MUSIC

The album includes the excellent track "Rasta Forever," which explodes with hypnotic and blissful dub techno sounds accompanied by powerful narration by Horace Andy.

On his latest full-length, Low End Activist swerves towards weightless grime and suspended hardcore miniatures to tell a very personal story. The UK-rooted producer continues his habit of zeroing in on a distinct approach for each release, leaving a logical breadcrumb trail of soundsystem science in his wake as he channels decades of bass absorption into 14 atmospheric cuts that prize patience and precision over obvious club functionality. Municipal Dreams plays out as a semi-autobiographical tour through the Blackbird Leys estate that the Activist grew up on. It’s a lived reflection on inequality and the ripple effect it has in working class communities, using the sonic palette to set the mood and scattering pointed samples throughout to spell out the story. In sampling the exhaust of a stolen Subaru Impreza, ‘TWOC’ looks back to the recreational car theft which was standard entertainment for the kids in his community. There’s an underlying idea that this ‘council estate sport’ wouldn’t have been so prevalent if there were public services and opportunities presented to the scores of disaffected youth looking for somewhere to direct their energy and frustration. In ‘Just A Number (Institutionalised)’ LEA alludes to the shattered juvenile detention system, growing up seeing friends and family members locked up at ease with little to no support on being released back into society, just meant that the same cycles of behaviour would play out over and over.

‘Violence’ samples from a short film shot by the drama division of the Blackbird Leys Youth Club to evoke the physical threat which formed a background hum to life on the estate. The industrial mechanics of the local car factory, which served an integral role as a workplace for many in the community, gets sampled in ‘They Only Come Out At Night’ while the ‘Everyone I look up to are either junkies or criminals’ sample in ‘Broke’ looks to a lack of positive role models. Municipal Dreams isn’t a one-note indictment of life on the estate, ‘Innocence’ captures the simplicity of a child at birth before their environment has time to shape them. The Hope interludes cut through the grim honesty of the longer tracks while a subtle thread of wry humour finds its way into some of the talking heads cutting through the signature LEA murk. But honesty is the operative word here, and the message feels all the more meaningful at a time when the UK’s social divisions are laid bare in the wake of a devastating stretch of austerity. Returning to Blackbird Leys to shoot images for the photo-zine and album cover, the Activist found the local community centre being demolished. The local pub stands derelict, its faded Welcome sign a grimly ironic portent of the options facing children of the estate in the wider world. Funnelling his memories, hopes and fears into a singular twist on the bass weight tradition, LEA captures evocative scenes that land somewhere between kitchen sink realism and rave futurism.

Some marriages are made in heaven and this is definitely one of them. Two of the great ambient masters of recent times concoct a stunning EP full of spine-tinglingly beautiful moments, subtle rhythms and soul-soothing tones. Echoes of Ry Cooder and Eric Satie mingle with found-sounds and warm electronics to create a landmark of ambient exotica.

Jim Coles’s fifth instalment of his best-selling ‘Acid Dub Studies’ series arrives in the form of the third set of original works exploring the infectious sound of the 303 bass-line in a dubwise setting. The album takes in traditional dub mixing approaches in a digital and roots/digi-dub style whilst also making space for more electronic and ambient processes to close the project.

‘Acid Dub Studies III’ arrives after 2 years of touring the material in a live setting at festivals and clubs including CTM at Berghain, Les Nuits Sonores, and Andrew Weatherall's Convenanza festival and is the culmination of some 5 years of experimenting with a style that has been met with critical acclaim, reaching far and wide into many a DJ’s box having been noted by some as a truly ground-breaking approach to working with the 303.

*300 copies limited edition* Drawing from field recordings collected during a trip to Japan, boring tables saturates sonic vignettes in sentimental key, replaying familiar traces of lived experience into something more abstract. The seven tracks on mathematical model 0010, Luca Quartarone's debut album, trail through evolving tonal expanses that envelop the environment in a perpetually expanding haze of serenity. Though sonic fragments hail from the everyday, the compositions themselves inevitably glide towards something much larger—just like a passing instant can extend into an ongoing remembrance.

The title of the album is inspired by a piece of land art by Hiroshi Sugimoto, which Luca encountered during a visit to the Enoura Observatory at the Odawara Art Foundation. The work features a metallic plane that embodies the geometry of a hyperbolic surface with constant negative curvature, continuously converging toward a 5mm gauge without ever meeting. Much like the geometry of this piece suggests a mathematical infinity, the album's sonic cartography evokes the feeling of intimate gestures within infinite expanses.

Properly deep and mysterious future-primitivism on the debut recordings from a reclusive artist about whom we know almost nothing except that they hail from the Mesolongi region of western Greece. Uncanny ambient chamber spectres are the order of the day, with a sound that could have been conjured decades or just weeks ago - who knows - giving something like The Caretaker processing crates of rebetika instead of the usual ballroom dirges.

Aeson Zervas is yet another enigma to emerge from a country that, in recent times, has gifted us the inventive spirits of Christos Chondropoulos’ and Nikolas Rafael Hadjilaskaris’ nebula of projects spanning Live Adult Entertainment, Christian Love Forum and ElHellEll - not to mention Jay Glass Dubs - and which has made Athens a magnet for the Euro avant garde and experimental in-betweeners.

Zervas’ music exists in a space out of time, manifesting a more discreet sound than any of his compatriots, but sharing a feel for displaced, etheric space and timeless, nostalgic romance. His eight-part debut album summons the ghosts of Greek folk and classical music in slow moving arrangements set in eerily iridescent plasma. Uncredited voices and instrumentation are wreathed in hypnotic, noumenal plumes that settle on the mind like smoke caught by moonlight.

He clearly shares the hypnagogic allure and sozzled sensuality of The Caretaker, as though James Kirby was reminiscing on a past life or spirit quest in Greece, but he also somehow reminds us of the solemn beauty of Dominique Lawalrée’s Belgian attic meditations, distinguished by subtle flourishes of near black metal dungeon gloom and arcane synth flickers that jolt the mind into unusual states of curious delight.

Unmissable, if you know what’s good.

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.

When Jako Maron reimagined Réunion island's politically-charged maloya sound on 'The electro Maloya experiments of Jako Maron', he focused on the genre's distinctive, revolutionary rhythms. Electro-plating the call-and-response thuds, he used the language of techno to upset the expected template, disrupting maloya's 6/8 pulse with modular bleeps and Roland kicks. He takes a different approach on 'Mahavélouz', focusing on the bobre, traditional maloya's only melodic instrument, a long bow amplified by a calabash that's known as the berimbau in Brazil. Maron was fascinated by the bobre's unique sonic signature, and noted that when it's usually played, it's drowned out by the louder percussive instruments. So he enlisted a number of traditional bobre performers to play a series of solos, using them to guide the album's four lead tracks and distorting and compressing the serrated hits until they stood confidently in front of his undulating roulér (bass drum) and sati (hi-hat) patterns.

"These four pieces are the culmination of my research into electronic maloya," explains Maron. "There's no need for words on this music; the bobre is the voice, and it is an ancestral voice. It's a reimagining of maloya kabaré in an electro form." This is the music that Maron has used to drive his recent live performances, so it prioritizes maloya's dancefloor potential. Swapping the traditional roulér and sati sounds for TR-606, TR-909 and TR-707 hits, he generates a hypnotic roll on opening track 'Paré po saviré' (rise up), forming a rubbery backdrop for Amemoutoulaop's acidic bobre twangs. Maron describes the track as a "call to bring spirits and people together", and using piercing feedback squeals to harmonize with the bobre, he introduces us to the voice that anchors the entire album. On 'Bék dann dir (try harder), he augments the bobre with glassy Korg Polysix chimes and Machinedrum sounds, and 'Zésprimaron'(the Maron spirit), ushers us towards a ceremony, shuffling his rhythm into a ritualistic throb, and using squelchy synth sounds to flutter into a trance.

Maron concludes his live bobre experiments with '1 piton 3 filaos' (one hill and three trees), and it's his most ambitious fusion, with hallucinatory flutes and technoid stabs rising weightlessly in-between Amemoutoulaop's frenetic performance. But this isn't the end of his investigation: Maron fleshes out 'Mahavélouz' with tonal studies that replicate the bobre synthetically. On 'Mdé prototrash', the characteristic ping is re-created by his modular system, and it's almost indistinguishable from the original instrument, buzzing and popping alongside Maron's surging percussion. The sound is more uncanny on 'dann kér Mahaveli' (in the heart of marvelous land) but no less affecting, knotted around synthetic bird calls and entrancing warbles. Even more idiosyncratic than its predecessors, 'Mahavélouz' is a bold step forward for Maron that builds on ancient foundations to construct a staggeringly new kind of dance music.

The artist sometimes known as Huerco S. ushers a phase shift of sound to the shoegazing harmonic gauze of Make Me Know You Sweet, his immersive debut proper as Pendant. In this horizontal mode, Brian Leeds relays abstract stories from a headspace beyond the dance, placing his interests in the Romantic landscapes of JMW Turner, Robert Ashley's avant-garde enigmas, and Indigenous North American philosophy at the service of a more expressive, oneiric sound that sub/consciously avoids the trap falls of "chillout" ambient cliché. Across seven amorphous, texturally detailed tracks he establishes far reaching coordinates for both Pendant and the West Mineral Ltd. label, which aims to release everything except the commonly accepted, traditional forms of late 20th/early 21st century dance music, while also representing the work of his inner circle of friends, producers, artists. In that that sense there's a definite feeling of "no place like home" to his new work, but that home appears altered, much in the same way The Caretaker/Leyland Kirby deals with themes of memory and nostalgia. It's best described as mid-ground music, as opposed to the putative background purpose of ambient styles, or the upfront physicality of dance music. Rather, the sound billows and unfurls with a paradoxically static chaos, occupying and lurking a space between the eyes and ears in a way that's not necessarily comforting, and feels to question the nature and relevance of ubiquitous pastoral, new age tropes in the modern era of uncertainty and disingenuity. The results ponder an impressionistic, romantically ambiguous simulacrum of real life worries and anxiety, feeling at once dense and impending yet without center. From the keening, 11-minute swell of "VVQ-SSJ" at the album's prow, to the similar scope of its closer, Pendant presents an absorbing vessel for introspection, modulating the listener's depth perception and moderating our intimacy with an elemental push and pull between the curdling, bittersweet froth of "BBN-UWZ", the dusky obfuscation of "IBX-BZC" and, in the supremely evocative play of phosphorescing light and seductive darkness in the mottled depths of "KVL-LWQ", which also benefits from additional production by Pontiac Streator. Make Me Know You Sweet taps into a latent, esoteric vein of American spirituality that's always been there, yet is only divined by those who remain open-minded to its effect. Master and lacquer cut by Matt Colton.

Delicate glitches drifting like particles, ambient textures rising like mist—West Mineral, the seminal imprint founded by Huerco S. and a defining force in the post-2010s “Dubient” movement, returns with another essential release. Sleepdial is the solo project of Denver-based experimental musician Luke Thinnes, known for his releases as Dubharp on 100% Silk and as French Kettle Station on Slagwerk. This debut LP offers a soundworld where blurred drones and error-like noise artifacts linger with echoes of nameless, half-remembered emotions. Navigating the liminal zones between loop and non-loop, structure and collapse, it gently scatters fragments of memory into Dubient silence. A crystalline document of dreamlike introspection—one that glows quietly within the contemporary experimental continuum. Mastered by Rashad Becker.

This is a record of a quiet curse engraved at the intersection of post-club, ambient noise, and electronic ritual music. The debut work of anonymous unit SixSixSevenFortySeven by NVST and Zohar, released by Manchester-based YOUTH, one of the most prestigious labels in the current left field, has arrived on analog. Rusty iron reverberations and closed-room grooves intertwine. A labyrinth of industrial/experimental electro that traces the dark side of the city! Disturbing noise, distorted beats, and vague voices fluctuate throughout the album, the rhythm repeats like a relic of memory, and occasionally a melody lit in the distance bleeds like a scar. This is not so much an album of sound as it is an "invisible map" drawn by the ghosts of the city.

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.

Very different from Biosphere's last AD 93 offering, 'The Way of Time' is a freewheeling set of atmospheric vintage synth jams, dubby ambient techno experiments and decelerated electro workouts that's inspired by American poet and author Elizabeth Madox Roberts' 'The Time Of Man'. Essential listening for fans of 'Patashnik', then.

On 2021's 'Angel's Flight', Geir Jenssen focused his gaze on Beethoven's String Quartet No. 14, tweaking and stretching it to tease out its essence. He's on more familiar ground here, using Joan Lorring's voice, from a 1951 radio adaptation of 'The Time Of Man', to guide us through a spruced-up spread of his signature sounds. If you've kept up with his releases, then you'll know that the last few albums have been made with restored keyboards and drum machines - a marked shift from his period using samples and software.

'The Way Of Time' seems to follow the same path: opener 'Time Of Man' is barely more than a brassy analog lead and Lorring's smudgy voice, while the title theme (that repeats in various forms), with its acidic plucks and sequenced repetitions takes us back to Jenssen's milestone album 'Patashnik', when he set the bar for ambient techno. It's a welcome return to familiar sonics; unlike his last couple of synth-heavy albums, that sounded like fun diversions and jams, 'The Way Of Time' holds neatly together as a unit, well braided by its journeyman theme. Lorring's voice is the anchor, and Jenssen's able to refresh his most referenced material with contemporary processes and techniques.

Occasionally, you find music outside the commercial mainstream, outside of everything – the music of visionaries, eccentrics, inventors, loners, the keepers of secrets, the path-finders. Moondog, Daphne Oram, Harry Partch are from this mould. And so too is Lori Vambe. New on Strut, the first ever reissue of Vambe’s privately pressed original albums from 1982, Drumland Dreamland and Drumgita Solo. A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist, Lori Vambe is a unique figure in British music. Creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced ‘drum-guitar’) or string-drum, Vambe intended to create a kind of music that had never been made in order to pursue access to the fourth dimension. Vambe was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and his father, Lawrence Vambe, was a noted Zimbabwean journalist and author. Moving to London in 1959, Vambe immersed himself in the Brixton squat movement of the early 1970s, teaching himself to drum and creating a short-lived performance group, The Healing Drums of Brixton (Vambe, the sculptor Alexander Sokolov and outsider musician Michael O’Shea). Vambe later had a dream-vision involving a feeling of ecstasy while playing an unknown instrument that extended from his own umbilical cord; the instrument would manifest itself as the drumgita. In 1982, he privately produced a pair of home recordings, the diptych set Drumgita Solo and Drumland Dreamland, releasing them on his own label Drumony. On these records, he rejected any commercial aesthetic and employed tape effects, temporal shifts, reversed sound and overdubbing to investigate space-time and access the fourth dimension. Combining layered drums with the rhythmic throb of the drumgita and, on Drumland Dreamland, an improvised piano performance by Brazilian concert pianist Rafael Dos Santos, the albums are both hypnotic and perturbing. Both albums were cut at Portland Studios by Chas Chandler and stand as a concealed monument of Black British experimental music. 500 copies of each record were originally pressed, and both were released together. The albums were never performed live. For this first ever reissue of Drumland Drumland and Drumgita Solo, Strut presents the two albums in their original artwork, housed in a deluxe slipcase including an additional 8-page 12”-sized booklet featuring unseen photos, liner notes and an interview with Lori Vambe by The Wire magazine writer Francis Gooding. Both albums are fully remastered by The Carvery.

Strut presents an exclusive reissue of Experience Unlimited’s 1977 debut album, Free Yourself, featuring a brand new interview with bandleader and co-founder ‘Sugar Bear.` This seminal recording blends soul, jazz, and funk-rock, laying the foundation for Washington D.C.'s go-go scene. Experience unlimited had originally started out in 1973 when they met at Ballou Senior High School in South-East D.C. and came to the attention of Black Fire Records’ Jimmy Gray after winning a school talent competition. “Jimmy saw that we had a lot of potential and he put us into the studio,” remembers bandleader Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott. “That was our first experience recording - I remember that he just told us to be ourselves and we just gathered together and played. We were young kids then saying what we felt.” Free Yourself is a free-flowing album, full of positive messages and infectious grooves. “We could play any style,” continues Sugar Bear. “The album has a lot of different songs and feelings – from ‘Peace Gone Away’ to ‘Funky Consciousness’ which features some heavy guitar work and ‘Free Yourself’ where you can hear early stylings of go-go – it’s all in one. We just wanted to record where we were at.” Experience Unlimited would go on to score the huge hit ‘Da Butt’ in 1988 which featured in the Spike Lee movie School Days and would add their unmistakeable rolling rhythms to Grace Jones’ ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ and Kurtis Blow’s ‘Party Time’ This new reissue of Free Yourself features full original artwork including the cover painting by Malik Edwards. It is remastered by The Carvery and includes a brand new interview with bandleader and co-founder Gregory “Sugar Bear” Elliott alongside rare photos.

Nigeria 70: No Wahala returns to a fertile heyday in Nigerian music when established styles like highlife and juju became infused with elements of Western jazz, soul and funk in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

"The Nigeria 70 series is the gift that keeps on giving [...] a reliable source for some of the finest music to come out of 1970s and 80s Nigeria" (Pop Matters)

If we can learn to love, think and serve, the mind will become so powerful and co-ordinate that it will unerringly direct all other of our activities. Our calm enthusiasm will inevitably give us that slow, deep and powerful breathing which will finally become automatic with us. Let something else tell you what to do when you want something by some greater forces, by the senses of transcendental knowledge. Why worry over what's already created? Think about the beautiful of tomorrow. Think about what can better that which has already been created on this planet giving good example for others, for you are the key to the world and the world will learn from you. For those who do not know Him by his name there is no mystery. For those who sincerely need Him deep down in their souls and believe and believe and believe, this will serve as much to me inso much as to this planet. Thank you Creator of All.

The Beautiful of Tomorrow by Pharaoh Sanders

Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp’s latest album, “Ventre Unique”, is a dynamic exploration that seamlessly blends folk, krautrock, post-punk, and African rhythms, delivering an emotionally charged yet exuberant listening experience. Helmed by Geneva-based Vincent Bertholet, the orchestra’s ever-evolving lineup and distinctive sound pay homage to both African music traditions and avant-garde artist Marcel Duchamp, while pushing the boundaries of contemporary music.

Recorded over ten days in the outskirts of Paris at Studio Midilive, the album features an eclectic international cast of 12 musicians. The result is a beautifully organic sound that balances Bertholet’s simple, loop-based compositions with intricate arrangements of marimba, horns, strings, and angular guitars.

Ventre Unique is the group’s sixth album and follows their acclaimed 2021 release, “We’re Ok But We’re Lost Anyway”. While their previous work captured the disarray of the world during the pandemic, “Ventre Unique” reflects on shared human experiences, inviting listeners to find common ground through music.

Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación! delves into the heart of Dominican merengue, a genre whose significance often eludes the spotlight. Bongo Joe's venture into unexplored terrain takes us to the Caribbean, specifically the Dominican Republic, shedding light on its musical tapestry. Curated by Xavier Daive, aka Funky Bompa, the compilation unveils rare '60s and '70s gems, providing a glimpse into a transformative period following the fall of the Trujillo regime. With over 20 years in the Dominican Republic, Xavier Daive meticulously sources original 45s, offering a snapshot of merengue's evolution during a creatively charged era post-Trujillo. The genre's roots, dating back to the 19th-century Dominican Republic, predate salsa, establishing its unique identity with the introduction of accordions via German trade ships. The genre's classic típico configuration emerged in the mid-'60s, leaving a lasting impact on its evolution. Focused on the explosive '60s and '70s merengue típico scene, influenced by genre pioneers like “Tatico” Henríquez and Trio Reynoso, the compilation showcases technical finesse and high-speed rhythms. Tracks like Rafaelito Román’s "Que Mala Suerte" embody the genre's infectious energy. Aristides Ramírez’s "Los Lanbones" adds a touch of humor, cautioning against pub freeloaders. Merengue Típico: Nueva Generación transcends the realms of a typical reissue; it's an immersive journey into the roots of Dominican merengue, expanding its narrative beyond borders to enrich the global musical landscape. This compilation goes beyond individual tracks, providing a historical and cultural context, enriching our understanding of the genre's evolution in the Dominican Republic during a crucial period. Designed for both connoisseurs and wild dancefloors, this compilation is not only a historical and cultural exploration but also a treasure trove for DJs seeking to infuse their sets with the vibrant rhythms of merengue típico.

A long-lost cornerstone of D.I.Y. soul by George Smallwood!! Synthesizers shimmer gently beneath heartfelt vocals, carrying a message of endurance and quiet resilience. A private press masterpiece where groove and testimony entwine—evoking the spirit of Syl Johnson, the introspection of Shuggie Otis, and the sacred solitude of the true soul craftsman.

Sublime private-press piano improvisations channeled from another world by Willem Nyland. Remastered from the original tapes and reissued for the first time, with in-depth liner notes by Matt Marble of the American Museum of Paramusicology.

A Columbia-educated chemist by profession and a self-taught pianist by affinity, Willem Nyland (1890-1975) is known as a spiritual teacher in the tradition of Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff.

In the mid/late 1960s, a split with Gurdjieff led Nyland to start his own group in upstate New York. There, after a Friday night lecture on “The Work” and a shot of brandy, Nyland would launch into remarkable piano improvisations on a specially tuned baby grand, sometimes playing for over an hour. Each improvisation was meticulously recorded and cataloged, a major part of Nyland’s teachings. 16 of these recordings were released as standalone LPs on Nyland’s own Gauge Hill Press, with artwork by Hungarian American decorative artist Ilonka Karasz, Nyland’s wife of over 50 years.

These records, with their cascading, deeply emotional playing and beautiful cover art, have become highly coveted by collectors and “paramusicologists.” Each contains depths of spiritual information and lyrical, almost visual instrumental storytelling. Nyland deftly and subtly shifts moods and tones throughout these truly inspired extended improvisations.

Piano Studies 337 is a particularly tempestuous performance that Nyland himself recommended to Ansel Adams as a good starting place for his music. So we’ve teamed up with Psychic Sounds and Nyland’s family to bring #337 to the world. Remastered from the original tapes and pressed to high-quality vinyl at Smashed Plastic in Chicago, the record includes extensive liner notes and faithful reproduction of the original artwork. Hopefully the first of more to come!!!!

Graham Jonson is drawn to the comforts of melody and noise. How the two conspire in tension, tonally and atonally, stirring up memory and mood. This quality animates the technicolor world of quickly, quickly, the psych-pop project that emanates from Kenton Sound, his basement studio in Portland, Oregon. “Everywhere your eye lands, there’s another curio to marvel over,” noted Pitchfork’s Philip Sherburne when he visited Jonson’s recording space for a Rising feature just after the release of his “strikingly original” 2021 debut LP, The Long and Short of It. Since then, Jonson formed a live band, released his Easy Listening EP in 2023, got into production projects (for Moses Sumney, Kid LAROI, and SahBabii), and navigated the up-and-downs of a young musician, the sustainability of tours and relationships. While shaped by personal bouts and fallouts, his highly-anticipated full-length follow-up finds Jonson making music that’s universal, open-ended, and rewarding, like great songwriters can do. He set out to make a folk album but couldn’t help coloring it in with noise; a confluence of lush instrumentation and unexpected sounds. Ambitious yet intimate, hi-fi yet homespun, the idiosyncratic songs on I Heard That Noise curve around the contours of everyday life with warmth, wit, and dissonance.

When asked to unpack the inputs of I Heard That Noise, Jonson cites the unpredictable vocal melodies and sound design of Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie), the raw emotion of Dijon, and the timeless cadence of Nick Drake. While drums were the focus of Easy Listening, he challenged himself to think outside of the beat with new material: “to see how much I could do with a song, specifically with production, without having a beat to it… there are moments with drums but it was more about the space in between.” Songs utilize visceral delay and distortion; sometimes, they melt out of frame before the peak or take sharp turns with sudden chord changes or sweeping jolts he likens to “jump scares” in film. “Experimenting with the idea of being comfortable, and then some crazy shit flies at you, takes you out of it for a second, and then maybe brings you back in.” What makes these non-linear choices effective is that Jonson remains a natural pop architect, knowing where to push and pull, add and subtract; and essentially, how to draw in and hold one’s attention.

Themes reach from recent experiences — a breakup followed by “periods of either being miserable or, like, living…trying to better myself” — to childhood memories. There’s a recurring low-frequency hum in his neighborhood; he and his friends have come to know it as the “Kenton Sound” (which gives his studio its name), and they’ve narrowed it down to some industrial testing site nearby. Every time it vibrates, he thinks of that time he heard “that noise” while skateboarding outside his mom’s house. Similar, but louder, scarier, a sky siren of sorts. “I remember all the dogs started barking in the neighborhood at the same time...a really weird, bizarre phenomenon.” The thought pattern, scattered with a cathartic headspace, led him to record the title track, where an abrasive intro dissipates into a sweet piano ballad about remembering and surrendering.

Jonson has a knack for interludes and outros, and he’s in full stride here; the opener’s ambient wobbles snap into the stomp of “Enything,” which at one point swelled with so much information he needed to get a new computer. Above bright and jagged guitar lines, harmonized with backing vocals from friend and past tourmate Julia Logue, Jonson playfully rattles through everything he’d do (“for you”). He’s quick to admit he often dreads the process of writing lyrics, yet the loose wordplay of “Enything” is proof his subconscious runs clever.

On “Take It From Me,” subtle sonic flourishes surround acoustic strums and tender keys as Jonson recalls the resignation of a night when a relationship’s end was imminent (“a great storm is coming over the hill.”). He explains, “I've always found peace in knowing that other people, even if I don't know their exact experience, may have the same feeling that I do.” The mantra-like reprise of “Take It from Me” carries that notion, a soft reassurance before the song washes away.

Kenton Sound’s ceiling can attest to the truth of “I Punched Through A Wall.” Jonson says in reality, the act emerged from a silly intrusive thought. The image (“The silhouette of myself”) lent a figurative scene to wrap real angst around. “I feel love like a cannon ball / I like being ripped apart,” he sings over one of the record’s sweetest, most pop-forward arrangements. As the chorus takes its final pass, a gentle piano phrase gets clipped by an outburst of power chords and feedback, repeating the lines twice as loud.

“Raven” crosses fable-like fiction with the sad story of a friend who lost his way; and just when the track’s innocent country twang settles in, he pulls the rug out with near-metal levels of heavy. The juxtaposition gets to the heart of I Heard That Noise. By excavating the extremes of his sound, Jonson not only brings the best out of himself but introduces myriad ways to engage with his music, which grows ever more inviting and boundless. 
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“Horizons” is an album by COMPUMA, developed from his 2023 digital-only “Horizons EP” released via Bandcamp. Inspired by his roots in Kumamoto and the landscapes he encountered during walks in various locations, the album captures the calm and comfort of everyday life. Blending ambient, downtempo electronic, and imaginary environmental sounds, it offers a minimal yet richly atmospheric listening experience.

Taba, the new album from Japanese musician, songwriter and traveller Satomimagae, unfolds as a series of vignettes that document both the personal and the universal, seen and unseen. Observing and absorbing the fleeting scenes and sounds of life flowing outside of her home studio, Satomi sings beyond herself, in an orbit of souls and systems both in the present and in the strange flux of memory, leaving linear songwriting to rest for circuitous stories expanded and expansive in tone and texture.