD only for the Japan market in 1999, Tree of Life is Midori Takada’s best kept secret, a lost gem of minimalism and percussive ambient. The album is separated in two parts, the first one finds Takada exploring her trademark environmental soundscapes with precise mastery of marimba, drums, and bells, notably on the magnificent fan-favorite "Love Song Of Urfa". The second half is a collaboration with Chinese virtuoso Erhu player Jiang Jian Hua, allowing Midori Takada to unveil new layers of her artistic mind with a slightly more theatrical approach and a beautiful crystallization of complex simplicity. The entire album was given a fresh new audiophile mix by Midori Takada herself and was mastered at Emil Berliner Studios, with half speed cutting for the vinyl version, to ensure an audio presentation aligned with the Japanese pioneer’s vision. This Tree of Life reissue follows two newly recorded Midori Takada albums, Cutting Branches For A Temporary Shelter and You Who Are Leaving To Nirvana, both available on WRWTFWW Records, along with her 1983 masterpiece, Through The Looking Glass.

"Of all the releases on Italy's legendary Cramps Records, Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina's seminal LP from 1979 has long remained among the most beloved. Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo not only introduced the world to the work of two gifted composers, but also is notable for being produced by electronic pioneer Franco Battiato. A sister album to Prati Bagnati would be Giusto Pio's breathtaking Motore Immobile, likewise graced with the maestro's gentle hand around the same time. Lovisoni and Messina are both central figures within the Italian avant-garde. Part of a generation of artists who contributed to a radical rethinking of musical practices and composition, they reveal Minimalism as it's rarely known: delicate melodies, subtle harmonic interplay, incorporating diverse creative traditions and slowly giving way to an ever-expanding open space. Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo's meditative title track, inspired by René Daumal's surrealist novel Le Mont Analogue, features Messina on synthesizer and Michele Fedrigotti's impressionistic piano, while on Lovisoni's 'Hula Om' and 'Amon Ra,' solo harp, crystal glasses and Juri Camisasca's radiant vocal drones further ascend into the stratosphere. Skirting the outer edges of ambient, new age and experimental music, Prati Bagnati has a transformative beauty unlike anything else. Superior Viaduct's edition reproduces the original sleeve design and is recommended for fans of Jon Hassell, Luciano Cilio and Popol Vuh."

Before New Age hit terra firms at the dawn of the 1980s, the classically-trained Bay Area composer Jordan De La Sierra's consciousness soared with cosmic concepts. With cues and lessons from the great minimalists La Monte Young,Terry Riley, Pandit Pran Nath, and help from the venerable public radio program Hearts of Space, De La Sierra embarked on a journey in alternate tunings and resounding reverberations, transporting entranced listeners from the Golden Gates to the intergalactic. Take an interstellar ride on the sensory engulfing space piano with this lovingly recreated double LP set, complete with De La Sierra's India-inspired visual artwork and musings on the tableau of space.

Métron Records presents Mycorrhizal Music, a new solo offering from composer and multi-instrumentalist Ess Whiteley and their first full-length release since their duo Liila’s album “Soundness of Mind” (Not Not Fun, 2021). Currently a PhD candidate in Composition at the University of California-San Diego, Whiteley’s practice spans recordings, installations, performances, and scores, a body of work as diverse as the fungal webs that inspire it.

Across seven tracks, Whiteley explores interconnected sound worlds shaped by mycelium networks, rhizomatic structures, and other unseen systems that sustain life. Rooted in experimental electronics, minimalism, ambient and IDM, the record imagines sound as ephemeral connective tissue capable of reshaping how a listener might experience time, memory, and futurity.

At the core of Whiteley’s work is an excavation of what lies beneath perception, the felt but unspoken currents of emotionality and subtle experiences that dwell in the unconscious. Mycorrhizal Music channels these hidden threads into a speculative ecosystem of kinship and exchange, where joy, play, and spirituality interlace like branching hyphae beneath the soil.

Mycorrhizal Music has been conceived as kinetic ambient music, designed to move with the listener while walking, riding trains, driving, cooking, where everyday rhythms align with shifting sonic textures, reminding them of hidden, interconnected, mycelial webs of spiritual vitality beneath the surfaces of daily activity.

Guided by a vision of speculative ecology and interspecies resonance, it thrives in contrasts: tracks like Rhizomatic Harpists and Whispered Messages in Tapestried Fields of Fluid Motion pulse with fluid momentum, while Kaleidoscopic Patterns of Emptiness Dancing drifts into fragile stillness.

Like an ambient house comet, Local Artist Ian Wyatt’s Slow Riffs return to Mood Hut 13 years since their debut LP with a bevy of weightless, subtly pendulous levitations.

The projected dream sequence of ’Simulacra’ connotes an out of body experience with a poetic grasp of ambient, deep house and their roots in jazz, fourth world and new age urges. With subtle holographic dub diffusions the record achieves a pleasant sense of treading air/water and being gently buffeted by cosmic breezes. Take the title tune for example, whose rippling congas and bleary sax motifs feels like passages of earliest Terre Thaemlitz meets Jon Hassell, while elsewhere they touch a subtly ruggeder vein like Rezzett’s ambient jungle thizzers in its depth charged subs and aerial interplay of drums and pads, giving way to Romance-like sensations with the tousled choral pads of ‘Cosmic Joke’, while ‘Mutual Dreaming’ harks back to early vaporwave templates of 0PN via James Ferraro.

A leading figure in the current ambient/experimental scene, Portland-based Patricia Wolf delivers her second release on Balmat with a soundtrack for a documentary set in Iceland. Centered around the UDO Super 6 synthesizer, and incorporating guitar, mallet percussion, and field recordings, it carefully maps the intersections of landscape and memory. Avoiding overtly dramatic swells, its sustained layers shift subtly, allowing traces of childhood recollections and Nordic folklore to emerge with quiet beauty. A work where Wolf’s meticulous sound design and lyrical sensibility converge, standing as a defining statement in her career.

It's a weird time in the world, but luckily we have Bremer/McCoy's really lovely music to listen to. Natten, which is Danish for “The Night,” takes inspiration from the end of day, that regenerative time under the constellations when our lives look different. Let it be your companion on this Earth, under the stars, as you contemplate this crazy time we’re in.