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A work that crystallizes the delicate ambient and electronica that Maps and Diagrams excels at into a quiet homage to nature. Warm cassette‑tape textures blend with gently wavering electronic tones, creating a serene sonic world where wind and light seem to drift slowly through a forest.
This is a collaborative work by Kodo’s Masayasu Maeda and Hida Onkyo Ha, featuring selected extracts from a four-hour improv session in Hida Takayama, up in Japan’s northern Alps. It captures waves of electronics, voices, taiko (Japanese drums), gongs, and other instruments as the sounds enter, entwine, and meld in the mountain air. The title ‘On-myaku Kyo-myaku’ evokes sounds (on) and echoes (kyo) that undulate like a pulse (myaku). Layering upon one another, over and over, conjuring reverberations, rhythms, ambient sound, noise, and moments that are tribal, spacey, and intoxicating. Lean into the sways and flutters of fleeting, pulsating, resonant sound.
New "doom ambient" tape from Question Mark on Tax Free.
The latest mixtape LP, “Even The Devil Smiles,” comes from rapper and producer IDK (Jason Mills).
Acclaimed Californian harpist Nailah Hunter unites with debuting theremin player Alia Mohamed for a hauntingly minimalist performance of Harold Budd's "The Pavilion of Dreams". The rendition concept was initially conceived and performed by the two musicians for the Nov 3rd 2024 edition of Leaving Records' seminal outdoor community concert series Listen to Music Outside in the Daylight Under a Tree in Los Angeles California. Nailah Hunter writes: "It was such a blissful experience getting to play in the golden light of the park that afternoon with Alia. We’d been exploring this piece together for a few years prior to the performance. The uniquely curious and misty quality of the piece is what initially drew me in and the bold and imaginative changes voiced in the harp part are what kept me coming back for more. It felt euphoric to finally get to share our sonic vision with folks we knew already appreciated the original work."
Hear before you is an ecstatic new standalone 2-track EP. A simmering and evocative exploration in contemporary spiritual jazz, nature/space music, and spontaneous composition. Elysian Invocation / “Pollen on the Earth” is a soaring, life-affirming longform dialogue between a cast of stellar musicians, every artist in symbiosis with each other and the work’s organic beating heart. Made from guitar, drums, saxophone, synthesis, percussion, and the scorching, fluid Voice of Saul Williams, the pieces commune with many worlds, natural, cosmological, and humanmade, full of fire and full of vision. Elysian Invocation begins with a rising gale of percussion and interplaying melodic lines before Williams’ righteous calling becomes the focus, both dreamlike in its imagery and incendiary in its authenticity. As vocalist (the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra member) Maia the Artiste repeats our culture is burning / sound the alarm over a tempest of intense, expressive energy, we are drawn into the eye of a cleansing, regenerative storm. The piece was recorded at Leaving Records’ regular Listen to Music Outside in the Daylight Under a Tree live series in LA, here for a California wildfires fundraiser event on Saturday, February 8, 2025. “Pollen on the Earth” was recorded at the Earthstar Creation Center, in Venice, California in May 2025. The piece sees Niño and Williams in collaboration with LA indigenous group Aztlan Unearthed. It opens with mesoamerican percussion and flute in dialogue, a devotional and ancestral storytelling made magic by the sensitivity of their playing. Soon, birdsong, horns and wordless chants enter and the handdrum rhythms become more entrancing, carrying us on their movement. Saul Williams’ spoken word enters as the ceremony simmers down, rhythmic and lyrical in expressive baritone. The piece calls for awareness, care, activism, and courage, to truly be in tune with Earth and Spirit.
In music, form is sometimes so intimately connected to experience as to speak meaning more compellingly than any word could. On After the Town was Swept Away, out September 5th on Leaving Records, BlankFor.ms, aka Tyler Gilmore, finds in rhythm a new vocabulary of self-collection. Confronting both grief and joy, its twelve tracks of tape loop manipulation festoon and murmur — the imperfect cyclicality of tape itself at once a metaphor for the record’s meditations on time, and the actual physical support shaping its sounds. Composed in the aftermath of two quickly succeeding life-changing events for the artist — the birth of his first child, Ellis, in November 2023, and the loss of his mother after a two-year battle with cancer in January 2024 —, the sounds of After the Town was Swept Away were born of unmaking and remaking. The composition process was mostly one of revision: early drum machine sketches were emptied out and degraded, whole songs restructured, tape loops stacked to digest a complex rhythmical biography. Rooted in early experiences in jazz and a long-held love of house and drum & bass, BlankFor.ms’ beat allegiances surface in ways that are never obvious, a vehicle for reinterpreting one’s times anew. Commanding such an articulate rhythmical language, the music of After the Town was Swept Away speaks thus in intense, affectionate, at times uneasy tones. We feel this deeply on lead single "Formed by the Slide". Against the offbeat loops of quietly loose, layered held-tone vocals — by composer, vocalist and friend of the artist, Ella Joy Meir —, rhythm emerges in noisier surges as if answering their achingly beautiful call. It is the sound of experience in its barest form: when life speaks, we respond as we can. After The Town Was Swept Away was born from love — not just in tender musing, but through actual, felt communion. This is true, for example, of the triptych titled after Kinship, the Highland Park yoga studio where, in 2024, experimentalist Colloboh hosted BlankFor.ms for an impromptu performance to a routine by yogi Meg Shoemaker, from which the three tracks were assembled. But the influence of others — both musical, as with jazz drummer Marcus Gilmore and pianist Jason Moran, with whom BlankFor.ms recently released a collaborative album, and more intimately personal — is felt throughout the whole record, bound together in rhythm. Could it be otherwise? Tape loops have a way of preserving and altering the past at once, marking and unmarking sounds and their sources. The beats on After the Town was Swept Away — pensively yet felicitously — come to terms with just that, their rethreaded rhythms making room for unexpected, unhoped for recollection — a way to survive the flood of experience.
Retrospection is rare for HTRK, the Melbourne-based duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, who marked their 21st year as a band in 2024 with a series of performances, installations, and long-overdue catalog represses. But back to the present, before more tour dates in 2026 and on the heels of their first new songs in several years (Summer 2025’s “Swimming Pool” b/w “Puddles On My Pillow”), HTRK close this chapter with String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK), the first full-length collection of HTRK covers and remixes from friends and contemporaries. Across two decades of music, HTRK have risen slowly to become your favorite artist’s favorite artist. The Guardian posits, “Few Australian bands have been as influential…with their idiosyncratic mix of atmospheric electronic and guitar-based squall for the past 21 years.”
Amidst the reissues, including the newly announced Psychic 9-5 Club, HTRK revisits their body of work and grapples with notions of legacy and lasting expression. They turn to some of their biggest fans for answers. String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK) invites new interpretations from Coby Sey, Double Virgo, Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley, Laura Jean, LEYA, Liars, Loraine James, NWAQ, Perila, Sharon Van Etten, and longtime collaborator, Zebrablood. The contours of HTRK’s singular, smoldering songcraft extend and distort in the hands of others, part peer tribute, part fun-house reflection; the effect is befitting of a band devoted to raw emotion, self-discovery, and unrestrained creative vision.
Maybe the most unexpected pairing, beloved songwriter Sharon Van Etten takes on “Poison” from Work (work, work) (2011) in her inimitable style. A cult favorite from the band’s darkest period, defined by sludgy 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, and vaporous guitar noise, “Poison” remains just as urgent and piercing here. “My little oxide joyride / Plastik pick me up / Where we gonna go / You decide…” Van Etten delivers with a pinch more clarity, underscoring the romance beneath Work’s bleakness.
Loraine James, HTRK's Ghostly labelmate in her Whatever The Weather alias and a past collaborator with Standish (James' 2019 Nothing EP), re-examines "Dream Symbol" from 2019 LP Venus In Leo. The original track found Standish revisiting her childhood home in a recurring dream, craving afternoons of innocence and the way the sun kissed her skin. James' glitchy treatment adds more dust and static to the scene, as well as her own voice, to Standish's verses, creating a doubling, duet-like feel.
The immensely talented duo of Kali Malone & Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))) encircle “Siren Song” from Rhinestones, the revelatory 2021 album that drew cues from the intimacy and brevity of Western folk, skewed through a narcotic, nocturnal lens. While the original was obscured in transition, a stark 49-second vignette of finger snaps and riffs, Malone and O’Malley stretch the moment to nearly six minutes suspended on organ drone and the trance-inducing mantra.
Double Virgo, Sam Fenton, and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi of post-punk outfit bar italia, tackle Marry Me Tonight’s "Rent Boy." The 2009 track found HTRK at their heaviest. Double Virgo strips it all back to strings, chimes, and strums as the two voices riff on Standish's wordplay. Alexandra Zakharenko, aka Perila, smoothes out the industrial edges of "HA", another cut from Marry Me Tonight; the hushed and hazy rendering allows various lyrical layers to seep into the echoed mix. Experimental legends and fellow Aussies Liars reimagine MMT's "Waltz Real Slow" as an outsider ballad or a tender Western drift; alien-like vocals cross stately chords that unravel to feedback in the final march.
Zebrablood gives “Soul Sleep” (Psychic 9-5 Club) a shuffling and blurry breakbeat remix, and Dutch dub techno fan favorite NWAQ deepens the drone of rarity “Female Jealousy” (Lilac EP). Rhinestones’ "Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings" becomes otherworldly in LEYA’s harp-backed version, while “New Year’s Day”, another standout from Venus In Leo, is mainlined into a folk standard by fellow Melbourne native Laura Jean.
Coby Sey reinvents Leo’s “Mentions”, lending his airy, soulful cadence to lyrics that outline a lack of physical intimacy in the social media age. Regarding the track, the acclaimed British musician adds that he first came across HTRK during the Myspace era, “My love for HTRK's music has existed for a long time.” This may be the case for many. HTRK’s indelible impact on underground music spans far beyond its initial reception. The ripples permeate time in such a way that they have positioned the band as a perfect candidate for the present round of renewed appreciation.Retrospection is rare for HTRK, the Melbourne-based duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, who marked their 21st year as a band in 2024 with a series of performances, installations, and long-overdue catalog represses. But back to the present, before more tour dates in 2026 and on the heels of their first new songs in several years (Summer 2025’s “Swimming Pool” b/w “Puddles On My Pillow”), HTRK close this chapter with String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK), the first full-length collection of HTRK covers and remixes from friends and contemporaries. Across two decades of music, HTRK have risen slowly to become your favorite artist’s favorite artist. The Guardian posits, “Few Australian bands have been as influential…with their idiosyncratic mix of atmospheric electronic and guitar-based squall for the past 21 years.”
Amidst the reissues, including the newly announced Psychic 9-5 Club, HTRK revisits their body of work and grapples with notions of legacy and lasting expression. They turn to some of their biggest fans for answers. String of Hearts (Songs of HTRK) invites new interpretations from Coby Sey, Double Virgo, Kali Malone and Stephen O'Malley, Laura Jean, LEYA, Liars, Loraine James, NWAQ, Perila, Sharon Van Etten, and longtime collaborator, Zebrablood. The contours of HTRK’s singular, smoldering songcraft extend and distort in the hands of others, part peer tribute, part fun-house reflection; the effect is befitting of a band devoted to raw emotion, self-discovery, and unrestrained creative vision.
Maybe the most unexpected pairing, beloved songwriter Sharon Van Etten takes on “Poison” from Work (work, work) (2011) in her inimitable style. A cult favorite from the band’s darkest period, defined by sludgy 808 beats, eerie synth arpeggios, and vaporous guitar noise, “Poison” remains just as urgent and piercing here. “My little oxide joyride / Plastik pick me up / Where we gonna go / You decide…” Van Etten delivers with a pinch more clarity, underscoring the romance beneath Work’s bleakness.
Loraine James, HTRK's Ghostly labelmate in her Whatever The Weather alias and a past collaborator with Standish (James' 2019 Nothing EP), re-examines "Dream Symbol" from 2019 LP Venus In Leo. The original track found Standish revisiting her childhood home in a recurring dream, craving afternoons of innocence and the way the sun kissed her skin. James' glitchy treatment adds more dust and static to the scene, as well as her own voice, to Standish's verses, creating a doubling, duet-like feel.
The immensely talented duo of Kali Malone & Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))) encircle “Siren Song” from Rhinestones, the revelatory 2021 album that drew cues from the intimacy and brevity of Western folk, skewed through a narcotic, nocturnal lens. While the original was obscured in transition, a stark 49-second vignette of finger snaps and riffs, Malone and O’Malley stretch the moment to nearly six minutes suspended on organ drone and the trance-inducing mantra.
Double Virgo, Sam Fenton, and Jezmi Tarik Fehmi of post-punk outfit bar italia, tackle Marry Me Tonight’s "Rent Boy." The 2009 track found HTRK at their heaviest. Double Virgo strips it all back to strings, chimes, and strums as the two voices riff on Standish's wordplay. Alexandra Zakharenko, aka Perila, smoothes out the industrial edges of "HA", another cut from Marry Me Tonight; the hushed and hazy rendering allows various lyrical layers to seep into the echoed mix. Experimental legends and fellow Aussies Liars reimagine MMT's "Waltz Real Slow" as an outsider ballad or a tender Western drift; alien-like vocals cross stately chords that unravel to feedback in the final march.
Zebrablood gives “Soul Sleep” (Psychic 9-5 Club) a shuffling and blurry breakbeat remix, and Dutch dub techno fan favorite NWAQ deepens the drone of rarity “Female Jealousy” (Lilac EP). Rhinestones’ "Sunlight Feels Like Bee Stings" becomes otherworldly in LEYA’s harp-backed version, while “New Year’s Day”, another standout from Venus In Leo, is mainlined into a folk standard by fellow Melbourne native Laura Jean.
Coby Sey reinvents Leo’s “Mentions”, lending his airy, soulful cadence to lyrics that outline a lack of physical intimacy in the social media age. Regarding the track, the acclaimed British musician adds that he first came across HTRK during the Myspace era, “My love for HTRK's music has existed for a long time.” This may be the case for many. HTRK’s indelible impact on underground music spans far beyond its initial reception. The ripples permeate time in such a way that they have positioned the band as a perfect candidate for the present round of renewed appreciation.
The album opens at dusk with an imagined final stop before departure, a roadside gas station just as daylight fades. This introductory scene, conceived as “Last Gas Station Before the Horizon,” places the listener amid passing cars, distant seagulls, and the low hum of anticipation. The idea is to frame the record as part of a radio program, potentially guided by a radio announcer’s voice drifting in and out of the soundscape. From there, the journey moves fully into night. Tracks progress like signals picked up along the drive, calm, reflective, and gently nostalgic, until the album’s closing moment. “Peaceful Blue” represents arrival at the final destination at dawn, when the sky shifts into a deep blue and the listener waits quietly for the sun to rise and a new day to begin. Transcoastal Night Drive is an album about motion, atmosphere, and memory, less a narrative than a feeling, inviting listeners to settle into the drive and let the night pass by.
Bifuu_ZONE, translated loosely as “a zone of gentle breeze,” is a concept drawn from Tsudio Studio’s personal vocabulary rather than a strict linguistic equivalent. While liminal spaces are often framed through unease, Bifuu_ZONE reimagines them as sites of quiet comfort, restoration, and slow transformation. The project centers on impermanence, erosion, and the subtle ways time reshapes even the most solid structures.The West takes its title literally, drawing inspiration from buildings and environments located west of Osaka. Each track is composed with a specific architectural space in mind, allowing tone, texture, and resonance to emerge from imagined structures rather than narrative progression. The result is a site-responsive ambient work that listens closely to stillness, weathering, and spatial openness. Saxophonist mori_de_kurasu appears on three tracks, introducing breath and human fragility into the album’s restrained sonic palette.This perspective is deeply informed by a Japanese sensibility toward impermanence, an acceptance of loss and change not as absence, but as gentle continuation. Rather than positioning liminal space through anxiety, Bifuu_ZONE gestures toward what lingers quietly after the dream has ended.Beyond the album itself, The West also marks a point of convergence within Tsudio Studio’s broader practice. In March, he will present an exhibition and live performance at Gallery SHUTL in Higashi-Ginza, Tokyo, centered on the idea of “post-liminal space.”Under his primary name, Tsudio Studio has released work through Media Factory, Local Visions, and ULTRA-VYBE, collaborating across Japan, Europe, and the United States. In 2022, the compilation OACL, which he contributed to and mastered through Local Visions, reached #2 on Bandcamp’s global charts. The West is a focused ambient work shaped by space, time, and quiet transformation.
A pure shakuhachi work by Katsuya Nonaka, a shakuhachi player and organic rice farmer whose deep relationship with nature forms the very foundation of his musical express
The latest cassette release from Tokyo‑based electronic musician and painter Akhira Sano. Evoking the stillness of late‑night hours and the lingering echoes of memory, it’s a work whose delicate details reveal themselves more and more with each listen.
A masterclass session of Japanese synth pop, new wave, and cosmic oddities from legendary Osaka-based DJ Mori Ra. Recorded live at ISC Records on Fairfax Ave. May 6th, 2023
Tending to his crop with dreams of rotation, Bruce sows and scythes four new grains in the porky mill. Of this strange fruit, that further explores his increasingly familiar, hyper-real and sonically surreal work within this current “movement,” he finds his foothold once more in a wild world intensity: fear and fury grappled in equal measure.
What's more, in celebration of the plentiful harvest thus far, (let alone in the interest of seed diversity), Bruce invites four fellow reapers to the farm, offering their recipe from the spoils of the label's yield:
Vancouver based Brit-abroad, dj_2button pulls apart 'The Hand,' with his 'Accidental Mood Mix,' to be reborn as an Odyssian 13 minute stomper: "a fight of emotions, of light and dark; in quiet protest to the incessant fear mongering that slowly numbs us on a global scale." Balearic shores can be seen glimmering in the distance, whilst you are dragged by part man part (very horny) bull into the depths of dancefloor madness.
re:ni proves she is the captain of her own ship as sweet SSRI numbness billows in the sheets and fraying, dubwise halyards tether and tear through her devilishly elegant 'sertraline queen mix'. polyrhythms plotted and percussion plundered; the vocal from 'Golden Water Queen' sounds oh so sweet in the claws of its new Regina.
Hotly titted deep house reviver, fka boursin empties clips with their bubblegum 'boomkat mix,' of 'The Price,' swivelling the original's brash and bawdy bonce, to face a 120 reality we all need to wake up and start sniffing. Sprinkled with trauma on an icing of a bassline more than a little rood, boursin is packing enough cake for the whole function to take home in (dreadful) goody bags (and even allowed compression in the mastering - mental).
Last and indubitably not least, from lying somewhat dormant in the depths of UK dance music legend, none other than flippin' Untold (!?) rises to seal the release with typically megalithic prowess. Proving he was just resting his eyes for a bit, his 'A1 Mirabelle Mix,' weaves and whips an otherworldly beauty, technically tantalising 'Dham's Jam' in adornments both sour and sweet. It's nothing short of a cloaks and daggers banger, primed for the darkest of dancefloor cosmic moments, and serving as a little less-than-warm-reminder that Untold’s presence in the world of dance music is crucial as ever.
Frankly, if you couldn't tell from all the verbose waffle, they have all absolutely smashed and finessed it: they were all approached after expressing a real resonance from the previous releases and it's such an honour to have them and their fantastic visions on the label.
Available digitally or on high quality cassette, the final chapter of the Poorly Knit's first act has been woven whimsically into the fraying folds.
Romeo’s Fall is an original score for voice by artist and composer EXLRUTH, a new work traversing romance and romanticism in a post-industrial North East England. Performed by countertenor Nik Rawlings with accompanying double bass from Caius Williams.
Informed by congregation, community and euphoria, exploring the meeting points of contemporary dance music cultures, traditional hymnal form, and the sonic appropriation and influence of regional industry, influenced by the legacy of the New Monkey. Addressing alternative trajectories of communion; on dancefloors (Makina) versus the nuclear act of togetherness within an industrial Northern landscape (classical/hymnal form).
This book features images taken from recently developed family super8, taken in and around Sunderland - 1960's onwards.
LINE is proud to announce the new solo release by Mark Fell, Ten Types of Elsewhere. Topology is a branch of mathematics concerning possible spaces and spatial objects – curves, surfaces, knots, manifolds, phase spaces, symmetrical groups, etc. The work explores a link between objects and alterity through spatial and temporal deformations, twistings, rotatings, reflections and stretchings. Here spaces and objects are not self-evident and singular, but multiple, irregular, anomalous.
The work began as a documentation of recent installations some in public spaces, some gallery works, some large works, some small etc. Inspired by the problems brought up by this activity, instead of using recordings to document these, ten processes came about each of which relates to the spaces and works in a different way – a recording, or system used to run the work, a pattern, a method or technique, a way of working, a name, or a reference point outside the work. This is Mark Fell’s first solo full length release in the United States and is a exciting new departure for LINE.
In 2025, ermhoi — a member of Black Boboi — composed the music for a video work screened at the Japan Pavilion of the Venice Biennale Architettura in Italy. To coincide with the homecoming exhibition held at the Sakurasuikan of the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art from January 24, 2026, she is releasing an album that reconstructs and reimagines the music originally created for the piece.
Goja means “chaotic” or “nonsensical” in various Japanese regional dialects.
This new work is packed with freely rambling music that leaps over the boundaries of orthodox musical instruments, homemade ones, and random objects. Listen out for taiko, drums, bits of wood, and a piano, marimba, accordion, rhythm machine, effector, wooden washtub, pot, impact screwdriver, power tool charger, and more…
Features 8 tracks. Download code available.
The Demise of Planet X is Andrew Fearn and Jason Williamson’s most expansive and ambitious release to date as Sleaford Mods. Boasting the duo’s most varied and expressive musical approach so far, it charts, critiques and satirises our times, while offering a universal cry of anger and release of energy that pushes against the encroaching cultural darkness.
Contemplating the world coming to an end not with a big bang but in slowly rising tide of irritating mundanity, The Demise Of Planet X strikes back with vivid sonics, acerbic words, enveloping atmospheres and a engaging wit across 13 tracks that will move hearts, minds and feet.
The album features a rare guest appearance from former Life Without Buildings frontwoman Sue Tompkins, plus collaborations with Aldous Harding, soul singer Liam Bailey and grime MC Snowy, the latter two both hailing from band’s hometown Nottingham. In her first foray into music, actress Gwendoline Christie (Wednesday/ Severance/ Game Of Thrones) also joins Midlands band Big Special on Sleaford Mods new single The Good Life, which is released today accompanied by a video directed by Ben Wheatley (The Kill List/A Field In England/Bulk).
‘“The Demise Of Planet X’ represents a life lived under immense uncertainty, shaped by mass trauma,” declares frontman Jason Williamson. “When we wrote the last album, it was about stagnation, a country that felt like a lifeless corpse. Three years later, that corpse has been split open by war, genocide, and the lingering psychological fallout of Covid whilst social media has mutated into a grotesque, twisted form of digital engineering. It feels like we’re living among the ruins. A multi-layered abomination etched into our collective psyche.”
A gum gnashing 60 minute ride of all unreleased James Pants beats & demos .. old fashioned mixtape business. BIG TIP!Spliced together by TBZ and Pissflaps.
"The Begena is one of those rare musical instruments of the world that has survived for more than 5800 years. What is fascinating about it is not only its age but the fact that both its manufacture and the purpose for which it is being played have never changed during all these years. It is still made of wood and animal products, such as the intestine of the sheep for the strings, the leather that covers the sound box. It is used for praying, for praising God and for meditation, just as it was in the olden days and it has survived until the present day. During the time of the Derg regime, after the overthrow of the emperor Haile Selassie, it was no longer considered important. As for the Begena, which used to be broadcasted through the radio during the fasting season, all this was stopped. At that time I was a teacher at the music school, the only music school in the country, and because I did not get the necessary support to develop it I had to stop, because I was not allowed to teach. And so we could say that it did become a disappearing popular art. But not anymore, especially in the past 15, 16 years it has revived. There are many Begena players, mostly youngsters, of whom I have taught more than 500 students. Still there are some Begena makers, who make the instrument for new students. What is interesting about this instrument is that the music, or the tone that comes out of this instrument, has a special power to make people to concentrate, to keep quiet, to be carried away in thoughts, thinking of what is said. This is a special quality. You don't have to be an Ethiopian, anybody can listen to it, automatically it will make him keep quiet and concentrate."
— Alemu Aga
Akhira Sano is a Tokyo-based artist working across sound, drawing, installation, and video. His practice finds generative potential for music in life's fleeting incidents, etching meaning from unassuming spaces and resonances. With releases on 12k, LAAPS, IIKKI, and The Trilogy Tapes, Sano has steadily carved out a distinctive voice within minimal and experimental music - one that privileges attentiveness and patience over spectacle.
"To Material Past", Sano's debut for SWIMS, carries this thread with a 30-minute expedition built solely using glockenspiel tones and field recordings from his local neighbourhood. This is a night walk with no map or end point; Sano follows irregular, coiling fragments that extend to form a tessellating luminous whole - like a subliminal mass of tree roots quietly shifting the concrete slabs beneath our feet.
Under this faded gauze of gestures and interactions, Sano's glockenspiel interjects like a grandfather clock, softly marking the partitions that make up a day's collected experience; clicking and chiming like the sleeping brain, as it sifts and catalogues a lifetime's ephemera of thoughts, faces and puzzles.
Re-upping and expanding our 2020 sufi-flamenco grail on LP and tape format, adding 4 newly unearthed tracks to those previously thought to be Aziz Balouch's only recordings.
Aziz Balouch moved to the Iberian Peninsula from modern-day Pakistan in 1932 in search of work and music. After a childhood spent studying Islamic mysticism and devotional songs in the Sufi shrines of his native Sindh he soon fell in love with the 'deep song' of flamenco and was taken in as an apprentice to the great heterodox cantaor Pepe Marchena after a chance encounter. He dedicated the rest of his life to flamenco and developed an elaborate theory of the South Asian and Sufi origins of the art which he propagated through live performances and publications in London, Spain and Pakistan.
Decades before the arrival of the academic discipline of ethnomusicology or the invention of 'fusion' Aziz Balouch painstakingly immersed himself into a completely different musical tradition seeking connections and drawing inspiration to create a unique performance style which has tragically remained hidden and ignored. These 8 tracks are taken from Aziz Balouch's only surviving recordings, two 7" EPs released in Spain in 1962. On each track Balouch draws on his polyglottism to seamlessly merge Sufi poetry in Persian, Sindhi, Hindi and Arabic with various forms of Andalusian song in Spanish. Accompanied by a single guitar his voice pushes through into the profound depths of human experience to excavate the shared past of flamenco which had been submerged beneath the surface.
Many thanks to Stefan Williamson Fa.