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After forming in the mid `60s and gradually finding their sound, A Bolha carved out a unique spot in Brazil's underground scene with their mix of fuzzed-out riffs and a hard-hitting, soulful rhythm section. Sem Nada was released in 1971 during the era when Arnaldo Brandao was on bass, and when the band was at its heaviest and most trippy.
The shifting dimensions of Masana Temples, fourth album from psychedelic explorers Kikagaku Moyo,are informed by various experiences the band had with traveling through life together, ranging from the months spent on tour to making a pilgrimage to Lisbon to record the album with jazz musician Bruno Pernadas. The band sought out Pernadas both out of admiration for his music and in an intentional move to work with a producer who came from a wildly different background. With Masana Temples, the band wanted to challenge their own concepts of what psychedelic music could be. Elements of both the attentive folk and wild-eyed rocking sides of the band are still intact throughout, but they’re sharper and more defined.
More than the literal interpretation of being on a journey, the album’s always changing sonic panorama reflects the spiritual connection of the band moving through this all together. Life for a traveling band is a series of constant metamorphoses, with languages, cultures, climates and vibes changing with each new town. The only constant for Kikagaku Moyo throughout their travels were the five band members always together moving through it all, but each of them taking everything in from very different perspectives. Inspecting the harmonies and disparities between these perspectives, the group reflects the emotional impact of their nomadic paths. The music is the product of time spent in motion and all of the bending mindsets that come with it.
Bongo Joe records is pleased to present La Contra Ola, a compilation recording dedicated to the early 80’s Spanish Synth Wave and Post Punk scene. First to be published outside Spain, this anthology explores the electronic music side of the independent music produced in the days in the Iberian Peninsula: Synthetic pop music with industrial sounds including futurist Art Rock, dance-floor productions and low-fi experiments on cassettes. Classics or true hidden treasures, this selection of nineteen songs is symbolic of the musical dawn that Spain experienced during the decade marked by the return of democracy and by the creative freedom initiated by Punk music.
Call Super revives the endangered art of the mix CD with a fluid, technicolour hour of elegantly advanced club music featuring a striking assembly of emergent artists.
Since their first releases in the early 2010s, Joseph Seaton has been a many-sided artist balancing expressive electronics with organic instrumentation. Their background in jazz has informed ambient and experimental albums, but they've proven to be just as comfortable tackling all shapes and speeds of impactful club music. This extends to their practice as a DJ, regularly surfing the slipstream of the club and festival circuit with a sensitive, seductive instinct for the movement of a dancefloor.
Seaton set out to make ARPO — an acronym for A Rhythm Protects One — to honour the meaning of mix CDs in a world drowning in online DJ streams. Part of the generation raised on seminal series like the metal-tinned fabric and fabriclive (which Seaton themselves contributed to), they cast back to the lasting impression of landmark sessions like Coldcut's 1995 opus Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes Of Madness. These were mixes to absorb over and over again, where every deeply considered track and transition became lodged in your psyche.
As a DJ, producer and composer with a reputation for distinctive, head-turning musicality, Seaton puzzled out a selection for ARPO that bristles with invention. Every track feels like a moment, loaded with motifs and loops that gently impose their presence across an ever-shifting, intricately woven tapestry of dancefloor psychedelia (not to be confused with any genres with 'psy' in the name).
As well as exclusive new material under their Call Super and Ondo Fudd aliases, Seaton seeks out uncanny talent from breakthrough artists in tune with their creative vision. In terms of slinky 4/4 groove and mid tempo pace, you might locate the likes of Conny Slipp, Scarletina and Clam1 on the wilder fringes of minimal tech house, but their productions teem with textural depth and melodic subtlety that reach past that scene's typically functional tendencies. Curveballs abound, and Seaton relishes in the chance to divert into dramatic workouts like their own 'Limelight' and 'mothertime' or strip everything down for the striking, swooning poetry of Malgo & KVS' 'The Argosy'.
Way beyond neatly boxed-off club styles, the individual tracks have their own unique qualities that hold space within the mix as a whole — memorable hooks that burrow in deep, sequenced as a complete and immersive whole to carry with you through life. As Seaton puts it themselves:
"There is a line in the Malgo & KVS track that goes, 'I must be the place where the storm catches breath.' The line captures that feeling of the best of times in a club, where everything slips away in terms of time and you feel like you’ve reached a place beyond the outside world, a place of your own that is somehow communal with those around you. The mix was meant to be an honest reflection of those moments for me as a DJ. The zones that somehow encapsulate the physical and mental harmony you feel in that place. This is a mix for that zone."
Of course, the importance of a mix CD is also rooted in its physicality. Seaton thought back to some of their favourite CD packaging, landing on the iconic pill box that housed Spiritualized's 1997 space rock opus Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. The original designer and manufacturer of that packaging, Daniel Mason, was sought out and enlisted to collaborated with Dekmantel's Jan Tomson. They created a triple-gatefold digipak that centres on figures and a typeface created from dance notation, and a volvelle — a rotating circle dating back to the middle ages originally used to calculate the phases of the sun and the moon. In ARPO's packaging, it acts as a key to detail the artists and track names that feature on the mix. It's a lovingly thought-out, unique piece that further cements Seaton's offering as a memorable entry into the mix CD canon.
You Never End is the third album from Moin (Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews) out via AD 93 on the 25th October.
This record marks Moin’s shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria.
The album’s collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K’s ethereal, reverb drenched vocals, Coby Sey’s words that bounce and echo across London’s concrete streets and Olan Monk’s emotive songwriting, while artist Sophie Al-Maria’s voice and thoughts are known to stretch across her multidisciplinary practice as an artist, filmmaker and writer. The unique mystique of each collaborator is maintained throughout the record while simultaneously opening Moin up to new possibilities, in a gentle shifting alchemy.
Continuing their enigmatic re-configuring of the traditional band, Moin use a mix of conventional and unique production and compositional techniques. Subtly re-framing the current conversation about what band in 2024 needs to be, Moin walk the line between what's reassuringly familiar and what's unsettling and inquisitive. You Never End is a more sensitive record in sentiment, it re-contextualises grunge, shoegaze and indie rock with a weirdly comforting melancholy while still sounding direct and alive.
The vocal collaborations bring the most articulate moments and lucid emotion while still remaining uniquely within Moin's established world. Alongside this, the record fine tunes the elements of electronic production that have always been a feature of the band's unique sound in a deeply subtle way. Elements are simpler and more direct, offering robust functional support as well as textural and emotional resonance. Together they show the potential for both practices to intertwine.
Over the past decade, Chaos In The CBD, the brotherly production duo of Louis and Ben Helliker-Hales, have captivated global audiences with their spectral, jazz-inflected deep house sound. With over 100 million streams worldwide, the New Zealand-born, London-based artists are set to release their highly anticipated debut album, A Deeper Life on May 9, 2025 via the label head’s very own In Dust We Trust imprint.
To celebrate the announcement, Chaos In The CBD have shared the atmospheric lead single ‘Love Language’, featuring fellow New Zealander Nathan Haines on Saxophone. It’s an undeniable standout moment on the album—moody, ethereal, and naturally soothing. Speaking on the track, Chaos In The CBD explains: “‘Love Language’ is a track that suits almost any setting, evoking the laid-back, easygoing rhythm of life in New Zealand. Perfect for a road trip to the beach or those magical moments at an after party when the sun reappears. Love Language feels like a reflection of the journey that brought it to life and we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.”
The 14 track LP marks a significant evolution in Chaos In The CBD’s artistic journey. Known for their signature sound epitomised by their breakout EP Midnight In Peckham on Rhythm Section, the duo’s debut album unites live instrumentation and vocal collaborations for the first time, fusing together key musical influences such as Ambient, Soulful house, R&B, Jazz & Balearic into a melting pot of an epic journey that will surely become a future classic. If Midnight In Peckham was the duo’s coming of age; then their debut album is Chaos In The CBD coming full circle. It features contributions from legendary figures such as Josh Milan of Blaze, Lee Pearson Jr., Stephanie Cooke and UK grime MC Novelist, among others.
Though they’ve been based in London for over a decade, Louis and Ben (aka Beans) have never stopped feeling at one with their homeland. A Deeper Life is nostalgic for their nature-filled youth, exploring the magical coastline and lush rainforest of New Zealand. “The title refers to our childhood, which was idyllic,” says Ben. “It was just the sun, the sand, the sea, waterfalls, birds and fish...” The result is an international dance sound that feels unmistakably like Chaos and ebbs and flows from the beach party to the club to the afterhours. “It’s laid-back but still driving at the same time; it’s club ready, but still deep,” Ben explains. It’s also distinctly Balearic: The brothers found a particular affinity with 90s Ibiza chillout music, being from such a “chill place” themselves. “In its own way, New Zealand is incredibly Balearic, but without the party side” says Ben.
The brothers hope that their debut evidences their deep appreciation of 90s house music, from David Morales’s Red Zone mixes and Kerri Chandler to DJ Sprinkles, Larry Heard and beyond. “We didn’t go to the school of hard knocks, we went to the school of Carl Cox,” they wrote in one of their typically hilarious posts on Instagram. But while they’ve built a meme-driven online personality for their social media accounts, their album shows a deeper side to them too. “We joke around but we want this album to be taken seriously,” says Louis. “It’s music from all around the globe, and there’s a deep meaning to how it flows and sticks together”.
For Chaos In The CBD, A Deeper Life is more than an album—it’s a celebration of their roots, their community, and their enduring bond as brothers. “This is a love letter to home and the feeling of being within nature,” says Louis. “It’s also an ode to a slower pace of life.” The album is an invitation to journey through their world: from the beaches of New Zealand to the heart of London’s dancefloors, and everywhere in between. A Deeper Life is set to be both a club-ready triumph and a reflective escape for listeners worldwide.
Originally out as a free Net-7inch on Jahtari in 2008 to pay respects at the shrine of arcade machine fighting games, these undying hiphop-infused martial arts Dubs by disrupt are finally reaching their intended destination: white blood-splattered 7inch vinyl (attention: not actual blood!).
"Samurai Showdown" (which eventually became Solo Banton's classic "Kung Fu Master", from his Music Addict EP in 2010) is taking place at sunrise, of course, when two master swordsmen are matching blades in a battle to the death. Can the wave-cutting technique of the Jahtari-school prevail?
The B-side is the meditation after the battle, mentally re-creating the epic struggle move by move and in slow motion...
So draw your Katana and prepare for beats as sharp as a battle sword, deadly moves of Ninja swiftness and basslines coming straight from the six paths of hell.
Strictly one-time pressing, 300 copies only!
Illuminated with breathtaking vocals and uncanny poetics, ‘Goodness’ is an open, impressionistic assemblage of drone, ambient, experimental electronics, improvisational music and minimalist dance music.
Across protean forms and voices, feeo explores an ever-evolving counterpoint between connection and isolation, the city and the natural world, the external and the internal. Contrasting beauty with volatility, communion with disintegration, feeo creates an album of absorbing tension between distinct contrasts.
With eleven interconnected pieces of music, each engaged in symbiotic dialogue, ‘Goodness’ represents a sinuous yet uniform work. Each track is like a link in a chain, with each piece revealing its lustre when held up to the light.
feeo describes the album as “an exploration of simultaneous yet opposing states of being; darkness and lightness, obscurity and visibility and most fundamentally, solitude and togetherness. Each song is an adumbration; a partial sketch of one aspect of the LP - each finding its complete meaning when read in the context of the whole.”
Mirroring the push and pull of perception and contemporary experience, ‘Goodness’ oscillates between disparate moods and intensities, reflecting moments of interiority, intimacy, seclusion, collective experience and exterior turbulence.
‘Goodness’ marks an evolution in feeo’s artistic practice, both as her first full-length release, and as a product of wider collaboration after several years working independently. Welcoming close collaborators and select affiliates into the fold, the process of making ‘Goodness’ was very much like the record itself; a deeply personal, special convergence of expression and artistry.
When DOOM reemerged on the scene in the 90s, he firmly marked his return, capturing the theory of knowing the rules if only to better break them.
That sentiment was captured not only in his unique writing method, but also in his production style that birthed the moniker Metal Fingers. He seamlessly blended creative ingenuity with the all-too-obvious, and a unique ability to sample things oft-considered off limits, yet still create magic.
The 10 volume Special Herbs instrumental series captures a key moment in time of Metal Fingers DOOM as producer, assembling, and sometimes slightly reworking, select beats from albums such as MM..Food, Operation: Doomsday, & King Geedorah, as well as a collection of exclusive beats.
When DOOM reemerged on the scene in the 90s, he firmly marked his return, capturing the theory of knowing the rules if only to better break them.
That sentiment was captured not only in his unique writing method, but also in his production style that birthed the moniker Metal Fingers. He seamlessly blended creative ingenuity with the all-too-obvious, and a unique ability to sample things oft-considered off limits, yet still create magic.
The 10 volume Special Herbs instrumental series captures a key moment in time of Metal Fingers DOOM as producer, assembling, and sometimes slightly reworking, select beats from albums such as MM..Food, Operation: Doomsday, & King Geedorah, as well as a collection of exclusive beats.
Punk Slime Recordings are proud to present the debut album from Gothenburg quintet Hollow Ship, the follow-up to the acclaimed debut 7” We Were Kings from late 2019. Due on April 3, Future Remains is a massive introduction from the band, showcasing their unique take on psychedelic rock which sounds like nothing else around, expertly produced by Hollow Ship together with Mattias Glavå (Dungen etc) on the majority of the album and working with Daniel Johansson on opening track “Take Off”.
A lot of new bands take their time in finding their feet; working their way slowly to the sound they want to project, and figuring out what it is they want to say gradually, as they go along. Not this one, though - both sonically and thematically, Future Remains sees them storm out of the gate with a crystal-clear mission statement. Somewhere in the space behind a well-worn eight-track recorder and the polish of present-day production, Hollow Ship have lift off.
Soundtrack to Cyprien Gaillard’s new stereoscopic film, Retinal Rivalry (2024), is an entrancing journey through Germany’s urban landscape and its layers of historical and social significance.
Bad Brains is the self-titled debut studio album recorded by American hardcore punk/reggae band Bad Brains. Recorded in 1981 and released on (then) cassette-only label ROIR on February 5, 1982, many fans refer to it as "The Yellow Tape" because of it's yellow packaging. Though Bad Brains had recorded the 16 song Black Dots album in 1979 and the 5-song Omega Sessions EP in 1980, the ROIR cassette was the band's first release of anything longer than a single. The release includes the original liner notes by Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. This reissue marks the second release in the remaster campaign on the band's own Bad Brains Records imprint with Org Music. In coordination with the band, Org Music has overseen the restoration and remastering of the iconic Bad Brains' recordings. The audio was mastered by Dave Gardner at Infrasonic Mastering.
Amid the early 2000s Scottish music scene that birthed Camera Obscura, Arab Strap and Belle and Sebastian, Tacoma Radar were the quiet achievers. Their sole album, No One Waved Goodbye – a mesmerising collection of hushed melancholy, is now hailed as a cult classic. Reissued for the first time, this deluxe double album features No One Waved Goodbye, both seven-inch singles, and the previously unreleased Live From the 13th Note.
In the late 1980s, singer Bizimungu Diudonne, his wife Agnes Umbibizi, and a backing band of family and friends self-released a visionary cassette, featuring stuttering electric guitars, loping bass lines, and call and response vocals. Their combo of 80s studio wizardry rooted in traditional Rwandan praise songs resulted in hypnotic, extended jams unlike anything else released in East Africa at the time. The lyrics praised the beauty of the countryside and the exploits of the ancient gods. On plaintive acoustic tracks squeezed between the electric bangers, Bizimungu and Agnes called for unity in the divided nation. Their message was an eerie presaging of the coming Rwandan Genocide, which tragically tooke the lives of all members of the group. Bizimungu and Agnes were both killed by Hutu militias in 1994. Their music, popular across the region, was largely forgotten in the ensuing decades. We first heard this album through music scholar Matthew Lavoie in 2018, and spent years looking for any surviving members of the band. Last year, co-producer and Voice of America host Jackson Mvunganyi tracked down Bizimungu and Agnes’ daughter, Noella, in Kigali. Only 8 years old at the time of her parents’ death, she had taken on the task of reintroducing their work to a new generation in Rwanda. Though her family lost almost everything in the genocide, Noella miraculously was left with a CD containing the master recordings of Inzovu Y’imirindi. It is stunning to finally hear this music in its fullness and immediacy, beautifully remastered at Osiris Studios and pressed on the highest quality vinyl at David Rawlings’ Paramount Press. We’re grateful to Noella and our collaborators for helping us share Bizimungu and Agnes’ vital music and message with the world.
If you head north on 1-85 from Hillsborough, NC, and take the exit for 58 East, in fifteen minutes you'll reach Diamond Grove, a small unincorporated area in Brunswick County, Virginia on the Meherrin River. To most eyes, there's not much there—you'll have to drive to Lawrenceville for groceries or to South Hill for hardware. But hidden in this patch of Virginia piedmont are the remnants of a dairy farm established in the 1740s, its main house an old two up, two down beauty still outfitted with rope beds and all. Go there today and you'll hear distant sounds of someone working soybeans and cotton in the leased-out outbuildings, farm-use tires grinding gravel roads, frogs peeping, and chickadees singing out: chick-a-dee, chick-a-dee. But if you happened to pass through in September of 2023, you might've heard fiddle tunes ricocheting off the pines, BBS rattling-to-rest inside empties, and the sounds of Weirs recording their second LP and Dear Life Records debut: Diamond Grove. Weirs is an experimental collective grown out of central North Carolina's music scene—one that is equal parts oldtime and DIY noise. Non-hierarchical in form, past Weirs performances have included anywhere from two to twelve people. In September 2023, nine traveled up US-58 to pack into the living and dining rooms of the dairy farm main house, still in the family of band member and organizer Oliver Child-Lanning, whose relatives have been there for centuries. This Weirs lineup—neither definitive nor precious—includes Child-Lanning; Justin Morris and Libby Rodenbough (his collaborators in Sluice); Evan Morgan, Courtney Werner, and Mike DeVito of Magic Tuber Stringband; and stalwarts Andy McLeod, Alli Rogers, and Oriana Messer who played deep into those late-summer evenings. What resulted are the nine tracks of Diamond Grove, recorded with an ad hoc signal chain assembled from a greater-communitys worth of borrowed gear. The Weirs project began as tape experiments on traditional tunes Child-Lanning made under the name Pluviöse in winter 2019. This evolved into the first Weirs record, Prepare to Meet God, which was self-released in July 2020 and was a collaboration between Child-Lanning and Morris during COVID. The strange conditions of that debut—a communal tradition of live songs recorded apart in isolation—are undone by Diamond Grove, a record rooted in the unrepeatable convergence of people, place, and time. On the new record, Weirs continue their search for how best to forward, uphold, and unshackle so-called "traditional" music. They are songcatchers, gathering tunes on the verge of obscure death. Their wild, centuries-spanning repertoire plays like an avant-call-the-tune session—a kind of Real Book for a scene fluent in porch jams, Big Blood, Amps for Christ, and Jean Ritchie. Weirs catch songs whose interpretive canon still feels ajar—open enough to stand next to but never above those who've sung them before. These aren't attempts at definitive versions. The recordings on Diamond Grove feel like visitations rather than revisions. And the question Weirs asks on this record is not how to simply continue the tradition of their forebears, but how traditional music could sound today. For Weirs, the history of this tradition could be taken less from the folk revival than from musique concréte; less from pristine old master recordings than something like The Shadow Ring if theyd come from the evangelical South. One listen to "(A Still, Small Voice)" and you'll hear the power of the hymn give way to its equal: the floorboards, fire crackle, dinners made and eaten. This tension between preservation and degradation is the inner light of Diamond Grove. Take "Doxology l": the melody of "Old Hundred", a hymn from the Sacred Harp tradition, is converted to MIDI, played through iPhone speakers, and re-recorded in the September air. To some revivalists, this hymn sung with all the glory of fake auto-tuned voices might sound sacreligious. But ears attuned, say, to the hyperpop production of the last few decades will immediately understand the tense beauty of hearing digitallyartifacted shape-note singing. This same tension animates "l Want to Die Easy." Weirs' version draws from A Golden Ring of Gospel's recording, monumentalized in the Folkways collection Sharon Mountain Harmony. The melodies, words, structure are largely unchanged. But the "'pure" clarity of voice in the early recording is gone. In its place, we hear the distancing sound of the dairy farm silo where Weirs recorded their version, its natural two-second reverb replacing pristine proximity. In this way, the sound of the recording site itself becomes equal to the traditional performance. The beating heart of Diamond Grove is Weirs's take on "Lord Bateman," a tune Jean Ritchie called a "big ballad:" played when the chores were done and the night's dancing had stopped. It is an 18th-century song—as old as the Diamond Grove farm—about a captured adventurer, described by Nic Jones as embodying the spirit of an Errol Flynn film. Like many great and often a cappella renditions, this "'Lord Bateman" is voice-forward, foregrounding the gather-round-children importance of yarn spinning. What's new here is the immense drone that transubstantiates the narrative into a ceaseless body of elemental forces. It's an eye-blurring murmur of collective strings that adds to the canon of Ritchie and June Tabor as much as to Pelt's Ayahuasca or Henry Flynt's Hillbilly Tape Music. While Diamond Grove isn't explicitly about the old dairy farm where it was recorded, it can't help but resemble it. Old English ballads like "'Lord Bateman" and "'Lord Randall" spill into fields once 'granted' by the British Crown. Tragic songs like "'Edward" stagger across Tuscarora trails and postbellum cotton rows. Hymns like "'Everlasting l" and "Everlasting Il" catch a moonlight that's been falling through double-hung windows since Lord Bacon's Rebellion. And the nocturnals still trill and plows still till a music uncomposed, waiting for any and all ears to chance upon it. Diamond Grove, in these ways, is history. It is a place. It is time. It is songcatching, liveness, tape manipulation. Like the low-head dam that the word weir implies, it is a defense against the current. It is a defense of regional lexicons against mass-produced vernaculars; a defense against the belief that we can simply return to a simpler time; a defense against the idea that folk music must remain "pure"; a defense against the claim that a dream of the future latent in lost histories is irretrievably lost. Against all that, Diamond Grove defends traditional music by making it sound like the complexity of today—because it knows that such music, and all the histories caught up in it, has a role to play in the days to come.
At the end of the 1980s, Mariolina Zitta approached the world of natural sounds, studying musicology and developing a passion for speleology. Her encounter with Walter Maioli was fundamental, guiding and influencing her definitive research into sound archaeology and the primitive sources of musical acoustic phenomena. In these recordings Mariolina conducts a magical ritual as a cave priestess, celebrating the icons par excellence of the mysteries of the night: bats. The specific frequencies of the calls of these fascinating creatures are recorded with special detectors used by ecologists, the result is an organic synthesizer. The fusion with the sounds of natural objects (stones, stalactites, logs, bone whistles, Tibetan bells, mouth bows, trumpet shells) and the vocal modulations of harmonic singing allow us to travel into a still unexplored sound dimension, through an evocative experience of total sensory listening. It is an arcane landscape filled with pure vibrations, magnetic resonances and aquatic sounds; an ancestral enchantment on the border between consciousness and dreams, a symbolic liturgy of primordial reverberations, echoes and whistles. Edition of 200 copies.
KontaktAudio presents the first-ever official release of the ultra rare and sought after B-Semi Live 24/5/1984 cassette, a rare and explosive document capturing a crucial moment in Japan’s underground noise and industrial music scene. Recorded at the legendary B-Semi venue in Tokyo, this performance brings together three pioneers - Merzbow, Null (K.K. Null), and Nord - delivering a raw, unfiltered onslaught of early Japanese noise music in its most intense form.
This historic recording showcases the primitive power and experimental spirit that defined the early Japanese noise music scene, sitting alongside the abrasive intensity of Whitehouse, the industrial ritualism of SPK, and the mechanical destruction of Throbbing Gristle. A sonic time capsule of Japan’s most groundbreaking sound revolutionaries, B-Semi Live 24/5/1984 is an essential piece of noise history.
Jezgro is proud to present the second release by the almighty god of noise Merzbow. "Torus" is bleak, twisted and uncompromising EP, that has a tendency to disturb and sooth, both at the same time, your inner dark parts and make you question your moral.
Spanish producer and composer Pedro Vian and Japanese noise legend Merzbow join forces once again for A Wheel of Mani, a singular work set to be released exclusively on 12” vinyl on June 4, 2025, via Modern Obscure Music. This collaboration follows in the footsteps of their previous joint effort, Inside Richard Serra Sculptures, released last year, where they explored the intersection of sonic abstraction and dense textural landscapes. With this new release, the two artists push even further into the spiritual and abrasive corners of their sound, merging ethereal atmospheres with the raw intensity of extreme noise, shaped by
glitch techniques and digital experimentation.
The album serves as a meeting point between seemingly opposing sonic worlds, now interwoven in a fascinating synergy. Vian contributes his sensitivity for hypnotic pads and enveloping ambiances, while Merzbow amplifies the experience with his signature saturation and searing textures. The result is a composition of stark contrasts and unexpected harmonies, inviting the listener into a sensory journey where mysticism and chaos coalesce into a singular experience.
The decision to release A Wheel of Mani on vinyl underscores its physicality, emphasizing the tactile experience of sound, where each groove reveals unexplored tonal dimensions. Vian and Merzbow eschew conventional approaches, dissolving boundaries between the ambient and the abrasive, the meditative and the cathartic. This is not an album that seeks easy resolutions but one that thrives within the tension between harmony and noise, where texture takes precedence and time becomes elastic. A work designed as much for deep contemplation as for total immersion in its expansive sonic universe.
A growling, distinctive set of loose-limbed, groove-fwd art rock inversions, Alpha Maid's debut album has been well worth the wait, augmenting post-punk, noise rock and free improv structures with sui generis studio fog and an unparalleled level of no-fucks-given eccentricity. RIYL Dome, Silver Apples, Moin, Klein, Mica Levi, Loop, Still House Plants.
Leisha Thomas has been working almost entirely without fanfare, imagining a sound that's part Black Dice, part Slint and part Klein. 2021's 'CHUCKLE', released on Olan Monk's c.a.n.v.a.s. label, felt sketchy, anarchic and unhinged - at the time, we compared it with Dean Blunt, This Heat, La Timpa and Slint - and 'Is this a queue' plays to Thomas's keenest instincts, darkening idiosyncratic pencil strokes with confident, intentional gestures. In a year where seemingly everyone's attempting the rock-pop pivot, Thomas refines and focuses ideas that have coursed through not just their solo work, but their spresso-branded collaborations with Mica Levi, for years. This is Thomas's record, for sure, and its quirks are only strengthened by collaborations with their wider community of like-minded operatives: Ben Vince, Coby Sey, Valentina Megaletti and Leo Hermitt. Nothing feels cheap or rattled off for clout - if there's an artist featured, you'd better know there's a damn good reason.
Opener '6-9' is irresistibly incongruous, a cheeky false start that de-platforms Thomas's signature guitar sound, fudging crusty environmental recordings and weightless drones into a modish take on Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis's subterranean rhythmic experiments. We're on more familiar territory with '2 Numbers', but what starts as a tempo-fluxing slowcore slog is coolly stirred by background whispers and plasticky stabs that sound as if they've been wrenched from Kelis's Neptunes-produced first LP. It's hard to know exactly what Manchester-based Hermitt has contributed to this one, but the track's as poppy as Thomas allows themself to get, nearing the tape-dubbed, lo-fi preciousness of last year's 'Underground Love'. Elsewhere, even when Thomas forms what might be mistaken for a song, it's inevitably deconstructed or skewered; on 'Guarded', their wailed ad libs and chants drift in-and-out of step with grumbly strums and boxy, staggered drums.
"It's been a minute," they echo thru distortion and a heaping spoonful of reverb. And by 'GOAT Rosetta' there's almost nothing left, just feedback, growling distortion and barely discernible words sung into the cavernous expanse. Even the genius 'WHY WE HAVE TO MOVE', that centres Valentina Mageletti's most Danny Taylor turn behind the kit, sounds as if it's about to fray at the edges, with its lysergic, xenharmonic guitar whirrs swamping Thomas's mumbled words and angular improvisations. They melt 'Washing Machine'-era Sonic Youth strums and boss-tuned twangs with similarly skewed AutoTuned moans on the simmering, brilliant 'On Smoke', and on the album's sobering finale 'Palimpsest', Thomas's purposed splatter of guitar noises and lurching beats fall into step with Coby Sey's alert annunciations and Ben Vince's inventive sax drones, forming a ruff outline of London's most fertile nook.
If you've been as bored by this year's "experimental" rock offerings as we have, let 'Is this a queue' restore your faith - it's that good.
In July of 2022, just one month before jaimie branch’s death sent shockwaves around the world, the trumpet player and composer was in Chicago at International Anthem studios putting finishing touches on an album. It was a suite of music she had composed and then recorded with her flagship ensemble, Fly or Die, over the course of a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In her wake, the album was near complete, with only mixing tweaks, final titles, and artwork to be fully realized. In the months following, her family (led by sister Kate Branch), her band (Jason Ajemian, Lester St. Louis, and Chad Taylor), and her collaborators at IARC banded together to gather memories, texts, emails, photographs, artwork and fragments belonging to jaimie to light the path forward. The goal was always to do what jaimie would have done. Packaged in stunning artwork by John Herndon, Damon Locks, and branch herself, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)) is jaimie’s final album with her Fly or Die quartet.
From the album's liner notes, written by jaimie's Fly or Die bandmates:
“jaimie never had small ideas. She always thought big. The minute you told her she couldn’t do something, or that something would be too difficult to accomplish, the more determined and focused she became. And this album is big. Far bigger and more demanding — for us, and for you — than any other Fly or Die record. For this, jaimie wanted to play with longer forms, more modulations, more noise, more singing, and as always, grooves and melodies. She was a dynamic melodicist. jaimie wanted this album to be lush, grand and full of life, just as she was. Every time we take a listen, we feel the deep imprint of her all over the music, and we see all of us making it together.”
For over four decades, Masami Akita, the man behind Merzbow, has remained one of the most singular and uncompromising figures in experimental music. Known as a pioneer of Japanese noise and a tireless sonic innovator, Akita has consistently pushed boundaries, exploring sound not as a vehicle for melody or harmony, but as a raw material to be shaped, sculpted, and sometimes obliterated. His prolific output spans hundreds of releases, each one revealing a different angle of his evolving sonic philosophy — from dense analog textures to intricate digital manipulations.
Originally released on CD in 2003, Animal Magnetism is now receiving a long-overdue vinyl reissue — a deluxe edition that not only revives the album but enhances it. This new edition has been meticulously remastered by Lasse Marhaug, a respected figure in noise and experimental music who brings on vinyl reissue new clarity, weight, and depth to the recordings. Spread across two vinyl LPs and housed in a gatefold sleeve, the reissue replicates the original artwork, including Masami Akita’s own photographs, while also adding a previously unreleased bonus track, “Quiet Comfort #2.”
Animal Magnetism occupies a unique position in Merzbow’s vast catalogue. It is a work that remains firmly rooted in the artist’s signature approach — dense layers of distortion, feedback, and electronic debris — but it also stands out for its sense of structure, variation, and surprising accessibility. It’s an album that, while intense, is not impenetrable. It invites the listener to explore its textures and uncover subtle melodic patterns and rhythmic shifts beneath the surface noise.
The opening title track sets the tone: a chaotic yet strangely hypnotic blend of static, metallic clangs, fractured beats, and synthetic tones. There's a sense of tension throughout — familiar in Merzbow’s work — but here, it builds gradually, revealing layers rather than overwhelming the listener all at once. There’s even the faint outline of something resembling a melody, buried deep beneath the sonic rubble, slowly emerging and fading as the piece unfolds.
What makes Animal Magnetism distinctive is its balance between harsh noise and a more refined, composed sensibility. Where many Merzbow albums plunge into total abstraction, this one maintains a sense of movement and progression. Tracks evolve over time, flowing into one another with a kind of warped continuity. Noise isn’t just a wall here — it breathes, pulses, and shifts form.
One of the album’s highlights, “Quiet Men,” is a surprisingly playful and kinetic track. High-pitched, swirling sounds bounce around in cartoon-like patterns, giving the piece a strange but infectious energy. It’s vivid, bright, and almost whimsical — a striking contrast to Merzbow’s more oppressive works. Yet, it never abandons the core aesthetic of noise: distortion, friction, repetition — only here, it’s presented with a lighter touch, almost like a satire of dance music through a noise lens.
The album’s longest piece, “A Ptarmigan,” stretches to more of twenty minutes and showcases Merzbow’s gift for long-form development. The track shifts dramatically over its runtime — starting with a sense of movement and brightness, before descending into slow, grinding dirges. At one point it feels almost celebratory, the next meditative and ominous. It’s a miniature sonic journey that encapsulates many of the album’s contrasts: playfulness and heaviness, speed and inertia, chaos and control.
Later, “Super Sheep” picks up the pace, with a more aggressive rhythmic drive. While its bass line may evoke familiar electronic or break core structures, Merzbow twists and mutates it into something uniquely his own. The distortion here feels intentional and compositional — not just as an effect, but as a central part of the track’s logic. It’s not chaos for chaos’s sake, but a carefully controlled burn. Another standout, “Pier 39,” veers into ambient territory. Gentle scraping textures, soft frequencies, and minimal movement make it a quiet anomaly in the tracklist — but also a necessary one. It shows how even within the noise genre, Merzbow is capable of creating space and silence, of dialing back the intensity to explore fragility and restraint. The newly added bonus track, “Quiet Comfort #2,” fits seamlessly into the album’s sound world. It serves as both a continuation and a reflection, extending the album’s themes while offering something fresh.
Today, as interest in Merzbow continues to rise — with new generations discovering the depth and breadth of his work — this reissue feels especially timely. It’s a reminder that noise can be complex, emotional, and even, beautiful. Animal Magnetism is not just for seasoned noise fans, but also for adventurous listeners looking for a unique and challenging experience that rewards attention and repeated listening. This edition is a must-have for collectors and newcomers alike: an essential document of an artist who continues to redefine the outer edges of sound.