NEW ARRIVALS

After a successful run of early EPs and his debut double LP You!, Producer and Singer-Sing Writer Alek Lee returns to Antinote with his new album Like a Flower — an 8-track journey (plus 3 digital bonus dubs) that feels like open-heart surgery. With raw vulnerability, Lee exposes his deepest fears, pain, and inspirations, singing straight from the gut, but also sending words of inspiration and hope. From dub-infused vibes like the opening track Alright featuring My Lord, to grungy ‘90s trip-hop stylings on Compensation and the title track Like a Flower, the album showcases Alek’s wide emotional and sonic range. He shifts seamlessly into smoky, Sade-esque moods on tracks like Change, Let the Sun Just Shine, and Hold On — intimate ballads exploring heartbreak and existential reflection. With his signature blend of melodica, live percussion, guitars, vocal choirs, and lush '80s synths, Alek Lee locks you into his unique sonic universe. His brutally honest, yet deceptively simple lyrics are dressed as balearic dub-pop bangers.

‘Yarrow’ is a bouquet of new music by Portland, Oregon-based musician and field recordist Patricia Wolf, marking the label’s ninth release and the third of Season Two. These works are her reflections on the life cycle of plants and their dynamic ecological relationships. Yarrow (Achillea millefolium, Asteraceae) is a flowering plant with a broad geographic range that includes North America and Eurasia. Yarrow connects Portland and London, where these songs were created and produced. Wolf wrote and recorded the music in Portland, Oregon, and it was pressed in the UK. Wolf created the album in response to her artist residency at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, as part of the Art-Science Exchange Project in the summer of 2024. She worked closely with ecologists Dr Paul CaraDonna, Dr Amy Iler, Dr Jane Ogilvie, Dr Nickolas Waser, Dr Mary Price, and Dr Will Petry, spending weeks engaged in long-term research on plants, pollinators, and their interactions as the climate changes. Each track on Yarrow looks at a different part of a plant’s life. The songs touch on the conditions that plants need to grow, the quiet life of roots, how flowers attract pollinators, and the strength of seeds. The first single, 'Inflorescence', the scientific name for the floral display that a plant makes in an effort to reproduce, captures this event in song. The music slowly builds layers, reflecting the album’s overall feel. The album ends with the majestic Boards of Canada-esque 'Adapted for Extreme Conditions', and the entire b-side features Patricia’s field recordings from around Gothic, Colorado, and a guided meditation by Dr Paul CaraDonna, whose research inspired the project, inviting listeners to tune into the sounds and activities of the ecosystem.

If – in some parallel universe (or perhaps a not-so-distant-future version of the one we’re already sentenced to living in) – the evil overloads of artificial intelligence were actually successful in their attempts to create convincingly enjoyable “original music,” more specifically tasked with wholly encapsulating my own personal tastes by data-chugging some cocktail of – oh, I don’t know – the posters on my wall, the records in my “most listened to” pile, the mixtapes I made for others, intensive physical scans of my auditory cortex, amygdala, hippocampus, heart strings, whatever else they have splayed out on their autopsy table with the intention of generating one all-encompassing “perfect band” based on the fruitful sum of their findings – that band, for me, would be (or would at least sound exactly like) the Tara Clerkin Trio. It is, quite simply, without exception, the music I wish to hear. Formed in Bristol UK (where none of them are from yet all of whom are deeply engrained) in 2020, the Tara Clerkin Trio – as it somewhat democratically exists today, despite the singular authority implied by its name – consists of the titular Tara Clerkin, her partner Sunny Joe Paradisos, and Sunny’s brother, Patrick Benjamin. I’ll confess, I don’t know what their respective roles are within the operation and there’s only a very small part of me that cares to learn, as one of my favorite qualities in an objective listening experience is the mystery of who is playing what, which sounds are “authentic” versus synthesized, which chunks are performed “live” in a room together versus meticulously Frankenstein’ed from measure to measure, or how exactly the overall sound is so (seemingly) effortlessly achieved. Though, I suspect, if and when I do witness a live performance by this band at any point, my enjoyment of the music will not be lost in my better understanding of it. With two extraordinary mini-albums – In Spring (2021) and On The Turning Ground (2023) – making a splash on London’s formidable World of Echo label in wake of their self-titled 2020 debut on Laura Lies In, this upcoming Somewhere Good LP is, in many ways, the band’s most realised work. In running their usual gauntlet of idiosyncratic (*an overused adjective for which here there is regrettably no sufficient alternative) approaches, Clerkin & co. color in and outside of compositional lines over the course of 40+ celebratory minutes - never wallowing, despite inherently somber subject matters of self-defeat, disease, displacement, restlessness, gentrification - allowing their arrangements and improvisations ample space and time to situate, stretch out, breathe, cross-pollinate, and ultimately take deeper hold on the listener’s imagination – all while somehow sounding more like themselves than ever before. Of course, there are traceable influences herein, if one felt that such comparisons were necessary to properly examine and enjoy this music (they aren’t)… Being the big dumb American from the small boring town that I am, cornfed on ‘90s alternative radio with the enchantingly exotic sounds of Maxinquaye and Mezzanine emanating from my chunky tube television, I can’t help but to make a blatantly obvious reference to a “Bristol sound”, ie the whole trip-hop trip, the pastoral crooning over the suggestive urban grime of cracked electro/piano treatments, the digitally-yet-primitively reconstructed James Bond soundtrack string-beats, etc.. But the Tara Clerkin Trio is so infinitely much more than that. There are elements of avant-pop, modern classical, kraut-folk, audio verité, dare I say indie rock (and not of the beer guzzling, masturbatory fuzz-flex variety but perhaps more like a Trish Keenan-fronted Faust, Adrian Sherwood at the mixing desk of If You’re Feeling Sinister, or – in expanding on our alternate reality – a world in which High Llamas cut a full-length for Warp Records with Andrew Weatherall on coffee duty). The hazy, unmappable skyline-mirage of droning harmonium, upright bass, peculiarly accentuated wind instruments, acoustic guitar, hushed yet literally mighty keys combine to hypnotizing effect. The band may make underlying nods to jazz, sure, but it’s not appropriation, it’s that they have the actual chops to build it out. Beneath the janky samples and oddball percussive embellishment lies actually great drumming. Beyond the manipulated vocal witchery and woefully reflective plain-spoke moments are Tara’s subtly inspired melodies, sung with what might honestly be the glue to the whole crazy equation. A calming consistency throughout the otherwise unpredictably dynamic, boldly intuitive, uniquely British exploration of this (their own) universe in song. – Ryan Davis (Chicago, February 2026)

Deep, deep stuff on the debut album from K Wata. Long and dubwise, dark and detailed. With bass that fills and warms a space. All noir. Cast shadows against the wall. Weight being shifted and distributed with singularly delicate poise, like a knife being balanced on the end of a finger. There’s a silvery, loose flow state to this record that maybe reveals the way some tracks were first written to be deployed live at Sustain Release 2025. Then taken back to the lab and tightened up further into the album’s final form, with beautiful mixing work between Kenzo and Chris Botta. With that in mind, Give U Space unfolds slowly and fluidly, giving the listener the chance to access and open up to the deepness of the sound, being led down a path. It rolls and builds momentum and groove, and ratchets tensions up toward peaks of energy "Whisper Dub" and "There Will Be Love". The tunes feel architectural. Rooms to be in and settle into. Simultaneously stripped back and then etched with neat little details and characterful or atmospheric sound choices. The silhouette of slo mo Memphis and Houston trap is a leading influence, especially with the drums. Mixing with bits of click’n’cut sampling and psychoacoustic tricks, the penumbra of dub techno and drowsier dubstep, and SG’s soft vocals rising in the ether. The presence and inspiration of the sound system is obvious in all of Kenzo’s work, the music can rattle when spun up louder or blended into the club. But K Wata’s uniqueness and signature comes from an often equally inward facing quality, touched by distance and longing and a sort of chiaroscuro incandescent light set up.

Re-up of vital 1977-’78 dubs by the wee legend, cooked up long, strong and odd at his fabled Black Ark Studio for DJ play and dancers’ satisfaction. ‘Disco Devil Vol.2’ homes in on 1977-78 on six tracks that still do the business, unless you’re prepared to shell out for spenny OGs. It’s bookended by two showcases of the wee radge packet really getting into it, as with the 9 min disco jam of Hugo Blackwood & Dr Alimantado’s ‘reggae Music’, diffusing the vox and melodica to a haze on clean-heeled step, and again working the chants and nyabinghi of Sangie Davis’ ‘Words’ to a mesmerising sway, into biblical roots business by Watty Burnett. But maybe best of all is the haunting mix of Devon Irons’ ‘Vampire’ with Perry’s deeply unusual, psychoacoustic tekkerz in full effect.

The Story Behind "Rhythm Matter” The origins of Rhyth Matter trace back to 2011, shortly after the Great East Japan Earthquake. While visiting Yony in New York, the artist Marter recorded a series of demos. When Marihito heard these recordings, he immediately saw the potential for a full-length project and envisioned a concept centered on "Live Dub" with a distinct Basic Channel influence. Over several years, the project evolved through a rigorous analog process. The multi-track recordings—originally captured on cassette tape, 4-track, 8-track, and reel-to-reel—were eventually digitized into Pro Tools to be meticulously shaped into the final album. At the time, Marihito was releasing an album through Bill Laswell’s label. When he shared the works-in-progress with Bill and asked if M.O.D. (Laswell's label) would be interested, the answer was a definitive yes. Initially, the album was set for release via a licensing deal with M.O.D. However, complications during the vinyl production phase at M.O.D. led to the difficult decision to scrap the record release. Refusing to let the vision of a physical LP die, Marihito took the project back to his own label, Personal Affair, finally releasing it on both vinyl and digital formats as it was always meant to be heard.

After recent forays into darkly psychedelic drone music, the Mexican American producer returns to the dancefloor with an album that fuses techno and guaracha into a throbbing polyrhythmic juggernaut.

Nuevos Ríos is the new project born from the meeting of Colombia’s iconic Canalón de Timbiquí, led by the unmistakable voice of Nidia Góngora (Quantic, Ondatrópica, The Bongo Hop), and the Toulouse-based trio Reco Reco, known for their explorations of trance-driven rhythms from South America and beyond. Rooted on the banks of the Timbiquí River in Colombia’s Pacific region, the collaboration fuses ancestral Afro-Colombian traditions with electronic and amplified sounds. The result is a powerful and hypnotic journey where marimba, percussion, bass, and voices intertwine with keyboards, guitar, and drums. Between ritual intensity and dancefloor energy, the music bridges continents—echoing West Africa, the Caribbean, and the sweaty clubs of Europe—while always returning to the river as a vital source of life and inspiration. Released on ZZK Records (home to Son Rompe Pera, Nicola Cruz, La Yegros, among others), this debut album is both a manifesto and a celebration: a living testimony of Colombia’s Afro-descendant heritage, reinvented through collective creativity. Nuevos Ríos is not just fusion—it is a new current, a sonic ritual where traditions flow into modernity.

'I Bet on Sky' is the third Dinosaur Jr. album since the original trio – J Mascis, Lou Barlow and Murph – reformed in 2005. And, crazily, it marks the band’s 10th studio album since their debut on Homestead Records in 1985. Back in the ‘80s, if anyone has suggested that these guys would be performing and recording at such a high level 27 years later, they would have been laughed out of the tree fort. The trio has taken everything they’ve learned from the various projects they tackled over the years, and poured it directly into their current mix. J’s guitar approaches some of its most unhinged playing here, but there’s a sense of instrumental control that matches the sweet murk of his vocals (not that he always remembers to exercise control on stage, but that’s another milieu). This is head-bobbing riff-romance at the apex. Lou’s basswork shows a lot more melodicism now as well, although his two songs on 'I Bet on Sky' retain the jagged rhythmic edge that has so often marked his work. And Murph…well, he still pounds the drums as hard and as strong as a pro wrestler, with deceptively simple structures that manage to interweave themselves perfectly with his bandmates’ melodic explosions. After submerging myself in 'I Bet on Sky', it’s clear that the album is a true and worthy addition to the Dinosaur Jr. discography. It hews close enough to rock formalism to please the squares. Yet it is brilliantly imprinted with the trio’s magical equation, which is a gift to the rest of us. For a combo that began as anomalous fusion of hardcore punk and pop influences, Dinosaur Jr. have proven themselves to be unlikely masters of the long game.

Sufjan Stevens, Asthmatic Kitty, and Soundsfamilyre announce Sufjan's third full-length album, a collection of songs for his birth-state, MICHIGAN, "The Great Lake State." Composed as a geographical tone poem, MICHIGAN follows a metaphysical expedition through the idiosyncrasies of middle America. Drawing from personal anecdote, regional history, and state heritage, Stevens mixes social and political grievances with songs about snowmobiles, Henry Ford, the Detroit race riots, and love. MICHIGAN's songs resonate with a range of sources-Vince Guaraldi, Terry Riley, and Nick Drake as accompanied by Stereolab and The Sea & Cake-in executing Stevens' peculiar palette that is simultaneously rock and blue-grass, jazz and pop, a style The Village Voice appraises as "Arthur Lee meets the Book of Psalms." In MICHIGAN, Stevens combines intimate, soft-spoken songwriting with the dense compositional complexity displayed on his previous release ENJOY YOUR RABBIT, which XLR8R called "...a transgressive, majestic album conjuring an academic jam session of Stereolab and Luke Vibert conducted by Steve Reich." Guest artists include Elin, Megan, and Daniel Smith (of The Danielson Famile), and John Ringhofer (Half-handed Cloud). Album art features original hand-paintings by Martha Stewart crafts editor Laura Normandin. MICHIGAN is the inaugural entry of THE 50 STATES, a cumulative recording project by Sufjan Stevens unparalleled in its panoramic enterprise: a record for each state! You think he's kidding, don't you? Now available from Asthmatic Kitty and Soundsfamilyre. Distributed by Secretly Canadian: release date: July 1, 2003 (which happened to be Sufjan's birthday).

Born in a Fussa U.S. military house, Minyo Crusaders cut new ground by fusing Japanese folk songs with Latin rhythms, earning high praise both at home and abroad from media like NPR and The Guardian. Now comes From Japan With Love, their first new album in three years.

TMZ stood out as a fiercely unique presence on TRANSONIC COMPACT DISC 01 and 02, the compilation albums that marked the first standalone releases from the newly reborn TRANSONIC RECORDS. An existence that could well be called an out-of-place artifact in techno history, this debut album bridges the gap between a hidden past and the present.

A wave of global critical reappraisal is building around Japan's definitive techno label, TRANSONIC RECORDS. To mark the occasion, a two-disc compilation album showcasing the dawn of Japanese 90s techno is set for release.

An album etched not only in the history of Japanese rock but also in the history of rock worldwide!A miraculous sound that never ages!Due to popular demand, re-released on clear vinyl!

●Why did the world's avant-garde musicians want to create "sound" with Conny Plank back then? The album "Phew" (released in 1981) was produced at the legendary Conny's Studio, which spawned masterpieces by Kraftwerk, Neu!, DAF, Eno, and others, with former Aunt Sally member Phew joining them.

●Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, former members of the German rock band Can, who had a great influence on techno and post-rock, participated.

●Conny Plank's outstanding engineering and Holger Czukay's ingenious editing created a groundbreaking sound world that still resonates uniquely and never fades even today.

Shuta Hasunuma Team — consisting of Shuta Hasunuma, Shuta Ishizuka, itoken, Yu Oshima, and Ryosuke Saito — has released their first studio album, 17 years after the group’s formation. The album includes a cover of Tortoise’s “Seneca,” with mixing handled by Tortoise’s own John McEntire and mastering by Dave Cooley.

The definitive release of Dubhei & New Chanel, the extraordinary musical work by Shinro Ohtake, known as an artist. Shinro Ohtake is currently known as an artist, but his career began in music. JUKE/19., which was among the first in Japan to respond to NO WAVE and incorporate it into their work, was far ahead of its time in 1980. Yet, their work quietly influenced many later artists. Yamataka EYE of Boredoms, in particular, openly acknowledged its immense influence, and in the 90s, he even started a duo with Otake himself, PUZZLE PUNKS (the unit continues to this day).

Dabuhei & New Chanel represents the ultimate expression of Otake's musical vision. This band, featuring guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, and turntables, was entirely remote-controlled, creating an extraordinary system where each stage performance itself became a work of art. Yamataka EYE was once featured in this system, performing with Destroy All Monsters, and his collaboration with Kazuhisa Uchihashi was also released as a CD work.

This release captures Dubhei & New Chanel's performance at the Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art's TAD space on the final day of the touring “Shinro Ohtake Exhibition,” which began at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo in 2022. It is presented across three analog discs and two CDs.

　For this performance, Toshiharu Toyama, a close ally who had worked with Ohtake and JUKE/19. since the early 80s, brought his own modified instruments and joined Dubhei & New Chanel mid-performance. Their playing plunged into a black hole-like sonic world that could never have emerged from Dubhei & New Chanel alone, creating an intense, condensed history of Ohtake's music starting from JUKE/19. , creating an intense experience that felt like a sudden condensation of the entire history of Ohtake's music, starting from JUKE/19.. Ohtake's live performance added to the ultimate industrial sound mass, creating a physical chaos.

Both the packaging and content differ between the analog and CD versions.

The analog packaging is unprecedented: a B-size silk-screen printed poster cut into three pieces, each housing one record, then all stored within a silk-screen printed clear case. When connected, they form a B-size silk poster. During cutting, the request was: “Blow out the bass at full volume—a lighter player might blow the needle off!”

Please note that the jacket image is a concept rendering and may differ slightly from the final visual.

Wind of Oirat is the full length debut by Mongolian independent musician and sound artist Ts Bayandalai. Following his acclaimed 2020 EP Kimel, he now presents a further matured, composed and refined version of his signature sound, which combines traditional Mongolian music and instruments with influences from experimental music and post-rock. Deeply rooted in the cultural traditions of his homeland, Ts Bayandalai, who grew up in a nomadic family in the Mongolian steppe, explores nature and its myths, his ancestral roots, and the relationship between humans, animals and nature.

“Baby It Cold Outside” is a new album by Lavurn. The music is a lovesick nod to the turn of the millenium and the ones who helped show us the way.

"A friend of mine told me he had visited the place that Cancer House live and record. He said they jammed together all afternoon. In the moment, in the zone so to speak, he became more and more convinced that what they were making together was the best music he had ever been involved with. As the afternoon drifted by, second by revelatory second, he began making grandiose plans to release the recording. By the time it was dark outside the windows he imagined it as a future lost classic, a key live document of a scene, a moment and an aesthetic. He thought about all the records he loved. He thought about the great, little known, statements of lo-fi, downer indie: dark, sweet, crawling guitar music by bands like Farewood, Bedhead, UN or The Sonora Pine. He could even picture the sleeve down to the last detail. The session ended and as they were all packing up he asked about the recording. And someone said ‘oh, we weren’t recording." -Jack Rollo

Following his run of downtempo Quiet Time offerings, Texan producer Gi Gi moves to Vancouver's Mood Hut and maps his "downtempo sampledelia" logic over a syrupy set of deep-as-fuck, back room rollers. Gi Gi's is motivated by the philosophy of sampling - his 2021 album 'Lumino Pleco' was built from textures snatched from Prince, Miles Davis and Erykah Badu records. But he appears to have settled more assuredly into his role at this stage, coining the "downtempo sampledelia" descriptor probably to stop people like us from perpetually reminding him that trip-hop already happened. To his credit, 'In Lieu' does veer further from the dubwise, slo-mo gear that propped up his last few releases, tightening the beats and sharpening those all-important hazy backdrops. And if you recognise a few of the elements, that's partly the point; Gi Gi bashes together the album like a rickety rope bridge between the contemporary listening bar and a half-forgotten record collection that stacks its 'ardcore vinyl alongside Weatherall productions, electro samba reissues, Chicago house and Alex Patterson's dream diaries. 'Pink Dirt' sounds as if it's burying Kirsty Hawkshaw's voice underneath its powdery syncopations and housey piano stabs and on 'Arque', featherlight string plucks are ducked behind rubbery pulses that Gi Gi excites with fractal psy inflections. And the specters of dub and jungle slow dance on 'Downswept', when Gi Gi marinades his expertly chopped breaks in a bubbling synth. It's the kind of gear that makes the most sense while the summer's still in full swing - balearic doesn't even do it justice.

Infant crafts eight immersive dub pieces built from echo-laden rhythms, shimmering ambient textures and spacious production. Drawing on Detroit techno and sound system culture, the album unfolds with patience and depth, favouring mood over momentum, with blissed soundscapes that ripple and refreact like liquid metal. Recommended for fans of the ambient side of echospace [detroit] axis.

Twenty years ago, somewhere in Scotland, an album emerged that felt like a missing link between The Black Dog, Chain Reaction and Irdial. It was released by the enigmatic Glasgow producer Pub on his equally mysterious label, Ampoule.

The album, Do You Ever Regret Pantomime? (2000), has since become the stuff of local folklore — a key work in the UK’s rich IDM and ambient lineage, and one of the most celebrated records of the early noughties. Bizarrely, it even made its way into the Billboard Top 100.

Do You Ever Regret Pantomime? also stands as a defining statement from a producer who has chosen to remain in their own space — one where everyone is welcome. Records like this are about losing yourself in sound and creating your own universe to explore.

Across its 70 minutes, you’re drawn into a deep matrix of spacious chords, abstract textures and gently shifting rhythms.

The 2020 reissue has been remastered and cut at Berlin’s Dubplates & Mastering, pressed as a 2x12”, and features new artwork alongside a bonus track.