MUSIC

Kaleidoscopic and psychotropic, Authentically Plastic's sophomore album is a dense mass of oozing rhythms and viscous harmonies that surges in all directions at once. Its predecessor, 2022's critically acclaimed 'Raw Space', had prioritized a level of intensity that Authentically Plastic dubbed "sonic flatness", developed in response to Western art's obsession with depth of field. 'Rococo Ruine' doesn't go back to the drawing board, but refines and widens the concept even further - without deepening it. The potent, austere rhythms that grounded 'Raw Space' have been stabilized and shredded, pasted into more consistent repetitions that act as an anchor for Authentically Plastic's surprising melodic hallucinations. And it's this fresh development that provides the new album with its unique sonic fingerprint.

When the time came to follow up 'Raw Space', the Ugandan DJ and producer wondered if it might be possible to approach melodic and harmonic material with the same philosophy they had applied to rhythm on their debut. Jamming on synths for the first time, they recorded long melodic sequences that they later juxtaposed with the steely rhythms that rooted their earlier material. The process is plain to hear on the album's volatile title track, a constantly moving fusion of buzzing arpeggios, eerie drones and mesmerizing rhythmic echoes.

Similarly, the evocatively titled 'Mercury Lake' ornaments its pounding, distorted beats with xenharmonic synth undulations, weaving the high-pitched squeals between glistening polyrhythms and volatile effects. And on 'End of the World Sale', Authentically Plastic takes a different approach, treating the melodic elements like "percussive objects", and it's one of the album's most distinctive statements. Working with just synthesized, tonal sounds, they orchestrate a pointillist symphony, dreaming up a surreal, trance-like mesh of staccato stings and semi-solid drones that dark, enigmatic and almost overpowering. Elsewhere, on 'Polycollision' and the turbo-powered 'Schizz', Authentically Plastic responds directly to 'Raw Space', augmenting its polymetric experimentations with discomfiting comb filtered oscillations on the former, and focusing its weight into skittering peak-time patterns on the latter. 

Having led the legendary avant-garde ensemble Ché-SHIZU and performed under Takehisa Kosugi with East Bionic Symphonia, Chie Mukai has become a defining figure of Japanese improvisational music. Originally released on cassette in 1989 via Steeple & Globe and reissued the following year on CD by P.S.F. Records, her solo masterpiece Kokyo Solo Improvisation now sees a long-awaited cassette reissue from Beijing’s UFO Creations. The profound resonance of her kokyū (erhu), exhausted and spectral vocalizations, and the use of metal fragments and cymbals create a performance that fuses Chinese musical traditions, rustic incantations, Eastern spirituality, and surrealist visions into a twisted sonic swell. A singular form of otherworldly music where the ferocity of improvisation collides with moments of prayer-like stillness. Hand-numbered edition of 100 copies.

In Kasimyn's own words, the phrase "BUNYI BUNYI TUMBAL" signifies a "Synthetic Feeling for Anonymous Sacrifice," encompassing the emotions born out of a deep dive into the Indonesian war archives. These archives include a trove of photographs documenting the era of Dutch rule, captured through the lens of the colonizers themselves. It is from this point of departure that the project HULUBALANG was born.

HULUBALANG's gaze is drawn to the peripheral figures populating these historical records. These secondary characters, devoid of individual significance, bear no names, receive no recognition, and serve as props in the broader narrative of history. Simultaneously, they become indispensable instruments in acquiring "lessons learned" from the perspectives of both the victors and the vanquished. Within this framework, the notion of TUMBAL, the non-belligerent "sacrifice," assumes a weight surpassing its translation. TUMBAL neither acts as a victim nor martyrs itself for its cause. It hauntingly reminds us of the systemic curse perpetually engendering disillusionment.

BUNYI BUNYI TUMBAL is a personal act of catharsis stemming from a long lineage of anger. It stands as a tribute to a village whose ritualistic dance, one night, was disrupted by external forces, causing the tune to shatter and leaving the dance caught in a space between innocence and pain.

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Kusnah berjalan lamban di tepi gumuk pasir, di sebrang pesisir pantai. Di sini lebih aman pikirnya. Di garis horizon dia melihat hamparan fata morgana. Di pikirannya fata morgana jauh lebih baik sebagai tujuan ketimbang dia harus diam dan menetap di desa: tubuhnya diperlukan untuk persembahan, mungkin buat para dewa-dewa yang haus akan anatomi dan spirit dari human being atau buat pembangunan yang dibangun oleh darah dan konstruksi tulang-tulang. Mungkin juga sebagai tumbal politik. Pikirnya, di tempat dimana politik berkelindan dengan nyawa, disitu dunia betul-betul sedang bekerja.

Sambil menatap nanar tumpukan tiram di pesisir pantai, di kepalanya terdengar musik-musik pesta dengan dentuman nakal dan dawai berantakan. Sebuah umwelt. Lagu-lagu kemenangan yang sering ia putar keras-keras dipikirannya ketika ia merasa kalah. Bukan kalah, tapi mengalah. Dalam hidupnya, terlalu banyak waktu dia bagi untuk mengalah. Dia melihat tumpukan tiram dengan miris. Dia berpikir keras mengapa manusia melihat tiram sebagai makhluk rendahan dibandingkan species lebih advance seperti manusia, oh lebih tepatnya, dia mengingat perkataan Plato bahwa manusia hedonist sama saja dengan seekor tiram. Hidup hanya dalam momen hari ini dan saat ini.

Tapi Kusnah merasa ia adalah manusia hedonist. Dia hidup untuk hari ini dan saat ini. Dia hidup bukan untuk progress. Persetan dengan progress dan pembangunan pikirnya. Dia hidup untuk menikmati waktu. Dia hidup untuk bersenang-senang. Jadi baginya, Plato ada benarnya. Sambil melihat lagi si tiram dengan sangat teliti, lagu-lagu di kepalanya terdengar semakin nyaring. Dia bertanya pada dirinya sendiri: sebagai hewan hedonist yang hanya diam dan menikmati deburan ombak, apakah para tiram ini juga memiliki musik yang berputar dalam tubuhnya dan membuat merasa menang diantara lautan kekalahan?

Tatapan Kusnah semakin intense. Dari belakang terdengar bunyi suara langkah manusia-manusia berlari bergerombolan. Satu, dua, tiga, empat bunyi familiar sepatu lars. Lima, enam, tujuh bunyi derap sendal jepit. Fata morgana di gumuk pasir buyar seketika diterobos gerombolan haus darah. Semakin lama semakin ia dengar samar-samar suara teriakan. “Itu dia orangnya!” terdengar sayup-sayup tapi mengeras. Langkah-langkah itu semakin kencang. Musik di kepala Kusnah pun semakin kencang terdengar. Tak butuh waktu lama hingga ia mulai menari. Seperti orang kesurupan kalau kata banyak orang. Tapi dia tidak kesurupan, dia hanya menikmati musik yang berputar dikepalanya. Berpuluh-puluh orang mulai terlihat secara high-definition ketika Kusnah membuka kelopak matanya.

“Akan kami persembahkan kamu kepada para dewa pembangunan!” teriak para lelaki dengan parang dan golok ditangannya. Kusnah menari seperti kerasukan. “Ayo! Tangkap dia” para lelaki itu bergegas mendatangi Kusnah, membawa tali tambang untuk mengikat dirinya. Kusnah tersenyum lebar, sambil tidak bisa berhenti menari.

“Ambil tubuhku, tapi aku tidak akan pernah membagikan hulubalang yang mengaum di dipikiranku!”

Kepala Kusnah terpisah dari badannya, persis setelah dia meneriakkan kalimat tersebut.

Riar Rizaldi

Ditulis ketika mendengarkan album pertama dari Hulubalang.

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Aditya Surya Taruna (aka Kasimyn) is one half of the Indonesian electronic duo Gabbar Modus Operandi known for their acclaimed records PUXXXIMAXXX and HOXXXYA (out via Yes No Wave and SVBKVLT, respectively) and overwhelming, hyper-active and unprecedented live experiences which have made them a popular act on several festivals of experimental music. In 2022, Kasimyn contributed with beats on Björk's latest album, Fossora, featured on three tracks: "Atopos", "Trölla-Gabba", and "Fossora”, and appears in two of the album’s music videos Atopos and Fossora. After joining Björk on her Cornucopia tour in Japan, Kasimyn is announcing his solo album on Drowned by Locals under his new project HULUBALANG.

'TTT grip Reckless Records don and record collecting heavyweight Toru Yoneyama on a mad cosmic noise mission sparked off with bony dancehall and mutant tekno-electro pulses – think Conrad Schnitzler meets Jeff Mills at Heinrich Mueller's lab afterhours, it's that wild.

The 92 minute 'Rescue at SW4' is among the best of TTT's already deadly run of '25 so far. Toru's eight trax take all the time needed – nearly up to 20′, and more often at least 10′ – to work out unpredictable permutations of spiny machine rhythm and rudely activated arp leads that seem to have a jazz-noise-tekno mind of their own.

An ideal case in point is the opening passage '052 T.HOLE', which spends the first 10 mins coaxing analog machines to sputter like a Schnitzler-meets-Dilloway jam, overeasy on the curdled chromatic distortion, before crystallising into a gnashing dancehall and Kongo tekno drum pattern whilst the synth wheezes psychoactive spumes. The transition is as effective and it is unexpected, and sets the tone for a class session of strangely sidewinding treats.

'BITT 35ER' stays in the longform lane with a more direct, if wobbly, traction from the offing, recalling some noisy Drexciyan probe and Mills' offbeat jazz-techno treks, whilst a pair of acrid palate cleansers set off a 2nd half encompassing pulsating, kosmiche dub techno noise in 'SPKXXX042', to Ra-esque wormholer '254222 BC' resolving in coiled acid tekno, and the stewed 303 gunk of '052 T.HOLE (048 bottoms)'.' (Boomkat, June 2025)

Originally released in 1985 on Japan Records, "Trap" marks the second solo venture from pioneering Japanese musician Chiko Hige. Delving deep into the raw energy of the No-Wave movement, Hige crafts a powerful, hypnotic sonic journey brimming with hyper-kinetic grooves, jagged guitar textures, and contorted saxophone lines. "Trap" stands as a snapshot of controlled chaos—its blend of frenetic rhythms and edgy soundscapes continues to resonate with fresh relevance, captivating new listeners and longtime fans alike. "Trap" exemplifies Chiko Hige's mastery of the Japanese No-Wave scene, offering a singular mix of experimental punk, jazz-inflected improvisation, and post-punk brutality. The album's tracks feature propulsive drum work, energetic guitar riffs, and twisted, melodic saxophone interludes, all woven into a hypnotic soundscape that feels both organic and intentionally chaotic. Chiko Hige, well-known as the drummer for Friction, explores new artistic ground in this solo effort, further establishing his role as an innovator in Japan's underground music scene. Despite its release over four decades ago, "Trap" remains a strikingly modern listen, capturing the imagination of contemporary audiences with its unbridled energy and genre-defying arrangements. The album's experimental approach continues to influence cutting-edge musicians worldwide, making "Trap" a foundational touchstone for collectors and fans of post-punk, avant-garde, and No-Wave music. For those discovering Chiko Hige today, "Trap" offers a thrilling portal into the feverish creativity and unstoppable drive of 1980s Japanese underground music.

Faitiche presents Beispiel (German for example, also suggests playing together), a joint project by Frank Bretschneider and Jan Jelinek. Muster is their first album. Free electronic music, the result of spontaneous improvisations. “Meaning” is a concept that is overused in connection with music. Muster does not call for the same kind of air quotes. With its title, German for patterns/exemplars, Beispiel’s album frees itself from the ballast of teleological semantics. There is no overarching theme, no preparation, no reading list, no reason for this music. Just two facts: Frank Bretschneider and Jan Jelinek have known each other a long time and appreciate each other’s work; and they share a love of modular synthesizers and of experimental set-ups designed to capture surprise. Bretschneider and Jelinek got together for their first joint session in 2016 and the years that followed brought more such meetings at Jelinek’s studio for open-ended musical dialog – at irregular intervals and with no clear objective. The improvisations were recorded in two stereo tracks: one track for Bretschneider’s audio, one for Jelinek’s. After each session, the recordings were processed separately, the options essentially limited to cutting and altering the frequency range. The nine pieces for Muster were selected from the resulting material. This approach reflects an ideal: music is when you play your first note without knowing what the third or fourth will sound like. When your 290th note still sees you leaving the beaten track, and when curiosity grows as the piece unfolds. Duping is part of Beispiel’s practice. Improvisation is about disagreement. It’s a matter of addressing the right issues. What’s happening here? What’s mine, what’s yours? Are “why” and “where next” legitimate questions? Muster is an exemplary work. Nine suggestions for what can be. Nine ideas for possibilities of listening. Arno Raffeiner

Merzbow is a Japanese noise legend who advocates and practices ahimsa and continues to experiment with alternative expressions that go beyond the boundaries of "noise". This is a rare cassette album released in 2010 by Gift Tapes, a prestigious American drone label that also produces works by Panabrite and Pulse Emitter.

Vanligt Folk unleashes their most daring work yet with Dischorealism, a wild mix of crabby 2-step rhythms, echoing yowls, and noisy club shapes. Following their 2017 release Palle Bondo, the Swedish trio continue to blur the lines between noise, club, and outsider pop, crafting a sound unlike any other.

This time, they focus on tight, groove-driven beats, while maintaining their signature weirdness with gravelly dub-noise textures, twisted hooks, and unsettling, possessed vocals. Exploring themes of friendship, sex, violence, and drug abuse, Dischorealism takes an impressionistic approach, leaving ideas open to interpretation and creating an eerie atmosphere that works on both the dancefloor and in more intimate settings.

With over a dozen tracks in 42 minutes, the album pulls from a range of influences—from fellow Scandinavians SHXCXCHCXSH to the dissonant, lo-fi worlds of V/Vm and Börft—but remains unmistakably Vanligt Folk. Highlights include the blunted 2-step of ‘DISKDASKO’, the acid-tinged ‘ÜNG GÜD’, and the peculiar odd-pop textures of ‘TJUF’. It’s an album that keeps you guessing, always on the edge of something strange.

First vinyl reissue of the landmark 1967 debut album by AMM, AMMMusic. Remastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin. Exact replica sleeve by Stephen O'Malley. "Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its recording in 1966, this reissue makes one of the cornerstones of the experimental music tradition available again in its original form, replete with Keith Rowe's beautiful pop art cover and the terse aphorisms by the group that served as its original liner notes. A testament to the interaction between the experimental avant-garde and the countercultural underground, the album was originally released on Elektra, recorded by Jac Holzman (the label's founder, responsible for signing The Doors, Love, and The Stooges) and produced by DNA, a group that included Pink Floyd's first manager, Peter Jenner (the title of Pink Floyd's 'Flaming' is a tribute to AMM's 'Later During a Flaming Riviera Sunset'). Formed in 1965 by three players from the emerging British jazz avant-garde -- Keith Rowe and Lou Gare had played with the great progressive big band leader Mike Westbrook and Eddie Prévost played in a post-bop group with Gare -- AMM quickly evolved from a free jazz group into something decidedly more difficult to categorise. By the time these recordings were made, two more members had joined the group: another Westbrook associate, Lawrence Sheaff, and the radical composer Cornelius Cardew. Then at work on his masterpiece of graphic notation Treatise, Cardew brought with him extensive experience of the post-serialist and Cageian currents in contemporary composition. Using a combination of conventional instruments and unconventional methods of sound production (most famously Keith Rowe's prepared tabletop guitar, but also prepared piano and transistor radio), the group performed improvised pieces often running for over two hours and ranging from extended periods of silence to terrifying cacophonies. On AMMMusic, long tones sit next to abrasive thuds, the howl of uncontrolled feedback accompanies Cardew's purposeful piano chords, radios beam in snatches of orchestral music. AMM's clearest break with jazz-based improvisation concerned the idea of individuality. Initially through an engagement with eastern philosophy and mysticism and later though a politicized communitarianism, AMM sought to develop a collective sonic identity in which individual contributions could barely be discerned. In the performances captured on AMMMusic the use of numerous auxiliary instruments and devices, including radios played by three members of the group, contribute to the sensation that the music is composed as a single monolithic object with multiple facets, rather than as an interaction between five distinct voices." --Francis Plagne

Indonesian duo KUNTARI make music that's so distinctive, they had to devise their own genre: primal-core. On 'MUTU BETON', multi-instrumentalist Tesla Manaf and percussionist Rio Abror dialog with both history and their tropical surroundings in Bandung, West Java's mountainous capital. Using the cornet and hulusi, a free reed instrument made from a bottle gourd and bamboo pipes, Manaf echoes the bellows of local elephants, orangutans and rhinos, grazing Abror's ancestral Indonesian rhythms with potent overdriven riffs and evocative microtonal chimes. It's music that's profoundly atmospheric and simultaneously raw, recorded live to fully encapsulate the dynamic and deeply human interaction between the two seasoned players. There are elements of sludge metal, noise and post-hardcore, references to traditional folk music and jazz, and gestures towards sound art, 20th century minimalism and dark ambient, but what KUNTARI do is completely idiosyncratic - it's hardly surprising it needed a similarly unique categorization.

Manaf started KUNTARI as a solo project, debuting in 2020 with 'Black Shirt Attracts More Feather' and animating his nimble instrumental improvisations with bold electronic processes and booming synthetic drums. And by the time he recorded 2022's acclaimed 'Last Boy Picked', his approach had evolved significantly; prioritizing organic sounds, he played prepared cornet and piano, bringing in additional percussionists to help devise a ritualistic rhythm section. Abror was one of those performers, and ended up sticking around, playing on 2023's furious 'LARYNX/STRIDULA', the stylistic precursor for 'MUTU BETON'. At this stage, the duo have racked up a litany of accolades and collaborated with a spectrum of like-minded artists, from noise deity Keiji Haino to fellow Indonesian free-thinker Rully Shabara, who's best known for his work with Senyawa and avant-garde supergroup OSMIUM. 'MUTU BETON' plays like a lap of honor, showcasing their most kinetic and most feral recordings to date.

On 'Parai', a two-part composition made for Singapore-based artist Priyageetha Dia's multimedia installation LAMENT H.E.A.T, KUNTARI surround loose, rattling polyrhythms with blood-curdling, animalistic calls and industrial strength chugs from Manaf's prepared guitar. The artwork honors indentured laborers forced to extract rubber in Southeast Asia, and KUNTARI's response is an incisive critique of colonialism, celebrating the region's ancient rhythmic forms and sharpening their edges as they barrel into the future. Upsetting the logic of academic American minimalism, KUNTARI disrupt winding Reichian xylophone, glockenspiel and marimba repetitions on 'Kerak Terusi', wielding swinging ceremonial thuds from Manaf's Rebana, a cow skin drum that often accompanies Indonesian Islamic rituals.

They confront local sonorities even more directly on 'Miamch', a commission the duo made for Yogyakarta's Festival Kebudayaan, dueling on saron, a single-octave metallophone, and a Javanese gamelan set, and don't just follow the expected path. The familiarity is soon replaced with eccentricity as eerie resonances and reverberations sweep across the rhythmelodic patterns. Rough-edged technoid patterns are bent into new shapes on the abrasive 'Paniscus', and on 'Bessing', KUNTARI do their best to recreate the singular atmosphere of a local trance ritual, interrupting howling spirit voices and jangling chimes with blackened, grindcore-inspired riffs. KUNTARI surpass even their own high standards with 'MUTU BETON', folding history and geography in on itself and suggesting a trailblazing Indonesian cultural movement that's not restricted by highbrow Western conventions. It's not just automation and technology that drives progression, it's interaction and observation. And there's nothing more primal, or revolutionary, than that.

Katatonic Silentio makes her Fleur Sauvage debut with a live recording captured in the Hypnose Room at La Nature 2023—a raw, improvised performance split into four parts across two 12”s. Moving between abstract electronics, textured noise and cinematic ambient, the set balances low-end weight and grainy chaos with fleeting moments of stillness. Tension underpins the entire performance, occasionally boiling over into jagged peaks of intensity. Rather than simply documenting a performance, this release preserves a ritual: unstable, embodied, and elemental. As ever with Katatonic Silentio, the sound is not merely heard—it is lived in.

    
Entering its 26th year of activity, the morphing, Los Angeles based experimental outfit, Sissy Spacek, joins Shelter Press with Entrance, among the project’s most captivating outings to date. Encountering the duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma joined in various configurations by an incredible cast of collaborators - Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, Ralf Wehowsky, and C Spencer Yeh - collectively transformed into a series a deeply intimate and delicate gestures of musique concrète, Entrance radically repositions the possibilities presented by group improvisation outside of time and place.

Founded at the end of the last millennium, the Los Angeles based project, Sissy Spacek, initially emerged from the knotted, fiery context 1990s American noise and grindcore, producing sheets of visceral sonority that quickly set the scene on its head. Going through numerous evolutions, before eventually settling as a duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma - joined by a rotating and often recurring cast collaborators - over the last 25 years the band has continuously entered states of evolution that have defied the expectations of its own context, seeding the sonic extremes noise with subtle and sophisticated approaches to free improvisation and musique concrète.

Fiercely positioning its efforts within the outer reaches of contemporary experimental music, while resisting the constraints of a singular sound or proximity, Wiese regards Sissy Spacek as being primarily centred around the practice of musique concrète and the pursuit of extremes. From its earliest releases - collage treatments of material gathered from the band’s full throttle practice sessions - the project’s conceptual framework has continuously evolved within a deeply engaged process of experimentation, not only reworking tactical approaches, but also definitions and perception regarding the location and action of their work. In recent years, this has led to an increasingly varied and diverse output. Percolating within, is a thread marked by a striking sense of delicacy and intimacy, driving forward while doubling as an unexpected challenge, in real time, to perceptions connected to the band’s past. Entrance is the most recent of these.

Embarking upon the four compositions that comprise the finalized four sides of Entrance, Wiese and Mumma enlisted longstanding collaborators, Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, and C Spencer Yeh, as well as new initiate, Ralf Wehowsky (of the seminal German electronic noise collective P16.D4), requesting a contribution of sounds from each, determined by a general set guidelines that dictated certain qualities the given sonorities, while allowing for the expression of each player’s distinct creative voice. The sets of resulting recordings were then chopped, harvested, manipulated, and reassembled as the four tape compositions that make up the album - Web Of Unfolding Appearance, Figure Of Reflected Light, Trancher And The Inheritors, True Dimension (From The Opaque - Spike) - each blurring the lines of authorship and clear creative proximity in remarkable ways.

Where historical gestures of musique concrète tend to draw upon non-instrumental sound sources - regarding its sonorous material as raw elements, unburdened by inherent meaning or association, to be transformed and imbued with musicality - Sissy Spacek turns this position on its head. Entrance comprises works of musique concrète that not only draw upon instrumental sound sources, with all their possible meanings or associations, but also individual characters and personalities of their players, crediting each resulting piece to its respective configuration of contributors.

As such, Entrance is an effort of sound collage defined by a rare sense of intimacy and humanity: four pieces that often take on the resemblance of group improvisation, but have, in fact, been assembled outside of time and place. Bent under the ever-present hand of Wiese’s tape treatments and manipulation, each of the album’s four compositions unfurl startling states of sonic abstraction and percolating texture, marked by a striking sense of hard-shifting structure, that culminate as tense, driven manifestations of ambient music: scrapes, squeals, rattles feedback, rolling drums, bouncing tones, whispers, bent electronics, electric artefacts, and seemingly everything else under the sun, configured into immersive, sublime mediations in sound from the most improbable events. 

A certain post-peak revelry and shaky fidelity of memory triggers and recall underlies Sebastian Carghini’s subtly trippy debut bow for topo2, the label run by erstwhile Dekmantel programmer Bert de Rooij and home to upsammy and Windu.

With a compelling poetic quality Carghini seduces us deep into hypnagogic states of mind with the mercurial ephemerality of his ‘Ramble’ album, an idealised iteration of the peculiar, subtle sound he’s developed over the past decade for the likes of Second Sleep, enmossed/Psychic Liberation, and Total Stasis. 

Leading on in the steps of upsammy’s gently febrile ‘Strange Meridians’, and the featured flows of ‘Juxtapose’ by Wind, the 11-part suite chases a frayed thread of memory looping logic thru processes that appear to uncoil and re-stitch the strands into forms of smudged dub tech and decayed electronica shades away from Actress’s iridescent greyscale, the Peak Oil x False Aralia dubtech soul axis, or even the sounds Andy Stott’s machines make when he’s not listening. 

Eager Buyers is an observation of longing, of memory, of attempted connection, of lost innocence, and irreconcilable dreams. It’s the sound of broken promises for a bright future, where rose-tinted glasses have lost their clarity, dirtied with disaffection over time. Spanish-born, Berlin-based artist JASSS, presents her third LP, Eager Buyers. It’s the inaugural release on her own new platform called AWOS, which also encompasses musical, AV and art collaborations, live events, and a radio show.

Across this sultry, smoky, cinematic epic, JASSS attempts to process mixed feelings amidst the modern malaise. Alluringly atmospheric and cerebral, but bold and direct, with high-spec sound design, JASSS spaces each element with expert definition. Searing swathes of noise nestle with crisp breakbeats, billowing bass, dark ambience, prepared piano, phosphorescent electronics and calibrated percussion.

“Whether you buy into the dream of capitalism or not, on a subconscious level, many people that lived through the 90s and 2000s had capitalist hope from the 80s and 90s drummed into them. It was a promise of something that never came true. We put our faith in a mirage, and now we’re left in an existential void, struggling with a very real

collapse.” - JASSS

A sort of anti-nostalgia, the record lives in a contemporary purgatory of oblique moods which hover in the psyche, somewhere between uncertainty, foreboding, and guarded anticipation. The raw metal of bass guitar strings plays a key part too, ranging from ornate melodic phrases, shoegazy drones, and attitude-riven hard twangs. Vocals come from JASSS herself, plus James K and Alias Error on the track “It’s A Hole”.

The heavy, hauntological atmospherics are in part due to the addition of field recordings – the discreet, but spiritually-loaded incidental sounds of a place which can capture its history, with the acoustics somehow retaining an emotional imprint of lives long gone. If pressed for descriptive reference points, ‘masterfully-produced-post-punk-post-rock- baroque-gothy-dubby-trip-hop’ might be a starting point, but that doesn’t do it justice. Equally spectral in their dream-like quality are the musical signposts, where genre elements are familiar, but somehow also unplaceable, untethered from context, and beautifully strange in their new composite. At points there’s an air of strangely dazed calm too – a kind of frazzled cool in the face of desolation, and even tender, lighter moments, which glint through the cracks.

Quickly following March’s The Fool - our label debut - Sa Pa reveals his new album Ambeesh on Short Span.

Coming five years after In A Landscape, and nearly a decade since his debut Fuubutsushi, Ambeesh is a collection of Sa Pa’s unreleased work.

Written between 2014-2019, the album has been conceptually curated as a follow up to his FORUM debut. Ambeesh possesses the unique language and liveliness of ambient, layered field recordings, and dub techno found in those earlier records, with those seamless skydives through pressure formations that were found on the Enter Sa Pa mix.

These pieces have been crackling under the surface of Sa Pa’s released work to date and there’s little else that compares. It’s a cache of some of his deepest and most texturally thrilling music.

Singular in its combination of atmosphere; Ambeesh presses on the body at the right volume, and moves in thrust and riposte with the listener’s circadian rhythms. Sa Pa continues to dissolve the border between club-informed experimentation and intimate headphone listening.

Ambeesh marks the artist’s return to his homeland Australia and an exciting new chapter.

    
Entering its 26th year of activity, the morphing, Los Angeles based experimental outfit, Sissy Spacek, joins Shelter Press with Entrance, among the project’s most captivating outings to date. Encountering the duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma joined in various configurations by an incredible cast of collaborators - Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, Ralf Wehowsky, and C Spencer Yeh - collectively transformed into a series a deeply intimate and delicate gestures of musique concrète, Entrance radically repositions the possibilities presented by group improvisation outside of time and place.

Founded at the end of the last millennium, the Los Angeles based project, Sissy Spacek, initially emerged from the knotted, fiery context 1990s American noise and grindcore, producing sheets of visceral sonority that quickly set the scene on its head. Going through numerous evolutions, before eventually settling as a duo of John Wiese and Charlie Mumma - joined by a rotating and often recurring cast collaborators - over the last 25 years the band has continuously entered states of evolution that have defied the expectations of its own context, seeding the sonic extremes noise with subtle and sophisticated approaches to free improvisation and musique concrète.

Fiercely positioning its efforts within the outer reaches of contemporary experimental music, while resisting the constraints of a singular sound or proximity, Wiese regards Sissy Spacek as being primarily centred around the practice of musique concrète and the pursuit of extremes. From its earliest releases - collage treatments of material gathered from the band’s full throttle practice sessions - the project’s conceptual framework has continuously evolved within a deeply engaged process of experimentation, not only reworking tactical approaches, but also definitions and perception regarding the location and action of their work. In recent years, this has led to an increasingly varied and diverse output. Percolating within, is a thread marked by a striking sense of delicacy and intimacy, driving forward while doubling as an unexpected challenge, in real time, to perceptions connected to the band’s past. Entrance is the most recent of these.

Embarking upon the four compositions that comprise the finalized four sides of Entrance, Wiese and Mumma enlisted longstanding collaborators, Tim Barnes, Marco Fusinato, Aaron Hemphill, Brad Laner, Katsura Mouri, and C Spencer Yeh, as well as new initiate, Ralf Wehowsky (of the seminal German electronic noise collective P16.D4), requesting a contribution of sounds from each, determined by a general set guidelines that dictated certain qualities the given sonorities, while allowing for the expression of each player’s distinct creative voice. The sets of resulting recordings were then chopped, harvested, manipulated, and reassembled as the four tape compositions that make up the album - Web Of Unfolding Appearance, Figure Of Reflected Light, Trancher And The Inheritors, True Dimension (From The Opaque - Spike) - each blurring the lines of authorship and clear creative proximity in remarkable ways.

Where historical gestures of musique concrète tend to draw upon non-instrumental sound sources - regarding its sonorous material as raw elements, unburdened by inherent meaning or association, to be transformed and imbued with musicality - Sissy Spacek turns this position on its head. Entrance comprises works of musique concrète that not only draw upon instrumental sound sources, with all their possible meanings or associations, but also individual characters and personalities of their players, crediting each resulting piece to its respective configuration of contributors.

As such, Entrance is an effort of sound collage defined by a rare sense of intimacy and humanity: four pieces that often take on the resemblance of group improvisation, but have, in fact, been assembled outside of time and place. Bent under the ever-present hand of Wiese’s tape treatments and manipulation, each of the album’s four compositions unfurl startling states of sonic abstraction and percolating texture, marked by a striking sense of hard-shifting structure, that culminate as tense, driven manifestations of ambient music: scrapes, squeals, rattles feedback, rolling drums, bouncing tones, whispers, bent electronics, electric artefacts, and seemingly everything else under the sun, configured into immersive, sublime mediations in sound from the most improbable events. 

Big Black was started by Steve Albini in 1982 while he was attending Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Lungs, the first Big Black release was recorded by Steve on a borrowed 4-track. He played everything on the EP himself - except the sax bleating courtesy of pal John Bohnen and the drums courtesy of Roland. Soon after, Steve recruited Jeff Pezzati (Naked Raygun) on bass, and Santiago Durango (also Naked Raygun) joined them on guitar. In 1983, together with live drummer Pat Byrne, they recorded the Bulldozer EP. By 1984, the band had done some touring and recorded the Racer X EP and the start of the Il Duce 7". After that, Jeff returned to Naked Raygun and was replaced by Dave Riley. In 1985, Big Black recorded their first full-length, Atomizer, as well as finishing the Il Duce 7". Atomizer was released in 1986 along with the release of the Hammer Party compilation CD. In 1987, the Headache EP and Heartbeat 7" were released. That same year, the band recorded and released the 7" of The Model/He's A Whore as well as their second full-length album, Songs About Fucking. They toured extensively (for Big Black). And they broke up.

Hampus Lindwall is a musical artist active in many fields ranging from contemporary music to experimental and electronic sound / music. He has released many albums, as a soloist and in collaboration and is the titular organist in Saint-Esprit, Paris, since 2005.

Gilla Band Ireland’s favourite Avant-punk quartet has re-issued The Early Years EP, a collection of out of print 7” singles and covers originally released on Any Other City Records and The Quarter Inch Collective and then on Rough Trade Records in 2015. The re-issue features new artwork based on the original colour blocks plus The Cha Cha Cha has now been remastered alongside the rest of the tracks and is ready for the dancefloor once again.

Fan fave (and live setlist staple) featured on the collection is an eight-minute cover of post-dubstep mastermind Blawan’s absurdist banger and demented earworm “Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage” that, simply put, is unlike anything you’ve ever heard before or since.

Primitive Maxi Trial is a time-warped excavation from the archives of Emiliano Pennisi, the Palermo-based producer and underground fixture behind the Paradigma collective (DerFreitag, Algoritmo). Surfacing on the Heat Crimes imprint, this archival transmission feels less like a retrospective and more like a haunted artifact – a fragment of the pre-digital underground rendered in dusty, lo-fi hues.

Drawn from material produced between the late ’90s and mid-2000s, Primitive Maxi Trial occupies a blurred zone where early DAW fetishism meets pirate aesthetics and a scavenger’s ear for pop-cultural residue. Think cracked VSTs (Albino, SubBoomBass), MPC 1000 grit, and CD-ROM sample libraries ripped from Future Music and Computer Music cover discs—long-lost sonic ephemera unearthed like forgotten VHS tapes in the backroom of a failing electronics shop.

There’s an unmistakable hauntological hue here—not in the usual Ghost Box pastiche sense, but something rawer, more regionally specific. These tracks were forged under the looming shadow of the Mafia Maxi Trial, in a city fraught with paranoia, informal spaces, and cultural fragmentation. That tension bleeds into the music: compressed textures, iron-lung atmospheres, and bleakly humorous juxtapositions that wouldn’t feel out of place soundtracking a Mark Leckey installation.

But this isn’t mere nostalgia. Pennisi’s compositions slip between IDM’s jittery melancholy, no-fi techno, ambient detritus, and grotesque rave misfires with an almost outsider art sensibility. Surreal cuts appear like tape-warped memories of nights out you’re not sure really happened. In the best moments, Primitive Maxi Trial feels like music made not for release but for ritual—claustrophobic yet oddly liberating, deeply personal yet disarmingly tongue-in-cheek.

Originally released in the early ’80s on the obscure German imprint Giraffe Rec, this elusive one-off LP by shadowy Düsseldorf-based unit Mentocome now sees an official analog reissue via Amok Age! A document of impersonal silence and machine-born noise, buried deep in the cassette underground and post-wave detritus of the time. Rust-laden echoes in the vein of Werkbund or Peter Rehberg, brooding industrial drones, and sinking minimal rhythms conjure a cold, mechanical poetry. At times evoking the empty claustrophobia of a U-boat’s inner hull, elsewhere revealing moments of rain-drenched piano reminiscent of early Robert Haigh. Less a record than a phantom cartography of unseen urban heartbeats, linking directly to the spectral soundworlds of the Creel Pone lineage.

This work consists of sound and a collection of AI-generated images. The image collection compiles the AI-generated images used for projection during the Merzbow Free Noise concert held at WWW in Shibuya, Tokyo on January 6, 2025. The use of such visuals is rare for Merzbow in recent years, and the use of AI-generated images in a live performance is a first attempt.

The concert was structured in two parts, and one of the rehearsal recordings of a track performed in the first part is the first track on the

CD, “Peacock Analogy.” It features a live mix of computer sounds recorded on CD with Sonicware’s Texture Lab, Oscillator etc. The

second track, “Tenbyo Caterpillar 1,” is one of Merzbow’s most recent studio recordings. It overdubs multiple layers of noise electronics,

computers, and more.

“Peacock Analogy”

The title “Peacock Analogy” is based on the fact that when a peacock painting was used as a reference image to generate a dilapidated cityscape, buildings and metal structures in the shape of peacocks were created. This phenomenon seems to have occurred due to a combination of several factors in AI image generation. From the peacock image, the AI learned the peacock’s unique shapes (e.g., the spread of its feathers, the shape of its neck, the overall silhouette, etc.). When generating the cityscape, the AI may have attempted to apply the learned peacock shape patterns to the city’s buildings and metal structures. In this case, because the prompts were vague expressions such as “dilapidated city” and “metal structures,” the AI was likely strongly influenced by the reference image of the peacock.

“Analogy” is the process by which AI recognizes similarities between different concepts and transfers patterns from one concept to another. In this case, the AI may have recognized similarities between the shapes of peacocks and the shapes of buildings and metal structures and applied the peacock shapes to the buildings and metal structures. In this way, AI image generation can produce unexpected results.

“Mimesis”

Mimesis is an art theory proposed by the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the concept that works of art imitate the real world or nature. Traditional art has emphasized faithfully reproducing reality or expressing an idealized reality. AI art generates images by learning from vast amounts of image data and recognizing patterns within it. In this point, AI can be seen as “imitating” existing images.

Furthermore, mimesis in AI art can be considered part of a creative process. By generating new images based on learned data, AI can expand human creativity and open up possibilities for new artistic expressions.

“Imitation” also carries negative connotations such as “copycat” or “fake” Because AI learns from existing data to generate images, there are various opinions, such as that its originality is low, or that because AI can generate a large number of images in a short time, its scarcity is low, or that because AI has no emotions, its artistry is low.

Is AI art like mass-produced “junk art”? Is AI art something that “resembles art but is not”?

Discussions continue on how AI art will change the traditional concept of art, how it will expand human creativity, and whether AI-generated images are art in the first place, who the creator is, and where the copyright lies.

MASAMI AKITA

*A Part of Text by AI-assisted with Gemini (Google).

Volume 9 of "Nine Studies of Ephemeral Resonance" presents a captivating exploration of sound through three evocative tracks: “Quiet Night,” “Spring Breeze,” and “Star’s Shine.” The album opens with “Quiet Night,” where synths engage in a calm struggle, creating an atmospheric tension that invites deep contemplation. As the piece unfolds, it balances tranquility with subtle shifts, drawing the listener deeper into its soundscape. Next, “Spring Breeze” transitions from a rhythmic pulse to a thrilling eruption of frenetic noise reflecting the chaotic energy of nature awakening in spring. Finally, “Star’s Shine” delivers a harsh yet beautiful sonic experience that glimmers like a bright star against the backdrop of silence, leaving a lingering impression. Housed in an elegantly crafted birchwood box, this limited edition is individually numbered, emphasizing its rarity and artistic value. The thoughtful attention to detail, including a mini-LP format and beautifully designed inserts, ensures that Volume 9 is not only a remarkable auditory experience but also a cherished item for collectors and enthusiasts alike.

Volume 8 of "Nine Studies of Ephemeral Resonance" invites listeners to delve into a vibrant and eclectic auditory landscape through four richly textured tracks: “Coolness,” “White Dew,” “Grass Leaves,” and “Monkey's Voice.” The album opens with “Coolness,” where a gently plucked electric piano gradually disintegrates into increasingly synthetic sounds, culminating in a refreshing wall of noise that invigorates the senses. Following this, “White Dew” and “Grass Leaves” continue to explore the realm of noise, weaving intricate layers that challenge and engage the listener. Finally, “Monkey's Voice” introduces a pulsating heart at its core, featuring splashes of bleeping sounds that shift from calm reflections to frenetic bursts of energy. Beautifully presented in a finely crafted birchwood box, this limited edition is individually numbered, enhancing its sense of rarity and value. With meticulous attention to detail, including a mini-LP format and elegantly designed inserts, Volume 8 stands as not only a significant artistic endeavor but also a treasured collectible for sound enthusiasts.