NEW ARRIVALS

After All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea (IMPREC 503LP, 2023) and Black Clouds Above The Bows (IMPREC 507CD, 2022), Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents the final entry of their album trilogy for Important Records. Conceived as a sonic reflection on the climate crisis and its devastating impact on coastal ecosystems, Ghosts Beneath The Brine addresses the mass deaths of fish, seabirds, crustaceans and countless other creatures that call these seas home, now rapidly being overfished, warming and acidifying. Where antique cavalry trumpets played a central role on Black Clouds Above The Bows and a dying church organ shaped All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea, cymbals form the core of Ghosts Beneath The Brine. The instruments were submerged in seawater for extended periods of time and played with a bow at various stages of corrosion. As the bronze alloy gradually reacted with the saltwater, their sound transformed, becoming darker, more fragile and unstable. Over time, the metal began to sing in ghostly overtones, as if haunted by the waters that shaped it. Much like large groups of fish shimmering beneath the surface, the cymbals slowly lost their shine, both sonically and physically, as salt and time took hold. Alongside its environmental narrative, the album draws from maritime mythology. Echoes of the sea bishop, the kraken, devil whales and sea serpents emerge throughout its soundscape. Once feared and revered, these creatures now exist only in the liminal space between folklore and memory, haunting the collective imagination like omens from a forgotten age. Through immersive textures and submerged harmonies, Wanderwelle intertwines myth and mourning, inviting listeners to drift between the real and the spectral. If humanity continues on its current course, familiar species such as sharks, oysters and even gulls may soon share the same fate as their legendary predecessors, becoming ghosts beneath the brine. Cymbals (submerged, corroded, played with bow and mallet), cello, voice, bowed guitar, Osmose synthesizer, modular synthesizer, field recordings. Track Listing: Disc 1 A 01. At Cape Lonesome 03:52 listen 02. Dissolving Souls 04:20 listen 03. Men Dragging Carcasses 04:08 listen 04. Empty Nets 03:27 listen B 05. The Sea Bishop's Sermon 05:12 listen 06. A Special Albatross 03:00 listen 07. Littered With Bones 05:26 listen 08. To Become A Ghost 04:44 listen - Amsterdam-based collective Wanderwelle presents the final entry of their album trilogy for Important Records. - Where antique cavalry trumpets played a central role on Black Clouds Above The Bows and a dying church organ shaped All Hands Bury The Cliffs At Sea, cymbals form the core of Ghosts Beneath The Brine. - The instruments were submerged in seawater for extended periods of time and played with a bow at various stages of corrosion. As the bronze alloy gradually reacted with the saltwater, their sound transformed, becoming darker, more fragile and unstable.

"Horace Andy started his career when he was 16 years old with his first hit 'Black Man Country.' His music was produced by many, including Studio One, Clocktower Records, and many others. Songs that became some of his best hits were 'Skylarking,' 'You Are My Angel,' 'Love of a Woman' and many others. Now in 2026 here comes Horace Andy with great new songs such as 'Agony Shame' and 'Scandal Herb Stock' with his producer Nkrumah Jah Thomas, so once again let's enjoy this great new LP and dance till you drop. Because music is life." -- Alfred Newman Track Listing: A1. Herb Stock A2. Women, See Them And Live With Them 2 Different Things A3. Give Me Your Loving A4. Sweet Reggae Music A5. Love You Pretty Baby B1. Shame And Scandel B2. Bad Woman B3. Agony B4. Baby Tell Me Why Do You Want To Leave B5. To Long To Come - Horace Andy coming with great new songs such as 'Agony Shame' and 'Scandal Herb Stock' with his producer Nkrumah Jah Thomas. - Horace Andy started his career when he was 16 years old with his first hit 'Black Man Country.' His music was produced by many, including Studio One, Clocktower Records, and many others.

Fugazi's debut 7 song EP, originally released in 1988. Printed inner sleeve with lyrics. "This 12" EP was recut from the Silver Sonya masters in 2008 at Chicago Mastering Service."

"K&L for KL" and "BLK+LND" bring together two of Phill Niblock's final compositions, conceived by Niblock as companion works and intended to travel together. Released by Sub Rosa, the record preserves a pairing that Niblock himself wanted heard as a whole. In 2022, Niblock asked bass clarinetists Katie Porter, based in New York, and Lucio Capece, based in Berlin, to record "K&L for KL," a work for two bass clarinets and electronic playback dedicated to his partner Katherine Liberovskaya. Porter and Capece perform together as Phase to Phase, a duo whose own music often explores the fragile, complex world of soft multiphonics. Niblock's music occupies another scale entirely: massive, sustained walls of sound in which individual tones accumulate into dense, physical fields. The recording took place on December 1, 2022, at Johan Vandermaelen's studio in Aaigem, Brussels. Porter and Capece had arrived to work with Niblock, but he had contracted COVID and joined the session via Zoom. Under Vandermaelen's direction, they spent the day recording the extensive material Niblock required, documenting the two bass clarinets in different iterations and across every octave specified for the work. Niblock later worked with Davide Capobianco in Pro Tools to construct the composition from these recordings. "K&L for KL" was premiered by Porter and Capece in Berlin in April 2023, with Niblock present and performing his films live alongside the music. They performed the work again in September 2023 at Niblock's 90th-birthday celebration at Silent Green in Berlin, again with Niblock performing his films live. The companion work, "BLK+LND," for acoustic bass, bass clarinet, and electronic playback, grew from recordings made in 2021 by bassist Robert Black and bass clarinetist Neil Leonard under Niblock's direction. Commissioned by Black, the work was constructed in Pro Tools by Niblock with assistance from Davide Capobianco and completed in late November 2023. Black, whom Niblock greatly admired, had died in the summer of 2023, making "BLK+LND" a posthumous collaboration with one of the musicians for whom it was conceived. The final chapter of these works unfolded in the last days of Niblock's life. On January 6, 2024, two days before his death, Niblock called Neil Leonard and Katie Porter from the hospital. He spoke with Leonard about plans for the premiere and tour of "BLK+LND," entrusting him with carrying the project forward. Niblock had wanted "K&L for KL" and "BLK+LND" to mirror one another and to be presented together on tour. Their pairing here fulfills that intention: two immense works for low-pitched instruments, built from the particular physicality of bass, bass clarinet, and electronic sound, and shaped through Niblock's singular process of accumulation and transformation. For Sub Rosa, this release is not simply an archival document. It realizes Niblock's final wish for these works to be heard together, bringing together two of his final compositions and preserving the musical relationships and collaborations at the heart of their creation.

"Black Editions Archives presents Live at the KiMo Theater Albuquerque 1979, a major new archival work by the late Cecil Taylor (1929-2018). Pianist, composer and bandleader Cecil Taylor's capacious and audacious originality reshaped twentieth-century music. In an astounding act of artistic forbearance spanning sixty years of performing and recording, Taylor didn't win over so much as wear down the jazz establishment through the force and brilliant execution of his ideas. His methodologies and language, if studied at all, remain unassimilated by the twenty-first century jazz mainstream and its institutions. Lincoln Center turned the house lights on during Taylor's first performance there (2007), a stark reminder that in spite of Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships and increased respect among some of his tradition-minded peers, the shock of his music had not diminished and he was still an outlier, if not an outlaw, presence. Live at the KiMo Theater Albuquerque 1979 captures Taylor on November 20, 1979, during a rare tour of the American West with a then newly reconstituted quintet formation of his Unit. An ensemble in regular flux from the mid-1970s onward, only two members of Taylor's 1978 Unit, violinist Ramsey Ameen (1945-2019) and alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons (1931-1986) -- the bel canto voice of every Cecil Taylor band since 1961-- made the trip with Taylor to Albuquerque. Re-entering the fold on bass and cello after a decade-long absence was prime mover extraordinaire Alan Silva (1939-), with drummer Jerome Cooper (1946-2015) making his Cecil Taylor Unit performance debut. Each historical incarnation of the Cecil Taylor Unit emphasized the musicians' freedom to infuse the architectures of Taylor's music with their own personalities. Together with the Maestro in Albuquerque, this novel formation played a concert as unique and fascinating as its line-up and instrumentation suggests, with dynamics, textures and interactions that are quite different from the often in-the-red, sometimes gladiatorial 1978 Taylor bands. The addition of Sunny Murray to this ensemble in February 1980 for the recording of It Is In The Brewing Luminous (HatHut) would transform the music yet again. KUNM and New Mexico Symphony recording engineer Mike Wolff created a custom bandshell for the ensemble on the stage of the historic KiMo Theater, utilizing direct and indirect symphonic miking to capture the music for NPR's Jazz Alive program. Jazz Alive never broadcast the recording, and the tapes lay dormant for 40 years, until Tom Guralnick -- producer of the 1979 concert and director of the Outpost Performance Space (Albuquerque) -- brought the recording to the attention of Black Editions Archive. Released in direct cooperation with Guralnick, with the permission of the musicians of the 1979 Cecil Taylor Unit and their heirs, Live at the KiMo Theater Albuquerque 1979 is presented in a x2LP heavy tip-on gatefold jacket featuring ink pigment and metallic foil stamping as well as an illuminating and historically detailed 12-page listening guide by Taylor scholar Ben Young. Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio cut the lacquers and Fidelity Record Pressing struck the audiophile-quality vinyl. This stellar production chain in combination with Wolff's symphonic recording approach has resulted in the most dynamic and natural sounding live recording in Cecil Taylor's discography. Listening to the music of Cecil Taylor is perhaps an even more radical act in 2026 than at any other time in the last half century. With Live at the KiMo Theater Albuquerque 1979, Black Editions Archive proudly puts its shoulder into growing and enhancing Taylor's legacy." --Michael Ehlers

An album by a little-known guitar duo released in 1999. Their songs—composed solely of guitars and making heavy use of harmonics—are beautiful pieces that evoke an ambient-like tranquility; during their live performances at the time, they even collaborated with 8mm film projections. However, while the album received high praise from a select few, the overall response was very limited. At the time, the indie scene had not yet re-evaluated ambient sounds, and there were virtually no other groups performing such simple instrumental music live. I believe this made the music extremely difficult to categorize and left it in a precarious position. However, once Japanese ambient music began to be re-evaluated globally in the 2010s, this album was rediscovered, and the remaining stock of CDs sold out instantly. Amid calls for a reissue, we’d like to unleash this music anew with this first-ever vinyl release. KENKEN—now known as URBAN VOLCANO SOUNDS—also makes a guest appearance. Whether you want to take your time exploring this little-known hidden gem or use it as everyday background music, this acoustic guitar instrumental album creates beautiful moments that seep into the very air around you.

Techno, Mondo, Lo-Fi - they anticipated the entire universe of these genres in 1978.

Recorded on a 4-channel tape recorder before their debut and released as a CD in 1996 to great acclaim, the legendary sound collection "1978" is finally being released as an LP for the first time after 30 years. It includes three previously unreleased tracks, including "Confusion," which had a different version on a fan club-exclusive flexi-disc.

A year before releasing their debut album from Toshiba EMI, Hikashu was already creating their own fascinating music. In a house off a narrow alley leading to the train tracks from the intersection at 6-chome, Toyotamakita, Tokyo, with the shutters closed and blankets hung, they reverberated sounds to intense rhythm machines. —Koichi Makigami

Originally released in 2009. "Back to music after three years of silence... On the suggestion of Robert Ashley, Douglas Dunn commissioned this piece from Éliane Radigue for choreography. Only the first part of Triptych was staged at the premiere at the Dancehall/Theatre of Nancy on February 27 1978. Recorded in the composer's studio in Paris. After the premiere of Adnos I (IMPREC 028CD) in San Francisco in 1974, a group of French students introduced Éliane Radigue to Tibetan Buddhism. When she returned to Paris, she began to explore this spirituality in depth, which slowed her musical production up until 1978. Triptych marks her return to composition, and draws its inspiration from 'the spirit of the fundamental elements,' water, air, fire, earth... Éliane Radigue likes to add that this has often been useful to her in her moments of research and transitions. This three-part composition, with its great humility and contemplative simplicity, heralded a new period of work and was the first in a series of masterpieces inspired by Tibetan Buddhism: Adnos II (1980); Adnos III (1981) [both included on IMPREC 028CD]; Songs of Milarepa (1983), with the voices of Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Robert Ashley; Jetsun Mila (1986); as well as the Triologie de la Mort (XI 119CD): Kyema (1988), Kailasha (1991), and Koumé (1993). Archival images included in the accompanying booklet." --Manu Holterbach

There are fewer great guitar trio records than you'd suspect. Guitar duo sessions are far more abundant, and these three players have all done their share of those. But the dynamics of a trio are more fickle. And when creating collaborative non-hierarchical music, maintaining a balance between three distinct voices is not easy. It requires rapt attention, a fearless approach to entering the unknown, and very good ears to do it successfully. Clearly, Connors, Vallera and Sharp display mastery of all of these conditions and then some. Recorded live at P.I.T. (Property Is Theft) in Brooklyn, When the Moon Is New documents the first meeting for the trio. Loren and Elliott, two of the best known experimenting guitarists on the planet, have a long shared history, dating back to the days of the legendary Chapel Arts Center in New Haven. Elliott appeared there regularly and often did some jamming with Loren on those occasions. Michael Vallera is from a different generation and came of age in a world where players like Loren, Ellliot, Keith Rowe and Derek Bailey had already blown apart any and all notions of the guitar's limitations. His work explores textures, colors and possibilities born from the knowledge that there are no limits to the guitar's sonic possibilities. Together, the three create a beautifully layered universe of sound, as wide open and cosmic as recent images from the Webb Space Telescope. Occasionally I think I can ID some complex pluckery as Sharp's, some blues-canted shimmer as Connor's or some mutli-valent sound sheet as Vallera's, but in truth, this is a excellent example of “fourth mind” creation in the Burroughsian sense. The individual parts played by each of artists combine themselves into something much larger than three commingled streams. There's a gigantic heft to the collective sound that will bowl you over in the best possible way. A truly magnificent record, When the Moon Is New, is an immersive and joyful example of experimental music at its most inviting and evocative. If it doesn't thrill you, I don't know what would. -Byron Coley, 2026

Legendary Sun Ra-bassist Ronnie Boykins stepped out on his own for his first and only release as a leader on, "The Will Come, Is Now". He was invited by ESP in 1964 to record his own album, and in February 1974, he told ESP that he was finally ready, and the session took place later that month. This recording not only features Boykins' solid abilities as a bassist, including his marvelous arco work, but also his talents as a composer and arranger. In addition, one is treated to an all-natural bass sound, a rare sound during this particular era of jazz history. In septet format, Boykins' six originals create a variety of moods and textures that not only evokes the music of Sun Ra but also reflects Boykins' own sensibilities as an artist.

Loving You To Death is very much about being with someone who is hurting you by hurting themself, knowing you should leave but that you can’t live without them. It’s mostly about one night, or one period of time? I don’t really know anymore, but maybe you can relate. Before writing this I was obsessed with stretching out my little moody riffs into long drawn out ambient pieces, throwing them through the morphagene and seeing what happens. But there is just way too much sound design around me, everything is so slick and impressive and boring and unmemorable. So I tried to keep everything bare, to accept the recordings as they are and to do it without a band. Long live mid-fi, dramatic relationships, obsessiveness, sing-song melodies and unprofessionalism, and huge thanks to Ariana, Matt, Adam, Yas, Nik, Victor, Ouri, Ziggy, my mom, Alan, and everyone else I drove crazy while making this.

The Vinyl Factory presents a brand new Ryoji Ikeda release. music for strings comprises three works written between 2020 and 2023, commissioned by Ensemble Modern, Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ, and DTzM, and built entirely around the physical behaviour of bowed strings.

“In 2016, I had a series of audiovisual concerts at a festival in Kyoto. Ensemble Modern from Frankfurt was there, performing a large piece by Heiner Goebbels. We became friends, and years later, in 2021, they commissioned me to create a new piece for their 2023 season,” Ikeda explains. “Through a workshop with their players, I decided to focus exclusively on strings”.

REFLECTION [for string nonet], op.13 has all nine players locked into a seven-eight rhythm, but staggered so the parts seem to answer each other.

PRISM [for string nonet], op.14 takes the idea of white light splitting into a spectrum and applies it to sound, with Ikeda working through almost the entire pitch range of the ensemble, pulling out clusters of notes the way a prism pulls out colour.

MIRROR [one for two], op.12 is built on a sheet of music where the staff notation is mirrored, allowing it to be read simultaneously from both the normal and opposite directions. As a result, two players share the single notation, performing together while reading it in opposite directions.

“For many years, I had ideas for MIRROR [one for two] that exists only as a dream. It seems simple, but it is extremely difficult to make sense of due to its very restricted rule. At the start, I decided to tackle this piece,” says Ikeda.

“Another dream of mine was to form a string ensemble arranged linearly on stage. Usually players perform in a semicircular formation to see each other. A linear formation, however, denies this visual connection. The challenge was implemented with PRISM [for string nonet] and REFLECTION [for string nonet].”

Performed by Ensemble Modern and recorded by SWR, the work premiered in Amsterdam on 8 February 2024 before its UK premiere at the Barbican on 20 February 2026.

Ryoji Ikeda, Japan’s leading electronic composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda focuses on the essential characteristics of sound itself and that of visuals as light by means of both mathematical precision and mathematical aesthetics. Ikeda has gained a reputation as one of the few international artists working convincingly across both visual and sonic media.

He elaborately orchestrates sound, visuals, materials, physical phenomena and mathematical notions into immersive live performances and installations.

Eklekto Eklekto is a contemporary percussion collective founded in 1974 in Geneva. Constantly seeking to reinvent percussion music, the group collaborates with living composers and contemporary artists through concerts, multimedia projects and artistic events that question the listener’s expectations towards new musical forms.

Eklekto has premiered over 100 new works and performed hundreds of internationally acclaimed shows.

code name: A-Z by Ryoji Ikeda comprises 26 sonic frequencies which form an audio conversation derived from the US military use of Morse code. Pressed on clear 12" vinyl with 13 locked grooves on each side and the title of each hand etched into the grooves.

Initially released on the occasion of Elevation 2017, an arts festival in Gstaad produced by LUMA Foundation, where Ryoji presented a site-specific installation of Test Pattern.

The second release from Ojas Music, Elyria Sound is a solo guitar album from Michael A. Muller, recorded to analog tape during a winter storm in Brooklyn in January 2026. Where Muller's previous work operated in darker, atmospheric territories, and 2024's Mirror Music wove together 11 collaborators, Elyria Sound strips everything back to a single voice: one instrument, one room, one take. Each piece was captured live in single passes to a one-inch tape machine, the most direct path from fingertip to magnetic oxide. The album title traces to 2018, when Muller began writing solo music while housesitting for a friend in Elyria Canyon in the East Los Angeles hills. The address became the name of his studio, and when he moved to LA shortly after, it became a way of life for the next six years. Elyria Sound is an intimate homage to his sensorial world of that time: the quality of light through a kitchen window. The lull of helicopters and sirens, the blurred glimmer of city lights stretching to the night horizon. Gravel, dust, lizards, birds. Clacking bamboo, white rose, jade, fig, and lemon. A dwelling. A resting place. The comfort of an exhale, and the looming awareness that nothing stays. To create the record, Muller developed entirely new guitar tunings, forcing himself to relearn the instrument's language from scratch. The result moves between lullaby and lament: spare, cyclical compositions where motifs recur at differing angles and tempos, variations on a central thread. One piece, "Arundel," pays tribute to David Pajo (Papa M, Slint, Tortoise), a nod to the lineage of guitar music that values texture and patience over drama. The cover artwork by Dennis Foster serves as a visual counterbalance to the music's intended simplicity.

A new LP by JJ Whitefield (Poets of Rhythm, Whitefield Brothers etc) and Gonçalo Mortágua. file under: spiritual jazz

Two side-long improvisations recorded in a spring evening beneath a 1908 shot tower. That is the whole record, and it is enough. Fysiikka ja Kemia - Physics and Chemistry - surfaced in late 2025 with Biologia, a debut LP on Tampere's Ultraääni Records that the label summed up in a single line: rural psych-jazz improvisations by the Finnish bastard sons of Arbete & Fritid. Three hundred copies, each sleeve screen-printed by hand by the band, gone quickly. We Jazz picked a track for their Friends & Neighbors compilation. Beyond that, almost nothing in print. No interviews, no biography, no real trail. The music has had to speak for itself, which is exactly how the group seems to want it. Haulitorni is the second chapter and a different kind of object. Recorded live on 25 April 2026 at Pispala Jazz, the small spring festival held at the Haulitehdas, the old shot factory that sits at the foot of Pispala's steel lattice tower above Tampere, it drops the six-track sequencing of the debut in favour of two long pieces, one per side. Verkkokalastuksen alkeet - the rudiments of net fishing. Kevätmuutto - the spring migration. Titles that read like chapter headings from a school primer, which is very much the point. The group has always named things this way, borrowing the flat vocabulary of Finnish natural science and rural life and letting the music undercut it. The Arbete & Fritid reference is not idle. Like the Swedish collective in the early 1970s, Fysiikka ja Kemia work a seam where free improvisation, folk memory and a loose psychedelic rock pulse run into one another without any one of them taking charge. On Biologia that produced pieces that could open with a fragment of something like a fiddle tune and end somewhere else entirely, ten minutes later, without a visible seam. Here, with the whole of a side to fill and a room full of people, the pacing stretches. Ideas are allowed to sit. The group's patience is its most distinctive quality - a willingness to stay inside a texture until it changes on its own rather than forcing the turn. A live document, then, from a scene that rarely gets documented: the Pispala hillside and its DIY venues, the Tampere orbit that gave Finland Kemialliset Ystävät and a long line of players working at the edge of jazz and folk without asking permission from either. Released on the same night the group shares a Tampere stage with Samla Mammas Manna, which places the lineage about as clearly as it can be placed.

An album consisting of four magically shimmering instrumental works. Moreover, both the album and its sleeve are more or less transparent—in other words, the especially perceptive music lover can truly see the light through the sound. AO is still a well-kept secret from Gothenburg: a new name from the Swedish underground, yet with long tentacles reaching back through the ages. AO creates an intelligently playful and playful music, with many dizzying points of entry, winding rooms, and smiling exits. AO is a rough diamond in the shadows. The album Stiltje began as a pile of collected sounds, intended to drown out the traffic outside the window of the condemned buildings on Fabriksgatan in Gothenburg. Sounds that could create calm while the road outside could be erased—or transformed into gentler waves. AO has created a form of spiritual embalming on vinyl; thus, we will all move toward a brighter, more sonorous future! Regardless of state, color, shape, or planet, AO’s music moves into your room, communicates, bounces around, and spreads its warm, tranquil glow.

Holy Tongue are a trio composed of Valentina Magaletti, Susumu Mukai, and Al Wootton. Accomplished musicians in their own right, they create expansive rhythmic music that moves freely through dub, trance, post-punk, free improvisation and cinematic psychedelia. Such a dynamic energy and force is mapped across a trilogy of critically acclaimed EPs, their debut album Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare and their collaborative album with dub-pioneer Shackleton. The trio recorded a series of improvisations in the Swiss Alps and London. Built on the foundation of vintage drum machines and instinctive interplay they created compositions where no stylistic borders apply. The record melts and the musicians’ instruments synergise, with a rawness added with featured vocals from collaborator and experimental vocalist Dali de Saint Paul on two tracks. The record is out via AD 93 on the 9th October. Dub techniques meet ritual percussion, hypnotic pulse and vast Popol Vuh-esque landscapes. Drawing equally from popular music, experimental traditions and spontaneous interaction, the trio treats playing, recording, editing and transformation as part of the same creative act. Sounds emerge, dissolve and reappear in new forms, creating a music that is both deeply physical and endlessly open. With no fixed boundaries and no allegiance to genre, their work embraces movement, texture and collective energy. The result is immersive, transportive music that shifts between meditation and propulsion, intimacy and scale, always evolving in the moment.

In 2009, the label Art Yard sent a probe into the outer regions of contemporary electronic music, releasing Berliner Ring's "Orbital" album, a dub techno hymnal for Berlin’s orbital ring road. Drawing together the disparate elements of invented instruments, modified keyboards, customized rhythm and string machines, it was built around moods and themes drawn from the Berlin landscape. One member of the Ring, Alexander Christou, also a part of the Berlin electro rock group Elecdrones, recording for Katzensonne. The band were “not interested in the crafting of chunks of music ready to be consumed”. Christou has since been recording under the moniker Al Chem, crossing analogue and digital realms, synthesizing a kind of philosopher’s stone. As Al Chem, he released on Tummy Touch Records, and now follows with a collection of foggy electronic dub meditations recorded between 2000 and 2005 in a full album. In the battle to harness the elements, ancient mists permeated Chem’s music. A murky, mercurial humidity saturates the project. A distinctly north European descendant of dub, a kind of Seventh Seal that Bergman could have made, if provided enough hydroponic infusions. No Hopper is a rework of the Ras Michael song No Hoppers, from his legendary album, Rastafari Dub, Chem's version shuffles the pack of electronic percussion with organic, Moondog-like rhythms and hazy atmospheric chords; The Prophet pinpoints Chem's GPS firmly in Berlin, just as The Red Tower blurs that kick-drum parallel between reggae and house music; Baudelaire sputters digital delay, piling on the pressure, a clatter of surgical implements performing an operation out of Dead Ringers, the patient storming out of the theatre with loosely fitted mechanical body parts; the instrumental No Hopper only serves to highlight the distant gathering storm. Ladder of Perfection rounds off the set with a drone, creaking with bubbling digital mud pools.

South African multi-instrumentalist Mpumi Dhlamini’s Nebula Nomad explores themes of deep inner reflection and cosmic wonder. TIP! The EP puts three tracks (clocking in at nearly 20 minutes runtime) from the 2024 album on vinyl for the first time: two reimagined versions of earlier compositions ‘The Higher Being’ and ‘Sibusise Nkosi’, along with ‘Culmination’. Dhlamini writes, produces and performs all vocals and instruments, with contributions from Mzizi, Tendai 'Shoxx' Shoko, Ayo Solanke, Sibusiso Mkhize, Zoe The Seed and Sphelelo Mazibuko. A brief introduction to a remarkable talent at the vanguard of South African spiritual jazz who has battled adversity and come out stronger, with something important to say.

"Recorded in Los Angeles over the course of a single day at a studio in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, Dois Desertos was produced by Mario Caldato Jr. and emerged without a predetermined plan or schedule. The project took shape during Portuguese musician João Pimenta Gomes' stay in Los Angeles with his family. During that time, through Rodrigo Amarante, João met Mario and Samantha Caldato, as well as musicians Abe Rounds (drums and percussion) and Gabe Noel (bass and cello). From those encounters, the album began to unfold organically. Working from simple scores—some containing little more than chord progressions—the sessions left plenty of room for improvisation. Every performance was captured live, in a single take, with no overdubs. The mixing process, also carried out live by Mario Caldato Jr., followed the same philosophy: effects and level adjustments were performed in real time and printed directly to the final two-track master. At the heart of the album's sound is the Cristal Baschet, a rare instrument played by rubbing glass rods with the hands, causing metal resonators to vibrate and produce an ethereal, resonant tone. João describes its sound as "a trace, almost like a shadow." Rather than taking the lead, the instrument serves as a textural foundation, while the bass and cello carry the melodic lines. Some of these melodies are original compositions, while others draw from traditional Portuguese fado, reimagined through an open and exploratory approach. The album has a dreamlike atmosphere, reflecting the perspective of someone experiencing Los Angeles from the outside—not in a rush to belong, but fully receptive to the city's unique energy. Two films helped shape this imaginary landscape: Model Shop (Jacques Demy, 1969), in which the French filmmaker uses Los Angeles as a pretext to simply observe and inhabit the city, and Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself. The result is Dois Desertos, an album that, in João's own words, "could never have been made anywhere else." With Dois Desertos, João Pimenta Gomes invites listeners into a deeply immersive experience, revealing a more exploratory side of his artistic practice while reinforcing Amor in Sound's commitment to releasing original works that engage with the many languages of contemporary music."

“Origen: Una Exploración por el Jazz Modal de los Trópicos” is a celebration of the human bonds that transcend cultural differences to create a shared language beneath the same sky. Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas are the protagonists of this sonic diaspora, where Modal Jazz, Spiritual Jazz, Egyptian Jazz, Ethiopian Jazz, Cape Verdean Kriolu, Brazilian Jazz, Latin Jazz, Caribbean Rhythms, and Flamenco Jazz come together, among many other influences, to shape a journey toward healing and a reconnection with our shared origin.

Named after a now-shuttered nightspot that overlooked the beach on Italy's picturesque Tuscan coast, Maxime Denuc's 'Club Imperiale' is a work of speculative historical fiction, a record that imagines a point of creative symbiosis between the Catholic church and the ecstatic dancefloors of the early '90s. Using a MIDI-controlled pipe organ, Denuc creates dense clouds of impossible-to-play notes that ricochet backwards and forwards through history, from Rome's reverberant cathedrals to the white, sandy beaches of the Balearic Islands. Not simply an album of trance and techno music performed on the organ, 'Club Imperiale' is a byzantine mass of references and lived experiences that considers the physical impact of sound, architecture and setting - and Denuc can trace its genesis to a single moment. Two years ago, the Brussels-based French composer was forwarded a surprising video by a Belgian fan. It was shot during a Wedding at a church in Menorca, where the organist was playing 'Infinite End', the lead track from 2022's 'Nachthorn'. Immediately, Denuc knew that this was the thematic backdrop he'd been waiting for; he imagined the aftermath of the event, wandering through small villages and teetering on a cliff's edge, finding a provincial nightclub and retracing his steps back to the beach to witness the sunrise.

This time around, Denuc was gifted the time and the access he needed to fully refine his concept. The technical side of the process had already been solved; after recording 'Nachthorn', he was now very confident with his system, able to control the pipe organ's keyboards, stops and pedals incredibly precisely using Max/MSP and OpenSoundControl, or OSC. And his relationship with the St. Antonius Church in Düsseldorf had deepened significantly. The cantor offered him a three or four days each month for a year to record the project and Denuc jumped at the chance. He moved into a small apartment nearby and spent every available hour behind the organ, working from 9AM until 5PM, stopping for mass and then returning for another long session, heading back to his studio on the off days to listen back to the recordings and plan fresh approaches. This allowed him to sculpt the experience meticulously, thinking about the history of sacred music and considering the real reasons that its compositions have lingered in the secular consciousness for so long. He wanted to concentrate on the visceral acoustic qualities of the church itself, so used a spatial multi-microphone setup to situate listeners between the concrete walls, fabricating an acoustic experience that's multi-dimensional and cinematic.

And the music itself also had to completely validate Denuc's themes. His compositions needed to feel like waves lapping at the shore, humid air rushing through aging pipes and hazy rave memories imprinting themselves on pliant brains. So on opening track 'Hallucinogen', Denuc reaches back to the mid-'90s directly, directly referencing 'LSD', an enduring psychedelic trance anthem penned by Shpongle's Simon Posford. The track interpolates a minuscule section of Posford's original, mapping its brain-tickling squelches to the pipe organ and using the church's natural reverb to capture the vast majesty of the building. "I tried to construct a whole world on top of it," Denuc explains. The album's aquatic themes meanwhile make themselves visible on 'Atlantis', the first example of Denuc's most recent compositional breakthrough, when he realized that using extremely short note repetitions he could create a seemingly continuous drone that shimmered like the surface of water. Imagining a dazzling white church in the Balearics, Denuc pens a revisionist trance anthem on 'Everytime', enhancing the imagery that inspired the record and letting the core motif bounce around the church walls.

These core elements course through 'Club Imperiale', folding in on themselves and melting into each other. Using his own hand-built Max/MSP sequencer, Denuc flutters towards the sun on 'La Paloma', noting the similarities between baroque music and progressive trance. And on the title track, Denuc hits the album's dreamy emotional core, a space where the afterparty begins in earnest, heralding the blurry, mirage-like second half of the record, where natural delays and breathy emotional traces seem to dissolve the very fabric of time. Moving through the dramatic 'Plasters Figures' and the '90s music video atmosphere of 'Impreza', 'Club Imperiale' concludes with 'Pegasus', a long chord sequence that heads steadily downwards into contemplative reminiscence, never quite taking flight. Even the best parties come to an end eventually.