MUSIC

The 2015 edition of Winnipeg’s send + receive festival, focussed on rhythm, turned out to be a generative meeting of minds. There, Mark Fell encountered the music of Will Guthrie, a meeting that was eventually to result in the frenetic acoustic drumkit and digital synthesis pairing heard on Infoldings and Diffractions (2020). At the same festival, Limpe Fuchs first heard and appreciated the music of Mark Fell, planting the seed of a collaboration that came to fruition when Fell (along with his son Rian Treanor) visited Fuchs at her home in Peterskirchen, Germany in September 2022. Black Truffle is pleased to announce the release of the results of this extensive session in the audacious form of a triple LP, housing over two hours of music across its six sides. The collaboration might appear unlikely: what common ground could exist between Fuchs, classically trained pianist, legend of improvised music, instrument builder and sound sculptor active since the 1960s, whose group Anima Sound connected the dots between free jazz, krautrock and ritual, and Fell, proponent of radical computer music, known for his bracingly austere productions that twist remnants of club music into algorithmic stutters? For all their seeming disparity in technology, approach and background, the music on Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch makes it immediately evident the pair share a great deal in their essentially percussive approach and ability to, in Fuch’s phrase, ‘establish silence’. Recording at her home studio, Fuchs had the use of her entire array of instruments, found, invented, and traditional, and treats the listener to some that don’t often make their way to concerts, including extensive passages performed (with Gundis Stalleicher) on pieces of wooden parquetry. Alongside metallic, wooden and skin percussion of all kinds, sounded and struck in every conceivable way, we also hear bamboo flute, viola, and Fuchs’ distinctive free-form vocalisations. Fell also stretched himself, with his contributions ranging from characteristically fizzing pitched percussive pops to swarms of sliding tones and abstract digital noise. Showing both remarkable restraint and improvisational freedom, much of the music consists of duets between a single percussion instrument and a distinctive mode of digital sound, often lingering in one timbral-rhythmic space for minutes at a time. Improvisational forward momentum coexists with a free-floating, wandering quality. On opener ‘Dessogia I’, the shimmering almost-gilssandi tones of Fuchs’ enormous set of microtonally tuned metal tubes ripples across Fell’s rubbery pulse, which moves up the frequency spectrum as Fuchs becomes more animated and switches to horn. At some points, as on the metallic chiming tones that open ‘Fauch I’, only the unexpected dynamic behaviour of Fell’s sounds distinguish them from Fuchs’ acoustic instruments. At others, like on ‘Queetch III’, the waves of sliding tones and noise textures are bracingly synthetic, joined by piercing squeaks and scrapes from Fuchs’ metal objects. Epic in scope, immersing the listener in an entirely distinctive world of sounds, and thrillingly bold in its melding of the most ancient musical procedures with cutting edge technologies, Dessogia/Queetch/Fauch is an unexpected major statement from two of the great mavericks of contemporary music.

Heavy weight vinyl. Remastered version of “out of noise”, his first solo album with commmons, released in 2009. The album was remastered under his supervision, adding previously unreleased tracks.

One of the universal experiences of life on Earth is staring, neck craned, at the cosmos. The vastness of one’s internal life meets the vastness of space, and in that moment those perspectives fuse in a state of wonder and curiosity. Space As An Instrument, the new album by French artist and musician Félicia Atkinson, invites listeners to explore the phantasmic landscapes created in such transformative encounters, when the mind is open and receptive to its environment. Like being absorbed by the immensity of the night sky, this music dilates the imagination and helps us to sit comfortably in the mystery of the ineffable. We are guided through Space As An Instrument by the piano, its a linear story told through restrained, iterative melodies that become entwined with the sounds at the music’s margins - a wisp of electronics, a pinprick of an enunciated consonant. They were recorded on Atkinson’s phone, which was placed next to the keys, or behind her, with the sound of the room bleeding through to give a sense of the place and time of the encounter. She describes these sessions as meetings where she and the piano commune to co-create these spiraling phrases and vaporous dissonances moment by moment. Complicating this dynamic is the presence of digital pianos, which exist in the surreal space of diodes and LED displays. They act as avatars of their three-dimensional counterparts: nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Still, the inhabited world of people, water, and wind can be heard throughout Space As An Instrument. Often these recordings are integrated into the backdrop of electronics, or reduced to the sound of movements whose physical forms are obscured: the microphone straining against a forceful gust on “Sorry,” arhythmic footsteps traversing an invisible terrain on “Pensées Magiques.” These field recordings take us to the brink of synesthetic experience, allowing us to glimpse with our ear the topography of the imagination. But Atkinson’s music resists any kind of singular perspective on the scene, or any distinct conclusion. “It doesn’t explain anything,” she says, “but it translates the way I perceive it, somehow.” Atkinson is a polymath by nature, engrossed in a variety of daily artistic practices that nourish one another. In her garden, she performs the slow work of cross-species relationship building, cultivating an ideal space for introspection and further creation; many of the album’s vocal and electronic elements were recorded there. Poetry, which she prizes for its capacity to render the everyday tools of meaning-making more enigmatic, becomes folded into the music as well. She paints as often as time allows. One personal limitation Atkinson finds in painting, the rendering of perspective, has become one of her music’s defining characteristics. The vantage point of the listener is slippery and undefined, with sounds at once appearing gigantic and minuscule, distant and immediate. This phenomena is central to “Thinking Iceberg,” a 13-minute piece that was whittled down from an hour and a half performance, who remain only a ghostly presence on the album’s recording. Atkinson wrote the piece in response to Olivier Remaud’s book Thinking Like An Iceberg, in which the philosopher assigns agency to these massive, endangered objects and imagines how they might perceive their millenia-long relationship to humans. Stoic synthesizer tones percolate while water flows just out of the immediate frame with a disarming clarity and presence. As the piece crests, Atkinson’s whispered voice emerges softly, placed right against the listener’s left ear, contrasting with the billowing mass of sound that otherwise dominates. We emerge with a glimmer of awareness of how immensity and delicacy can coexist as time and humanity extract their toll. Félicia Atkinson says her music exists “on the verge of understanding and not understanding,” which often precludes such literal interpretations. But in that nebulous space there is humility and openness, and perhaps enough empathy to understand the consciousness of a massive, frozen chunk of water. With the listener’s perspective diffused into many different vantage points, how might that, too, become a vehicle for the development of compassion? As we listen, we encounter the wisdom that there is meaning not just in the experience of the sublime, that radical juxtaposition of limitlessness and intimacy, but also in the continuum of countless individuals that have taken the same journey.

One of the universal experiences of life on Earth is staring, neck craned, at the cosmos. The vastness of one’s internal life meets the vastness of space, and in that moment those perspectives fuse in a state of wonder and curiosity. Space As An Instrument, the new album by French artist and musician Félicia Atkinson, invites listeners to explore the phantasmic landscapes created in such transformative encounters, when the mind is open and receptive to its environment. Like being absorbed by the immensity of the night sky, this music dilates the imagination and helps us to sit comfortably in the mystery of the ineffable. We are guided through Space As An Instrument by the piano, its a linear story told through restrained, iterative melodies that become entwined with the sounds at the music’s margins - a wisp of electronics, a pinprick of an enunciated consonant. They were recorded on Atkinson’s phone, which was placed next to the keys, or behind her, with the sound of the room bleeding through to give a sense of the place and time of the encounter. She describes these sessions as meetings where she and the piano commune to co-create these spiraling phrases and vaporous dissonances moment by moment. Complicating this dynamic is the presence of digital pianos, which exist in the surreal space of diodes and LED displays. They act as avatars of their three-dimensional counterparts: nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. Still, the inhabited world of people, water, and wind can be heard throughout Space As An Instrument. Often these recordings are integrated into the backdrop of electronics, or reduced to the sound of movements whose physical forms are obscured: the microphone straining against a forceful gust on “Sorry,” arhythmic footsteps traversing an invisible terrain on “Pensées Magiques.” These field recordings take us to the brink of synesthetic experience, allowing us to glimpse with our ear the topography of the imagination. But Atkinson’s music resists any kind of singular perspective on the scene, or any distinct conclusion. “It doesn’t explain anything,” she says, “but it translates the way I perceive it, somehow.” Atkinson is a polymath by nature, engrossed in a variety of daily artistic practices that nourish one another. In her garden, she performs the slow work of cross-species relationship building, cultivating an ideal space for introspection and further creation; many of the album’s vocal and electronic elements were recorded there. Poetry, which she prizes for its capacity to render the everyday tools of meaning-making more enigmatic, becomes folded into the music as well. She paints as often as time allows. One personal limitation Atkinson finds in painting, the rendering of perspective, has become one of her music’s defining characteristics. The vantage point of the listener is slippery and undefined, with sounds at once appearing gigantic and minuscule, distant and immediate. This phenomena is central to “Thinking Iceberg,” a 13-minute piece that was whittled down from an hour and a half performance, who remain only a ghostly presence on the album’s recording. Atkinson wrote the piece in response to Olivier Remaud’s book Thinking Like An Iceberg, in which the philosopher assigns agency to these massive, endangered objects and imagines how they might perceive their millenia-long relationship to humans. Stoic synthesizer tones percolate while water flows just out of the immediate frame with a disarming clarity and presence. As the piece crests, Atkinson’s whispered voice emerges softly, placed right against the listener’s left ear, contrasting with the billowing mass of sound that otherwise dominates. We emerge with a glimmer of awareness of how immensity and delicacy can coexist as time and humanity extract their toll. Félicia Atkinson says her music exists “on the verge of understanding and not understanding,” which often precludes such literal interpretations. But in that nebulous space there is humility and openness, and perhaps enough empathy to understand the consciousness of a massive, frozen chunk of water. With the listener’s perspective diffused into many different vantage points, how might that, too, become a vehicle for the development of compassion? As we listen, we encounter the wisdom that there is meaning not just in the experience of the sublime, that radical juxtaposition of limitlessness and intimacy, but also in the continuum of countless individuals that have taken the same journey.

From beloved composer Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, a revelatory new album of piano pieces, unreleased or virtually inaccessible until now!

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru is a true original – an Ethiopian nun whose recordings have funded orphanages back home since the early ’60s. Her compositions and unique playing style live somewhere between Erik Satie, Debussy, liturgical music of the Coptic Ethiopian Church, and Ethiopian traditional music. It is some of the most moving piano music you will ever hear.

This is the first archival release of the great composer’s recordings since the Éthiopiques series reintroduced her music to the world in 2006. Drawn from original master tapes and a nearly impossible-to-find vinyl release, Jerusalem unveils profound new facets of Emahoy Gebru’s performance and compositions.

The record picks up where the last two Mississippi releases left off, with tracks from her 1972 album Hymn of Jerusalem, of which only a handful of copies are known to exist. These include “Home of Beethoven,” “Aurora,” and a true masterpiece that stands amongst her greatest compositions, the moving “Jerusalem.” “Quand La Mer Furieuse” is the first release featuring Emahoy’s singing voice, forshadowing a vocal album planned for fall 2023. The B-Side brings us the artist’s home recordings - tracks like “Farewell Eve,” “Woigaye Don’t Cry Anymore,” and “Famine Disaster 1974” mark a bridge from liturgical work to dark and intense classical material, a new mode.

This album is released in celebration of Emahoy Gebru’s 99th birthday on December 12, 2022. Mississippi is honored to work with the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Publisher to continue to introduce this visionary composer to the world.

Newly remastered recordings pressed on 160gm black vinyl, heavy jacket with reproduction of 1972 artwork, song notes by the artist. 

The studio at 122 West Loveland Avenue was not an unfamiliar space for Steve Okonski, the leader of his eponymous trio Okonski. Ever since the Colemine label set up shop in Loveland, Ohio it has been a host to a number of groups passing through town, including Durand Jones and the Indications who all of this trio’s members have connections to. After setting aside some time in winter of 2020, Okonski, trained initially as a classical pianist, invited Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery and Aaron Frazer to work on an album that was initially planned to be beat driven and fully composed trio instrumentals. After finishing this first session with some improvisations, a second week was booked in the summer of 2021 to try and capture some more of that spontaneous energy. During this session, the tracks were all improvised and recorded live to a Tascam 388 during several late nights at the Colemine HQ. They were structured to allow the group’s collective intuition to fully shape the melodies and arcs of the music. The album opens with Runner Up, where a triumphant yet melancholic melody in the piano leads to a more reserved B-section driven by the drums and bass of Frazer and Montgomery. As you journey through the remainder of the album you are met with a plethora of evoked and explored emotions. The calmness one has walking down a moonlit street after midnight, the connection one has for a person who comes into their world for just a moment or a lifetime, and the nerves and catharsis one feels when starting upon a new, unknown journey. Magnolia closes with Sunday, a track that was recorded late into the night at the close of their first recording session. Without the spontaneity of Sunday, the remainder of Magnolia would likely have never come to fruition. Magnolia was composed from the heart and from the spirit of those in the studio those late nights in Loveland. It is the culmination of an emotional and artistic release that was not afforded or recognized before the band sat at their instruments, and because of that it is introspective, meditative, spiritual, and new.

The studio at 122 West Loveland Avenue was not an unfamiliar space for Steve Okonski, the leader of his eponymous trio Okonski. Ever since the Colemine label set up shop in Loveland, Ohio it has been a host to a number of groups passing through town, including Durand Jones and the Indications who all of this trio’s members have connections to. After setting aside some time in winter of 2020, Okonski, trained initially as a classical pianist, invited Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery and Aaron Frazer to work on an album that was initially planned to be beat driven and fully composed trio instrumentals. After finishing this first session with some improvisations, a second week was booked in the summer of 2021 to try and capture some more of that spontaneous energy. During this session, the tracks were all improvised and recorded live to a Tascam 388 during several late nights at the Colemine HQ. They were structured to allow the group’s collective intuition to fully shape the melodies and arcs of the music. The album opens with Runner Up, where a triumphant yet melancholic melody in the piano leads to a more reserved B-section driven by the drums and bass of Frazer and Montgomery. As you journey through the remainder of the album you are met with a plethora of evoked and explored emotions. The calmness one has walking down a moonlit street after midnight, the connection one has for a person who comes into their world for just a moment or a lifetime, and the nerves and catharsis one feels when starting upon a new, unknown journey. Magnolia closes with Sunday, a track that was recorded late into the night at the close of their first recording session. Without the spontaneity of Sunday, the remainder of Magnolia would likely have never come to fruition. Magnolia was composed from the heart and from the spirit of those in the studio those late nights in Loveland. It is the culmination of an emotional and artistic release that was not afforded or recognized before the band sat at their instruments, and because of that it is introspective, meditative, spiritual, and new.

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

The soundtrack to “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” (winner of the 1983 British Academy Award for Best Original Score), one of Ryuichi Sakamoto's first film scores and masterpieces, is finally being reissued on 180-gram vinyl for the first time in 41 years since its initial release in 1983. The new cutting master has been remastered in 2024 by Heba Cardley, an engineer who has worked on reissues of Ryuichi Sakamoto's works as well as Bjork's. The booklet includes liner notes by Peter Barakan and Junichi Onuma.

Ryuichi Sakamoto held a no-attendance online solo piano concert "Ryuichi Sakamoto: Playing the Piano 12122020" on December 12, 2020. The live performance was directed by Rhizomatiks and filmed by Zakkubalan, and was simultaneously broadcast worldwide from a studio in Tokyo. The live performance was a one-night-only event with no archive, making it a rare and precious event that will never be seen again.

Juan Atkins and Moritz von Oswald – the two indispensable protagonists of the Electric Garden – plug back into the wilderness. ‘Transport’ – the full length effort brings together a set of studio-refined sequences aimed at colonizing some of the dark energy that pulsates through those areas that are thoroughly electrified, even if not ‘on the grid’. The Detroit-Berlin axis triangulated to a third point which, like the atomic particle that lives in two places at once, flickers between a form of techno-charged ambience and a futuristic club-jazz which cannot be broken down into constitutive parts. Borderland remains caught in a state of enraptured stillness, invisibly moving between every imagined future for electronic sound making. The result: a font from which springs serene and exhilarating musical ideas that vibrate with refined energy for sixty seconds in every minute.

Time and duration are core themes in the work of both William Basinski and Janek Schaefer, and this long-distance collaboration took a suitably long gestation of eight years from start to finish. In that time, our collective perception of time has at times become disorienting. “ . . . on reflection ” remodels that instability as an exquisite work of art – one that is unmoored by time or space. Limitation breeds creativity, revealed as an expression of minimalism and close focus. Deploying a delicate piano passage from their collective archive, Basinski and Schaefer weave and reweave in numerous ways, forging an iridescent flurry of flickering melodies. The sounds of various birds heard from late night windows on tour can occasionally be heard throughout, ricocheting off mirrored facades, reflecting on themselves as they continually reshape their own environments with song. “ . . . on reflection ” looks backwards, a bustling revelry of positive emotions heard through the aging mirrors of memory. It is a celebratory meditation where sound shimmers through time like the light of the sea’s waves glistening as it folds and unfolds upon itself. Created 2014-2022 between L.A. & London. Mixed at Narnia, Walton-on-Thames.

First volume of solo piano compositions by Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, finally back in print. Born to an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa in December of 1923, Emahoy spent much of her youth and young adulthood studying classical music in Europe. She returned to Ethiopia in the 40s, where the war interrupted her musical studies. In 1948 during a church service in Ethiopia, she found her faith and began years of religious training. Throughout her physical and spiritual journeys, Emahoy continued to compose for the piano. She first released this album in Germany 1963 as small private press record. The tracks reflect her own travels, seamlessly moving between Western classical and traditional Ethiopian modes, evoking Erik Satie, the orthodox liturgy, and meditative Christian music all at once. Her work is like no one else in the world, lyrical, hypnotic, full of spiritual warmth and a direct connection to the divine. Emahoy is now 98 years old and still lives in Jerusalem. She continues to play, and the funds from her work go to the righteous causes to which she has dedicated her life. We are incredibly proud to present this music on vinyl again, mastered by Timothy Stollenwerk and presented in collaboration with the EMAHOY TSEGE MARIAM MUSIC PUBLISHER and Foundation. This black vinyl LP version includes a new reproduction of the original artwork, with the composer’s own notes, translated from the original German.

A Day of the Sun is a spiritual jazz masterpiece full of poetry by two geniuses of the Japanese musical scene. Masahiko Togashi and Isao Suzuki, pivotal figures in jazz with a unique talent and sensitivity that transcends conventional jazz forms and styles. In addition to being skilled performers they demonstrate extraordinary compositional talent that transcends their sensibilities and wisdom of more conventional jazz. They are together a wonderful combination of techniques, but without the eyes and ears of these two artists, the mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation that only certain artists are able to recreate together, would never have given rise to this music. The album is based on Togashi's drums/percussion and Suzuki's bass, with occasional changes to cello and piano/synths, and is skillfully performed by just the two of them, creating a unique worldview; a performance that far exceeds expectations. The mystical melodies of the East, earthy percussion, and the sensibilities of the two intertwine to create a unique groove, resulting in a universal masterpiece that will never fade away and connects with today's sound makers and DJs. Top sound quality from original master tapes. Includes 4-sided insert with a very interesting interview at the time with the two musicians regarding the record.

Lucy Duncombe embroiders her signature vocal synthesis on a remarkable cover of Bonnie Beecher’s one-off, cult ballad ‘Come Wander With Me’, a pearlescent gem exemplary of Modern Love’s guess-again, gotta-get-‘em-all 7” shellings - RIYL Maria Chavez, Kara-Lis Coverdale, Laurie Anderson, Nozomu Matsumoto, Niecy Blues. Highly regarded for a pair of innovative releases with 12th Isle, Lucy Duncombe is an experimental singer and artist who uses technology to deftly abstract songcraft in ways that uniquely pique the imagination. With ’Sunset, She Exclaims’ Lucy diversifies Modern Love’s 7” series via a trio of works that embody influences ranging from doo wop to avant garde and pure pop forms, in a style of melismatic sound poetry weft with Jacquardian intricacy. It’s a truly precious, beguiling and evocative record that will reward repeat plays for eons to come, much in the manner of contemporary classics such as Kara-Lis Coverdale’s ‘Grafts’, or Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’. The star of this short story is no doubt ‘Sunset, She Exclaims’, where Lucy reframes Jeff Alexander and Anthony Wilson's haunting ballad, ‘Come Wander With Me’, used as a titular device in The Twilight Zone’s swansong episode, 1964, and which has since notably featured on Vincent Gallo’s ‘Brown Bunny’(2003). In Duncombe’s larynx and motherboard, the song is dissected and reworked as a glossolalic froth of hiccuped melody blooming into crepuscular harmony. Its effect is practically hormonal; affective as indole in, as she puts it, "reducing the stench of the real”, whilst distilling the saccharine sadness of the original to a synaesthetic, dream-nudging whiff of nostalgia. Once you prize yourself away from that A-side, Lucy’s B-side only lures deeper into blurred hyper-pop fantasy. The precedents of Maria Chavez’s experimental sound poetry and Niecy Blues’ raw soul hover around ‘Ghosting’ and ‘Ghosted’, teasing the parameters of avant-pop into plasmic refrains, foregrounding the usually unwanted parts of vocal performance - glitching digital artefacts and errant detritus - in a way that makes the mind’s eye saccade, tracing the half-heard glowworms nestled in its bush of ghosts. Fine-tuned ears will surely recognise the sort of brilliance on show here, and will no doubt revel in its gauzy glaze, which prizes oneiric ambiguity, ephemerality, the supernatural, over anything more corporeal.

The entire album is permeated with ethereal, lo-fi sounds, creating a superb ambient/drone masterpiece that is melancholic and introspective, yet filled with sweet, meditative charm!

"Generative sonic backdrop for bus stations. Designed to enhance space and portray a mod of progressiveness, grandeur, and ethereal calm. A slowly shifting static backdrop designed to enhance modern architecture, rather than compete with it. Sounding as if the structure itself was resonanting. Hovering sound-fields that utilizes sonic phenomena proven to induce states of calm. Can be presented as a multichannel, polyrhythmic installation with different components of the composition emanating form different areas within the structure, and elements constantly shifting in relationship to other elements, creating an organic sonic-tapestry that never repeats the same way. In essence, the soundscape becoming a living organism with unpredictable behavior. Inspired by avant-garde bus station designs such as Domitianus Arquitectura's station in Rio Maior, Portugal; Bluck & Morgen's Busbahnhof Poppenbuttel in Hamburg, Germany; and Metaraum Architect's bus station in Pzorzheim, Germany." - Rod Modell

Ephemera is the debut album by Fergus Jones, the artist formerly known as Perko, an Edinburgh-born, Copenhagen-based producer, DJ and founder of the FELT record label. The nine-track release is out now. Ephemera was developed with collaborative energy as the creative priority, produced by Jones alongside an extensive list of like-minded musicians, lyricists and vocalists including Huerco S, James K, Koreless, Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn of Bristol’s Cold Light crew, Laila Sakini and Lia T. The album embodies Jones’ inner journey as he ranges further than ever sonically and emotionally, emphasising instinct, intensity, tactility and rapture. “Heima” was written and produced with Huerco S and James K between Iceland, Copenhagen and the United States’ East Coast. Developed during and named after the same Icelandic artist residency that birthed Perko & Huerco S’ debut co-production “Prang,” “Heima” is a shimmering piece of fortified trip-pop featuring vocals from James K, appearing here following solo releases for AD 93 and collaborations with Yves Tumor. “Tight Knit” aligns Jones’ graceful production with the raw and restless emotions thundering from the performances of Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn of Cold Light, the shadowy Bristolian collective channelling the city’s deep sonic history into an equally rich future. The album makes a distinctive impact that reverberates and glows long after its runtime. Analogue audio sculpting, adaptive processes and imaginative approaches to creating sound are at the forefront – whether resulting from an endless exchange of iterative stems with Huerco S, or hydrophone recordings with Koreless. Evocative vocal performances and songwriting combine with weighty sound design, gliding easily between the organic and synthetic to reflect and expand the thin spaces of transcendence in each. “This album was made over the last five years in various studio and outdoor locations around the world, reflecting my ongoing emphasis on natural collaboration as a creative ideal. It’s my most personal record yet, written with experimentation and an open attitude as guiding lights.” – Fergus Jones Ephemera follows three prior releases on Numbers under the Perko alias – 2018’s NV Auto, 2020’s The City Rings, and 2023’s Prang, which was included on Resident Advisor’s Best Tracks of 2023. Jones has contributed DJ mixes to the long-running FACT and Truants series, is a frequent guest on radio stations such as NTS and Rinse, and has toured globally.

'Apodelia' is Hotspring's second solo release on Mood Hut, and is partly a further exploration of song forms, studio techniques and instrumentation explored on 2020’s 'Obit for Sunshade'. 'Apodelia' explores lifting into revealing; scouring fidelities, playing with emotion, and improvising by night.

12" is Ryuichi Sakamoto's first original album in about 6 years, since "async" released in 2017. This is a collection of 12 songs selected from musical sketches he created as if he were writing a diary, and compiled them into a single album. The jacket was drawn by Lee Ufan, an international artist representing the "Mono-ha" school.

A solo album released in 2017. It is an ambitious work that breaks new ground after more than a year of recuperation from illness, and several concerts have been held overseas, mainly featuring material from this album. While the previous album "out of noise" was an organic acoustic work, this album makes extensive use of analog synthesizers, including vintage ones. Since one of the original production ideas was the soundtrack to a fictional Tarkovsky film, each song strongly evokes the listener's own image of the film. In fact, after the album's release, Shiro Takatani, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Zakkubalan, and others made a film of the album and its songs, which was also presented as an installation. The album includes "andata," a new signature song that has been performed at every concert in recent years. Also, "fullmoon" and "Life, Life" featured readings by Paul Bowles and David Sylvian, respectively, from the film "Sheltering Sky".

Following releases on Sähkö Recordings and The Trilogy Tapes, "Fever of the World" is the Soda Gong debut by Memotone, the nom de plume of UK-based multi-instrumentalist Will Yates. As a collection, it is both intimate and expansive, like the feeling of gathering one's thoughts before setting off on a long journey or committing to an irrevocable course of action. Throughout, Yates' talents as both player and sound designer are on full display, as are the sonic signatures that have come to characterize the Memotone catalog: low-lit, ECM-inflected noir; evasive and evolving loop-based accretions; and mellifluous mosaics of keys, guitar, reeds, and percussion. It is patient and focused music, built around production techniques and compositional ideas that have been perfected both in studio and in live performance over a period of several years. "Catherine, On Fire" sets the scene, one of two languid, longform selections, and develops slowly from a spare, harmonic-laden guitar loop into a bed of rippling textural ambience and woozy clarinet filigree. Later, "The Bus" and "When the Bakery Has What You Want and It's Cheap" conjure images of rain-streaked windows, fanciful baked confections, and grey skies broken finally by sunlight. Warm, generous, and comfortable in its own skin, this is music that reminds us that when it feels easy to resign ourselves to world weariness, we should pause for a moment and listen to the rustle of the leaves. The wind knows not to linger.

It is with great pride Miasmah announces the posthumous release of this double album of the final work by experimental composer Marcus Fjellström, titled The Last Sunset of the Year. Collected by Marcus’ friends and colleagues Erik K. Skodvin and Dave Kajganich, this release brings together music written and produced during Marcus’ tenure as composer for the first season of the AMC anthology series The Terror, which told the story of the doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage. That said, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR is, by design, not a soundtrack to the show. Dave Kajganich writes in the album’s liner notes: “Some of the pieces will be familiar to those who know The Terror (though in some cases in different forms), but many other pieces are being made available here for the first time. The selected pieces have a unity unto themselves, and we feel strongly that this release should be taken not as a companion to the show, but as Marcus Fjellström ’s final album, on its own terms. We’ve presented these pieces without titles, except for titling the four movements of the journey they suggest. It is a journey that evokes the mystery, grandeur, and desolation of the Arctic, and articulates the spiritual and existential implications of traveling there. In many ways, THE LAST SUNSET OF THE YEAR goes further, and deeper, than the show ever could, presenting a remarkable sonic line from contented exploration, to staggering decline, to death—and even to a final vista beyond death.” Kajganich reached out to begin discussing the idea of this release with Skodvin, back in 2017, after Marcus’ death, but before the series had premiered. In the years since, Dave and Erik have Zoomed and emailed back and forth hundreds of times, studying all seventy-five of the pieces Marcus wrote for the show in all their forms (as many as six or seven versions to a piece), to winnow down a final list of pieces to include. The most difficult phase of the process, Kajganich reveals in the notes, was understanding the best way to sequence the tracks. It required listening to many different track orders and paying close attention to how each order created a slightly different identity for the album through their specific juxtapositions and dynamics. “In a way I can’t fully articulate, it was very much as though Erik and I were having a final, deeply felt and joyous conversation with Marcus himself about the interior lives of these pieces,” Kajganich says. The album’s title comes from a moment in the show when a group of Victorian sailors who are trapped in winter pack ice, suffering dwindling psychological resources and supplies, stand on the deck of one of the doomed ships to watch the sun rise above the horizon for a moment, and then immediately set in the last sunset of the year before six weeks of darkness, an event which, even through the lens of their inevitable coming losses, could still be viewed as something astonishing and beautiful. None of those men could know, nor can we, what waits for us across the line of death, but in The Last Sunset of the Year, Marcus seems to have had a notion.