NEW ARRIVALS

The first ever reissue and remastering of Jon Hassell & Farafina’s prescient, “Fourth World” masterwork. Propulsive Burkinese rhythms meet revelatory, ambient soundscapes. Co-produced with the legendary studio team of Brian Eno & Daniel Lanois. “[Hassell’s] command of microtonal shadings enabled him to blend into the West Africans' distinctive sonic colorations, which would not have been possible for a player whose intonation conformed strictly to Western music's equal temperament.” – Robert Palmer, New York Times Composer and trumpeter Jon Hassell has been an elusive, iconic musical figure for more than half a century. He’s best known as the pioneer and propagandist of “Fourth World” music, mixing technology with the tradition and spirituality of non-western cultures to create what he termed the “coffee-colored classical music of the future.” In 1987 he joined with Farafina, the acclaimed percussion, voice, and dance troupe from Burkina Faso, to record Flash of the Spirit. While the album is a natural extension of those “Fourth World” ideas, and a new strand of Possible Musics, it also a distinctive outlier in the careers of both artists; an unrepeated merging of sounds whose influence still reverberates today. Hassell arrived as the outsider, having to slide in and around Farafina, an established group that started in 1978 where the leader, as he told Music Technology, was “somewhat inflexible in terms of new things. They were suspicious at first…about what could happen and why this whole thing was going on.” But once settled in the studio, the musicians sparked off each other. The eight members of the band - who had also collaborated with the Rolling Stones and Ryuichi Sakamoto - brought their long apprenticed, virtuosic drumming and melodic textures (balafon, flute, voices) to the sessions. They built up layers and patterns of rhythm, while producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois (fresh off the phenomenal success of U2’s Joshua Tree) created a sonic atmosphere in which they could creatively intertwine with Hassell’s digitally processed trumpet and keyboards. Just the physical feel of the drums in the room was enough to inspire Hassell. “There’s something about the volume of air that drums pump, there is a wonder quality about it that’s impossible to find any place else,” he recalled. “Even if you sampled all that and tried to duplicate it, I don’t think it would have the same feel.” The experiment took root. Despite their initial skepticism, the musicians from Farafina ended up relishing their interaction with the studio team and the trumpeter/conceptualist Hassell. Souleymane “Mani” Sanou, Farafina’s band leader from the early 90’s on, remarked: “traditional instruments, they can meet with electronic and modern music; so collaborations are so important to us…yes, with Jon Hassell, the experience was amazing.” The music that emerged was rich and groundbreaking, a move to transcend the boundaries between jazz, avant-garde classical, ambient and the deep rhythmic tradition embodied by Farafina. But of course, Hassell had been slowly blurring and ignoring such boundaries for years. He’d served an apprenticeship with Stockhausen, worked with minimalists Terry Riley and LaMonte Young, studied Indian music under Pandit Pran Nath, and collaborated with artists like Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel and David Sylvian, as well as forging a path into ambient music, through an especially fruitful partnership with Brian Eno on the albums Fourth World, Vol.1: Possible Musics and Dream Theory in Malaya. Hassell’s ideas of melody and rhythm had moved beyond the confines of Western music, out into borderless, imagined spaces, and in Farafina he found the ideal companions in exploration. It’s an album of subtle, telling details, where the layers and textures build and change to highlight each other. On “Out Pours,” for instance, the groove simmers softly, led by shifting patterns on the balafon, while Hassell’s heavily treated trumpet creates breathy swirls of sound that play and dance around them. Percussion leads on “A Vampire Dances,” pushing and probing and seeming to force electronic shrieks as a response from Hassell’s trumpet, while the keyboard creates a bed of sound that refuses to hold still. “(Like) Warriors Everywhere” takes that idea even further. Over Farafina’s surging rhythms, Hassell’s electric piano and trumpet dig deep into abstract, melodic ideas hinted at by the Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis band. What’s apparent is how carefully the musicians listen to each other and the ways in which they respond; the spaces become as important as the notes. Every piece of music is alive. It breathes, it changes and grows. Farafina create the rhythms and counter-rhythms that spring and move, making room for Hassell’s explorations. They affect him, and in turn what he plays alters what they do. It’s symbiotic; each inspires the other. The trumpet techniques that Hassell developed to play the microtones of Indian music – electronic and acoustic – let him easily slide through the music. He becomes part of the whole, his trumpet another voice in the band, rather than an imposed, outside Western instrument – achieving one of the aims of the “Fourth World” credo, to create a new, natural trans-cultural harmony. And nowhere is that harmony more apparent than on the epic final track, “Masque,” where percussion and treated trumpet draw the listener along on a journey through shifting landscapes that transform into unexpected colors with every turn. It becomes a series of discoveries that startle and delight and sometimes confound. On its release 32 years ago, Flash of the Spirit was a revelation, a record that had no clear parallel for its encompassing sound. Even today, now that the musical world has caught up with much of Jon Hassell’s vision, it still feels especially vibrant. The album remains a testament to both the influence Hassell has quietly exerted on contemporary music, and the forward-looking traditionalism of Farafina, one of West Africa’s great rhythmic ensembles. As walls and barriers are erected around the globe, it is hard not to think of the music found on Flash of the Spirit as ever more relevant. An echo from the past. Still transmitting future possibilities.

2026 restock. "Stunning, heavy requiem for ten electric guitars." Recorded in 1994, with the following guitarists: Steven Antonelli (alto guitar), Eric Hubel (tenor guitar), Brannon Hungness (soprano & octave guitars), Phil Kline (tenor guitar), Carolyn Master (alto guitar), John Myers (soprano guitar), Dave Reid (bass & octave guitars), Ellen Watkins (soprano & octave guitars). Minimal and massive, for fans of Sonic Youth, Black Lips, etc. "Subtitled 'The Mystery' and 'The Mystery Pt. 2,' these two symphonies concern themselves with the two big questions: Life and Death. They are both scored for eight guitars, two basses, keyboard, drums, vocal and two conductors. Symphony No. 8 has two movements: 'The Passion' and 'Spiritual Anarchy' that both build upon sustained tones that create a counterpoint by means of delays in scale and other patterns and micro tunings. There are also two movements in Symphony No. 10: 'The Final Problem' and 'The Horror.' These are built in a similar manner to the techniques in No. 8 but the tuning and scales employed are different, creating another sensation yet still as intense and continuous in rhythm as No. 8." -- "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide

2026 repress; double LP version. "Marking the occasion of twenty years since the original release, and coinciding with Vashti Bunyan's 80th birthday, DiCristina is pleased to present Lookaftering (Expanded), a reissue of her legendary second album. This new expanded edition features the original studio album along with a second disc of demos, an alternate take, and a live performance. This edition also comes with a stunning 16-page lyric book featuring a collection of paintings by Vashti's daughter, Whyn Lewis -- paintings that they both say have closely, and coincidentally, reflected the lyrics of the album. Also included are sleeve notes from Vashti, producer Max Richter, and Devendra Banhart. Originally recorded between 2001 and 2005, the unreleased demos were created at Vashti's home, with Vashti accompanying herself on electric and acoustic guitar along with a host of experimental instrumentation including synths, accordion, piano, strings, pipe organ, harmonium and recorders. The demos offer a more stripped-back sound, with the live version of 'Lately,' recorded in 2006 at the Echo in LA, offering a pitch perfect performance by Vashti's North American touring band of Gareth Dickson, Jo Mango, Kevin Barker, Helena Espvall, and Kat Hernandez. Listening to the demos and final versions side by side while reading the sleeve notes, and taking in the beautiful new artwork is a wonderful experience."

Avian Hydraulics was originally released by the German label Frei zum Abriss Kollektiv as a limited edition of 50 copies, pressed on a liquid-filled lathe-cut 10-inch. A liquid-filled record is a curious object: colored liquid or oil is sealed between two layers of transparent resin, so that when the record is moved, the fluid drifts and blooms into ever-shifting patterns. The concept first surfaced in 1978, when a prototype was developed for a Disney film — but the sealing technology of the era could not keep the liquid from leaking or evaporating, and the idea was abandoned before it ever reached the market. Since 2015, however, development has advanced toward resins that resist leakage and evaporation, bringing the format to where it stands today — though even now it remains an imperfect thing. The imperfections lie chiefly in the sound. By its very structure, room must be reserved inside the disc to hold the liquid, which means the grooves cannot be cut deeply, driving the playback volume to an extreme faintness — for the liquid itself absorbs the vibration of the stylus. In the case of lathe cutting, the grooves are even shallower because the cutting is performed directly onto a rigid resin—such as polycarbonate—rather than vinyl. The result is a double diminishment: the sound vibrations transmit poorly, and both the sonic pressure and the volume fall away. As an art object, the liquid-filled record is a singular and beautiful thing. But to hear the music as it was truly meant to be heard — at full volume, at full pressure, down to the finest detail — the digital version is the honest answer. Since Frei zum Abriss Kollektiv holds to a policy of no digital distribution, we have chosen to release it here, on Bandcamp. This work began, first of all, with the idea of the liquid-filled record itself. From that single image, the artwork and the titles of the songs were gradually drawn out and refined. Masami Akita

Folded cover sealed with hand numbered sticker. Edition of 50 hand-numbered copies. Recorded & Mixed at Munemihouse March 2026.

Japan’s electroacoustic vanguard reconvene for their second album proper, once again shining light on previously unoccupied space somewhere between Arthur Russell and Autechre. It’s supremely moody, impossibly innovative business, folding Yuki Nakagawa's no-wave'd cello vamps into Koshiro Hino (aka YPY)'s brittle electroid syncopations, absolutely essential listening if you’re into SND, Pan Sonic, DNA, Suicide.'KAK' - what a title - is the next stage of KAKUHAN’s evolution, seemingly self-titled but hiding plenty of clues if you understand Japanese. "KAK" can evoke a number of different characteristics: edge or angularity, core, expansion, agitation or absence. The duo meditate and refract these guiding principles over nine tracks (and a bonus digital addendum) with their usual focus on the interplay between man and machine - something Hino's been exploring for many years with both his solo work as YPY, and with his pioneering band, goat (JP). Working with electronics (drum machines, samplers, oscillators) Hino infuses weightless rhythms with rare fluidity, as if tracing an algorithm trained on Milford Graves. His rubbery, bio-mechanical outbursts are formed into jagged, continuum-confusing trajectories - prismatic spaces where grime intersects footwork and jersey club, and drill corkscrews thru gagaku and Americana.Yuki Nakagawa's emphatic improvisations are just as mind-altering. While he holds back at first, accenting Hino's rapid-fire sequences with hollow, resonant scrapes and junked Downtown distortions, he eventually edges further towards centre stage. Featherlight cello squeals are elongated, imagining a decelerated hoedown, angling folk-y, ecstatic shapes while Hino responds with drum machine prangs. Soon, the duo skewer nervy baroque ornamentation with clockwork whirrs that trip over themselves, the insectoid rhythmic fractals gradually scuttling around a droning cello. By the end of the album, the duo have somehow completely switched roles; Hino's grey boxes now sounding as if they've been excavated from ancient ground, while Nakagawa's strings throb with cybernetic energy, beamed in from a far dimension.

Comprised of ensemble and solo music recorded at church choir performances, during rehearsals, and at singers' homes, this album compiled by music researcher Dr. Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje presents the listener with spiritually driven music gathered in several rural towns in southeast Georgia. Songs exhibit influences from traditional African and slave music, presenting deeper lyrical meanings about the role of Africans in America throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Many songs feature audience involvement and vocal improvisations performed by a variety of age groups. Liner notes include a brief history of black religious music in America, as well as complete song texts.

A highly anticipated 7-inch analog vinyl release, "Mr. Maxmetal," by DJ/producer Master Kohta—the owner of the retro gaming cafe "cafe la siesta" in Kiyamachi, Kyoto, and a pioneer who has driven the chiptune scene for many years—is now available from KUMARU Records!

Celebrating half a century since its legendary debut, Guruh Gipsy returns in a definitive 2026 official reissue—honoring one of the most visionary works in Indonesian music history. Widely regarded as one of the greatest Indonesian albums of all time, this landmark release is an experimental collaboration between Guruh Soekarnoputra and the progressive rock collective Gipsy. Its bold fusion of Balinese traditional music, orchestral composition, and progressive rock spirit resulted in a work far ahead of its time—a sonic artifact that remains deeply relevant and inspiring today.

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

2026 repress; clear with red color vinyl. "Standards, the fourth full-length recording from Chicago's Tortoise, boldly announces their return following 1998's TNT. Tortoise spent the bulk of 1998 and a portion of 1999 touring the world. Following tours of the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, Brazil, and Australia, Tortoise members worked on other projects that occupied them until the spring of 2000 when they began to record Standards. In 1999 members of the band toured the US as the backing band for legendary Brazilian composer/singer Tom Zé's. Musically, Standards is their most concise statement of purpose thus far. The tunes are direct and immediate, yet they maintain the exploratory edge that has always characterized the group's output. The fusion of instrumental sounds (electric, acoustic, and synthesized) is subtle and subversive. Similarly, the group's fluency within the studio environment gives the finished work a quality that alternates between artifice and reality. Whilst TNT was constructed in the studio using segments recorded, improvised or altered electronically, the 'Standards' sessions began after a period of rehearsal and composition. The contrast, simply stated, is that the studio was used extensively as a compositional tool for TNT, whereas with Standards it was used predominantly as tool to realize and enhance the existing new compositions. The studio does not impose itself on the recording to the same degree listeners witnessed on TNT, and the resulting record is in many ways reminiscent of their unadorned self-titled debut. Sounds, notes and rhythms are manipulated but in general, processing is spare. Tortoise's highly lyrical melodies, rich and varied tonal palette and high level of musicianship were recorded in a studio designed by McEntire. The resulting record is the clearest demonstration of the band's many skills and strengths."

Tortoise have been expanding the definition of rock music for almost 30 years, nodding to dub, rock, jazz, electronica and minimalism throughout its revered and influential discography. The resulting sounds have always been distinctly, even stubbornly, their own. Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters has not been available on LP since it was released in 1995. The record ushered in a late 90’s remix craze, and launched a 12” series of remixes by a wide range of artists. This extremely limited re-press for our 30th Anniversary is a Tortoise record unlike any other, as Tortoise turned their iconic early songs over to their friends to play with. We love the sense of community & unlimited creativity that this record represents! Remixes include mixes by Steve Albini, Jim O’Rourke, Mike Watt (Minutemen), Brad Wood (Liz Phair), and Rick Brown (75 Dollar Bill). Original songs recorded by Dan Bitney, Bundy K Brown, John Herndon, John McEntire, and Douglas McCombs.

Glorious vinylization of this 2022 duo session, originally issued as a cassette, documenting the first time Suzuki and Noyes ever collaborated. Ayami Suzuki has become known to cognoscenti for her brilliantly imagined vocal improvisations, through recordings with like-minded folks such as French vocalist/polymath Delphine Dora and avant hurdy gurdy player, TOMO. Rob Noyes has developed a parallel reputation as a master third-generation acoustic guitarist in the post-Takoma tradition. Originally based in the U.S. he wisely relocated to Tokyo several years ago. Which is where this meeting took place, And while I initially assumed the music had been composed to some degree. Rob assured me that was not true, He says, “I think the recording can seem like something we took a lot of time with and discussed/composed to some degree, but we actually just agreed to meet at a rehearsal studio. It took a little more than an hour to track it all, without ever having played together before or even really discussing the approach we were going to take. I just tuned my guitar to a different tuning for each one and we let it roll.” The results kinda speak for themselves, but I was blown away by the notion they had never collaborated previously. The intimate nature of their blend recalls such long-time collusionists as Tim Buckley & Lee Underwood or Loren Connors & Suzanne Langille. Rob's delicate instrumental arcs create a perfect net for Ayami's vocals, which are usually wordless (although they always feel weighted with emotional content). It's a mesmeric pairing of voices. Which I can only hope is the first of many. Classic Fevers and Chills is a perfect soundtrack for spring, Unconditionally magical. --Byron Coley, 2026

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

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

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

Chicago’s excellent, shapeshifting Kino Disk chase 8004’s ace dub abstractions with Eustress’ actions in familiar meadows of overgrown FX, farming post-dub techno landscapes highly tipped FFO Vladislav Delay, Echospace, False Aralia. Peripheral to the Windy City’s fecund undergrowth, Indianapolis-based Heath Gillespie aka Eustress practises forms of dub techno at gauzy arm’s reach from the OG source. On the six tracks of ‘Exit’, his 2nd release for the label, he distorts familiar tropes to taste, diffusing a palette of windswept dub chords and unanchored bass in space crackling with an iridescent grayscale filament. His approach broadly swerves dub techno’s club momentum in favour of soothing meditation, letting everything hang out and slosh, loosely suspended in gritty yet lush amniotic plasm with an effect calling to mind the etheric depths of Echospace or even Werkbund’s atmospheric enigmas. A hands-on background as mixing engineer comes to the fore in his work’s sensory tactility, convecting minds from a slow tempest to beatific bliss-out, rumbles of distant dub chord thunder and carpet rolling gouch-out, ultimately stranding up on the 8 min peninsula of ‘Exit 6’, under a borealis play of smudged, harmonised light, nerves combed into the breeze.

Emotional Rescue returns after a much-needed year hiatus, refreshed and ready, as it moves into its 15th year, to further explore the environs of oft-forgotten musical secrets and present them to new heads and minds. To celebrate, the label looks back to one of its favourite collaborations, the music of French ‘Ethno-Industrialists’ Vox Populi! in presenting a truly unique EP of 'In Dub', inspired remixes by 4 fellow Paris based artists of today in Full Circle, Froid Dub, Krikor and Shelter. 'In Dub' takes a selection of songs from the series of albums reissued or compiled on Emotional Rescue and sister label, Platform 23, and gives the Master tapes to this talented ensemble to offer their own, unique dub reworks. Coming about after a special meeting of all the protagonists at a Paris warehouse party, the project explores the on-going advances in technology offered, mixed with pure talent and a respectful homage. Formed by Axel Kyrou and including wife Mitra, as well as long-term music and art partners Pierre Jolivet aka Pacific 231 and Francis Lafont aka FR6 Man, they forged a path from obscure, drum and drum-based cassette releases on to fully realized albums and compilations on their now cult Vox Man Records. Alexis Le Tan and Joakim’s Full Circle project starts, with their electronic dub remake of Soleyman Dub from the ‘Alternatif Réalisme’ compilation (ERC079). With releases on Good Morning Tapes, Offen and their own “Released” label, their plaudits as master diggers and producers of dubby tripped-out inspired electronics – releasing slowed Trance some 10 years before anyone else – is inspired. Tuning in and turning on the original dub into a mantra style slow-breaks (Digi)dub is the perfect experimental flavour. Jube Man is next, a twisted, psychedelic dub out by rising stars Froid Dub. The stand-out from the ‘Magiques Creations’ release (ERC052), an album that explored Vox Populi’s furtive post-industrial period of 1984 to 1988, Jube Man was the perfect selection by the duo of François Marché and Stéphane Bodin. Froid Dub have steadily developed their “cold” Digidub style to acclaim – releasing a steady flow of dub inspired electronics on their own label Delodio, as well as recently appearing on sister label Emotional Response’s 10th year anniversary collection, ‘All Trades’. Their haunting, shuffling and murky acid / piano dub, with the drifting “Space Echoing” of Mitra’s vocals from the live desk mix, creates a ghostly version to effect. Next, master mixer, producer and engineer Krikor serves a steppers remake with his “OverDub” of Zen-Dub. With a career that spans releases on Tigersushi, LIES and Soul Jazz, his sound has developed from Electro, House and Techno, to Acid, Bleep, Dancehall, Dub and touches of Gabba. Taken from Vox Populi!’s master-opus Aither (ERC030), the first of our reissues dating back to 2016, Zen-Dub’s pacey, lo-fi dub experience is transformed and overdubbed into an incessant sound system throb, a true bass quaking “steppa”. To close, Micro Climax is put through Shelter’s increasing avant dub exposition. Appearing on the likes of Growing Bin, Emotional Response and his own Protopost, as well for – and being in-house designer – on the much-missed Séance Centre, Alan Briand aka Shelter productions have developed from Balearic, Edits and House to explore Avant, Raga and live Dub productions. Appearing on the recent ‘Ethniques Pyschedeliques’ compilation on Platform 23 (PLA032), in original form Micro Climax is a sprawling 10-minute ethno-dub of whispered vocals, drone and sub bass. Shelter strips it back, keeping background effects, adding live bass and percussion to create a wonky, slow, shuffling ska-lite excursion to complete a true 'In Dub'.

"YARD STYLE showcases legendary vocalist Johnny Clarke and the budding genius of Mad Professor (b. Neil Fraser). The year was 1983, Mad Prof had yet to become the very well known mixer he is today. Later projects with, amongst others, Massive Attack, would see him firmly installed as the UK's premier dub remixer. Characterized by electronic kick drum, digital echo effects and his very own brand of technical wizardry. Sounding like no other, yet drawing heavily on the established rituals of dub music making. A bridge between the older roots of Jamaica and the purely electronic digital dub that took over in the UK and Europe."

aisie returns with a transformative descent into the darkness, assembled entirely from snippets of obscure educational science shows, ghost station radio transmissions, vinyl record detritus and blown-out microscopic field recordings. Twisted into mystifyingly revelatory aural documentations of moments that never were, it unfolds like a dream sculpted out of shadows. Enchanting, enigmatic and elusive like the origins of the source material used for its creation.

Komet, aka: Frank Bretschneider, is one of the founders of Germany's Raster.Music label and has become an important contributor to the world of microscopic sound and digital sonic art. Recently, he has been releasing material on labels such as Raster, 12k, and Mille Plateaux, among others. Rausch (roughly: white noise, or, distant noise) is a very organically composed blend of clean sinetones and faint echoes of melody and air with a subtle dub aesthetic and intensely polyrythmic microbeats. It is Bretschneider's most engaging album since 1997's Flex.

Happy Today, the third album from guitarist/bandleader Jeff Parker’s long-running ETA IVtet, was recorded live at Lodge Room in Los Angeles on August 20, 2025. This fresh entry into the IVtet’s catalog captures Parker and the band – including drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and saxophonist Josh Johnson – on record outside of the now-shuttered Highland Park micro-club ETA for the first time.

The performance also captures a distinctly joyful night of togetherness set against the backdrop of dark times. “2025 was a very difficult year for me and my family,” Parker says. “Dealing with being displaced from the Eaton fires for eight months, and the kind of toll that that instability took on my family’s mental health and general outlook, coupled with Donald Trump being back in office and basically making life miserable for everyone… There was a lot of sadness and despair. But feeling the sense of community that we created with our concert, and later hearing the recording, seeing the beautiful footage that had been shot and the photographs of such joy to be back in that space and to be making music again: It was a very happy moment. So I called the record Happy Today. It’s meant to be a statement of joy.”

That joy and camaraderie found in communal space seems to be a major catalyst for the ETA IVtet’s music. The band’s audience is, somehow, an essential part of the formula. Case in point: the show at Lodge Room was actually meant to be the cherry on top of a weekend of studio sessions by the band. Those sessions were intended to be the next album released by the group, its first ever studio record. Upon listening back, though, it was clear to Parker that the Lodge Room performance was the recording that shined brightest and felt most true to the band’s spirit, harkening back to the weekly session the four musicians held at ETA for so many years.

ETA was undoubtedly more than just the namesake of the band. Part laboratory, part low-stakes proving ground, it’s where the language of the IVtet’s sound percolated and coalesced over the course of an almost mythical seven-year-long Monday night residency that yielded two critically-acclaimed records—2022’s Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and 2024’s The Way Out of Easy—and an instantly recognizable group sound.

Happy Today is that sound—the IVtet's signature syntax built around long-form, minimalist improvisation—expanding confidently into a larger space while creating the same hypnotizing, deeply-tuned listening effect on visibly enraptured audiences. The album contains two sidelong pieces recorded as the band performed in the round at Lodge Room, surrounded by an audience of 400 or so deep listeners. (The venue, appropriately enough, sits on the same street and just a few hundred feet away from the storefront that used to be ETA.)

The drastic change in venue size, and this document in general, is representative of an expanding demand to experience this band live that has been surging for years, starting with the release of their debut album Mondays. For the subsequent, final year that ETA was open, there would typically be a line down the block on Monday evenings, with far more people trying to catch the show than the club could hold. Even if you could get inside the building, given the limited capacity, the IVtet was a difficult band to actually see play. Couple that with the fact that before the closure of the club in December 2023, the IVtet had never played outside of Los Angeles. Access to the live experience had been extremely limited, and that has seemed to feed a sense of mystery and allure around the band’s music for the many fans of Mondays and The Way Out of Easy.

On paper, the IVtet’s growing audience is something of a conundrum. After all, minimal longform improvisation is likely the precise antithesis of streaming-centered content culture. Despite that, at the show that produced Happy Today, as with any IVtet show, the audience willingly settles into and accepts the band’s pace as they iron out a story which digs deeply into every facet of an idea before investigating a new one. Here the attention economy feels lightyears away, the crowd instead surrendering to that old and very human penchant for listening. With open ears, the crowd stands ready for a big yarn, a long tale, and from the jump there seems to be a trust between performer and audience that mimics the trust between the musicians as they move from detail to detail.

“The band isn't afraid to explore static spaces,” says Parker. “It seems like the thing is to stay on one idea for a while. Really, for a long time. To kind of exhaust it. And then one person shifts and then the thing moves together.”

“Everybody is constantly dropping crumbs and you can take them or you can leave them,” agrees Bellerose. “There are these little hints, these little moments, and everybody's aware of them.”

“When it is time to change, it can change very quickly,” says Butterss. “If someone suggests a new idea, it can flip in an instant. Everyone's constantly ready to go with it if the moment calls for it.”

“Like Swimwear,” the side-length opener of Happy Today, contains a quintessential example of this distinct IVtet move. The track gets off the ground slowly but deliberately, ramping up tension over the course of its first ten minutes without a moment of harmonic dissonance. The band, rather, steadily pulls at the corners of the rhythm. Here each member steps forward and backward in the sonic space to build a gleefully disorienting group cadence, where the repetitions of the individual overlap in such a trancelike way that even soloistic breaks from Parker’s electric guitar or Johnson’s effected alto sax never manage to snap the tension wire. Bellerose works deep into the rhythmic fascia, employing all manner of auxiliary percussion—strewn across his kit, tucked into his shoe, or wrapped around his legs—all without a hint of novelty. Every micro-choice comes from a place of both curiosity and confidence.

And then the shift: just as the thing is about to come unglued Bellerose opts into a smooth, low-register downbeat groove that Butterss has been auditioning for the previous minute or so. Parker swiftly kicks into an organ-like drone while Johnson and Butterss stay the course. It’s a series of decisions that could go any number of ways depending on the night, like running water pushing into fresh geography, moving from tributary to mainstream, past the levee and into the floodplain. There is no set path; if it went a different direction it would still be the cumulative result of the same water flowing.

That is to say that there are no hard and fast rules to what the IVtet does. Defining the music, in fact, is something that the band takes special care not to do. Living in that mystery, it seems, helps to keep the path open, cleared to push into new and satisfying territory.

“For me, the thing to protect is just where it started from, which was freedom and openness,” says Bellerose. “In the early days of the band Jeff was recognizing how we were all communicating within the structure of playing standards. He's one of the greatest producers I've ever worked with because he has this vision. And a big part of producing is casting—putting the right people in the room. So these shifts, they're completely natural within these improvised pieces that we do because the foundation was there and Jeff knew it. He had already noticed the communication within the band, but wanted to really push it further.”

The key to Parker’s push lies in the generosity to step back, to allow each member an equal voice, and to de-center himself. What we hear on Happy Today is an egalitarian group sound by design, curious and intuitive.

“Everybody's listening in a way where it's not always like ‘I'm going to go with you’,” says Johnson. “But it's always ‘I hear you’. And sometimes it's ‘I hear you and I'm going to stay here and allow the tension of these two things to exist for a while before maybe joining you.’ But the thing that's cool is that everybody’s hearing it. Because of the time that we've spent together there’s a maturity to the listening—a very special version of deep listening.”

“The number of times that we've talked about the music is so few compared to the years and years of playing,” Johnson continues. “I think that's one of the really beautiful things about the band—how organically the way that we play together has come about and evolved over time. Definitely on brand for the music that the band makes too. Slowly evolving, long form development.”

“I learned how to improvise in this band,” reveals Butterss, astonishingly. “I didn't really play improvised music before. So my whole approach to improvisation has been shaped by playing with Jeff, Jay, and Josh. It is a band and it has its own language. I think you could drop the needle on any of the recordings and people would be able to say ‘that's the quartet.’ It's very distinctive and it's developed very organically. We have never talked about it, I don't think.”

“That's our band,” says Parker of “Like Swimwear,” almost with an outsider’s sense of fascination at the recording. He seems to feel the same enchantment and surprise that the audience does while listening, despite being a primary part of the process. “That's it. I mean, that's what the ETA Quartet does.”

It’s a blessing for this band to be so expertly documented in its naturally public, live context. The two sidelong improvisations from Lodge Room that make up Happy Today, as with the recordings that made up the IVtet’s first two albums, are beautifully rendered by engineer Bryce Gonzales—recorded and mixed live, direct to a Nagra tape machine utilizing a compact outboard rig that he built himself, specifically to record this band. Much like the thumbprint originality coming from the players themselves, Gonzales’ capture of the music is its own signature, his mixes a form of sound improvisation themselves.

A major addition to this particular presentation is the full album length film by Charlie Weinmann, documenting the band's performance of Happy Today at Lodge Room, which will be released in tandem with the album. A shadow-laden, almost noirlike capture of the band in its full sprawling glory, Weinmann’s camera makes the joyful reality of seeing the IVtet at work widely accessible for the first time.

With Happy Today the reach of Parker’s IVtet extends further than ever before, but the essential formula, if there is one, remains the same. The anchor seems to be in variations on an almost alchemical communication—a feeling of connection between band members, sure, but also between the band and the audience. It’s an ongoing trust exercise, born organically in the corner of a small room in Los Angeles and flowing outward at exactly its own natural pace. It’s social music with a clear ability to move those willing to listen. Happy Today is an invitation to become part of the exchange and experience the joy of deep listening.

A companion mini-album to Heavy Combination, last year’s career-spanning compilation documenting some of the amazing music recorded over five decades by the late Joseph Kamaru, a towering figure in post-colonial Kenyan culture. This new record presents five more gems from the archives, chosen by Disciples and Joseph Kamaru’s grandson, the sound artist KMRU. Carefully remastered from original tape transfers, with liner notes by Kenyan academic Maina wa Mũtonya.

In Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, he posits that the aura of art objects is destroyed by the ability to photographically reproduce them. When you had to make a pilgrimage to a work it remained elusive, charged, ever distant; but when you can easily see a reproduction, such aura dissipates. What Benjamin did not anticipate is that in the age of AI and the frictionless fount of digital content, we have imbued mechanical and analog means of media production with aura. Film cameras from the last 100 years are in high demand (the point and shoot Olympus Mju I featured in Wim Wenders film Perfect Days still sells for $200), vinyl sales continue to grow year by year, 35mm and 70mm film screenings have become aura-drenched events people travel across country for, and as to the world of vintage and analog synthesizers, when a friend asked for the price on the Yamaha CS-80 synth used on Toto’s “Africa”, the answer was a cool $60,000. Despite the ability to simulate almost any synthesizer on a computer, the original physical units retain their mystique. Perhaps this lies in the physical process, many of these synths are temperamental and difficult to fully utilize, and the effort and ingenuity can be felt in ways that will always be absent from easy digital simulacra. Perhaps there is an aura in their imperfection, as Brian Eno wrote: “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided.” Some may call this nostalgia, but such sonic imperfections are the sounds of humans interacting with the physical world, and it is understandable to feel a pang of emotion and attachment in a time of exponential alienation. Marche 22 was recorded over a week at the Museo Del Synth Marchigiano in Macerata, Italy. The museum is filled with rare and obscure synths (especially CRB, GEM & Elka) as well as salvaged materials from a nearby shuttered Farfisa organ factory, including MARS, an unfinished realtime audio processing application developed by IRIS - similar to the now well known MAX/MSP. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein play a suite of pieces that encompasses the last sixty years of synthesizer music—there are nods to Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Jean Michel Jarre, and Morton Subotnick. Dixon and Stein are like jazz masters playing the American songbook with their own riffs and quotations. What shines through in these varied works that are sometimes rhythmic, sometimes melancholic, and sometimes both, is a soul, a spirit, an emotion vibrating through the tones like the charge of coming rain or the thrum of a distant train on the tracks.