PRE-ORDERS

Winding through cavernous passages of sound, Rod Modell builds a patient, tactile world shaped by low-end pulsations, drifting electronics and finely observed environmental detail. Gurgling currents, rustling textures and crystalline drips move in and out of focus, giving way to heavier sound masses before opening onto unexpectedly calm, almost soothing spaces.

What appears abstract at first gradually reveals a strong emotional pull. Modell’s control of dynamics and pacing allows small shifts in tone and texture to carry real weight, with moments of darkness offset by sudden glimmers of light and stillness. Electronic spirals rise and dissolve, while quieter passages create a sense of suspension, as if time has briefly slowed.

The result is a deeply considered listening experience that rewards attention. Every nuance feels deliberate, each detail contributing to a broader sense of tension, release and atmosphere. Rather than overwhelming, the music draws the listener inward, balancing restraint and drama in a way that feels both immersive and quietly affecting.

Rod Modell returns with Frequencies In The Fog, a deeply immersive work built from minimal structures, patient motion and finely judged restraint. Pads, discreet electronic details and slow, enveloping bass lines form the core, while distant, treated voices and subtle textural creaks surface like echoes caught in mist.

The music unfolds in gentle cycles, where circular movement alternates with moments of liquid stasis and near-silence. Sounds appear and recede without warning, revealing fleeting impressions of place before dissolving again into a shifting haze. There is a sense of suspension throughout — as if the listener is drifting through intangible terrain, guided more by atmosphere than direction.

As with much of Modell’s work, the power lies in the details: the careful balance between density and space, the tension between motion and stillness, and the way each element feels inseparable from the whole. Frequencies In The Fog invites deep listening, rewarding patience with a quietly absorbing journey through blurred environments and half-remembered forms.

Morton Feldman's three long pieces for flute, piano and percussion, played by the GBSR Duo (Siwan Rhys & George Barton) with Taylor MacLennan on flutes. Why Patterns? (1979) 30 minutes, Crippled Symmetry (1982) 90 minutes and For Philip Guston (1984) 280 minutes.

"The works contained in this box set occupy a special place within the context of Morton Feldman’s oeuvre, written as they were for Feldman’s ‘house ensemble’ at the University of Buffalo from the late 1970s onwards: Morton Feldman and Soloists. Flutes, piano/celesta and percussion is an idiosyncratic combination of instruments that Feldman came ultimately to favour. Indeed of Why Patterns? he said in 1983 “I never dreamt to write one of my most important pieces with that combination”; but in his last decade Feldman wrote multiple chamber works for identical forces only twice: the two string quartets, and the three trios presented here.

What a contrast – where the string quartet offers an abundance of woody timbres, this ensemble is glacial, dominated by simple, almost sine-tone-like sonorities. Percussion could be anything, but the pure metallic sounds of the vibraphone and glockenspiel dominate, with tubular bells and marimba introduced in Guston but rarely used. The ensemble seems almost an embodiment of Feldman’s spectacular statement from 1984’s The Future of Local Music “I’m not interested in colour”.

Yet in exploring the timbral etiolation this unusual trio affords, Feldman discovers an unexpected world of delicate tinctures where harmony and colour interact and become almost indistinguishable. Notably, immediately after stating “I’m not interested in colour,” Feldman continues by remarking on Schoenberg’s observations about the interaction between pitch and timbre: “he says that timbre is the prince of the domain, that the resulting timbre is to some degree more important than the pitch itself, as we think of pitch. That’s a very important idea.”

Perhaps it’s no surprise then that this ensemble, with its uniquely refined timbral combination, held the role of crucible for Feldman’s important compositional ideas in the transition into his fully-fledged late period.

For Philip Guston: The close friendship between Morton Feldman and the painter Philip Guston collapsed in 1970, an estrangement that would endure until the painter’s death in 1980. Four years later Feldman would dedicate this contemplative epic to his late friend and to their lost friendship; a work that conjures an emotionally complex world of hazy perceptions and hazier reflections.

As the hushed tones of piano, flutes, celeste and metallic percussion cluster in complex soft-focus rhythms, at some points cohering around snatches of melody, at others scattering to explore seemingly unrelated ideas, Feldman explores the limits of memory and half-recollection – traversing and re-traversing the same terrain, but with deceptively sure tread leading the listener towards a poignant, perhaps devastating, conclusion."

Feed Like Fishes is Should's first full-length record — an album of noisy, sedate, and minimal pop songs. Falling somewhere between shoegazer, slowcore, and postrock, Feed Like Fishes is a wonderfully complicated record that echoes the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Slowdive, Bedhead, and Galaxie 500. The album also includes Should's take on The Wedding Present song "Spangle."

The album begins with "Fish Fourteen," a fuzzed-out lo-fi instrumental inspired by Colin Newman's instrumental solo record, Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish. "Sarah Missing" fits perfectly with the work on Should's A Folding Sieve album, with its unforgettable vocal chorus awash in shoegazing delight.

"It Still Would" and "It's Pull Is Slight" are moderately-paced indie rock tunes that bring to mind Bedhead, the latter song featuring a parade of bells throughout its extended coda.

"Memdrive" encircles whispered vocals with gliding bass and guitar lines in the spirit of Main's early work. Should also explore Apollo-era Brian Eno on "Inst2" substituting heavy analog-delayed guitar notes for Eno's keyboards.

"Both Eyes Open" ends the record with a nod to the melodious, delicate side of Yo La Tengo with Marc and Tanya's coupled vocals going down as sweet as sugar.

Majesty Crush are a Detroit based shoegaze band from the 90s, but lightyears ahead of their time. They released their first and only studio album Love 15 on Dali Records, which was a subsidiary label of Warner/Elektra but folded shortly after its release. The album offers listeners a dreamy, guitar-driven sound that blurs the lines between indie rock and pop - something that is a defining feature of Majesty Crush.

After a half decade slog in the Gilman Street punk scene as The Vagrants, Brian Jay, Nick Gancheff, Craig Miller, and Dave Henwood resurfaced with a new name and a new sound. Their mid-punk crisis in full bloom, the quartet abandoned dissonant guitars and garbled glass vocals in favor of a jangly, albeit introspective mood. Neither shoegaze nor emo, and sonically exiled from their Lookout Records peers, Pot Valiant carved out their own corner of the East Bay, releasing two singles and a brilliant LP before imploding in mid-1994.

By early 1994 Pot Valiant had graduated from brooding high school punk band to young adults with an ever widening spectrum of influences. Gone were the palm-muted guitars and downcast lyrics, replaced with a modern rock sensibility and command of the subtleties of the loud/quiet dynamic. The group’s sole LP was tracked in early 1994 for the Benicia-based Iteration Records, and released via famed distribution black hole Dutch East that summer to heady critical praise. The 10-song Transaudio was awash in dense, ringing guitars, powerful drumming, and a hushed vocal approach more at home in a bar than an all ages club tucked into an industrial part of Berkley.

Shintaro Sakamoto's new album ‘Yoo-hoo’, his first release in about three and a half years, reflects his overseas live experiences over the past few years while showcasing a diverse sound incorporating blues, mood songs, 60s soul, surf instrumentals, funk, and more. Furthermore, the lyrics, captured through his unique perspective, are truly one-of-a-kind. The new album, containing ten tracks including the October digital single “To Grandpa” and the November digital single “Is There a Place for You?”, is now complete.

Like the previous work, this album was recorded primarily with members of the Shintaro Sakamoto Band: Yuta Suganuma on drums, AYA on bass & backing vocals, and Toru Nishinai on saxophone & flute. Guest player Mami Kakudo participates on marimba for two tracks. Recording engineer/mastering: Soichiro Nakamura. Artwork: Shintaro Sakamoto.

William Basinski's epochal four-album box of slowly decomposing memories gets its long-overdue deluxe reissue, with liner notes from Laurie Anderson and a fresh mastering job from Josh Bonati.

Undoubtedly one of the greatest "ambient" albums of our era, 'The Disintegration Loops' is an enduring aesthetic touchstone. It didn't exist in a vacuum when it appeared in the early '00s, as the dust settled after 9/11, but Basinski's prescient meditation on decay in the wake of tragedy felt like a musical mark in the sand - a body of work that changed the way we think about repetition and tape saturation. The story goes that the composer, who'd been recording loop-based, minimalist experiments since the '70s, inspired by Brian Eno's 'Discreet Music' and Steve Reich's 'It's Gonna Rain', was going through his archive of reel-to-reel tapes when he realized the ferrite was flaking away from the plastic. Not willing to give up on the material, he recorded the output, letting the tape head destroy his pieces irreparably and adding reverb to the output.

Now, this would have been good enough without the additional context, but Basinski finished 'Disintegration Loops' on the morning of September 11, 2001, and played the first piece to his friends as they sat on the roof of his apartment block, watching agape as events unfolded. He used the footage he shot at the time for the covers of each disc, and the suite's solemn, thoughtful decline served as the unofficial soundtrack of our collective grief, an unfussy reminder of tragedy that plays out its haunted remnants of the past until they die, quite literally. There's been plenty of music that's aped Basinski's method since, and we don't doubt there'll be plenty more, but there's nothing quite like the original, and this latest remaster is the definitive version.