NEW ARRIVALS

First released by Extreme in the massive, infamous 'Merzbox,' "Red Magnesia Pink" is extracted and recontextualized as a standalone release for the first time. Recorded in 1995, "Red Magnesia Pink" sees Merzbow in peak form. A psychedelic whirlwind of synthetic transmissions; harsh, wet, screeching sounds that could only be produced by Masami Akita. Featuring two previously unreleased bonus tracks from the same era.

claire rousay's 'sentiment' gets the remix treatment from Maral, more eaze, Patrick Shiroishi, M Sage, Andrew Weathers, AMULETS and Gretchen Korsmo.

Texas-based mainstay Andrew Weathers is first up, his rework glues all the vocals on the entire 'sentiment' album into a robotic gurgle - it's the most off-track version of the set and immediately stands out. Maral's take on 'ily2' is more restrained, adding a beat and neatly psychedelic back half, while sound artist Gretchen Korsmo turns 'asking for it' into a whisper of the original as if she's turned it inside out, leaving rousay's vocals to harmonize with her tempered drones. AMULETS' rework of 'head' sounds more in-line with the 'sentiment' mood; the Portland-based A/V artist swells rousay's fizzing emo-folk into tape-fucked shoegaze, and it works very well.

Classic selection of Augustus Pablo dubs, faithfully reissued right down to the misspelling of his name on the front cover! The legendary melodica-maestro is featured here on the organ with a supporting cast of Sly & Robbie on drums & bass, Bingy Bunny 'pon rhythm guitar, Sticky on percussion and Melodic Gladdy (wicked name!) on piano. As the title tells us, there's an African theme at its core, from the referential track titles such as 'Dub In Ethiopia' and 'Nigerian Dub Love' to 'Dubbing In Africa' to the sweeter guitar licks and the generally lighter-headed, sun-soaked charm of Pablo's spiritual, intuitive playing.

Limited Japanese edition with Obi.“Some of it sounds so pure and clear and I am picturing him huddled around all that gear, simply magical. In my memory he didn’t play ‘for’ the audience but was rather trying to perfect these various permutations of sound within himself…and a few of us just happened to be present.” – Tom Lee

"Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in And Out" offers an intimate unedited Arthur Russell solo live performance recorded at Phill Niblock’s Experimental Intermedia Foundation in Downtown NYC on 12/20/85.

Phill curated and produced with Arthur two concerts at EI that would become an integral part of the foundation for the World of Echo album. Arthur titled this performance “Open Vocal Phrases, Where Songs Come in and Out”. This extraordinary performance was recorded by Steve Cellum and overseen by Phill and Arthur. Arthur would later edit sections from this performance merging it with studio material recorded at Battery Sound to finalize the World of Echo album released in 1986. Side four of the vinyl includes two instrumental tracks from "Sketches For World Of Echo", "Changing Forest" and "Sunlit Water"

Recorded in 1996, Merzbow’s The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue is one of a series of unique editions from his vast catalogue that reveals a side of his practice often under represented.

During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Masami Akita was sometimes working on film and theatre music. In this space he created a series of recordings that capture the full scope of his sound worlds.

Given the nature of these settings, his compositional approaches were varied, seeking to create both intensely crushing walls of sound and more spatial, and at times rhythmic, pieces that plot out an approach to sound making which atomises his universe of sound, and uncovered the singular detail that is often consumed in the whole.

The Prosperity Of Vice, The Misfortune Of Virtue is the soundtrack to the theatre piece 'Akutoku no Sakae/Bitoku no Fuko' by Romantica. Based on Marquis de Sades's 'Historie de Juliette ou les Prosperités du vice' & 'Les Infortunes de la vertu’, this recording was originally released with limited distribution and remains one of the lesser available Merzbow recordings.

This edition is completely remastered and contains an additional cut from those original sessions.

I've just released a collaboration CD album under the name of my Agencement with Masami Akita's Merzbow, which was recorded in autumn 2024.

I hadn't been in contact with him for a very long time, but we were recontacted and considered for a collaborative project for a few years, and we finally did it this time.
We also did the cover artwork for each side.

This is not a digital-only release, so please pick up the CD and listen to it.

repressed! jeff parker's magnificent first solo album -slight freedom-, a new york times best albums of 2016. 2nd edition pressed on premium 120-gram audiophile vinyl by RTI, presented in a retro flipback jacket.

slight freedom, jeff parker’s first ever solo record, presents the first opportunity to hear the guitarist in fully self-revealed circumstances. recorded 2013 & ’14 in the hollywood hills as he relocated from chicago to los angeles, parker combines the dark tonal palette & percussive attack he’s long been known for with real-time processing elements & field recordings, deftly crafting a unique world of solo guitar music --multilingual, mysterious, alive with extraordinary sonic events, with a sturdy intelligence in charge & a raw homestyle vibe. the record is yet another defining moment for parker in 2016, a year that already includes a brilliant ensemble album (the new breed) & tortoise’s 25th anniversary tour & record (the catastrophist).

parker’s title composition sets the album’s cavernous mood. terse lines & ricocheting loops morph into a gnarly ambient section that resembles neil young droning out over a vg+ copy of discreet music. parker creates a different sort of ambient space in his take on frank ocean’s 'super rich kids,' bending the melody around a bossa nova rhythm into a moodsville tone poem. parker makes an extraordinary long-form statement out of chad taylor’s ‘mainz,’ a piece he first recorded with taylor & chris lopes on the album bright light in winter. twice the length of the trio recording, the multi-layered soliloquy finds parker leaping from the high rung to damn near orchestral heights, pushing his techniques & concepts to their breaking points. it’s one of the great solo performances you’ll hear from a musician this year. to say “lush life” comes with formidable baggage is an understatement. parker achieves instant classic status with a rendition that sounds beamed-in from a decommissioned satellite --burned out, covered in space grit, yet still formally nuanced & beautifully reflective of strayhorn’s world-weary lyrics.

twenty years into the game it’s a joy for eremite to present work by an artist who’s clearly taking his music to the next level.

Automatic Writing compiles three early Robert Ashley works from 1967-79 -- some of his most experimental works. Composed in recorded form over a period of five years, "Automatic Writing", originally issued on Lovely Music in 1979, is the result of Robert Ashley's fascination with involuntary speech. He recorded and analyzed the repeated lines of his own mantra and extracted four musical characters. The result is a quiet, early form of ambient music. The piece rather famously formed the basis for Nurse With Wound's A Missing Sense (1997). Steven Stapleton's commentary on the recording: "A Missing Sense was originally conceived as a private tape to accompany my taking of LSD. When in that particular state, Robert Ashley's 'Automatic Writing' was the only music I could actually experience without feeling claustrophobic and paranoid. We played it endlessly; it seemed to become part of the room, perfectly blending with the late night city ambiance and the 'breathing' of the building." The piece features the voices of Ashley and Mimi Johnson, with electronics and Polymoog backing, with a switching circuit designed and built by Paul DeMarinis. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon" and "She Was A Visitor" are excerpts from an opera entitled "That Morning Thing", composed in 1966-67 as a result of Ashley's impulse to express something about the suicides of three friends. "Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon", originally issued in 1968, is a woman's description of a sexual experience. Ashley attempts "to demonstrate the dichotomy between the rational-whatever can be explained in words-and its opposite-which is not irrational or a-rational, but which cannot be explained in words." The lead voice performed by Cynthia Liddell, the processed back-up chorus, the recurring bell tone, and the pervading tape hiss, create an unsettling mood. "She Was a Visitor" was originally issued on the electronic compilation Extended Voices in 1967. It is another form of description, intended to be understood as a form of rumor. The chorus is divided into groups, each headed by a leader. A lone speaker repeats the title sentence throughout. The separate phonemes of this sentence are picked up freely by the group leaders and are relayed to the group members, who sustain them softly and for the duration of one natural breath. The time lag produces a staggered, chant-like effect, with the sounds moving outward from the nearest performer to the farthest. Booklet notes by Robert Ashley.

A masterpiece of heavenly beauty minimal poetry left by Robert Ashley, a solitary composer who has made his name in the history of American contemporary music, in 1977! The most important masterpiece of Ashley's career as a legendary experimental music collective and Sonic Arts Union with Alvin Lucier, David Berman and Gordon Mumma. Recorded at Mills College's Center for Contemporary Music in 1977, and put on a clear examination of piano, polymoog, and clavinet by the famous performer "Blue" Gene Tyranny, who has also left many works on Lovely Music. Krishna Bhatt's tabla sounds fluently, and Ashley's spiritual poetry is layered on top of each other.

Fennesz, who creates unique electronic sounds with guitars and computers, has released his first album in about five and a half years, "Mosaic." It is an unparalleled masterpiece with incredibly beautiful sound images constructed with incredible precision.

This is Fennesz's most introspective album to date. It was written and recorded at the end of 2023 and finished in summer 2024. Fennesz opened his third new studio space in the last four years. Without any immediate plans, this time he started from scratch with a strict working routine: wake up early in the morning, work until noon, take a break and work again until the evening. At first, just collect ideas, experiment and improvise. Then write, mix and revise. But the title was decided early on: Mosaic. It reflected an old-fashioned image-making technique, where elements were placed one by one to build a whole picture, before pixels could do it in an instant.

Mosaic, as its name suggests, is a delicate and intricate album, stitching together sonic fragments into something vast and immersive. Fennesz constructed the work layer by layer in a meticulous, almost meditative process, as if restoring forgotten memories or constructing a sonic monument.

Mosaic is a cinematic, deeply engaging and beautiful score with diverse influences and multiple possibilities to be explored by the listener.

With Mosaic, Fennesz proves once again that he's not just a musician, but an architect of sound, crafting a world for us to inhabit before dissolving, if only for a moment, into the ether. An album where science meets dreams, precision meets poetry, where sound itself becomes an ancient language that invites us to rediscover it. A real gem!

Fate in a Pleasant Mood was recorded in Chicago in 1960, but not released until 1965. It was the last album featuring Sunny's band from Chicago. After a decade and a half in the Windy City, tired of local indifference by fans and the press, Sun Ra decided to take his music elsewhere—briefly to Montreal, then New York, where he settled for seven years.

Stylistically, Fate in a Pleasant Mood veers from ballads to bebop, from free jazz to Ellington-inflected voicings, from the 12-bar blues to strains of crime jazz and cha-cha. In his Sun Ra biography Space is the Place, John Szwed says of the album's offerings: "To a seasoned jazz listener at the time they might seem either slightly out of kilter or evidence of a band with a hidden agenda." Suspicions aside, Fate in a Pleasant Mood is an accessible album by the era's standards, and full of delights. Of particular note is the imaginative drum solo (probably by Jon Hardy) on "Space Mates"—a restrained touch at odds with the prevailing hard bop emphasis on funkiness and speed. Indeed, there are a lot of unusual percussion textures throughout the set (e.g. on "Kingdom of Thunder," which approximates a Saturnesque take on the late '50s exotica of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman).

Sun Ra discographer Robert L. Campbell wrote: "In 1967 the album was given the catalog number 202. The spine of the Saturn LP, but not the front or back cover, rendered its title as it may have been intended originally, 'Faith in a Pleasant Mood' (the spine also said "Saturn Vol. 2," without indicating what Volume 1 was, and gave the number as 9956-2-B)."

This digital collection includes the unreleased 45 rpm single version of "Lights on a Satellite," which features the engineer's title cue at the head followed by the album performance drenched in heavy reverb.

Fully licensed and limited to 500 copies. It was 1976 when Prince Far I debuted is unique toasting style under the spell of producer Lloydie Slim at Randy's Studio. The album features nine tracks based on psalms and "The Lord's Prayer," over rhythms largely played by The Aggrovators. Psalms 53 -- in particular -- used the rhythm from the Lee "Scratch" Perry-produced "Mighty Cloud Of Joy." It is meditative music and established Prince Far I, literally the man with the voice of thunder, as a formidable force in music business.

Science Fiction is an album by the American avant-garde jazz saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, released in February 1972. It is considered as Coleman's creative rebirth. A stunningly inventive and appropriately alien-sounding blast of manic energy, where Coleman combines his past and future, working with bassist Charlie Haden and drummers Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell. The album is made up of spacy, long-toned melodies and rhythm, including two songs with Indian vocalist Asha Puthli, which sound like pop hits from an alternate universe, and "Rock the Clock" where an Arabic double-reed instrument called “musette” is used.

Long-awaited reissue of this rare Jamaican compilation, originally licensed in 1964 on local imprint Soulsville Center. Prince Buster is the obvious matador here with five exclusive tracks. Also featuring ska stalwarts The Maytals, Don Drummond, Roland Alphonso, The Skatalites, Gaynor & Errol, Millie Small & Roy Panton, and Owen Gray.

When Nkrumah Jah Thomas’ hit #1 on the Jamaican charts in 1976 with his debut single ‘Midnight Rock’ on Alvin Ranglin’s GG label it gave the new DJ a theme song and an entry into the world of music. Within 3 years he had launched his own label Midnight Rock and alongside more music under his own name he produced a series of classics by the likes of Tristan Palmer, Anthony Johnson, Early B and many more.

In 1997 he signed a deal with Acid Jazz’s Roots label and since then through our on-going collaborations his career as a producer has been anthologised and developed, including the release of a series of archive King Tubby and Scientist mixes, the use of his masters to be sampled by Nas (on The Don), Protoje and others, and re-issues of his classic albums. To celebrate 40 year of Midnight Rock, last year Thomas went back into his tape archive to unearth another 10 tracks, either with original vocals or guest names brought in.

Behind original rhythms recorded at Channel 1, Tuff Gong and others, featuring the Roots Radics and The Midnight Rock Band and mixed in places like King Jammy’s and Tubby’s we are given a line-up of stellar talent. We have Lynval Thomson with the plaintive ‘I Can Be Your Man’, and forthright Super Cat on ‘Me Glad She Gone’ and first rare Luciano on ‘Good Thing Goin’ On. They are joined by Courtney Melody, Pinchers and Joesy Wales, Daville and more. Keeping the circle whole Thomas appears on two tracks including the future classic ‘Sounds A Go Dead Tonight’ with Junior Vibes.

Gathered together on record this will be released by The Roots label on the 19th of April 2021.

After another long period of silence, Deaf Center return with two long-form, hypnotic pieces recorded in an intimate setting. “Reverie” can be seen as a follow up to 2014’s “Recount”, which saw two pieces of music created around their live-sets in different periods. This time, we are treated with a contemporary, raw live performance from October 2024 in Rabih Beaini’s studio, Morphine Raum in Berlin, during the 15th anniversary celebration of Sonic Pieces. This was the first concert from the two old friends since 2019. As always, the duo favours improvisation, and what emerged on this evening turned out to be a truly magical encounter between the two, with Otto A Totland on piano and Erik K Skodvin on guitar, cello, electronics and processing.

In “Rev”, deeply effected piano motifs reverberate and echo in the depths of the room, evolving through looping and electronics into a blissful, mesmerising cloud of (dis)harmony. The sound is reminiscent of the 7inch "Vintage Well" mixed with the basic elements of 2011's "Owl Splinters”. “Erie”, on the other hand, begins almost jazz-like as a piano and cello duo, slowly transforming into a full-bodied organ drone. Towards the end of the piece, the piano motifs from before repeat and vary, for then to slowly settle into gentle melancholy, supported only by a low, rumbling ambient shadow. The immediate duality of the two performers has rarely been so strongly felt, Totland’s deep melodic feeling is underscored by Skodvin’s abstract ambience and processing. Dark versus light, loud versus quiet - this has always been at the core of what makes Deaf Center a special project.

Although this is a live performance, the quality and scope of the album are more akin to a real studio recording. A welcome stop on the path towards the next chapter in Deaf Center’s history, and a great way to forget everything and for a moment get lost in reverie.

Novisad’s second album Seleya, originally released by Tomlab in 2001, is reissued by Keplar with a previously unheard bonus track from 2004 and a fresh cut by LUPO. Produced by Kristian Peters, these thirteen loop-based miniatures evoke a sense of early-2000s digital experimentation—crafted with the rudimentary tools, quirks and limitations of pre-Ableton software and repurposed equipment. Aliased tones, subtle dissonances and quietly colliding loops form a delicate, melancholic atmosphere that’s both intimate and exploratory. Untethered from convention, Seleya documents a moment of sonic curiosity and invention, where imperfection and unpredictability add emotional depth to its fragile beauty.

Editions Mego reissue the 2001 release Asuma by Finnish artist Ilpo Väisänen. Originally released on CD this is the first ever vinyl issue, remastered by Rashad Becker. 2001 is a landmark year for the artist following a wave of success from the notable outfit Väisänen formed alongside Mika Vanio, Pan Sonic (as they were now known then). Following a string of highly acclaimed and influential releases such as “Vakio”, “Kulma”, “A’ and “Aaltopiiri” Pan Sonic had toured the globe extensively leaving a trail of blown expectations and rumours of all manner of objects in venues cracking or falling apart due to the immense sound the duo concocted with their unique instruments.

Taking a break from the ecstatic cacophony of Pan Sonic, Väisänen retreated to work on a solo release which conjured the spirits of the former outfit whilst simultaneously carving out a more personal take on these new electronic forms.

Asuma is a precise study of drones, rhythms, clicks, ambience and gentle confusion. Whilst inhabiting a zone of abstraction the results also move in a natural field as Väisänen’s native Finland permeates these recordings as much as the idea of experimentation itself.

Autioitu 1 opens the album as delicate pinball rhythms bounce across the spectrum as a hairy drone hovers underneath. The mood is both intriguing and unsettling. Tukahduttaja is a delightfully disorientating sound sculpture that is hard to pinpoint what it actually is. Klikki is comparable to a microscopic version of Pink Floyd’s “Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict”. Asumaton is a foreboding miniature acting like a segway to Vallitseva which embraces the icy clicks that punctuates much of the Pan Sonic output. Arvioimaton Ongelma is an audio riddle whilst Jaettu jitters around a dancefloor crawl. Autioitu closes proceedings as a gentle ambient thumper. Asuma is awash with contradiction and mystery. This is time wrapped in twisted turns and rewards a neat payoff for those interested in the absolute fringes of electronic ‘dance’ music.

Nicolás Melmann (born in Buenos Aires and now based in Barcelona) explores sound's social and poetic dimensions through transdisciplinary projects. Drawing inspiration from Erik Satie's concept of "furniture music," Melmann's compositions transform the listening experience into havens of calm and contemplation.

Música Aperta is a fusion of acoustic and electronic sounds, rich in beautiful harmonies, where carefully soft elements interplay with delicate raspiness. Made up of three parts, the music unfolds slowly, immersing the listener in time. Música Aperta resonates with echoes of Satie, the meditative minimalism of Arvo Pärt, the roughness of Phill Niblock, and the nostalgic reflections of Richard Skelton.

Another way of listening to Música Aperta is through its digital encore – an extension of the album experience that brings the concept of open music to life – "a work that remains unfinished and open to transformation." The website features a reactive audiovisual interface where images dynamically respond to the music's behavior, translating electroacoustic frequencies into real-time cinematic landscapes. The album blends instrumental and electronic textures while allowing listeners to interact with different layers through a virtual mixer, enabling them to create unique sound combinations and personal sonic experiences.

Long, long overdue reissue of this gem from the depths of The Skaters dreamweaving dimension, released as a limited tape through Spencer Clark's Pacific City imprint back in 2008. Comprising a period of extreme and vital activity for both Clark as Monopoly Child Star Searchers and Black Joker and his kindred spirit James Ferraro under his own name - 'Marble Surf' or 'Discovery' - and a myriad of identities like Liquid Metal or Edward Flex, this split finds these intrepid explorers on each side of a scrying mirror.

Conjuring the Angel Snake entity as a vessel for unlocking the unconscious, Ferraro takes up the A-side with hypnotic wooden percussion sustaining queasy tape processed keyboard lines that intertwine amidst a growing haze of hiss. About halfway through the digression an announcer boombox voice cuts up the scenery for a serpentine dance around the discarded remnants of civilisations past and future. Clark's Monopoly Child rides a beaming synth and muffled percussion accents on his trademarked keyboard thrills, all ascending and descending runs brimming on the horizon, not quite here, not quite out of reach, fading out to a galloping murk smeared by hallucinatory flute-like sounds and portamento accents that float in harmonic suspension.

Truly visionary and arresting stuff from these true purveyors of the netherworld, due to be rediscovered in these times of poor half-reassessments of the given past. It was never a dream, it was always a dream.

*300 copies limited edition* Panos Alexiadis is a sound artist based in Athens, Greece, active in the field of contemporary electro-acoustic music. He founded and co-curated the tape label Thalamos, a home for exploratory sounds, where some of his own works also found their place. Marking a return after a period of (sonic) reflection, Cestrum Nocturnum is an album of remembrance and renewal. Through a lattice of self-sampled piano, fragmented voices, field recordings, and transient digital traces, Alexiadis composes a space of warmth—an electronic tapestry woven from the ephemeral. Across six pieces, sound unfolds like memory: layered, textured, dissolving at the edges yet leaving an imprint. A meditation on the cyclical nature of being and the often unnoticed beauty that quietly persists, even in the darkest hours. Cestrum Nocturnum is both a shelter and a signal.

Adrian Sherwood returns with the mutating rhythmic soundscapes of The Grand Designer, a four track EP and the latest instalment in On-U Sound's long-running and much-loved 'disco plate' series.

The title track and lead single is out today, and serves as a trailer for a forthcoming full-length album, with different instruments filtered through Sherwood's bank of effects over an irresistible groove, and typically deft percussive detail.

"Let's Come Together" flips the same rhythm into a mystical dub, with sadly departed friend and collaborator Lee "Scratch" Perry providing typically off-the-wall vocal interjections. It also serves as a reminder of the wealth of collaborative projects Sherwood has released in recent years, releasing critically acclaimed new albums not only with Perry, but also Horace Andy, Sonic Boom & Panda Bear, African Head Charge, Spoon, Creation Rebel, Pinch, and more.

"Russian Oscillator" perhaps cleaves closest to the Sherwood & Pinch records, experimental electronics weaving in and out of heavy sound system sonics and a ruffneck dancehall adjacent swing.

The EP closes with "Cold War Skank", a left hand turn off the highway into scorched desert blues, distorted slide guitar patterns over widescreen film score atmospherics.

Available as a strictly limited and collectable 10" vinyl, mastered and cut by Frank Merritt at The Carvery, housed in a classic On-U disco plate sleeve, with cover collage by Studio Tape-Echo.

After five years spent largely confined to the United States, Ron Trent is set to return to global touring in 2025. To mark the occasion, he’s partnered with Rush Hour to release Lift Off, a brand-new album of music recorded at different points over the last decade.

Arriving almost 35 years since he wowed the world with his game-changing debut, the Afterlife EP, Lift Off was inspired by Trent’s desire to ‘let the imagination speak for itself’ while exploring the diverse influences that have shaped his unique musical perspective. A departure from his previous album, 2022’s downtempo masterpiece as Warm, What Do The Stars Say To You, the 10-track set features a mixture of epic instrumentals, inspired collaborations and vocal cuts whose music was written with certain singers in mind.

While Lift Off features music that ripples with Trent’s familiar aural trademarks –rich rhythms, warm chords, impeccable instrumentation, inspired arrangements, and lashings of heady hand percussion – it sees the long-serving producer explore a variety of sounds and tempos, in the process blurring the lines between dance music’s past, present and future. In his words, it’s a vision of what dance music can become, where nods to new wave, alternative and slow jams sit side by side with up-tempo dancefloor workouts rooted in R&B, jazz-funk, house and sunset-dance.

Presented on two double vinyl albums and a single digital download release, Lift Off contains some of Trent’s most magical and sonically detailed music to date. For proof, check the lilting synth-strings, enveloping chords, samba-soaked percussion, vibrant electronics, elongated organ solos and starry synths sounds of ‘Woman of Color’, the Wally Badarou-inspired ‘Hot Ice’, the alternative Balearic love song ‘And Fly Away’, and the alternative 80s/New Order-influenced ‘Just Another Love Song’, where his own hazy vocals catch the ear.

From the start of the project, Trent wanted to create music with musical collaborators and hand-picked vocalists in mind. Two regular collaborators make an appearance, with fellow Chicagoan (and Jungle Wonz member) Harry Dennis delivering a delightfully poetic spoken word vocal on the incredible ‘Her’ – a subtly Latin-tinged epic that’s amongst Trent’s most picture-perfect concoctions to date – and fellow Rush Hour artist Lars Bartkuhn adding virtuoso jazz guitar solos to the equally inspired ‘Street Wave’.

Perhaps more headline-grabbing is the inclusion of legendary disco-boogie vocalist, producer and arranger Leroy Burgess, who accepted Trent’s invitation to write and perform vocals on an instrumental he’d written with him in mind, ‘Let Me See You Shining’. Combining Trent’s usual spacey synths, rolling grooves and ultra-deep musical sensibilities with nods to his guest singer’s synth-heavy boogie and proto-house works of the early to mid 1980s, the track features a typically expressive and soulful lead vocal from the New York great – a genuine musical meeting of minds that’s worth the admission price on its own.

Effortlessly soulful, atmospheric, musically on-point and bursting with vivid aural colours, it offers a neat summary of the sonic delights littered throughout Lift Off – a killer collection of sophisticated and forward-thinking music for the head, heart and feet.

A new age lightness of being guides NNF alum Baptiste Martin to gently optimistic ambient, H-pop and glitching electronica styled results on a debut for Stroom, inseparable from its back story, regaled by the label below:

""I was admitted to Son Llàtzer Hospital in Mallorca on October 1, 2024, following a psychotic shock”.

This could well have been the opening sentence of a confessional novel but it’s not. It’s the first line of an email, which landed in my mailbox seemingly out of nowhere. The words were written by Baptiste Martin, the composer behind Les Halles.

In his letter, sent as a pdf document, Baptiste offered his friends a concise but striking report on his whereabouts from the past months. In brief, Baptiste was lost, found, lost and found again, yet seemingly forever confined to the walls of his cerebral interior. The letter describes a loss of grip and self-control, like a baby water turtle trying to hoist his way out of the fish tank by scratching the glass walls, without any result.

Baptiste is a musician and not a writer. His opening line is thus followed by an album, not a novel. This is the album. Yet, ‘Original Spirit’ doesn’t tell the story of his psychotic shock as a linear nonfiction, it offers a vague resolution to all the mischief in life: the hope for the existence of an original spirit, untainted despite all that might happen during the course of a life.

The album provokes images of what I would perceive as indeed an original spirit of oneself: an abstract nothingness breezing through landscapes of colours, searching for places beyond the boundaries of what we call freedom in the material world. A stream of sound, nostalgic to a time that never existed, a mystical loophole that we know isn’t there yet still crave for. In short: the sound of an uncannily serene feeling beyond hope."