MUSIC

BJ Nilsen returns with True than Nature, a collection that elevates everyday and environmental sounds through subtle electronic manipulation. Focused on the intrinsic properties of sound itself, the album draws attention to often-ignored sonic phenomena—industrial hums, echoes, labour, and material textures—transforming them into abstract, shifting soundscapes.

By withholding details about source locations and techniques, Nilsen encourages listeners to engage without preconceived anchors, allowing meaning to emerge through deep listening. Titles are left deliberately open-ended, offering symbolic cues rather than fixed narratives. The result is a contemplative, perception-altering experience that blurs the line between the known world and imagined sonic possibility.

Based in Amsterdam, BJ Nilsen has worked since the early 1990s across music, theatre, film, and sound design. His long-standing interest in field recording, environmental acoustics, and the psychological dimensions of sound has led him to explore both natural and industrial terrains, including recent studies of Arctic mining regions and urban soundscapes.

The source material for 'Layering Buddha' are samples derived from a 'Buddha Machine' - an audio artwork by the Chinese/Canadian artist duo FM3. These are cigarette package sized, battery powered sound playback devices, containing nine short musical loops. Due to manufacturing imperfections, individual machines play those with a slightly different sound, pitch and duration. The built-in playback circuit, with its low sampling rate and bit resolution, produces a very rough sound, similar to ancient computer games or talking toys. Rich textures and moving echoes occur when many of these machines are played at the same time, distributed in space.

Illuminated with breathtaking vocals and uncanny poetics, ‘Goodness’ is an open, impressionistic assemblage of drone, ambient, experimental electronics, improvisational music and minimalist dance music.

Across protean forms and voices, feeo explores an ever-evolving counterpoint between connection and isolation, the city and the natural world, the external and the internal. Contrasting beauty with volatility, communion with disintegration, feeo creates an album of absorbing tension between distinct contrasts.

With eleven interconnected pieces of music, each engaged in symbiotic dialogue, ‘Goodness’ represents a sinuous yet uniform work. Each track is like a link in a chain, with each piece revealing its lustre when held up to the light.

feeo describes the album as “an exploration of simultaneous yet opposing states of being; darkness and lightness, obscurity and visibility and most fundamentally, solitude and togetherness. Each song is an adumbration; a partial sketch of one aspect of the LP - each finding its complete meaning when read in the context of the whole.”

Mirroring the push and pull of perception and contemporary experience, ‘Goodness’ oscillates between disparate moods and intensities, reflecting moments of interiority, intimacy, seclusion, collective experience and exterior turbulence.

‘Goodness’ marks an evolution in feeo’s artistic practice, both as her first full-length release, and as a product of wider collaboration after several years working independently. Welcoming close collaborators and select affiliates into the fold, the process of making ‘Goodness’ was very much like the record itself; a deeply personal, special convergence of expression and artistry.

This album finds internationally active turntablist and sound artist dj sniff reconstructing material from the Japanese avant‑garde label doubtmusic. Through a process of constant destruction and regeneration of the source recordings, he creates an entirely new sonic form—an invigorating work that sits at the intersection of turntablism and experimental music.

Sound Reporters was a Dutch publishing company that specialised in anthropology, religion, and history, releasing unique documents of the cultural multiplicity of human societies and their importance. These recordings were originally released on cassette in 1988, and consist of field recordings made on the Greek island of Amorgos, part of the Cyclades island group in the Aegean Sea. The release was jointly credited to the painter Harry Van Essen, who lived for several years on the island and recorded its soundscapes, and also to the ethnomusicologist and founder of Sound Reporters, Fred Gales, who mixed the recordings.

The recordings consist of sketched amalgams of local sounds from Egiali, a port in the northeast of the island. The first half is a soundscape deeply rooted in the island people’s daily lives, alternating sounds of the sea with popular music, recitations of poetry, the sounds of fishing boats, people playing boardgames, a party. The second half takes us out of the village and into the mountains, unveiling the island’s unadorned natural environment: the sounds of cicadas, the buzz of honeybees, the bells of the large herds of goats left out to pasture, etc.

Simultaneous performance for instruments and playback of two of Jakob Ullmann's compositions:

Solo I (1992/93-2010) for flute

Solo IV (2013/14) for low string instrument

A fragile music of swirling, shifting sounds which drift in and out of focus. The two musicians construct their scores independently, interpreting a number of different elements: a combination of graphic images, a series of given pitches, transparencies with lines indicating glissandi and multiphonics, and an agreed time-structure. There is more material than can be included in a single performance, so both musicians also control live playback of some of the ‘extra’ sounds that they have prepared.

Each realisation of these pieces is unique, and Jon Heilbron & Rebecca Lane's realisation is essential.

There is an interview with Jakob Ullmann about the music on the Another Timbre website.

Goja means “chaotic” or “nonsensical” in various Japanese regional dialects.

This new work is packed with freely rambling music that leaps over the boundaries of orthodox musical instruments, homemade ones, and random objects. Listen out for taiko, drums, bits of wood, and a piano, marimba, accordion, rhythm machine, effector, wooden washtub, pot, impact screwdriver, power tool charger, and more…

Features 8 tracks. Download code available.

Pierre Bastien’s "Tools" pays tribute to the Meccano screwdriver, the origin of his mechanical instruments. Using self-made devices, Bastien explores sound’s raw materiality, embracing chance and discovery, and inviting listeners to experience new musical worlds.

“On my end, I had to sooner or later pay a similar tribute to the tool that allowed for the crafting of the Mecanium, from 1976 to this day. [...] Origin of origins, which even preceded the shaping of the sound-generating device, the Meccano screwdriver stands out from the regular screwdriver because of its singular shape: a simple metal rod flattened at one end, and rounded into an oblong loop at the other. [...] This all-new, streamlined, purposeful design helped me, once more, to compose the current record.” - Pierre Bastien

In Tools, Pierre Bastien explores his long-standing fascination with the concept of “elsewhere” from a new perspective. The title echoes an article by René Van Peer, which opens with this concise formula: “I compose with a screwdriver”. Bastien performs on instruments of his own making —mechanical assemblages built primarily from Meccano parts— which structure not only the music itself but also an image of music. Rather than seeking narrative or metaphor, let’s not imagine anything just yet, Bastien invites us first to observe the raw materiality of his mechanisms: the clash of gears, the hum of rotation, the tension between precision and accident.

The machine-instrument at the origin of this record was composed of a rhythm section, a harmonic section with six valves playing six major chords, a rotating nail violin, eight rotating flute mouthpieces, and an automated skeleton of a record player. The device holds its hidden secrets. What emerges, unplanned, carries the essence of discovery. The unexpected remains invisible until it materializes. To discover something is to understand that the world we knew has widened. As such, Bastien’s creative process is a precious reminder that “elsewhere” (and its multitude of worlds) is always lurking around us.

"I'm sitting in a different room than you are now. I'm recording my own voice. By the resonant frequency of the room strengthening itself, my voice is excluding only the rhythmic elements. Repeat recording and playback until completely destroyed. At that point what you hear is the very natural resonance frequency of the room expressed by my voice. I have this movement in my voice. I think of it as a way to smooth out band irregularities, and I'm not conscious of revealing this phenomenon itself. "

A repress of the classic "I'm Sitting in a Room (1969)" by contemporary musician Alvin Lucier (1931-), originally released in 1981.
By repeatedly recording and playing back the sound of voices echoing in a particular space until the voices become indistinct, the work explores the acoustical engineering of the space to reveal its specific frequencies. It is a work that can only be realized by actually being there, and although it can be perceived as a mere acoustic work just by listening to the recorded sound source, its original purpose is a groundbreaking content that allows the listener to embody a vast and infinite space.

1980 super masterpiece. A work released in 1972, in which a wire with a length of 15 meters was pasted, huge magnets were installed at both ends, and the vibration relationship between air and wire was emitted by an oscillator. This CD contains four tracks of about 18 minutes, but it seems that it was actually an installation for 72 hours in a row. A meditative ecstatic continuous sound that changes depending on the ceiling of the place, the flow of air, the comings and goings of people, etc.

DUMB TYPE is a multimedia performance art group based in Kyoto that was formed in 1984 and continues to be active at the forefront of the art scene. We are excited to announce the simultaneous release of two cassette book works produced by musician Toru Yamanaka and the late Teiji Furuhashi, a central figure of the group, for works from the early DUMB TYPE Theatre era: "Every Dog Has His Day (recorded in 1985)" and "Plan For Sleep (recorded in 1986)," now available for the first time on vinyl.

Since the founding of DUMB TYPE, Yamanaka has primarily been responsible for music production, while the late Furuhashi played a crucial role in translating Yamanaka’s compositions into stage direction. Their collaboration began with previous groups ORG and R-STILL, and was influenced by the NEW WAVE and progressive rock trends they were pursuing at the time, as well as by artists like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, who fused minimal music and avant-garde performance. Moreover, their bold incorporation of cutting-edge sampling and house music during that era laid the foundation for DUMB TYPE's sound, marking an important intersection in the history of minimalism, ambient music and performance art in Japan.

In the performance of this work, "Plan for Sleep" (1986), created simultaneously with “Every Dog Has His Day” (1985), Yamanaka took on the role of sound operation. The performance begins with a minimal piece where the tones of the electronic organ and striking phrases from the piano and saxophone race forward in syncopation. Following this, various sound fragments drift over a deafening industrial beat reminiscent of machine noises. There are also pieces that transform the typing sounds of a typewriter into rhythm, showcasing a range of experiments inspired by the then-novel sampling technology, beautifully intertwining with the physicality of the performance.

Additionally, influenced significantly by film music, Yamanaka incorporates a rich tapestry of colors through melancholic melodies that evoke various scenes, from secular jazz to other influences. This work constructs a uniquely original and sophisticated worldview that stands out even when surveying the canon of avant-garde performance art from around the globe in the postmodern era.

Manon Anne Gillis has been creating music using primitive systems since the 1980s. Her ninth solo album weaves together her voice, breathing, words and sounds using ingenuous methodologies. She has remarked that her sound is not something conceptual and that feeling and immersion matter far more to her than understanding. Her latest collection consists of ten pieces that approach sound as a tactile, sensory experience. She transforms spoken word and singing into blurred noise and irregular repetitions, plunging them into rhythm tracks to create new inner worlds.

Manon Anne Gillis has been creating music using primitive systems since the 1980s. Her ninth solo album weaves together her voice, breathing, words and sounds using ingenuous methodologies. She has remarked that her sound is not something conceptual and that feeling and immersion matter far more to her than understanding. Her latest collection consists of ten pieces that approach sound as a tactile, sensory experience. She transforms spoken word and singing into blurred noise and irregular repetitions, plunging them into rhythm tracks to create new inner worlds.

Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based music artist who has recorded since 2019 several albums on labels such as Important Records, IIKKI, and recently 12K among others. Working with electronic, instrumental, and concrete sounds, he crafts immersive assemblages of long overlapping tones and blurred resonance, cut through with textural crunch and hiss.

Roméo Poirier’s Off The Record (faitiche 39) transforms the overlooked detritus of recording sessions into intricate, surreal sound pieces. Across fourteen short works, Poirier builds from accidental studio captures — engineers’ instructions, idle chatter, mic checks, false starts — fragments never intended for release. Drawing on the visual art concept of “Accumulation” pioneered by Arman, Jean Tinguely and Daniel Spoerri, Poirier assembles more than a thousand found sounds from archival tapes. Voices from old shellac grooves meet digital snippets lifted from YouTube, warped and reconfigured into vivid, shifting collages. The result is a series of miniature worlds where the mundane mechanics of music-making become the raw material for new sonic narratives. By reframing the prelude to performance, Poirier crafts a universal story about creativity in the studio — one that’s at once playful, intimate, and strangely cinematic.

CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER charts a new period of exploration and discovery for Alexander Tucker both as musician and producer. After discarding a year’s worth of material, Tucker sought the advice of Downwards Records label boss Karl O’Connor aka Regis who advised him on production techniques and approach. Along with further support form Freddy Lomas of Kinn and Emptyset’s James Ginzburg, Tucker got to work on a new set of material with a heightened sense of clarity and density. Tucker explains “Making this album really tested me, it was the outcome of a long period of hard lessons and harsh realities, but I had some good friends to guide me along the way and pull me out of the mire.”

At the core of MICROCORPS is Tucker’s complex modular systems, knitted into the tracks are triggered samples of his own cello and bass guitar playing, which meld into the electronic fabric of each track. Tucker expands “I wanted the album to sit somewhere between machine technology with something primitive, where synthetic and acoustic sources become intertwined. I like the idea of different dimensions phasing in and out of one another, creating new areas where I can explore sound, structures and imaginary spaces”

These imaginary spaces play a key role in the construction of CLEAR VORTEX CHAMBER. Tucker’s background in fine art and his current work with experimental comics bleeds into the unspoken landscapes of his music. “I want to trigger parts of the brain that can dream up imagery whilst at the same time focus of the sonic structure of the music itself, I guess I’m still obsessed with trying to create some sort of psychoactive environment” The architecture of each track presents itself in the form of massive kicks, sonar clicks and kinetic percussive rhythms, supported by pulsing bass drones. Cello and bass guitar samples initially bowed, plucked and hit by mallets are triggered creating dense wooden timbres that punctuate the electronic field. Voices and vocals both treated and untreated weave throughout the album in the form of cryptic dialogues and unspooling wordless singing, adding to the cross pollination of something human, machine and a space in-between.

Collaboration is a key element to MICROCORPS. Justin K Broadrick’s heavy spidery guitar lines and processed screaming rip wormholes in ‘FEDBCK’, Regis lends his distinct vocal work to ‘ZONA’, Japanese artist Phew injects organ drones, vocals and fried electronics throughout ‘SANSU’. On penultimate track ‘FEBCK 2’, Karl D’Silva’s droning saxophone joins Broadrick’s feed backing guitar noise and improvising lyricist, producer and sound artist Elvin Brandhi spits out cut up diatribes across final track ‘MALLETS’. Throughout the album Tucker’s own processed voice sits alongside singer JJOWDY’s eerily gentle laments

Rian Treanor presents 10 x 10 = Great Hits, a collaborative album born from his Electronic Music Club — a free after-school project in Rotherham where young people learn to make music alongside leading experimental artists.

Over two years, guests including RP Boo, YPY, Beatrice Dillon, Elvin Brandhi, Bianca Scout, Will Guthrie, Cara Tolmie, Modern Institute, DJ Sprinkles, Gavsborg and Lord Spike Heart joined sessions that encouraged play, invention and curiosity. The resulting album was co-produced by Treanor with Brandhi, Modern Institute, Bianca Scout and RP Boo, with workshops coordinated by Isabella Carreras and artwork by NaOH.

Operated as a non-profit, all proceeds from the project fund trips and activities for the participants.

This record brings together four original works commissioned for the exhibition Afrosonica – Soundscapes, presented at the MEG (Museum of Ethnography in Geneva) in 2025. Blending sound art with reflections on the democratization of museum collections, this recording project explores connections: between past and present, between archives and living practices, between sonic materials, collective imaginaries, and diasporic trajectories.

The artists — KMRU, Midori Takada, Yara Mekawei, and Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape (Mo Laudi) — reactivate objects, voices, and gestures. Through listening to their creations, they weave links between buried memories and contemporary realities, between spiritualities, struggles, identity reinventions, and the poetry of sound.

This record brings together four original works commissioned for the exhibition Afrosonica – Soundscapes, presented at the MEG (Museum of Ethnography in Geneva) in 2025. Blending sound art with reflections on the democratization of museum collections, this recording project explores connections: between past and present, between archives and living practices, between sonic materials, collective imaginaries, and diasporic trajectories.

The artists — KMRU, Midori Takada, Yara Mekawei, and Ntshepe Tsekere Bopape (Mo Laudi) — reactivate objects, voices, and gestures. Through listening to their creations, they weave links between buried memories and contemporary realities, between spiritualities, struggles, identity reinventions, and the poetry of sound.

Shadowing the swarming, boiling liminality of 'Croon Harvest' and 'Sub', 'The Vestige' unbalances Italian electroacoustic veteran Guisseppe Ielasi's subtle guitarwork with Manchester-based composer Jack Sheen's phantasmic post-'Automatic Writing' room tones and temporal irregularities.

Good one, this. It doesn't work on paper; the two artists' methodologies diverge significantly, with the Italian guitarist working in a more isolated fashion, while Sheen is best known for his ensemble work. But they're both drawn to sounds and forms that drift just out of focus - "mysterious, liminal musical material" in Sheen's own words - and that's the starting point for 'The Vestige'. They began by shuttling recorded material back and forth, Sheen using acoustic stems from his recent projects and Ielasi dubbing sketches with his guitar, and then polished up the ideas at Ielesi's studio in Monza, just outside of Milan. And there's an intentionality to this material that followers of either artists will recognize. Engineering the material so it's almost unrecognizable, the duo create a sequence of thirteen untitled tracks that represent the purity and allure of sound itself. Attempting to imagine this sonic liminality - a sound that's between realms, not quite music, not quite noise, not quite acoustic, not quite electronic - they blur the spectrum, creating a depth of field that's constantly captivating.

And although the album won't surprise anyone who spent time poring over 'Croon Harvest', the inclusion of Ielesi's delicate instrumentation widens the material and crumples some of its textures. On 'V7', we can hear those same Sheen-patented steam hisses and boiling whistles, but 'V9' sounds like that baton's been passed to Ielesi when his string-powered microsounds get treated with the same lopsided EQ processes. Both artists manage to mold their sources into impressions, where the texture of the sounds is more important than the aesthetic character. Just clap yr ears around the gamelan-like mid-range guitar twangs on 'V11', or the decaying brass that animates 'V12'. If you're fascinated by sound's plasticity, this one's for you.

DUMB TYPE is a multimedia performance art group based in Kyoto that was formed in 1984 and continues to be active at the forefront of the art scene. We are excited to announce the simultaneous release of two cassette book works produced by musician Toru Yamanaka and the late Teiji Furuhashi, a central figure of the group, for works from the early DUMB TYPE Theatre era: "Every Dog Has His Day (recorded in 1985)" and "Plan For Sleep (recorded in 1986)," now available for the first time on vinyl. Since the founding of DUMB TYPE, Yamanaka has primarily been responsible for music production, while the late Furuhashi played a crucial role in translating Yamanaka’s compositions into stage direction. Their collaboration began with previous groups ORG and R-STILL, and was influenced by the NEW WAVE and progressive rock trends they were pursuing at the time, as well as by artists like Laurie Anderson, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson, who fused minimal music and avant-garde performance. Moreover, their bold incorporation of cutting-edge sampling and house music during that era laid the foundation for DUMB TYPE's sound, marking an important intersection in the history of minimalism, ambient music and performance art in Japan. The work “Every Dog Has His Day (1985)" represents a defining moment for the sound identity of DUMB TYPE, created through the collaboration of Yamanaka and Furuhashi. The minimalist tracks feature repetitive and striking phrases on piano and synthesizer, a radical approach that transforms various concrete sound samples into beats together with a pleasant ambiance that envelops everything with meticulously applied effects. Additionally, rhythms such as waltzes and shuffles reflect a fusion of respect for past music and modernism, beautifully establishing the iconic sound of early DUMB TYPE. The diverse expressions of the tracks trigger signals that dance around, including driving noise, electronic sounds, and telephone busy signals, evoking scenes that rise and fall, transforming before our eyes.

Kunsthaus Bregenz presents Wish You Were Gay, a major exhibition by Anne Imhof that gathers new sculpture, painting, sound and six video works never before shown. The show reflects on the artist’s formative years while extending themes that have defined her practice from the beginning.

Imhof revisits early recordings from 2001–03, a period when her life and work overlapped to the point of being inseparable. Using handheld camcorders – then a new technology that allowed the screen to flip – she performed directly to the lens, testing gestures, movements, and songs with guitars, amps, and her close circle of friends and collaborators. These raw documents, urgent and improvised, form the foundation of her later explorations of presence, absence, chance, and fate.

Across the exhibition, Imhof transforms this material into a language of repetition, doubling, and variation, situating the body as a central medium. Figures slow into moments of suspended tension, or erupt with sudden force, echoing her distinctive performance works. Biographical in tone and steeped in the realities of queer community and chosen family, Wish You Were Gay is both intimate and expansive, drawing threads from past to present in a charged meditation on life, art, and endurance.

Soundtrack to Cyprien Gaillard’s new stereoscopic film, Retinal Rivalry (2024), is an entrancing journey through Germany’s urban landscape and its layers of historical and social significance.

A decade after its release, A Fragile Geography returns transformed. This limited edition cassette accompanies the AFG10 anniversary reissue, offering an inspired re-envisioning of Rafael Anton Irisarri’s landmark compositions. Reworks presents distinctive readings of these pieces, with each artist leaving their personal mark on the material. The titles remain unchanged, with the sole exception of “Hiatus,” reborn here as “Ausencia.” Together, these reimaginings extend the emotional cartography of the album into new terrains.

KMRU reframes “Displacement” with expansive, glimmering layers that open into meditative ambient landscapes. Nairobi born and Berlin based, he is known for morphing field recordings into vivid aural experiences, often capturing the texture of footsteps, foliage, and distant city life and weaving them into contemplative soundscapes. In this version he introduces subtle new sounds, including stringlike synths that trace and heighten the piece’s emotional arc. The result invites close listening, offering enveloping tones where the organic and the synthetic gently collide and flow.

Penelope Trappes renders “Reprisal” as a voice-led invocation of the delicate and the intimate. Her wistful vocals bloom with fragile sorrow, rising over shimmering strands of strings to create a sound world at once sacred and shadowed. She is adept at channeling inherited grief into music that is transcendent and otherworldly. The interplay of her voice, the strings, and her use of space and depth draws those qualities into Irisarri’s orbit, imbuing “Reprisal” with the same spiritual weight and clarity that define her most powerful work.

Kevin Richard Martin (a.k.a. The Bug) transforms “Empire Systems” into a cavernous “Iced Mix,” driven by polyrhythmic double bass motifs and sculpted from subterranean pressure and negative space. Known for pushing sound to its physical limits, Martin brings the stark intensity of his dub and noise infused practice into Irisarri’s architecture. The track seethes with harmonic distortion and erupts in white noise rhythms, its brooding low end depth and icy reverberant textures amplifying the tension. Vulnerability and force are set in stark relief, as silences feel as heavy as the bursts of sound themselves. The result is a stark study in atmosphere, restraint and impact, reframed through Martin’s singular lens of sonic mass and low end intensity.

On Side B, Mabe Fratti opens with a cinematic, dreamlike, Lynchian reimagining of “Hiatus” in her native Spanish (“Ausencia”). She threads cello and voice so wondrously that her rendering feels at once hauntingly beautiful and disquieting. Emotionally charged melodies shift in unexpected directions, while her soft, intimate vocals hover above Irisarri’s brooding synth textures. Fratti’s gift for blending experimental and avant pop sensibilities with visceral, emotionally powerful expression shines resplendently here. She gives voice to Irisarri’s reflections on the passage of time and his growing desire to reconnect with his familial roots.

Abul Mogard stretches “Persistence” into a vast drone elegy. A master of patient sound sculpting, Mogard layers evolving waves of analog synths into a dense shroud that radiates its own internal light. Gradual surges of tone and subtle harmonic shifts emphasize the piece’s endurance and inevitability. Irisarri’s original composition, in Mogard's hands, becomes a rumination on time’s unrelenting flow. Melancholy and transcendence coexist in equal measure in this engulfing, cathartic rework.

William Basinski and Gary Thomas Wright close the cycle with a spectral version of “Secretly Wishing for Rain.” Basinski’s field recordings of Reseda rainfall and birdsong, which open and close the rework, add a personal touch and evoke the imagined sound of a grainy film reel flickering to life. The piece suspends Irisarri’s yearning for the Pacific Northwest, lodging it hazily between memory, place and an unreachable dream. It feels like a fading recollection, half forgotten and half felt. A final gesture that dissolves the album into vapor, leaving the listener adrift in its lingering afterglow.

Mastered with great care by Stephan Mathieu and featuring a remixed version of the original artwork by Daniel Castrejón, this edition refracts the language of the original through new prisms. Less a return than a passage, across time, across interpretation, into uncharted emotional realms.